The Accidental Detective

guy on the planet I could beat up. So, no, it’s not for work. It’s for peace of mind. Rowing clears my head in a way that nothing else does—alcohol, meditation, pot—”
    “Not that Tess has ever broken the drug laws of this country,” Talbot puts in.
    Monaghan sighs. “With every year, I become more law abiding. A business, a mortgage. I have things to lose. I want to be one of those people who lives untethered, with no material possessions.”
    “She talks a good talk,” Talbot says. “But you’ve seen the house, right? It’s filled with stuff. She’s put down roots—in Roland Park, of all places. You know what Tess is like? The ailanthus, the tree that grew in Brooklyn. Have you ever tried to get rid of one of those things? It’s darn near impossible. No one’s ever going to be able to yank Tess out of Baltimore soil.”
    “Now that’s a novel I do read every year,” Monaghan says. “An American classic, but not everyone agrees. Because it’s about a girl.”
    Talbot yawns daintily, bored. “I vote for Otterbein cookies. They have them at the Royal Farms over on Key Highway.”
F AMILY T IES
    I t is late afternoon at the Point and Crow Ransome—“No one calls me Ed or Edgar, ever,” he says, and it’s the only time he sounds annoyed—agrees to take a break and walk along Franklintown Road, where the trees are just beginning to turn gold and crimson.
    “I love Leakin Park,” he says of the vast wooded hills around him. The area is beautiful, but best known as the dumping ground of choice for Baltimore killers back in the day, a fact that Ransome seems unaware of. “I’m not a city kid by nature—I grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia—and I like having a few rural-seeming corners in my life.”
    Will he stay in Baltimore, then?
    “It’s the only real condition of being with Tess. ‘Love me, love my city.’ She can’t live anywhere else. Truly, I think she wouldn’t be able to stay long anyplace that wasn’t Baltimore.”
    What is it about the private eye and her hometown?
    Relative to his girlfriend, Ransome is more thoughtful, less impulsive in his comments. “I think it’s an extension of her family. You know Tess’s family is far from perfect. Her uncle, Donald Weinstein, was involved in a political scandal. Her grandfather Weinstein—well, the less said about him, the better. Her uncle Spike, the Point’s original owner, served time, although I’ve never been clear on what he did. No one ever speaks of it, but it had to be a felony because he wasn’t allowed to have the liquor license in his own name. Anyway, she loves them all fiercely. Not in spite of what they’ve done, but because they are who they are, they’re family.
    “I think she feels the same way about Baltimore. It’s imperfect. Boy, is it imperfect. And there are parts of its past that make you wince. It’s not all marble steps and waitresses calling you ‘hon,’ you know. Racial strife in the sixties, the riots during the Civil War. F. Scott Fitzgerald said it was civilized and gay, rotted and polite. The terms are slightly anachronistic now, but I think he was essentially right.
    “The bottom line,” Ransome says, turning around to head back to the Point, “is that Tess really can’t handle change. When I first knew her, she had been eating the same thing for breakfast at Jimmy’s in Fells Point for something like two years straight. Oh, she will change, but it’s very abrupt and inexplicable, and the new regimen will simply supplant the old one. When she crosses the threshold to our neighborhood coffeehouse, they start fixing her latte before she gets to the cash register. She’s that predictable.
    “Truthfully, I keep worrying that I’ll wake up one morning and I’ll no longer be one of Tess’s ruts.”
    But Ransome’s smile belies his words. He clearly feels no anxiety about his relationship with Monaghan, whatever its ups and downs in the past. What about marriage or children?
    Unlike Monaghan, he doesn’t sidestep the question. “If children, then marriage. But if children—could Tess continue to do what she does, the way she does it? The risks she takes, her impulsiveness. All of that would have to change. I don’t want her on surveillance with our baby in the car seat, or taking the child on her Dumpster diving escapades. I’m well suited to be a stay-at-home father, but that doesn’t mean I’ll give Tess carte blanche to do whatever she wants,