Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

“Had me in a group home.”

Tate waited.

“I ain’t going back there ever.”

Tate nodded at that, asking no more questions, and it was the boy himself who pressed it: “Copper worth more than the rest, ain’t it? I know where we can snatch some copper pipe for real.”

And each day since, with the boy and Tate sharing everything.

Long after midnight, Tate fired the last speedball after the boy’s wheeze got regular and turned to a light snore. Child can’t shake that asthma at night, he thought sadly, telling himself that after a couple runs tomorrow, if Daymo was still struggling, they would run down to the university clinic, get some free medicines.

But right now, with good dope and coke running wild in his head, Tate had other work at hand. Yes he did. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he found the rat bait and, from the wax-covered end table, a folded strip of cardboard. He found the first of the empty Black Diamond caps on the floor beside the table and opened it, staring at the space where heroin no longer was.

He would see Lorenzo tomorrow. Most definitely.

Corelli was on the B-of-I computer when he sensed Cabazes behind him.

“For a big man, you’re pretty quiet.”

“Graceful, like a cat.”

“I was thinking more like a ballet dancer or an interior decorator or some shit like that. Someone willing to embrace alternative lifestyles.”

Cabazes nodded at the screen and its display of a light sheet: White, male. Timonium address. A few misdemeanors and no open warrants.

“The fuck are you looking at?”

“Him. That’s the cocksucker fucking my wife.”

Cabazes frowned. “Lemme guess. You spent the whole day yesterday camped at Trina’s apartment so you could mark the new boyfriend.”

“Not the whole day, no.”

“Fuck, Tony. Grow the fuck up.”

“You see this guy? Look at this here. Driving under the influence, D-and-D, failure to obey. Guy’s an asshole. Look at this one from ’96… solicitation for prostitution, sodomy…”

Corelli looked up at his sergeant, mock deadpan. “Guy’s a sodomite.”

“Who the fuck isn’t? By Maryland code, a blowjob is sodomy.”

“Seriously, you think I want a guy like this around my kids? You think Trina will want a guy like this around her kids once she knows?”

“Once she knows what? That her new honey once got DUIed? That once in 1996 he took a blowjob from some pro?”

“Right. I’m sure it was just the once.”

Corelli hit a button, sending the sheet to the printer on the other side of the admin office. Amid the staccato clatter, his sergeant looked at him for a long moment, then pulled up a chair and sat, leaning close.

“What concerns me here, Tony, is a certain lack of perspective on your part.”

“Lack of perspective?”

“How long since you and Trina split?”

“Twenty months.”

“Divorce is final, right?”

“Two years, she says.”

“Two years.”

“Yup.”

“Who you fucking now?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, who you fucking?”

“Arlene. The nurse from Sinai.” He paused, and when Cabazes waited him out, added: “Among a couple others.”

“A couple others. Tony, you been a whore as long as I’ve known you. You were a whore before you married Trina, you were a whore when you were with her, and with the possible exception of a week or so after she finally walked out, you’ve stayed a perfect whore. You’d fuck a rathole if it had carpeting around it.”

“So?”

“So you’re parked outside of Trina’s apartment waiting to see who comes out so you can play detective and decide why she isn’t right to sleep with whoever the fuck she wants. This is what you do.”

“This guy’s gonna be around my fucking kids.”

“You’re around your fucking kids, Tony. And I’ve known you to drive shitfaced. You’re around your kids and I’ve fuckin’ you take a pro’s blowjob once or twice.”

“When?”

“Boardman’s bachelor party. Remember?”

“Bachelor parties don’t count.”

Corelli got up, walked to the printer and pulled the sheet free.

“Leave it be, Tony. The problem isn’t this guy, and it sure as shit ain’t Trina.”

Corelli said nothing, folding the printout, tucking it inside his jacket.

“Anyway, I need a witness for a statement. Room two.”

“Yeah, what’d we catch?”

“Something a little lumpy. Thought it was a straight overdose, but now I got this little fuck in there putting himself in, calling it a hot shot.”

“Huh. No shit.”

Corelli followed his sergeant to the interrogation room.

“Rat bait, huh?”

The man nodded, then scratched himself.

“You loaded an empty with the rat bait and then he stole it from you and fired.”

The man began to cry. Corelli shot Cabazes a look.

“You’re saying you loaded the hot shot on purpose, and that when we tell the M.E. to test for strychnine, it’s gonna come back positive for that and negative for opiates.”

The man nodded again, then vomited. Corelli shot back in his chair, then followed Cabazes out of the The Box. They walked down the hallway for paper towels.

“The fuck kinda goof puts himself in for a hot shot?” Corelli said. “You keep your mouth shut, it’s the perfect murder. Nobody gives a fuck and no jury’s ever gonna believe it’s anything other than a fiend firing bad shit.”

“He says he can’t live with it,” Cabazes offered.

“Why the fuck not? Why’s he gotta bust our balls?”

They found towels in the men’s room, but no mop or pail in the utility closet. They went down to the fifth floor, then the fourth, before finding a janitor. Ten minutes later they were back upstairs, Cabazes heading for the interrogation room and Corelli short-stopping at the soda machine.

“Be there in a sec.”

He fed a dollar and banged for a diet drink before shouts from Cabazes brought him running around the corner. The Box door was open and his sergeant was wrapped around the little fuck’s waist, holding him. Corelli looked up to see the man’s leather belt tied around the ceiling brace, the other end around his neck.

“Get him offa there,” Cabazes grunted.

Standing on the table, Corelli fumbled for a few moments before finding and unfastening the buckle. The body flopped against Cabazes, then onto the table. Corelli jumped down and they loosened the other end of the belt. The dead man rewarded them with a cough, then a breath, then another cough. Twenty minutes later, he was sitting in the same chair where they had left him, sipping water from a Styrofoam cup, one arm extended for a paramedic checking his blood pressure.

Cabazes was in the squad room calling the duty officer.

“I don’t get it,” Corelli said. “You hot shot a guy who stole from you and then you come in to confess. The fuck is up with that? You did what you had to.”

The man said nothing at first, then shook his head softly.

“He ain’t stole from me. Daymo wouldn’t steal.”

Corelli waited.

“The hot shot was for this motherfucker Lorenzo. He the one been taking my shit all the time, bangin’ me ’round for it. I loaded the shot for him. The boy…”

His voice trailed away. The paramedic finished, nodded to Corelli, and left.

“The boy was an accident,” Corelli said, finishing the thought.

The man was crying again. “He was living with me, you know? Ain’t had no place else to go, an’ I was lookin’ out for him. I was lookin’ out for him more than myself, you know? He ain’t got no mother or father to speak of, but I was kinda like a father with him. An’ he was starting to use a bit, you know? I seen it. I pulled him up when I seen it. An’ I wasn’t havin’ none of it, so we had gone back and forth on that.”