Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [28]
Gray sky bruising to violet, factory lights sparkling in harbor oil, as they nibbled some bread and cheese; the city waiting on the last party of the year.
Pitiful? What are you doing on New Year’s Eve?
The guy’s name was Orlo, a junk collector from the Clinton Street wharves. What he was to her is hard to say, although I could guess. His story checked out. Lucky man, as far as that goes.
“He was peeling an orange,” she said, “and the spray chafed his hands.”
Chafed … who talks like that anymore?
I guess it was a little picnic on the bench. They weren’t waiting for a bus, just sitting down. Gave her age as fifty-four—you could have fooled me, even with the beating she took—and said the junk man was “going on sixty-six …”
“Orlo Pound?”
“Is he in trouble?”
“Why would he be?”
“Am I?”
“Not that I can see. Except, you know, the reason I’m here.”
“It was cold,” she said, “so I’d eat a little cheese and put my hands back in my coat.”
“Anyone speak to you?”
“Nobody pays attention. People got their own problems.”
Headed to their own midnight truths.
They sat and watched people come and go from the Southern Hotel across the street. It had been important once, back in the railroad days, but not anymore. The only thing that revolved was the front door.
Something about the hotel bothered her.
“They were bringing cakes into the hotel and each cake had a big number on it—one followed by nine followed by six followed by four,” she said. “Do you remember back in Prohibition when the Southern had orchestras playing jazz on the roof?”
“Before my time, ma’am.”
“I begged him to take me dancing there.”
“Mr. Papageorgious?”
“Orlo.”
“Yesterday you wanted to dance?”
“No,” she said, an edge to it. “Back when they had orchestras on the roof.”
“Did he take you?”
“One day I will, he said. One of these days. Then the Depression hit and nobody was going anywhere.”
“When was the last time you saw your husband?”
“Yesterday morning. He was going down to the hall to wait on a ship.”
“On New Year’s Eve?”
“On the way out, he stuck his nose in the pot,” and she pointed to a dented stew pot on the drain board next to the sink.
“And?”
“And he didn’t like what he saw.”
What George Papageorgious saw was awful.
It seems that our Mystery Woman had been up cooking before dawn, and when her old man rolled out of the house, he stepped into a kitchen steamed up with garlic and salt and …
“Clove,” she said, “I had it on the back burner. Out of the way.”
The poor son of a bitch lifts the lid and puts his face to the bubbling water. It don’t smell half-bad to him, I guess, so he gets a little closer, shooing away the steam with his hand.
When it clears …
“Christ, that’s all he was yapping about,” said the bartender at the Lorraine Tavern, not five blocks from the bus stop where his wife was having her little picnic. “‘Crock of shit—milk blue.’ A broken record: ‘Crock of shit—milk blue …’”
“What?”
“The eyes. The boiled-up eyes of the pig staring at him from the pot.”
The Lorraine was on the first floor of the Seafarers Union hall over on Gay Street; between the Great White Way bowling alley and “Your Old Friend Simon Harris” Sporting Goods. All three businesses catered to seamen.
Witnesses said that George had been drinking at the bar since it opened at 6 a.m. and let more than one ship go without throwing in for a job.
“Guess his old lady was making up a batch of head cheese,” said the barkeep. “Man, the way he run it down, we could’ve fixed up a shitload of it ourselves. Didn’t have the heart to tell him you’re supposed to throw the eyes away.”
They said the Greek put away eight or nine shots of vodka and got uglier with each one; shouting questions that didn’t make any sense.
“How long?” he bellowed. “How long that goddamn pig in my face?”
Scalded pink snout; pale, sunken eyes; a gun on the bar.
“Everyone’s edging out the side door and I told him to put it away. ‘Look pal,’ I says, ‘a sugar ship’s gonna tie up Locust Point in a couple