Gretchen O’Brien turned her rather broad ass toward Tess and began crawling across the floor, gathering up her credit cards.

“I don’t have anything else to say to you. You wanna call the cops?”

“I don’t know,” Tess said.

“Can I have my gun?”

She pushed it across the desk but kept the ammunition.

“Well, you’ve got my particulars. They can always put out a warrant on me, if you like. I don’t care. But I’m not hanging around here.”

Gretchen stood up and grabbed her gun. She looked around the room she had come to search and found it wanting. “It was a long shot, anyway. You don’t know anything.”

“What would I know? Or have? What are we looking for, Gretchen? Tell me that much. It’s not much of a treasure hunt if not all the players know what they’re looking for. Is this really about a bracelet? Or maybe a Maltese falcon? What’s the rumpus? as Hammett would say.”

“He a cop?”

“A detective writer. People associate him with San Francisco, but he was born in St. Mary’s County and worked as a Pinkerton agent right here in Baltimore. I always heard The Maltese Falcon was inspired by the details on a building downtown.”

Gretchen smiled at her. “So that’s where you learned to do what you do. In books, and made-up books at that. Figures.”

She walked toward the door, moving a little stiffly, which Tess decided to count as a small victory. She turned back at the last minute, but only because she needed the key. Tess tossed it to her, and Gretchen caught it in her right fist, then let herself out. She hoped Gretchen hurt like hell in the morning, that she felt all sorts of unsuspected aches in unfamiliar places. Then again, Tess probably would too. The body never seemed to realize when it had been on the winning end of a fight.

The sheaf of faxes had fallen to the floor while she and Gretchen tusseled. Tess stooped to gather them. They were police reports, not only the assault on Shawn Hayes but two burglaries-and pretty humdrum burglaries to judge by the inventories of what was taken. Herman Peters must have sent them by mistake.

Told you so, he had scrawled on the cover sheet. When you look into these-assuming you’ve got nothing better to do-you’ll see why your friend is off-base.

Her friend. For a moment she thought he meant Yeager; then she realized he was referring to Cecilia, the perpetual activist. As she scanned the reports, she wondered idly how Cecilia would feel about that characterization of their relationship. Was she still Cecilia’s friend or merely a tool who had long ago ceased to be relevant to Cecilia’s various missions?

The report on Shawn Hayes noted he had been beaten quite badly, with a bat or something else made from wood, but the weapon had never been found. The burglaries seemed to have nothing in common with the attack or with each other. One was in Bolton Hill, the home of Jerold Ensor, who sounded vaguely like someone she should know about, one of those names that crop up on donor lists and the society pages.

The other was a name of no resonance, Arnold Pitts, at an address that didn’t register: Field Street. She had seen that street sign at some point, somewhere, but she couldn’t quite place it. The reports made the two incidents sound like penny-ante break-ins, with just the usual mix of fenceable gear taken-televisions, DVD players, a camcorder.

When you look into these, you’ll see why the cops think your friend is off-base. That assumed she was going to look into them. She wanted to whine to that unseen mother who seemed to hover above her at such moments, so much more powerful than any deity, Aw, do I have to? She really needed to find some paying work and leave all this behind.

But if these reports were Gretchen O’Brien’s quarry all along? With a sigh, Tess reached for her crisscross and phone book.

Chapter 13

Tess decided to spend the next day doing some-thing truly novel-trying to earn a buck or two. After all, she had the day free. She couldn’t call on the two men who had been burglarized until the evening, given that she didn’t know where they worked.

Besides, she needed to make some money. And she had learned that getting people to pay what they owe was often the hardest part of her job.

She began with a visit to her biggest deadbeat, a fish-market owner who called himself Fuzzy, Fuzzy Iglehart. Tess preferred Mr. Iglehart, despite his repeated invitations to use his nickname. He didn’t call Tess anything, except for the occasional “girlie” or the Baltimore-generic “hon.” That was before he had stopped returning her calls two months ago. When he saw her coming down the aisle at Cross Street Market a little after 11 a.m., he looked around to see if there was an exit handy. There was, but the narrow side aisle was blocked by two elderly shoppers, so he sighed and stood his ground.

“How you been?” he asked Tess, as if they were old friends.

She countered with a more relevant question. “How’s business?”

“Awful,” he said. “Just awful. It’s where they got me, in this dark little corner, away from all the other fish guys. I don’t know who I pissed off, but someone has it in for me. Someone at the city, or in the management here.”

Fuzzy Iglehart began almost every conversation this way, telling her his troubles, proclaiming the city, the state, the world, and all their bureaucracies to be in league against him. When he had come to Tess’s office last summer, he appeared to have a point. A rubbery-limbed man had staged a spectacular slip-and-fall in front of Fuzzy’s Fish and tried to sue the city, only to find its liability was capped. So he had gone after the next pocket, Fuzzy’s insurance company, but the agent wiggled off the hook by pointing out the puddle was caused by a faulty refrigeration unit. Ah, but the manufacturer of the refrigeration unit noted Fuzzy had not installed it properly, thus voiding its warranty.

As in the old children’s game, the Farmer in the Dell, the cheese stood alone. Terrified of the legal fees that even a successful case might cost him, Fuzzy had a rare moment of clarity: He decided to confirm that the injured party was, in fact, an injured party. Within forty-eight hours of being hired, Tess had videotaped Mr. Slip-and-Fall building a brick patio in his backyard. She sent the would-be plaintiff a cassette, along with a short note explaining the penalties for criminal fraud in Maryland, and the case abruptly vanished from the docket.

That had been Labor Day and Fuzzy Iglehart had been her best friend, promising her free fish and a fix-up with his son, Fuzzy Jr., both of which she politely declined. Still, Fuzzy Iglehart had continued to proclaim he would do anything for Tess, absolutely anything.

Except, it seemed, pay her.

“January’s bad,” he said, launching into his usual litany of woe, his eyes fixed on some spot beyond her left shoulder. “It’s always bad, but it’s worse than ever this year.”

“You said last month that all you needed to do was get through Christmas and you’d be able to pay me.”

“Christmas was terrible this year. So cold.”

“It was one of the warmest Decembers on record.”

“See, that’s what I mean. Too warm. Who wants to eat oyster stuffing when it’s so warm out? Look, how about I give you a credit for what I owe you, give it to you in goods?”

“Because, as I told you last month and the month before that, I hate fish and I’m allergic to shellfish.”

“And you from Baltimore. Okay, how about I give you one of those old oyster tins? They’re very decorative. I got another one around here. They’re worth a lot. I seen it on eBay.”

“You gave me one of those in November and told me you’d make good after Thanksgiving.”

“But you like that kind of stuff, right? Old Baltimore stuff, I mean. You got that weird clock in your office, I remember. Fuzzy has a good memory.” He tapped his fuzzless forehead, retreated into a small storage area behind his stall, and returned with a row of stadium or auditorium chairs, four in all and extremely used.