Baltimore Noir

STAINLESS STEEL BY DAVID SIMON

Sandtown-Winchester

He fought the dragging wheel all the way across Saratoga, then down through the park on St. Paul and over to the viaduct. Rush-hour traffic played around him, the people in the cars seeing him but pretending not.

The boy trailed a few steps behind, lost in a daydream, tossing off some freestyle, trying for some flow. Boy thought he had something with his rhymes, but Tate, being so much older, couldn’t really say one way or the other.

“Ain’t no one ’bout a song no mo’?” he asked.

The boy smiled. It was a thing between them.

“Singin’ an’ shit, you know. Key of whatevah.”

“Nigga, please.” The boy shook his head, as if Tate were beyond hope. “’Cause you old school, I gotta be?”

Tate leaned into the cart, fighting the wheel. The boy followed, still in his flow until Tate made a point of throwing out a loud line or two of back-in-the-day sanctified music.

“Oh happy day…”

“Country-ass songs,” the boy said. “Please.”

Halfway across the viaduct, the bad wheel flopped left, pulling the cart off the sidewalk, hanging it on the edge, spilling some of the aluminum strips onto the asphalt. A parcel delivery truck in the close lane had to slow and wait for them to set things right. The deliveryman stayed off his horn, patient enough, but from the cars behind came all kinda noise.

“Lean down on that side,” Tate told the boy.

“Huh?”

“Naw, put weight on it an’ I’ll lift.”

The boy stared at him as more car horns sounded.

“Stand on the motherfuckin’ shoppin’ cart. Lean on that bitch.”

Daymo got it, finally, putting his weight on the front corner of the cart. He was sixteen and maybe 5’9", but built solid, a boy who would tend toward weight if he didn’t start adding some inches. He also began wheezing from the asthma. But with the boy standing on the cart, leaning toward center, there was enough counterweight to right themselves on the sidewalk.

Traffic moved again as Tate grabbed the fallen strips of aluminum, tossing them back in the cart. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, then stole a look at the boy, who turned away, wounded.

Tate had raised his voice. Cursed, too.

“Didn’t mean to yell. I was feelin’ pressed, you know, with cars an’ such.”

The boy nodded, wheezing.

“We cool?”

“It’s all good.”

They rolled down Orleans in silence, crossing near the hospital and then down Monument to the metal yard. Tate tried to get Daymo to throw out more rhymes, but the boy kept inside himself.

“At least forty here, maybe fifty if that door be stainless steel, which I believe it is.”

The boy said nothing and ten more minutes passed. By the time they reached the scales, Tate felt his heart would break from the silence.

The aluminum window strips brought twenty-six dollars, steel belts from a couple radials another six, but the man at the scales said the broken half a door from a warehouse locker was lead, not steel. Bulk metal, meaning only four for all that weight.

“Naw,” Tate told him, “that’s stainless right there.”

“Shit no. Do it look stainless?”

“Yeah, it do. Dirty from the pile where I found it is all.”

“Bulk weight,” the man said wearily, and Tate snatched the last singles, feeling punked, especially in front of the boy. He walked away calling the metal man everything but a child of God.

“Thirty-six. Ain’t bad for the first run of the day.”

The sound of the boy’s voice took the anger from Tate. He stopped and pulled the cash from his pocket, counting out eighteen and handing it to Daymo, who looked at the bills, then back at Tate.

“You need twenty to get out of the gate, right?” the boy said.

Tate said nothing and grabbed the empty cart, rattling away from the scales with the boy trailing.

“Ain’t you need one-and-one to start?”

Tate shook his head. Dope alone would get him right; he could wait on the coke until the next run. “Fair is fair,” he told the boy.

“You can have the twenty, man. I make due with the rest.”

Tate looked at Daymo, suddenly proud of the moment.

“We partners, ain’t we?”

The boy nodded, still wheezing, coming abreast on the other side of the cart. The sun was high now and they rattled down Monument Street feeling the summer day.

“Even split. Always.”

Corelli had no patience for this anymore. He had to admit that much. When he was younger, he could wait the wait, sitting in whatever shithole where he was needed, staying awake with black coffee and AM radio. Once, when he worked narcotics, he stayed put in the Amtrak garage for thirty hours, watching a rental car until a mule returned from a New York run.

He fucking made that case. Yes he did. Hickham had come out on midnight shift to relieve him, but Corelli was young then and wanted to show the senior guys in the squad a little something extra.

“I’m spelling you,” Hickham had said. “You can still catch last call.”

“Fuck it. I’m good.”

Corelli tossed the line away like it was nothing to sit in a fucking car for a day and a night and more. He could still see the look on Hickham’s face, that fat fuck.

“You wanna sit some more?”

“I said I’m good.”

Corelli thought he’d made a point until he got back to the squad office the following afternoon to learn Hickham had pronounced him an idiot. The fuck kind of braindead goof won’t take relief after twenty hours in a parking garage?

“Proud to know you, kid,” Hickham had said, the sarcasm thick. And the rest of those guys just laughed. Never mind that it was him who eyeballed the mule. Never mind that the case went forward because of it. The joke was on him.

His radio crackled and he recognized the voice.

“Seventy-four ten to KGA. Lateral with seventy-four twenty-one.”

“Seventy-four twenty-one?” the dispatcher repeated.

Corelli reached for the radio, keyed the mike, and answered: “Seventy-four twenty-one. I’m on.”

“Seventy-four twenty-one, go to three for a lateral.”

He flipped channels to hear his sergeant asking what the hell he was doing all afternoon. He answered dryly that he was busy with police work, that he was out in the streets of Baltimore defending persons and property from all threats foreign and domestic. His sergeant, equally dry, remarked on the weakness of the lie.

“Couldn’t you just tell me you’re drinking at some bar?” Cabazes mused, indifferent to whoever was listening on channel three. “Then I’d know you respect me enough to lie properly and respectfully.”

“I’m at Kavanagh’s on my sixth Jameson. Feel better?”

“No, actually. Now, because of that admission, I have to believe you are standing in your soiled underwear in a North Philadelphia cathouse.”

Corelli laughed, as much at the word cathouse as at his sergeant’s wit. Cabazes was good with fucking words and Corelli so amused, he nearly missed the white guy in the seersucker coming down the apartment steps. He keyed the radio mike again, even as he watched the son-of-a-fuckingbitch cross the parking lot, headed toward the Beemer, sure enough. He knew it would be the Beemer.

Lawyer, maybe. Or something like a lawyer.

“What do you need, Ray?” he asked his sergeant, releasing the mike.

As he wrote the Beemer’s tag, he listened to Cabazes tell him that Lehmann’s squad was short a man for the midnight shift, that he could work a double and clock overtime if he wanted.

“I’m good with it. No problem.”

The Beemer rolled past him on the way out of the lot. Glimpsed through a windshield, Lawyer Boy looked younger than he expected. Baby-faced even.

“Seriously, Tony, what’re you doing out there all the damn day?”

“Police work.”

In the pause that followed, he could hear wheels turning in his sergeant’s head. “All right,” Cabazes said finally, “I’ll see you when I see you.”

Tate stayed off Division Street, even though the crew on the Gold Street corners was said to have the best coke. He copped instead at Baker and Stricker from some young boys selling black-top vials.

There was no sense going on the other side of the avenue. Or so he told himself until he was halfway down the gulley on Riggs, moving fast, hungry to get the shit home and fire up.

“Where you been at, nigger?”

Tate startled at the voice. Not here on Riggs. Not again.

“I said, where the fuck you been at?”

Tate tried to cross and join the street parade around Riggs and Calhoun, where the Black Diamond crew was working double-seal bags. But Lorenzo followed him, cutting the angle, grabbing him by the throat and forcing him into the wall of the cut-rate. A tout, watching from the other corner, laughed.

“I’m up on Division Street waitin’, and where the fuck is you?” Lorenzo was in his pockets now, rooting around, finding nothing. “The fuck’s it at? Huh? Where the fuck it be?”

Lorenzo pulled out Tate’s shirt, grabbed his dip, then reached down for his socks. Tate tried to run, but Lorenzo snatched him by the hair and threw a hard right, bouncing Tate off the wall. The blood felt warm and metallic in his mouth, and when he finally found some balance, Tate realized that Lorenzo had the dope and coke both: two small zip bags of Mass Destruction and a red-top of good coke; all of it had been curled in the top of Tate’s left sock.

“This some low shit,” he managed.

But Lorenzo was already walking away, laughing. The whole corner-touts, runners, fiends-was tripping on the spectacle. At Mount Street, Lorenzo turned back before crossing and shouted, “Catch ya later.”

Tate gathered himself, wiping blood on his sleeve. Four times in two weeks, and there was no sign Lorenzo was getting tired of the game. Four times he had his shit taken. On Monday alone, it was eight black-tops-a bulk-buy to celebrate the money from the copper rainspouts from that warehouse roof.

“Why you his bitch like that?”

It was the tout, all of fifteen years old, signifying, trying to have more fun with it. Tate turned, started back across the street, and then saw the boy at the mouth of the alley, staring. Tate looked away, then started down Riggs. The boy followed, catching him at Fulton.

“’Sup.”

“Ain’t much,” said Tate. Maybe he didn’t see. Maybe he got there after.

“Yeah?”

“Banged up my face a bit.”

“I seen.”

Walking away, Tate felt shame washing over him. But the boy followed silently for several blocks, until they were passing the corner at Edmondson and Brice.

“Lorenzo jus’ an asshole,” Daymo finally offered.

Tate gave nothing back, pointing instead to the Edmondson crew. “How ’bout you let me hold ten till tomorrow? First run of the day, I get even with you.”

The boy shrugged. “Ain’t got ten.”

“You ain’t got ten dollars? How the fuck not? I gave you thirty-five at them scales not two hours past.”

The boy shrugged again. Tate looked at him for a moment.

“What was you doing on Riggs?”

“Huh?”

“What was you doing on Riggs, comin’ out the alley?”

“Wadn’t doin’ shit.”

Tate grabbed Daymo’s wrist and spun him, pulling the boy’s arm behind his back and feeling the pockets of his denims. Right as rain.

“Get off. Get the fuck off me.”

But Tate had them out already, three gel-caps of Black Diamond. The boy looked away, hurt and angry both.

“The fuck is this here? You ain’t shootin’ this shit, I know.”

“Jus’ a snort now an’ then.”

Tate looked at the boy and waited. Nothing else was offered, and so, pocketing the caps, he filled the silence with his own words, the softest he could find.

“This shit ain’t for you, Daymo. It ain’t. You think about what it is you really want an’ where you want to be at, an’ then you take a look at my sorry ass.”

The boy did.

“It ain’t for you.”

Tate turned and crossed Edmondson. The boy didn’t follow.

“So he go an’ steal from you,” Daymo shouted, “an’ you steal from me!”

Tate stopped and wheeled. “I’m holdin’ thirty of yours. You gonna see that money first run tomorrow. My word.”

He turned and walked down Monroe without looking back, knowing in his heart that Daymo understood, that he had heard his words as truth. And later that night, when the boy came up the stairs of the vacant building where they were laying up, he said nothing further, just nodded quickly to Tate, then undressed and crawled onto his bedroll. The boy knew Tate would have his thirty after the first run. And he knew Tate was real about him not getting high, about the right and wrong of it all.

At the end of summer, Tate told himself, he would find a way to get Daymo back in school somehow, maybe even walk him up to Harlem Park and talk to the people there. Get him some school clothes and a book bag, even.

He had run through his own family years ago, burning them out one after the next, using them all to keep chasing. Shit, he had done a lot to be ashamed about. But he had never lied to Daymo, never cheated him. Not ever. And the boy knew how he felt, though nothing was ever said in all the time they had run together, the boy looking for meal money and finding Tate at the scales one winter afternoon.

“I can work for it if you need help.”

“Where you live at?” Tate had asked.

The boy shrugged.

“You ain’t got peoples?”

“Had me in a group home.”

Tate waited.

“I ain’t going back there ever.”

Tate nodded at that, asking no more questions, and it was the boy himself who pressed it: “Copper worth more than the rest, ain’t it? I know where we can snatch some copper pipe for real.”

And each day since, with the boy and Tate sharing everything.

Long after midnight, Tate fired the last speedball after the boy’s wheeze got regular and turned to a light snore. Child can’t shake that asthma at night, he thought sadly, telling himself that after a couple runs tomorrow, if Daymo was still struggling, they would run down to the university clinic, get some free medicines.

But right now, with good dope and coke running wild in his head, Tate had other work at hand. Yes he did. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he found the rat bait and, from the wax-covered end table, a folded strip of cardboard. He found the first of the empty Black Diamond caps on the floor beside the table and opened it, staring at the space where heroin no longer was.

He would see Lorenzo tomorrow. Most definitely.

Corelli was on the B-of-I computer when he sensed Cabazes behind him.

“For a big man, you’re pretty quiet.”

“Graceful, like a cat.”

“I was thinking more like a ballet dancer or an interior decorator or some shit like that. Someone willing to embrace alternative lifestyles.”

Cabazes nodded at the screen and its display of a light sheet: White, male. Timonium address. A few misdemeanors and no open warrants.

“The fuck are you looking at?”

“Him. That’s the cocksucker fucking my wife.”

Cabazes frowned. “Lemme guess. You spent the whole day yesterday camped at Trina’s apartment so you could mark the new boyfriend.”

“Not the whole day, no.”

“Fuck, Tony. Grow the fuck up.”

“You see this guy? Look at this here. Driving under the influence, D-and-D, failure to obey. Guy’s an asshole. Look at this one from ’96… solicitation for prostitution, sodomy…”

Corelli looked up at his sergeant, mock deadpan. “Guy’s a sodomite.”

“Who the fuck isn’t? By Maryland code, a blowjob is sodomy.”

“Seriously, you think I want a guy like this around my kids? You think Trina will want a guy like this around her kids once she knows?”

“Once she knows what? That her new honey once got DUIed? That once in 1996 he took a blowjob from some pro?”

“Right. I’m sure it was just the once.”

Corelli hit a button, sending the sheet to the printer on the other side of the admin office. Amid the staccato clatter, his sergeant looked at him for a long moment, then pulled up a chair and sat, leaning close.

“What concerns me here, Tony, is a certain lack of perspective on your part.”

“Lack of perspective?”

“How long since you and Trina split?”

“Twenty months.”

“Divorce is final, right?”

“Two years, she says.”

“Two years.”

“Yup.”

“Who you fucking now?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, who you fucking?”

“Arlene. The nurse from Sinai.” He paused, and when Cabazes waited him out, added: “Among a couple others.”

“A couple others. Tony, you been a whore as long as I’ve known you. You were a whore before you married Trina, you were a whore when you were with her, and with the possible exception of a week or so after she finally walked out, you’ve stayed a perfect whore. You’d fuck a rathole if it had carpeting around it.”

“So?”

“So you’re parked outside of Trina’s apartment waiting to see who comes out so you can play detective and decide why she isn’t right to sleep with whoever the fuck she wants. This is what you do.”

“This guy’s gonna be around my fucking kids.”

“You’re around your fucking kids, Tony. And I’ve known you to drive shitfaced. You’re around your kids and I’ve fuckin’ you take a pro’s blowjob once or twice.”

“When?”

“Boardman’s bachelor party. Remember?”

“Bachelor parties don’t count.”

Corelli got up, walked to the printer and pulled the sheet free.

“Leave it be, Tony. The problem isn’t this guy, and it sure as shit ain’t Trina.”

Corelli said nothing, folding the printout, tucking it inside his jacket.

“Anyway, I need a witness for a statement. Room two.”

“Yeah, what’d we catch?”

“Something a little lumpy. Thought it was a straight overdose, but now I got this little fuck in there putting himself in, calling it a hot shot.”

“Huh. No shit.”

Corelli followed his sergeant to the interrogation room.

“Rat bait, huh?”

The man nodded, then scratched himself.

“You loaded an empty with the rat bait and then he stole it from you and fired.”

The man began to cry. Corelli shot Cabazes a look.

“You’re saying you loaded the hot shot on purpose, and that when we tell the M.E. to test for strychnine, it’s gonna come back positive for that and negative for opiates.”

The man nodded again, then vomited. Corelli shot back in his chair, then followed Cabazes out of the The Box. They walked down the hallway for paper towels.

“The fuck kinda goof puts himself in for a hot shot?” Corelli said. “You keep your mouth shut, it’s the perfect murder. Nobody gives a fuck and no jury’s ever gonna believe it’s anything other than a fiend firing bad shit.”

“He says he can’t live with it,” Cabazes offered.

“Why the fuck not? Why’s he gotta bust our balls?”

They found towels in the men’s room, but no mop or pail in the utility closet. They went down to the fifth floor, then the fourth, before finding a janitor. Ten minutes later they were back upstairs, Cabazes heading for the interrogation room and Corelli short-stopping at the soda machine.

“Be there in a sec.”

He fed a dollar and banged for a diet drink before shouts from Cabazes brought him running around the corner. The Box door was open and his sergeant was wrapped around the little fuck’s waist, holding him. Corelli looked up to see the man’s leather belt tied around the ceiling brace, the other end around his neck.

“Get him offa there,” Cabazes grunted.

Standing on the table, Corelli fumbled for a few moments before finding and unfastening the buckle. The body flopped against Cabazes, then onto the table. Corelli jumped down and they loosened the other end of the belt. The dead man rewarded them with a cough, then a breath, then another cough. Twenty minutes later, he was sitting in the same chair where they had left him, sipping water from a Styrofoam cup, one arm extended for a paramedic checking his blood pressure.

Cabazes was in the squad room calling the duty officer.

“I don’t get it,” Corelli said. “You hot shot a guy who stole from you and then you come in to confess. The fuck is up with that? You did what you had to.”

The man said nothing at first, then shook his head softly.

