Chapter 8 - The Clearing of Montgomery Street
The moving van from the Maryland Historical Society arrived at eight o'clock on Saturday morning.
The rain had finally blown out toward the eastern shore, leaving the sky over Federal Hill a brilliant, washed-out blue that smelled of clean river salt and cured oak leaves. The air was forty-two degrees, sharp enough to see your breath as you crossed the brick sidewalks.
Rachel and I stood in the double parlor of the brownstone, watching two young men in gray canvas vests carry Daniel’s antique grandfather clock through the front doors.
The clock had belonged to the Mercer estate in Green Spring Valley. It was nine feet of carved black walnut with a brass dial that tracked the phases of the moon and the movements of the tide in the Chesapeake Bay. It had ticked in the hallway for five years, its deep, slow tock... tock... tock counting down the minutes until Daniel’s key turned in the exterior lock every afternoon at five-fifteen.
"Where is it going?" Rachel asked, holding a cardboard box filled with the porcelain dinner service Daniel had insisted on buying for the mayor's dinner.
"The museum in Annapolis," I said. I was wearing an old pair of jeans, my work boots, and an oversized gray sweatshirt that smelled of woodsmoke. My hair was tied back with a blue bandana; my face was bare, the skin clear, the yellow shadow on my jaw now completely gone under the morning sun. "The curator said they’ll put it in the maritime wing. Behind velvet ropes. Where nobody has to listen to it unless they buy a ticket."
The living room was almost empty now.
The floor-to-ceiling glass that opened onto the courtyard had been washed clean of the rain-streaks. The dark stain where the cabernet had soaked into the quartz island had been removed with hydrogen peroxide and stone poultice; the counter was white again, clean and cold as an operating table.
Lena Ortiz walked into the kitchen from the service corridor, carrying a clipboard and a roll of heavy craft paper.
"The transition team from the coalition is arriving on Tuesday," Lena said, leaning against the counter. "We have five women scheduled for intake by the end of the month. Two from the hospital program, three from the county shelter in Towson."
She looked around the high-ceilinged room, her eyes taking in the empty spaces where the oil paintings of the Mercer ancestors had hung.
"They're going to paint the walls," she said. "The caseworkers thought pale green. Something that looks like the woods."
"Tell them to paint them yellow," I said. "The bright kind. The kind they use on school buses."
The front doorbell chime sounded—two clean, electric notes that echoed through the bare rooms.
I walked down the long corridor, past the empty coat pegs, and opened the heavy front door.
Detective Marcus Reed stood on the limestone stoop.
He wasn't wearing his tweed overcoat today; he had on a dark blue zippered jacket with the small gold shield of the Baltimore City Police Department embroidered on the left chest. In his right hand, he carried a thick manila envelope sealed with red evidence tape.
"Morning, Clara," he said, touching the brim of his flat cap.
"Morning, Marcus," I replied, stepping back to let him through the threshold. "Coffee’s on the counter. The good kind. Rachel brought it from the roaster in Frederick."
Reed walked into the kitchen, his boots making a heavy, solid sound on the heart-pine. He set the envelope on the quartz island.
"The grand jury finished their review at nine o'clock last night," he said, taking the porcelain mug Rachel handed him. "Thirty-two counts. They added federal wire fraud and interstate transportation of stolen securities. Daniel’s being transferred to the federal detention center in Cumberland on Monday morning."
"And the plea?" Rachel asked, leaning forward over her box.
"There is no plea," Reed said, blowing gently across the surface of his coffee. "The U.S. Attorney told Julian Vance that if Daniel doesn't take twenty-two years at the federal camp, they’ll unseal the secondary indictments regarding the municipal housing vouchers from twenty-twenty-one. Julian advised him to sign the allocation agreement by five o'clock today."
He tapped the manila envelope with his forefinger.
"These are your personal effects from the lockbox," he told me. "The passports. The original birth certificates. And the title deed to the property in Wilmington."
I looked at the red evidence tape.
For five years, my entire identity—my legal standing, my capacity to sign an agreement, my right to own the dirt beneath my boots—had been stored inside that paper folder, locked away in an iron box behind another man's grandfather's portrait.
I didn't open the envelope.
I reached out, took the red tape by the corner, and peeled it back with a single, slow, tearing sound that filled the quiet kitchen.
"You leaving the state, Clara?" Reed asked softly, watching my hands.
I walked to the courtyard window.
Below, in the narrow brick garden, the dead leaves had been raked into two neat piles beside the compost bin. The old ailanthus tree that had leaned against the service corridor had been trimmed back, its bare branches reaching up toward the high, cold blue of the autumn sky.
Through the clear glass, I could see the harbor—the red cranes of the container terminal, the white ferry boat cutting its clean, triangular wake through the gray water toward Fort McHenry, the gulls circling high over the grain elevators where the sun hit the metal roofs like a row of clean mirrors.
May you like
"No, Marcus," I said, turning back toward the room, toward my sister, toward the women who were coming on Tuesday with their children and their cardboard boxes.
"I’m staying right here," I told him. "The foundation needs an auditor."
