Over the past week Tess had become quite adept at trailing Ava. She hung back at least twenty feet, her eyes focused on some spot two or three feet in front of her, her clothes dark and unmemorable. She no longer worried about her hair, although she wore dark glasses as an extra precaution. Primarily she counted on Ava to walk slowly and never notice people who were of no use to her.
Today, however, Ava moved more quickly than usual, getting too far ahead. As Tess tried to close the distance without attracting attention, she smacked into someone, quite hard, and found herself staring into a man's familiar face. Down into it, actually, for the man was short, not even up to her collarbone. Irritated and embarrassed, Tess looked at a face to which she could not put a name, despite a panicky canvassing of her past. College? Newspaper days? A bad date?
Although short, the man had a huge head perched on a scrawny neck. His head was so big, and his neck so thin, that his head seemed to bob like a toy dog in the back of someone's car. Tess gave him her warmest smile and heartiest "Hello!", hoping his reply would provide a hint to his identity, or at least the time needed to fish for his name. But Big Head stared at her as if they had never met.
They hadn't. As he turned away Tess realized she had been gazing into one of Baltimore 's most ubiquitous faces, a visage seen so frequently everyone believed they knew its owner: Michael Abramowitz. His close-set eyes had stared out of newspaper pages and television screens for close to fifteen years. His ignominy began as a public defender, a loudmouth who bugged people by having far too much success with the accused killers and rapists he represented. Abramowitz liked to win, and although he had grown up as a poor relation-a distant cousin to a local fortune based on plastic slipcovers-he always insisted the wretched salary didn't bother him.
Yet when he quit a few years ago, he had gone after money with the same single-mindedness that had carried him through the public defender's office. He became the drunk driver's friend, the king of the slip and fall, the star of wonderfully campy commercials who noted, in front of a roaring fireplace, "Two wrongs don't make a right. You may have done something wrong, but you can get the right lawyer."
Over the years the commercials grew increasingly bizarre, adding to his fame. He appeared with a Dalmatian and, for a brief time, a fake family. When a newspaper article revealed he had never married or fathered children, he switched to playing the banjo, a line of chorus girls behind him, all singing to the tune of "Sweet Sue." "Ev'ry star above/Knows when push comes to shove/You'll sue/Yes, you/Stars up in the sky/Tell you he's your guy/Michael who?/Will sue." His lumpy face and thick Baltimore accent made him a celebrity of sorts. The business made him if not rich, then obscenely comfortable.
Yet just when people began to speculate Abramowitz could parlay his visibility into a successful run for office, he again confounded public expectations by joining O'Neal, O'Connor and O'Neill, that sedate stable of blue bloods who shunned publicity, except for the occasional "grip and grin" photo at a symphony party or a pre-Preakness event. Abramowitz had told reporters, affecting a Garboesque accent and the true wording of her Grand Hotel speech: "I just want to be left alone."
Perhaps he told the truth. Today he scuttled away quickly enough when Tess feigned recognition. She shrugged and pushed on into the hotel lobby, looking for Ava.
No luck. She checked the board of events to see if there was some conference she might be attending. It seemed doubtful, unless Ava had suddenly become a forensic pathologist, the only meeting listed. She called the front desk from a house phone, asking for Ava Hill's room. No one by that name was registered, a man's prissy voice told her firmly. She turned abruptly away from the house phone and collided a second time with Mr. Big Head, Michael Abramowitz.
Again Tess had to stop herself from smiling as if he were an old friend. Frightening, the intimacy television created with strangers. This time Abramowitz gave her a long, hard look. Tess wondered if he thought she was a chronic litigant, hurling herself into well-dressed people in hopes of a lucrative settlement. He said nothing, however, just turned and walked toward the elevator. He was an absurdly small man, except for that giant head, and Tess thought he must get tired carrying it around. Not even Rock's body could support such a gargantuan head.
The thought of Rock set off a series of small explosions in her brain. Abramowitz, Ava's boss. Ava. Hotel lobby. Abramowitz and Ava. Not in the lobby, but upstairs somewhere.
"But he's so ugly," she said out loud, drawing a harsh look from a young woman sitting nearby, a baby in her lap. The baby, a little boy in a white lace gown and cap, was not, in fact, particularly good-looking. Tess turned away quickly so the woman could not see her face, red with mortification and laughter. When she had contained herself she walked back to the bank of phones near the entrance.
She considered what she had seen. Ava and Abramowitz. It was tempting to jump to the conclusion that they were here together on some illicit business, but what proof did she really have? For all she knew they were meeting a client in one of the suites upstairs, some Sims-Kever executive who still traveled in style, even as he cried poverty to his victims.
Pulling out the crumpled sheets Rock had given her a week ago, Tess dialed Ava's office and asked for her secretary. A woman with an English accent came on the line. Interesting touch for a firm founded by three micks, Tess thought.
"Miss Hill, please."
"She's not available. May I take a message?"
Tess began stammering, which was only partly an act.
"Oh, wow, shit-I mean, sorry, but do you happen to know where she is? This is going to sound really spacey, but I'm this old friend of hers from, like, grade school, and we made these lunch plans and-would you believe-I forgot where I'm supposed to meet her. Could you check her calendar and see if there's anything that might give me a clue?"
The secretary sniffed disapprovingly, then shunted Tess into the vacuum of "hold." She came back on the line a few seconds later.
"Are you sure it was today? Her lunches are blocked out all month, from noon to two."
"I must have really screwed up. Does she have anything tomorrow? Does she have anything about meeting…Becky for lunch?"
"No, nothing written down. Shall I have her call you?"
"What? What? I can't hear you. I must be in a bad cell." Tess hung up the pay phone and picked up the house phone next to it.
"Front desk."
"Hi, it's me in the kitchen." She figured the front desk attendant wouldn't want to admit he didn't recognize the voice of a fellow employee. "Hey, what room is Mr. Abramowitz in this week? I can't read it on the room service slip and you know how he is if his food is cold. He always threatens to sue!"
"He's in 410. And you better get it up there fast. You know he expects the food to arrive no later than twelve-thirty. He doesn't like to be interrupted."
Not enough, Tess thought. Not enough information with which to ruin your friend's life. She took a deep breath and said: "So he can have dessert by one, right?" She barely recognized the coy, snide laugh she produced on cue.
The front desk clerk snorted, then recovered. "Just get the food up to the room. They're both here."
Chapter 6
That night, Tess ran her hardest route.
She ran along Boston Street and into Canton. Past the expensive condos thrown up along the waterfront when Canton had been touted as the next hot neighborhood. It had never quite happened, so only a few high rises squatted among the row houses, Gullivers in Lilliput. It would be sweet, Tess thought, if the residents awakened one day to find their expensive homes staked to the ground, swarming with those who now lived in their shadows.