Laura Lippman: Baltimore Noir

He slid by his mother in the row and headed out to the men’s room, his head awash in psychotropic drugs and sentiment, his insides tied up in an old familiar guilt. He walked down the wide hallway and staggered into the bathroom, suddenly feeling faint.

As he stood in front of the urinal taking a piss, he saw visions of himself at Orioles games, rooting for the Ravens, maybe playing cocktail piano in some little bar. This was his hometown, after all, and though he had run from it like a man escaping the death house, he had never quite forgotten it. Never forgotten the neighborhoods where people actually knew each other, going to Thanksgiving dinner with your grandparents on both sides of the family, loving all of them. And the friendships, the fierceness of them, the loyalty and dearness of old friends, came storming back to him.

While he pissed, he lay his head against the cool tile wall and felt a great mass of confusion swing through him.

“Holy shit,” said a rough voice behind him.

Weeks zipped up his pants and turned around. There, standing and smiling at him, was none other than Tyler Edwards, a guy he’d grown up with thirty years ago. A sandyhaired, freckle-faced kid, Tyler had been a minor devil in Tom’s personal history. They’d both grown up in rough old Govans, gone all through school together. Tyler was a brilliant but maniacal child… a boy who once broke off every aerial on every car as they walked ten blocks from their homes to the Guilford Bowling Alley.

In the ’70s Tyler had become a serious drug dealer for a while, then a golf pro at the Maryland Country Club. Sometime in the ’80s Tyler had gone to prison down the Cut at Jessups. Word came back that he had killed a man in self-defense down there but bribed his way out of being prosecuted for it. Weeks tended to believe the story. If anybody could get away with murder, it was charming, demented Tyler.

“Tommy Weeks,” Tyler said. “The kid who conquered Hollywood.”

“Hey Ty,” Weeks said. Though he had always felt a mixture of excitement and dread around Tyler, he now felt a rush of affection for the sick old hustler.

Tyler’s left eyebrow moved up and down like a puppet’s, and his smile revealed a map of wrinkles on his face. But even so there was the same impish mischief in his large, buggy eyes, a promise of malevolent fun.

“Out here to see your dear old mom, hey?”

“Yeah,” Tom replied. “And she’s dearer than ever.”

“Yes indeed,” Tyler said. “Nothing like the old homestead. The smell of fresh hard crabs, snowballs in the alley, and Mommy’s tender kisses.”

“Stop before I puke,” Tommy said, laughing.

“Well, I suppose you’re tied up, which is a shame and a pity, because I’m heading downtown to the fabulous Bertha’s Mussels and I’d love to carry you along with me.”

“Sorry,” Tom said, “but I’m not free for another few hours.”

Tyler smiled and put his hand under his chin, a real-life parody of The Thinker. “Tell you what. I have a few morbid duties to perform. Why don’t I do them now and meet you down there at say, 8 o clock?”

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “I’m really tired and I’ve got to get my mother to bed.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun to get out and about. You really need to make this trip, Tom. Get in touch with your old hometown-self, so to speak.”

Weeks could feel something inside of himself pulling him toward Tyler. Unlike Tom’s fake bad-boy friends in Hollywood, Tyler was always an inspired imp. A night with him might be terrifying but at least it would be real. And wasn’t that the reason he came back to Baltimore now and again? To experience something he couldn’t buy or fake his way out of?

“Fuck it,” Tom said. “I’m on. See you at 8, Ty.”

“Attaboy,” Tyler said. “I promise you something special. You’ll see.”

After the movie, Tom took Flo out for a drink at a mall bar called The Firehouse. It was loud and brash and filled with obese guys with scraggly facial hair and plaid shirts, which they wore hanging outside of their pants. Their girlfriends and wives wore bright red lipstick and dyed their beehive hair in primary colors.

“I hate it here,” his mother said. “I always hated this side of town anyway. Parkville, the Belair Road. Buncha hairhoppers and rednecks. Christ, I’d rather live over in the Northwest with the Jews. ’Cept the Jews don’t live there no more. Now it’s all the so-called black nations.”

Weeks liked to think he was up on the latest demographics in Baltimore, but he was shocked when he heard the Jews had moved away from Northwest.

“Where do the Jews live these days, Mom?”

“Further out, hon,” his mother said. “I heard from Harvene that the Jews have just about taken over Pennsylvania. They nearly run the Amish out. Of course, as soon as they left Pikesville, the jungle bunnies moved right in and had about ten million kids, and started killing each other over drugs at the drop of a hat.”

Weeks shut his eyes and imagined blacks all over Baltimore, dropping their funky baseball hats and firing 9’s at each other. The hats floated down like leaves, followed by their wiry, blood-soaked bodies.

“What kind of drink do you want, Mother?”

“Vodka,” she shot back. “And not that cheap well shit either. I want Grey fucking Goose.”

“Good for you,” Weeks said, as he watched three fat men in Ravens T-shirts roll by. They were all singing along with George Thorogood’s version of “Bad to the Bone.” Weeks felt an intense jealousy for their innocent belligerence. When was the last time he had sung anything with his pals? That was easy, 1968. The year the singing stopped.

“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking,” Flo said, with a mischievous grin on her face. “I get good and drunk, then you can drop me off back at the goddamned prison camp and go see one of your old girlfriends.”

“I haven’t got any girlfriends, old or otherwise, in Baltimore anymore.”

“Bullshit,” his mother said as the waitress approached. “You’ve always had girlfriends everywhere you go. Girls made fools of themselves for you, because they don’t know what a rotten bastard you really are.”

She laughed and looked up at the waitress, who wore two-inch false eyelashes and enough rouge to make her look like a clown in drag.

“Gimme the Goose,” Flo said. “A double. And keep ’em coming. My big shot son is here and he can afford it.”

The waitress looked at Weeks, and when she smiled she showed about a half-inch of gum.

“Your mother is soooo cute,” she said.

“Yeah,” Weeks said. “Mom’s a living doll.”

By the time Weeks carried the drunken, cursing Flo up to her apartment, he had a screaming headache and a pain in his chest. He thought about popping another blood pressure pill, but they tended to wear him out and he still had to drive all the way downtown to see Ty.

Fuck it, he thought, as he gently lay his mother down in her bed and kissed her sweating forehead. Maybe he didn’t really need to see Ty after all.

And yet there was something about meeting the old convict that was impossible to resist.

He was about to leave his mother’s side when she reached out a bony hand and grabbed his wrist. “Hey,” she said. “You can fool those pinheads out in California but you can’t fool me. You know what you did the first two months of your life?”

“No,” Tom said, feeling dizzy again. “What?”

“You wet the bed every night. Every damned night. And it wasn’t your father who came in and cleaned you up and walked you around when you were screaming. It was me, your horrible old mother. The one you hate so much.”