All this, without ever taking his beeper off.
“I can get the police report from Philadelphia,” he told her. “I’ll have it faxed to me this afternoon. I’ll let them keep back whatever they’re keeping back, as long as I can have the part about you. That’s all our readers care about.”
Tess experienced the kind of disgust and anger only an ex-reporter can feel for the press. Peters had no standing, he couldn’t force her to talk about what had happened. Without her account, she doubted he could piece a story together. But he could make her life hell in a dozen different ways. She had to make a deal, had to persuade him to trade what was in the box for what was behind the curtain.
“What happened yesterday is a tiny detail on a much larger canvas. The Philly paper won’t scoop you because the Philly cops are holding back the most interesting stuff, in order to protect the life of a possible witness.” Slight lie there, but only slight. “I’m really small potatoes.” Her father’s leftover phrase. It tasted like soot in her mouth.
“But you’re the local angle,” he repeated, ever dogged.
“Think big, Herman. If you’re patient, I’ll give you a head start on the story when it finally comes together.” It was an easy promise to make, and it would be an easier one to break if she had to. She didn’t owe Peters anything.
“You didn’t cut me in on the Gwen Schiller story early. We had the Washington media breathing down our necks on that, because her family lives in Potomac. They had us surrounded.”
Ah, so there was the grudge unmasked. Peters was pissed because he had been forced to scrounge for scraps at that feeding frenzy of a press conference, which had come too late in the day to allow the Blight to put together the kind of comprehensive package on Schiller that the Washington paper had been able to churn out effortlessly.
“It was the communications officer’s idea to schedule the press conference on the television stations’ time clock. I’d have much rather given it to you first. You’re the only reporter in town whose work has any nuance.”
Peters’s cheeks bloomed even rosier at this praise and he put his hands in his pockets in aw-shucks mode. Esskay head-butted him, and he resumed petting her.
“Is it a good story?”
“I don’t have all the pieces yet. But so far it has sex and death and civic corruption.”
His brown eyes glowed the way Esskay’s might, contemplating another package of Nabs. “That’s a good start.”
“But just a start. When I move toward the finish line, I’ll call you. Tell me how to get you on that.”
Tess gestured toward Peters’s belt buckle and he looked down, momentarily confused. Once he realized she was talking about his beeper, he gave her the number, as well as his office, home and cell phone numbers.
“You’re on call,” she said. “You’re the first one I’ll contact. I assume you’ll do me the same courtesy if you hear of anyone trying to slip my name into the paper for any other reason?”
“It’s a deal,” he said, shaking her hand.
“Just remember, Peters. Keep thinking big.”
“My beeper,” he said.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“It’s the vibrating kind.”
“Well, then you must be one of the happiest men in Baltimore, given how many times it goes off in a day.”
But Herman Peters was already getting back into his car, off to visit Baltimore’s latest ex-citizen.
As soon as he was off the block, Tess retreated into her office and called Martin Tull.
“Thanks for those phone numbers,” she said.
“Did it pan out?”
“No, I guess the kid was lying to me. But I still appreciate the help. Who does that, anyway? I mean, is it one person at the phone company, or do they have a whole department?”
“It’s not like you can do that on your own, you know. You have to have a legit reason for getting phone logs.”
He knew her so well. For a moment, she was tempted to tell him about the prostitution ring at Domenick’s, just as her father had asked her to do. But if vice detectives busted the place, she was even less likely to know how Gwen’s fate was connected to the bar. No, she would do it her way, but quietly, so her father wasn’t on the receiving end of any more calls from Arnie Vasso.
“I know I don’t have carte blanche at the phone company. I’m just appreciative. I was going to send a little Christmas remembrance. You can’t begrudge me the right to try and make friends, to stay on someone’s good side. They did a rush job. I want to say thank you.”
“What kind of Christmas remembrance?”
“A Noël buche, something like that.”
His voice still reluctant and suspicious, Tull gave her the name and number. Then he asked: “Were you in Philadelphia yesterday?”
“Yeah. Divorce case. It got ugly.”
“So it would seem. Philadelphia homicide called down here today, wanted to know if you were legit. Rainer took the call. He said you were okay, for a dope-smoking smart-ass lunatic who always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” A pause. “They say you might have saved someone’s life.”
“They’re much too kind.” One life had been saved, but one life had been lost, too. Tess didn’t know how the Philadelphia cops did math, but she counted it as a wash.
“You telling me everything, Tess?”
“Yeah, sure.” She wished, sometimes, that she didn’t have quite so many people interested in her well-being, paying attention to her moods. “It’s just-I’m tired of dead people.”
“Tell me about it.” But his voice was more sympathetic than she had any right to expect. Tull had seen hundreds of dead bodies and she wasn’t even in the double digits. Yet.
“John Updike, in that book you gave me, he said the dead make space,” Tull added. “You know what I think?”
“What?”
“Updike doesn’t know dick about what it’s like to be a homicide cop in Baltimore.”
She laughed, although there had been a time she would have considered such an opinion sacrilegious. Not because it was a smear on Updike, but because it impugned all writers, and writers had been gods to her once. In college, she had read books as if all the secrets of the universe might be revealed in a single line. She had swooned at those moments of communion, when someone so distant from her-someone male, of a different generation and place-had expressed so perfectly what she thought existed in her heart alone. Now she knew writers were no different from anyone else, just humans fumbling with the same questions, albeit with better language skills.
“Hey-” Tull said.
“What?”
“I want a Noël buche, too. Support your local sheriff.”
Name and number in hand, she called Tull’s contact at Bell Atlantic, a woman named Kelly. It took endless twists and turns through a voice mail system to get to her, but a human eventually came on the line.
“Kelly, this is Janet over at Martin Tull’s office. He wanted me to thank you for getting those phone logs out so fast to us.”
The young woman sighed. “Not fast enough for some people, I guess.”
“Did someone at the police department give you a hard time?”
“No, you guys were great. But the guy from the senator’s office gave me fits. He was here first thing yesterday, throwing his weight around. Detective Tull said I could fax the logs, but nothing would do for this guy but to get his photocopies first thing in the morning. He was nice to look at, but he sure didn’t have good manners. Not one ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ in the mix. I guess being that pretty makes a guy kind of conceited.”
Maryland had forty-nine senators. More than one could have a pretty male working in the office, Tess told herself.
“Did you get his name? I’d like to talk to his boss, and remind them that Bell Atlantic is our partner in these ventures, that everyone should be treated with respect.”