Baltimore Noir (4 page)

When he’d been a student at Calvert College, Tom rented an apartment on Thames Street, right across from the pier on which he’d once been in Sea Scouts. Back then, he thought, as he parked his car on Aliceanna Street, Fell’s Point had symbolized freedom, sex, drugs (black hashish right off the ship and carried in a seaman’s trunk right into his apartment), and an endless party. Even the names of the bars had seemed so quaint and cool. Besides Bertha’s, there was The Horse You Came in On, and The Admiral’s Cup, and The Brass Monkey … The cobblestone streets, the arty girls from Maryland Institute, the student filmmakers, the folksingers, the occasional Goucher Girl in rebellion against her rich parents … God, it had been great back then … a place where every day seemed to have an unlimited possibility for surprise and romance.

Now, however, as Weeks walked the few blocks toward the bar, he was stunned by how small and seedy everything appeared. The ramshackle little bars with their neon lights looked tawdry and trashy. Dead End Ville. Drunken students wandered from bar to bar looking for girls and drugs, just as Weeks himself had years ago—but now, to his jaundiced eye, they seemed hapless and lame.

He walked by a man sitting in the gutter with a torn shirt and a bloody nose. Behind him a woman screamed, “If you weren’t such a pussy you’d go back in ’ere and kick his ass, Terry!” The beat man looked up wearily and said, “Fuck you, babe. Don’t try and promote that Who Struck John shit wif me.” Weeks looked down at the guy and realized he only in his early twenties. He felt that he could already see the downward trajectory of the boy’s life … a few years of stumbling about in Fell’s Point, perhaps pretending to be some kind of artist, then either jail, addiction, or worse.

That’s what had happened to most of his old pals. So many of them gone the way of drugs, like Mike who died from a hot shot in The Bottom, and Brad who had been killed by a head-on collision while driving on pills down to Ocean City.

It had been a mistake to come back here, Weeks thought. What could he possibly find but sadness? The old story of the middle-aged man who tries in vain to find the lost spirit of his youth in a place that’s forever changed. It was pathetic, ridiculous. What he should do is just turn around now, go back to his car, and forget this absurd quest. Head back out the 95 and dive into the safety of his king-sized bed at the Quality Inn. That’s exactly what he should do.

And yet, he found himself opening the thick wooden door at Bertha’s and going inside, looking for something he knew he could never find, but drawn on in spite of that. Or perhaps because of it. Weeks had always had a weakness for lost causes.

Ty sat at the bar drinking Wild Turkey and a pint of amber beer back. He wore a white scarf and a camel’s hair coat. He looked, Tommy thought, a little like Richard Widmark in
Kiss of Death.

As Weeks sat down, Ty put his bony arm around his shoulders and smiled. “I’m glad you made it, Tommy. I thought you might blow me off.”

“No way,” Weeks said. “But I can’t stay too long. Gotta fly out tomorrow.”

“Whoa,” Ty said. “Got a big meeting in Hollyweird?”

“No, nothing like that. But I do have a couple of dead-lines.”

“Good old Tommy,” Ty said. “You always were an ace student. First kid in the class with his hand up.”

Weeks wanted to protest that this wasn’t so. He hated being thought of as a good little academic. After all, he was as much a hipster as any of them, wasn’t he? But perhaps it wasn’t true. Perhaps he’d only given the appearance of being a rebel, while being careful not to burn too many bridges. The thought that he was playacting a badass used to torture him as a kid. He suddenly hated Ty for reminding him of his youthful cowardice, but his old friend was smiling at him with what seemed like real affection.

“What are you drinking?” Ty asked.

“Jack Daniel’s,” Tommy said. In Los Angeles these days he mostly drank juices or fizzy water. But here in Charm City a man still had to drink hard whiskey.

“Jack it is,” Ty said. “You look good for your age, Tommy. California must agree with you.”

“It’s all right. I’ve been doing fine.”

“Oh, come on,” Ty said. “I’ve read all about you in the
Sun
, and I’ve seen your movies. You specialize in action stuff. Tough guys.”

Tom felt his face redden. “Yeah, well … that’s how I got pigeonholed. Just
The Business.”

“Sure,” Ty said. “I understand. But some of the old crowd might not get that. I’ve talked to guys who … actually think you’re representing
yourself
as a tough guy.”

