Baltimore Noir (17 page)
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.
T
he Baltimore of Branko’s dreams was a killer’s paradise, a bleak landscape of wet streets after dark. To his mind, it was the one city in America where even a restless soldier fresh from the wars might feel at home, patrolling the long, deep trenches of its row-house streets, entire blocks walled off by bricks the color of mud. Someone who was handy with weapons could get mighty comfortable there, and that certain someone, of course, would be Branko.
Like most Europeans, he tended to embellish any fantasy involving America with touches of the Wild West. Thus, he saw himself ruling Baltimore in the manner of a desperado, careening over the potholes and sewer grates in an old nag of a Crown Vic, riding the range to the clip-clop of gunshots.
The endings to these flights of fancy never varied. Word of his murderous exploits would filter down through desk sergeants, cop reporters, and neighborhood gossips, and inevitably make its way to a script writer for
Homicide
, the television show that had first brought Baltimore to Branko’s attention. The resulting episode would make Branko a legend, because who could possibly resist the exotic lure of his tale: Branko Starevic, the Balkan hit man who traveled 5,000 miles for a single commission.
Imagine the disappointment, then, of Branko’s first real view of Baltimore as his plane circled to land at BWI. It was a Friday afternoon in October, and the sunlight on the fall foliage below was almost shocking in its luminescence. Flak bursts of orange and yellow were everywhere, overflowing from parks and hillsides, assaulting streambeds and riverbanks, and spilling from the cracks of neighborhoods. When the big jet looped out across the bay, the glare from the water almost blinded him. He shifted in his seat to see clean white sails in formation. A ribbon of trestled highway passed beneath them. Then the towers of downtown winked smartly as if to seal the jest, and in quick succession Branko spied a tall-masted ship at harbor, two big stadiums, and more highways, teeming with cars, coursing arteries of a place that looked disturbingly vital.
He fidgeted uncomfortably, the airline lasagna from three hours earlier executing a barrel roll, then he shut the plastic shade in disgust. For ages he had looked forward to this moment, anticipating a gloomy approach through factory smoke and low clouds. He had expected to behold a city rendered in the colors of a bruise—
once upon a daylight dreary, as he pondered weak and weary
—yes, he knew Poe as well, from a translated copy lent by a friend at the beginning of his Baltimore fixation.
The weak and weary part he had cold. Branko had been traveling for twenty hours, a low-budget itinerary from Sarajevo via Zagreb, Frankfurt, and JFK, with lengthy layovers at every stop.
Here is what the passport control officer saw as Branko lumbered forward with his overnight bag and his documents (his boss, Marko Krulic, had fixed the visa with a cooperative consular officer, paying twice the amount Branko would be earning for the commission): He was a tall man, about 6’3", with the rangy build and sharp cheekbones of those Slavic toughs the NBA favors for their Euro guile and rigid fundamentals. Pale skin with the translucence of boiled cabbage. He wore a black leather jacket, too large and with too many silver buckles. His black pair of acid-washed jeans sported a label no American had ever heard of, and his lank black hair was a longish version of a style from 1957.
But it was Branko’s eyes that prompted the passport officer to ask a few extra questions, just before they took his prints and snapped his photo. It wasn’t the bleached-out blue that demanded your attention; it was their chilly quality, as if he were staring up at you through an inch of frozen pond. The war had done that for him, the war and all its enthusiasms of killing on the run, house by house.
Krulic, his commander, was now his boss, and in the manner of most war profiteers he had diversified into the multiple rackets of peacetime—drugs, stolen cars, bootleg designer wear, and duty-free vices of every ilk. Branko was a hired gun, and the target in Baltimore had only recently to Krulic’s attention. It seemed that war-crimes investigators in The Hague had finally made their way down the pecking order to Krulic and were struggling to collect evidence. Krulic knew something that they didn’t: that the most incriminating witness now lived in the States, having made his way to an apartment on the fringes of Fells Point back in ’98.
Branko had to have the job the moment he heard about it. Dubbed episodes of
Homicide
were an obsession, and he felt he knew the entire cast by name. He spoke just enough English to believe he would be able to engage them in witty conversation, should he happen across them in a bar. And, who knows, now maybe he would.
