Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [80]
Doomed, he said to himself. Doomed, doomed, doomed, doomed …
Slink’s real name had been Edward. “Little Eddie,” up until he was around five, when he had landed in Johns Hopkins Hospital for a fairly nasty appendectomy and had received not one, not two, but three Slinkies as get-well gifts. Little Eddie was nuts for his Slinkies. Shing, shing, shing, he undulated them from hand to hand for hours at a time, one eye trained on the black-and-white television in the corner, for he was nuts about television as well. Hands-down favorite? The Early Riser. It was Little Eddie’s dream to grow up and get a job like the Early Riser, a janitor in a darkened TV studio who said, “Pssst, come over here,” to the camera first thing in the morning before anyone else had arrived for work, and then put cartoons on for the kids at home to watch.
It didn’t work out that way of course. There such job, except for the one guy who already had it, and of course he wasn’t a real janitor, he was the station’s weather guy wearing fake dusty clothes and a large fake bottle-brush mustache. Instead, Little Eddie grew up to be a milkman for Cloverland Dairy. Though by then he wasn’t Little Eddie anymore, nor Edward, nor Ed, and not even Slinky, which was what the large nurse with the nose mole had taken to calling him during his five days at Hopkins and which Little Eddie’s mother had picked up on. By the time he hit his tenth birthday, the diminutive had dropped away and he was Slink Ridgely, right up until his twenty-seventh year and the school bus/milk truck collision at the intersection of Caves Road and Garrison Forest Road. Slink’s tombstone read Edward Charles Ridgely. The first time Slink saw it he’d scoffed, “Right. Who the hell is he?
Strange day for Slink, that first day of being dead and buried. He logged ten straight hours hovering in one spot—directly in front of his tombstone—and just thinking. Unusual for a guy like Slink Ridgely, who had been a bobber and a weaver, always on the go, go, go.
Slink had loved his job. Four hours sleep was generally all he had needed, so rising and shining at 4 in the morning to start his route had been no big deal. He’d slide behind the wheel of his trusty Olds 98 with a cup of coffee in one hand and a Chesterfield dangling from his lips and be halfway to the dairy before the first light of day cracked the horizon. Skinny as a post, Slink would slip into his white delivery suit in the company locker room, lower his hat carefully over his precious wavy hair, then give a poke to the underside of the brim, easing the cap back on his head just so. Loading the truck took about twenty minutes, then a quick pop into the office to tell pale Sally a racy joke and have her straighten his bow tie for him, then he was ready to roll. The company frowned on its drivers smoking while on their routes, which is why Slink’s customers grew to know him as the skinny milkman with the rakish grin and the ever-present toothpick.
Housewives left instructions in the milk box. Extra gallon of chocolate milk, please. Two dozen eggs next time. When are you getting the sugar donuts in again? Slink was shown the tooth knocked out in football, the newest edition to the family, he heard vacation plans, the great news about the new job. He caught the sometimes whiff of bourbon on Ellen Matthews’s breath, he got the updates on Hal Fenwick’s slow cancerous march to the grave. “Christ,” he used to say to the boys at the Pimlico clubhouse, “There’s this couple on my route. The Burtons? Damn marriage is coming apart right in front of my eyes. Personally, I think the guy is a jerk. Gotta say, I side with wifey on this one.”
Slink’s luck with the horses wasn’t all that great. He had about a half-dozen different systems for picking them,