Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [79]
The beer here was better, but it was $4 a pop. Another major dent in his stash.
“You should get that looked at,” the waitress said, and for the first time Branko noticed an ugly cut on his left hand, already crusting over with darkened blood.
“Yes,” he said, “you are right. I caught it in my car door.”
No sooner had he drained his glass than he had company—two rangy fellows, also in black leather jackets. Branko experienced a moment of recognition, much as Dusko had earlier, before one of them said in their native tongue, “Come with us.”
He reached for his jacket pocket, but a huge hand stopped him, while a second hand reached inside to retrieve the Glock. So much for self-defense. He figured he had better act quickly, while there were still other people around. So, just as the fellow was pocketing the gun, Branko bolted.
He barely eluded their grasp in his sprint for the door. He bowled over an entering couple, then managed to slip out just as the door was closing, heading left down the cobblestoned street. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the two men were only ten yards behind. He expected gunshots at any moment. The waterfront was dead ahead, and he dered if he was going to have to leap into the harbor. He n’t a good swimmer, and the water hadn’t looked like the sort you’d want to swim in. Footsteps pounded behind him, loud slaps on the stones, but still no shots. Nearing the end of the block, he was relieved to see a cross street going in both directions along the wharf.
But it was the sight to his right that suddenly seemed to make all the difference. He recognized it instantly. In fact, he would have known it anywhere, in any context, but especially here in Balty-more—the hulking brick building with grand arched windows and five fat marble columns aligned across the second-story façade, the blue and white lampposts out front flanking the marble steps of the entrance. And now, as his racing footsteps and rising spirits led him closer, he could make out the black and gold lettering on the plate glass above the door: “Baltimore City Police.”
No wonder his pursuers hadn’t fired shots. They’d been practically standing in the cops’ backyard. Branko ran harder even as his sense of relief grew. How appropriate that some desk sergeant would now be his salvation. Sure, he had botched the commission, but that too might sell as a script: the hapless hit man, so far from home, saved by the homicide squad, then sent home amid gales of affectionate laughter and promises that he would be a good boy from now on.
He still heard footsteps, but they’d be giving up soon. They wouldn’t dare pursue him inside, although it certainly was curious how dark the building seemed. Not at all the vibrant sort of place it was on television. And you would have thought a policeman or two would be in sight by now.
It wasn’t until Branko reached the top steps and found the doors locked that he realized his mistake. He shook the handles in vain, peering inside. Empty. Dark. Probably had been since the show left town. Wallpaper peeling in great shards, the floor in ruins. A pigeon strutted into view from the shadows, shitting as it walked.
But even as his assailants reached him, and even as they spun him round by the shoulder and sank a cold barrel into the flesh of his scrapple-filled stomach, Branko couldn’t resist a last fleeting vision of what this might all look like on film—camera dollying high for a downward shot of his darkened head and frightened face, the Balkan hit man with the tables turned, yet still with stars in his eyes.
THE HAUNTING
OF SLINK RIDGELY
BY TIM COCKEY
Greenspring Valley
It wasn’t simply that the ghost of Slink Ridgely couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for Annie Brewster’s marriage to the red-haired man. It was more than that. Much more. Slink knew. Of course he did. Ghosts know. Slink watched the ceremony mainly from the area of the empty choir stalls