Krulic was aware of Branko’s television addiction, but figured that a killer was a killer. His bigger worry was Branko’s inexperience with handguns. Most local jobs were dispatched with AK-47s or RPGs.
“You won’t be able to just blow up his house, you know,” Krulic had said. “Well, not unless you can arrange some sort of gas leak. But be tidy, be smart.”
To Branko, being smart meant carrying out the deed in such a fashion that, one day, he would settle down on his couch before his Soviet-made television to see his exploits immortalized by the actors he knew and loved. Perhaps the killer—the one modeled after him—would even have a fling with Melissa Leo, or at least a flirtation. He liked it when she talked tough, although he suspected from the clothes she wore that maybe she didn’t like boys. But surely, he had thought, he scanned the credits of an episode only two nights before his departure, some of those writers must be yearning for a breakout idea. Well, he was about to give them one.
These were the contents of Branko’s pockets and overnight bag as he exited customs: two changes of clothes, a toothbrush, $50 in cash, a credit card (he was under strict orders to use it only to rent a car), a fake New Jersey driver’s license, the address for a homeless shelter where he was supposed to sleep, a telephone number for a contact who would supply his gun, a Fells Point address for a bar called Flip’s, and a return ticket to Sarajevo, reserved for Sunday. That gave him only two nights, but he was a fast worker.
The target was Dusko Jevic. Branko knew only that the man worked at Flip’s, at 1900 Aliceanna Street, where he supposedly swabbed floors, hauled garbage, killed rats, and did a little bouncing. His name was pronounced “DOOSH-ko” and, barroom clientele being what it was, the regulars called him “Douche Bag” or just “Douche.” Not being particularly fluent in English, Dusko didn’t seem to mind.
Branko’s expectations took another hit at the Hertz counter. Instead of a Crown Vic he got a Ford Focus. An upgrade to make things right would have cost $39.50 a day, and Krulic wouldn’t have approved. So he grabbed the keys, bought a map from a newsstand—at $6.95, it was obvious his $50 wasn’t going to last long—then plotted a course for Fells Point.
At first, the drive into town only depressed him further. The procession of colorful trees continued, straddling the highway. There was even a welcome sign, painted on the sort of rustic timbers you normally found at alpine retreats.
Then he reached the fringes of Westport, and his spirits began to lift. He got only a glimpse, but it was enough. To his right, battered rowhouses were bunched like the cars of a derailed train. To his left was a small slag heap. Just ahead, a lane was shut for repairs, lined with unsightly orange barrels. The pavement seemed to have suddenly gone to hell, rippled and rutted and scarred. This was more like it. His mood brightened at every alarming jolt of the axle.
The clincher was a huge factory-like building that reared up suddenly on his right, just as the downtown skyline came into view. He slowed for a better look. It was sheathed in brown corrugated metal, at least a dozen stories high, with three chimneys belching steam and a fourth, taller and thicker, pouring white smoke a good half-mile into the blue. But the best part was the sign out front. Someone had actually had the balls to tout this monstrosity as an
“Empowerment Zone.”
Well, Branko certainly felt empowered now, and he drove onward with spirits revived, unflagging even as he skirted the touristy attractions of the harbor—that damned tall-masted ship again and those long pavilions with cheerful green rooftops.
It took only a mile before he was back in his milieu. Crossing Central Avenue, he entered a gloomy block of low-slung homes built of dark brick. Their flat rooftops and barred windows made them look like prisons. Yet children played in the streets, and the homes extended for blocks. Could this, perhaps, be “the projects”? His pulse quickened in excitement. He half expected to come upon a bleeding body at curbside, surrounded by yellow crime-scene tape. Then a cruiser would round the corner, and Bayliss and Pembleton would leap from either door. Okay, okay, he knew they were just actors, so he accommodated reality by also imagining a film crew.
Lights, camera, action.
A cameo of Branko in profile, idling by in the car, a first and ominous sighting of the mysterious man in black from the Balkans.
“Stay in your lane, asshole!”
A honking horn ended his reverie and he swerved to let a Jeep Cherokee roar past, some white guy on a cell phone who flipped him the bird. Branko was out of the projects now, but fortunately the view was no happier. Over the next several blocks, in fact, the nicest house to be seen was a
mural
of a house painted on the side of a vacant one. As if on cue, a police helicopter throbbed past overhead. Perfect.
