Baltimore Blues

"I wouldn't know about the temple. I don't know Hebrew. But you're right about Abramowitz's longing to be caught. He felt guilty and he wanted everyone else to feel guilty, too. That's why he insisted on joining the firm, so Shay would have to see him and-these were his words-‘think about it every day, as I do.' The only thing Seamon thinks about every day is whether his bran has done its work and where his next affair will come from, the associates or the secretaries."

Tess liked the image of red-faced Shay on the toilet, day-dreaming of secretaries. But she couldn't afford to be distracted.

"So Abramowitz blackmails his way into the firm, and they give him a nice office with a harbor view and no work. It was brilliant. The best way to drive a workaholic crazy. That was the point, right? To drive him crazy? To make him quit, or commit suicide?"

Mrs. O'Neal's eyes seemed to darken. "No," she said, "I wouldn't wish insanity on anyone."

"Your son is insane, isn't he? That's why you give so much money to mental illness causes."

"We earmark about half our donations for the mentally ill." Very careful, Tess noticed. If she had been recording the conversation, Mrs. O'Neal would be able to argue she never admitted to doing anything. She wasn't taping it, however. For some strange reason she had thought she would be safer if she didn't.

"Does your philanthropy make up for your son killing someone?"

This time Mrs. O'Neal met her eyes. "Yes, Miss Monaghan, it does. In fact it more than compensates."

"How do you figure?"

"If William had been arrested he never would have been judged competent to stand trial. He would have been committed to some state asylum, at the state's expense, until he was. Instead he is in a nice place in Co

"I see-it was in the best interest of the taxpayers. What if the taxpayers preferred not to pervert our legal system?"

"Lawyers pervert the system," she replied. "The jurors pervert it. We sidestepped it."

"And Jonathan Ross?"

"The reporter? What about him?"

"He was murdered."

"Really? I read his death was ruled a hit-and-run, an accident."

"He was going to figure this out. He was starting to research foundations. He had talked to Fauquier. He would have put it together as I did, eventually."

Mrs. O'Neal just smiled.

"Am I going to be in a police report, Mrs. O'Neal? Am I going to be an accident?"

"Seamon tends to…panic. You've seen how red he becomes, how his voice starts squeaking. Another sign of the compulsively tidy. But when he has time to think-time to listen to advice-he is quite rational."

"Fauquier will write more letters to other reporters. He wants to tell his story. He wants attention."

"Yes, he does. You visited him yesterday, I understand. Your name was on the sheet. We've been taking note of his visitors since Mr. Abramowitz's death. Today-" She glanced at her watch, the kind of gold simplicity that costs dearly. "It's already happened. Shay held a press conference at one-thirty and a

"I know."

Now it was Tess who did not want to meet Mrs. O'Neal's eyes. If Luisa saw the past through her window, Tess saw the future. Fauquier's appeals would run out. His lawyer would whisper to him: "Don't say anything about that fake confession yet. We have a plan. We're going to a

"There's only one thing I don't understand, Mrs. O'Neal. Why did you have Abramowitz killed? Was he so miserable that he was going to confess?"

"I'm afraid, dear, you can't blame us for that. We have no idea who killed Abramowitz, although we probably owe whoever it was a debt. It has worked out nicely for us. He was becoming quite a nuisance."

"Aren't you worried I'll tell?"

"No. I think, on some level, you see my side of things, Miss Monaghan. Justice was done. A boy was killed, a man confessed. My son is in a hospital for the rest of his life, which is longer than he would have stayed in jail. What more would you ask?"

"I don't see your side. I could never think the way you do." Tess was almost yelling, frantic in her hope that she was telling the truth.

"Well, then, I'll tell you the second reason I'm not worried. You're no one, and no one will ever believe you. But if you'd like a little money, a reward for being so clever, it could be arranged."

"Actually," Tess said, surprising even herself, "I might."

Chapter 29

Tess left the O'Neals' and drove to a copy store out in the suburbs, a bright, lively place with an espresso bar and throngs of people. Despite Mrs. O'Neal's kind assurances that she was too inconsequential to kill, she felt safer in public. She paid for computer time and typed up the story she had told Mrs. O'Neal, fleshed out now with Mrs. O'Neal's details. At the end she listed all her resources, a bibliography of sorts. She smoothed out and photocopied the crumpled, damp faxes, paid for the disk on which she had worked, and put everything in a manila envelope, which she then sent by certified mail to Kitty. She wrote on the back flap, "To be opened only in the event of my death." Kitty was one of the few people who would unquestioningly follow those instructions. She wouldn't even find it particularly odd. Tyner, while the more logical choice in some ways, would have opened it immediately.

Strangely Tess almost believed Mrs. O'Neal when she said they had not arranged Abramowitz's death. More importantly she believed she couldn't prove it if they had. All this work, all this effort, and she had ended up solving the wrong case-Jonathan's death and the death of a little boy whose name she had not even known two days ago.

That's why I hated being a reporter. You were always getting the wrong answers to your questions.

The thought darted across her mind like a cockroach ru

Because Whitney wanted to be a reporter, and you could never stop competing with Whitney. Because Jonathan was a great reporter, and you loved him once and wanted him to love you. Because James M. Cain was a reporter who went to Washington College, then had gone on to write wonderful books and have an interesting life. You wanted to be a writer with a regular paycheck. That didn't make you a reporter. Or a writer. It made you a coward and a fake. An imitation.

Her package mailed, she drove home and flopped on her bed. She had not exercised for five days, since Jonathan's death, and she'd eaten little. Her body felt puny and weak, her stomach flat, the kind of flat that comes from the atrophy of muscle. A workout's effects are lost in seventy-two hours, Tess chided herself, then tried to remember the last time she had gone three days without ru