The Accidental Detective

ponder this, and if an out-of-towner dares to inquire, a shrug is the politest possible reply he or she can expect.
    On the fourth day of August, one such native, Tess Monaghan, was a block away from this particular restaurant when she felt that first bead of sweat, the one she thought of as the scout, snaking a path between her breasts and past her sternum. Soon, others would follow, until her T-shirt was speckled with perspiration and the hair at her nape started to frizz. She wasn’t looking forward to this interview, but she was hoping it would last long enough for her Toyota’s air conditioner to get its charge back.
    The Cuban Restaurant. Local lore about the place—and it had all been dredged up again, as of late—held that another name had been stenciled over the door on the night of its grand opening many years ago. The Havana Rum Co.? Plantain Plantation? Something like that. Whatever the name, the
Beacon-Light
had gotten it wrong in the review and the owner had decided it would be easier to change the name than get a correction. It had, after all, been a favorable review, with raves for the food and the novel-for-Baltimore gas station setting. If the local paper said it was The Cuban Restaurant, it was willing to be just that, and the new name was hastily painted over the old.
    Live by publicity, die by publicity.
That’s what Tess Monaghan wanted to stencil above her door.
    She slid her car into the empty space next to the old-fashioned gas pumps where attendants had so recently juggled a nightly crush of Mercedeses, Cadillacs, and Lincoln Navigators. Inside the cool dining room, a sullen bartender was wiping down a bar that showed no sign of having held a drink that day, and two dark-haired young waitresses stood near the coffeepot, examining their manicures and exchanging intelligence about hair removal. If Tess had been there for a meal, that conversation would have killed her usually unstoppable appetite.
    She found the owner, Herb Marquez, in an office behind the bar. The glass in front of him might have held springwater, or it might have been something else. Whatever the substance, the glass was clearly half empty in Marquez’s mournful eyes. His round face was as creased as a basset hound’s, his gloom as thick as incense. Even his mustache drooped.
    “You see that?” He waved a hand at the empty dining room.
    “I saw.”
    “A week ago, maybe—
maybe
—you could have gotten a table here at lunch if you were willing to wait twenty, thirty minutes. At night—two weeks to get a reservation, three on weekends. That may be common in New York, but not in Baltimore. I been in the restaurant business forty years—started as a busboy at O’Brycki’s, worked my way up, opened my own place, served the food my mama used to make, only better. And now it’s all over because people think I polished the most popular guy in Baltimore.”
    “
Most
popular?” Tess had a reflexive distaste for hyperbole. “Bandit Gonzales isn’t even the most beloved Oriole of all time. He’s just the flavor of the month.”
    An unfortunate choice of words. Herb Marquez winced, no doubt thinking about the flavors he had served Bandit Gonzales, that subtle blend of spices and beef that went into
ropa vieja
. Literally, “old clothes,” but these old clothes had been credited with making a new man out of the aging pitcher, having the greatest season of his life.
    Until last Sunday, when a sold-out crowd in Camden Yards—not to mention the millions of fans who had tuned into the Fox game of the week—had watched him throw three wobbly pitches to the first batter, fall to his knees, and give new meaning to the term “hurler.”
    “Well, I’d put him in the top three,” Marquez said. “After Cal Ripken and Brooks Robinson.”
    “No, you gotta put Boog Powell ahead of him, too. And Frank Robinson. Maybe that catcher, the one who led the crowd in ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy.’ Then there’s Jim Palmer and—”
    “Okay, fine, he ain’t even in the top five. But he was the only bright spot in the Orioles’ piss-poor lineup this season and he thinks, and everyone else thinks, that he spent twenty-four hours puking his guts out because of my goddamn food. It was in all the papers. It was on
Baseball Tonight
. Those late-night guys make jokes about my food. And now the guy’s talking lawsuit. I’m gonna be ruined.”
    He gave the last word its full Baltimore pronunciation, so it had three, maybe four