In his growing enthusiasm, Branko missed the turn for the shelter, so he doubled back after heading north on Broadway, reaching his destination a few blocks later. Krulic had instructed him not to park too near the shelter, lest anyone realize he was an impostor. His contact, a Balkan émigré whose name had not been revealed, arrived within minutes of Branko’s call from a pay phone. They met on the shelter’s front steps.
“You’re good for two nights here,” he said. “I told them your name is Bob King, and did the paperwork for you. They think you’re out of a job, so act depressed. Here’s the gun.”
The bag seemed ridiculously small, no heavier than a couple of potatoes. Branko started to peek inside.
“Not here, stupid! They’ll kick you out before you even get inside. The doors open at 6, in twenty minutes. Here, put it in your overnight bag. It’s already loaded—one clip, don’t waste it. Dusko the Douche Bag gets to work at 7. Give me the phone number.”
Branko handed it over.
“Don’t call me again. You’re finished with me, and I’m finished with you.”
“But …”
The man was already walking away. Branko watched him go half a block before climbing into a huge pickup truck and driving away. He had yet to see anyone at the wheel of a Crown Vic.
By the time the shelter opened there was a line to get in. He sauntered upstairs and settled on a camp bed, everyone calling him “Bob” as he opened the city map on his knees. The overnight bag was tucked between his feet. He had already stuffed the bag with the gun into a pocket of his jacket, but not before a peek inside. It was a Glock. He’d heard of them, they were mentioned often on
Homicide
, so he didn’t feel so bad anymore about the size.
He ran an index finger along the grid of the map until it rested on the location of Flip’s, at Aliceanna and Wolfe. It was a good twenty blocks from here. There was still more than an hour to kill, so he decided to drive into Fells Point for a look. He would take a stroll, loosen his limbs for the kill. His stomach growled. Better have dinner too.
Parking was tougher than he had expected, and he ended up forking over a precious fiver at a small lot near the waterfront, a few blocks east of Broadway.
Fells Point was a puzzle to him. He traversed a block on the upper end that looked dilapidated, yet the next few were downright beautiful, disgustingly so, with gas lamps and flower boxes, and bars that were far too cute and proper for a man in a black leather jacket with too many silver buckles. He passed a few restaurants, but the prices posted on the menus made him weak in the knees.
Just when he thought he had figured the place out, he rounded a corner to see a drunk covered in tattoos and a three-day beard, swaying on a cloud of malt. In the next block, he passed a junk shop. He spotted a Latin dance bar, then a nice boutique. Across the way he saw a ratty-looking bridal shop, and something called the Polish Home Club. He wondered vaguely if there might also be a Bosnian Home Club, which produced a spasm of panic. What if the show had already filmed an idea just like his, and it had yet to air? The possibility had haunted him to some extent ever since prosecutor Ed Danvers had joined the cast. The actor’s name had leaped out from the credits: Zeljko Ivanek. Possibly Russian, not Balkan, but he couldn’t be positive.
At some point in his wanderings, Branko ended up on Lancaster Street heading west; he was about to cross Broadway when a familiar sight caught his eye. It was the green oval sign for Jimmy’s Restaurant. His spirits soared. He’d seen them eating at Jimmy’s on
Homicide
. One block further to the right was the waterfront, which meant that somewhere nearby was the locus, the Mecca, the center of his universe—Baltimore Police Headquarters, home of the homicide bureau, the place where they did so much of the filming. His pulse quickened, yet he also felt uneasy. He had an illegal piece in his pocket and murder on his mind. Correction:
homicide
on his mind. This was no time to be bumbling into a policeman.
Jimmy’s was another matter, seeing as how he was hungry. What were the terms the Americans used for such places? Diner. Greasy spoon.
It was crowded and Branko settled himself to one side of a partitioned table for four, set apart from two men at the other half by a red slab of wood running down the middle. Everything was familiar—the long counter, the sizzling griddle, the huge urns of coffee—right down to the red-checked tablecloths, although he was disappointed to discover that they were plastic.