Tommy winced. This was getting to be a drag. “Not me. I’m just a humble scribe doing a job of work.” He took his shot of Jack from the barmaid and downed it. It burned his throat and he had to repress a cough.

“Yeah, well that’s what I told them,” Ty said, looking at his watch. “Funny thing, out there you’re pigeonholed as a tough guy, and back here as an academic kind of dude. The many lives of Tommy Weeks.”

Tom signaled to order a second drink. “Who’s been saying that kind of lame shit about me?”

“Just some jerks,” Ty said. “Mouse Wiskowski and Bobby Hamm.”

Tom felt a sudden rush of sadness. Though he hadn’t seen either of them in twenty years, he hated the fact that they thought him a phony. In a weird way it mattered more to him what they thought about him than anyone he’d met in Los Angeles.

Now Ty reached over and massaged his stiff neck muscles. “You’re getting all tense back there,” he said. “I should never have mentioned it. Those guys don’t matter at all. I can tell you one person who’s said nothing but nice things about you. Ruth Anne. Those guys start in with their ‘He’s gone Hollywood’ crap, Ruth Anne takes up for you every time.”

“Is that right?” Tom said, taking another hit of the Jack Daniel’s. He tried to keep his voice level, as if this information was of no more interest than an Orioles score, but his breathlessness betrayed him.

As as kid, Ruth Anne had lived around the corner from him on Craig Avenue. Black-haired and green-eyed, she’d been the neighborhood darling before she became the homecoming queen at the University of Maryland. Every boy who ever met her fell madly in love with her, and Tom was no exception. But he had never gotten beyond “friend” status before. Now, even after all these years, the thought that she might actually think of him at all, much less argue among the old timers that he was still a true blue Baltimore guy (even if it wasn’t really true), cheered him up immeasurably.

“You still see her?” he asked now, not even trying to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Sure I do,” Ty said. “She just recently came back to the old neighborhood. Lives only a few blocks away from me over on Chateau Avenue.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I am not,” Ty said. “Been through a lot of tough stuff, kiddo. Got divorced and ended up limping back to town. But she still looks great.”

“She does?” He knew that he sounded like the hopelessly smitten teenager he’d once been, but after his third Jack Daniel’s he didn’t care.

Ty smiled and rubbed his shoulders again.

“I promised you a surprise, old buddy, and that’s it. Ruth Anne’s having a party tonight and she absolutely insisted you come.”

“Hey, that’s great,” Tommy said. His head was spinning and he suddenly felt another rush of pure affection for Ty. Why had he been so worried about meeting Ty? It was crazy, really, his old paranoia still informing his life. Why, Ty was an adult now, and so was he. They could be friends, without all the old one-upsman bullshit.

Ty looked at his Cartier watch and squeezed the back of Tom’s neck again.

“Hey, the party’s already started. Let’s get over there before all the food’s gone.”

“Great,” Tom said, feeling about fifteen years old. “That’s just great, Ty. Wow, Ruth Anne. I can’t believe it.”

They drove across Kirk Avenue, past City, Tommy’s old high school. He remembered hanging out there on the stone wall outside the school, listening to the black guys singing acappella harmonies, and knowing even then that nothing would sound purer or better than that, no matter where he went or how long he lived. And he’d been right, nothing ever had. They drove by a hair salon at Kirk and 33rd Street, the place that had once been Doc’s Drugstore where he’d hung out with the City guys, eyeing the Eastern girls, of which Ruth Anne was number one. If he could have talked to her, he felt now, maybe his whole life would have been different. Maybe he would have married her and stayed in town and had four or five kids, and been happy and satisfied with a normal job and taking care of his family. Maybe his mother wouldn’t be so angry with him for leaving her behind.

They drove down Loch Raven Boulevard, then down the Alameda, and he suddenly felt that maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe he and Ruth Anne would see one another and they would instantly understand that they were meant to be together. Maybe he’d invite her out to Los Angeles, and after a few visits she’d move out there with him but they’d keep a place here in town, too.

That was crazy, but why not? It happened all the time, didn’t it? Old acquaintances meet and fall head over heels in love, and after all he wasn’t the scared little kid from Govans anymore. No, he was a successful screenwriter, knew all the stars, all the directors. God, a guy like him was a catch for her … and yet it didn’t feel that way. Thinking of her, he still felt scared, breathless, unsure of himself. He didn’t want to come off like a Hollywood phony, dropping names, but he didn’t want to miss the chance to impress her either.

