TUESDAY

Chapter Twenty-three

TESS MADE A GAME OF TRACKING DOWN THE FOUR local felons that Mark Rubin had met through his volunteer work, deriving a peculiarly Baltimorean pleasure in structuring the most efficient route through the chaotic city. Uncle Donald, glorying in his ability to get confidential information, had procured the men's workplaces from Parole and Probation, which simplified things. Katzen was on the edge of downtown, Russell in downtown proper. She would then swing into SoWeBo, the southwest Baltimore neighborhood whose dilapidated row houses were more likely to evoke Soweto than SoHo, and end the day in southeast Baltimore, close to her own office. If she timed it right, she'd make Cross Street Market for lunch, pick up some fresh Utz potato chips, hot from the fryer, and still have time for a late-afternoon dog walk and coffee break.

"Good-bye," she called to the dogs, as she headed out. "I'm off on the Jewish-losers tour of Baltimore."

She would come to regret that joke, private as it was, before the morning was through.

Daniel Katzen-burglar and beater of old ladies-had found gainful employment as a security guard, at no less a place than the Beacon-Light. If such a man worked for any other employer, it probably would have sparked a five-part investigative series on the Blight's front pages. But in the newspaper's own lobby, an ex-felon with a gun was no cause for alarm. Tess wondered if Katzen had lied about his background or if the newspaper's management reasoned that Katzen's willingness to hit women in moments of stress would come in handy should its unions strike.

"You need a pass to go upstairs," Katzen informed Tess before she even had a chance to introduce herself and state her business.

"I don't want to go upstairs," she said, not bothering to tell him that she had been sneaking in and out of the Beacon-Light for years, using a former employee's swipe card. "I'm here to see you. Do you remember a man named Mark Rubin?"

"No."

"Let me provide some context. Seder dinners, monthly prayer sessions, baruch ata Adonai."

"Hebrew school? There mighta been a Rubin in my class."

"Bars, electronic fences, guard towers-"

"Hey." Katzen glanced around the lobby, although there was no one there to overhear. "No need to screw with me like that. Okay, yeah, I remember Mark Rubin from you-know-where. So what?"

"What about Rubin's wife? Or his father-in-law, Boris Petrovich?"

"Boris was his father-in-law?" If Katzen was playing dumb, he was exceptionally good at it. "That dirty old Russian? Man, I hope his daughter had money. Because if she looked like her old man, she was definitely a two-bagger."

"She's not a two-bagger," Tess assured him. "She's gorgeous. And missing."

"Yeah?" He patted his pockets. "Well, I'm clean. Gorgeous, huh? Go figure. But then, Rubin was rich. A rich guy can always get a girl. Women are all about money. Like you, I bet you wouldn't go out with a guy like me because I'm a security guard."

"I wouldn't go out with a guy like you because you break into houses and beat up old women."

"That's what I used to do," Katzen said, wounded. "I'm a changed man. I even got a pardon."

Assuming he was telling the truth-a tricky assumption-then Katzen had come by his right to carry a firearm legitimately. But Tess wasn't convinced that Katzen knew the difference between a pardon and the mere end of parole.

"No thanks. What about Natalie Rubin?"

"Who?"

"Rubin's wife."

"The dirty Russian's daughter?"

"Never mind." Katzen's mind seemed to be on a loop, and a very short one at that. Tess left the newspaper building, convinced that Katzen was far too dumb to play dumb so effectively.

Scott Russell wasn't dumb, far from it. But the wiry forty-something man she met for coffee was simply another dead end, using Tess's time to try to pressure her into buying stocks. He was a junior executive at a discount brokerage house, working on commission, and he spoke of the market as if it were a kind of religion, a mystical force that would transform one's life if one surrendered to it completely. Tess was sure he had once spoken of aluminum siding with the same fervent certitude, and that he would probably find other gods and goods to worship throughout his working life. She bade him good-bye as quickly as possible, taking a card and promising to give serious thought to pharmaceutical stocks.

By 11:30 a.m., when Tess rang the doorbell at a converted garage on Poppleton Street, her heart was harder than the pharaoh's. The ring went unanswered at first. She checked the address for Mickey Harvey, then leaned on the bell again.

"Coming," a man's soft voice finally answered, followed by slow, careful footsteps. "Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sander."

Mickey Harvey looked more like a living ghost man an actual man-gray eyes, gray hair, and gray complexion.

"I'm Tess Monaghan," she said. "I work for a man named Mark Rubin."

He smiled, the first man to show instant recognition at the name. "How is Mark? I haven't thought about him in years. He was very helpful to me, during my time… inside."

Inside. They all said "inside." It was more truism than euphemism, Tess decided. Serving time was something that most people could never understand, so these former inmates used a word that rendered the experience at once vague and definitive.

"You're not an engineer anymore."

He laughed, a rusty chuckle that sounded as if it didn't get out much. "What was your first clue? No, I've had this woodworking business for five years now. I do custom-builts. Money's not as good as it was when everybody was rich on paper, but I'm making ends meet."

"It's nice," Tess said, "when your avocation can become your business."

"Avocation? I'm not sure I'd call it that. Time was, I couldn't hammer a nail in straight. My ex is shocked. She always says, 'I couldn't get you to change a lightbulb when we were married, and now look at you, building armoires.' You know that old joke, right? How many Jewish boys does it take to change a lightbulb?"

"How many?" Tess responded dutifully.

Mickey Harvey made an incredulous face. "They have to be changed?"

Tess didn't have to fake her laugh, but she juiced it a little.

"So how did you end up being a Jewish carpenter?"

"I entered a vocational program while I was in a halfway house, began wood-shop courses more as occupational therapy than anything else. I don't drink anymore."

The last was offered almost as a reflexive confession. Society might be through punishing Mickey Harvey, but he was a long way from being ready to stop punishing himself.

"I'm talking to men who knew Mark through the Jessup program because his wife has disappeared, taking his children with her. Her father, who was in the program, claims to have some damaging information about her, but he won't tell us what it is. I'm just looking for any lead I can find."

He shook his head. "I wish I knew something, but I didn't even know Mark had a wife. Who was her dad?"

"Petrovich."

"Oh, yeah. I guess I knew he had a daughter, but he never told me that she was married to Mark. I was in a different cell block, though. I only saw those guys when the Tribe got together." Another twisted smile, another rusty laugh. "That's what I called it. The Tribe. And even the Tribe, small as it was, had cliques."

Tess wasn't surprised. The need to divide and subdivide was instinctive to humans, and there was no stratum of society it didn't affect. "How did the Tribe"-she used the word gingerly, not sure if she had a right to do so-"divide itself?"