Baltimore Noir (5 page)

“You wanna tell the one about how you stuck me in the sewer when I was eight years old. How you stepped on my fingers when I tried to push the grate up, and how you found a rat and threw him down there on top of me. And then left me down there for four fucking hours.”

Louis looked taken aback. He wasn’t used to such impudence from his victims.

“Well, the thing is, Tommy,” Louis started, suddenly grabbing Tom by the neck and squeezing, “the story ain’t done yet. See, in the earlier version you got away, ’cause Herbert Snyder happened to be home on leave from the navy and the shithead let you out. But this time you stay down there for good, you rich little Hollywood cocksucker.”

The pain in Tommy’s neck was unbearable. He managed a weak swing, clipping Louis on the side of the head, which accomplished nothing but further infuriated the big man.

“Down we go,” Louis said.

He pushed Tommy to his knees, and just for a second Tommy had the optimistic thought that Louis would have to pull off the sewer grate to stuff him inside, and during that interval maybe he could—if he could get his breath—run away.

But now he saw what he should have known all along. The grate had been pulled aside already. Jesus, this had been Ty’s plan the whole time.

“Down we go, asshole,” Louis said. “Just like days of yore.”

Tommy couldn’t stand it … being thrown into the same hole by the same lunatic bully he’d encountered as a child. He gasped, and bright lights glittered in his eyes. There was only one thing he could do, but if it didn’t work it might cost him his life. But why not? He’d rather be dead than go through the sewer treatment again.

Tommy shot out his fist and punched Louis Wetzel in the balls. The big man screeched and let go of his death grip on Tommy’s neck. His hand came down to his crotch but Tom hit him again, and the tormentor fell to his knees. Tommy had no idea what to do next … Panicky, he punched him in the face, and then took several pokes at Louis’s eyes.

From behind him he heard a cheer. “Brilliant,” Ty said.

“Fucking brilliant.”

Tom looked up and saw Ty’s happy, demonic smile framed by the moon.

“You really showed me something there,” Ty said.

Then he raised his arm and pounded Louis on the head with a crowbar. Tommy heard Wetzel’s skull crack, and saw blood drip down his ears.

“And one for good luck,” Ty said. He waved the crowbar over his head and brought it down again on Louis’s huge head.

The big man made a horrible gasp and fell off the curb, his head and shoulders dangling in the sewer.

Ty laughed and kicked him the rest of the way in. “Here we go, Tom,” he said, in a jovial way. “Give me a little hand with the grate, hey, pal?”

Tommy stood up, rubbing his neck, which was raw and throbbing with pain. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Well, duh,” Ty said.

“Is he … dead?” Tom asked.

“Oh, I imagine so. You can’t really live all that long without a brain, and I expect what’s left of Lou’s is a pile of jelly by now.”

They put the grate in place, then sat on the edge of the sewer, Tommy gasping for breath and both of them looking down every so often to see if Louis was going to make some kind of horror movie comeback.

“Why … why’d you do this?” Tom said.

Ty lit a Camel and smoked in a satisfied way.

“You’re gonna get a kick out of this,” he said, offering a cigarette to Tom, who took him up on it.

“I am?”

“Yeah, you are. See this whole thing started with your mother.”

“Bullshit,” Tom said, accepting a light from Ty.

“I swear,” Ty said. “See, these days I’m a physical therapist. I work over at Pinecrest, and about a week ago I get a call to go up to apartment 354, and who’s there? None other than your lovely mom, Go-Go Flo, as we call her, ’cause she’s always up to something. Hugely popular in the dining hall. Anyway, we get to talking about you and she told me you’re a big shot now and hardly ever talk to her, and after I’m working on her back awhile, she says to me, ‘We oughta take Tommy downa peg.’ So we cooked up this little trick to, you know, scare you a little. Just a gag. Believe me, I never expected Louis to go that far. I think when you told him you didn’t want to hear his story … well, that sent him around the old twist.”

“Jesus, Ty,” Tom said. “You and my mom cooked this whole sick thing up?”

“Sure did. I followed you to the theater. If you hadn’t come out soon, I was going to go in and get you, but your mother was right. She said you always go to the bathroom at least once in every movie. Sometimes two times.”

Tom felt himself blush. The enormity of it was too much for him. “The old witch,” he said. “And the Ruth Anne thing …”

“That was her idea, too. She said she knew you were in love with her when you were a kid, but she never thought the girl was good enough for you, so she told Ruth Anne to buzz off and keep away from you.”

“What?” Tom said. “She did
what?”

