Tess’s hunch was right: Going to the city’s municipal offices and insisting on paying a parking ticket for which there was no record was a sure way to get prompt, courteous attention. It didn’t hurt, having the registration information and Audrey Windsor’s name and address. It also didn’t hurt that she kept pulling out fistfuls of bills and waving them around, desperate to put them in some employee’s hand. Just the sight of those ATM-crisp twenties made the clerks perk up.
“You see, she’s afraid that, even though you say there’s no record, she’s going to find a hold on her registration at year’s end. She’s scared to death to come to the city again. She thinks you’re going to boot her. She thinks there’s a warrant out for her arrest.”
The overworked clerk clicked wearily through the computerized files. “I just don’t see… there isn’t. Wait, here’s something. Your aunt’s van got three tickets in this one block of Lancaster over the past two years. That part of Lancaster’s in a residential zone, but a lot of people miss that, because one block over, there are no restrictions. We get a lot of complaints, believe me. Like there’s not a sign saying it’s permit parking. Like people who drive can’t read. But your auntie paid promptly, every time. She’s free and clear.”
“Residential zone?” Carl asked. Tess couldn’t speak. Her chest was tight. She knew where Lancaster Street was. She knew all about the parking restrictions in that neighborhood.
“In some of the busier neighborhoods, like Federal Hill and Fells Point, you need a residential permit to park for more than two hours. Otherwise, the people who live there could never find a place. You can imagine what it’s like, fighting the bar traffic or the Orioles traffic to park within walking distance of your own house. But like I say, these tickets were paid. We keep those records, because they’re often in dispute. Although, usually it’s the other way. Your auntie paid it within the twenty-five-day window. Didn’t even have interest on it. I can’t believe she got a notice. Look, if she gets another one, come back. I’ll give you a printout of this, just in case.”
“Sure thing,” Carl said, shaking her hand and taking the sheet of paper showing the van’s brief history of parking fines.
Tess was edging backward out the door, smiling and nodding, her chest still so tight she wasn’t sure she could draw a breath. As soon as they were out of the woman’s view, she ran for the stairway and to the front doors. Once on Holliday, she spun in a circle, as if she expected to see someone waiting for her on the busy street.
“What’s wrong?” Carl asked, panting from trying to keep up with her. “It’s only three parking tickets, spread out over two years. It’s a lead, but I wouldn’t get too excited.”
“I’m not… excited,” Tess said, “but I know that block of Lancaster.”
“So?”
“It’s about six blocks from where I lived, up until eighteen months ago.”
CHAPTER 37
They drove straight to Lancaster from the Wolman Building. Normally, Tess might have detoured by her office and crisscrossed the block first, compiling a list of longtime residents. Older people were more prone to notice who came and went or to complain about parking. But she didn’t want to waste a single minute of the late spring light. Tess knew she didn’t like to see anyone’s shadowy figure on her doorstep past dinnertime, even if it was just a Jehovah’s Witness or a child selling band candy.
And she had felt that way before she knew someone wanted to kill her.
“You take the south side of the street,” she told Carl. “I’ll take the north.”
“We only have one photo,” he said, unfolding the enlarged driver’s license, the one that showed “Alan Palmer” with a heavy beard and shaggy hair.
“It’s the van that counts. On a narrow street like this, people will remember that behemoth because it takes up so much space. When you live in a neighborhood where parking is hard to come by, you find yourself cursing the big vehicles.”
“Okay, but don’t go into anyone’s house alone,” Carl said. “Wave to me, and I’ll come over.”
“What, do you think our fellow is a mad genius who has a hidden dungeon beneath his Baltimore rowhouse?”
Tess was trying to make a joke, but Carl’s sheepish look made her realize that he had not quite outrun his cinematic fantasies. That was exactly what he feared, some subterranean lair beneath the city streets, with bottomless pits and Gothic implements of torture.
“We’ll be no farther apart than the length of the street,” she assured him. “As for either one of us going inside-this is East Baltimore, hon. We’ll be lucky if anyone unlatches the screen door.”
Architecturally, this block of Lancaster was hit-and-miss, its partial gentrification arrested by the latest dip in Baltimore’s perpetual boom-and-bust cycle. About half the houses had been redone-the brick repointed, the doors painted striking Colonial colors, wooden shutters refastened to the windows in defiance of the damp harbor breezes that would require the owners to repaint them every year.
The others, however, still had painted screens and Formstone siding. No self-respecting yuppie would leave this fake stone siding on his or her house, Tess knew, although she supposed a few artistic types adored it for its pure camp value. Still, her money was on the Form-stone as a place where Billy Windsor might have lived, or at least visited on a regular basis.
She was wrong. In less than thirty minutes, she and Carl had worked the entire block, from west to east. People had been helpful, especially when they heard that Tess and Carl were city employees who were assigned to evaluate the efficacy of parking regulations. Many a resident had leaned into the doorjamb and complained long and loud about the interlopers who parked on Lancaster. People from well outside the residential parking district. People from the other side of Ann, said one older woman, her head bristling with the kind of wire curlers that Tess hadn’t seen in years.
“Or even”-the woman paused, lowering her voice as if she were about to say something truly slanderous-“Wolfe Street.”
But no one remembered the van as a standout among the block’s repeat offenders. After all, it had been several months since the vehicle had received a ticket. Maybe Billy Windsor had moved on-as Tess had.
Tess and Carl met on the corner to compare notes. The sky overhead was shot through with pink now. They had maybe thirty minutes of light left.
“See, Tess?” Carl said. “He didn’t live around here. Probably came down to have a meal or something. I mean, lots of people come to Fells Point. This would have been a good place to meet women, if you think about it.”
“Not for our guy. He couldn’t make the connection he needed in a bar, shouting over the din of music and other people. He moved slowly. He courted his women.”
“At any rate, he didn’t live here.”
“Not on Lancaster, no.” Tess sighed. “But maybe on one of the surrounding blocks, outside the parking district.”
“It’s getting late, Tess.”
“Then let’s hurry.”
This time, however, they decided to go door-to-door in tandem. They worked Wolfe, moving north, then turned onto Eastern. The farther out they went, the less hospitable people were-and the less likely to speak English. A lot of Dominicans had settled in the neighborhood, and they spoke a rapid staccato Spanish that Tess couldn’t begin to follow. They thrust INS documents at her and Carl, assuming they were from immigration. Just the sight of strange Anglos made them nervous and defensive.
Which was why the seventh Spanish-speaking man stood out. His Spanish was equally rapid but smooth. He wasn’t scared, Tess realized, he was just trying to build a wall between them, so they would go away. He was shaking his head, chanting, “No’sé, no’sé,” before they asked a single question. When they showed him the license number for the van, he didn’t bother to look, just pushed the paper away and continued shaking his head. “No’sé, no’sé, no’sé.”