Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [38]
“Fuck it,” he said to no one in particular.
HOME MOVIES
BY MARCIA TALLEY
Little Italy
Parents: Please do not allow your children to sit, stand, or lean on the railing surrounding the seal pool. Angie wasn’t counting, but she must have heard the announcement fifty times since she arrived more than two hours ago. The recording was grating on her nerves.
The sun had clocked around to the west, too, so her bench no longer sat in the shade of the National Aquarium, its hulk—all glass and Mondrian-style triangles—looming like the Matterhorn behind her. Sweat beaded uncomfortably along her hairline; it ran in rivulets between her breasts, soaking through the fabric of her Victoria’s Secret T-shirt bra.
Damn! Baltimore was hot in July.
Squinting through her Ray-Bans, Angie scanned the bustling Inner Harbor, searching for the sailboat, a Sabre 402 named Windwalker. To her right rose the honey-beige tower of Baltimore’s World Trade Center, and if she turned her head to the left—past the raked-back masts of the USS Constellation, past the red brick walls of the Maryland Science Center—the crimson neon of the Domino Sugars sign, five stories high, glowed like a beacon. Blue-canopied water taxis ferried visitors from the two pavilions that housed the shops and restaurants of Harborplace across the water to dine at the Rusty Scupper, or to points beyond, like the tourist-magnet neighborhoods of Little Italy and Fell’s Point.
But there was no sign of Jack or his boat.
Angie had visited the Sabre website, so she knew that a 402 cost almost a half a million dollars. Even a used model could set you back two hundred thou. But it wasn’t the price that impressed her; it was the fact that the boat had two separate cabins with doors. That locked. With any luck, though, she wouldn’t have to use them.
Angie yanked her cell phone out of its holster and checked to make sure she had her brother Johnny on quick dial, in case things turned sour. Then she punched in the number Jack had given her, but voicemail kicked in right away. Damn! Maybe he was out of signal range, or talking to someone else. She scowled at the phone.
Jack. Jack freaking Daniels!
Angie imagined her mother’s disapproving voice. “With a name like that, Ange,” she would have warned, shaking a finger, “he’s gotta be an axe murderer.”
Angie’d argue she found it hard to believe that anybody’d make up a name like Jack Daniels.
“You don’t know anything about the man!” her mother would say. “Safer to stay home.”
Once, Angie had hitchhiked from Baltimore to San Francisco and back, and lived to tell the tale. “Pure dumb luck,” her mother had scoffed, with emphasis on the dumb.
Angie’s mother had never approved of blind dates, either, so the idea that her only daughter planned to sail off with a guy after meeting him for the first time on the Internet would have sent her into cardiac arrest.
So Angie hadn’t told her.
“I’m taking a vacation, Mama,” she’d said. “Got a great rate out of Providence to BWI. I’ll visit Johnny in Baltimore, see how he’s doing at Harkins, then who knows? Florida, maybe.”
The Florida part was practically true. After Baltimore, Jack said he was planning to sail down the Intercoastal Waterway to Fort Lauderdale, then across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.
On the bench next to her, Angie had a canvas tote with Cruising World stenciled on the side in blue letters. She rummaged inside and pulled out the ad that had been clipped and sent to her post office box in Providence, Rhode Island.
Energetic, forty-eight-year-old Italian American engineer with a comfortable, well-equipped two-cabin, two-head 40’sloop needs an adventurous, athletic female partner to island hop in the Bahamas, year round if possible. Safe sailor, good navigator, I dive, fish, cook, and clean. Healthy, intelligent, 5’11", 185, lots of salt and pepper hair. Previous female mate references available.
Angie had responded that she was an adventurous,