“Hmmmm. Why don’t you get Anne Tyler to do that? Or John Waters, or Barry Levinson? They’re the big names, the ones everyone associates with Bawlmer.”
“We tried,” Yeager admitted, all too happy to let Tess know she wasn’t his first choice. “Waters is on the West Coast, doing the sound mix on his latest film project; Levinson is shooting a film out of the country, and Anne Tyler said she doesn’t do television. Can you imagine?”
Tess could.
“So, what do you think?”
“Honestly? I think it’s about as across-the-board-irresponsible as anything I’ve ever heard. This is an open homicide investigation. It’s a little fresh to be processed, canned, and repackaged for the purposes of feeding the entertainment-industry maw.”
Yeager did his mock-indignant look, lifting his eyebrows and compressing his lips into a thin frown. “By airing this show, I could help the police develop leads. People often come forward after seeing things on television.”
“Keep telling yourself that. How many crimes have you solved to date?”
“Look, I haven’t told you everything I got. This is a sensational story, and everyone’s sitting on it. Police are trying to link it to some other crimes.”
“Shawn Hayes. I know, I was there.”
“Not just Shawn Hayes. Shawn Hayes is only one of three cases they’re looking at.”
He had her and he knew it, although she tried to fake a casual knowingness. Three cases? Cecilia might be right about a public safety threat.
“Sure,” she said, “the other cases, too. But the two victims-I’m blanking on the names. Who were those guys? Rainer told me and I forgot.”
Yeager laughed at her, enjoying every minute of it. “Rainer’s not telling you anything, I’m sure of that. Not that he helped me out much, either. I’m capable of doing a little legwork, you know, spreading around a few ten-dollar bills. I’ve developed quite a few leads. I found you, didn’t I?”
It’s a long trip to the bottom of a Daily Grind travel mug, but Tess was almost there. She finished off the last strong swallow of French Roast, her eyes on the wooden table between them. Yeager’s hands were pink and puffy. He wore a wedding ring, but his finger ballooned around it in such a way that you couldn’t ever imagine it coming off. Tess had an irrational dislike of men who wore wedding rings, perhaps because she had been hit on by so many of them. Her father had never worn one. He always said he didn’t need to look at his hand to remember he was married, and he’d worry about any man who did.
“I’m something of a First Amendment purist, so I would never presume to tell anyone in the media what to print or broadcast. But there are real victims here, and families experiencing true grief and pain. Don’t forget that, okay?”
“I know that’s what you and the other card-carrying members of the PC police would have us believe. But things are always more complicated than they appear,” Yeager said, self-consciously cryptic. “Isn’t that a constant theme in Poe’s work?”
His face was blank, unreadable, and Tess realized he would never tell her what he knew, not after she rejected his great gift of five minutes of television.
She got up to leave. “I don’t pretend I’m an expert on something after skimming a few books. Still, I’m not sure how your theory gibes with ”The Purloined Letter,“ which states that the things you’re looking for are often hidden in plain sight.”
Yeager had one last wheedle in him. “If you came on my show, you’d become a nationally known expert. Whenever Nightline or CBS News or Dateline needed a private detective, you’d be on the Rolodex. It’s good exposure.”
“It’s generally agreed,” Tess said, “that I’m overexposed. But good luck. If I’m near a place with cable television on Thursday night, I’ll try to watch.”
Chapter 10
The Enoch Pratt Free Library always lifted Tess’s spirits, and she was in need of a lift when she walked through its doors later that day. She had wasted much of the morning, trying to run down Yeager ‘s tantalizing clue about the other two related cases. She had even given the tip to Herman Peters at the Blight, hoping to steal Yeager’s scoop from under him, but the young police reporter had been indifferent to her gift, sighing so heavily into his cell phone that it sounded as if he had entered a wind tunnel.
“I hate a red ball,” he muttered, from some alley in West Baltimore where he was watching police pack up the year’s latest murder victim, a young black man who had been shot to death. The anti-red ball, if you will. “I hate the fact that all these reporters think they know everything about homicide investigations, because they watch NYPD Blue and Homicide reruns.
They even try to talk the talk. And this guy Yeager is the worst, with his “bunky‘ this and ”skel’ that when he’s trying to score points with the cops. I think Rainer hates him more than he hates you.“
“Great,” Tess said. “But just because he’s irritating doesn’t mean he doesn’t know anything. He said there are two more cases, Herman. What of it? Are there other beatings? Homicides?”
“I know there aren’t any homicides linked to either of these cases,” he said adamantly, as if he had memorized every case file on every homicide-and perhaps he had. “In fact, I’m pretty sure there’s no relationship between the attack on Shawn Hayes and this Poe shooting. The cops told me off the record what happened-Hayes went cruising, picked up the ultimate rough trade, things got ugly. It happens. But whoever beat Shawn Hayes didn’t then buy a gun and stake out the Poe grave. It’s a ridiculous theory.”
“And yet it’s a theory that came from someone in the police department.”
“So your other friend says. My guess is that Rainer is setting up a gay detective, giving him false information about sensitive cases to see if he’ll blab. Watch for that shoe to drop in a few weeks.”
“Would Rainer do that? Sounds positively Mc-Carthyite.”
“A cop’s first loyalty is expected to be to the department. Rainer’s capable of double-crossing a Baptist to see if he’ll leak information to his congregation. He may be homicide, but he belongs in Internal Affairs if you ask me.”
Ah, it was her fault for listening to a television talking head. Why had she believed Yeager?
So she hung up the phone and went to the Pratt, because of a note left in her mailbox by some crank. She really ought to become a little more discerning. Especially given that no one was actually paying for her services.
But Tess would go a long way out of her way to end up at the Pratt. She loved everything about it, beginning with its name, which came from the merchant who had poured his fortune into it. Once, Baltimore had been full of places with similarly idiosyncratic names. Memorial Stadium, whose gigantic letters had promised it would stand forever as a tribute to veterans, was scheduled for demolition, the letters slated for storage. The airport had shed the delicious name of Friendship to become the boringly mundane BWI- Baltimore Washington International. Tess thought this was the saddest civic change since the Bromo-Seltzer Tower had lost the bottle at its top.
But the Pratt remained the Pratt and managed to hold on to its dignity, even as it moved into the computer age and tried to bring its ancient branches up to code. Tess liked the soaring atrium here at the Central Library, one of the few places that made her feel small. She liked the gold leaf, the portraits of the Lords Baltimore, the hidden treasures of the Maryland Room. Best of all, the Pratt wasn’t a hushed, somber place. Sounds bounced from the ceiling to floor and back again-respectful, librarylike sounds, but sounds nevertheless. In all her years of coming here, Tess had never heard a librarian say “Hush.”