Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

That got through.

“And you’re never going to post another picture online, ever, right?”

Yoshi picked up the wadded strip of cotton he’d ripped from the nightgown and the duct tape he’d brought with him.

“Wait,” Gary said.

Tania, leaning against the wall, was ready to leave. “Make it fast.”

He took a deep breath. The words came tumbling out, indistinct but comprehensible. “You-you feel so proud of yourselves, but nothing’s going to change.”

“Sure, Gary.”

“I’m not the only one doing this,” he went on. “There’s others, taking pictures. Just like me. Looking for an edge. I’m gone, there’s a dozen ready to jump in, take my place-and my girls.”

“Just like you jumped in,” Tania said calmly, “when a couple of other photographers left the business last year.”

Gary nodded.

She got down beside him and looked into his eyes. “Like Phil at Young Beauties.” She glanced at Yoshi. “And who was that other one?”

“Silverteen Models,” he replied. “Guy had a funny name.”

“Rogelio.” She switched her gaze back to Gary. “Gone for good, both of them, just when they were getting successful.” Gary slowly understood what she was saying. His face went yellow.

“We’ve been searching for Zhenya for a long time,” Tania said. “But she keeps moving on, and until now we were always a step behind.”

“But Phil-” The smell of Gary’s sweat and drying blood filled the room. “Phil was-”

“In the hospital for weeks,” Yoshi said. “He almost died.”

Tania shrugged. “Phil didn’t cooperate, but, you know, I think you will.”

Yoshi looked at her and she nodded. He pushed the cotton past Gary’s bruised lips and into the clotted mouth, and began wrapping the contorted face with tape.

When he was done, they picked up the trussed body, Tania grasping the legs, Yoshi the torso. Together, they hauled the trembling form across the room. In a few seconds Yoshi had tied it tightly to the pipes under the sink. Gary wasn’t going anywhere until someone found him.

Under the wild gaze of the shot-red eyes, they washed their hands with plenty of soap and left the bathroom for the last time.

“How could she do this?” Yoshi asked. “Zhenya. How could she be with such men?”

They were walking through the early-afternoon sunlight on Security Boulevard, Yoshi carrying Gary’s two bags, Tania her own. Unless they hit bad traffic on the turnpike, Yoshi’s Miata would get them to Queens by nightfall. They’d find Zhenya’s address and see what else Gary’s apartment had to offer.

The sun gleamed off the windows of the Social Security mountain up ahead. Horns honked and brakes squealed along the boulevard, the flood of cars carrying people toward snacks at Dunkin’ Donuts and antacid at Rite Aid. But the noise and bustle seemed remote, distant to Tania, as if she were just a projection of herself placed here and the real girl was somewhere far away.

“They told her she was beautiful,” Tania said. “They offered her money. They swore that her family would renounce her, would never welcome her back, not after what she had done. They put their hands on her until she thought they owned her.”

Yoshi gave her a sharp look. “Is that what Gary did to you?”

Tania shrugged. “Close enough.”

“I wish I’d killed him!” Yoshi knotted his hands. “You should have pulled the gun out as soon as he walked in the door.”

She smiled. “Then we might not have learned anything. And anyway… after what happened with Phil, we agreed I’d wait till you got there.”

“I know,” Yoshi said. “I remember.”

Phil’s raging response had been… unexpected. Even with the pistol, Tania probably couldn’t have handled him alone.

“We were lucky Gary turned out so easy,” she said.

Yoshi stared at the traffic as if he wanted to challenge each car to a fight. “Security Boulevard “ he said with loathing.

“And anyway, it was good.” She caught his expression. “No, it was. Now I know what Zhenya heard. And the other girls too. What they heard when they were poor and scared and hungry, when they’d run away and thought everyone back home hated them.”

“But we don’t-”

“What was it her parents said after she left?” Tania said. “‘We have no daughter!’”

Yoshi shook his head. “My brother Avi. That fool.”

“And how was she to know they’d changed their minds, Avi and Rachel?” Tania asked. “She was out of reach.”

They walked in silence for a while. The wail of distant fire engines wove in and out of the traffic’s tidal surge. Then Yoshi spoke: “When we find her, will she come home with us?”

Tania thought about the unsmiling face, the dark, haunted eyes she’d seen in image after image.

“I think so,” she said.

Yoshi nodded. “And then, finally, we’ll be done.”

But Tania barely heard him. She was listening to another voice, the one that had been with her all day.

Most of us make the mistake of thinking that such experiences occur only very rarely,” the rabbi had said. “But it isn’t true. Every wedding, every birth, every death, takes you out of one life and into another. Even the Sabbath lets you escape for twenty-five hours, every week of the year. And each week, the world you join is different from the one you left, just as you, yourself, are different.”

He’d smiled then at all of them sitting in the pews. “Despite the risks,” he’d said, “some of us find these liminal moments the most fulfilling of our lives. We welcome them, cherish them, even come to crave them. Life would be a cold, barren place if they did not exist.”

They reached the Miata. There was a ticket fluttering on its windshield.

“And then we’ll be done, right?” Yoshi said.

Tania felt the memory of Gary’s hands on her skin. She thought of all the other girls he’d touched, and all the girls these new photographers-the eager replacements he’d brandished at them in his last gesture of defiance-would touch as well. Girls who would listen to the serpent words, and through fear or desperation or self-hatred would believe what they heard, just as Zhenya had. Girls who might want to put up a fight, but who weren’t lucky enough to have an Uncle Yoshi or a.22.

She looked up, watched his eyes widen at the expression he saw in hers. “Uh-oh,” he said. “We’re not done, are we?”

Tania smiled at him. They came from the same tribe.

“Not quite yet,” she said.

Howard Park

Had it not been his body in the huge box of fake hair, I like to think that Miles Henry would have been amused.

At least, the man I once knew would have seen the humor in it: a male stylist who made his fame as one of the top hair weavers in Baltimore discovered in a burial mound of fake hair at the Hair Dynasty, the East Coast’s biggest hair-styling convention of the year. It had all the elements that guaranteed a front-page story in the Sunpapers, maybe even a blurb in the “Truly Odd News” sections of the nationals. Television reporters swarmed the scene, desperate for a sound bite from anyone even remotely connected to Miles. Yes, it all would have been sweet nirvana to Miles, publicity hound that he was. If only he had lived to see it.

I knew him pretty well. In fact, I knew him when he was Henry Miles, the only half-black, half-Asian guy in Howard Park, our West Baltimore neighborhood. His exotic looks ensured that he never wanted for female attention, although they also made him a target for the wannabe thugs who didn’t much cotton to a biracial pretty boy spouting hiphop lyrics. He was a few years older than I was, so our paths crossed only rarely. Besides, he was the neighborhood hottie and I was a shy chubby teenager with acne. The difference in our social statures, as well as the difference in our ages, limited us to the socially acceptable dance of unequals. Meaning, I stared at him and he didn’t know I was alive. It was only when we were grown and found ourselves cosmetology competitors that we began to talk to one another.