He was alone tonight, though. It was after eight when he finally rose from his table. Callie was in her car waiting for him when he drove down from the Sea King parking lot. Go home, she commanded.
No such luck. He drove back to the heavily commercial area of the waterfront, past the Harbor Patrol station and the loading cranes and the ships’ chandlers and the fish market, now closed for the night. Stanwyck turned off Front Street and left his car in a high-rise garage on Mitchum next to the dockworkers’ union hall. Callie parked in an alley with a slight feeling of relief. It was easier to tail someone on foot in the waterfront district, and yups like Hal Stanwyck normally didn’t venture too far into the interior. It ought to be all right.
This time he had no specific destination in mind. He just wandered, looking. The waterfront district was as safe as any place in Port Wolfe could reasonably be, as long as you stuck fairly close to the shoreline. Past Third Street, though, running parallel to Front, you might as well wear a sign saying “Victim.” The streets back there were dark, narrow, and twisty, sometimes changing their names for no discernible reason... those that had names. Some of the alleys were wider than the streets, the ones that backed on warehouses equipped with loading docks. It was an easy place to get lost in.
Stanwyck had stopped in front of a porno house. He looked at the photos on display and exchanged a few words and a laugh with the street shill urging him to buy an hour of Paradise. “Live Acts!” the pink neon screamed. Callie leaned against a utility pole and gaped. Before she’d gone into prison, that building had housed an outfit that provided laundry services for ships in the harbor. They were right on Third Street, the unofficial dividing line between normal and ghetto. She’d never seen a porn palace this close to the shore before. What else had changed while she was away?
Happy Hal bought a ticket and went in. Callie looked around for a place to perch.
Across the street was Salvatore’s Tattoo Parlor. Sal Gagliardo wasn’t a bad guy, but he was one of those people she’d be better off avoiding. Still, he wouldn’t think anything of it if she went in and sat for an hour. She wondered if his mother was still alive.
She was. A bell tinkled when Callie pushed open the door. Ever since his wife died, Sal had lived with his mother behind the shop. But right then, Mrs. Gagliardo was seated in her usual chair, nodding, unaware of their visitor. The old woman had been hard of hearing and intermittently senile the last time Callie had seen her.
“Be right with you,” Sal said without looking up. He was working on a bikini-clad girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen, tattooing a sprig of cherries high on her inner thigh.
Another girl was watching. “Ooh, way cool! Looks shrewd, Brittany!”
“Yeah? I wanna see. Gimme a mirror.”
“In a sec,” Sal said. “Almost done.”
He finished up and handed them a mirror. The two girls giggled at the reflection of Brittany’s crotch, but they agreed the cherries were hot stuff. The second girl paid Sal while Brittany slipped a dress twenty years too old for her on over her bikini. “Show your friends,” Sal said with a crooked smile. They left, chattering happily and banging the door after them.
The banging door woke up old Mrs. Gagliardo; she muttered something and made a birdlike movement with her hands. Her son turned to Callie and said, “Now, what can I do for you?”
“Hello, Sal.”
His eyebrows rose. “Callie? Is that you?”
“It’s me.”
“Hey, I heard you were out. Come here, girl!” Callie went over for her hug. “Hey, Mama!” Sal shouted. “Look who’s here! It’s Callie Darrow!”
“Who is it?” the old woman asked.
Sal shouted even louder. “Callie Darrow! You remember Birdie’s girl, don’t you?”
Birdie’s girl. Callie yelled, “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Gagliardo!”
“Birdie’s girl?” The old woman reached a shaky hand out to her. “Why, hello, Callie. I haven’t seen you in the longest time!”
So she did remember. “I’ve been away,” Callie shouted.
Sal got them all coffee while Callie settled into a lumpy upholstered armchair that had a thin disguising afghan thrown over it. By dipping her head a little, Callie could peer through the lettering stenciled on the front glass and get a clear view of the porno house. It called itself The Garden of Eden, and one life-sized poster by the doorway did show a man and a woman wearing fig leaves.
“So, Callie.” Sal took a swallow of coffee. “Got anything going?”
Here it was. “Nothing major. I need to get reoriented first.” She jerked a thumb toward the window front. “That place across the street. What happened to the laundry?”
“Folded.” He grinned at his own weak joke, then turned serious. “Not enough demand for what they supplied. All the new ships have onboard laundries. Only old tramp steamers and like that need a shore laundry now, and there ain’t many of them left.”
Callie sighed. “That big old laundry was there since before I was born.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame.”
Mrs. Gagliardo said, “This is too hot.” Her son carefully removed the coffee cup from her frail fingers and set it on the small desk next to her. “Let it cool a little.” He looked at Callie. “Guy I know’s lookin’ for a bonnet.”
A female decoy. “When?”
“Friday, around noon.”
Callie shook her head. “That’s when I report to my probation officer.”
Mrs. Gagliardo’s body jerked. “Oh! I can’t sleep at night and keep drifting off.”
Callie grinned. “Happens to me, too, sometimes.”
The old woman leaned toward her. “How’s your mama, Callie? Is she over her cold yet?”
Callie and Sal exchanged a glance. Sal shouted, “Mama, Birdie died a long time ago. Callie was still a kid. You remember.”
“Oh.” The old woman looked confused.
The door opened and a sailor and his girl came in, laughing and flirting. He wanted her name tattooed over his heart.
While Sal tended to his customer, Callie stared through the glass at The Garden of Eden across the street. That was one reason she wanted to leave Port Wolfe. Here, she would always, always be Birdie’s girl.
Callie had been a thief and a con artist as long as she could remember. Her first lessons had come from her mother, who taught her to slip quietly into her bedroom while she was entertaining and remove cash from the john’s billfold — not all of it, just enough that he wouldn’t know immediately he’d been ripped off. Callie was a quick learner, finding ways on the street to bring home a little extra money. Birdie’s girl was known as a kid who could be trusted to deliver a message, lift a set of keys, finger a likely mark.
Birdie Darrow told people she was a singer... and she did sing, sometimes, whenever she could find a dive that would hire her for a night or two. But she wasn’t very good; even her young daughter could tell that. Callie often wondered whether Birdie had ever planned to teach her the tricks of that other profession she practiced, the one that kept the two of them clothed and fed. It was something she would never know. When she was eleven, Callie had watched, traumatized, as a drunken john beat her mother to death.