“He ain’t stole from me. Daymo wouldn’t steal.”

Corelli waited.

“The hot shot was for this motherfucker Lorenzo. He the one been taking my shit all the time, bangin’ me ’round for it. I loaded the shot for him. The boy…”

His voice trailed away. The paramedic finished, nodded to Corelli, and left.

“The boy was an accident,” Corelli said, finishing the thought.

The man was crying again. “He was living with me, you know? Ain’t had no place else to go, an’ I was lookin’ out for him. I was lookin’ out for him more than myself, you know? He ain’t got no mother or father to speak of, but I was kinda like a father with him. An’ he was starting to use a bit, you know? I seen it. I pulled him up when I seen it. An’ I wasn’t havin’ none of it, so we had gone back and forth on that.”

“So he snuck the hot shot from you without you knowing.”

The man nodded, tears streaming. He was angry now, his voice louder.

“I was actin’ all parental an’ shit, like I was responsible for that boy. Like I wasn’t who the fuck I been for twenty fuckin’ years, you know? Pretending to be something past a low-bottom dope fiend, but you know what? I a low-bottom dope fiend and I kilt that child. I did. So just lock my ass up an’ be done with this shit. Jus’ lock me the fuck up ’cause I am done pretending. I wadn’t no good for that child. I ain’t good for no one. So jus’ lock me up ’cause I’m responsible for this here.”

Corelli backed away, leaving the door open. The smell of vomit followed him into the hall, where he found Cabazes.

“Duty officer is on the way downtown. He wants a twenty-four on it.”

Corelli nodded toward The Box.

“Paramedic says he’s good to go.”

Cabazes nodded.

“So let him.”

“What?”

“After the duty officer gets his twenty-four, we let him go.”

“He’s giving himself up, we can make it a murder.”

“You let him go, it can stay an overdose and not even be a stat.”

“We could use the clearance.”

“Fuck the clearance. In this poor fuck’s head, he’s been tried, convicted and sentenced. The hot shot was for anoth asshole. The kid was an accident. This sadass motherfucker’s gonna live with more weight than we could ever give him.”

Cabazes stared at him for a moment, nodded, then headed down the hall.

Corelli walked into the coffee room, poured sludge from the bottom of a dying pot, then slumped at the corner desk. He stared out the window, watching people and cars negotiate the rush hour below. It was Friday and he thought about calling Trina, asking if she wanted to do something together with the kids this weekend. The zoo, maybe. But he thought on it a moment longer and couldn’t see it happening.

Reaching into his pocket, Corelli pulled out the printout and tossed it into the can with the Styrofoam and stirrers and coffee grounds.

“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, freespirited young lady who wanted to sail where the weather is warm, the wind is steady, and the islands are beautiful. After a flurry of e-mails, they’d agreed to meet.

She hadn’t called his references.

Angie lived life on the edge.

Parents: Please do not allow your chil-

Someone pulled the plug on the recording, thank God. Angie joined the crowd around the outdoor pool as aquarium staff prepared to feed Ike and Lady, the gray seals who lived there. She rested her forearms against the railing and watched Ike flounder onto a rock, snap up the fish tossed his way, and honk appreciatively for the crowd.

When feeding time was over, Angie strolled along the seawall, past the grinning black hulk of the USS Torsk permanently tied up there, wondering where the hell Jack Daniels had gotten to. He was coming from Annapolis, he said, so she’d timed their meeting carefully, taking the crowds into consideration. Maybe Jack was already on island time.

So she wouldn’t mess up her cutoffs, Angie selected a relatively clean spot and sat down on the granite wall, her legs dangling over the water. Her feet ended in Docksiders. No one could say she didn’t dress like a sailor.

The water taxi came and went, its canopy flapping as it chugged through the still, humid air. Motorboats flitted about the harbor, weaving around the fleet of paddleboats that puttered around like ducklings. Sailboats bobbed quietly at anchor, suddenly swinging wide, facing into a puff of wind that rippled a path along the water.

“Stevie! Stay away from the water!” A woman’s voice, screeching. When Angie turned her head to check out the kid, she saw it: a Sabre motoring in under bare poles, its blue hull bright against the greenish-brown mound of Federal Hill. It would be ten, twenty minutes maybe, before the captain found a spot to anchor amid the sea of tethered vessels.

Angie extracted a digital camcorder, smaller than a paperback, from a plastic bag in her tote. She flipped it open and centered the sailboat in the viewfinder. She zoomed in, waited for the cam to focus. No mistake. Windwalker was stenciled in gold letters on its hull; an inflatable dinghy bounced along in its wake.

She panned aft to where the captain, his features indistinct in the shadow of a baseball cap, manned the helm, then forward along the life lines. Well, that’s a surprise. Jack Daniels had crew. A young man in chinos and a blue polo shirt stood on the bow, his foot resting lightly on the anchor chain as it screamed over the windlass and snaked into the water, pulled along by the weight of the anchor as it sank into the muck at the bottom of the Patapsco.

When the anchor was secure, the two men piled into the dinghy, cranked the outboard to life, and motored to the dock where they jostled for a spot, bouncing off the other inflatables like oversized inner tubes.

Through the viewfinder Angie watched the men disembark, watched the young guy shake Jack’s hand, watched as he seemed to be saying goodbye. Good, she thought. One less Y chromosome to worry about.

From behind the camera, Angie stared, comparing the man coming toward her to the photo from the e-mail attachment. The man in the photo had darker hair, a wider nose, a less prominent chin. Angie sat on the seawall, puzzled, her knees pulled up, hugging them, studying the man with the salt-and-pepper hair who had to be Jack from under the brim of her hat. Son of a bitch knew he was late, too, hustling along the pier, glancing at every female face, probably wondering if she’d given up on him. Let him sweat. Angie had the advantage, after all. She hadn’t sent Jack a picture-only a description. One couldn’t be too careful.

Jack reached the end of the pier and stopped to gaze out over the water, big hands hanging at his sides. She stuffed the videocam into her tote bag, stood, and followed.

“Jack?” she called, settling the strap of the tote comfortably against her shoulder.

He turned. His sunfrosted eyebrows lifted. “Mandy?”

“That’s me.” She smiled ruefully. The name sounded strange pinned on her, rather than on the drugged-out cousin to whom it actually belonged. Angie extended her hand, and he took two steps forward to take it.

“Shall we go somewhere to talk?” she asked, eager to get on with it.

Walking side-by-side, chatting casually, they crossed the brick-paved causeway to Barnes and Noble, the ho-hum of its chaindom somewhat mitigated by being sandwiched between its trendier cousins, the ESPN Zone and Hard Rock Cafe. Once inside, they wound through smokestacks tattooed with rivets, rode up the industrial-style escalators to Starbucks.

“My treat,” Jack said, and bought them each a mocha frappuccino.

“Do you want to see the boat now, before you make up your mind?” he asked, sitting down at the table opposite her.

“How about the other guy?” She jammed a straw into her drink.

“What other guy?”

“The guy I saw riding in on the dinghy.”

Jack actually blushed. “You must mean Tim. He works for the yacht broker.”

“Tim, then.”

“He installed a self-steerer in the Sabre. Wanted to make sure it worked.”

“Self-steering will come in handy on the ocean,” Angie commented, taking a sip from her mocha frappe. “So, tell me about the trip.”

While Jack extracted a map from his fanny pack and smoothed it out on the table, Angie studied his face. The eyes were right, and so were the ears, but the nose and chin bothered her. Plastic surgery? If so, the scars were hidden in the tiny creases of his well-tanned skin.

Jack anchored a corner of the map with his drink. His finger traced a line from the Abacos to Eleuthera, down the long Exumas chain to Great Exuma. Angie smiled and nodded and asked all the right questions-about sending and receiving mail, about satellite phones and how they’d divide up the duties and the costs-but knew it was time to move on.

She leaned over the map. “I’d like to see the boat now, Jack.”

His eyes, dark as cinnamon, locked on hers, and something went ka-plump in her chest. Goddamn. She hoped that wouldn’t be a problem.

Minutes later, opposite the aquarium, Angie held back. “Wait a minute!” she said, grabbing Jack by the arm and dragging him along. “You have to see the seals!” She led him to the seal pool, where they stood side-by-side, leaning against the railing, the crowds pressing in around them.

Ike and Lady eeled soundlessly through the water in their idyllic, 70,000-gallon world. Mounted on the railing was a sign-Caution: Throwing coins or objects in the pool can kill the seals. Well, not so idyllic, maybe.

They watched in companionable silence for a while, then Jack turned to face her.

“Mandy,” he said. His eyes seemed to drink her down. “This’ll probably not sit too well, but you could be the figurehead on my ship of life.”

“That’s bullshit,” she said, smiling.

“No,” he said. “Gilbert and Sullivan.”

“About the figurehead. I don’t think so… Bill “ Her voice dropped an octave on his name, like a late night DJ. Her smile evaporated and she waited, giving him time to let the significance of her words sink in.

“Shitfuckdamn.” He blinked slowly. “How the hell did you find me?”

“We’re betrayed by our buying habits, Jack. Take me, for example.” She plucked at the collar of her gauzy shirt. “If I wanted to disappear, I’d have to stop shopping at Chicos.”

Jack relaxed against the railing. Perhaps he was relieved. “So what gave away?”

“The West Marine catalog.”

“No way.” He actually grinned.

She slipped a hand into her tote, easing it down deep along the side. “I called their 800-number to complain that we hadn’t received our catalog since we moved, and were they still sending it to the Providence address.” She shrugged. “‘Oh, no,’ the woman told me, ‘it’s going to your new address in North Carolina.’” Angie smiled. “Of course she confirmed that for me.”

Jack laid a hand on her shoulder, and again she felt it, like a jolt of electricity straight to her heart. “But why you?” he asked.

“Not me,” she said, leaning closer, so close that her nose was filled with the Tide-washed freshness of his shirt. “It’s Michael Cirelli who’s looking for you. He wasn’t amused when you ratted. When your testimony sent his son to jail.” She paused. “It irks him that Danny’s cooling his heels at Lewisburg while you are…” Angie waved a hand in the direction of Windwalker, bobbing quietly at anchor in the harbor behind them. “Sailing off into the proverbial sunset.”

“I’d like to be sailing off with you,” Jack whispered.

She stood on tiptoe, her lips warm against his cheek. “I’m really sorry, Jack.”

The knife cool in her hand. Its blade, long and thin, penetrated his shirt and the skin of his chest, slipping cleanly between his ribs, piercing the left ventricle of his heart. Still leaning against the railing, Jack only looked surprised as she withdrew the knife and dropped it back into her tote. Jack slumped against her-another amorous couple enjoying the summer evening. Her lips brushed his ear as she whispered, “But if I’d sailed off with anybody, it would have been with you.”

With a fluid, practiced move, she lifted and pushed, gently tumbling him over the railing, onto the concrete skirt that surrounded the seal pool, where he lay still, one hand trailing in the water, his eyes wide, locked on hers. It would take several minutes for his heart to bleed out, flooding his chest cavity. Plenty of time for Jack to call out-Help! Murder! or even her name. But he lay quietly along the skirting, defeated, dying.

Lady surfaced, the water sleeking off her mottled fur. She snorted, her whiskers twitching curiously next to Jack’s hand. Bobbing, she studied the dying man with dark, sorrowful eyes.

“Sorry, Lady,” Angie whispered, thinking about the warning sign. Then, “Call 911!” she screamed. “He’s having a heart attack!”

In the subsequent confusion, she slipped away, weaving quietly through the crowd, moving confidently against the grain.

Near the causeway between the power plant and Baltimore’s Public Works Museum, the wig came off with the hat, in one quick swoop. By the time she crossed President Street, Angie had fluffed up her flyaway copper curls, and the disguise was tucked safely into the plastic bag that had once held her videocam.

She strolled down Fawn Street, almost to Gough, before finding a dumpster where she ditched the bag. She doubled back to Exeter. Angie wasn’t worried. Two thousand people were crowded in Little Italy tonight, out to enjoy the film festival. Cinema al fresco would generate tons of garbage. Nobody was going to be pawing through the dumpsters in the morning.

On Stiles, at the far end of the bocce court tucked between High and Exeter, she found her brother and his team, all duded up and slicked back, their asses being whipped by paisanos on Social Security, wearing team shirts, Bermudas, and tube socks. She perched on a park bench painted red, white, and green to watch the massacre, wondering, not for the first time, how Johnny could bet serious money on a game that was a cross between lawn bowling and horseshoes. After a while, she wandered off and bought herself a meatball sub and ate it at the corner of High and Stiles, where Johnny found her later, just as it was growing dark. He carried a couple of lawn chairs.

“Sorry I’m late, sis.”

She presented her cheek for a kiss.

He unfolded a chair, placed it on the sidewalk, and held it steady while she sat down. “Glad you stopped by.”

“I’m starving,” she said. “What’s in the box?”

“Dessert,” he said.

“From Vaccaro’s, I trust,” she said, holding out her hand for the box.

“How’s Mom?”

“Just fine,” Angie replied, liberating a chocolate-dipped cannoli from a square of wax paper. “She thinks I should get a life.”

“And Providence?”

“Not so good as when Buddy Cianci was mayor, but thriving.” She took a bite of the cannoli, savoring the sweetness of it on her tongue, feeling giddy. “You should visit sometime, Johnny.”

“Maybe I will,” he said, “if I’m not on call over Thanksgiving.”

From the third floor bedroom of John Pente’s apartment directly over their heads, a blue stream of light projected the opening scenes of Moonstruck onto a blank white billboard across a parking lot crammed with people: a street festival meets the drive-in, but without all the cars.

“They always start with Moonstruck “ her brother explained, “and end with Cinema Paradiso

“All Italian?”

He nodded, chewing, his mouth full of amaretto tiramisu. “Mostly.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a printed schedule.

“So if it’s mostly Italian, how come they’re showing A Fish Called Wanda next Friday and not The Godfather?” Angie asked after reading it over.

Johnny licked whipped cream off his fingers. “The neighborhood would never go for The Godfather,” he said.

“Why not? It’s classic.”

“You know.” He tucked his hands in his armpits and tipped his chair back to rest against the formstone.

“What?” Angie said, comprehension dawning. “Too much like home movies?”

Johnny snorted. “Yeah. Everybody thinks we hang out on street corners with stupid meatheads named Vito saying ‘fahgedaboutit’ all day.”

Angie laughed out loud. “Does any rational person seriously believe that every Italian-American family has a mobster or a hit man somewhere on their family tree?”

“Stereotypes,” said her brother.

“Cultural bias,” said his sister, settling back to enjoy the movie. “Fahgedaboutit.”

Author’s note: When the seal pool at the National Aquarium in Baltimore closed for renovation in early 2002, Ike and Lady were sent to live at the Albuquerque Biological Park. Ike died several years ago, at the ripe old age of thirty-two, but Lady, now thirty, thrives in New Mexico

LIMINAL BY JOSEPH WALLACE

Security Boulevard-Woodlawn

As always, the rabbi had spoken in calm, measured ones. If we could learn to see them, we’d recognize that our existence is full of liminal moments,” he’d said, “times when we’ve already left our previous life behind, but have yet to take the step into a new one. A liminal moment represents the space between an ending and beginning-a critically important gap, and of course potentially a very dangerous one.

That had been three days ago. Now Tania Blumen’s head banged against the motel’s bathroom wall, unloosing a blue-green flash deep within her skull. Pain followed after a respectful pause, radiating along her jawline and cheekbones like thunder pursuing a lightning bolt.

“God, I’m sorry, sweetie,” the man said to her, his voice wet, his hands grasping the waistband of her panties and tugging. Something stung her on the hip: his fingernail tearing her skin. “I didn’t mean to do that, I’ll never do it again, I promise,” he said. “If you’d just listened to me, trusted me… Didn’t you know this was going to happen? You must have known. I’m asking so little, and you’re making it so hard-”

Liminal moments.

Tania guessed this qualified as one.

“Room 213,” the teenage clerk at the Round Tripper Inn said. “Out that door into the courtyard, up the stairs on your right.” His eyes were on her face. “You need help, come back and ask.”

“The room,” Tania replied, “it says the number on the door?”

The clerk blinked. “Sure.”

“Then I’ll find it,” she told him.

“Oh, wait,” he called as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder and turned away. “I forgot to tell you.”

She looked back.

“Mr. Sims isn’t here yet. He called to say he’d be a little late.”

Tania stood still, thinking. Thinking: Still time to turn around. Still time to get on the bus and head back home.

And face Yoshi. And tell him she’d lost her nerve.

She went out into the courtyard.

Two bus rides, that’s all it took to get from Falstaff Road to Security Boulevard. Yet it was a different world.

Tania stood blinking in the milky spring sunshine, the pounding in her head competing with the ceaseless roar, like a river in flood, of the boulevard a block away. No one she knew would ever find her here. The people from her neighborhood didn’t work at the Social Security offices, those giant buildings that towered over the neighborhood like active volcanos. They didn’t shop at the Old Navy, rent movies at the Blockbuster, buy sandwiches at the Subway and cars at the Chevrolet dealership over there, with its giant plaster fox.

And they didn’t stay at the Round Tripper Inn.

But that was the point, wasn’t it?

The room was suffused with brownish light filtering through closed curtains decorated with crudely stitched crossed baseball bats. The queen-sized bedspread displayed a repeating pattern of gloves, and the lampshades were designed to look like baseballs. Two garish paintings of a tubby Babe Ruth hung on the wall, a mirror with an inexplicable seashell frame between them.

Tania felt shaky. She hadn’t been able to eat breakfast this morning, or even dinner last night. Tzom, Yoshi had named it. The ritual fast. Purification, it was said, was an essential part of the journey. But looking at her face in the mirror, at its pallor in the room’s earthy light, Tania didn’t feel pure.

