Charm City

"Maybe. The deal has lost a lot of momentum since Wink's death, although there's actually more real money co

The elevator had reached the first floor. Tess walked outside with Feeney, determined to prolong their conversation. She wanted to bring him around to his phony alibi, the lie that had her wrestling with her own greased boa constrictor, but she knew better than to be too direct or confrontational.

"What a difference a week makes. Last time we talked, you were delivering the eulogy for your own career. Remember?" The night you lied about your whereabouts, and dragged me into this whole mess.

Feeney made a strangled noise, half-grunt, half-laugh.

"Then comes what your publisher likes to call the ‘unscheduled publication' and-bam-everything starts falling into place. The first story leads to the tip from the guy in Georgia and you suddenly have the story of your career."

"And Wink is dead."

"How did you get there so fast the night Wink died, then get the story in the paper? It must have happened right on deadline."

"I dictated from a pay phone outside a Royal Farm on Reisterstown Road."

"But the story said the cops didn't arrive until ten-thirty, so you had to be right behind them. Who tipped you off? County police? The medical examiner? An ambulance driver?"

"I didn't get there right behind the cops, Tess. I got there right before them."

Tess stopped at the bottom of the long, low steps in front of the Blight and grabbed Feeney's arm, forcing him to stop and look at her.

"Wink? Wink called you?"

"He called my beeper and left his phone number. I recognized the number-I'd been dialing it almost every day, if only to get a ‘no comment' from him or a ‘drop dead' from his wife. I called back, no answer. I figured if Wink was ready to talk to me, I shouldn't let the mood pass, and I drove out there. The garage was closed and locked, but the front door was unlocked, as if he had been waiting for me all along. And I guess he was, in a way. Wink always did do things with flair."

"What did you do?"

"I called the cops from his house. And then I got out my notebook, took down all the information, and filed my story, like a good boy."

"The story said the cops found the body."

"No, we neatly sidestepped that detail. I wanted to put it in-I thought it made for a nice ironic touch. You know how the editors like those phrases ‘The Beacon-Light has learned,' or ‘As the Beacon-Light first reported.' I dictated: ‘The Beacon-Light last night discovered the body of Wink Wynkowski, an apparent suicide.' Colleen and Jack over-ruled me."

"It is a little melodramatic."

"Have you ever seen a dead body?" Feeney asked, then blushed, remembering Tess had seen her share. He jammed his hands in his pocket and began walking north along Eutaw. She fell in step beside him, too intent on their conversation to be put off by his rudeness.

"You shouldn't feel guilty, Feeney. I bet Rosita doesn't have any guilt pangs, and she's as responsible as you are."

"Rosita's young. She's probably mad he didn't beep her. Rosita always thought she could crack the story wide open if she had a few minutes with Wink. She does get people to open up to her, I'll give her that. I don't know how she does it."

I do. She doesn't let their quotes get in the way of the story.

"How much reporting did she contribute to the first story? Without any help from you, I mean."

"Most of the personal stuff about Wink, the details about his marriage and his childhood. And she was the one who got the call from the guy who knew him at Montrose. She wanted to do that interview by herself, but Sterling was skeptical about the guy, wanted to good-cop/bad-cop him, make sure he wasn't some petty psycho. Rosita went in all empathetic, while I was the hard-ass. The guy was solid, though, and my courthouse source backed him up."

"Did the courthouse source help you out on the first story? Was he one of the people you didn't want to identify?"

"Yeah, he's given us lots of stuff over the years, it would be crazy to burn him. But the key was the financial source, someone who-well, let's just say he was a former business associate whose creative accounting tricks for Wink could have resulted in jail time. Now he's born-again, the father of three little girls, soccer coach, PTA president. I was so careful to protect his identity I never even wrote his name in my notebook. He was just U.C.-the Unknown Citizen."

In her memory, Tess tasted gin, heard the congenial buzz of the Brass Elephant, saw Feeney's red face as he slurringly declaimed a few lines of poetry.

"That's what you recited to me in the bar, the allusion I couldn't place. Auden's ‘The Unknown Citizen.' ‘Am I happy? Am I free?'"

"Did I?" Feeney asked unhappily. "I don't remember."

"It was your exit line," Tess reminded him. "When you stormed out at eight o'clock and left me alone with your tab." He squirmed a little, as she had expected he would, as she wanted him to. Good: now they had acknowledged the lie between them, the way he had used her.

"Well, obviously he was on my mind," Feeney offered. "I'm surprised I didn't blurt out his name, in the state I was in."

"Go ahead and blurt it out now. I'm an old friend, you can trust me." Tess's mind was racing ahead: if Rosita had conducted any of the interviews with the Unknown Citizen, perhaps she had twisted his words the way she'd twisted Linda's. It was worth checking out.

Feeney's face was pensive, the way he sometimes looked before a poetry jag, although he was obviously stone-cold sober now.

"Tess, as long as you work for management, you're not my friend and I don't trust you. And if you want to continue this conversation, I suggest we find my union rep."

He turned and began walking quickly toward the Shrine of St. Jude. Tess stood on the corner, as breathless as if he had just punched her in the stomach. How had Feeney gotten things so twisted? She was here because of his deceit, because he had used her as his alibi, and if she didn't make the case that Rosita had sneaked the story into the paper out of unalloyed ambition, Feeney might take the fall. Typical Feeney, going on the offensive when he should be offering profuse apologies.

"Fuck you, Kevin Feeney," she called after him, although he was already too far away to hear her. "You can take care of yourself from now on."

The sleet had finally stopped, but the wind had picked up, stinging and bitter. That's the only reason my eyes are tearing, Tess told herself as she walked back inside. Because of the wind.