“Yeah, Ruth Anne always liked you but your mother pushed her away. Anyway, she knew you’d come with me if I said Ruth Anne was having a party. Your mother is wild. She’s so imaginative. Man, she’d make a great con artist.”

“Yeah.” Tom suddenly felt like he was going to puke. But he had to fight it back. It just wouldn’t do to puke on a dead man’s body stuck beneath him in the sewer.

“Well, I guess we ought to be getting back home,” Ty said. “That’s enough fun for one night, huh?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tom said. “But Ty, I mean … what’s going to happen when the cops find Louis’s body?”

“In this neighborhood? Nothing. They find five or six bodies a week around here. Gangs, drugs, home invasions. This is Baltimore, son. And Louis was a scumbag. Hey, we just did Charm City a favor. Don’t you worry your Hollywood head about it, pal. They only catch killers in the movies.”

“Okay,” Tom said. “Listen, Ruth Anne? Do you really know where she is?”

“As a matter of fact I do. She’s living downtown. I wrote her name and number on a piece of paper for you. The part I told you about her divorce, coming home? That was the real deal. And she
does
want to see you.”

“No shit?” Tom said, as they drove away from the moonlit sewer.

“No shit,” Ty echoed, turning down the Alameda and stepping hard on the gas. “But if I were you, Tom, this time I wouldn’t say a word about it to your mom. She’ll try to sabotage it again. She’s the kind of old lady that wants you all to herself, you know?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said, suddenly flooded with a terrifying euphoria. “You got a point there, Ty. In fact, I don’t think I’m going to be seeing my mother anymore. Ever.”

“Now wait. You can’t turn your back on your moms. You know that.”

“Why, because she’s my mother?” Tom said. “Big fucking deal.”

“No, not because she’s your mother,” Ty answered, laughing. “Because she’s such a unique kinda monster. I mean, nobody could resist a monster like that.”

Tom found himself laughing along in spite of himself. “Well, I’m going to try. I really am.”

“Fat fucking chance,” Ty said. “Fat fucking chance.”

They drove on through the night. Tom looked up at the sky, hoping for some kind of cosmic release. But the stars looked like a patch of teenage acne and the moon was large and bloated, just like Flo’s demented face.

PIGTOWN WILL SHINE TONIGHT

BY
J
ACK
B
LUDIS
Pigtown

E
verything had gone up in price since World War II ended the year before. Coddies were a nickel, so were the big, sour pickled onions. Cigarettes cost two for a nickel, but only in the little store across the street from the Carroll Park playground could you buy them by the stick.

I gnawed the first layer of the pickled onion and made a sour face.

“You been here long enough,” Mr. Butler said.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

I didn’t want to leave the store because Knucks was still on the corner smoking one of the cigarettes he had just pinched.

I was what the neighbors called “a good kid.” For a few pennies or a nickel I would go to the store for them. From old people I wouldn’t even take that. It was the way my mother taught me before she died.

Birute Ludka, the D.P. girl, was coming around the corner from Herkermer Street, watching her feet go one in front of the other and holding her arms under her breasts so they wouldn’t bounce. I watched, but I tried not to think about her breasts because I didn’t want to tell it in confession. The “e” end of Birute’s name had a tough “eh” sound. Most people couldn’t pronounce it, so they called her Ludka.

“Hello,” she said to me.

I said, “Hi,” and stepped out of the way so she could go into the store. She wore her skirt shorter than the other girls. She was growing so fast that her clothes didn’t fit her. She went to one of the Catholic schools, Fourteen Holy Martyrs, on the other side of the B&O tracks. She didn’t go to St. Alphonsus, the Lithuanian school where I went, even though she had come over from Lithuania.

“What are you, some kind of Romeo?” Knucks said.

“What do you mean?”

“‘Hello?’ ‘Hi?’” He mocked both of us with his exaggerated tones. “I’d sure like to get into that,” he added.

He was a big guy who was always beating up other kids. His real name was Billy Hagen, and he lived just on the other side of the B&O bridge. They called it Pigtown up there too.

“How about you?” Knucks said.

“How about me, what?”

“Would you like to screw her?”

“Yeah,” I said in self-defense, though I was embarrassed to say it.

“What’s
D.P.
mean anyways?” Knucks asked.

“Displaced Person. It means her family got away from the Nazis and came to America.”

“How old is she?”

“Thirteen or fourteen.” I was guessing that she was my age. She was tall. She might have been older than that, but I didn’t think so because she was still in grammar school.

“Old enough to bleed,” Knucks said, then grinned.

The last part of it was usually “old enough to butcher.” I was not sure what that meant, but some of the older guys always said it about younger girls.

“When she comes out, you grab her and I’ll feel her up.”

