Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [89]
He stood and, as the drapes swung shut, he recalled a restaurant, its back to Slemmers Alley: Mo’s Fisherman’s Wharf, and maybe the staff was gone by 2 o’clock. The restaurants throughout Little Italy shutting down, Stiles Street empty, the alley also.
Bigelow would wait until then.
Looking at Tess.
Bigelow saw the little girl in the backseat, and she’s a witness too
He parked the van over on Aliceanna a block from the harbor, and he took out the old baseball bat he kept with a couple of tattered mitts under the rear seat. He headed north in the rain, fist wrapped around sullied tape above the crack in the handle.
When he turned the final corner, ready to enter the litter-strewn alley from the south end, he saw a figure.
Darting, he avoided a puddle and pressed himself into the shadows of a garage door and watched as Bigelow looked at the side of the tilted wood frame, stepping back, peering up, down.
He held back as Bigelow, frustrated, turned in the direction of Stiles.
Coming off the door, he shifted the cracked bat to his right hand.
Bigelow was maybe twenty feet away, easing toward a streetlight’s halo.
On Stiles Street now, Bigelow went wide eyed suddenly, retreating, raising his hands.
Three men marched at him, scowling, shoulders hunched, and Bigelow protested. “Hold on, fellas,” he said. “Hey, hold—”
With startling quickness, one of the dark-haired men brought a tire iron onto Bigelow’s head.
Bigelow mewed, staggered, and then issued a sickening gurgle as he fell to his knees.
Another blow, equally efficient, and he heard Bigelow groan.
Bat in hand, he ran forward and, bursting among the men, he slammed Bigelow, cracking him hard across the back of his head, sending him face first onto the wet sidewalk.
The men stomped Bigelow, swearing in Italian.
“My sister,” said the heavyset one, “my kid sister. Son of a bitch.”
Bigelow tried to roll into a ball.
Tess’s father raised the bat and smashed him again, and then again.
And again. And again.
Panting hard, his chest heaving, he looked down, tears mingling with the rain on his face.
Bigelow’s blood spread across the concrete.
He heard the thin, beak-nosed man to his left grunt as he drove his foot into the beaten man’s ribs.
Lisa. Lisa Ghiardini,” the thin man said. “First the mother, then you rape the daughter!”
The girl he’d seen running through the yards was the daughter of the woman Bigelow had pistol-whipped at the Colombo Bank. A girl from the neighborhood.
He staggered back, the bloody bat dangling from his fingers.
As two thin men continued to pound Bigelow, the stout Ghiardini looked up.
“Pete?” he said, gulping air, steam rising from the top of his head. “Pete Sangiovese?”
The two other men stopped for a moment, and Bigelow let out a low groan.
“Pete,” Ghiardini said, gesturing with a meaty hand, “over here. You want another shot? Come on. Take another shot.”
He turned, trotting along the alley. Running. Eager to disappear.
The bat went in the river at Fell’s Point, sinking beneath Styrofoam cups, condoms, and bobbing pop bottles. Before returning to the van, he ran his hands through a puddle, washing away Bigelow’s blood.
He drove quickly back to the hotel, knowing he’d done what he’d had to.
Tess was sleeping, purring gently, and the bathroom light was still on.
The note he’d attached to the mirror above the sink was still there: “I’ll be right back. Brush your beautiful teeth!”
Her pink toothbrush was dry.
He showered, and planned to wash his shirt and jeans in the hotel’s basement laundry room. He’d have to get new running shoes: Bigelow’s blood soaked through the gray laces, clung to the soles.
Putting on his pajama bottoms, he sat on the bed next to his daughter and he stared at her.
For as long as he had her, they’d be together. He would not let her feel alone.
His eyes moistened as he studied her sweet smile, heartshaped lips, long eyelashes; contentment …
No angels?