Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

“So he snuck the hot shot from you without you knowing.”

The man nodded, tears streaming. He was angry now, his voice louder.

“I was actin’ all parental an’ shit, like I was responsible for that boy. Like I wasn’t who the fuck I been for twenty fuckin’ years, you know? Pretending to be something past a low-bottom dope fiend, but you know what? I a low-bottom dope fiend and I kilt that child. I did. So just lock my ass up an’ be done with this shit. Jus’ lock me the fuck up ’cause I am done pretending. I wadn’t no good for that child. I ain’t good for no one. So jus’ lock me up ’cause I’m responsible for this here.”

Corelli backed away, leaving the door open. The smell of vomit followed him into the hall, where he found Cabazes.

“Duty officer is on the way downtown. He wants a twenty-four on it.”

Corelli nodded toward The Box.

“Paramedic says he’s good to go.”

Cabazes nodded.

“So let him.”

“What?”

“After the duty officer gets his twenty-four, we let him go.”

“He’s giving himself up, we can make it a murder.”

“You let him go, it can stay an overdose and not even be a stat.”

“We could use the clearance.”

“Fuck the clearance. In this poor fuck’s head, he’s been tried, convicted and sentenced. The hot shot was for anoth asshole. The kid was an accident. This sadass motherfucker’s gonna live with more weight than we could ever give him.”

Cabazes stared at him for a moment, nodded, then headed down the hall.

Corelli walked into the coffee room, poured sludge from the bottom of a dying pot, then slumped at the corner desk. He stared out the window, watching people and cars negotiate the rush hour below. It was Friday and he thought about calling Trina, asking if she wanted to do something together with the kids this weekend. The zoo, maybe. But he thought on it a moment longer and couldn’t see it happening.

Reaching into his pocket, Corelli pulled out the printout and tossed it into the can with the Styrofoam and stirrers and coffee grounds.

“Fuck it,” he said to no one in particular.

Little Italy

P arents: Please do not allow your children to sit, stand, or lean on the railing surrounding the seal pool. Angie wasn’t counting, but she must have heard the announcement fifty times since she arrived more than two hours ago. The recording was grating on her nerves.

The sun had clocked around to the west, too, so her bench no longer sat in the shade of the National Aquarium, its hulk-all glass and Mondrian-style triangles-looming like the Matterhorn behind her. Sweat beaded uncomfortably along her hairline; it ran in rivulets between her breasts, soaking through the fabric of her Victoria’s Secret T-shirt bra.

Damn! Baltimore was hot in July.

Squinting through her Ray-Bans, Angie scanned the bustling Inner Harbor, searching for the sailboat, a Sabre 402 named Windwalker. To her right rose the honey-beige tower of Baltimore’s World Trade Center, and if she turned her head to the left-past the raked-back masts of the USS Constellation, past the red brick walls of the Maryland Science Center-the crimson neon of the Domino Sugars sign, five stories high, glowed like a beacon. Blue-canopied water taxis ferried visitors from the two pavilions that housed the shops and restaurants of Harborplace across the water to dine at the Rusty Scupper, or to points beyond, like the tourist-magnet neighborhoods of Little Italy and Fell’s Point.

But there was no sign of Jack or his boat.

Angie had visited the Sabre website, so she knew that a 402 cost almost a half a million dollars. Even a used model could set you back two hundred thou. But it wasn’t the price that impressed her; it was the fact that the boat had two separate cabins with doors. That locked. With any luck, though, she wouldn’t have to use them.

Angie yanked her cell phone out of its holster and checked to make sure she had her brother Johnny on quick dial, in case things turned sour. Then she punched in the number Jack had given her, but voicemail kicked in right away. Damn! Maybe he was out of signal range, or talking to someone else. She scowled at the phone.

Jack. Jack freaking Daniels!

Angie imagined her mother’s disapproving voice. “With a name like that, Ange,” she would have warned, shaking a finger, “he’s gotta be an axe murderer.”

Angie’d argue she found it hard to believe that anybody’d make up a name like Jack Daniels.

“You don’t know anything about the man!” her mother would say. “Safer to stay home.”

Once, Angie had hitchhiked from Baltimore to San Francisco and back, and lived to tell the tale. “Pure dumb luck,” her mother had scoffed, with emphasis on the dumb.

Angie’s mother had never approved of blind dates, either, so the idea that her only daughter planned to sail off with a guy after meeting him for the first time on the Internet would have sent her into cardiac arrest.

So Angie hadn’t told her.

“I’m taking a vacation, Mama,” she’d said. “Got a great rate out of Providence to BWI. I’ll visit Johnny in Baltimore, see how he’s doing at Harkins, then who knows? Florida, maybe.”

The Florida part was practically true. After Baltimore, Jack said he was planning to sail down the Intercoastal Waterway to Fort Lauderdale, then across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.

On the bench next to her, Angie had a canvas tote with Cruising World stenciled on the side in blue letters. She rummaged inside and pulled out the ad that had been clipped and sent to her post office box in Providence, Rhode Island.

Energetic, forty-eight-year-old Italian American engineer with a comfortable, well-equipped two-cabin, two-head 40’sloop needs an adventurous, athletic female partner to island hop in the Bahamas, year round if possible. Safe sailor, good navigator, I dive, fish, cook, and clean. Healthy, intelligent, 5’11", 185, lots of salt and pepper hair. Previous female mate references available.

Angie had responded that she was an adventurous, freespirited young lady who wanted to sail where the weather is warm, the wind is steady, and the islands are beautiful. After a flurry of e-mails, they’d agreed to meet.

She hadn’t called his references.

Angie lived life on the edge.

Parents: Please do not allow your chil-

Someone pulled the plug on the recording, thank God. Angie joined the crowd around the outdoor pool as aquarium staff prepared to feed Ike and Lady, the gray seals who lived there. She rested her forearms against the railing and watched Ike flounder onto a rock, snap up the fish tossed his way, and honk appreciatively for the crowd.

When feeding time was over, Angie strolled along the seawall, past the grinning black hulk of the USS Torsk permanently tied up there, wondering where the hell Jack Daniels had gotten to. He was coming from Annapolis, he said, so she’d timed their meeting carefully, taking the crowds into consideration. Maybe Jack was already on island time.

So she wouldn’t mess up her cutoffs, Angie selected a relatively clean spot and sat down on the granite wall, her legs dangling over the water. Her feet ended in Docksiders. No one could say she didn’t dress like a sailor.

The water taxi came and went, its canopy flapping as it chugged through the still, humid air. Motorboats flitted about the harbor, weaving around the fleet of paddleboats that puttered around like ducklings. Sailboats bobbed quietly at anchor, suddenly swinging wide, facing into a puff of wind that rippled a path along the water.

“Stevie! Stay away from the water!” A woman’s voice, screeching. When Angie turned her head to check out the kid, she saw it: a Sabre motoring in under bare poles, its blue hull bright against the greenish-brown mound of Federal Hill. It would be ten, twenty minutes maybe, before the captain found a spot to anchor amid the sea of tethered vessels.