Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

What can I say? The only thing more hard-shelled than the local delicacy are the locals themselves. And while I was sorry for Sal, I realized these photos would get far more play than the murder, just another Baltimore domestic, already fading in public memory with Kylani’s arrest.

Poor Miles-upstaged by a crab.

Memorial Stadium

A light drizzle had just started to fall when the two men moved their conversation from the waterside tiki bar to an inside corner table still overlooking the Inner Harbor. James “Jilly” Cuomo brushed his thin gray hair back with both hands after sitting with his back to the windows. Tommy “Red” Dalton, a tall man with broad shoulders, positioned his chair so he could see the boats docked on the far side of the marina.

A short waitress with a big chest and a long ponytail had followed them with their drinks. “Anisette?” she asked.

Jilly pointed to a spot on the table directly in front of him. The waitress set a napkin down first, then his drink. She smiled at Tommy before placing his glass of water on a napkin in front of him.

“I guess this is yours,” she said.

Tommy winked at her.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Not right now,” Jilly told her.

She was still looking at Tommy.

“No thanks,” he said.

Jilly glanced at her ass when she left. “Nice rack, but she could use a little more meat, you ask me,” he said. He turned to Tommy and the conversation that had been interrupted by the rain. “He’s got you in the car, yeah, and…?”

Tommy said, “I says to him, I says, if you’re thinking she’s out there, she pro’bly is. There’s nothin not gut-check about it, what we’re talkin. A guy knows, same as a broad, it comes to that. You just do. Junior says to me, he says, ‘I’m pretty sure something is going on.’”

Jilly was mid-yawn. “The moron,” he tried to say.

“This is that day couple weeks after I first meet him at the party down here, this place. I figure he figures I’m around his age and all, he can talk to me, it won’t go nowheres. This is before I get sent for by the old man, of course, which, I gotta tell you, I first get that call, I’m thinking, uh-oh, the fuck I do to deserve this? Sometimes you get sent for, you get dead.”

Jilly nodded. “It’s a smart assumption. A guy should be prepared for whatever, especially these days.”

Tommy was enthusiastic. “Right, exactly, but at the time I get the call, I’m not thinking straight enough to figure that out. I’m just thinking I fucked up and now I gotta pay for it. Maybe get whacked for whatever the fuck and I got no clue what it is, it might be. Makes it even tougher to think, that happens, you get sent for out the blue like that.”

Jilly sipped at his anisette. “Yeah, so… back to Junior.”

Tommy said, “Right, so, Junior has me there in that old tank he drives, the Lincoln, he turns to me, he says, ‘Look at my eyes.’ I do and they’re all red, bloodshot from crying it looks like, or he didn’t sleep the last hundred years, maybe he’s a vampire or somethin. Anyway, I see they’re red and he says, right out there, just like this, ‘I think my wife is fucking around.’”

Jilly frowned.

“Exactly,” Tommy said. “I mean, all due respect, it’s a tough thing, you find your wife is out there and all, but Jesus Christ, Junior, grow a pair.”

“The kid is weak,” Jilly said. “He’s always been weak.”

“Yeah, but what the fuck am I doin there listenin to it? I mean, Jilly, I know the guy less than two, three weeks, he picks my shoulder to cry on?”

“What he say?”

“This and that, her routine the last couple weeks since she got some promotion at work, whatever. Makin excuses, findin reasons, I don’t know. He’s losin sleep, he don’t wanna confront her, he don’t know for sure. He’s all fucked up in the head, which I know for fact because I’m sitting there listenin to it. It’s pathetic is what it is. Not for nothin, he’s my kid, I gotta think about takin him out the Gunpowder River there and lose him.”

“I’m sure it’s crossed the old man’s mind more’n a couple times,” Jilly said, “except it’s his son.”

“What I figure, yeah,” Tommy said. He stopped to drink most of the water in his glass.

Jilly noticed the waitress watching Tommy from across the room. He motioned toward her with his head. “I think you got a fan.”

Tommy glanced her way and smiled. “She isn’t half bad,” he said, “except it’s a headache I don’t need right now. The wife says to me the other week, she says, ‘Don’t forget our anniversary is coming.’ That turned out to be a week ago and of course I forgot. Now I’m paying for it in spades. Every night I go out I’m not dragging one of the kids, I gotta hear it full throttle on the way out and all over again when I get back.”

Jilly motioned at the glass. “Sure you don’t want something stronger?”

Tommy waved it off. “Positive,” he said. “I never drink on a job. Never ever.”

“You’re not working now,” Jilly said. “Not yet.”

“Irregardless.”

Jilly downed his anisette. He spit a coffee bean into his open palm and then slapped the empty shot glass on the table. “Better you’n me,” he said. “Not drinkin, I mean.”

“Anyway,” Tommy continued, “Junior tells me this sob story about his wife and what he thinks is going on and how he feels he can trust me because he asked around and so on. And this is all confidential, what he says to me. He says it’s to stay between us, me and him, but that his father is aware of the situation too. Which now I know, or why’m I here tonight with you?”

Jilly yawned again before looking at his watch. “Be grateful there’s an end to this nightmare,” he said, “this New York prick ever gets here.”

Tommy gathered his thoughts. “I says to him, I says, what about her routine? She buy new clothes? She getting her hair done different? She wearing new shoes? You know, obvious shit. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘come to think of it.’”

Jilly smirked. “Dumb cocksucker.”

“Please, you don’t know the half of it,” Tommy said. “No wonder, what I’m thinking, his wife is out there. The fuck can blame her, she’s dealing with that mess every end of the day.”

“So, what, he sent you out looking?”

Tommy nodded. “Which is another thing I didn’t appreciate,” Tommy said. “Sittin around waitin on a guy, a job, whatever, is one thing. Followin some broad around, see who she’s bangin in her spare time, that I can live without. Felt too much like the law, spying like that. It’s lowlife work. Bad enough I gotta do it, but then I gotta give him a call, Junior, and meet him at the diner over West Mulberry off Forty, give him a report. Knowin she’s out there, just knowin it, wasn’t enough. This fuckin loser wants details.”

Jilly made a face. “Details?”

Tommy threw up his hands. “I says to him, I says, ‘I’m not there in the room with them, Junior. How do I know what they’re doin inside?’ What most people do, they meet at some motel on the sly, middle of the fuckin afternoon, they’re supposed to be at work. Not good enough. The jerkoff wants to know were they holdin hands before they went in. Did they kiss? Were they touchy-feely?”

“Asshole,” Jilly said.

“I couldn’t make things up, but I didn’t watch that close, tell you the truth, what they did before and after they screwed each other’s socks off. I said I didn’t know, but they seemed chummy.”

“He get a rise out of that?”

“If his eyes turn to a pool of water count for anything, yeah, I guess.”