Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [33]
Traffic moved again as Tate grabbed the fallen strips of aluminum, tossing them back in the cart. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, then stole a look at the boy, who turned away, wounded.
Tate had raised his voice. Cursed, too.
“Didn’t mean to yell. I was feelin’ pressed, you know, with cars an’ such.”
The boy nodded, wheezing.
“We cool?”
“It’s all good.”
They rolled down Orleans in silence, crossing near the hospital and then down Monument to the metal yard. Tate tried to get Daymo to throw out more rhymes, but the boy kept inside himself.
“At least forty here, maybe fifty if that door be stainless steel, which I believe it is.”
The boy said nothing and ten more minutes passed. By the time they reached the scales, Tate felt his heart would break from the silence.
The aluminum window strips brought twenty-six dollars, steel belts from a couple radials another six, but the man at the scales said the broken half a door from a warehouse locker was lead, not steel. Bulk metal, meaning only four for all that weight.
“Naw,” Tate told him, “that’s stainless right there.”
“Shit no. Do it look stainless?”
“Yeah, it do. Dirty from the pile where I found it is all.”
“Bulk weight,” the man said wearily, and Tate snatched the last singles, feeling punked, especially in front of the boy. He walked away calling the metal man everything but a child of God.
“Thirty-six. Ain’t bad for the first run of the day.”
The sound of the boy’s voice took the anger from Tate. He stopped and pulled the cash from his pocket, counting out eighteen and handing it to Daymo, who looked at the bills, then back at Tate.
“You need twenty to get out of the gate, right?” the boy said.
Tate said nothing and grabbed the empty cart, rattling away from the scales with the boy trailing.
“Ain’t you need one-and-one to start?”
Tate shook his head. Dope alone would get him right; he could wait on the coke until the next run. “Fair is fair,” he told the boy.
“You can have the twenty, man. I make due with the rest.”
Tate looked at Daymo, suddenly proud of the moment.
“We partners, ain’t we?”
The boy nodded, still wheezing, coming abreast on the other side of the cart. The sun was high now and they rattled down Monument Street feeling the summer day.
“Even split. Always.”
Corelli had no patience for this anymore. He had to admit that much. When he was younger, he could wait the wait, sitting in whatever shithole where he was needed, staying awake with black coffee and AM radio. Once, when he worked narcotics, he stayed put in the Amtrak garage for thirty hours, watching a rental car until a mule returned from a New York run.
He fucking made that case. Yes he did. Hickham had come out on midnight shift to relieve him, but Corelli was young then and wanted to show the senior guys in the squad a little something extra.
“I’m spelling you,” Hickham had said. “You can still catch last call.”
“Fuck it. I’m good.”
Corelli tossed the line away like it was nothing to sit in a fucking car for a day and a night and more. He could still see the look on Hickham’s face, that fat fuck.
“You wanna sit some more?”
“I said I’m good.”
Corelli thought he’d made a point until he got back to the squad office the following afternoon to learn Hickham had pronounced him an idiot. The fuck kind of braindead goof won’t take relief after twenty hours in a parking garage?
“Proud to know you, kid,” Hickham had said, the sarcasm thick. And the rest of those guys just laughed. Never mind that it was him who eyeballed the mule. Never mind that the case went forward because of it. The joke was on him.
His radio crackled and he recognized the voice.
“Seventy-four ten to KGA. Lateral with seventy-four twenty-one.”
“Seventy-four twenty-one?” the dispatcher repeated.
Corelli reached for the radio, keyed the mike, and answered: “Seventy-four twenty-one. I’m on.”
“Seventy-four