Tommy looked at Kitty and licked his lips, helplessly enthralled. "Okay," he said at last. "But I'm gonna tell Spike how Tess tricked me. He wouldn'ta liked the way she squashed me like a bug. I almost smothercated."

Kitty kissed him on his sweaty forehead, then went back to the store, as Tess untied the scarves at his wrists and ankles. Tommy made a big show of rubbing his wrists and forearms, as if his bonds had been tight ropes instead of loose, silken scarves.

"So where did Esskay come from?" Tess asked.

"I swear on my mother, I don't know the answer to that. Two weeks back, Spike showed up with this dog, looking like Monday's meatloaf on Friday."

"Come again?"

"You know. He was all gray and lumpy looking. Said he had met with this guy he knows, and the guy wanted him to have the dog?"

"What guy?"

"Jimmy Parlez. It's a French name? As in parlez the English, you know?"

"Why did Monsieur Parlez give him a greyhound?"

Tommy shook his head. "Spike wouldn't tell me nothin'. He said ignorance was piss."

"Bliss. Ignorance is bliss."

"You sure?" Tommy wrinkled his forehead as he thought about this. "Anyways, the only thing he did tell me 'bout was the numbers."

"Numbers? I knew this had to do with book-making."

Tommy shook his head. "Uh-uh. Spike don't run no street numbers no more. Can't compete, what with the state doing Pick 3, Pick 4, and all those gimmicky instant win games. He's down to a sports book now, a little action on Pimlico."

"And on dog races?"

"Tess, there are guys who come into The Point and put money down on how much a bushel of crabs is gonna cost on July fourth, but nobody around here is gonna bet some greyhound race in Florida or New Hampshire when ya got stakes races right down the road. Now, tell that dog to come to me."

He waggled his fingers, but Esskay ignored him until Tess placed a piece of the dog's namesake bacon in Tommy's hand. Gingerly, he held the crunchy bite out to the dog, who snatched it with such alacrity Tommy almost lost part of a finger. He clambered on top of the chair, but Esskay only became more agitated, leaping around him wildly until Tess gave her another piece of bacon.

"I'm a little scared of dogs?" Tommy confessed unnecessarily.

"Don't worry, she's harmless unless she thinks you're a piece of food," Tess assured him.

He climbed down from his chair and tentatively began scratching behind Esskay's ears. As the dog relaxed under his touch, he pulled the left ear back and turned it inside out, exposing the ghostly pale interior, the way one might turn a little leather glove.

"All racing dogs have tattoos here, like ID numbers. That way, the tracks can keep track of 'em. But the numbers also mean you can trace 'em back to their trainers."

"Why would you want to do that?" Tess asked.

"'Cuz a few bad trainers can't be bothered to do the right thing when the dogs can't race no more. They'd just as soon kill 'em and dump 'em. The ear tattoos make that hard to do."

"So who was Esskay's trainer? How do we track her number?"

"You can't. That's what I'm tellin' ya." Tommy ran his finger over the smooth skin inside the dog's left ear. "Someone put a new tattoo on this dog, a home-made job like you see in prison. See? Where this dog once had numbers, all she has now is these red Xs. It's like filing down the serial number on a car or a TV set. Untraceable."

Tess looked at the crude markings inside both ears. Although a vivid red, they would be easy to miss unless you knew to look for them, or spent a lot of time playing with a dog's ears, something Tess was not inclined to do. Esskay's breath had kept even Crow from going nose to nose with the dog. The marks still looked a little raw, and there were tiny scabs. It must have been painful, being on the receiving end of a tattoo gouged with penknife and filled in with ballpoint. No wonder Esskay had been so fearful at first.

"Okay, so you cover up the dog's tattoo and no one knows who it belongs to. Seems like a lot of work to dump some racing dog. And this dog is still alive. So what does it all mean?"

"That," Tommy sighed, "is what Spike and only Spike knows. Look where it got him. You know what? He did say ignorance is piss. Ignorance is piss, and knowledge ain't shit, that's exactly what he said the last time I talked to him."

Armed with Tommy's tissue-thin leads, Tess headed to the Beacon-Light, figuring its computer databases could help narrow her search. But Tommy's scraps led nowhere fast. In the Beacon-Light's Nexis account, Tess searched for "greyhound" and "ears" in various combinations, but found only a few stories from the country's major newspapers, most of which recounted successful rescue efforts. There was no Jim Parlez at all in the court files, no matter how she spelled it, and no possible explanation for why someone would go to so much trouble to change a greyhound's tattoo.

As for the MVA, its records claimed there were no salmon Buicks in all of Maryland, and there were too many brown ones to count. That didn't surprise her: the car had probably been stolen, then hastily painted so it was as untraceable as the greyhound its occupants sought. The only thing left to do was to go to the courthouse and feed Parlez's name through the computers there, just in case he had a record that predated the Blight's system, which only went back to the late '80s. Spike's associates usually had had at least one brush with the city's criminal system, although Spike himself had never been caught doing anything illegal.

Baltimore 's Clarence Mitchell courthouse is an unspeakably sad place, a limestone-and-marble reminder of how innocent the city had once been. Imagine the folly of a public building with entrances on four sides, as if people could be trusted to come and go at will, without passing through metal detectors and opening purses and briefcases in front of armed guards.

Tess surrendered her Swiss Army knife to the security guard. Now her only problem was to figure out where to go. Normally, she would have relied on Feeney to walk her through the circuit court computer files. But some newbie she didn't know was filling in for Feeney while he continued to chase basketballs and millionaires. Tess was on her own.

She fed Parlez into the criminal system. No dice. She then tried the civil system, but still came up snake eyes. Tommy had probably mangled the name beyond recognition. For all she knew, she was really looking for Hervé, St. Tropez, or Parsley.

"Ma'am? Ma'am?"

Unaccustomed to being ma'amed, Tess didn't respond to the earnest young voice until she felt a tentative tap on her shoulder. She turned to face a nervous young man with an amazing mane of bushy brown hair falling to his waist. Despite temperatures in the forties, he wore only a denim jacket over a faded black T-shirt.

"I don't work here," Tess snapped. Why did people always assume a woman was a clerk, ready to serve?

"Oh." He looked forlornly at the computer next to her. "I just thought you might be able to tell me if you can find divorces here. I'm looking up my wife."

"Shouldn't you know if your wife has gotten a divorce?"

"Yeah, sure-if it was from me. I need to find out if she ever got one from her first husband. I'm her second husband. She's Mrs. Roger Hehnke now." He thumped his chest with his index finger. "I'm Mr. Roger Hehnke."

Disarmed by his pride in acquiring a wife, Tess showed Mr. Roger Hehnke how to look for the file. She was glad she did. It was gratifying to hear his relieved giggle when he found his wife had remembered to end the first union before starting a second-at least, in the legal sense.

"See, her first marriage ended on April second last year, and we got married on April fifth. Our baby wasn't born until May, so we're totally cool."