Read Online Baltimore Noir by Laura Lippman - Free Book Online Page A

At least the neighborhood has preserved, bless my home, its running battle with a roving apostrophe: Fells Point. Fell’s Point. I prefer an apostrophe since I’m the possessive type.
    Bars along Thames and Fleet and Aliceanna Streets are selling for $1.5 million and $2.1 million, and even Alicia over at Birds of a Feather might sell her license to offer ninety brands of scotch; the knitting club obviously won’t be able to meet there anymore. The Whistling Oyster is still open, but I hear they were asking $800,000 for the property. The Dead End Saloon? $2.1 million. Even that hokey schooner, Nighthawk, skipped town—not that I ever wanted to sail on one its “Mystery!” cruises. See, the urbanites have arrived, the new immigrants. They leave flyers at The Daily Grind coffeehouse that read, “Dramatic Loft Space Available. 20 X 80. Many Goodies for the Self-Indulgent Urbanite.” Soon enough, they’ll be calling Fell’s Point “Inner Harbor East.” Even the panhandlers in Fell’s Point are upscale: they don’t directly ask for money; they remind you to use the central parking meters and please display the receipt on your dashboard.
    Christina still waits in her window, though. Christina, a psychic advisor, must be sixty-eight now, but still waits to sell you a piece of your future. Bertha’s bar and her worldfamous bumper stickers are still here, and the immortalized The Horse You Came in On, and my favorite watering hole. Casey’s is two blocks down from the Recreation Pier, where they filmed the TV drama, Homicide . Baltimore’s amphibious Duck Tour grinds by, as tourists with duckbill-yellow quackers hope to witness a shooting or maybe just a chalk outline for old time’s sake. But all that’s left is a plaque: “In This Building from 1992–1999 a Group of Talented People Created a Television Legend—Homicide: Life on the Street.” The city wants to turn the pier into something called a boutique hotel, according to the community newsletter and my employer, the Fell’s Pointer
    My name is Michael Flanagan: I’m twenty-three, collect snow globes, eat entire rolls of Butter Rum Lifesavers after lunch, had a girlfriend once who convinced me to paint my toenails cobalt; have promised myself to one day see Aruba; Sundays wreck me (I should be thinking hopefully of the week ahead, but my mood reverses itself: the dull bulk of the past pins me), and I think Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island” might be better than Paul Desmond’s “Take Five.” Since last year, I have been a staff writer for the Fell’s Pointer , which firmly believes in an apostrophe. I write about bicycle master plans, the harbor’s garbage skimmers, and once I wrote a feature about Twiggy, a water-skiing squirrel that is pulled by a remote-controlled boat. My stories have also warned readers about leaving bricks on their property because they tend to be used as weapons during robbery attempts.
    My newsletter salary is $950 a month, so I also offer my services at The Love Joint, an adult movie emporium on Broadway, walking distance to Casey’s. My employer, Mr. Harland Grimes, and I continue to differ on the artistic direction of the store; I believe Grace Kelly was the finest vision on film, but he stubbornly stocks the store with Paris Hilton home videos. Mr. Grimes often sports avocado-sized bruises on his upper arms. His forehead is large enough to accommodate a second face. Snap beans for legs, icebox chest. And he never wears socks, just old-lady-blue tennis shoes, just the three eyelets on each side.
    I work weeknights, stacking Paris videos into attractive pyramids by the front door. My days are spent reporting newsletter stories, investigating the tattoo magazines in The Sound Garden record shop, and having the mussel chowder at Bertha’s. By 5 p.m. I’m in Casey’s, which is across from a toy store that once featured a bubble machine on the second floor. Bubbles would parachute and pop onto cobblestoned Thames