“In the midst of a liminal moment, you are out of the world,” the rabbi had said. “For that time, it is as if you no longer exist.”

A keycard hissed as it slid into the slot outside the door of Room 213.

Almost at once, Tania knew.

“You’re so beautiful!” Gary Sims spoke in tones of awe. “Even more beautiful than the photographs your uncle-”

“Yoshi.”

“Your Uncle Yoshi sent me. Beautiful!”

“Thank you,” Tania said.

Her face was hot. It did not feel like her face at all.

“Don’t thank me,” Gary said, placing a heavy shoulder bag and a smaller, flatter case on the bed, then turning back toward her and clasping his hands in front of his chest. “I should thank you, Tania. For giving me this chance.”

Gary smiled, nodded his head, made a little bow toward her. He was maybe thirty-five, but looked younger, with a round face, a wispy beard and mustache surrounding red lips that stood out against his pinkish skin. Just an inch or two taller than Tania’s 5’8” and always in motion, hands knotting and releasing, foot tapping, head tilted to one side, then the other, as he looked at her and away.

Making Tania feel like something heavy and ponderous, a cow, an elephant, in comparison.

But Gary seeming to think otherwise. “I couldn’t tell from the photos, but your nose is perfect,” he said. “Those little buttons-they just don’t show up well. And those girls who get their noses broken and reset-” His hand went up and pushed at the tip of his nose. “They look like pigs, don’t you think?” Another quick glance. “With you, though, I was worried about a bump. You know, a lot of girls like you have that bump right here-” Touching the bridge of his nose now. “But not you.”

A lot of girls like me.

“I’m so glad to be here,” he said. “It was worth the drive.” Looking suddenly shy, he reached into his pocket. “I brought this for you.”

A long silver necklace, interlocking links, a chain. Hanging from it was a Jewish star.

He placed it around her neck, arranged it so the star rested in the little indentation between her breasts. It shone against the navy-blue of her Goucher sweatshirt.

Tania knew then.

She understood exactly how this worked.

And why it worked.

“Your uncle told me you don’t have a computer at home.”

She shrugged.

A sympathetic grimace. “Why not?”

“My parents won’t let me.”

“Yes, that’s right.” He laced his fingers, pulled them apart. “And I’ll bet that’s not all they’re unfair about. You probably even have a strict curfew, right?”

She shrugged again.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” He looked thoughtful. “How old are you, Tania?”

“Seventeen,” she said. “Like my uncle told you.”

He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “So beautiful, so bright, but so… stifled. Held back. Distrusted,” he said, shaking his head. “Believe me, I’ve heard it before, more times than you could believe.” His gaze touched gently on hers. “Seventeen is old enough to start making your own decisions, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” she said. Then: “That’s why I’m here.”

“I know.” His eyes were full of sympathy and understanding. “I’ll help you, Tania,” he said. “I swear it.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, unzipped the smaller of the two bags he’d brought, and pulled out a laptop computer. He unfolded it, rested it on his knees, and pushed a button. The computer hummed, and a moment later the screen turned from black to gray to blue.

“Let me show you what we’ll be doing together.” He gave her a slantwise look, then patted the bedspread beside him. “You won’t be able to see from way up there,” he said. “Sit.”

When she hesitated, his face turned solemn, as if he was on the verge of taking offense. “Sweetie, I feel like we already know each other so well,” he said. “I understand you. I know what you’re trying to escape from. But you have to trust me. So keep me company. Sit.”

She sat.

It was called TeenHeaven. The letters were spelled out in a flowing script with a pink heart where the “a” should have been. The Place Where All Your Non-Nude Dreams Come True,” a second line read.

“Whose dreams?” she asked.

He turned his head to look at her. She could feel the heat of his leg just a few inches from hers, and all at once she was aware of her body. Her heart pounding beneath her breasts, the band of her panties digging into her hip, a tickle of sweat snaking down the back of her neck.

“Yours,” he said softly. “Your dreams, Tania.”

“And theirs too.” She glanced at him. “The members.”

“Yes,” he said. “And why not? Why shouldn’t we please them? They’re men and women who appreciate the energy and spirit and beauty of youth, and are willing to open their wallets to prove it.”

His smile was warm on her face.

“But deep down they’re nothing to me-just ghosts, phantoms out there in cyberspace. Numbers on a credit-card slip. You…” he sighed. “You’re real. You’re sitting right here with me. And your dreams are the only ones that matter.”

A row of portraits, eight in all, each contained within an oval of a different pastel color. Cameos, they looked like, or popsicles, or candy eggs with girls trapped inside.

Pretty girls, fifteen years old, sixteen, seventeen. A name below each portrait, with the i’s dotted with smiley faces: Jessica and Kristi and Nata, Suz and Miki and Beatriz. Smiling at the camera or giving it a pouty look.

“This is where I’ll be?” Tania asked. “Here?”

“At first,” Gary said. “Just at first.”

He reached up and brushed the side of her face with his fingers, the lightest of touches. “I’m amazed by you,” he said. “You must be the most beautiful girl in Baltimore. I know that the camera will love you as much as I do.”

She blushed.

He turned back to the computer. His fingers moved across the touchpad, the moisture from her cheek leaving momentary trails on the gray surface.

“Here’s how it’ll go,” Gary said. “We’ll do the first few shoots today, here. I’ll introduce you on TeenHeaven as my newest discovery-” She heard him take a breath. “Boy, will the members be happy to meet you And then, in a couple of weeks, we’ll get together again and do a full-scale session, maybe ten, twelve different outfits. Get a thousand great shots, easy, and use the best of them for the grand opening of your own site.”

He paused, thinking, then smiled at her. “What say we call it ‘Blooming Tania’?”

Glorious Gloria was tall and slender, with dark, wiry hair and olive skin. She often wore short-shorts, halter tops that were a size or two too small for her, long dangly earrings, brightly colored headbands. She always looked only half-awake, smiling sleepily over her bony shoulder at the camera or lying on a tan sofa in a living room with splintery floors and peeling wallpaper, her toes pointed to accentuate the length of her legs.

Starlight Stacy lived on a farm someplace warm. Even in winter she was always outdoors, feeding the chickens in her shorty pajamas, posing in muddy boots and a bathing suit amid rows of vegetables, scraping the flesh of an orange off the peel with her even white teeth, swinging on a tire in a miniskirt.

Dream Jeannie had freckles everywhere: her face, her arms, between her breasts. All her photographs were taken indoors. She almost always wore bathing suits, and had moved from tankinis in her earlier galleries to thongs in her most recent, suits so insubstantial as to leave her practically naked.

Tania felt her face grow hot again.

“I know,” Gary said. “Not until you’re ready. But you’ll be amazed at how fast you become comfortable with the… more revealing outfits. Everyone does.”

Joyful Jane, though, didn’t look comfortable. In fact, her modeling name seemed like a joke, or an indictment. She never smiled, never once, as she posed. Her large, dark eyes and prominent cheekbones gave her a vulnerable look.

“My shy one,” murmured Gary. “Popular because she’s shy.”

“She looks like me,” Tania said.

Gary glanced up from the screen at her face. “Not a surprise, really.”

Tania looked at him.

“Sweetie, you come from the same tribe.”

“Everywhere,” he told her. “They’re from everywhere. Gloria is from Sandy, Utah. Melanie-I didn’t show you her-lives in Froid, Montana. Stacy hails from Balm, Florida-”

“Are those real places?”

Gary laughed. “Yes, and there’s a million more just like them. All filled with girls desperate to get out.”

Tania thought about that. “So all your other models are from small towns?”

“Uh-huh. Big-city girls cause too many problems.” Then he shook his head. “Well, Jane lives in Milwaukee, but she’s the exception to the rule.” He smiled. “Just like you are. The same exact kind of exception.”

He gave a fond laugh at the confusion on her face. “Where did your family come from, Tania? Russia?”

“The Ukraine.”

“Same thing.” His hand touched her knee for emphasis, withdrew. “Look, sweetie, I know about Jews. Immigrant Jews. They don’t move here looking for big-city lights. Wherever they settle, even if it’s New York or L.A., they build their own small town.”

Again that quick touch. “Take you. Your address says you live in Baltimore, but I know that you’re really from the village of Park Heights. It might as well be a thousand miles from anywhere. You shop at your own stores, eat in your own restaurants, keep with your own kind. It’s true, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Especially for the girls,” he said. “I mean, you don’t even get to have a computer. Too busy learning to cook while the men read the Bible, right? You wouldn’t even know about me if your uncle hadn’t broken away from the tribe and told you.”

He smiled at her silence. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Those jeans, that sweatshirt-is that how you get to dress at home?”

“No,” she said.

“Of course not. You have to, like, cover up everything, right?” He frowned, on her side. “And do they ever tell you you’re beautiful?”

She shook her head.

Radiating warmth, he leaned toward her, reached out and rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, you are,” he said. “I love Blooming Tania, my girl from the Baltimore shtetl.”

He pronounced it “shteedle.”

There would be enough money for everyone to be happy, he said.

“You’ll earn fifty dollars an hour for the shoots, which will usually take two or three hours.” He looked up from the camera he held on his lap. “Imagine-a hundred dollars, two hundred, for just an afternoon’s work! Have you ever had that much of your own?”

She said no.

“But that’s just the beginning. Just the beginning, Tania! Once I set you up in your own site, you’ll get ten percent of each membership fee. Right now, memberships go for twenty-five dollars a month, but it’s heading up up up.” His face lit up. “Think of it! Starlight Stacy has almost twelve hundred members-I write her a check for almost three thousand dollars every month from memberships alone. And, Tania, I think-I know-you’ll do even better.”

He put the camera down on the bed, stood, came over, and clasped her hands in his. “And even that’s just the start. Then there’s CD collections, DVDs, webcams-so many opportunities,” he said. “You’ll have more money than you ever dreamed of, enough to go out to restaurants, to buy the clothes you want-and wear them without anyone telling you otherwise.” His grin was full of eager complicity. “I’ll even buy you your very own computer.”

He released her. “Now, sweetie, let’s get to work.”

So here it was at last.

“When you take my pictures,” she asked, “will anyone else ever be… there? In the room?”

He shook his head. “No. Never. I promise. Just you and me-” He bent over and unzipped the larger of the two bags and pulled out a camera. “And our little witness.” He pushed a button and the camera made a whining, dissatisfied sound.

A glance at her body. “I hope your uncle gave me your measurements right.” A smile. “Of course, we won’t mind if the outfits I brought are a little tight, will we?”

“Can I…” She hesitated. “Can we start with what I’m wearing?”

Eyes narrowed, tapping his chin with a forefinger, he studied her, then aimed the finger at her sweatshirt. “Take that off,” he said.

She removed her new necklace, wrapped it around her right hand, and took off the sweatshirt, static electricity snapping around her ears. Handed the sweatshirt to Gary and put the necklace back on over her gray turtleneck.

Scanning her body, Gary pushed his tongue into the side of his mouth, making a little mound in his left cheek. “Hmmm,” he said.

He stepped close to her. “This will do,” he decided, “with an adjustment or two.”

Reaching out, he pulled the turtleneck tighter, tucking the extra fabric into the waistband of her jeans. She felt the pressure of the material through her bra against her breasts. “Better,” he said.

Head tilted to one side, he walked around behind her. She felt his hand on her hip, on her waist, on her bottom. She stepped away from him, saying, “Stop that.”

He seemed not to have heard her. “Next time, wear jeans a size smaller, ’kay?” he said. The camera whined again. “I think we’ll start next to that chair over there.”

On your tiptoes. Now lean forward a little. Good. Smile. No, try again, you look like you’re eating soap. That’s better. Jane has crooked teeth-that’s why she keeps her mouth closed. Yes, she’s planning to get them fixed. But your smile is perfect, we don’t have to hide it. There! Excellent!

Now, come here. Yes, on the bed. Lie back-good! This leg up. No, like this. Your left foot here. Hmmm. Let’s try it with your shoes off. Who wears shoes to bed, silly? Don’t worry, only the shoes. Well, the socks too. Most people don’t find socks to be a turn-on, even cute little white ones like yours. See, I’ll put your shoes and socks right here near the door, where you can find them when we’re done.

Oh, Tania, you have the most gorgeous feet! Our members will just love you. Some of them get very excited by feet, you know. Well, yes, I agree, it’s weird. I mean-feet? But that’s people, you know. You can’t ever tell what will raise their temperatures. Though I have to say, when I look at you, your feet aren’t the first things my eyes gravitate toward. Tania, you’re blushing! Great… a bit of shyness, embarrassment, are perfect for your first shoot. Your cheeks are like little apples!

Okay, now, sit up. What? Don’t worry, I’m not taking it off, just rolling it up a little. Just to here, so they can see your bellybutton and the bottom of your rib cage. Just a smidge higher. Now let’s loosen the belt, just a couple of notches, and open this. I promise, not too much, just enough for a glimpse. I always think the glimpse is sexier than the full view, don’t you?

I remember watching a comedy show on TV years ago, and there was this scene set in a nudist colony. Everyone was naked, of course-though they made sure we didn’t see anything-but no one was aroused because there was, like, too much skin everywhere, you know? All the men were really bored until this dressed woman came to visit, and then, boy did they go wild, trying to figure out what she looked like under her clothes! Too funny.

You see, that’s why my sites make so much money, even though they’re non-nude. It’s all the power of imagination, seeing how far we’ll go, always expecting, hoping, dreaming they’ll catch a glimpse of something we didn’t mean to show. That’s why they’ll love you, Tania, with your shyness and reserve and hints of something more. Oh, great. Perfect.

Now lean back. Wait, let me adjust the pillow. Good. Now arch your back. More. Excellent! You’re so toned… do they have a gym for young Jewesses down Park Heights way? Okay, roll this way a little and look over your shoulder at us. Play with your necklace. Great. Lips apart, teeth just barely showing. Eyes open wider-we want that half-innocent, half-whore look. What, they didn’t teach you that at the yeshiva? Doesn’t matter, it comes natural to you. Good. Good. Good!

As Tania got off the bed, Gary stepped close and kissed her on the mouth. A quick kiss, done almost before she could react, leaving behind the impression of his soft lips and the smell of his sweat and the salamander sensation of his tongue.

“Don’t do that!” she said, but he had already turned away and was back at work. Rummaging through the larger of his bags, he pulled out something white and lacy.

He came back toward her. “This next,” he said, holding out the nightgown. “Give everyone a look at those lovely long legs of yours.”

“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.

Something set in his face, a tightening of skin around his eyes. But when he spoke he sounded just the same. “Oh, sweetie,” he said, “don’t start getting all Red State on me now. It’s just a nightgown. I’m not making you wear a thong or a see-through or anything like that, yet. I know you’re new, which is why I didn’t bring anything too… too much But you have to work with me, Tania, you have to meet me partway. You can’t expect to show nothing, you know?”

His words washing over her.

The opportunity provided by liminal moments is that they give you the chance to shed the skin of your past life, and be reborn,” the rabbi had said. “The danger is that you may leave your old existence behind, but be unable to find your way into a new one. Then you can be lost forever.

Gary dropped the nightgown on the bed, reached down, and yanked her turtleneck out of the waistband of her pants. She felt the goosebumps rise on her newly exposed skin.

“No!” she said. Then, more quietly, “I’ll change in the bathroom.”

“Okay.” He smiled, rubbed the back of his hand against her belly. “Take your bra off, but leave your panties on,” he instructed her. “We’ll give them something to dream about!”

Her face looked simultaneously chilled and feverish in the blue fluorescent light of the bathroom, her hair tangled under the headband, a vein pulsing in her forehead. Did the members find such discomfort sexy? She thought they did. That’s why they liked Jane, the girl who never smiled, who looked like she was posing against her will.

Tania’s eyes traced the scattering of birthmarks on her chest above her bra, the small scar on her belly, the extra flesh above her hips. Already her body didn’t seem to belong to her. Already she was studying it as if she were one of them.

She hung the lacy white nightgown on a hook and took a closer look at it. At most, it would come down only to midthigh. Gary was no doubt planning future ones to be shorter still, to reveal even more.

Turning away from the mirror’s accusing gaze, she reached back, unhooked her bra, and put it down on the counter beside the turtleneck. Unzipped her jeans, pulled them down and off, folded them, and placed them on the counter as well. Took the nightgown off the hook.

She was dropping it over her head when the door swung open and Gary came in. The whites of his eyes had a yellowish sheen and his lips were very red. As she stood there, frozen, he closed the door, raised the camera, and started shooting, the repeated clicking of the shutter like a bird pecking at her skull.

“Get out!” Her voice emerged as little more than a whisper. She struggled to slide the nightgown on, but the hem got twisted around her neck. “Turn off the camera!”

He focused below her waist, the camera clicking. “You have too much hair,” he said. “Our members don’t like so much hair. You’ll have to shave.”

Suddenly the camera was on the counter and he was close to her, so close that she could smell his sweat. One hand rested on her hip while the other moved, searched, probed, further down. “Let me shave you,” he said into her ear. “I love to photograph my girls as I shave them. It’s the most intimate thing-”

“No!” She twisted away from him, stumbled toward the door. But before she could get it open, he grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and hit her.

Not in the face, not where it might leave a mark during the next shoot. In the stomach. She fell back, her head slamming against the wall. And then he was up against her, his fingernail scratching her flesh as he yanked at her panties, his wet, confident voice apologizing, begging, muttering incantations that she no longer wished to make sense of.

She’d waited long enough. It was time to reenter her life.

She brought her right knee up, felt it slam into something hard and something soft. The breath whistled out of Gary like he’d sprung a leak, and then he was rolling on the floor, grasping himself, moaning and cursing, his red face suddenly white with shock and pain.

Tania stood over him. Men are amazing, she thought, rubbing the back of her head. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut, nod at everything they say, blush a little, and they assume you’re whatever they want you to be. A runaway, a slut, a victim, a whore.

