The address Gretchen had given Tess was in Southwest Baltimore, in a neighborhood known as Pigtown. It was nicer than it sounded-but then it would have to be. Her sleepiness abated, as she headed down Martin Luther King Boulevard, and she realized she was excited. Gretchen’s call held the promise that something was finally happening.
They had been following Pitts for almost a week, with no real results. He lived the life he claimed to live-going to estate sales, visiting private homes, meeting with restaurateurs who wanted vintage dishes or flatware. Saturday had been a particularly long day, with Tess trying to trail Pitts through flea markets and Salvation Army stores without being seen. Even with fake glasses and her hair stuffed into one of Crow’s knit hats, she dared not get too close to the sharp-eyed dealer.
He was easier to track on the streets, meandering in a coral-colored van that reminded Tess of a swollen stomach, for it spent the day swallowing and disgorging various goods. Pitts was a horrible driver, no surprise there, at once vague and unpredictable, drifting across lanes, accelerating for no reason, capable of throwing on the brakes if he spotted an old table or chest of drawers placed in an alley for bulk trash day. Once, he almost wrapped the van around a utility pole in Perry Hall, where an unusually blunt consignment shop owner advertised his wares as dead people’s things for sale. Pitts tried to buy the hand-lettered sign, only to be rebuffed.
It seemed to Tess that Pitts’s mission in life was to reapportion the planet’s stuff, buying it from one person and selling it to another. The van started empty and ended empty, while Pitts and his wallet grew fat. And it was all quite legal, as far as Tess could determine. When she checked with Pitts’s customers, claiming to be a member of a Baltimore Police Department task force on burglary, everyone had the proper paperwork and bills of sale. They also had effusive praise for Pitts, saying he was fair and dependable. Sure, he charged top dollar, but he knew what things were worth.
What Pitts didn’t do during the week was almost as notable. He didn’t meet with Ensor. He didn’t return to Bobby Hilliard’s apartment. Tess assumed he knew he was being watched, although not by whom. Whatever his shortcomings, Pitts was revealing himself to be a patient man, one who could bide his time and wait for what he wanted. She wondered if he was willing to wait right up to next January nineteenth. She wondered if the Visitor would come to the grave again as long as Bobby Hilliard’s killer was at large. Then again, if the Visitor was Bobby Hilliard’s killer-but her mind continued to reject that scenario. Bobby had crashed the Visitor’s party, not the other way around. The Visitor had been an unwitting and unwilling witness.
She pulled her gray Sunbird behind Gretchen’s white Taurus. Rental cars were a thing of beauty-not only untraceable but unmemorable too, absolutely generic. It was as if the industry had been created for private detectives.
“Is he here?” she asked in a whisper, climbing into the passenger seat. She didn’t see his van anywhere on the street and, like its owner, it was hard to miss, big as he was small, its paint job flat and dull.
“No, I let him go.”
“Gretchen-”
“Look, I’ve been pulling the six-to-six night shift all week, and it couldn’t be more boring. You’ve had all the action.”
“I wouldn’t call it action,” Tess said. “Although I have picked up some knowledge about Fiestaware, Jadeite, and something called Vaseline glass, which shines as if it’s been exposed to radiation. I also found a nacho platter, with four little dishes named for the Four Corner states, which fit into a larger tray. It was only fifteen dollars. You put the salsa and the queso in Utah and Arizona -”
“Well, while you’ve been shopping for knickknacks, I’ve been sitting in the street most nights, watching a dark house. But tonight, a little before eleven, he came out and got in his van and came straight here. Spent most of the night inside, by himself as far as I can tell. I followed him back to his house, where I assume he tucked himself in. Then I came back here and called you. We’re not going to have a better time to do this. The door has a standard lock and a deadbolt. Unpick-able, at least by me.”
Tess’s mind was stuck on the fact that Arnold Pitts was now unsupervised. For all Gretchen knew, he could have spotted her and devised this maneuver, so he could go and do something else this morning while they sat outside an empty, meaningless building. “You could have come back here after I started my shift.”
“This is going to take both of us. And it’s better to do it now, when we know he’s been and gone, right? C’mon, Tess, time for a little B and E.”
Tess studied the building. To say it was nondescript would be flattery. A squat double-wide rowhouse of crumbling brick, it had a heavy metal door and no windows at all on the first floor. There were three windows on the second and third floors, the glass panes painted so they were as dark as the old brick.
“I can’t get to those windows. They’re too high.”
“There’s a smaller one, in the back, about midway between the two floors. I think it might go to a bathroom. Painted, like the others, but not quite as high. I can boost you in.”
“Why am I going in?”
Gretchen’s eyebrows rose in an imitation of innocence. “I thought you liked glass cutting. You were telling me the other day, when I told you I thought we should search Pitts’s house while he was out one day, how good you were with your glass cutter.”
Tess didn’t remember bragging about her skills, but she did prefer cutting glass to picking locks. Sighing, she went back to her rental car, where she had stowed her tools for the duration of this surveillance, and walked with Gretchen to the back of the old rowhouse. The block appeared to be deserted. The other houses had boarded windows and doors, along with paper signs that warned against trespassing-which didn’t mean they were empty, far from it. Tess couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching them, but she told herself it was probably some wide-awake addict. If she and Gretchen could break into this little fortress, the neighborhood men would quickly follow, harvesting the metal inside.
They had to circle the block to get to the trash-strewn alley where rats waddled, placid and serene as sheep in a meadow. When Gretchen had said a boost, Tess had assumed she would make a cradle with her hands and allow Tess to step up to the window. But Gretchen crouched down, indicating she wanted Tess to stand on her shoulders.
“No way you can hold me like that,” Tess argued. “I’ll fall and break my neck.”
“I can do it, I’m strong. Just take your boots off. I did this with my kid sister, playing circus.”
The fact that she had a sister-the fact that no-nonsense Gretchen had ever done anything in her life resembling play-was the only personal detail that Gretchen had volunteered to date. Tess decided to trust her. Bracing her palms against the building, she placed one socked foot, then the other, in the broad grooves between neck and shoulder. Then, to her astonishment, she was up, Gretchen lifting her to the window-not easily, but steadily-without too much wobbling. Tess thought she was strong, but Gretchen clearly was doing a little more upper-body work.
“Could we be this lucky?” Tess called out. Her voice was so loud that it echoed in the quiet street, but it seemed ridiculous to whisper.
“What?”
“This window was painted shut at some point, and someone must have counted on that to hold it, because it’s unlocked. But the wood is so soft from years of damp that I think I can get it open without cutting.”
She banged her fist around the edges of the frame and then started to push at the lower sash with all her might. Forgetting that Gretchen’s shoulders were all that stood between her and the earth, she tried to use her weight by stepping forward with her right foot. They staggered crazily for a moment-yes, this would make for a nice circus act-but Gretchen held fast to Tess’s ankles and managed to regain her balance.