Charm City

"Kill the commissioner!" screamed one frenzied fan, straight into Tess's right eardrum. "Kill Tagliabue! Damn Bob Irsay! Fuck the rotting corpse of Bob Irsay!" Irsay had taken the Baltimore Colts away on a snowy night in 1984, and although the city had a new football team and Irsay was dead, he was still anathema. Baltimore sometimes forgot, but it never forgave.

The television anchor continued smoothly over the outburst. "But one man never said die. And now that man is going to bring basketball back to Baltimore. Within days, he expects to sign a letter of intent with a pro franchise that wants to relocate to Charm City. In return, the city has agreed to build a beautiful new facility, and you fans turned out tonight to show the NBA we can support a team here. Now, that's teamwork!"

And a great use of tax dollars, Tess thought sourly. Then again, the state had already done the same for the Orioles and the Ravens. If ever a city needed a self-help book, it was Baltimore: Towns That Love Sports Too Much, and the Greedy Team Owners Who Use Them.

"So please welcome the team captain, the guy who's brought us this far, the guy who ‘winked' at everyone who told him it couldn't be done, our very own Gerard ‘Wink' Wynkowski."

A slender, not quite tall man bounded onstage. He had bypassed the warm-ups in favor of a violet polo shirt, black jeans, and a black leather bikers' jacket. Gray-and-white cowboy boots of some exotic and politically dubious skin-ostrich, maybe snake-added a few inches to his height, so he appeared lanky alongside the governor and mayor. Shrewdly, he kept his distance from the former pros, who would have dwarfed him.

"Are you ready for some basketball?" he drawled, in an unmistakably Baltimore accent.

His face, angular and sharp, was deeply ta

"Wink! Wink! Wink! Wink!" the crowd yelled to their sports savior, much as they had yelled it on high school basketball courts twenty-five years ago, when the idea of a 5'11" Polish kid going on to a pro career had not seemed quite so ridiculous. His last name had provided the nickname, of course-his last name and, it was rumored, a tendency to hoodwink anyone he could.

"You guys are the greatest," he told the crowd. "You came out on a night like this, not even knowing which team I'm negotiating with. Imagine how many people will be here in a week's time, when I expect to make an official a

The crowd chanted back eagerly: "Jam one! Slam dunk! Jam one! Slam dunk! Jam one! Slam dunk!"

Tess moved forward through the cheering crowd, curious enough to want a better look at this local hero. Wink's life story was straight out of some old thirties movie: a fatherless young hood who was actually rehabilitated in the system after a string of petty crimes had landed him in the infamous Montrose facility for juveniles. She had known he was rich, but hadn't realized his restaurants and health clubs had made him enough money to consider buying a sports team.

When the crowd became too dense to let her advance through the center, she cut left, zigzagging until she was down front, but far to the side. This close up, Wink's flat blue eyes were not the merry or dancing lights she would have expected above such a broad grin. Large and grave in his small face, they took everything in and gave nothing back.

Suddenly, someone shoved Tess roughly from behind, with the sense of entitlement found only in popes, royalty, and television news crews. Given that the Pope wasn't expected back for a while, and native daughter Wallis War-field Simpson was the closest Baltimore had come to the throne in this century, Tess knew she would be face to lens with a cameraman when she turned around. She had wandered into the media clot, where the television reporters were taping segments for the 11 o'clock news.

"You're in my shot," the cameraman hissed at her.

"How inconsiderate of me." She didn't move-at least, not right away.

Nearby, two print reporters, a man and woman, stood with notebooks in hand. The woman scribbled madly, while the man just stared at Wink as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. For a moment, Tess felt as if she should be with them, as if she, too, should have a notebook. Then she recognized the man-not by his face, which was turned away from her, but by his ankles, always bare, even on a night like this.

"Feeney!" she yelled. He looked up warily from beneath the bill of his battered wool baseball cap, smiling when he saw it was Tess who had called his name.

"Darlin' Tess!" Kevin Feeney called back, beckoning to her. "Come over here. We're just gathering atmosphere."

The young woman at his side surveyed Tess in one quick, lethal glance. Tess could almost hear her brain clicking away on the sort of points system that some women used: Taller-1 point for her. Hippy-1 point against. Big breasts, long hair-2 points for. Hair, unstyled, worn in a braid down her back-2 points against. Older than me-3 points against. Face, okay. Clothes, not stylish, not embarrassing. Tess wasn't sure of her final score, but apparently it was just a little too high. The woman gave her a terrifyingly fake smile, one that suggested she had little experience with real ones, and held out her hand.

"Rosita Ruiz." Ouch-a bad case of NPR disease. The Rs rolled off her tongue like ball bearings and the T was an aural machete. Rosita seized Tess by the hand, pinching the flesh between thumb and index finger the way a crab pinches one's toes in the surf. Tess, who often did grip-strengthening exercises with an old te

Short, but most women looked short to Tess. Built like a gymnast-slender above the waist, stocky and firmly rooted below. With her even features and glossy black hair, she should have been striking, even beautiful, but something had soured her looks.

"Tess Monaghan," she said, dropping Rosita's hand and turning back to Feeney. "I can't believe you're covering this. Don't they have interns to do this kind of crap? Or sportswriters? You belong in the courthouse, covering real news."

"I told you. We're here for color. Sparkling details."

"For what?"

"Can't say, darling, can't say."

"When Feeney says color, he doesn't mean it literally," Rosita explained earnestly. "You see, in newspapers, color means-"

"Tess used to be one of us," Feeney interrupted gently, although Tess sensed no interruption was ever gentle enough for Rosita. "Now she's a private investigator."

"Well, sort of. I still have to get my license. But I'm definitely no longer a member of the fourth estate." Fu

"Well, let us know when you do. Maybe Rosita can write a little feature about you when you crack a big case. Tess Monaghan, the rowing P.I."

"No rowing this time of year," Tess reminded him. "That's for the real diehards. I'll go back on the water on April Fool's Day, not a day sooner."

Feeney didn't hear her. He was practically glowing, lighted from within by his secret story. It could be about politics, Tess guessed, given the cast of characters onstage. A new profile of the governor would require a fresh anecdote about his propensity to make himself ridiculous. Or the Tucci family might be using its considerable clout to ensure another concession for its trash disposal business, which found fewer and fewer neighborhoods wanted an incinerator down the street. Like most rich families, they were quick to cry poverty whenever a state regulation or a new fee got in their way.