The Sugar House

“She shouldn’t have run,” he said. “I’d have let her go, I wouldn’t have forced her to stay. I never force anyone, do I, Adam? And I don’t hurt them. Tell her, Adam. Tell her how I saved you, tell her everything I did for you.”

But Adam Moss was out the door, ru

He was waiting for her just outside the iron gates.

“Were you scared?” Tess asked him.

“Scared that you would kill him, and I wouldn’t stop you,” he said. “I can’t believe Dahlgren knew, all this time, that he set me up like that. I’m an accessory, aren’t I?”

They were walking up the hill, toward Tess’s car. The city of Baltimore was spread out before them. The top of Federal Hill was possibly the best vantage point from which to view the city. From here, one could take in downtown, Fells Point, the harbor, and Locust Point. The whirligig at the American Visionary Art Museum twisted in the wind. The Domino Sugars sign blazed red in the night. It was a fu

“If the police ever come looking for you, tell them what you know and I think you’ll be okay. But don’t stick your neck out, Adam. Nicola DeSanti is willing to kill to protect her grandson and great-grandson.”

“I guess so,” he said. “But it’s still hard for me to believe. She’s a small-timer, content with prostitution rackets and black market cigarettes. You know she’s death on drugs, fires her girls if they get caught using. She has her own weird moral compass, however skewed. Dahlgren’s the one who scares me. Mr. Law and Order, Mr. Family Man, using a girl’s murder for his political gain. I can just see how it went down, how Fulton carried the story of Gwen’s death and Meyer’s involvement to him, like some dumb, eager bird dog. Love me! Pat me! Don’t fire me! It’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for Meyer, getting caught up in that.”

“Then you’re a bigger person than I’ll ever be. I can’t imagine anyone more loathsome than Meyer Hammersmith.”

Adam looked back at Meyer Hammersmith’s house. At night, in the streetlights, the limestone glowed white. Another Sugar House, Tess thought. The world was full of Sugar Houses, places that looked so sweet, and left such a bitter taste.

“It’s not what you think,” he said. “He doesn’t want sex. He wants people to think he’s having sex. He wants to own things of beauty, things that everyone else wants, and can’t have. It was a good deal for me. I didn’t even graduate high school. I was a hustler in New York. Meyer was a step up for me. Wendy’s from some Virginia backwater where you’re lucky to get out without having your cousin’s baby. We thought Beth-Gwen-was one of us. More naïve, perhaps, but scrappy. We never would have brought her to him if we hadn’t thought she was strong.”

“She was strong, that was her problem,” Tess said. “She was stronger than you. She’d never consent to be someone’s slave.”

“I wasn’t his slave,” Adam said, his voice sharp. “More like an indentured servant. It’s a contract. You put the time in, you leave set for life. It’s not that different from being in on the ground floor of one of those Internet companies, or some start-up like, well, Dick Schiller’s. I slept with a lot of men and women before I met Meyer, and all I ever got out of it was spending money and some new clothes. He gave me a new life.”

They had stopped beneath a streetlight, where Tess had parked. She was still thinking about Gwen, her death, the details of the autopsy. She felt unfinished somehow. Unfinished-she remembered the fresh tattoo on Gwen’s ankle, the line on her leg.

“Show me your ankle,” she said to Adam Moss.

“What?”

“You heard me. Show me.”

Reluctantly, he propped his loafered foot on the hood of her car and rolled down his sock. There it was, the same black band that police had found on Gwen’s ankle. Only this one went all around the ankle.

“Meyer’s mark,” she said. “And you think you weren’t a slave. They branded slaves, Adam. Holocaust victims, too. You sat there and took it, but Gwen Schiller wouldn’t. That’s why she ran.”

She turned her back on him as she unlocked her car, overwhelmed by the unbidden image of Meyer Hammersmith, leaning over Gwen Schiller with his needle, slowly and deliberately inking a black band around her ankle so she would forever be his. Had she kicked him before she ran, jackknifed her legs into his soft stomach, bruised his chin with her flailing feet? Tess hoped so. She really hoped so.

“Look,” Adam said, “we can get them back. We can avenge Beth’s-Gwen’s-death. I know enough to destroy Dahlgren. There’s all sorts of sleazy shit going on with his campaign, stuff that could land Meyer in jail.”

“Dahlgren’s only a small part of the problem. He can’t help me.”

“But he’s my part.”

“Fine, you take care of your part, and I’ll take care of mine. Just stay out of my way, Adam. Because when it comes to protecting people I love, Nicola DeSanti has nothing on me.”

chapter 31

IT WAS SPIKE WHO CONVINCED NICOLA DESANTI TO MEET at this tavern, the Point, by persuading her that its West Baltimore location was quieter, less likely to draw scrutiny than Domenick’s. She arrived with only Pete and Repete. The terms were no weapons, but Tess doubted the DeSanti clan had honored this request.

After all, she hadn’t.

“You know why we’re here,” Spike said, after everyone had taken their places at a long table in the middle of the bar, the one used for large parties, for birthdays and a

“Who’s the little guy behind the bar?” Nicola said, pointing with her chin.

“My assistant,” Spike said. “He needs lifts just to get out of bed in the morning, you don’t need to worry about him. I’ll vouch for him.”

This earned Spike a sour look, which he ignored.

Nicola DeSanti settled in with a sigh, fishing a package of cigarettes from her bright red pocketbook, sending Pete to fetch an ashtray from one of the other tables. With her teased brown hair and polyester pantsuit, she might have been settling in for a hot night of bingo at the local parish.

“You know, Spike, I came here because we know the same people, we have mutual friends who’d like everybody to get along, because it’s better for them if people aren’t feuding,” she said. “Baltimore is a small town. But you don’t run anything, you don’t have any clout. I’m here out of respect to them, not to you.”

“Yeah,” Spike said. “I also know that all you really wa

“Who you kiddin’? He’s out of there, too. All that old shit is going to come up the surface, and there’s not a thing you or I can do about it. I’m go

Spike nodded, as if to commiserate: Such bad luck to have your politically co

“Maybe your boys here should have thought about that before they killed him.”

“Don’t talk shit, Spike. These boys didn’t have nothing to do with that. They weren’t even there that night.”

“Really? Someone was. The investigators found three gasoline canisters. A source tells me they got a print hit this week.”

“No way,” Pete said. “There aren’t any prints on those cans.” Repete nodded. “No prints.”

“How could you be so sure?” Tess asked. “Unless you wore gloves, of course.” The fact was, she and Spike had made up the part about the prints. They weren’t even sure Pete and Repete had fingerprints on file, but it had seemed like a safe bet.