Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

His radio crackled and he recognized the voice.

“Seventy-four ten to KGA. Lateral with seventy-four twenty-one.”

“Seventy-four twenty-one?” the dispatcher repeated.

Corelli reached for the radio, keyed the mike, and answered: “Seventy-four twenty-one. I’m on.”

“Seventy-four twenty-one, go to three for a lateral.”

He flipped channels to hear his sergeant asking what the hell he was doing all afternoon. He answered dryly that he was busy with police work, that he was out in the streets of Baltimore defending persons and property from all threats foreign and domestic. His sergeant, equally dry, remarked on the weakness of the lie.

“Couldn’t you just tell me you’re drinking at some bar?” Cabazes mused, indifferent to whoever was listening on channel three. “Then I’d know you respect me enough to lie properly and respectfully.”

“I’m at Kavanagh’s on my sixth Jameson. Feel better?”

“No, actually. Now, because of that admission, I have to believe you are standing in your soiled underwear in a North Philadelphia cathouse.”

Corelli laughed, as much at the word cathouse as at his sergeant’s wit. Cabazes was good with fucking words and Corelli so amused, he nearly missed the white guy in the seersucker coming down the apartment steps. He keyed the radio mike again, even as he watched the son-of-a-fuckingbitch cross the parking lot, headed toward the Beemer, sure enough. He knew it would be the Beemer.

Lawyer, maybe. Or something like a lawyer.

“What do you need, Ray?” he asked his sergeant, releasing the mike.

As he wrote the Beemer’s tag, he listened to Cabazes tell him that Lehmann’s squad was short a man for the midnight shift, that he could work a double and clock overtime if he wanted.

“I’m good with it. No problem.”

The Beemer rolled past him on the way out of the lot. Glimpsed through a windshield, Lawyer Boy looked younger than he expected. Baby-faced even.

“Seriously, Tony, what’re you doing out there all the damn day?”

“Police work.”

In the pause that followed, he could hear wheels turning in his sergeant’s head. “All right,” Cabazes said finally, “I’ll see you when I see you.”

Tate stayed off Division Street, even though the crew on the Gold Street corners was said to have the best coke. He copped instead at Baker and Stricker from some young boys selling black-top vials.

There was no sense going on the other side of the avenue. Or so he told himself until he was halfway down the gulley on Riggs, moving fast, hungry to get the shit home and fire up.

“Where you been at, nigger?”

Tate startled at the voice. Not here on Riggs. Not again.

“I said, where the fuck you been at?”

Tate tried to cross and join the street parade around Riggs and Calhoun, where the Black Diamond crew was working double-seal bags. But Lorenzo followed him, cutting the angle, grabbing him by the throat and forcing him into the wall of the cut-rate. A tout, watching from the other corner, laughed.

“I’m up on Division Street waitin’, and where the fuck is you?” Lorenzo was in his pockets now, rooting around, finding nothing. “The fuck’s it at? Huh? Where the fuck it be?”

Lorenzo pulled out Tate’s shirt, grabbed his dip, then reached down for his socks. Tate tried to run, but Lorenzo snatched him by the hair and threw a hard right, bouncing Tate off the wall. The blood felt warm and metallic in his mouth, and when he finally found some balance, Tate realized that Lorenzo had the dope and coke both: two small zip bags of Mass Destruction and a red-top of good coke; all of it had been curled in the top of Tate’s left sock.

“This some low shit,” he managed.

But Lorenzo was already walking away, laughing. The whole corner-touts, runners, fiends-was tripping on the spectacle. At Mount Street, Lorenzo turned back before crossing and shouted, “Catch ya later.”

Tate gathered himself, wiping blood on his sleeve. Four times in two weeks, and there was no sign Lorenzo was getting tired of the game. Four times he had his shit taken. On Monday alone, it was eight black-tops-a bulk-buy to celebrate the money from the copper rainspouts from that warehouse roof.

“Why you his bitch like that?”

It was the tout, all of fifteen years old, signifying, trying to have more fun with it. Tate turned, started back across the street, and then saw the boy at the mouth of the alley, staring. Tate looked away, then started down Riggs. The boy followed, catching him at Fulton.

“’Sup.”

“Ain’t much,” said Tate. Maybe he didn’t see. Maybe he got there after.

“Yeah?”

“Banged up my face a bit.”

“I seen.”

Walking away, Tate felt shame washing over him. But the boy followed silently for several blocks, until they were passing the corner at Edmondson and Brice.

“Lorenzo jus’ an asshole,” Daymo finally offered.

Tate gave nothing back, pointing instead to the Edmondson crew. “How ’bout you let me hold ten till tomorrow? First run of the day, I get even with you.”

The boy shrugged. “Ain’t got ten.”

“You ain’t got ten dollars? How the fuck not? I gave you thirty-five at them scales not two hours past.”

The boy shrugged again. Tate looked at him for a moment.

“What was you doing on Riggs?”

“Huh?”

“What was you doing on Riggs, comin’ out the alley?”

“Wadn’t doin’ shit.”

Tate grabbed Daymo’s wrist and spun him, pulling the boy’s arm behind his back and feeling the pockets of his denims. Right as rain.

“Get off. Get the fuck off me.”

But Tate had them out already, three gel-caps of Black Diamond. The boy looked away, hurt and angry both.

“The fuck is this here? You ain’t shootin’ this shit, I know.”

“Jus’ a snort now an’ then.”

Tate looked at the boy and waited. Nothing else was offered, and so, pocketing the caps, he filled the silence with his own words, the softest he could find.

“This shit ain’t for you, Daymo. It ain’t. You think about what it is you really want an’ where you want to be at, an’ then you take a look at my sorry ass.”

The boy did.

“It ain’t for you.”

Tate turned and crossed Edmondson. The boy didn’t follow.

“So he go an’ steal from you,” Daymo shouted, “an’ you steal from me!”

Tate stopped and wheeled. “I’m holdin’ thirty of yours. You gonna see that money first run tomorrow. My word.”

He turned and walked down Monroe without looking back, knowing in his heart that Daymo understood, that he had heard his words as truth. And later that night, when the boy came up the stairs of the vacant building where they were laying up, he said nothing further, just nodded quickly to Tate, then undressed and crawled onto his bedroll. The boy knew Tate would have his thirty after the first run. And he knew Tate was real about him not getting high, about the right and wrong of it all.

At the end of summer, Tate told himself, he would find a way to get Daymo back in school somehow, maybe even walk him up to Harlem Park and talk to the people there. Get him some school clothes and a book bag, even.

He had run through his own family years ago, burning them out one after the next, using them all to keep chasing. Shit, he had done a lot to be ashamed about. But he had never lied to Daymo, never cheated him. Not ever. And the boy knew how he felt, though nothing was ever said in all the time they had run together, the boy looking for meal money and finding Tate at the scales one winter afternoon.

“I can work for it if you need help.”

“Where you live at?” Tate had asked.

The boy shrugged.

“You ain’t got peoples?”