Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

Lady surfaced, the water sleeking off her mottled fur. She snorted, her whiskers twitching curiously next to Jack’s hand. Bobbing, she studied the dying man with dark, sorrowful eyes.

“Sorry, Lady,” Angie whispered, thinking about the warning sign. Then, “Call 911!” she screamed. “He’s having a heart attack!”

In the subsequent confusion, she slipped away, weaving quietly through the crowd, moving confidently against the grain.

Near the causeway between the power plant and Baltimore’s Public Works Museum, the wig came off with the hat, in one quick swoop. By the time she crossed President Street, Angie had fluffed up her flyaway copper curls, and the disguise was tucked safely into the plastic bag that had once held her videocam.

She strolled down Fawn Street, almost to Gough, before finding a dumpster where she ditched the bag. She doubled back to Exeter. Angie wasn’t worried. Two thousand people were crowded in Little Italy tonight, out to enjoy the film festival. Cinema al fresco would generate tons of garbage. Nobody was going to be pawing through the dumpsters in the morning.

On Stiles, at the far end of the bocce court tucked between High and Exeter, she found her brother and his team, all duded up and slicked back, their asses being whipped by paisanos on Social Security, wearing team shirts, Bermudas, and tube socks. She perched on a park bench painted red, white, and green to watch the massacre, wondering, not for the first time, how Johnny could bet serious money on a game that was a cross between lawn bowling and horseshoes. After a while, she wandered off and bought herself a meatball sub and ate it at the corner of High and Stiles, where Johnny found her later, just as it was growing dark. He carried a couple of lawn chairs.

“Sorry I’m late, sis.”

She presented her cheek for a kiss.

He unfolded a chair, placed it on the sidewalk, and held it steady while she sat down. “Glad you stopped by.”

“I’m starving,” she said. “What’s in the box?”

“Dessert,” he said.

“From Vaccaro’s, I trust,” she said, holding out her hand for the box.

“How’s Mom?”

“Just fine,” Angie replied, liberating a chocolate-dipped cannoli from a square of wax paper. “She thinks I should get a life.”

“And Providence?”

“Not so good as when Buddy Cianci was mayor, but thriving.” She took a bite of the cannoli, savoring the sweetness of it on her tongue, feeling giddy. “You should visit sometime, Johnny.”

“Maybe I will,” he said, “if I’m not on call over Thanksgiving.”

From the third floor bedroom of John Pente’s apartment directly over their heads, a blue stream of light projected the opening scenes of Moonstruck onto a blank white billboard across a parking lot crammed with people: a street festival meets the drive-in, but without all the cars.

“They always start with Moonstruck “ her brother explained, “and end with Cinema Paradiso

“All Italian?”

He nodded, chewing, his mouth full of amaretto tiramisu. “Mostly.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a printed schedule.

“So if it’s mostly Italian, how come they’re showing A Fish Called Wanda next Friday and not The Godfather? ” Angie asked after reading it over.

Johnny licked whipped cream off his fingers. “The neighborhood would never go for The Godfather, ” he said.

“Why not? It’s classic.”

“You know.” He tucked his hands in his armpits and tipped his chair back to rest against the formstone.

“What?” Angie said, comprehension dawning. “Too much like home movies?”

Johnny snorted. “Yeah. Everybody thinks we hang out on street corners with stupid meatheads named Vito saying ‘fahgedaboutit’ all day.”

Angie laughed out loud. “Does any rational person seriously believe that every Italian-American family has a mobster or a hit man somewhere on their family tree?”

“Stereotypes,” said her brother.

“Cultural bias,” said his sister, settling back to enjoy the movie. “Fahgedaboutit.”

Author’s note: When the seal pool at the National Aquarium in Baltimore closed for renovation in early 2002, Ike and Lady were sent to live at the Albuquerque Biological Park. Ike died several years ago, at the ripe old age of thirty-two, but Lady, now thirty, thrives in New Mexico

Security Boulevard-Woodlawn

As always, the rabbi had spoken in calm, measured ones. If we could learn to see them, we’d recognize that our existence is full of liminal moments,” he’d said, “times when we’ve already left our previous life behind, but have yet to take the step into a new one. A liminal moment represents the space between an ending and beginning-a critically important gap, and of course potentially a very dangerous one.

That had been three days ago. Now Tania Blumen’s head banged against the motel’s bathroom wall, unloosing a blue-green flash deep within her skull. Pain followed after a respectful pause, radiating along her jawline and cheekbones like thunder pursuing a lightning bolt.

“God, I’m sorry, sweetie,” the man said to her, his voice wet, his hands grasping the waistband of her panties and tugging. Something stung her on the hip: his fingernail tearing her skin. “I didn’t mean to do that, I’ll never do it again, I promise,” he said. “If you’d just listened to me, trusted me… Didn’t you know this was going to happen? You must have known. I’m asking so little, and you’re making it so hard-”

Liminal moments.

Tania guessed this qualified as one.

“Room 213,” the teenage clerk at the Round Tripper Inn said. “Out that door into the courtyard, up the stairs on your right.” His eyes were on her face. “You need help, come back and ask.”

“The room,” Tania replied, “it says the number on the door?”

The clerk blinked. “Sure.”

“Then I’ll find it,” she told him.

“Oh, wait,” he called as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder and turned away. “I forgot to tell you.”

She looked back.

“Mr. Sims isn’t here yet. He called to say he’d be a little late.”

Tania stood still, thinking. Thinking: Still time to turn around. Still time to get on the bus and head back home.

And face Yoshi. And tell him she’d lost her nerve.

She went out into the courtyard.

Two bus rides, that’s all it took to get from Falstaff Road to Security Boulevard. Yet it was a different world.

Tania stood blinking in the milky spring sunshine, the pounding in her head competing with the ceaseless roar, like a river in flood, of the boulevard a block away. No one she knew would ever find her here. The people from her neighborhood didn’t work at the Social Security offices, those giant buildings that towered over the neighborhood like active volcanos. They didn’t shop at the Old Navy, rent movies at the Blockbuster, buy sandwiches at the Subway and cars at the Chevrolet dealership over there, with its giant plaster fox.

And they didn’t stay at the Round Tripper Inn.

But that was the point, wasn’t it?

The room was suffused with brownish light filtering through closed curtains decorated with crudely stitched crossed baseball bats. The queen-sized bedspread displayed a repeating pattern of gloves, and the lampshades were designed to look like baseballs. Two garish paintings of a tubby Babe Ruth hung on the wall, a mirror with an inexplicable seashell frame between them.

Tania felt shaky. She hadn’t been able to eat breakfast this morning, or even dinner last night. Tzom, Yoshi had named it. The ritual fast. Purification, it was said, was an essential part of the journey. But looking at her face in the mirror, at its pallor in the room’s earthy light, Tania didn’t feel pure.