"Not so mysterious. I talked to her over the weekend. Pretty routine résumé-last job was in San Antonio, she's from Boston, wants to move back there. No husband, no boyfriend."
Whitney picked up the receiver and held it out toward Tess. "You don't need Colleen's permission to dial long-distance. Just an access code and I'll give you that: five-four. Sheer coincidence, I assure you, nothing to do with our beloved publisher. What's the paper in San Antonio, the Eagle? No harm in checking out Rosita's reputation down there."
Tess took the phone and placed it back in its cradle. "You got me the job, Whitney. Now let me do it. My way."
Unlike most blunt people, who tend to be extremely tender about their own feelings, Whitney was nearly uninsultable "Okay. Just trying to be helpful. I'd ask you to lunch, but I have a squash date with Sterling, assuming it hasn't been overtaken by recent events."
Perhaps Colleen Reganhart wasn't so paranoid after all. Tess was surprised to feel a little stab of jealousy on her own behalf. "Lobbying for Japan? Or something bigger?"
" Japan is big enough. For now. And yes, I'm working all the angles. Luckily, Sterling is a better player than I am, when he isn't having problems with his back, or his carpal tunnel. It's hard to throw games without being too obvious about it."
Tess waited about five seconds after Whitney left, then pulled out the phone book and looked up the area code for San Antonio.
Newspaper bureaucracies are as byzantine and hierarchical as any government office. It took Tess almost an hour to find a San Antonio editor who would talk to her about Rosita Ruiz. Rosita's supervisor, the sports editor, seemed the obvious choice, but he referred her to the managing editor's office, where she learned the assistant managing editor for administration handled all such queries. It turned out this editor had an assistant who oversaw the two-year intern program, in which Rosita had been employed, and only he could serve as her reference.
"Edward Saldivar." His was a soft, young-sounding voice with a slight accent, one Saldivar seemed to try and minimize, anglicizing his first name as much as possible. Quite the opposite of Rosita, hitting her consonants with hurricane force.
"My name is Tess Monaghan and I'm checking Rosita Ruiz's references. She listed you as the contact there."
"Ah." When stalling for time, Saldivar made a singing sound, as if he were warming up his vocal cords for a chorale performance. "Our policy is to confirm the position an individual held here, and verify dates of employment, no more, no less."
"That's not exactly a reference."
"Ah." A little higher this time. "I see your point. But recent litigation by, uh, disgruntled workers, suggests companies should adopt uniform policies, lest they be accused of slander. Unfortunate, but that's the way everything is going today. Besides, Rosita left here more than six months ago, for a job at the paper up in Baltimore. Why don't you call them?"
"I'm calling for them, from their offices. Did you provide a reference then?"
"I don't recall being asked, and I don't know if someone else was contacted. But whoever was called would have given only the dates of employment. That's our-"
"Your policy. Yes, I understand, Mr. Saldivar. But Rosita has the job and she knows I'm calling you." A harmless lie. "Surely you should be able to speak freely about her work at the Eagle. She covered minor league baseball, right?"
"She worked here for nineteen months, leaving last October to join the Baltimore Beacon-Light."
"I thought she had a two-year internship. Why did it end in nineteen months?"
"It's not unusual for our two-year interns to leave for permanent positions at other papers before their terms are up. Rosita Ruiz resigned on October first after securing a job at the Beacon-Light, a larger paper that could afford to pay her much more. We were very happy for her. Good day, Miss Monaghan." Saldivar was not the type who would slam a phone down to end a conversation. No, he slipped the receiver back into place, almost as if he regretted breaking the connection. That was something she could learn from Saldivar, Tess decided, without the benefit of a two-year internship: Good manners are a great way to be rude.
It was almost 7 when Tess left the Blight, a lonely time in that forsaken neighborhood, especially on a rainy March night. Her shoulders ached, as did her neck, and she had a splitting headache. Doing nothing was hard work, and she had done little more than play solitaire with the computer after running into the dead-end known as Ed Saldivar. Out of sheer perversity, Tess had stayed even later than Colleen Reganhart had specified, forgetting she would have to walk back to Tyner's to get her car. On top of everything else, the Blight had forgotten to provide her a parking place, and the Nazi who supervised the lot had told her the visitor spaces couldn't be used by an employee, even one as tenuous as she.
Head down against the wet wind, Tess shuffled along the sad, deserted blocks of Lexington, bricked in during the 1970s, when downtown "malls" were thought to be the secret to urban renewal. There were still stores here, discount chains and cheap clothing boutiques, but they closed along with the state offices at 5 P.M. Even the Nut House was shuttered, much to Tess's disappointment. A handful of pistachios would have made a big difference in the quality of her life just then.
She was crossing Park Avenue when she noticed a long, brown-colored car with bits of salmon paint peeking through. It made a sudden U-turn on the one-way street, fishtailed to a stop with a great squealing of brakes, then made another U and headed back in the right direction. Downtown Baltimore, with its warren of one-way streets, often had that effect on out-of-town drivers.
Two blocks later, as Tess turned north on St. Paul, the same car passed her again, heading south. Again the brakes whined and the car almost spun out on the slick road. But even at this hour, one-way St. Paul was too busy for the car to dare going the wrong way. She watched it turn left at the next side street, suddenly overtaken by a sinking sensation that these might be her hospital-bound buddies, in another untraceable vehicle.
"As long as I'm walking against the traffic, I should be okay," she told herself, speaking out loud from nervousness. She started up St. Paul, and although she walked quickly, she hadn't covered an entire block before the same car-an old Buick, she saw now-passed her again. She looked for a license plate, but there wasn't one, not on the front, and the back plate was thick with mud.
Tess stopped for a moment to think. She'd never make it to her car, not along these increasingly desolate blocks north of downtown. She could disappear into the Tremont Hotel just ahead, or turn around and go south, vanishing into the shops at the Gallery or Harborplace. Even on a Monday night, the restaurants would be busy enough to offer her some protection while she waited for Crow, or a taxi. But she had to be sure it was the same men. There had to be a way to confront them without putting herself at risk.
To the east, City Hall's gold dome shone in the misty dusk, all the inspiration she needed. She checked her wallet. Forty dollars in small bills. Should be enough. She sprinted for South Street, but not so quickly that her friends in the brown-and-salmon-mobile couldn't see her.
Because of the parking problem in downtown Baltimore, an underground economy of de facto valets had taken hold in the more congested areas near City Hall and the district court building. Homeless men earned money by feeding parking meters for people who "tipped" them. Even if one didn't plan to stay beyond the meter's time limits, it was smart to offer a dollar or two, if only to protect one's car against the men offering protection. Tess, who had patronized these attendants while on various errands for Tyner, knew they scorned the local shelters, preferring to sleep near their place of business. They should be settling down for the evening just about now, having scored some sandwiches from the nearby missions. The trick was getting them to emerge from the cubbyholes and doorways where they slept.