Tess didn’t remember bragging about her skills, but she did prefer cutting glass to picking locks. Sighing, she went back to her rental car, where she had stowed her tools for the duration of this surveillance, and walked with Gretchen to the back of the old rowhouse. The block appeared to be deserted. The other houses had boarded windows and doors, along with paper signs that warned against trespassing-which didn’t mean they were empty, far from it. Tess couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching them, but she told herself it was probably some wide-awake addict. If she and Gretchen could break into this little fortress, the neighborhood men would quickly follow, harvesting the metal inside.
They had to circle the block to get to the trash-strewn alley where rats waddled, placid and serene as sheep in a meadow. When Gretchen had said a boost, Tess had assumed she would make a cradle with her hands and allow Tess to step up to the window. But Gretchen crouched down, indicating she wanted Tess to stand on her shoulders.
“No way you can hold me like that,” Tess argued. “I’ll fall and break my neck.”
“I can do it, I’m strong. Just take your boots off. I did this with my kid sister, playing circus.”
The fact that she had a sister-the fact that no-nonsense Gretchen had ever done anything in her life resembling play-was the only personal detail that Gretchen had volunteered to date. Tess decided to trust her. Bracing her palms against the building, she placed one socked foot, then the other, in the broad grooves between neck and shoulder. Then, to her astonishment, she was up, Gretchen lifting her to the window-not easily, but steadily-without too much wobbling. Tess thought she was strong, but Gretchen clearly was doing a little more upper-body work.
“Could we be this lucky?” Tess called out. Her voice was so loud that it echoed in the quiet street, but it seemed ridiculous to whisper.
“What?”
“This window was painted shut at some point, and someone must have counted on that to hold it, because it’s unlocked. But the wood is so soft from years of damp that I think I can get it open without cutting.”
She banged her fist around the edges of the frame and then started to push at the lower sash with all her might. Forgetting that Gretchen’s shoulders were all that stood between her and the earth, she tried to use her weight by stepping forward with her right foot. They staggered crazily for a moment-yes, this would make for a nice circus act-but Gretchen held fast to Tess’s ankles and managed to regain her balance.
Tess pushed again, and the window moved up by no more than eighteen inches. Enough, she judged, for her to get through. She grabbed the ledge and pulled her torso through the opening. Her legs dangled for a moment, but she pressed against the inside wall with her hand and slid forward, grateful for the coat and gloves that protected her from the splintery, mushy wood beneath her belly.
“Hey!” Gretchen called out, as if worried about being left out.
Tess stuck her head out. “Toss up one of the flashlights and I’ll go down and see if I can unlock the front door. And bring my boots and my bag, okay?”
She was on the landing of a rear staircase. Tess crept down, taking care to watch where each shoeless foot landed. But the old building, while not particularly clean, was neat. There was no debris on the stairs, no waste, animal or human, and the kitchen she entered still had its old fixtures. The metal scavengers had not gotten inside here, not yet. She found a narrow hallway and followed it to the front. The metal door had a dead-bolt, just as Gretchen said, but Pitts had been kind enough to leave a key in it. Tess loved people’s stupidity when it benefited her.
“Did you see anything?” Gretchen asked, thrusting Tess’s boots and duffel bag at her and rushing past, as if worried that Tess had searched the building without her.
“I came straight to the door,” Tess said. “Slow down, take a minute to think about what we’re doing here. For one thing, let’s find out if there’s any electricity in this place.”
They were in the hallway of what appeared to have been a grand home, before someone had bricked in the first-floor windows. A wide stairway rose to the upper floors, and a chandelier hung overhead. The beam of Tess’s flashlight found the switch and they turned it on. The light was dull, the bulbs smoky with age and dirt, but it was better than creeping around by flashlight. Gretchen started down the narrow hall.
“I’ve been that way already,” Tess called after her. “It’s nothing but an old kitchen. Let’s see what’s behind these sliding doors.”
The ornately carved doors were another remnant from the house’s better days. They balked at Tess’s touch and then gave way, rolling back to reveal an old-fashioned parlor.
“What a bunch of junk,” Gretchen said, after flicking the light switch in this room. This was Tess’s first thought too. Boxes were piled almost to the ceiling, while sheeted pieces of furniture stood among them like so many ghosts. The room was so crammed with stuff it was impossible to venture more than a few steps inside. Yet it projected a sense of order, suggesting that its caretaker would know instantly if anything had been disturbed.
“Let’s check the upstairs rooms,” Gretchen said, and Tess could see no reason not to follow her. But as she turned to go, her boot heel caught on one of the sheets, dragging it from its moorings and revealing an object she had never thought to see again. It was a lighthouse made from Bakelite, standing almost as tall as she was, with a green-and-white striped base and what appeared to be a gaslight fixture in the top.
“It’s the Beacon-Light beacon!”
“What?”
“The replica of the image that appears on the Beacon-Light’s masthead. It used to stand on a pedestal above the Beacon-Light offices on Saratoga Street,” Tess explained, walking around the lighthouse. “It disappeared in the mid-eighties, during the renovations. A boy at an antiques store in Fells Point told me they still get calls about it, from time to time, but they’re always false alarms.”
“Who would want it?” Gretchen asked dubiously. “It’s tacky as hell, and it doesn’t look like it would be worth much.”
“It could be,” Tess said. “To the right person, it would be worth a lot. I wonder how it came to be here.”
“People get rid of stuff all the time, don’t they? The city spent years trying to get that damn RCA dog back from the guy in Virginia who bought it, then put it in that crazy museum. I never understood why people care so much about some big plaster dog, just because it once sat on a building they drove by when they were kids.”
“It’s a harmless sentiment, unless-Gretchen, let’s see what else is here.”
While many of the boxes were, indeed, filled with porcelain and china and crockery, a second theme quickly emerged as they worked feverishly in those predawn hours. It was “ Maryland, My Maryland,” as sung by Arnold Pitts. Here were boxes filled with National Bohemian merchandise, from coasters to signs, all declaring Baltimore the Land of Pleasant Living.
Here were the T-shirts made to promote the Maryland Lottery when it began in the 1970s, back when it was considered progressive public policy to trick the state’s poorest citizens into financing construction projects for the middle class.
Here was one of the original Ouija boards, which had been invented in Baltimore, a fact Tess had forgotten. Boxes and boxes of Oriole and Colts memorabilia, including a football-shaped bank that Tess was tempted to slip into her backpack. A letter to the Baltimore Police Department from Bob Dylan, asking for details of the Hattie Carroll case, although he had already committed her story to song. The old-fashioned swimsuit and straw hat the then-mayor had worn to frolic with the seals when the National Aquarium wasn’t completed at the promised time. Finally, there were cartons of old postcards, glowing with the rich hand-tinted hues of a long-ago, maybe never-was Baltimore. Certainly, Tess had never known a Baltimore of such somber beauty.