The one thing they never seem to expect is for you to fight back.

She untangled the nightgown and pulled it down, the soft cotton brushing against her skin. Then she stepped over the writhing, gasping Gary and walked out of the bathroom. Found her bag. Reached inside and pulled out the pistol, the.22 she’d had for three years and knew how to use.

She returned to the bathroom, stood near the door, waited for Gary to notice her. When his eyes finally stopped watering and he saw the gun, he grew very quiet and still, even as his hands continued to clutch his groin.

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you,” she said to him, “that when a girl says stop, she means stop?”

He stared up at her, startled by the sound of her true voice. Then he took a deep breath, another, made a nodding motion with his head. “You’re right,” he said, filled with contrition. “I’m sorry, Tania. I lost control. It won’t happen again. I don’t know what came over me. I thought you wouldn’t mind. I thought you understood. My mistake. My terrible mistake. It’s just that you’re so beautiful, so gorgeous… I mean, look at yourself! Just look. Any man would have-but I know I shouldn’t. I know, I know, I’m so sorry, it was like…”

She glanced at the mirror, saw no great beauty, just a tall girl with strong arms and long legs and lots of hair down below. Then she squatted beside Gary and put the gun to his head.

“If you apologize one more time-” she said. “In fact, if you say one more word before I tell you to, I will shoot you.”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, kept quiet. At last he was learning to listen.

In the sudden silence she heard a thud, a knocking sound, a muffled curse, another thud.

Finally.

“Don’t move,” she said to Gary. “Don’t speak.” She stood, looked at the gun, back at him. “You don’t know me well enough to know whether I’ll use this or not.”

She walked across the room to the front door, swung it open just as the man on the other side was hurling himself against it again. He came in fast, catlike, somehow keeping his balance in his heavy leather boots, his wiry hair a mess, his eyes wild beneath his tangled eyebrows. Staring at her, then scanning the room, his gaze resting briefly on Gary lying on the bathroom floor before coming back to her. His sharp-featured face turning murderous as he saw the streaks of blood on the nightgown.

Tania put a hand on his arm. “I’m okay, Yoshi,” she said.

“It’s nothing, a scratch. I’m fine.”

“It was the traffic,” he said with furious frustration. “I was stuck on the Beltway, and then this boulevard-I didn’t know what to do. I finally left the car at a hydrant and ran the last eight blocks, and then the guy at the desk wouldn’t give me a key.” His eyes were still frantic. “I was going to call you, call the police, but-”

“It would have ruined everything,” she said. “You did right.”

She went up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek, which at last seemed to calm him a little. “Check the bags,” she said. “I’ll see what he has to say.”

Yoshi took a deep breath, another, and nodded.

She went back into the bathroom, where Gary had propped himself against a wall. His face was flushed a deep red, but his eyes were like blue glass beads.

“You set me up,” he said. “Both of you.”

Tania made a scornful gesture with her hand. “It was easy.”

“You’re robbing me,” he said.

“Among other things.”

She sat beside him, reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet. Glanced at the address on his driver’s license and sighed.

She could tell that he was looking at her. Tania thought that, despite all his praise for her beauty, he probably hadn’t paid much attention to her face till now. It was her body, and how much of it she would expose to the camera, that had mattered.

He said, “How old are you?”

She raised her gaze to his. “Twenty, Gary. I’m twenty. Much, much too old for TeenHeaven.”

She heard someone enter the room behind her and got back to her feet. “Gary Sims,” she said, “this is my uncle, Joshua Blumen.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Yoshi said, and planted his boot in Gary’s face.

“Shut up,” Tania said.

She was wearing her own clothes, the clothes Gary had assumed were a costume or a sign of rebellion. Herself again, though not quite. Each time she emerged she was changed.

Gary lay there at her feet, hands on his face, exploring the jagged edges of his broken teeth with his tongue, blood from his cut lips streaking his fingers. He hadn’t said anything.

“I’m sick of hearing your voice,” she went on. “I feel like I’ve spent half my life listening to you babble. It’s my turn to talk now. My turn.”

The rabbi always said that any class that had Tania in it automatically ran a half hour late. People who wanted to see Jews as stereotypes saw her as one of the pushy, noisy types, only concerned about herself. But they were wrong too.

“First of all,” she said, “if you say one more word about Jewish girls-if you ever even use the word ‘Jewess’ again-Yoshi will find you and kill you.”

“Can I?” Yoshi asked. Then he scowled. Jewess?

He’d gotten most of his good mood back after breaking Gary’s teeth. But not all of it. Gary cowered away from his dark gaze.

“You don’t know a thing about Jewish girls, if you believe every one of us is hidden away, protected, pure, and innoent-” She brought her face close to his, jabbed him in the chest with a forefinger. “Helpless under your hands.” She made a fist, hit him harder. “Some of us know more than you think. Some of us go to temple and wear jeans and read the Bible and have computers too. We live here-” Another blow. “In Park Heights, yes, but also in this city. In the shtetl and in Baltimore at the same time. Understand?”

He moaned.

“And for those who choose a different way, it’s their choice,” she said. “So next time, you keep your fantasies of peeking under the dress of an Orthodox Jewish girl to yourself, okay?”

Gary’s head lolled. Yoshi said in a mild voice, “I think you made your point, T. And you want him to stay awake for a while, don’t you?”

She sat back, breathing hard. “God,” she said. “No, I don’t.”

Then she sighed, reached into the pocket of her jeans, pulled out and unfolded the sheet of paper she’d printed out the night before. Yoshi squatted beside her as she showed it to Gary.

Gary moved his lips. “Jane?” he said.

“Yes, Joyful Jane,” Tania replied. “The one who never smiles. Is she still your model?”

Gary nodded.

“You still see her-work with her?”

Another nod.

“You swear?” She poked him. “You can talk now.”

“Yes,” he said. “She’s my model.”

Tania felt herself open up. Blooming Tania. “Where does she live?”

He licked the drying blood from his lips. “I told you. Milwaukee.”

“Where in Milwaukee?”

“I don’t know.”

She slapped his face. Fresh blood flew. “Tell us where Jane lives,” she said.

“I told you.” His voice was thick. “Milwaukee. I’ve never-never seen where she lives. We meet-in a motel.”

Tania raised her arm again. “But you do have her address somewhere, don’t you?”

He spat bloody saliva onto the floor beside him, then slumped back against the wall. His eyes were dull. “It hurts,” he said.

“Concentrate, Gary,” she warned him.

He let out a breath that bubbled at the end. “At home,” he said vaguely. “My desk.”

“He lives in New York City,” Tania told Yoshi. “Queens.”

“I know.” Yoshi gave a resigned grunt. “Could have been Kansas City, I guess.”

Gary lifted his head. His eyes focused a little. “Jane,” he said. “Why?”

“She is my cousin,” Tania said.

“My niece,” added Yoshi. “My brother’s youngest daughter. Zhenya.”

Gary’s gaze went from the picture to Tania’s face.

“You saw it too,” Tania reminded him. “Remember? Zhenya and I, we come from the same tribe.”

She splashed water on his face. Pink rivulets got caught in his patchy beard.

“Now you better talk,” she said in a low voice.

They could hear Yoshi on the phone. “Yes, this is Mr. Sims in 213,” he was saying. “There’s no ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign here to hang on the doorknob. I want to make sure no one bothers me till I check out tomorrow morning… You sure?… Great. Thanks.”

“He learns what you tried to do to me, I tell him the details, he really will kill you,” Tania said.

Gary’s tongue ran around the inside of his mouth. “What?”

“Those pictures you took of me-the ones in here.” She clasped her hands to keep from hitting him again. “Do you take ones like that of Zhenya?”

He nodded.

“And the other girls?”

“Most.”

“Do they ask you to stop?”

He just looked at her, as if the question made no sense.

She touched him with a forefinger. “Do they want you to stop?”

Fresh sweat broke out on his face. “Sometimes,” he said. The unspoken words in his mind: As if that mattered.

She sighed, weary of his presence. “Just one more question. Those pictures? The ones of-of naked bodies. What do you do with them?”

“I sell them,” Gary said. Even now, he couldn’t quite keep the pride out of his voice. “Special clients buy them.”

Tania had heard enough. “Not anymore they won’t,” she said.

Panic made him more alert. “You can’t leave me here!”

Yoshi grinned, twisting Gary’s arms behind him and expertly binding his wrists. “Just for one day,” he said. “Just long enough for us to find what we need without you getting in our way. Tomorrow the cleaning lady will come in to make the bed, and she’ll find you. You won’t die before then.”

But Gary was barely listening. “I’ll shout-I’ll tell the cops.”

“Really?” Yoshi leaned in close. “I don’t think so. You seem like a smart guy. I think what you’ll do is disappear, turn up in another city, find a new line of work.” He yanked on the rope and Gary whimpered. “If you tell a soul about us and what happened here today, we’ll deliver everything we find in your apartment-and in your cameras-to the police.”

That got through.

“And you’re never going to post another picture online, ever, right?”

Yoshi picked up the wadded strip of cotton he’d ripped from the nightgown and the duct tape he’d brought with him.

“Wait,” Gary said.

Tania, leaning against the wall, was ready to leave. “Make it fast.”

He took a deep breath. The words came tumbling out, indistinct but comprehensible. “You-you feel so proud of yourselves, but nothing’s going to change.”

“Sure, Gary.”

“I’m not the only one doing this,” he went on. “There’s others, taking pictures. Just like me. Looking for an edge. I’m gone, there’s a dozen ready to jump in, take my place-and my girls.”

“Just like you jumped in,” Tania said calmly, “when a couple of other photographers left the business last year.”

Gary nodded.

She got down beside him and looked into his eyes. “Like Phil at Young Beauties.” She glanced at Yoshi. “And who was that other one?”

“Silverteen Models,” he replied. “Guy had a funny name.”

“Rogelio.” She switched her gaze back to Gary. “Gone for good, both of them, just when they were getting successful.” Gary slowly understood what she was saying. His face went yellow.

“We’ve been searching for Zhenya for a long time,” Tania said. “But she keeps moving on, and until now we were always a step behind.”

“But Phil-” The smell of Gary’s sweat and drying blood filled the room. “Phil was-”

“In the hospital for weeks,” Yoshi said. “He almost died.”

Tania shrugged. “Phil didn’t cooperate, but, you know, I think you will.”

Yoshi looked at her and she nodded. He pushed the cotton past Gary’s bruised lips and into the clotted mouth, and began wrapping the contorted face with tape.

When he was done, they picked up the trussed body, Tania grasping the legs, Yoshi the torso. Together, they hauled the trembling form across the room. In a few seconds Yoshi had tied it tightly to the pipes under the sink. Gary wasn’t going anywhere until someone found him.

Under the wild gaze of the shot-red eyes, they washed their hands with plenty of soap and left the bathroom for the last time.

“How could she do this?” Yoshi asked. “Zhenya. How could she be with such men?”

They were walking through the early-afternoon sunlight on Security Boulevard, Yoshi carrying Gary’s two bags, Tania her own. Unless they hit bad traffic on the turnpike, Yoshi’s Miata would get them to Queens by nightfall. They’d find Zhenya’s address and see what else Gary’s apartment had to offer.

The sun gleamed off the windows of the Social Security mountain up ahead. Horns honked and brakes squealed along the boulevard, the flood of cars carrying people toward snacks at Dunkin’ Donuts and antacid at Rite Aid. But the noise and bustle seemed remote, distant to Tania, as if she were just a projection of herself placed here and the real girl was somewhere far away.

“They told her she was beautiful,” Tania said. “They offered her money. They swore that her family would renounce her, would never welcome her back, not after what she had done. They put their hands on her until she thought they owned her.”

Yoshi gave her a sharp look. “Is that what Gary did to you?”

Tania shrugged. “Close enough.”

“I wish I’d killed him!” Yoshi knotted his hands. “You should have pulled the gun out as soon as he walked in the door.”

She smiled. “Then we might not have learned anything. And anyway… after what happened with Phil, we agreed I’d wait till you got there.”

“I know,” Yoshi said. “I remember.”

Phil’s raging response had been… unexpected. Even with the pistol, Tania probably couldn’t have handled him alone.

“We were lucky Gary turned out so easy,” she said.

Yoshi stared at the traffic as if he wanted to challenge each car to a fight. “Security Boulevard “ he said with loathing.

“And anyway, it was good.” She caught his expression. “No, it was. Now I know what Zhenya heard. And the other girls too. What they heard when they were poor and scared and hungry, when they’d run away and thought everyone back home hated them.”

“But we don’t-”

“What was it her parents said after she left?” Tania said. “‘We have no daughter!’”

Yoshi shook his head. “My brother Avi. That fool.”

“And how was she to know they’d changed their minds, Avi and Rachel?” Tania asked. “She was out of reach.”

They walked in silence for a while. The wail of distant fire engines wove in and out of the traffic’s tidal surge. Then Yoshi spoke: “When we find her, will she come home with us?”

Tania thought about the unsmiling face, the dark, haunted eyes she’d seen in image after image.

“I think so,” she said.

Yoshi nodded. “And then, finally, we’ll be done.”

But Tania barely heard him. She was listening to another voice, the one that had been with her all day.

Most of us make the mistake of thinking that such experiences occur only very rarely,” the rabbi had said. “But it isn’t true. Every wedding, every birth, every death, takes you out of one life and into another. Even the Sabbath lets you escape for twenty-five hours, every week of the year. And each week, the world you join is different from the one you left, just as you, yourself, are different.”

He’d smiled then at all of them sitting in the pews. “Despite the risks,” he’d said, “some of us find these liminal moments the most fulfilling of our lives. We welcome them, cherish them, even come to crave them. Life would be a cold, barren place if they did not exist.”

They reached the Miata. There was a ticket fluttering on its windshield.

“And then we’ll be done, right?” Yoshi said.

Tania felt the memory of Gary’s hands on her skin. She thought of all the other girls he’d touched, and all the girls these new photographers-the eager replacements he’d brandished at them in his last gesture of defiance-would touch as well. Girls who would listen to the serpent words, and through fear or desperation or self-hatred would believe what they heard, just as Zhenya had. Girls who might want to put up a fight, but who weren’t lucky enough to have an Uncle Yoshi or a.22.

She looked up, watched his eyes widen at the expression he saw in hers. “Uh-oh,” he said. “We’re not done, are we?”

Tania smiled at him. They came from the same tribe.

“Not quite yet,” she said.

ALMOST MISSED IT BY A HAIRBY LISA RESPERS FRANCE

Howard Park

Had it not been his body in the huge box of fake hair, I like to think that Miles Henry would have been amused.

At least, the man I once knew would have seen the humor in it: a male stylist who made his fame as one of the top hair weavers in Baltimore discovered in a burial mound of fake hair at the Hair Dynasty, the East Coast’s biggest hair-styling convention of the year. It had all the elements that guaranteed a front-page story in the Sunpapers, maybe even a blurb in the “Truly Odd News” sections of the nationals. Television reporters swarmed the scene, desperate for a sound bite from anyone even remotely connected to Miles. Yes, it all would have been sweet nirvana to Miles, publicity hound that he was. If only he had lived to see it.

I knew him pretty well. In fact, I knew him when he was Henry Miles, the only half-black, half-Asian guy in Howard Park, our West Baltimore neighborhood. His exotic looks ensured that he never wanted for female attention, although they also made him a target for the wannabe thugs who didn’t much cotton to a biracial pretty boy spouting hiphop lyrics. He was a few years older than I was, so our paths crossed only rarely. Besides, he was the neighborhood hottie and I was a shy chubby teenager with acne. The difference in our social statures, as well as the difference in our ages, limited us to the socially acceptable dance of unequals. Meaning, I stared at him and he didn’t know I was alive. It was only when we were grown and found ourselves cosmetology competitors that we began to talk to one another.

Not that my little shop, Hair Apparent, could ever be considered a true threat to Miles’s chain of mega-salons, His and Hairs. There were four His and Hairs in the Baltimore metropolitan area, combination hair-and-nail emporia where Baltimore’s celebrities went to get their ’dos done. In our city, celebrity is defined as female television anchors, the wives of the pastors at the mega-churches, and strippers, although not necessarily in that order. Miles had started doing hair in college as a way of meeting women and discovered he was actually good at it, especially when it came to taking a woman who was close to bald-headed and transforming her into Rapunzel. He was the king of the weave.

He shared his empire with his older sister Janice who had renamed herself Kylani and taken to playing the role of Dragon Lady, complete with super-long talon nails and makeup that emphasized her Asian features. I had never much liked her and I wasn’t alone. She was condescending to everyone and she made a big show of how much money she and her brother were raking in. Miles oversaw the beauty shops, she managed the nail business, and they both joked that their success was based on combining all the salon stereotypes-African-American stylists on one side, Asian nail technicians on the other, gossip everywhere.

Kylani was ambitious, always pushing Miles to expand the business into Washington, D.C. or maybe even New York. Vain as Miles was, he at least recognized that it was better to be a big fish in Baltimore than a small fish anywhere else. He was all about expanding the businesses they already owned and plowing the profits into better equipment, the newest technology, and anything else that made the salon more upscale. Kylani seemed to be all about directing her share toward her wardrobe, trips, and cars. Miles told plenty of people that the nail side of the business would never have been profitable without his constant improvements.

I was privy to such confidences because I was publicity chair for our local branch of Cosmetology Representatives and Appearance Professionals-an organization of hairdressers, makeup artists, nail technicians, and fashion stylists that is known by the unfortunate acronym CRAAP. Miles was president of CRAAP, so we spent more time together as competitors than we ever had as kids growing up in the same neighborhood.