“You’re crazy,” I said.

“Chicken.”

“Yeah, I’m chicken,” I said, and I left the corner. It was getting dark and my grandmother wanted me home.

“Buack, buack, buack,”
he called after me, making the chicken sound from some gang movie. He called out the same sound, only louder, as I approached Cooper the Cop, who was standing on the corner of Bayard and Herkermer, swinging his club. His regular beat was on the other side of the tracks where Knucks lived and Birute went to school, but he spent a lot of time down on Bayard Street with us.

“What’s that noise all about?” Cooper asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

I looked back and saw Birute coming down the steps from Butler’s with an ice-cream cone. Knucks was saying something to her and she smiled. Then he started to follow her.

I turned the corner toward my grandmother’s house, which was across from the coal yard.

I thought about what Knucks said about getting into Ludka. I knew the dirtier words for that. I even knew the word
intercourse
I thought about it a lot but I figured I was too young for that. So was Birute. You were supposed to be married before you did that.

I stood on my grandmother’s scrubbed marble steps waiting for Ludka to turn the corner and come down so I could say hello again and see her smile. It was out of the way to her house, but it was the way she always came.

She didn’t come that time, and not ever again.

I had trouble sleeping that night because I was thinking about Birute and about what Knucks had said about her. She was pretty, beautiful maybe, but not like a movie star because she didn’t wear makeup. I wouldn’t mind having a girlfriend like her, but after
“Buack, buack, buack,”
what chance did I have? Maybe she didn’t come down Herkermer Street because she was embarrassed to know me.

In the middle of the night, I heard a police siren and the dogs in the backyards started to bark. They did that two or three times a week, usually when somebody walked down the alley.

I had a dream about Birute Ludka and me doing what Knucks said. When I awoke, I changed my jockey shorts and hoped my grandmother would wash them without seeing the stains.

On the way to school, a couple of girls on the trackless trolley were talking about a D.P. girl who was killed in the Carroll Park playground.

“What D.P. girl?” I asked.

“The tall one that lives on Carey Street,” one of them said. They were both wearing the white Seton High uniforms that made them look like nurses or waitresses.

“Birute?”

“No. Ludka something.”

My face went hot. She couldn’t be dead. But I thought about the police car in the middle of the night and the dogs barking.

“You know her?” one of the Seton girls asked.

“No,” I said. I had said hello to her, but I didn’t really know her.

I guess because she was Lithuanian, there was some talk in school about the murder. I didn’t join in, but I paid attention. One of the nuns asked me if I knew her since she lived in my neighborhood. I said that I didn’t. I was scared because of my dream, but also because of what Knucks had said: “Old enough to bleed.” I didn’t think that “old enough to butcher” meant murder though.

When I got off the No. 27 coming home, I walked up Carey Street and saw Knucks was sitting on a set of steps. As I approached, he got up. Then he walked along with me. “You didn’t see me talking to her,” he said.

“No,” I said. I did see him, though, and I saw him start to follow her.

“Keep it that way.”

“Sure,” I said. I turned at the corner and he walked up Carey Street toward the bridge.

I wondered what that was all about. It didn’t make sense until the police came to my grandmother’s door and asked to talk to me.

One was a police detective named Kastel. When my grandmother came downstairs, he talked to her in Lithuanian much better than I could. I had never seen him before, but the uniformed policeman with him was Girardi, who walked the neighborhood beat.

“Did you know Birute Ludka?” Kastel asked. He pronounced
Birute
better than anybody I had ever heard except my grandmother.

“Not very well,” I said.

My grandmother was wringing her hands in her handkerchief while Detective Kastel asked me questions. From time to time, he would explain something to her in Lithuanian. She understood some English but she could not speak it.

“But you knew her?”

“I always said hello.”

“Did you talk to her yesterday?”

“Just to say hello.” I was nervous as I answered his questions about where and when. I was particularly nervous when he asked if my name was Walter.

“Who was with you when you saw her?”

“Nobody,” I said. “I was just coming out of the store and she was going in.”

I didn’t want to talk about Knucks, but Cooper the Cop knew about it. I wanted to correct myself, but I didn’t. I could be in trouble for that, but if I told, I could be in bigger trouble with Knucks. Cooper would probably tell them anyway.

“You didn’t see her after that?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“And nobody was with you?”

“No,” I said.
Old enough to bleed.

“I thought I saw you talking to some other boys on the corner,” Girardi said.

“No, sir,” I said. I knew he was fishing because I had only talked to Knucks. I would stick to my story unless Cooper, who was on the other corner, confronted me later.

“You hear anything about her?” Detective Kastel asked.

