Baltimore Blues Read Free Page A

him.
    “No, but you used to be a reporter. Didn’t you tell me something about following some city official? And you write reports for your uncle. This could be like a report.” He pretended to dictate. “‘At seven-thirty P.M . I saw Ava going into the Hemispheris Clinic at Hopkins. Did not come out for three hours. Receptionist confirmed she is donating platelets for a young cancer victim.’ See?”
    Jesus , she thought, he really can’t come up with a good story . It was more plausible that Ava was going to Hopkins’s sex change clinic and didn’t want to see Rock until she had her new equipment.
    Still, thirty dollars an hour, for even five or six hours, was a frighteningly attractive prospect. Easy money. If Ava was doing nothing, Tess would make a friend happy. If Ava was up to no good, Tess would be paid to save her friend from a disastrous mistake.
    “A computer upgrade,” Rock wheedled. “Car repairs. A nest egg for your own racing shell, so you don’t have to use the shit ones here.”
    Tess was compiling another list: A pair of earrings that didn’t come from a Third World country. Leather boots, including the soles. Student loans. But she turned her mind away from those things, determined to find the flaw in the plan.
    “Why not a real private eye, if you’re willing to pay private eye prices?”
    Rock looked across the river, suddenly fascinated by three young children wading on the northern bank.
    “A real private eye would be sleazy,” he said slowly, as if he was working the answer out for himself. “This is just a favor between friends. I’m offering to pay you because Iknow your time is valuable. And because I know you’re always strapped for money.”
    As a freelancer Tess billed her time at twenty dollars an hour and often settled for less. As a contractual state employee she made ten dollars an hour. Her aunt gave her kitchen privileges, health insurance, and six dollars an hour for working in the bookstore. Her time had never been considered worth thirty dollars an hour.
    “Where does Ava work?” she asked.
    He smiled. He really did look like Dondi, although not so vacant around the eyes.
    “I’ll fill you in at Jimmy’s.”

Chapter 2
    T ess did not have blueberry pancakes after all. She wanted them, but as soon as she walked into Jimmy’s in Fells Point, the cook threw two bagels to toast on the griddle and poured fresh orange juice into a red plastic tumbler. Her usual: two plain bagels, toasted, one with cream cheese, one without. She had been eating the same breakfast at Jimmy’s for two years, at least five days a week.
    She had always wanted to walk into a place and have someone ask, “The usual?” Of course, in her original fantasy the place had a long mahogany bar, men wore suits and women wore hats, and she would order a martini, straight up. No olive.
    Rock, after a quick look at the place mat menu, ordered the carbohydrate special, a meal of his own creation: toast, pancakes, orange juice, fruit cup, and cereal with skim milk.
    “No syrup or butter,” he told the waitress. “Just lots of extra jelly.”
    “That all?”
    “Do you have any rice? Or some pinto beans?”
    The waitress stalked off, unamused. Rock was an ardent believer in the idea that diet could boost athletic performance, although the parameters of that diet kept changing. Currently he shunned fat and most meat. Given his workout regime, however, he had to eat enormous amounts and drink protein supplements to maintain his weight. He never ate forpleasure and he never drank alcohol. His one vice was caffeine, which he claimed enhanced his performance. The kitchen in his little apartment in Charles Village was a shrine to coffee. Rock didn’t own a VCR, a CD player, or a microwave, but he had a French press, a cappuccino and espresso maker, and a freezer filled with nothing but ice trays and bags of coffee beans, all labeled and dated. His chronic insomnia surprised only him.
    Breakfast arrived