“How do you know Arnie Vasso?”
“We move,” Nicola yawned, “in the same circles.” Tess couldn’t imagine her moving at all. Her dark hair had almost no gray in it, her flat brown eyes were shrewd.
“What about Henry Dembrow?”
“Never knew no Henry,” she said, and went back to her paper. The two blonds sauntered out of the bar, as if responding to some signal Tess had missed. They made a point of getting too close, of brushing by her, and she caught their scent, body odor with an overlay of something pharmaceutical. The pinball machine gave off one last ring. Game over. Show over.
“Gwen worked here, though.”
“Never knew no Gwen.”
“She might have used a different name.”
“Might of.” Nicola DeSanti’s voice was mild, even agreeable. So why did she frighten her so much?
“Would you at least look at a photograph of her, just to put my mind at ease?”
“No,” Nicola DeSanti said.
The waitress who had brought Tess her green pepper rings on her first visit came out of the kitchen then. She was wearing an ivory dress, semi-formal, and not quite right for any occasion. The dress looked as if it couldn’t decide whether it was intended for a cocktail party or a first communion. Some female instinct told Tess that a man had picked out the dress, a man who didn’t know too much about clothes.
“What do you think?” Her question seemed to be for the room in general.
“I think,” Nicola DeSanti said, “that you should go back in the kitchen and wait for your ride.”
It was only then that the waitress registered Tess’s presence. She nodded, flustered, and backed out of the room. She seemed nervous in the dress, as if worried about keeping it clean. A legitimate concern in dusty Domenick’s, but wouldn’t the kitchen have more hazards?
“Gwen worked here,” Tess said. Not a question this time.
“I don’t think so,” Nicola said.
“How can you know, if you won’t even look at her photograph? How can you be so sure, unless you do know Gwen already?”
“Her picture was in the paper.”
This wasn’t a cross-examination, there was no jury to which Tess could appeal, or point out the inconsistency in the woman’s conversation. She wondered if the waitress might have known Gwen, but she was so clearly new-Tess remembered how overwhelmed she had seemed, just carrying a tray, how she had dropped everything with a crash-that she couldn’t have been working here a year ago.
She left the bar. No one said goodbye. Instead of walking back to her car, she went around the block and headed down the alley behind Domenick’s. There was a large green dumpster there, and she crouched behind it, watching the back of the bar. Something was wrong, something was missing. It was the smell of food. Granted, no one was in Domenick’s eating just now, but taverns always smelled of the fried foods they served. And her hiding place, the dumpster, should have been a stew of ripe, rotting smells. She glanced inside-bottles, cans, broken-down cases. Go figure, the owners of Domenick’s didn’t recycle. Still, whatever brought people to Domenick’s wasn’t the food. She had probably been the first person to eat there in ages.
She wedged herself behind the dumpster, lying flat on the ground, and continued to watch the back door. She didn’t know what she expected to see, but her gut told her that if a girl in an ivory dress disappeared, she eventually had to reappear. Fifteen minutes passed-a short time, yet much longer when one was lying on a cold, rough patch of cement. A car pulled up in the alley. From her place on the pavement, all Tess could see were tires, a strip of shiny maroon paint on some kind of sedan. Gray trousered legs went from the car to the back door, disappearing inside. Soon the same legs appeared, accompanied by a pair of girl’s calves. Tess couldn’t help noticing that the girl’s legs were stubby and thick-ankled.
“I thought they were going to pick me up,” the girl was saying.
“Here? No, not here. I told you. You’re going to Harbor Court for tea.”
“Iced tea in winter? That’s all I get? Jesus, I thought this guy had money.”
“Hot tea, with little sandwiches. You’ll like it. Just don’t eat too many. This is a look-see, remember. You might not get it.”
“And it’s a good thing to get?”
“Honey, it’s the best gig in town. If you get it. Most don’t. For every ten that go, maybe one gets picked.”
They climbed into the man’s car. Tess was able to catch sight of the license plate, the make of the car. A Mercury Marquis, fairly new. She waited until it turned out of the alley and then stood up, unkinking her knees, brushing herself off. She wondered if she could pass muster at the Harbor Court’s high tea. She’d have to. She walked slowly through the alley, and the five blocks back to her car. Running, rushing, attracted attention, and it didn’t gain that much time in the end. She’d make it to Harbor Court before tea was over.
Or so she thought, until she rounded the corner and saw the blond duo from Domenick’s, sitting on the trunk of her car.
chapter 20
“WHERE YOU BEEN?” ASKED ONE, HAILING HER AS if they were old friends.
“Yeah, where you been?” echoed the other. “We’ve been waiting for you. You been talking to Gee-gee all this time?”
“Gee-gee?”
“It’s what we call my grandmother,” the first one said, scowling, daring her to make something of it.
My grandmother, not our, she noted. Then they weren’t brothers, although they could have passed. Could have passed for twins, in fact. Two Baltimore punks with the unhealthy pinkish pallor that always reminded her of the inside of a white rabbit’s ears. In the dim light of the bar, they had looked stringy and small. Now she saw they were taller than she was by several inches, with taut neck cords and sinewy forearms.
“I was walking around the neighborhood. I decided while I was here, I’d take a tour of Mencken’s house.”
She was counting on them not knowing it was closed, because she was counting on them not knowing who Mencken was.
“The Mexican restaurant?” the other one asked. “That’s long-gone.”
“Not Mencken’s Cultured Pearl, the writer’s house. The Mexican restaurant was named for him.”
“Bullshit,” the first one said. “Ain’t no writer famous enough to have his house be a museum, much less a Mexican restaurant.”
“Not many,” Tess agreed.
“Yeah, where is this place?”
“Over on Hollins, across from the park. I’ll show you, if you want to walk up there with me.” She was screwed if they took her up on her offer. The Mencken House had been closed since the City Life Museum had gone belly-up and parceled out its holdings.
Then again, she might be able to outrun them in the park. Maybe.
“I hate fucking museums,” the second one said, leaning back against the rear windshield, his hands behind his neck, as if to catch a little sun. “When we was in school, they were always dragging us to those fuckin’ places. They’d take us to the B amp;O, right here in our fuckin’ neighborhood. Like I give a shit about trains. I liked the FBI, though. That was cool.”
The taller one got up and walked around the car, leaning against the Toyota’s driver-side door. Tess would have to push him away to get her key in the lock. That’s what he wanted, she realized with a sinking feeling. He wanted her to make the first move, and then he would make the second.
“You like Domenick’s?” he asked. “You keep coming around.”
“I’ve been to friendlier places.”
“Well, it’s a neighborhood joint, and this isn’t your neighborhood, is it?”
The one sitting on her trunk sat up and began to bounce, so her car moved beneath him, jouncing on its worn shocks. Tess took out her keys and tried to reach around the other one in order to open her door. He grabbed her wrist, hard. What was it with men and her wrists today?