"I don't know anything," he whined, pulling his head to the side so he could breathe. Esskay licked his forehead with increasing interest, perhaps trying to decide if Tommy might be a good substitute for her Teddy bear, left behind at Rock's. Certainly, he was larger, with more surface area to lick.
"This is kidnapping," Tommy repeated. "That's a feral offense."
"Luckily, Kitty isn't dating anyone in law enforcement right now, so who's going to know? And with your only real friend in a coma, who's going to care? You remember, your good friend Spike, whose big-screen TV you were about to take for yourself."
"I just wanted it for the bar, to help business. By the way, I'm adding torture to those charges. This dog stinks."
"As you once said so memorably, Tommy, that's like the pot telling the kettle to get out of the kitchen if it can't stand the heat."
Chapter 17
You couldn't call Tommy tough, but he had a stubborn streak, and that could be almost as good under the right circumstances. For most of the morning, he sat sullenly and silently in Kitty's kitchen. Tess sensed his dignity had been offended by her ploy, which had been predicated on Tommy not being a serious physical threat. To make him feel better, she tied him to his chair with a pair of Kitty's silk scarves, although she doubted he would try to run and knew she could catch him if he did. His zippered ankle boots would slow him down on the cobblestones of Fells Point.
"Would you like something to eat?" Crow, although fortified on doughnuts, had prepared a large breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, hopeful the smell of food would entice Tommy into talking. But food had never interested Tommy. He ate only enough to balance his beer intake.
"No, thank you, I'm maintaining just fine," he said, giving Tess a wounded look. Laurence Olivier couldn't have delivered the line with more gravitas.
"A coma's a serious thing," Crow told Tommy, pushing the plate of eggs a little closer.
"Uh-huh. Serious as a heart attack," said an unmoved Tommy.
"And what if Spike never comes to?" Crow asked. "These guys may not go away. They may hurt Tess, or her parents. They seem to be pretty dangerous guys."
"The dredges of society," Tommy agreed.
Tess leaned over and whispered in Crow's ear, "This is hopeless. We're going to have to pull out our big gun."
Crow left the room and Kitty returned in his place, red curls bouncing, bright red high heels dancing across the wooden floors. Just looking at her, Tommy flushed a shade even darker than her shoes. He had never actually spoken with Kitty-he had always been too tongue-tied to dare. But Tess knew he had noticed her. All men did.
"Good morning, Tommy," Kitty said, as if it were perfectly normal for him to be tied to a chair in her kitchen. "I hear you've been doing a great job running The Point in Spike's absence."
Tommy nodded curtly. Even with his pillow hair and baggy baby blue sweats, he had an odd dignity.
"He'll be so proud of you when he hears." Kitty leaned over Tommy, her mouth deliriously close to his ear, her long skirt brushing against his ankles like a friendly cat. "I really do think he'll wake up, that he'll be with us again. People do come out of comas, you know, sometimes with remarkably few ill effects. There's still so much we don't know about the brain."
"I have read that myself," Tommy said, his thoughtful tone suggesting he gleaned his medical news from the New England Journal of Medicine, instead of the Weekly World News.
"What worries me is how Spike is going to feel if he finds out you refused to tell Tess what she needs to know," Kitty said. "I'm sure you think you're protecting him by not sharing his secrets with Tess, but I can't imagine Spike wanted Tess endangered."
Tommy looked confused and troubled. Suddenly, this conversation was headed somewhere he didn't want it to go.
"But she kidnapped me!" he protested. "She used brute force!"
"Only because you wouldn't talk to her when she visited you at The Point that last time. And now these guys are following her, because they think she has whatever it is they want. Maybe because you told them that." Kitty was at eye level with him now, her mouth so close to his it must have hurt a little. "What if they hurt her as badly as they hurt Spike? Do you want to be the one to explain that to him? Do you want to be the one to tell me something has happened to my niece?"
Tommy looked at Kitty and licked his lips, helplessly enthralled. "Okay," he said at last. "But I'm gonna tell Spike how Tess tricked me. He wouldn'ta liked the way she squashed me like a bug. I almost smothercated."
Kitty kissed him on his sweaty forehead, then went back to the store, as Tess untied the scarves at his wrists and ankles. Tommy made a big show of rubbing his wrists and forearms, as if his bonds had been tight ropes instead of loose, silken scarves.
"So where did Esskay come from?" Tess asked.
"I swear on my mother, I don't know the answer to that. Two weeks back, Spike showed up with this dog, looking like Monday's meatloaf on Friday."
"Come again?"
"You know. He was all gray and lumpy looking. Said he had met with this guy he knows, and the guy wanted him to have the dog?"
"What guy?"
"Jimmy Parlez. It's a French name? As in parlez the English, you know?"
"Why did Monsieur Parlez give him a greyhound?"
Tommy shook his head. "Spike wouldn't tell me nothin'. He said ignorance was piss."
"Bliss. Ignorance is bliss."
"You sure?" Tommy wrinkled his forehead as he thought about this. "Anyways, the only thing he did tell me 'bout was the numbers."
"Numbers? I knew this had to do with book-making."
Tommy shook his head. "Uh-uh. Spike don't run no street numbers no more. Can't compete, what with the state doing Pick 3, Pick 4, and all those gimmicky instant win games. He's down to a sports book now, a little action on Pimlico."
"And on dog races?"
"Tess, there are guys who come into The Point and put money down on how much a bushel of crabs is gonna cost on July fourth, but nobody around here is gonna bet some greyhound race in Florida or New Hampshire when ya got stakes races right down the road. Now, tell that dog to come to me."
He waggled his fingers, but Esskay ignored him until Tess placed a piece of the dog's namesake bacon in Tommy's hand. Gingerly, he held the crunchy bite out to the dog, who snatched it with such alacrity Tommy almost lost part of a finger. He clambered on top of the chair, but Esskay only became more agitated, leaping around him wildly until Tess gave her another piece of bacon.
"I'm a little scared of dogs?" Tommy confessed unnecessarily.
"Don't worry, she's harmless unless she thinks you're a piece of food," Tess assured him.
He climbed down from his chair and tentatively began scratching behind Esskay's ears. As the dog relaxed under his touch, he pulled the left ear back and turned it inside out, exposing the ghostly pale interior, the way one might turn a little leather glove.
"All racing dogs have tattoos here, like ID numbers. That way, the tracks can keep track of 'em. But the numbers also mean you can trace 'em back to their trainers."
"Why would you want to do that?" Tess asked.
"'Cuz a few bad trainers can't be bothered to do the right thing when the dogs can't race no more. They'd just as soon kill 'em and dump 'em. The ear tattoos make that hard to do."
"So who was Esskay's trainer? How do we track her number?"
"You can't. That's what I'm tellin' ya." Tommy ran his finger over the smooth skin inside the dog's left ear. "Someone put a new tattoo on this dog, a home-made job like you see in prison. See? Where this dog once had numbers, all she has now is these red Xs. It's like filing down the serial number on a car or a TV set. Untraceable."