"Sure," she replied, almost slipping into her normal voice. "By the way, it's a girl who's coming out, not a gentleman. But she's OK."
"OK, hon. See ya!"
Despite Tyner's repeated exhortations to dress like a grown-up, Tess sensed the Macauleys would be more comfortable with someone who looked as if she had gone to Catholic school with their daughter or dated their son. She paired a plaid skirt with a white blouse, then added a man's navy vest. To do the Catholic girl bit properly, she thought, I should put on knee socks and roll my waistband up until the skirt barely covers my ass. That had been the parochial school look of her era. Instead she slipped penny loafers onto bare, tanned feet and braided her hair. Fetching, she decided, sort of like a field hockey player on her way to church.
In her Toyota she headed east past Canton, past the quaint row houses of Greektown and Highlandtown, leaving the city limits and heading into Dundalk. On a map East Baltimore County looked promising. It sat on what should have been prime real estate, the meandering coastline of the Chesapeake Bay, with tiny points and inlets. And perhaps it was gorgeous, once upon a time, a time before Bethlehem Steel. But there was no Dundalk before Beth Steel, which had built the community in 1916 to house its workers. In the 1950s, when steel production was at its height, red dust from the mills had fallen steadily over the community, sifting over everything. Cars, clothing on lines, the rooftops and windowsills. They called it "gold dust" and were grateful for it, because it meant the shipyards were busy and jobs plentiful.
There was still gold in Dundalk, but not so much for those who lived there as for the men who represented them in court. Few households had been spared asbestosis or one of the other degenerative diseases associated with the onetime wonder fiber. One lawyer alone had built an empire on asbestos, earning more than $250 million in a single class action suit. Now he owned the Orioles. Some of the widows of Dundalk were doing pretty well, too, but none had a sports franchise, not yet.
But, as Mr. Miles had, Tess wondered why Mr. Macauley was so focused on money. Technically he was one of the lucky ones. There were thousands of men throughout Baltimore who had been diagnosed with asbestosis, or the related cancer, mesothelioma. Asbestosis-white lung-was said to be a particularly horrible way to die. The lungs collapsed slowly, until you felt as if you were suffocating. And it wasn't enough to prove asbestos had done it. You had to know which brand of asbestos was poisoning you if you wanted to collect.
Yet Abner Macauley had won in court, one of eleven plaintiffs in the last of the preconsolidation trials. He was due $850,000, and he had won it before he died. The other rewards ranged from $900,000 to $2.1 million, according to the clip Feeney had found, for a total of $15 million. How had the jury decided the costs of eleven men's lives? Macauley had worked a relatively short amount of time-a mere eight months during World War II-and had been able to show he was never exposed again. Someone who could enjoy the money should get more, Tess decided, not less. The scale of suffering seemed inverted to her.
The Macauley house, off Holabird Avenue as promised, was a hideous 1950s-era ranch, a sprawling structure of brick and sea green trim that looked as if it had crawled out of the bay and died on this lot.
Small yappy dogs threw themselves at the Macauleys' storm door when Tess rang the bell. They didn't seem particularly vicious, but she wouldn't have turned her back on them. After almost two minutes, which seemed longer with dogs panting and snarling, a short, chubby woman came to the door. She wore cherry red pants, a red and white striped jersey, and toilet paper rolls in her tinted strawberry blond hair. Tess knew the look. It was one of the favorite local methods for preserving a salon-made beehive.
"You must be the girl!" the woman said cheerfully. "Just let me get this last bit of paper off my hair. One of those mornings, I guess you know."
"Sure," Tess said, feeling agreeable now that she was on the threshold of an important discovery. On the drive over she had convinced herself Macauley had to be involved in Abramowitz's death. She hadn't figured out the details, but her intuition was practically buzzing.
Inside, the house was early Graceland, decorated with ceramic monkeys and kittens. Mrs. Macauley led her to the family room at the end of a long dark corridor. Here, two recliners sat side by side, facing an old-fashioned console television whose color had taken on a distinct lime tint. TV trays stood in front of both chairs, and two hot microwave dinners waited next to sweating cans of National Bohemian. It was how the O'Neals might have lived if their fortune had been a hundredfold less.
"We always eat lunch in here," said the woman, presumably Mrs. Macauley, although she had never introduced herself. "Abner loves his programs."
"Where is Mr. Macauley?"
"He'll be out directly," Mrs. Macauley said, eyes fixed on the television screen. Her beehive, now unwrapped, was remarkable, a towering structure whipped from hair normally as thin and runny as egg whites. It wasn't a look to which Tess aspired, but she admired its defiance of nature and gravity.
She stared at a door at the end of the corridor, eager to lock eyes with Macauley. In her imagination everything would be revealed in a glance. Her only fear was that her earnest face would inspire an inadmissible confession on the spot.
Finally a door swung open and Macauley stepped out, dragging a reluctant animal on a thin, pale yellow leash. She saw him give the leash a yank, swearing under his breath. A sadist, she thought with some satisfaction as he started down the hall, practically dragging the poor animal.
He moved deliberately, with the measured tread of someone quite sure of himself, a hideous yellowish smile frozen on his face. As Tess's eyes began to adjust to the dim light, she realized he didn't have a pet with him, but something on wheels. Squinting into the dark hallway, she saw the yellow leash was a tube, leading to some contraption at his feet.
"Sweet Jesus Christ," she said under her breath.
What she had taken for a grotesque smile was a breathing tube stretched across his face. The "pet" was his portable oxygen tank. Macauley came down the corridor as slowly as a debutante bride moving across rose petals at the cathedral. And when he finally arrived in the family room, Tess was the one ready to burst into tears, equal parts frustration and pity.
"I've only been on the tank a month or so," he said by way of introduction. "Takes some getting used to."
"Certainly," Tess said, bobbing her head in inane affirmation. She was still trying to reconcile this frail old man with the wrathful monster she had imagined.
"Vonnie says you have news of my check." Each syllable was breathy and measured, a sibilant wheeze. "I was glad to hear of it. I had begun to think I might not live long enough to see my money."
"Yes, the check." She was mesmerized by his face and the tube, staring like a little kid who didn't know any better. "Of course. I'm afraid…it's not good news. You see, Michael Abramowitz's death has only complicated things."
Mr. Macauley flushed, but it was an anemic, blue-tinted rush of blood to his face, so he looked more as if he were choking. In his disappointment he couldn't form any words at all, only a faint hiss.
"Abner! Abner!" Mrs. Macauley cried, looking up from the television, and Tess remembered how Donna Collington and the judge had laughed over her cries in the courtroom. "Control your breaths! Remember, the doctor says you have to control your breaths."
He waved his hand in front of his face, miming he was fine. It was several seconds before he spoke again.
"I don't understand. I read in the paper how some of the others, the ones in the consolidated trial, got their settlements, and they came after me."