“Now Jordan, I know this is way more than you’re used to handling,” he had told me at our last planning session, picking pieces of lint from the oversize sweater he wore. These Bill Cosby throwbacks were Miles’s trademark, an odd choice given the fact that his salons were so ultra-chic. The joke around town was that he did it to reinforce the image that he was straight because no gay man would ever allow himself to be seen looking so unstylish. Maybe so, but the things were dust and dirt catchers, picking up more stuff than a Swiffer.

“I’m on top of it,” I said. “I’ve got Cathy Hughes’s local radio stations on board and you’re going to be on Larry Young’s talk show on 1010.”

“You’re doing fine locally.” Pick, pick, pick-the sweater and me were both getting raked over. “But we have to pull this thing off with class. So no ghetto fashion shows or tacky discos. Think high-end. See if you can get the D.C. stations and maybe Philly to cover this. You have to reach beyond your usual comfort level.”

Just who did he think he was talking to, I seethed. Whose marketing plan had landed us Hair Dynasty? I may have been only twenty-three, but it was my brainstorm to send crab cakes, Utz potato chips, and gallons of “half-and-half” to the organizers. Half-and-half is a local concoction, a mix of iced tea and lemonade, and it is pure ambrosia. I was positive that it had sealed the deal.

Half-and-half is a good analogy for hair shows-you didn’t have to grow up in a black neighborhood to get it, but it sure helped. Black hair care is big time, a billion-dollar-ayear business these days. But a hair show is more three-ring circus than sedate gathering of professionals, with every stylist scheming to steal the show. Demure chignons and sleek pageboy cuts were not the norm at Hair Dynasty. You’d be more likely to see a woman with the Statue of Liberty rising from her hairline, woven from suitably patriotic red, white, and blue hairpieces. Or a model strutting the catwalk in an haute couture “hair dress” that started at her temples, crisscrossed around her neck, and extended down her body to form a sweeping floor-length gown. The overall effect made the wearer look like a slightly less hairy version of Cousin Itt.

Wefts of hair were sewn or glued in, blow-dried, sprayed, teased, and pinned. There were perms and curls, braids and weaves, and more dyed-color combinations than they have at Sherwin-Williams. People still talked about the year a Chicago stylist sent out a model with a weave designed to look like a satellite dish and a television. The thing actually worked and got pretty good reception. We never figured out how he pulled it off without showing any wires or electrocuting the girl who had to balance it.

And now the whole circus had come to Baltimore, whose motto could be: A Small Town With Big Hair. We take hair very seriously in my hometown. I’d taken the credit for getting the show here and now I had to take responsibility for making it a success. It was all going according to plan-until Miles’s body was discovered.

It was late morning on the first day of the convention and I felt I looked like quite the young professional in my cream-colored linen suit. Sure, almost everyone else would be in basic black, the calling card of the beauty business, but I wasn’t working any heads that day so I thought I could afford to dress up. Besides, as publicity chair, I needed to be camera-ready. Just because I was barely 5’4” and about wenty pounds overweight didn’t mean I couldn’t be fly.

I walked the exhibition floor with pride, enjoying the happy buzz of a convention in full swing-flamboyant demonstrations of new styling techniques, salespeople hawking the latest shampoos and conditioners absolutely guaranteed to give the user thick, glossy, long hair in two days. Loud was good, a sign of people enjoying themselves. Unfortunately, the happy din of the convention center wasn’t loud enough to drown out the screams of the unfortunate young woman who found Miles.

His impromptu shroud of fake hair was behind some dividers that had been used to create a storage area and her screams bounced off the convention center’s concrete walls. The acoustics made it hard to figure out exactly where the ruckus was. By the time I got there, security was cordoning off the area with those elastic stands usually used in banks and airports. The ones where if you lift the top portion, the band snaps right back into the pole like a hyper rubber band. Several people had surrounded the woman and were trying to quiet her hysterics.

It was looking more and more likely that I would be on television, but not in the celebratory manner I had envisioned.

“Let me through,” I said, as I attempted to squeeze by what looked like a crowd trying to make it into a hot nightspot. “I’m with the organizing committee and I need to know what’s going on.”

Luckily, my best friend and business partner Jennifer was close by. She waved me over as she tried to dispense tissues in the general direction of the weeping.

“Listen up,” she said loudly, trying to be heard over the now gulping sobs of the crying girl. “This is Jordan Rivers and she is going to escort this poor child to a quiet area where she can relax and prepare herself to speak with the authorities.”

The girl was wearing the standard stylist uniform of black T-shirt and black slacks, and she looked up from the center of the group with red-rimmed eyes, which were set off nicely by the black lines of mascara streaking her face. “Authorities,” she moaned. “I have to talk to the cops?”

“That’s usually what happens when you find a dead body,” I told her, trying to reach through the others to grasp hold of her arm. “You have had quite a shock. Let’s find you someplace to sit down and relax.”

“Suppose she don’t want to go with you.” A glowering young man whom I hadn’t noticed had his arm firmly wrapped around her waist. “Do you have some identification or something?”

“I’m not the police. I’m Jordan Rivers and I’m in charge of publicity here. I’m not going to take your friend far, just to an office on the next floor to get her away from the crowd. Security is having enough trouble keeping people away from the body, and in a minute they are going to figure that getting the details from the person who found the body might be the next best thing. Now, sweetie, what’s your name?”

“It’s okay, Chris,” she hiccupped in the direction of her protector, before turning to address me. “I’m Diana. I’m a wash girl at Divas Salon and I had just went to get some hair for my boss when-”

“No need to explain it all right now,” I said, aware of how gossip would sweep through this crowd. “Let’s go find you a chair and get you a glass of water or maybe some tea.”

Like a child trying not to lose a parent in a crowd, she reached out and grabbed hold of the back of my suit jacket. I guess I was about to find out how “wrinkle-free” my linen suit actually was. I guided her through the maze of people to the elevator and up to the third-floor meeting room used as our nerve center for the event. Along the way, I stopped to ask a security guard to send the police up as soon as they arrived. Several of my colleagues tried to catch my eye and some even called out my name but I kept moving, concentrating on trying to radiate serenity to Diana who had the back of my jacket balled up in a death grip. I shooed a few people from the room and grabbed a bottle of water for Diana out of the mini fridge in the corner as she dropped limply onto the beige couch that dominated one wall. I pulled a rolling chair from the conference table in the center of the room and turned it so I sat facing her.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Is there anyone I should call for you?”

“I should call my mom and tell her what happened,” she said. “Shoot! I left my purse downstairs, and my cell phone and everything is in it.”

“Don’t worry about it. Your friends will watch out for your stuff, I am sure. And in a minute this place will be crawling with Baltimore’s finest and I doubt that thieves will be making off with much today. So why don’t you tell me what happened.”

“I was washing hair for Cindy. I’m in cosmetology school and I work for her at Divas. A lot of us like to work the hair shows because you can make extra money and pick up some tips. I want to have my own salon someday. Anyway, Cindy had run out of hair and asked me to go get some more. I couldn’t find the color she needed in the top of the box and so I kept digging, and that’s when I felt something hard. I pulled my hand out and it was sticky. I realized that it was blood and I started pulling hair out of the box, and that’s when I saw him. I just started screaming and I couldn’t even talk. It was awful.”

“How was he laying?”

“He was on his stomach,” she said, before covering her hands with her face as if trying to blot out the memory. “He had a pair of scissors sticking out of his back.” She wrapped her arms around herself as if to warm her body. I sympathized with her, having found my beloved Aunt Tilly’s body. And while her death hadn’t been a violent one, I knew the shock which accompanied seeing the shell of a person after the spirit had fled. It was a sight that could chill you.

Before I could ask anything more, a pair of police detectives walked in and I suppressed a groan. Did I mention that Baltimore was small?

“Jordan,” my sister said with that girl-don’t-give-me-nomess tone I knew all too well. “Can you excuse us please?”

I know, I know-what are the odds of my sister catching the body at my convention? Actually, in Baltimore, about one-in-five. Census says 600,000-plus in the city proper, over a million in the metro area, but I swear there are only sixty, seventy-five people tops, and I know them all. So, anyway, my good luck, right? Wrong.

You would think my sister Euphrates and I would be closer despite the fifteen-year age difference. She knew the agony of being saddled with a name that elicited guffaws and corny jokes, even though she had used her middle name, Patricia, ever since she was a teenager. But we couldn’t be more different. At 5 9” she was way taller than me, and where I could pinch way more than an inch, she was thin and muscular. I was a glam girl who loved the latest hairstyles and fashions and she looked like she had been wearing the same outfit since 1991, though the colors rotated among blue, black, and army-green.

But our differences went more than skin deep. She’s always been as straitlaced as they come and more of a second mother to me than an older sister. As my mama liked to say, “Euphrates don’t stand for no types of nonsense,” and that’s probably what drew her to the police force straight out of high school. When she made detective, she was the youngest African-American woman in the history of the department.

But the wildest thing she ever did was marry a white Jewish guy and set up house in a semi-Orthodox neighborhood in Pikesville where they were raising my gorgeous niece and nephew. While I considered myself a bit of a free spirit, my sister never met a rule she didn’t like. Sometimes it seemed like she would purposely set out to do the exact opposite of what I did. If I went right, she went left. Even though she opted for a career just like I did, she still managed to get her Bachelor’s in Criminal Justice by going to school at night, and I knew she was disappointed that I didn’t go to college. It was as if she thought everything I did or didn’t do was personally directed at her. I felt the same about her too, some days. I was convinced that she kept her hair cut short in a natural as a direct slap at me as a stylist. Like she would much rather go to a barber shop than have her own sister do her hair.

Now her partner, Ahmad Johansen, was another story. I had long ago decided that Ahmad was my soul mate, though he has been a bit slower at coming to that realization. Ahmad means “greatly praised” in Arabic, and Detective Johansen had a lot to be praised for. Six-foot-two, chiseled physique with café au lait skin, gray eyes, and a voice that rivaled Barry White, the man was the epitome of fine but carried himself in such a way that you knew he had no idea why women had a tendency to stop and stare at him when he walked by. He was as easygoing as my sister was stiff. They made quite a team.

After a few minutes, the office door opened and my sister and Ahmad came out. “U”, as I liked to call her to remind her that someone hadn’t forgotten where she came from, motioned to a uniformed officer further up the hallway. He looked all of twenty years old and scrambled to do my sister’s bidding.

“We are going to transport the witness to the station to take a formal statement,” she told the cadet. “Until then, make sure no one talks to her.”

She looked right at me when she said that, then added: “Jordan, where can we chat?”

We walked down the corridor into another meeting space, this one small, and probably more importantly to my sister, unoccupied. U motioned for me to sit in one of the chairs, but I chose to lean against the meeting table instead. No way was she going to make me feel like a suspect by towering over me during questioning.

“So,” my sister said, “what do you know?”

“I know that Miles is laying dead in a box full of hair. Other than that, you probably know more than I do.”

“I doubt that, Jordan. You looked like you were deep in conversation with the witness when we arrived.”

“Said witness has a name,” I replied, crossing my arms. “All Diana said was that she was going to get some hair for her boss and that’s when she found Miles. If I knew more, I’d tell you more.”

“Look, Jordy,” my sister said, reverting to my childhood nickname, “we may need your help with this one. You know all the players here and I suspect that this thing with Miles was personal. The uniforms say he still has his wallet on him so we can rule out robbery. And besides, it would be more likely that we would be dealing with a pickpocket with a crowd this size than a robber who would take the chance on knifing someone in a convention center filled with people. Plus, he was stabbed with a pair of scissors that had some type of ivory inlay on the handles. Very high-end. Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt Miles?”

“I hate to speak ill of the dead, but the man could be a jerk,” I said. “He was a massive womanizer to start. And seeing as how he had poached clientele from just about every stylist in B-more, anyone here could have had a motive.”

“That’s why we need you to help us narrow down the field,” my sister said. “You are always up in everybody’s business so I’m sure you know if he’s been having problems with anyone lately.”

“First of all, I dislike the implication that I am nosy,” I sniffed. “It’s not my fault that people confide in me. I just have an air of trustworthiness that I exude.”

Ahmad stifled a laugh. I tried to give him my best dirty look, but was distracted by his gorgeousness.

“It might help if I could see the body,” I said, tapping my cheek as if I was speculating about something.

“Jordan,” my sister practically yelled, “this is not an episode of Murder, She Wrote. I am not going to have you traipsing all over a murder scene!”

“Look,” I huffed, “do you want my help or not? I promise I won’t go running through the blood and mess up your precious forensics. Maybe I’ll recognize the murder weapon or see something that might be out of the ordinary. I helped plan this whole event, in case you have forgotten!”

“Jordan might have a point,” Ahmad piped in. “She can’t do much damage if we are right there with her.”

I looked at him with a combination of gratitude for recognizing the value of my insight and irritation for his insinuation that I needed to be baby-sat.

“Let’s go,” my sister said, turning quickly and practically barreling out of the room.

Downstairs had turned into a bit of a madhouse with police swarming the area and everyone craning to see what was happening. Some young women I recognized as His and Hairs employees were crying and comforting each other near the three booths that had been set up to showcase designs from the salon. My sister flashed her badge to clear a path for us and we stepped gingerly around the dividers that had been shielding Miles’s corpse from view.

I’d seen him looking better. His face had already taken on that ashen look of the dearly departed, and a small trickle of blood appeared to be coming out of the corner of his mouth. Or it could have been a strand of hair, as he was laying on a pack of “Ridiculously Red, Number 38.” A police photographer was snapping away, periodically pushing the bottom of his Baltimore City Police Department jacket to the side to avoid the zipper as he crawled around and laid flat to get multiple angles. Miles was on his stomach, head turned to the side, his hands on either side of his head, as if he had tripped and was trying to soften his fall.

Most of the plastic packets of hair had been cleared from on top of him and I could make out the black crocheted sweater he was wearing over a T-shirt, and the handle of the scissors was sticking out through one of the holes near his left shoulder blade. Those sweaters had been the bane of the planning committee’s existence because Miles insisted that the center be kept well air-conditioned so he wouldn’t swelter. Not much of a problem, except that it was unseasonably cool outside even for a Baltimore April and many of the models were running around wearing next to nothing other than tons of hair. Maybe, I thought, one of them wigged out and killed him. The old “I-murdered-because-my-brain-froze” defense. Johnnie Cochran, may he rest in peace, could have taken that on.

“See anything out of the ordinary?” Ahmad asked.

“Well, he’s dead all right.”

“Other than that, Columbo.”

“It’s hard to tell,” I said. “Maybe if I could get a little closer look.” There was something about Miles’s sweater that seemed off. Were those holes part of the design, or had they opened up in a struggle?

“Forget about it, Jordan,” Ahmad said. “I’m surprised your sister even let you get this close.”

That’s when I realized that U was no longer with us. I stepped around the divider and caught a glimpse of her through the crowd about ten feet away talking to C.P. Murray, hairdresser and drama king extraordinaire. No one knows what the initials C.P. are short for, but my theory is that it stands for “Chile, please” because that’s what I feel like saying every time he opens his mouth. Forty-five if he was a day, but he claimed he hadn’t crested thirty yet.

He gave himself away reminiscing about the old-style hairdos he used to craft. He had cornered me more than once during the weeks before the show to chat about his glory days, clutching his little two-ounce Chihuahua, Bouf (short for bouffant). “We really must figure out a way to get national coverage of the absolutely fabulous salons we have here. Baltimore is the place to go for the latest styles and no one seems to know it. Forget New York and L.A., honey. We set the trends when it comes to black hair! Was I not the first to do the asymmetrical cut with the deep finger waves and the glittery bangs? Tell me that wasn’t fierce!”

It did no good to explain to him that we were lucky enough to get any coverage for Hair Dynasty, and I had only managed to pull that off because I convinced the photographers that they would get colorful shots of creations like the “Domestic Goddess,” which entailed a model with a hairsculptured kitchen sink on her head complete with wet and wavy hair coming out of the “faucet” to simulate running water. And unless Oprah or Halle Berry started jetting to B-more to get their hair done, I doubted that the national media was going to pay much attention to us.

Although, now they would. Death by scissors, buried in hair Miles had a shot at the cover of his beloved Weekly World News

U raised her hand and made a come-here motion, but when I started that way she shook her head vigorously and mouthed “Ahmad.” I stepped around the divider again and tapped him on the shoulder. “She who must be obeyed beckons,” I said. But I was right behind him. My sister was out of her mind if she thought I wasn’t going to listen in on what C.P. had to say. Jennifer had spotted me tailing Ahmad and she caught up with me, linking her arm with mine.

“Yes, we argued, but we always argued,” C.P. was whining as Ahmad, Jennifer, and I strode over. “Ask anyone. He was very jealous of my business.” He motioned to the large black banner on the booth which contained the name of his salon, Isn’t She Lovely, in gold letters. “But I wouldn’t have killed the man.” He shifted his dog under his arm and held him like a purse while he looked to two of his employees who were doing hair at the booth for confirmation.

“We have information that you threatened Mr. Henry just a few hours ago,” U said calmly.

“Me?” C.P. asked incredulously. “Why in the world would I threaten Miles?”

“Remember, you said you would slit his throat if he kept coming over here stealing your hair spray,” piped up one of C.P.’s employees, a petite honey-colored woman with chunky fuschia highlights in her hair. C.P. shot her a venomous look over his shoulder.

“Figure of speech, Mona,” C.P. said, a little louder than necessary. “I am a nonviolent animal lover.” He patted Bouf for emphasis.

“We were also told that you changed clothes, Mr. Murray,” U further explained. “Now why would you do that?”

C.P. whipped around to face Mona. “You are deliberately trying to destroy me!” he screeched. “It’s because I wouldn’t give you last Friday off, isn’t it?”

“Calm down, Mr. Murray,” Ahmad intoned. “No one is accusing you of anything… yet.”

“Do you own a pair of ivory inlay scissors?” U asked, studying C.P.’s face closely.

