Baltimore Blues

"Your aunt said I could wait here for you to wake up, but she'd toss a dictionary at my head if I didn't let you sleep. I've been here almost an hour."

Tess slid down under the covers, pulling them up to her chin. "I'm sorry, Cecilia, I'm not in the mood to help you investigate anything today. Can't you come back later?"

"Who said I need your help? Didn't it ever occur to you I could help you?"

Cecilia unfolded the newspaper. It was the final evening edition, but Tess had not made the front page. In fact she was on the back of the state section, next to the weather map. Maybe if she had died she would have gotten better play.

"A sixty-two-year-old former middle school vice principal shot himself outside the Baltimore Water Resource Center after attacking a woman there," Cecilia read slowly.

A vice principal? She thought Miles was a custodian with the city schools. But that had been her assumption because of his current job. Miles had said only: "I used to be with the school system."

Cecilia continued, picking up speed, a random Baltimore "O" occasionally creeping into her speech. Otherwise her voice was almost accentless, a trick of transformation that had taken far greater effort than cutting her hair and letting it return to its natural color. "Police are now investigating whether Frank Miles may be linked to the recent hit-and-run death of Jonathan Ross, witnessed by the same woman, Theresa Esther Monaghan of Bond Street. Mr. Miles met Ms. Monaghan, who works for lawyer Tyner Gray, when she conducted a routine interview in co

"Except for the fact that's one of the worst-written stories I've ever heard, I'm not sure why you decided to come over and read it to me this evening. But thanks for sharing."

"It's not the story. It's the photograph."

Tess picked up the paper and looked at Frank Miles, smiling his gentle smile in a staff photo that must have been at least fifteen years old. Nice of the school system to provide it to the paper, she thought. Would they have been so cooperative if he was still employed by them?

"Typical head and shoulders shot. Probably every principal and vice principal in the city has one on file. What's so interesting?"

"Because if it wasn't for the photo, I wouldn't have remembered him by name. I know Frank Miles. He tried to join VOMA. Abramowitz had defended two men who raped his daughter."

"Did he know the group's real name, or was it just a happy coincidence that a real VOMA happened into VOMA?"

"We'll never know." Cecilia sat on the bed. "Pru turned him away, of course, the way she always did. I see now she recruited the original members with an eye to finding women who wouldn't look too closely at the group's finances. She wanted weak people, passive people. She didn't want anyone she couldn't control."

"Did he get angry when you turned him away?"

"No. He was very sweet and understanding. He had brought brownies to the meeting, so Pru let him stay, just that once. His daughter was raped back and front by two neighborhood boys, classmates of hers. They said she was a whore who had done everyone in the neighborhood. She killed herself a month after they were acquitted. Pru told Mr. Miles he should find a group for people who had lost children to suicide."

Tess remembered his shadowy living room, the dusty photographs on the wall. "I don't have any children," he had told her. "Just nieces and nephews." But there had been a beautiful girl in a graduation gown.

"Can you prove this? Will the others remember?"

"I'm a few steps ahead of you-again." Cecilia smiled. "He filled out a membership form so he could get on our mailing list. Not that Pru ever mailed anything but fund-raising solicitations. I got her to give it to me after I saw the paper this afternoon. She raised a stink, but I reminded her she's not in a position to call the shots anymore."

She unfolded the old sheet of paper. Frank Miles's handwriting was neat and plain. Tess recognized his West Baltimore address.

"Are you going to the cops with this?"

"That's my next stop. Not because I care about your friend, although I guess no one should do time for a crime he didn't do. I want people to know a sweet, gentle man was driven crazy by what happened to his daughter. If Abramowitz had driven me to my death, I'd like to think my pop would have killed him, too."

Tess reached out and put her hand on Cecilia's arm. "I know you hate Abramowitz, but he did have a conscience. He agonized over the choices he made in his life and he paid for most of them. I read parts of a diary he left. He was very…self-aware. I grew to like him, reading it."

The corners of Cecilia's mouth moved in an odd way that, technically, would qualify as a smile. The ends turned up, a shadow of a dimple showed in her right cheek, but it was the saddest face Tess had ever seen. "Did he ever mention the rape cases in his diary?"

"Well, I didn't read it all," Tess said. It sounded weak, even to her. She saw Cecilia's point. Michael Abramowitz may have been tortured by his capital murder cases, his estrangement from the law, his futile campaign against Seamon O'Neal. But the rape cases weren't important to him.

"Yeah. That's what I thought. Ever read Don Quixote?"

"No, I keep meaning to read it, but-I did see Man of La Mancha at Painters Mill when I was a kid."

"The nuns make you read it in honors. I keep thinking of this one line. ‘What thanks does a knight-errant deserve for going out of his head when he has good cause?' Frank Miles had good cause, Tess. His family played by the rules and was destroyed by them."

"He didn't have good cause, not against Abramowitz. If he wanted to avenge his daughter's death, he should have killed the rapists."

Cecilia shrugged. "For all we know, he did. I can do research, too. The two guys who raped his daughter were killed in a drive-by last year. Together, just the two of them. Maybe it's just a coincidence."

With that she walked to the door, then turned back. "I am sorry Frank Miles tried to kill you. I guess that was uncalled for."

In spite of herself Tess had to laugh. Cecilia had a talent for making her laugh at the oddest things, when she thought nothing in the world would ever seem fu

The charges against Darryl "Rock" Paxton were dropped by mid-October, a week before the Charm City Classic.