Beale was enjoying his little vocabulary lesson. Tess wasn't. Several replies of varying degrees of heat and wit occurred to her. But her aunt and her former employer had repeatedly impressed upon her that running one's own business meant eating several healthy doses of crap every day.
"Okay, so to whom do you wish to make tribute?"
Beale twisted his hat, kneading the brim with fingers as plump and long as the Esskay Ballpark Franks that had given the greyhound her name. Hot dog fingers and ham hands, Tess thought, then wondered why she had pork products on the brain. Apparently her usual morning bagels weren't going to hold her until lunch today.
"As I told you, I worked at the Procter and Gamble on Locust Point. It was a good place to work-decent pay, good benefits. The company shut it down while I was…gone."
Prison, you were in prison. For killing a little boy.
"That was hard on folks, but the stock went up, up, up. That was my retirement fund and I couldn't touch it for almost five years, so it went up even more. I'm a rich man by my standards, richer for not working than I ever would have been working. I couldn't spend all this money if I tried. And I've got no wife, no kids, no family at all, no one to leave it to."
Tess nodded, although she still wasn't sure what he was getting at.
"Now there was a television show, before your time, ‘The Millionaire.' A guy named Michael Anthony used to show up, tell folks they were going to get some money. My wife and I always liked that show. I got to thinking-maybe I could have my own Michael Anthony, someone who could find the children, then help them out. Not with millions-I'm not doing that well-but with a thousand here or there."
"The children?" He had lost her completely.
"The ones who were there that night. The ones who saw what…happened."
Tess tried to remember the news stories about the Butcher of Butchers Hill. There had been much about his victim-Donnie Moore, it was coming back to her in bits and pieces. The media had worked hard to find something of interest to say about an eleven-year-old who wasn't particularly nice or bright, yet didn't deserve to be shot in the back for an act of vandalism. The best they could come up with was that Donnie was a work in progress. The other children, the witnesses, had been virtually anonymous figures by law and custom. As foster children, their names were confidential and the local media kept them that way during the trial. The court artists hadn't even sketched the children on the stand, if memory served.
"Why would you do this? Those kids taunted and tormented you."
"And one of them was killed. That's not God's justice. I may be right with the courts now, but I'm not right with myself, and I'm not right with God. I can't do anything for the boy who died, except pray for both of us, but I might be able to help the others. Scholarships, if they want to go to college. A car to get to a part-time job. Help at home. I don't know. Doesn't everybody need money?"
He had her there. Boy, did he have her there.
"So who are these kids? Where are they?"
"Well, there was the chubby one. And the twins, I remember their names. Truman, that was the boy, and the girl was Destiny, I think. Then another boy, a skinny one who did most of the talking."
"You don't have full names?" She tried not to sigh audibly.
"No'm. They were foster kids, lived with the Nelsons, a nice young couple that took in lots of kids. They meant well, but they couldn't handle those kids, couldn't even keep 'em in clean clothes. The Nelsons moved away after the shooting, and the kids all went to new homes. But they'd be eighteen now, out on their own anyway, right?"
"If they were at least thirteen at the time, they would be. But if they're still minors and in foster care, they're going to be hard to find, even with names. Donnie was only eleven, there's no guarantee the others were much older. We can't even expect them to have drivers' licenses. City kids-" She had started to say "poor black kids," but caught herself. "City kids often don't, you know."
"Oh." Beale thought for a moment. "I think the chubby one was named Earl. Or Errol."
"Errol?"
"Maybe Elmer. An E name with an L in it somewhere, I'm pretty sure of that. Does that help?"
Tess forced another would-be sigh back into her throat. "Look, Mr. Beale, I have to tell you the odds I can find these kids are pretty slim and, while it won't be expensive, it will cost money, probably more than you ever dreamed. You'll pay not only my hourly rate, but any expenses I have. Mileage. Fees for computer searches."
"I can pay," he insisted.
"Before I can begin working on your case officially, you have to visit an attorney named Tyner Gray and ask for a referral to a private detective." She opened her desk and pulled out one of Tyner's cards. "He'll draw up a contract for my services. That guarantees our relationship is privileged, which may not seem important to you, but it's extremely important to me."
"It means you don't have to talk to people about me, right?"
"Yes." Maybe. Even Tyner couldn't guarantee that the cops wouldn't challenge her on this some day. The trick was to stay away from the kind of matters that interested cops, which she had every intention of doing. "Tyner will charge you his hourly fee for your visit. It may seem like a lot for not much work, but there's no getting around it if you want me to take your case."
"I told you, money isn't a problem."
"In my experience, money is always a problem eventually. You have to understand, this isn't a fee-based result. I look, you pay. Finding people is easier today than it's ever been. But not when you don't have their names. You'd be surprised how many kids are named Destiny in Baltimore alone."
"Destiny doesn't matter so much. She's a girl."
Healthy doses of crap, healthy doses of crap, Tess chanted to herself. "And why don't girls matter?"
Beale wasn't so self-absorbed that he couldn't sense her irritation. "I didn't mean-it's just that I'm a man, and I'm worried about the young black men I see. The girls sometimes find a way out on their own. It's harder for the boys. It's hard to be a black man, but it's even harder to get to be a black man, if you know what I mean."
Tess knew, much in the same way she knew certain facts about Bosnia, Singapore, and the Gaza strip. Parts of Baltimore were foreign countries to her, places she couldn't reach even with a passport. That was just the way it was, the way it had always been, the way it was always going to be.
"Okay, I'll try to find the boys and the girl, once I figure out who they are. Let's say a miracle happens and I located them all. Then what? Do you want me to arrange a meeting?"
"I wouldn't mind meeting them, but I guess they're not much interested in seeing me again. No, you just find 'em and figure out what they need, and what it might cost. I'll write you a check, then you'll write them a check. I have to be anonymous in this. I don't want to risk them turning down the money, out of some strange sort of pride."
Tess jotted these instructions on her desk calendar, although she doubted there was much chance Beale's philanthropy would be rejected. That kind of virtuous pride was the stuff children's stories were made of, not real life.
"If you give any one of them more than ten thousand dollars, you can't be anonymous with the IRS. There's a gift tax, you know. You might want to consider setting up a foundation or nonprofit of some sort. Tyner can walk you through the process. It might be advantageous, tax-wise."