For all I know, she thought, flipping through the plat book, the hands of Hilde’s killer have held this book recently, have touched the pages I’m touching now. She ran her index finger down the column of listings, feeling the shadow of another finger beneath hers. The finger jumped to her spine, a particularly icy finger with a long pointed nail, and she shuddered.
The owner of the property on 36th Street was listed as a corporation, M.H. Hammersmith Properties. Tess didn’t have to be a cryptologist to figure out that the man behind the company was one Meyer Hammersmith, campaign chairman for Kenneth Dahlgren, boss of Adam Moss. You also could be as ignorant of the city’s history as the Blight’s new managing editor and be aware that Meyer Hammersmith owned dozens, possibly hundreds, of properties throughout the city. It was how he had made his millions. He probably owned properties he didn’t know he owned, including this modest storefront on 36th Street.
And yet.
Meyer Hammersmith was Ken Dahlgren’s finance chairman.
Adam Moss, Dahlgren’s aide, had paid a visit to the gallery owned by Hammersmith.
The woman behind the counter, the woman who didn’t believe in names, had shown real fear when Tess had come by. But she had been comfortable with Adam, she hadn’t been afraid of him.
Tess was on a cul de sac, a big, looping one, but a cul de sac nonetheless, in which every road led back to Ken Dahlgren. Yet there was nothing to connect Dahlgren to Gwen Schiller, or Henry Dembrow, or Devon Whittaker. In fact, there was nothing to connect Dahlgren to anyone. Adam Moss had requested the telephone records. Meyer Hammersmith owned the building. Dahlgren was just the grinning figurehead at the center, the pet that they were grooming to win best of show in a year or two. A former backbencher, as Feeney had said, stunned by his good fortune. He wouldn’t ask any questions, as long as the money kept rolling in, and rolling in.
She and Whitney had worked out a system: Tess could page her via beeper if she needed her urgently. She did this now, punching in her cell phone number, then going outside and waiting on the courthouse steps for Whitney to find an outside line.
The courthouse steps always felt like the wings to a dozen different dramas. Today there was a wedding party, posing for a photograph, the bride so pregnant that it appeared the baby had achieved legitimacy by mere minutes. Newly broken families, divided into sullen, smoldering camps, tried not to make eye contact as they headed into the building. Lawyers in cheap suits raced by with speeded-up walks that only exposed them for the ambulance chasers they were. Some trial was hot enough to bring out the television vans as well, and the reporters were lining up, ready to go live at noon, even if the trial had yet to recess. Given the choice between gathering information and going live, television reporters always chose the latter. After all, you couldn’t have dead air.
Tess’s phone rang, and she pulled it out.
“What’s up?” Whitney sounded breathless, excited.
“Have you worked your way up to opening the mail yet?”
“Have I? I’m covered with paper cuts. So I started using my Swiss army knife, which seems to make the other volunteers ever so nervous.”
Tess had a mental image of Whitney, slicing carelessly through the day’s mail.
“Do you see the checks when they come in? Do you have access to the files where campaign contributions are listed?”
“Sure, but can’t you get them up at the Election Board?”
“Not the current ones. Besides, I’m looking for certain names, certain addresses. I’m especially curious to see if anyone’s bundling-you know, trying to avoid contribution limits by parceling out donations to relatives, or neighbors. I want you to look for donations from Southwest Baltimore, which isn’t in the first, or even in the forty-ninth. And I want you to look for anyone who has the last name DeSanti.”
“I don’t dare take notes,” Whitney said, bless her quick, steeltrap mind. She understood instantly what Tess wanted. “At the very least, they’ll think I’m another candidate’s spy, and they’ll can me.”
“Just remember as much as you can for now. If I’m right, we’ll find a way to come back and get the files.”
“He has a big fund-raiser at Martin’s West in a few days,” Whitney said. “Five hundred dollars a head, and the checks are pouring in. Maybe, if I’m very, very good, I can get them to send me to the bank with the daily deposits. Then I can stop en route and copy down all the names on the checks. Although a lot of it is cash.”
“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” Tess said. “Hey, how well do you know Meyer Hammersmith, anyway?”
“My folks know him. He always seemed like a sweet old man to me, essentially harmless-assuming any real estate billionaire can be essentially harmless. When he comes out to the house, he almost drools, thinking about what he could do with my parent’s property. But they’re not really friends so much as they’re allies, sitting on all these arts boards. My mother was shocked when he signed on with Dahlgren, he’s such a philistine. Look, I better get back. I told them I had to go to the drugstore. And when they asked why, I just lifted an eyebrow in that don’t-ask-female-trouble kind of way, and the guy let me go. But how long can it take to buy tampons, you know?”
“Whitney-” Tess thought of Hilde, dead simply because she happened to stand between Devon Whittaker and her would-be killer, about Gwen Schiller, about the frightened no-name woman in the no-name gallery. “Be careful.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she assured her airily. “The Swiss army knife isn’t the only thing I’m packing, I can tell you that much.”
chapter 28
IT TOOK A MERE TWO DAYS FOR WHITNEY TO SECURE THE privilege of making the Dahlgren campaign’s daily deposits.
“They’re talking about making me a paid staffer before too long,” she told Tess over the phone on Thursday, almost preening. Only Whitney could go undercover and turn it into a career opportunity.
“I’m not sure it’s such a good idea for you to draw a paycheck from these people,” Tess said worriedly.
“Oh, I know. I told them I was doing this for love, not money.” Her voice lowered, as if she were trying not to be overheard, although she was calling from her snug little cottage. “And there is so much money, Tess. The guy has a real war chest. I know congressional races cost a lot these days, but do you think he might be keeping his options open? Maybe he’s really going to run for governor, or U.S. Senate.”
“Only if it’s an open race. He’d never take on an incumbent. Look, as Deep Throat said to Woodward-”
“Assuming Deep Throat ever existed. I have my doubts.”
“Whatever. Follow the money, Whitney. Find patterns, any patterns-in names, in addresses, in fund-raisers. I’m here in my office with Jackie right now, going over Dahlgren’s past finance reports, but it’s pretty Mickey Mouse stuff. Running for state senate, he was lucky to get $200 from his own father-in-law. It sounds as if he’s now raising more in a week than he did for all his other campaigns combined.”
She hung up her phone. It was late, almost ten, and she was exhausted. Not so much from working-Whitney was doing more than she was-but from all the lying and deception. If her father was to believe that she had dropped her inquiry into Henry Dembrow’s death, then everyone else had to believe it as well.
Even Ruthie Dembrow, who had hot, furious words when Tess told her she was suspending the investigation through the end of the holidays. But it was precisely because of Ruthie’s quick temper that Tess had lied to her. She was counting on her to complain to Pat yet again about his unreliable daughter, how she had started the investigation only to drop it for a second time. So Tess was not only working secretly, but for free.