“I do, and I can show them to you,” C.P. said quickly, walking over to his work station where he dug through his many supplies. “They were right here this morning. Mona! Did you steal my scissors? I swear, when this is over we are having a very long talk, you and I.”

At that moment, a uniformed officer with a name tag that read “A. Jenkins” escorted a visibly distraught Kylani over to where we were. “Detectives, this is the victim’s sister and she’s demanding to see the persons in charge of the investigation,” the officer said.

“Arrest this man!” Kylani screamed. “He killed my brother.”

C.P. paled and opened and shut his mouth so hard that I thought his teeth were going to shatter. He sputtered and managed to choke out, “I have no idea what she is talking about.”

“They argued this morning,” Kylani continued. She was actually wringing her hands, holding one fist tight inside the other. Given the length of her nails, it had to hurt, but she seemed too distraught to notice.

“I was standing right here when it happened. C.P. said Miles had stolen the last client he was ever going to take from him. He promised he would get even. I’ll never see my brother again!” she wailed, then collapsed against the police officer.

“Where’s the shirt you were wearing earlier, Mr. Murray?” my sister asked.

“I got some dye and perm on it so I asked my assistant to wash it with the last load of towels,” C.P. stammered. “She left an hour ago to go to the laundry. I swear to you, I would never hurt Miles. I was one of his mentors.”

“I think we should continue this discussion at the station,” U stated, all business.

“How could you, C.P.?” Kylani cried, as the officer propped her back up on her feet. “How could you stab my little brother with your special scissors after pretending all this time to be his friend?” She threw her hands up to her face and tilted backwards as if she were about to swoon again.

“U, wait,” I said. “Officer Jenkins, did you take Kylani to see her brother’s body?”

“No ma’am,” Jenkins replied. “The crime scene is still being processed.”

“Kylani,” I tried to boom in my most authoritative voice. “Give it up. Once the police review the security tapes, they will know that you killed Miles.”

Her head shot up and the tears magically disappeared. “Are you nuts?”

“The jig is up, girlfriend,” I said. “You stole C.P.’s scissors and stabbed your brother. Either you lured him to the storage area or he was already back there, but you shoved him in that box of hair and covered him up, probably because he was too heavy to drag someplace else and you couldn’t chance somebody seeing you.”

“Why would I do such a thing??” She was good at mock indignation, I’ll give her that. But then, the whole performance had been top-notch, undone by only one little detail.

“I have no idea,” I said confidently. “But I can assure you that the police will find evidence on his body that connects you to the murder. You messed up and left something behind.”

With that, I grabbed her right hand and held it up to her face.

She wrenched away from me and tried to run, but both Ahmad and the uniformed officer grabbed an arm and snatched her back. She rained down curses on me as they cuffed her and led her away. Jennifer gave me a high-five and C.P. reached out and hugged me, squeezing Bouf between us. He promptly yelped and nipped me. Bouf, not C.P.

“Well, little sister,” U smiled, “that was quite a bit of investigative work. How did you figure it out?”

“I got suspicious when she mentioned the scissors,” I said. “How did she know that? Even if someone had said he had been stabbed, she wouldn’t necessarily know that it had happened with a pair of scissors. But the clincher was her nails.”

“Her nails?” U questioned.

“Yeah. Two of her tips were broken off. She probably snagged them in Miles’s sweater dragging his body into that box of hair. I thought I saw something stuck in the crochet. Her nails were her calling card and there is no way she’d be at a hair show with them looking a hot mess like that.”

Jennifer started giggling, C.P. guffawed, and U rolled her eyes. Bouf even gave a high-pitched bark of amusement.

“Well,” U said, “good thing you knew about the tape from the security cameras.”

“Umm, yeah,” I grinned sheepishly. “If that even exists. I was bluffing. It always works on the TV shows.”

My sister actually cracked a smile and said, “Okay. But next time, find a show with better dialogue. ‘The jig is up, girlfriend’ was a bit much, even for you.”

Before I could respond, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to find Olive, my vice-chair for publicity, wringing her hands and looking distraught.

“Jordan, you’ve got to come,” she said in a rush. “We have, um, a situation.”

“A situation other than a murder?”

“Yeah,” she said. “See, I was being proactive and I thought we should do something to take folks’ minds off this mess, so I made an executive decision. I mean, I couldn’t find you and you are always saying, ‘Be empowered,’ so I thought, ‘WWJD. What would Jordan do?’ People are here to have a good time as well as network and show off their skills, and I started thinking, We need to refocus here…”

“Olive.” I used all my will not to scream at her. “Please get to the point.”

“Well,” she said, “I sent out the specialty hair models.”

“So?” I actually thought it was a good idea. The local-themed ’dos included an Oriole and a black-eyed Susan. “It’s the crab,” she sighed.

“It went haywire.”

Someone had come up with the beyond-obvious idea to construct a huge steamed crab, orange-red as if it had just emerged from the pot. The “Crustacean Creation” was to be the pièce de résistance of all the hair art. I had vetoed the Old Bay seasoning glitter on the grounds that it would create a mess, but gave in on the rigging that allowed the small, black beady eyes and long claws to move. The stylist, who had majored in mechanical engineering before dropping out of Morgan State University, was to follow at a discreet distance and work the contraption using a wireless remote.

“Define haywire,” I said, feeling a massive headache starting behind my eyes.

“Just come see,” Olive said, as she grabbed my upper arm and led me forward.

Yet another crowd had gathered, this time around local newspaper photographer Sal Dorsey, one of the old-timers. Sal was tilted forward as if he were about to take a header into the floor, and his camera swung like a pendulum from his neck. His bald patch had reddened until it was almost the same color as the hair crab that had him in its grip. Yes, the only thing keeping Sal from sprawling face-forward was a giant claw, which was giving him a crustacean wedgie. Even as the stylist pushed multiple buttons, trying to loosen the hair crab’s grip, the model continued to smile robotically at Sal’s colleagues, who were busy snapping photos even as they shook with laughter.

What can I say? The only thing more hard-shelled than the local delicacy are the locals themselves. And while I was sorry for Sal, I realized these photos would get far more play than the murder, just another Baltimore domestic, already fading in public memory with Kylani’s arrest.

Poor Miles-upstaged by a crab.

ODE TO THE O’S BY CHARLIE STELLA

Memorial Stadium

A light drizzle had just started to fall when the two men moved their conversation from the waterside tiki bar to an inside corner table still overlooking the Inner Harbor. James “Jilly” Cuomo brushed his thin gray hair back with both hands after sitting with his back to the windows. Tommy “Red” Dalton, a tall man with broad shoulders, positioned his chair so he could see the boats docked on the far side of the marina.

A short waitress with a big chest and a long ponytail had followed them with their drinks. “Anisette?” she asked.

Jilly pointed to a spot on the table directly in front of him. The waitress set a napkin down first, then his drink. She smiled at Tommy before placing his glass of water on a napkin in front of him.

“I guess this is yours,” she said.

Tommy winked at her.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Not right now,” Jilly told her.

She was still looking at Tommy.

“No thanks,” he said.

Jilly glanced at her ass when she left. “Nice rack, but she could use a little more meat, you ask me,” he said. He turned to Tommy and the conversation that had been interrupted by the rain. “He’s got you in the car, yeah, and…?”

Tommy said, “I says to him, I says, if you’re thinking she’s out there, she pro’bly is. There’s nothin not gut-check about it, what we’re talkin. A guy knows, same as a broad, it comes to that. You just do. Junior says to me, he says, ‘I’m pretty sure something is going on.’”

Jilly was mid-yawn. “The moron,” he tried to say.

“This is that day couple weeks after I first meet him at the party down here, this place. I figure he figures I’m around his age and all, he can talk to me, it won’t go nowheres. This is before I get sent for by the old man, of course, which, I gotta tell you, I first get that call, I’m thinking, uh-oh, the fuck I do to deserve this? Sometimes you get sent for, you get dead.”

Jilly nodded. “It’s a smart assumption. A guy should be prepared for whatever, especially these days.”

Tommy was enthusiastic. “Right, exactly, but at the time I get the call, I’m not thinking straight enough to figure that out. I’m just thinking I fucked up and now I gotta pay for it. Maybe get whacked for whatever the fuck and I got no clue what it is, it might be. Makes it even tougher to think, that happens, you get sent for out the blue like that.”

Jilly sipped at his anisette. “Yeah, so… back to Junior.”

Tommy said, “Right, so, Junior has me there in that old tank he drives, the Lincoln, he turns to me, he says, ‘Look at my eyes.’ I do and they’re all red, bloodshot from crying it looks like, or he didn’t sleep the last hundred years, maybe he’s a vampire or somethin. Anyway, I see they’re red and he says, right out there, just like this, ‘I think my wife is fucking around.’”

Jilly frowned.

“Exactly,” Tommy said. “I mean, all due respect, it’s a tough thing, you find your wife is out there and all, but Jesus Christ, Junior, grow a pair.”

“The kid is weak,” Jilly said. “He’s always been weak.”

“Yeah, but what the fuck am I doin there listenin to it? I mean, Jilly, I know the guy less than two, three weeks, he picks my shoulder to cry on?”

“What he say?”

“This and that, her routine the last couple weeks since she got some promotion at work, whatever. Makin excuses, findin reasons, I don’t know. He’s losin sleep, he don’t wanna confront her, he don’t know for sure. He’s all fucked up in the head, which I know for fact because I’m sitting there listenin to it. It’s pathetic is what it is. Not for nothin, he’s my kid, I gotta think about takin him out the Gunpowder River there and lose him.”

“I’m sure it’s crossed the old man’s mind more’n a couple times,” Jilly said, “except it’s his son.”

“What I figure, yeah,” Tommy said. He stopped to drink most of the water in his glass.

Jilly noticed the waitress watching Tommy from across the room. He motioned toward her with his head. “I think you got a fan.”

Tommy glanced her way and smiled. “She isn’t half bad,” he said, “except it’s a headache I don’t need right now. The wife says to me the other week, she says, ‘Don’t forget our anniversary is coming.’ That turned out to be a week ago and of course I forgot. Now I’m paying for it in spades. Every night I go out I’m not dragging one of the kids, I gotta hear it full throttle on the way out and all over again when I get back.”

Jilly motioned at the glass. “Sure you don’t want something stronger?”

Tommy waved it off. “Positive,” he said. “I never drink on a job. Never ever.”

“You’re not working now,” Jilly said. “Not yet.”

“Irregardless.”

Jilly downed his anisette. He spit a coffee bean into his open palm and then slapped the empty shot glass on the table. “Better you’n me,” he said. “Not drinkin, I mean.”

“Anyway,” Tommy continued, “Junior tells me this sob story about his wife and what he thinks is going on and how he feels he can trust me because he asked around and so on. And this is all confidential, what he says to me. He says it’s to stay between us, me and him, but that his father is aware of the situation too. Which now I know, or why’m I here tonight with you?”

Jilly yawned again before looking at his watch. “Be grateful there’s an end to this nightmare,” he said, “this New York prick ever gets here.”

Tommy gathered his thoughts. “I says to him, I says, what about her routine? She buy new clothes? She getting her hair done different? She wearing new shoes? You know, obvious shit. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘come to think of it.’”

Jilly smirked. “Dumb cocksucker.”

“Please, you don’t know the half of it,” Tommy said. “No wonder, what I’m thinking, his wife is out there. The fuck can blame her, she’s dealing with that mess every end of the day.”

“So, what, he sent you out looking?”

Tommy nodded. “Which is another thing I didn’t appreciate,” Tommy said. “Sittin around waitin on a guy, a job, whatever, is one thing. Followin some broad around, see who she’s bangin in her spare time, that I can live without. Felt too much like the law, spying like that. It’s lowlife work. Bad enough I gotta do it, but then I gotta give him a call, Junior, and meet him at the diner over West Mulberry off Forty, give him a report. Knowin she’s out there, just knowin it, wasn’t enough. This fuckin loser wants details.”

Jilly made a face. “Details?”

Tommy threw up his hands. “I says to him, I says, ‘I’m not there in the room with them, Junior. How do I know what they’re doin inside?’ What most people do, they meet at some motel on the sly, middle of the fuckin afternoon, they’re supposed to be at work. Not good enough. The jerkoff wants to know were they holdin hands before they went in. Did they kiss? Were they touchy-feely?”

“Asshole,” Jilly said.

“I couldn’t make things up, but I didn’t watch that close, tell you the truth, what they did before and after they screwed each other’s socks off. I said I didn’t know, but they seemed chummy.”

“He get a rise out of that?”

“If his eyes turn to a pool of water count for anything, yeah, I guess.”

Jilly shook his head. “This is too familiar, tell you the truth, although Senior didn’t sit around take it up the ass, I’ll tell you that much.”

Tommy seemed surprised. “The old man, the boss?”

“Was ’69, the year New York fucked us from both ends, the Jets over the Colts in the Super Bowl there, and then the Mets over the O’s in the series. You pro’ly weren’t born yet.”

“Don’t think I was. I was like, six, that other thing happened, midnight run, the Mayflower vans, whatever.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Jilly said, “we all earned. Anybody taking action made out that year, but then there’s that other thing, the pride issue. Bitter fucking pill to swallow, losing to New York twice the same year. Made Angelo crazy, that’s for sure.”

“What happened?”

Jilly glanced around the restaurant before he leaned forward to whisper. “Senior gets wind his old lady is out there with some guy with the Erioles,” he said. “Had me and Eddie Bats, which was the muscle end of his crew back then, had us thinking it was one of the team we was gonna have to whack. This is the same night the O’s take game one down Memorial. Cuellar beat Seaver, goes the distance on a six hitter. Buford nails Seaver first inning, home run. Great fucking game.”

Jilly sat back to savor the memory. He saw Tommy was waiting for more, and then leaned forward again. “Anyway,” he continued, “Angelo gets wind it’s somebody with the Erioles organization with his wife, but there’s only two of us he comes to this with. He wants it dealt with quiet, no muss, no fuss, but serious, no bullshit either.”

“Was he runnin his own crew back then?”

“Yeah and no,” Jilly said. “We were his guys, me and Eddie Bats. Like I said, his muscle, but we weren’t a formal crew. Things was different back then. Why the books never reopened here. Baltimore fell outta the loop when it came to families and so on, what they got there in New York.”

“I hope it was better’n it is today,” Tommy commented.

“Today you got rats riding shotgun,” Jilly said. “Makes it hard to get serious about taking a blood oath, the guy giving it is wearing a wire. Another New York phenomenon, the bosses rat now.”

“Yeah, well, makes it hard to earn sometimes, what we got down here,” Tommy said. “There’s strength in numbers.”

Jilly said, “Weakness, too, but you’re young yet, you’ll learn. More guys on a job, more you got to worry about. I did two bids at Maryland Pen before it become a transition center, whatever the fuck that means, because a couple too many guys on a job couldn’t hold their water.”

Tommy nodded.

“Just sit tight about earning,” Jilly said. “You’ll get your play soon enough. You’re with tight people now.”

Tommy said, “So what happened, the old man?”

Jilly leaned forward again. “Angelo was married a few years,” he whispered. “Maria was what, I don’t know, twenny-five, maybe? Twenny-six? Anyway, Angelo sends me and Eddie to the stadium see what’s what after the game. He had some guy from the dock workers’ union there feeding him tickets down to the field boxes he hands off to Maria. She was a big fan. Where he met her originally, an Erioles game.”

“No shit?”

“I shit you not.” Jilly stopped to push his empty shot glass closer to the edge of the table for the waitress. “She takes her eyes off’a you a minute, maybe she sees I’m dry over here.”

Tommy turned to the waitress and pointed at Jilly’s empty glass. She started over.

“Anyway, winds up Maria likes them young,” Jilly continued. “She married Angelo, and he was up there in age compared to her, but the kid she’s with out the stadium lot there a couple times a week, one of the kids hawking the beers and soda and whatnot, working the stands there, he’s gotta be twenny-one, I guess, he was selling the beer, but that’s a lot younger than she is, or Angelo was. Bottom line, it’s not Boog Powell, Brooks Robinson, or Jim fucking Palmer she’s banging. It’s some kid hawking shit in the stands. The time Angelo musta been thirty-five or so. Imagine what he felt like, his wife is out banging some kid sells hot dogs, pro’ly in the backseat of his father’s car.”

“Jesus Christ, was this, like, common knowledge?” Tommy asked.

Jilly stopped and waited for the waitress to replace his drink with a fresh one. She smiled at Tommy again. He returned the flirting with a wink before she left them alone.

“Yeah and no,” said Jilly. “I mean, a few more people than us knew about it, me and Eddie Bats. Some might’ve seen them at the game there, or afterward, whatever. Somebody brought it to Angelo’s attention the first place, where to look for the guy and all. She was hanging around the stadium, getting fucked in the car for Christ sakes. She didn’t try hard enough to hide it, you ask me. And it was like twice a fucking week there, whenever they were home, the O’s.”

Tommy was shaking his head in disbelief.

“I mean, Eddie wound up dead a few years later, so whoever he told must’ve known after the fact, but don’t forget now, this was more’n thirty years ago.” He paused to sip at his drink again. “Anyway, long horror story short, the Mets take game two, then three and four, and Angelo, while he’s making it hand over fist on the local book, everybody and their mother was all over the O’s, huge favorites they were going into the series that year, two twenny-game winners, that lineup and all, like I said, we all killed on that series, anybody taking action.”

“What my old man said,” Tommy interjected. “Big money year that was, the sports book.”

“Right,” Jilly said. “But it was Angelo’s pride killed a guy. After the Colts lost to the Jets, Angelo hated anything New York. Anything had to do with the place. Even though we made on that game, too, all the local money was laying the eighteen points, some guys were giving nineteen, even with the money we made off the Super Bowl there, it was after the Mets upset the O’s he went completely crazy. He tells me and Eddie after the O’s drop game four, if they lose game five, which they did, we was going back to the stadium there with the kid his wife was banging and toss him off the roof. ‘Let the cocksucker see if he can fly like an Oriole,’ he tells us.”

