Baltimore Noir

“Dennis,” angry and hate-filled, accusing him of all kinds of things, telling him not to call or write. Finally, I cleaned the house best I could, especially the bathroom, although I didn’t feel I had to be too conscientious. I was the contractor. Of course my fingerprints would be around. The last thing I did was grab that bottle of Chardonnay, took it home to Angeline, who liked it just fine, although she would have fainted if she knew what it cost.

Weeks later, when Deirdre was officially missing and increasingly presumed dead according to the articles I read in the Sunpapers, I sent a bill for the projects that I had done at cost, marked it “Third and Final Notice” in large red letters, as if I didn’t know what was going on. She was just an address to me, one of a half-dozen open accounts. Her parents paid it, even apologized for their daughter being so irresponsible, buying all this stuff she couldn’t afford. I told them I understood, having kids of my own, Joseph Jr. getting ready for college next year. I said I was so sorry for what had happened and that I hoped they found her soon. I do feel sorry for them. They can’t begin to cover the monthly payments on the place, so it’s headed toward foreclosure. The bank will make a nice profit, as long as the agents gloss over the reason for the sale; people don’t like a house with even the hint of a sordid history.

And I’m glad now that I put in the wine cellar. Makes it less likely that the new owner will want to dig out the basement. Which means there’s less chance of a collapse, and less likelihood that they’ll ever find that little bag of bones in the hearth.

FAT CHANCE BY ROBERT WARD

Old Northwood

Thomas Weeks, a screenwriter of some renown, had last been to his hometown, Baltimore, Maryland, two years ago, for his father’s burial. Now he was back again, to visit his ailing and cantankerous mother, Flo, a resident of Pinecrest Retirement Community. The visit had not gone well. His mother had once been a complex and interesting person but had in the past ten years committed herself to being a cartoon version of herself. Now she played a fat, bitter, and foul-mouthed woman, the kind of person who scuttled all friendships and lived in a sordid fantasy of her own violated innocence. As Weeks presented her with an assortment of new mystery novels he thought she might enjoy, she screamed obscenities at her only son, craning her neck out of her pink terry cloth bathrobe, like a puffed-up cobra on Animal Planet.

“Don’t try to bribe me with your shitass books,” she hissed. “You left me here to die while you went out ’ere… to Hollywood, sucking up to all the producers and them other whores.”

For his part, Weeks said nothing. Armed with years of psychotherapy, and the latest SSRIs, he merely gave her a weak smile and laid the books on the edge of a table, which held her collection of porcelain cats.

His mother stared at him through her small darting eyes and shook her head as she launched into her next solilo-quy.

“Yeah, you think I don’t know what’s up, but I do, Mister Hollywood. You come back when I’m half-dead to appease your conscience. And to keep yourself in line for my money when I’m gone. Well, buddy boy, I have amassed over $400,000, but you might not get a cent of it. Yeah, you think you can lord it over me alla time and then show up and do your Prince Charming routine for a couple of days and I’ll forgive you for leaving me here to die. Well, you just might have another thing coming, mister!”

There was a voice inside of Weeks that screamed, “Fuck you, you horrible old bitch!” but he managed to put it down. His shrink, Dr. Jerry Leamer, had drilled him in healthy avoidance tactics.

“Don’t let her get to you,” tan and cool Doc Jerry said. “Take her to public places, movies, restaurants, where she can’t open up on you.”

“Would you like to go to the movies, Mother?” Weeks asked. He thought for a second that his voice sounded remarkably similar to Tony Perkins’s in Psycho

She looked at him and made an animal sound of disgust-Errrrahhhhgh-but then nodded her head. “Yeah, all right. Anything to get the fuck out of here.”

Though it was far from fun, Weeks silently congratulated himself on managing his mother’s terrifying mood swings. Maybe he was even getting good at this coming-home stuff. Once he had helped her into his rented car, he popped another half a Paxil, and by the time they had arrived at the White Marsh Mall his head was as pleasantly empty as a Kenny G. solo.

The movie was a Richard Gere vehicle called Shall We Dance? Gere pranced through it, romancing Jennifer Lopez, blinking his eyes to convey emotional growth. Flo loved it. Her furious face turned soft and her wrinkles smoothed out. Watching her in the dark, Weeks suddenly felt a secret childish love for her. He impulsively wished he could chuck his Hollywood career and move home. After all, some of what she’d said was true… he had turned his back on his homeys and gone for the brass ring, and many of the producers and actors he knew in Los Angeles blowhards and frauds. Maybe he could buy a small house here and come back more often, help her to calm down. That was what a good son should do, he thought, staring at Gere’s perfect hair. Then, only seconds later, he ripped the notion from his mind. What the fuck was he thinking? She was insane, and the old hardassed town would crush him, as it had crushed the hopes of most of his boyhood pals.

Halfway through the insipid movie, Weeks felt a wave of nausea overtake him. The smell of burned popcorn, the stale air in the theater, his mother’s cheap drugstore perfume… all conspired to turn his stomach, and a flash of bile came up in the back of his throat. Christ, he thought, Baltimore was a crab cake filled with poison.

He wasn’t used to so many emotions anymore. In Los Angeles he faked his way through both meetings and friendships, pretending to have passion for things he had no interest in, pretending to be intimate with people he barely knew. The City of Angels was famously superficial, of course, but there was charm to living without the baggage of tortured involvements. Indeed, coming back to his hometown, with its solid brick rowhouses and old- school loyalties, made Weeks feel that the weight of history had pinned him to the mat, like a dead insect.

He slid by his mother in the row and headed out to the men’s room, his head awash in psychotropic drugs and sentiment, his insides tied up in an old familiar guilt. He walked down the wide hallway and staggered into the bathroom, suddenly feeling faint.

As he stood in front of the urinal taking a piss, he saw visions of himself at Orioles games, rooting for the Ravens, maybe playing cocktail piano in some little bar. This was his hometown, after all, and though he had run from it like a man escaping the death house, he had never quite forgotten it. Never forgotten the neighborhoods where people actually knew each other, going to Thanksgiving dinner with your grandparents on both sides of the family, loving all of them. And the friendships, the fierceness of them, the loyalty and dearness of old friends, came storming back to him.

While he pissed, he lay his head against the cool tile wall and felt a great mass of confusion swing through him.

“Holy shit,” said a rough voice behind him.

Weeks zipped up his pants and turned around. There, standing and smiling at him, was none other than Tyler Edwards, a guy he’d grown up with thirty years ago. A sandyhaired, freckle-faced kid, Tyler had been a minor devil in Tom’s personal history. They’d both grown up in rough old Govans, gone all through school together. Tyler was a brilliant but maniacal child… a boy who once broke off every aerial on every car as they walked ten blocks from their homes to the Guilford Bowling Alley.

In the ’70s Tyler had become a serious drug dealer for a while, then a golf pro at the Maryland Country Club. Sometime in the ’80s Tyler had gone to prison down the Cut at Jessups. Word came back that he had killed a man in self-defense down there but bribed his way out of being prosecuted for it. Weeks tended to believe the story. If anybody could get away with murder, it was charming, demented Tyler.

“Tommy Weeks,” Tyler said. “The kid who conquered Hollywood.”

“Hey Ty,” Weeks said. Though he had always felt a mixture of excitement and dread around Tyler, he now felt a rush of affection for the sick old hustler.

Tyler’s left eyebrow moved up and down like a puppet’s, and his smile revealed a map of wrinkles on his face. But even so there was the same impish mischief in his large, buggy eyes, a promise of malevolent fun.