“On the No. 27 this morning. Some girls were saying she was murdered.”

“And raped,” Officer Girardi almost yelled at me.

“I didn’t hear about that,” I said. I wasn’t even sure what
rape
meant. I would look it up in the dictionary later.

“Did you see her last night?” Kastel said.

“No, sir.”

“Mister Butler says you left just before she came into his store.”

“I did,” I said. “It’s when I said hello.”

“Then what did you do?” Kastel asked.

“I went home.”

“You weren’t planning anything?” Girardi said.

“Nothing,” I said.
Old enough to butcher.

Detective Kastel talked about me to my grandmother in Lithuanian and my grandmother started to cry. I didn’t understand much of what they said because they were talking too fast. I did hear my grandmother say
“Vladas”
several times, which was Lithuanian for Walter.

After Kastel left, my grandmother talked to me in Lithuanian. I spoke back to her in English. We spoke slowly and we understood a lot of what we said, but neither of us could speak the other’s language very well.

I just kept saying no when she asked if I knew anything about Birute. From time to time she would say, “
Dieva mano, Dieva mano
“ spread her hands, and look up. It meant, “My God, my God.” I never could figure out if it was an actual prayer or just some kind of cursing.

My grandfather came home later and she started the
Dieva mano’s
all over again. He didn’t understand English, so didn’t talk much, but she explained to him about Birute Ludka.

I did all of my homework and looked up the word
rape
in the dictionary. I was afraid to go out. I just stayed home and listened to the radio, but I did not pay much attention to it. I was thinking about Birute in my dream. It had nothing to do with murder but it was kind of like rape, because she never said anything. She just said, “Hello,” like yesterday, and we did that thing, and she looked up at me with no expression on her face.

It felt good, but I felt rotten too, because she didn’t smile.

We did not get the newspaper at my house so I read the
Evening Sun
at a friend’s house to learn more about what happened.

“You didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?” my friend’s father asked.

“Me?”

“You seem to be reading about it a lot.”

“It happened in our playground,” I said. I decided I would not read his paper anymore.

I wanted to go to the funeral home to see her laid out, but I thought about murderers returning to the scene of the crime and I did not want anyone to think that I might be a killer.

The next day, I bought the
Baltimore News-Post
from the American Store on Washington Boulevard, where the trackless trolley stopped on my way home from school. The paper said that the police found her buried in the sandbox in the playground at about the same time her mother reported her missing. Whoever did it had covered her up in a hurry, the paper said.

Officer Girardi spotted me coming home with the newspaper.

“Hey, you,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Why you getting the paper? Your grandmother don’t know English.”

“Movies,” I said, thinking fast. “It tells what’s playing at the movies. I always go on Saturdays. That’s tomorrow.”

“Where’s your mother and father?” he asked. My grandmother had explained that to Detective Kastel, but maybe Kastel didn’t tell Girardi.

“My mother’s dead. My father’s working out of town.”

“Where’s out of town?”

“Out west someplace,” I said, but the truth was that I didn’t know where my father was. My mother died while he was overseas and I only saw him for a couple of months after the war. He didn’t want to hang around. He always said I reminded him too much of my mother.

“Did he know the Ludka girl?”

“My father?”

“Who’re we talking about?”

“He left us before she moved into the neighborhood.”

I don’t know why I said
left us
instead of
went out west to work

I found out later that day that Kastel and another policeman had interrogated my other grandmother about my father until she cried. I spent time with my father’s side of the family only on holidays like Christmas and Easter and sometimes Thanksgiving.

“You saw the girl just before she was murdered,” Mr. Butler said when I went to the store. I had been there maybe a dozen times since the murder, but he had never talked about it. Now, it was like he was accusing me of something.

“You saw her last,” I said.

“You were on the sidewalk. I saw you.”

“I was gone before she came out,” I said.

“That guy called Knucks was with you, wasn’t he? The one who steals cigarettes.”

“I went home,” I said.

“They asked a lot of questions about you.”

He was getting tough with me, and I decided to get tough back. “They asked me a lot of questions about you too,” I said, though I was lying.

“Me?”

“Yeah. You.”

“Why were they asking about me?”

I lied and now he had me cornered. “How should I know? Why would they ask about me?”

“Because she said she liked you.”

“She
said
that?”

“She said you were a nice boy—not like the others.”

That made me feel good, but it also made me want to cry. I gritted my teeth. “Give me a pickled onion?”

“Sour?”

“You know the kind I like.”

There were only three in the big jar and he had to poke around with the tongs before he got the smallest one.

“Were you with the guys that raped her?” he asked.

“What guys?”