Tommy sat up straight. “Holy shit,” he said. “That was you?”

Jilly put a finger to his lips. “Easy does it,” he said. “No need to announce it here.”

“Holy shit,” repeated Tommy, a little lower this time. “Holy fuckin shit, Jilly. I remember my old man talkin about that one day. He was explainin to me the worst thing he ever witnessed, the Erioles losing to the Mets like that. He said some guy was so depressed, some kid worked the stadium there, he went up the roof and jumped.”

“It’s better that’s what people think,” Jilly said.

Tommy chuckled. “I wished the old man was still alive. I could straighten him out on that, him and his fuckin Erioles.”

Jilly took offense. “What, you got something against the O’s?”

“I couldn’t care less,” said Tommy, waving the question off. “Fuckin faggots making telephone-number salaries to play games. Please. I like to shake them down is what I’d like to do. I put it to a guy a couple years ago, about shakin down some of those clowns, see how tough they are with a gun in their mouths, see if they wanna part with some of that cash they make for jerkin off half speed around the bases, but he says it’d bring federal attention unless we went after the home team guys lived in Baltimore, and he wasn’t about to shake down a couple of home team guys.”

Jilly was expressionless.

Tommy said, “You can relax, Jilly, I didn’t do it. I never bothered. Need a crew to get away with somethin like that, at least a partner with big enough balls.”

“Yeah, well, just pick another city, you’re gonna do something crazy like that. ’Less you wanna make a couple hundred thousand enemies.”

“It was an idea. Nothin ever come of it.”

Jilly was still staring. Tommy opened his hands and said, “What, I burn a picture of the Pope?”

Jilly rubbed his face.

“What happened afterwards?” Tommy asked. “The kid dove off the cliffs there? Angelo is still married, no?”

“Different broad,” Jilly said. “Different Maria, come to think of it. The original was let go shortly thereafter, the difference between the father and son, you ask me. One has balls, speaking of them. The other don’t.”

Tommy was confused. “Let go how? What, his old lady isn’t the same one back then?”

“He gave her walking papers and not a fucking dime to go with them,” Jilly said. “I get the call to drop her off the Travel Plaza, give her the scratch for a bus ticket, like the Peter fucking Pan, one fucking way, and that’s what I did. She had two bags with her, suitcases, that was it. Her eyes were red like what you says Junior looked like.”

Tommy was incredulous. “This was Junior’s mother? Are you shittin me?”

“I shit you not one more time,” Jilly said. “It was indeed Junior’s mother. Didn’t make a difference. She made Angelo look bad there, embarrassed him, he took care of things. How this came about tonight, us waiting here. The old man stepping in, or you’d be dealing with Junior the next ten years with this bullshit, like some fucking shrink pro’ly. Why we’re here waiting on this New York guy now, the old man.”

“So the old man’s wife now, she’s a Maria too, but not the original, not Junior’s mother,” Tommy said.

“You’re quicker’n you look,” Jilly said.

“Okay, I get that, but there’s another thing I don’t get,” Tommy said. “Why we’re farmin it out the first place. I mean, what the fuck, we can get a couple guys down the docks put on a couple masks, go to work, shove’m in a container there, send it across the ocean someplace.”

“Angelo’s got his reasons,” Jilly said. “The man knows what he’s doing, although I don’t like the idea reaching out to New York either, tell you the truth.”

Tommy shrugged.

“Who knows, maybe he’s thinkin ahead,” Jilly said. “Let it go. Angelo’s no dope.”

“You know the guy, the one from New York?”

“Nope,” said Jilly, looking away then. “I don’t like he’s from there is all. Shit fuckin city it is.” He stopped to sip his drink again. He set it down and remembered something. He pointed at Tommy. “We’re sure they’re down the Tidewater Marina, ’Napolis there, right, the two of them?”

“Where they been the last two nights,” Tommy said. “Since Junior is out to Vegas for some convention.” He pulled a set of Polaroid pictures from his pants pocket and showed Jilly the top one, the back of a cabin cruiser. The Tina Marie was clear across the rear of the boat.

“Guy’s got a pair,” Tommy said, “I give him that much. Names the boat after his wife and fucks his girlfriends on it.”

“Not after tonight he don’t,” Jilly said. He took the pictures and flipped through them quickly. He stopped to stare at one of a topless woman being groped on the deck of the Tina Marie. He said, “Fucking twat, look at her.”

Jilly handed the pictures to Tommy. “Make sure you lose those later.”

“Will do,” said Tommy, stashing them. He sat back in his chair and stretched through a yawn. “I never much minded it, though, New York,” he said after the yawn. “It’s got a lot to be said for it, all the things you can do there anytime the night.”

“It’s a pisshole,” Jilly said. “And it’s got them fucking teams I hate.”

“What, the sports thing? You’re not serious.”

“As a fucking heart attack. I hate the place. They could flush it down the toilet all I care.”

“So, what, like you don’t care what happened there, nine-one-one? That didn’t bother you?”

Jilly pointed a finger. “That’s an entire other matter, what happened there. And it wasn’t just them, either. Pennsylvania got it too. And the capital. That was an act of war against the country, something completely different. I’m talking in general here. I hate the fucking place. I hate the city and both baseball teams play there. And don’t get me started on the Jets, those cocksuckers.”

Tommy shrugged again. “Okay, fair enough. I hear ya.”

“Shula starts Unitas, it’s a different game altogether,” Jilly ranted. “Maybe we don’t cover the spread, but there’s no way that faggot white-shoed cocksucker and his nylon commercials beats Johnny U. Wearing nylons, for Christ sakes, a football player.”

Tommy didn’t know what Jilly was referring to. He left it alone while the old man finished his fourth anisette.

“What time this guy supposed to get here?”

“Half an hour ago,” said Jilly, suddenly seething. He slapped the shot glass down loud enough for the waitress and several other people across the room to hear. He said, “Back when you were six, whatever, ’84 it was, I think, Colts up and left middle of the night? That all started when they lost to the Jets back in ’69.”

Tommy tried to get him off the subject. “Who’s he with in New York, this guy we’re waitin on?”

Jilly wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. “Vignieri,” he said.

“Aren’t they having their own problems?”

“Who isn’t? Fucking deals they offer today, the government, guys are lining up like it’s the lotto to make a deal.”

Tommy noticed the rain coming down harder, but didn’t mention it. “Angelo tight with New York?”

“Used to be very tight with them,” Jilly said. “I suppose he still has something going there, or why he reached out inna first place?”

“The one coming here a made guy?”

The waitress was back with another anisette. She set it on the table and picked up Tommy’s glass to refill.

“Fuck knows,” Jilly said when the waitress was gone. “I’ll tell you a good one, though, you wanna hear a war story about a made guy come down here from New York to do a thing a few years ago.”

Tommy moved his chair in. He set his elbows on the table and smiled.

Jilly smiled too. “Guy comes here to do a job, take somebody out from Philly was hiding the Camden Yard. Was between the bosses, something do with the casinos in Atlantic City, back when they first went up. Anyway, the New York guy comes down, has dinner with a few of us, he don’t shut up breaking balls about the Jets, the Mets, and then I think it was the Knicks too, I’m not mistaken. They won it too that year, but not against the Bullets. Bullets were gone early, I think. Anyway, he’s going on and on about the greatest city inna world, a couple of us get an idea, we get up to piss and make a call over to Lombard Street, some crazy kids hanging out there. A few of them go back to the hotel this New York hot shot is staying and fuck up his car.”

Tommy laughed. “Now I know you’re shittin me.”

Jilly made the sign of the cross. “I shit you never,” he said. “It was kid stuff, don’t get me wrong. We’d all rather have put a couple in his big fat mouth, the cocksucker, but it turns out, the kids they sent to the garage there, the hotel garage the guy was staying, they slash the four tires plus the one in the trunk, they rip up the upholstery, all the leather there, and they carve Erioles and Colts all over the hood, the fenders. Shoved a golf ball or some shit in the gas tank too. The guy was fucking livid when he gets back from whatever he did. It was dumb shit, but we all pissed our pants the next few days after. Angelo heard the story and sent the kids fucked the car up some kegs of beer and a few of the older broads from one of the strip joints.”

“Who was the guy? You remember him?”

“Agro something. Somebody Agro, I think. He’s a big shot there now, I’m not mistaken. Skipper with the Vignieri crew.”

“That’s one I gotta remember,” Tommy said. “It’s a great way to fix a ball-breaker.”

Jilly looked up toward the front door and spotted a man wearing sunglasses. “Look at this mamaluke,” he whispered. “Middle of the fucking night, he’s the nightrider with those shades.”

Tommy turned to see who Jilly was talking about.

“He puts on a white baseball hat, he’s our guy, which he is, I can tell,” Jilly said.

The man in the sunglasses pulled a white baseball cap from his coat pocket. He took his time looking around the restaurant before putting it on.

“Cocksucker,” Jilly said.

“What?” Tommy said.

“Fucking Mets hat.”

Forty-five minutes and thirty-five miles later, which was all that separated Baltimore from Annapolis, Jilly sat in a stolen Taurus half a block from the Tidewater Marina while he waited for Tommy Red and the guy from New York to return from their visit to the Tina Marie. The rain was coming down hard. It had just started to thunder when Jilly spotted the white Mets hat.

He flashed the headlights to get their attention. The two men ran back to the car. Jilly unlocked the doors when they were close. Tommy sat in the back. The guy from New York sat up front.

“How’d it go?” Jilly asked.

“Done and done,” Tommy said, “the both of them.”

“Which means you have something for me now,” the guy from New York said.

Jilly said, “You can take that hat off now, it stopped raining soon’s you got in the car.”

The New York guy wasn’t amused. “Where’s my money?”

“Under the seat,” Jilly said.

The New York guy reached down under his seat at the same time Jilly pulled the Walther from between his legs. The mousetrap he had set under the car seat snapped shut and the New York guy barely gasped before the first of three bullets entered the left side of his skull.

Tommy froze on the backseat. Jilly had to yell to get his attention.

“Oh! You wanna sit here with him, be my guest, but I suggest you come with me before it stops raining, some fucking plebe on a midnight jog finds you.”

Tommy was nodding, but hadn’t moved.

“Grab the handle and pull,” Jilly told him. “Then the door’ll open, you can get the fuck out.”

Tommy finally realized what Jilly was saying and got out of the car. He circled the back end slowly until he saw Jilly was wiping down the Walther with a chamois cloth.

“We just leavin him here?” he asked.

Unless you wanna invite him home,” Jilly said. He started across the road toward a minivan parked at the curb. “Come on. That one’s ours. You’re driving.”

Tommy tried the door and found it unlocked. He got in behind the wheel and waited for Jilly to get settled.

“Key’s in the ignition,” Jilly said. “You gotta turn it to start the thing.”

“Right,” said Tommy, before he started the engine. He glanced back at the stolen car before he pulled away from the curb. “Where to?”

“Me, home,” Jilly said. “But first I gotta get my car. I was you, I go back the Inner Harbor and catch that waitress before she goes home with one’a the kitchen help.”

Tommy drove toward Interstate 97. He didn’t speak again until they were pulling off the exit where Jilly had parked his car near Route 50.

“What was this tonight?” Tommy asked.

“Something between bosses,” Jilly said. “Not that you need to know.”

“Right,” Tommy said.

Jilly lit a cigarette. “You okay?”

“Yeah, almost.”

“You did good.”

“I’d’ve done better, I knew what was comin.”

“You thought you were next, after the prick?”

“For a second, yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“Angelo likes you,” Jilly said. “Or he don’t send you.”

“Right.”

“But this is where it ends, make no mistake. What happened tonight, that’s the end of it. Should never come up in conversation, okay?”

“Got it. Course not.”

“Your old man wasn’t Irish, you might get straightened out, be what used to be a made guy.”

Tommy forced himself to shrug. “Ain’t what it used to be, like you said.”

“We’re not flashy down here, but we look after our own,” Jilly said. “Remember that.”

“Yeah, I will. I appreciate it. I do.”

Jilly pointed to the curb near the entrance to a parking lot.

Tommy pulled over. “Here good?”

“Yeah, I promised the old lady I get her bagels for the morning,” Jilly said. “She likes to toast them, she don’t need them fresh.”

Tommy put the transmission into park.

“One thing,” Jilly continued. “I didn’t like that scam shaking down the Erioles. The guy steered you straight, you don’t do that to the home team. If nothing else, learn that tonight, huh? You ever get a bug like that again, you wanna go after some baseball players, go pick on the Yankees in that shit city. They’re all fucking millionaires anyway, they can afford it.”

“Right,” Tommy said. “I’ll go to New York.”

Jilly was about to get out when he stopped. “Leave this thing a block from wherever you parked your car. At least a block. Wipe down whatever you remember you touched and take the keys with you. Grab a ferry ride in the morning and drop ’em in the bay.”

“Got it,” Tommy said.

Jilly opened the glove compartment. Tommy flinched.

“Easy, kid,” Jilly said. He pointed to a thick envelope. “There’s eight grand in there. Take it with you, unless you don’t need it.”

Tommy managed a smile through his nervousness.

“I’ll see you around,” Jilly said. He closed the door, knocked on the window twice, and was gone.

Tommy swallowed hard a few more times before he removed the envelope from the glove compartment, jammed it between his legs, and drove off. When he looked up at the rearview mirror, he noticed he was still smiling.

“Go O’s,” he said.

DON’T WALK IN FRONT OF ME BY SARAH WEINMAN

Pikesville

I wanted honest work and got it at Pern’s. A Jewish bookstore is a strange place to work for a guy like me, but I didn’t have much choice; a month of job hunting left me frustrated and ready to break things, and the ad stuck on the store’s main window was as close to salvation as I could get.

Though Sam-we were on a first-name basis from the beginning-was very particular about which items I could handle and which I couldn’t (“Anything with God’s name on it, leave it to me”), he left me to my own devices when it came to handling the cash register, stocking the books, and helping out customers. I hadn’t known much at all about Judaism, but I sure learned fast.

When I told my mother where I was working, she was understandably confused, but got over it quickly enough. I had a job, and a pretty decent one, and that was what mattered to her most.

“I worried about you, Danny, the whole time you were incarcerated “ She articulated each syllable, just as she did every time she used the word. Which was a lot, because my mother adored big words. It was her way of showing how much more educated she was than the rest of the mamas in Little Italy.

“Why’d you do that?” I said. “I was going to be okay. And I am, right?”

She touched my face. “Danny, I know that, but not then.” The silence afterwards was telling. I hadn’t written her much in the six and a half years I was gone. Only when she made the four-hundred-mile trek with my cousin Sal did I learn just how sick she was.

“I don’t want to think about then, Ma. It’s over, I made my mistakes and I don’t want to make them again. You have my word.”

Only a slight narrowing of her eyes gave away the hurt she still felt. She’d forgiven me a long time ago for shaming her, but wouldn’t forget. I still had to work on forgiving myself before I could truly let go.

The task was made easier with the day-to-day work. Some customers gave me an extra look, scouting my face for some recognition of familiar features, but most people weren’t nearly as blatant because they were too preoccupied with making sure they had the right item to buy. I followed Sam’s advice and was courteous to each and every person who walked in, from the prominent members of the Jewish community who liked to act the part to the giggly teens who “accidentally” broke things, to frazzled mothers of crying groups of children. It was an education.

A couple of months in, I was working alone on a Thursday morning. Sam couldn’t show up till later in the afternoon because his granddaughter was starring in her school play. He was so proud of her that even as he feigned reluctance over giving me full responsibility for the store, I knew he had confidence in me. I knew what I could and couldn’t handle or touch, what advice to give, and when to keep my mouth shut.

A wiry, bearded middle-aged man wearing a black hat with an upturned brim strode in with a purposeful gait. The purpose being me.

“You’re Danny Colangelo,” he stated in a surprisingly deep voice. Surprising because I’d expected a higher-pitched tone to match his skinny frame.

I never heard my name during working hours. Right from the start, Sam insisted I use a different moniker because “it’s easier for you, and easier for the customers.” I didn’t argue, so if anyone needed to know my name, I was David. I flinched at hearing my true name spoken.

It must have shown, because the man added, “Look, Sam Levin said you’d be alone at the store and it’d be the best time to speak to you. So don’t worry about it.”

Whenever anyone, except my mother, said, “Don’t worry about it,” my guard went up even more.

“Who are you?”

“My name later, my problem first, if you don’t mind.”

I folded my arms. “Actually, I do mind. I’d prefer it to be the other way around, uh-”

“Oh, all right then,” he said in an exasperated tone. “Chaim Brenner.”

I cut him off before he continued introducing himself. “I know who you are.”

His eyes widened. “Sam’s already told you about me?”

“Sam hasn’t told me a damn thing. If he was supposed to, then he’s probably acting like the cagey bastard we both know, but I doubt it. Anyway, even a goy like me knows you run Ner Israel.”

The principal of Baltimore’s prestigious school for young rabbis and scholars-in-training laughed. From the sound of it, he didn’t do so very often.

“All right, I think that’s enough male posturing from the both of us. I’m not really very good at it.” He chuckled softly a more genuine sound. “Probably why I chose my path and you chose yours.”

I wondered if he’d ever get to the point. “How can I help you, rabbi?” I emphasised his title.

He apologized, then began his story. “My daughter Beryl is to be married next month. She’s the second youngest in the family, and a lovely girl. Beautiful, really. If you saw her you’d understand what I’ve had to deal with.”

“Fighting off the boys with a stick?” I said only halfironically. Some of the yeshiva boys who showed up in the store talked about the same things any guy would. Namely, women. And not necessarily in the nicest of terms.