Let her know that he was the new Tommy Weeks now, not some goof who mumbled into his SpaghettiOs, like he used to back in junior high school whenever she came around …

He looked up and noticed that they were heading right down Winston Avenue, his old street. The single Victorian houses flashed by, old man Greengrass’s place, the balding old coot who never let them come into his yard to retrieve their pinkies, and there was the little store that Pop Ikehorn used to own. Right there on the corner at Craig and Winston, where he used to buy sodas and horror comics, and hang out with his little friends, Danny and David Snyder, and Eddie Richardson … and … then Ty was pulling over, parking his Mercedes.

There was someone huge standing on the corner, a guy at least six-foot-five, but he was cloaked in shadow.

“What’s up?” Tom said, looking across the seat at Ty. “I thought we were going around the corner to Chateau.”

“We are,” Ty said. “But I’d be a poor host dragging you out for just one surprise. Hop out. There’s an old pal of yours standing right there. He wants to welcome you back.”

Ty raised his left eyebrow and looked exactly like a demon, Tom thought. In spite of his best efforts to hop gamely out and face this unexpected visitor, Tom found his stomach jumping with butterflies. Who the hell could it be standing there on
that
corner at 10:30 in the cold?

He took a step toward the huge hulking figure, and then, even before the guy lit a cigarette revealing his long, haggard face, he knew.

The man was none other than Crazy Louis Wetzel, and the shock of seeing him here, right here where it had happened so long ago, made Tom break out in an icy sweat.

“Hey, look who it ain’t,” Wetzel said, spraying some spittle in Tom’s direction.

He smiled a weird, gap-toothed grin at Tom, and reached out to shake hands. Tom hesitated. He didn’t want to shake this jerk’s hand. He had spent years in therapy because of him, and now the guy was offering him his hand in a gesture of friendship? Fuck that.

And yet, if he refused to shake hands with him, then Wetzel would know how much pain he’d caused Tom, which would make him happy, the sadistic son of a bitch. More than anything he didn’t want to make Louis Wetzel happy.

So he reached out and took the big man’s hand.

“Good to see you, Tommyboy,” Wetzel said, taking it and holding on.

“Yeah,” Tom replied. “How you doing, Louie?” Why the fuck wouldn’t he let go?

“Great. ’Cept for my back. Had an accident downa Point … I worked at Bethlehem for years. Was working inna rod factory and shit got overheated and jumped on me. Got third-degree burns on my legs, and when I fell down I fucked up my back.”

“That’s too bad,” Tom said. Good, he thought, may it hurt you every day for the rest of your sick fucking life, you piece of shit. He finally managed to extricate himself from Wetzel’s grasp.

“That must seriously limit your mobility,” Ty said, leaning on the hood of someone’s ’76 Caddy.

“Nah,” Louis said, glaring at Ty, as though he’d been cursed out. “Not that bad at all. I could still take you, buddy.”

“Don’t doubt it at all, Lou,” Ty said.

“’Course, if I had a way wif words, like Tommyboy here, I could write me some movies and make a ton of money. ’Cause you guys know I got the fucking stories.”

“No doubt,” Ty said. “Let’s hear one. Just for old time’s sake.”

“Shouldn’t we be getting along?” Tom said. He tried not to look at Louis as he spoke, but glancing down at the street was even worse. For just below him was the sewer grate, rusted, ancient … Was it possibly the same grate from twenty-five years ago? Sure it was … Nothing stayed the same except the sewers in Baltimore.

“What’s a matter?” Louis said. “You don’t wanna hear my story, Tom? You only listen to stories now if they pay you, is that it?”

“No, that’s not it.” Tom felt the weight of Louis’s reptilian gaze glowering down at him, but in spite of it, he felt angry now. He really wasn’t the helpless kid he’d been back then, with a father who didn’t speak to him and an insane mother. Hanging out in bars as he had for so many years, he’d had more than his share of fights, physical as well as verbal. Indeed, the only place he felt really helpless was when he was back home … Baltimore was like some great behemoth that he could never quite slay.

“What is it then?” Louis said.

Tommy found himself smiling at Louis, and sticking his own face in the big man’s chest.

“It’s you, Lou. I know what story you want to tell. But I don’t want to hear it.”

Wetzel laughed and glowered down at him. “Yeah? What story is that?”