Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [88]
“My teacher said I—”
“You can’t be like everybody else. No, not you, eh? With the goddamn trumpet. What’s wrong with you?” he spit, flinging his hand in the air. “And let me tell you, quiet boy, as for this teacher making miracles: non ci sono angeli.
No angels? “Pop, I’m saying—”
Having made his point, the old man suddenly fell into his thoughts. He headed for his bedroom and, as if talking to himself, said, “Or maybe it’s too much, too rough. This kid, he don’t fight for nobody.” Patting his pockets for a tobacco plug, he added, “Trumpet. Bah.”
In his mind, there was a red-brick wall around Little Italy, high as the warehouse at Camden Yards, high as the moon. He felt it even when he was out on Pier 5, blowing flawless scales until dawn, the cops letting him be. Blue notes disappearing in the early morning haze, and he wished he could too.
Meanwhile, Bigelow: his face a sudden riot of pimples and pustules, and now the neighborhood girls found him repulsive too. He turned to cold stone, hooked up with a gang, worked his way up to armed robbery.
The elevator stopped hard, and the man flinched, remembering Bigelow had tried to rob the Colombo Bank with a face like that and no mask. Pistol-whipping plump Mrs. Ghiardini, who had two sons at St. Leo’s and a baby girl at home, their father a fireman killed tumbling off the back of the truck one snowy night. Fifteen, twenty years ago, said the guys at Sabatino’s, nodding knowingly, they would’ve taken care of it; the cops would’ve found Bigelow floating in the harbor, hands missing, his skull a jigsaw puzzle. But out of respect for his mother, born Ana Riccardi over on Eden Street …
“We home, Daddy?” Tess whispered as he opened the door.
“Close enough, tesoro “ he replied.
He set her on the bed, knelt to remove her sneakers. Her pajamas were in the drawer under the TV.
“I can brush my teeth better than you,” he said, trying to smile.
Waving off the nightly challenge, she offered her baby-soft cheek, then slithered under the covers, clothes and all.
Tess slept as if exhausted, unaware he was sitting on the bed across from hers, staring at her, reaching over now and then to stroke her hair. Tess, who resembled his mother as much as her own: olive hue, the round chin, deep brown eyes. His mother in the photo, him too. Easter Sunday, he’s five and she’ll be dead in three months.
“Your mother, she was some firecracker,” said one of the guys at Sabatino’s. “A temper? Madonna mio …”
Left unsaid: How did she wind up with a slug like that? Out of earshot, in the coffee shops off Broadway, actors, writers, producers said the same about Margaret Mary.
“Tess,” he cooed in the dark room, and he was thinking as his heart began to pound, and the headache again.
Bigelow could find him—a witness who could confirm the girl’s story of assault, of rape. And maybe Bigelow saw beyond the high beams and recognized the man behind the wheel, as the man had recognized him. The fruit-stand man’s son down from Massachusetts, the boy with the horn.
On his heels, running his hand across his forehead, he tried to envision the limits of Bigelow’s imagination, as if he could fathom a criminal mind.
He figured Bigelow, though full of bad intent, would do what was easiest first: return to Little Italy and see if the fruit-stand man still lived in the crumbling, graffiti-stained wood frame off Slemmers Alley.
He went to a chair by the window, and in the hotel room’s darkness a cold shiver swept over him, his stomach leaping to his throat.
Finding no satisfaction behind the rusted bars on the building’s windows, Bigelow would calculate: The fruit-stand man’s son had been lost in the construction site; his father dead, no doubt; a hotel near the yards, it being too late to drive home to Massachusetts.
Bigelow would find the van.
Tess slept serenely, a wry smile on her face.
He pulled back the heavy drapes. Looking through the rain, he saw the warehouse,