“You might say that,” said Rabbi Brenner tightly. “I should be happy she’ll be settled down soon.”

“But you aren’t.”

“Correct.” The door swung open and a young, heavily pregnant mother wheeled in a stroller containing two crying toddlers. The rabbi briefly stepped away from the register to say hello to her. She responded, looking at the rabbi with undisguised awe. Her stay was brief: She wanted candlesticks, I found them for her, and five minutes later, having paid a small fortune, she left.

The rabbi resumed his story. “On paper, my future son-in-law is very desirable. A decent young man, attends a yeshiva in Cleveland, went to Israel last year, and comes from a good family with yichus…” That word I didn’t know. He hesitated briefly before translating it as, “Breeding, good lineage. It’s hard to express in English, but this boy, he is perfectly acceptable. On paper. And he’s always been a gentleman with Beryl, and extremely respectful of me and my wife.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“In the last two or three weeks, I’ve heard… rumors. Usually I wouldn’t dare take unsubstantiated gossip, loshen hara, into account, but too many stories are repeating themselves from different sources. I’ve tried to warn Beryl but she won’t listen to a word I say. The girl believes that because she’s getting married, she won’t have to answer to me anymore!”

I can’t say I blamed the girl’s reasoning, but I said nothing and let the rabbi continue.

“Anyway, this boy, Moshe, everywhere he goes, trouble seems to follow. In Israel, the rabbi at the yeshiva he attended in Be’er Sheva couldn’t prove anything wrong, but any time a boy was beat up-and there were four incidents like this-he’d clam up as soon as Moshe reappeared. I called up the principal of the school in Cleveland, and after some serious questioning I received even more stories along the same lines, but even worse.” Rabbi Brenner trailed off, his face twisting in sudden pain.

He dropped his voice to a whisper even though no one else was in the store. “One boy had to go to the hospital, the beating was so bad. They hushed it up and made it clear Moshe would not be welcome to return once he’d finished the year. This happened three months before my daughter met him, and now it’s too late. She insists on marrying him and refuses to listen because all I have are bubbe-meises, ‘fairy tales,’ as she says.

“There’s no other way to put it: Moshe is a blot that must be rid of.”

I tried to process what the rabbi was saying, and it didn’t make any sense. Or at least, I didn’t want it to make sense in the way I thought he meant.

“Look, rabbi, you’re going to have to be a whole lot more specific. Because if you’re asking me to do what I think you are, then you’ve asked the wrong person.”

“Sam said I could count on you!”

“And I’m very glad my employer trusts me. But killing someone’s going way too far.”

The whisper was gone now. “That’s not what I meant!” Rabbi Brenner blushed. “My God, how could you think that of me? That I’d hire a… hit man, or whatever it’s called. Never mind that to do so would be illegal and immoral, but it’s a sin.”

“Not like it hasn’t happened before,” I pointed out. “Look at the guy in New Jersey.”

“He was not a real man or a good Jew. No, this is what I want: Follow Moshe around. Find out what he does. Find out if the rumors are true and do so before he marries my daughter.”

What Rabbi Brenner proposed shocked me more than if he’d asked me to kill his future son-in-law. “You want me to play private investigator?”

He smiled. “If that’s how you want to think of the task, then yes, I do. You already know how to blend in, else how would you have worked here so long?”

“Good point,” I acknowledged. Blending in was a talent I’d developed when I was little. I’d never looked stereotypically Italian, thanks to a smattering of Irish inherited from my maternal grandmother and some stray Scots ancestry on my father’s side. Instead, I grew up to look like a taller, stockier absentminded professor. Granted, one who could alter his perceived appearance depending on whether the situation was benign, neutral, or dangerous. I’d harnessed the ability even more when I’d taken up space in certain city corners to deal, and it was even more of an asset in prison.

I was good at fading into a crowd. And this, in a perverse way, sounded like a fun thing to do.

“I’ll do it, but are you sure Sam will let me take so much time off the job?”

“I’ve already procured a substitute: my youngest daughter, Sara.”

That was easy. “Fine, but I’ll warn you, I might be good at the chameleon business, but I’ve never followed anyone around before.”

“You could always find a mark, correct? Someone to whom you could sell your wares?”

Rabbi Brenner had an interesting way with words, and as soon as those were out of his mouth, he winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to remind you of your past.”

I shrugged it off. “That’s why it’s the past. I’m trying to move on, but I guess I’ll never leave it behind.”

We quickly negotiated payment and a next meeting, scheduled for a week before the wedding. I only foresaw one major problem.

“What if I don’t find anything out before the wedding takes place?”

The rabbi fixed me with a look that chilled me. “Then we’ll figure out something else.”

With Sam’s blessing, I spent the next three weeks tailing Moshe Braverman from Rabbi Brenner’s home to wherever the boy-because he wasn’t more than about twenty-one-went to. When I followed him to a religious neighborhood, I wore clothing similar to my Pern’s uniform. If it was an area I knew better, like Baltimore Highlands or the Northwest sections, I ditched the white dress shirt and glasses and opted for all black. And if I happened to be in a nicer part of town, closer to the downtown core, a quick trip to a restaurant bathroom to change into jeans usually did the trick.

Except all that clothes-switching didn’t amount to anything at all, because from what I could see, Moshe was clean. When he was with his bride-to-be, he was the epitome of the lovesick suitor, telling Beryl whatever she wanted to hear without ever breaching the social codes of where to touch and how much distance to keep. Because of their engagement, the couple was allowed to go around town unchaperoned. An irony, then: Maybe all Rabbi Brenner wanted was a glorified bodyguard for his daughter, the last vestige of an overprotective parental instinct.

When I asked my mother, whose illness was worsening, she seemed to agree.

“Some parents just don’t know how to let their children go, to be adults,” she declared between hacking coughs.

“Yeah, that’s why I’m still here with you, Ma,” I said, mopping her brow. I didn’t like that her fever kept spiking, but any time I brought up the idea of admitting her to the hospital, or even a nursing home, she refused.

“Danny, in spite of everything, you’re a good son. A good man. Even for this crazy, overbearing rabbi, you’ll do the best you can.”

“You really think so?”

“Of course I do. You think other people would have been so determined to look for a decent job when they left prison? Would they have spent weeks driving up and down the city looking at want ads, even though not a single person wanted to hire you?”

My mother’s words brought back the humiliation of those early weeks. I’d been back maybe a month, living in a basement apartment just outside of Pikesville. A part of town I would never have set foot in when I was younger, but the shabby, poorly lit one-bedroom I now called home belonged to my cousin Sal. Still, it was a step up from an 8’x 8’cell, so I didn’t care too much if the kitchen was tiny and there was barely room for a bed and a desk. I didn’t cook, and once I got a job I’d hardly be in the apartment at all.

But weeks of frustration took their toll. I didn’t want to lie, but telling the truth about my stint in prison made prospective employers antsy, leaving them to reject me outright or not even bothering with a response. After yet another ill-fated interview where my past came up, I wondered whether I was qualified for anything but selling small bags of powder to desperate customers on shitty street corners. All I had to do was call up a couple of old contacts and I’d be back in.

I didn’t want to do that. I couldn’t face my mother’s disappointment when she’d believed in me the entire time I was in prison, and I couldn’t quit on myself and take a step back when all I wanted to do was keep barreling forward. Something had to come along.

Thanks to Sam Levin, something had.

I leaned over and kissed my mother on the forehead. “You’re the best, Ma. I’ll come and see you soon.”

She shook her head and smiled ruefully. “Just do the best you can.”

Later that afternoon, I met Rabbi Brenner at a kosher Italian place further south along Reisterstown Road. I didn’t shy away from the truth: that I’d found absolutely nothing to prove Moshe Braverman was a bad match for Beryl.

Of course the rabbi didn’t like what I had to say. “And you checked? And double-checked? Did you interview people?”

Even though you didn’t ask me to, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. Your daughter’s friends gushed about Moshe, about what a nice boy he is. A couple of them seemed pretty jealous that she landed him and they didn’t. Some of the boys at Ner Israel-”

“You were on the premises? I never saw you.”

“It wasn’t too hard.” I let that sink in, because the school was known for its excellent security. “Going there didn’t yield me much in the way of information, though. Since he’s not a student there, most of the boys I spoke to could only offer impressions formed when he’d been in town. All of which were of the ‘decent young man’ variety.”

I took a spoonful of fettuccini-surprisingly good-and swallowed. “I’m sorry, rabbi, but I think you might have to accept Moshe as your son-in-law.”

Rabbi Brenner slumped in his chair, taking the news worse than I’d expected. But his eyes burned. It occurred to me once again that this man wielded considerable power within his community, and was regarded as a scion, a man of absolute respect. I had given him bad news and he didn’t like it. I didn’t like what this could mean for me.

He sat back up and held my gaze. “If there isn’t anything to be found before the wedding, there will be something found a the wedding.”

“Forgive me,” I said, “but is it possible you’re taking this just a bit too personally? Let her marry Moshe. He could turn out to be a good guy, after all-”

“That’s just not possible, Mr. Colangelo. And to think of him fathering my grandchildren,” his face turned sickly white, “is something I cannot even consider. No. You’ll go to the wedding and keep an eye on him there.”

“What?” It was definitely the strangest invitation I’d ever received.

“Just continue your decoy act, the one you’ve been doing all month. But this time you’ll have to wear what I’m wearing.” He signaled downward toward the fringes, the tzitzis

“Oh,” I said, understanding.

“After all, it’s not like you’ll be the only outsider there. Many times, we need to add men to the group in order to increase the number of dancers, to make it look more festive, freilach. You’ll just be another member of this group.”

He explained further: There was an agency responsible for finding able-bodied young men to add to the corps. Being Jewish was an option, not a requirement. In order to blend in, yet again, I’d have to register with this agency and use Rabbi Brenner’s name.

“They don’t ask questions, so it shouldn’t be a problem.” The rabbi gave me a meaningful look. “Nor should your task.”

“I can only try, rabbi.”

We finished our meals in silence. He picked up the check and stood first.

“Rabbi, one more thing,” I called.

He turned around.

“I hope you’re wrong.”

“And I hope I’m not,” he said, before leaving me to stare at the last strands of fettuccini on my plate.

Many families went for the pomp and circumstance that a hotel could provide, but not Rabbi Brenner. A synagogue was the only place for a wedding, he’d told me during our meeting the week before, and the Beth Jacob Synagogue on Park Heights Avenue was his choice. By the time I arrived, the place was packed. I hadn’t wanted to drive in my rented tux so I’d brought it with me, assuming I’d be able to find a bathroom to change in.

I wasn’t the only one with the same thought. A couple of other dancers from the agency I’d paid lip service to a few days earlier were also changing in the bathroom. A young boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen looked completely stunned at what he was seeing.

“Why are you changing into your suits?” he asked.

The other guys exchanged looks so I elected to answer the question. “We’re here to dance. You been to a wedding in this synagogue before?”

The boy shook his head. “Not here, usually at a hotel in Pikesville.”

“Well, anyway,” I continued, “they want people to be really excited for the bride and groom, but sometimes there aren’t enough invited guests. That’s why we’re brought in to help.”

“Wow, that’s really cool!”

When the boy finally took off, the other two ringers laughed.

“Couldn’t have explained it better,” said the first, a short, stocky bruiser with blond hair.

“Poor kid,” said the other, taller man. “He might be traumatized!”

“I hope not, and hell, someone had to.” I didn’t want to make small talk: I had work to do.

What work exactly, I still wasn’t sure. Moshe would be sequestered in a back room somewhere, being prepared by his family and friends. There was no way I could just walk in and make myself a part of the group. I thought about trying to watch him during the pre-wedding ceremony where he would “uncover” Beryl’s veil to show she was his real bride and not an impostor, but couldn’t find an opportunity. All I could do was watch, and wait for some signal, whatever it was.

But all that watching allowed me one extra pleasure: checking out the girls. This was a wedding, so they’d be dressed up more elaborately and formally than girls I hung out with. I didn’t know what was in the water, but Beryl was far from the only beautiful girl present. There were plenty, most of them obviously preening for the mostly male crowd.

The girls waited by the canopy where the bride and groom would be married. Unlike more ultra-Orthodox places, this synagogue’s seating was allowed to be mixed when the wedding, like this one, took place on a weekday, so everyone could mingle freely. As a girl passed a boy, she flashed her brightest smile and hoped it would be reciprocated in turn. I even benefited from a couple of those smiles, so I did the only proper thing: I smiled back.

“What is this, a meat market?” I asked Sam, who was sitting next to me. The rest of his family was on his other side.

“You might say that,” he replied, a faint Russian accent inflecting his voice. “But how else are young women supposed to meet men? Weddings are the best times to do so.”

I certainly knew that. When my best friend got married right before I was sent up, I’d become instant friends-well, if you call it that, though after several rounds of JD I certainly didn’t-with the maid of honor. Never saw her again after the next morning, but I’d always remember her, and her mouth, vividly.

The ceremony began with the cantor’s intonation and the room quieted down. I’d never been to a Jewish wedding before, and the rituals fascinated me. The prayers, which I couldn’t understand, had an ancient rhythm that appealed to the buried part of me still well-versed in Latin liturgy. Seeing Beryl circle her husband seven times amused me, and I winced when Moshe broke the glass, wondering if he’d hurt his foot.

When the crowd clapped, so did I. Beryl and Moshe made a beautiful couple, and the ceremony was elegant and dignified. The only thing marring the celebrations was Rabbi Brenner’s expression of absolute disappointment. He couldn’t know where I was sitting but it didn’t matter. I felt that expression on me and a responding pang of guilt. I hadn’t done my job, even though there was no job to do.

And then chaos broke out.

It lasted maybe a minute, two tops. First there was shouting, then there was screaming, and then there was a shot. When it was all over, a man was tackled to the ground, and another one-Moshe Braverman-lay dead under the chupa. Because of security issues, police were already at the synagogue, so an arrest was quickly made, but the story wouldn’t fully emerge until a few days later, when Sam and I attended the shiva We’d closed the shop up early in order to get there in mid-afternoon, when hardly anyone else was around. Even though Beryl had barely been a bride (there’d been some question as to whether the ceremony was truly valid, but a signed document was a signed document), she was an active mourner and wept over the loss of her husband.

Rabbi Brenner’s emotions were far more controlled. Even though he’d spent much energy, and a fair amount of money, on me to prove him right, he hadn’t expected the evidence to occur in such a dramatic fashion.

“I watched it unfold and couldn’t do anything,” he told us in hushed tones, so his wife and daughter, sitting on the other side of their living room, couldn’t hear. “I couldn’t stop that boy from confronting his tormentor, the one who’d put him in the hospital and crippled him for life-silencing him with such finality. I’m not sure how I’ll live with myself.”

It wasn’t appropriate, but I put my hand on his shoulder nonetheless. “You didn’t bring this upon your family, rabbi. You had no way of knowing.”

Rabbi Brenner looked at Sam, who knew the entire story after I’d filled him in the day after Moshe’s death, then me. His face was tear-stricken. “The ways of God are far more complex than you, or even I, can possibly understand. Perhaps you are right, Mr. Colangelo, and my actions or thoughts didn’t lead to a ruined wedding and a traumatized daughter and community. But I’ll never know.”

We left soon afterwards, saying a brief but awkward hello to a still-weeping Beryl and her more stoic mother.

“Do you need me around for the rest of the afternoon?” I asked Sam, as I drove him back to Pern’s.

“No, go ahead. I’ll get one of my older grandchildren to help me out. See you tomorrow, Danny.”

I stopped Sam before he left the car.

He turned around. “What is it?”

An old memory had come flooding back. “The way you said it reminded me of the first time you used that expression.”

Sam laughed. “The day I hired you, you mean. You were so stunned I knew who you were and took you on anyway.”

“No one else would take a chance on me.”

Sam said nothing. Another memory came back.

“There was something else you said then, something about not being surprised what develops as a result. I wish Rabbi Brenner could say the same.”

When Sam looked at me, I realized just how old he was. His spirit and old-world jokes carried him through during working hours, but without them, he was every inch the man who’d survived pogroms, two World Wars, and losses I had no idea about.

His voice was unnaturally grave. “Me too, Danny.”

I put my hand on his forearm. I hoped that by gripping it, I could convey the message I didn’t dare speak aloud: that I was proud to work for him and always would be.

After I dropped him off I took the interstate back to Little Italy. My mother was waiting, and she didn’t have much time. I wanted to spend as much of what was left of it with her.

I turned the key and walked upstairs to her bedroom. My cousin Sal had spent the morning there and his wife Theresa usually picked up whatever slack we couldn’t.

My mother was awake and beamed when she saw me enter the room. I knelt at her side and felt her forehead. Clammy, but not feverish. Not a bad sign.

“How are you doing, Ma?” I said softly.

“Better now that you’re here. How are you?”

She heard my story with a mixture of shock and reproach, the latter for getting mixed up in such a “crazy situation.”

“I’ve been in them before and I managed to get out of them. And this one didn’t even involve me going to prison.”

She held my gaze, the light in her eyes blazing. “Just promise me you’ll continue to stay out of them.”

I held her hand. “That I can promise,” I said, the man who always tempered promises with realistic expectations, because it wasn’t just what she wanted to hear: it was the truth.

My mother died three days later. It wasn’t easy, but I know she passed in peace and suffered a lot less by the end than beforehand. I still work at Pern’s, and I work hard and Sam trusts me with more tasks. I’m moving out of my basement apartment soon, and Sal’s set me up with a girl he knows, someone “from the neighborhood.” I haven’t seen Rabbi Brenner and don’t expect I will unless he comes into the shop to buy something. Sometimes I wonder how Beryl’s doing, but I try to keep from thinking of her.

It’s a start. Not much, perhaps, but in this town I’ll take whatever I can get.