Charm City Read Online Free PDF Page A

until late. I'll tell Kitty to check on
you."
    Esskay looked up briefly, then went back to
staring at the blanket. Great ,
Tess thought. I'm talking to a dog, and
it's not even paying attention . And
she ran down the stairs, late for work. That was the one drawback of
the office being only ten minutes away. You couldn't make up
lost time on the commute.

Chapter 3
    T yner
Gray's law office was in an old town house on Mount Vernon
Square, a pretty neighborhood clustered at the feet of George
Washington, who kept watch from the top of a modest monument.
"But it's older than the one in DC," some
local was always quick to point out. Tess didn't care much
about the monument, but she liked the pretty park outside her office
window, the strains of classical music that drifted over from Peabody
Conservatory, and the good restaurants in the neighborhood. Last fall,
fate and circumstances had brought her here, in what was to be a
temporary job. Tess had ended up staying on, although Tyner reminded
her every day that her goal should be to obtain a private
investigator's license and open her own office.
    As she came through the heavy front door at
9:15, she could hear the whine of the old-fashioned elevator only Tyner
used. Tess darted up the broad marble steps between the first and
second floors, then took the narrower staircase to the third floor,
confident she could beat the wheezing lift. They had timed it once with
Tyner's stopwatch, the one he used when putting novice rowers
through drills. It took exactly one minute and thirty-two seconds for
the elevator to make the trip from first to third. By the time Tyner
arrived, she was at her desk in the front room, which she shared with
Alison the receptionist, making notes on an interview she had conducted
last week, some woman who hoped to sue her neighbor in a boundary
dispute.
    "I'm not fooled, you
know," Tyner said, rolling past her in his wheelchair.
    "Really, Mr. Gray, she's
been here all along," volunteered Alison. A preppy beauty, as
overbred as a golden retriever, Alison was a good egg. She
couldn't lie to save her life, though.
    "I heard you on the
stairs," he called back to Tess. "You have a very
heavy tread. I never remember—do you pronate or
supinate?"
    "Pronate," she said,
following him into his office, a spare, uncluttered room. In a
wheelchair for almost forty years, Tyner hadn't waited for
anyone to make the world accessible to him. Although his office was in
a nineteenth-century town house better suited to antiques, he had
chosen sleek, modern furnishings, which took up less floor space. His
desk was a large, flat table, custom made so he could roll right up to
it. The chairs facing it were tall and slender, expensive maple pieces
with narrow strips of leather for seats. They also were wretchedly
uncomfortable, and, not incidentally, reminiscent of the sliding seats
in a racing shell. Rowing was Tyner's true passion, even if
his years as a rower had ended up being only a fraction of his life.
    "My uncle got robbed last
night," Tess told him, perching on one of the chairs.
"Someone worked him over pretty bad."
    "Jesus. Which one? Which
side?" Unavoidable questions, and difficult ones, for Tess
had nine other uncles—her father's five younger
brothers, her mother's four older ones. Spike was actually a
cousin, and to complicate things further, no one had ever agreed to
which side of the family he belonged. His last name was Orrick. Changed
from O'Rourke , Tess's mother
always said. Could be one of those Eastern
European Jew names , her father inevitably
countered, screwed up the immigration officials .
    "The one who owns The Point, that
bar on Franklintown Road. It was a robbery, and they were pissed
because he didn't have anything."
    "This city is becoming
unlivable."
    "You say that every other day.
You're just looking for a reason to buy that house in
Ruxton." This green, sheltered suburb, no more than five
miles outside the city limits, was a kind of code between