Baltimore Noir (6 page)

“You know.”

He was referring to Knucks but I didn’t know who else, and I didn’t say anything.

“Nah, a pussy like you wouldn’t hang with them.”

When I left the store, I started toward Herkermer Street. Knucks came across from the playground where Ludka was murdered and walked along with me.

“They talk to you yet? Did you give ’em my name?”

“For what?”

“What did they ask you about?”

“They asked if I knew her and I said I didn’t.”

“Did you tell ’em we were talking about her?”

“I told you I wouldn’t.”

“So you lied to ’em. Keep it up,” he said.

He ran across the street to the lot that ran alongside the coal yard and up toward the railroad tracks. It was the short way to his house from here. I was always afraid of him, but I wasn’t the only one.

I was on my way to my grandmother’s house when Officer Girardi called after me.

“Yes, sir,” I said, and stopped.

“What did he want?” He must have seen us talking.

“Wanted to borrow a nickel. I didn’t have one.”

“Not even for him?”

“No, sir.”

“Mr. Butler says he saw you two talking to her the day they got her.”

“We didn’t talk. I just said hello. I was on my way home.”

“But Knucks was outside with you?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “No, sir.”

“Knucks says you were talking about banging her.”

“Me?”

“That’s what he says.”

I figured he might be trying to trick me, so I said, “I didn’t even talk to him.”

It seemed like everybody was ganging up on me: Knucks, Mr. Butler, the police. Even my grandmother was starting to ask a lot of questions.

“She was a good looking girl, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Beat your meat over her?”

I felt my cheeks go hot again. I knew what that meant, but I never did it because every time I tried, it hurt.

“No, sir.”

“Come on, tell me about Knucks.”

“I don’t know anything about him.”

Girardi had his back to the coal yard. I saw Knucks standing on the railroad tracks where the cars dumped the coal, and I figured I was in trouble no matter what I said.

“Did he tell you he was gonna do it?” Girardi asked.

“He didn’t tell me nothin’,” I said. I turned away from him and started to walk toward my house. He came after me, grabbed my arm, and turned me around.

“If we don’t get him, we’re gonna get you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For raping and killing the Ludka girl.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“You ever hear about being an accessory?”

“What’s that mean?”

“Means you’re lying to protect a pal.”

“He’s no pal of mine.”

“I guess not. Because he’s trying to pin it all on you.”

Knucks was still up on the railroad tracks watching us, and I couldn’t keep from glancing at him. Girardi turned to see where I was looking, but Knucks had disappeared.

“What were you looking at?”

“Nothin’.”

“You see him up there? He trying to intimidate you?”

“I gotta go home.”

“Think about what I said and tell the truth next time.”

I kept walking and he didn’t come after me.

A few nights later, I was in my room trying to do my homework. Some guys were singing and it was echoing down the alley:

Pigtown will shine tonight,

Pigtown will shine.

Pigtown will shine tonight,

All down the line

I never quite understood why Pigtown would shine, but I didn’t understand a lot of things. It distracted me so I didn’t have to think of Birute, but I was having trouble doing my homework. Then somebody banged hard on my front door.

“I’ll get it,” I told my grandmother and grandfather, who were already in bed. My grandfather worked two jobs and I hardly ever saw him.

“What did you tell him?” Knucks said.

“Nothing, but he was asking about you.”

“What about me?”

I told him that Girardi wanted me to say that me and him talked about Birute. “But he almost saw you watching from the coal yard.”

“Only almost?”

“He turned around and you were gone,” I said.

“They took me in and talked to me all night. I didn’t tell them a thing about you, except that you walked past me outside the store. So don’t you tell them anything else.”

Knucks jumped off the steps and ran up the street.

My grandmother called down the stairs in Lithuanian and asked who was at the door.

“A friend of mine,” I said in English. “I told him I couldn’t come out.”

By the time I was back upstairs, the boys down the alley had stopped singing. I didn’t even want to go back to my homework. The last part of it was to look up words in the dictionary. While I was at it, I looked up
rape
again. I did not do that to Birute, even in my dream.

I had trouble sleeping because I was thinking about my mother, who was dead, and about my father, who was gone. I thought about my grandmother and grandfather. Mixed in with all of it was what Knucks had said about Birute Ludka being old enough to bleed and what had happened to her later that night.

When I finally managed to sleep, I had nightmares about Birute. She was coming up from out of the sandbox and she was pointing at me, accusing. Her face was smashed, her hair was crusted with wet sand, and her clothes were torn, especially her skirt. Everything was in black-and-white except that she was bleeding bright red blood from everyplace.

“I didn’t do anything,” I told her.

“You dreamed about me,” she said.

Even in this ugly dream, I remembered how real the first dream had been. I hadn’t forced myself on her because she didn’t try to stop me from doing it. It was not in a sandbox, it was on a bed.

“But I didn’t fuck you, Knucks did.” I never said that word when I was awake—I never even thought it. I said it in a dream, but even in the dream it seemed wrong.

“You too,” she said.

“Only in the dream.”

“It’s just as bad,” she said.

I woke up sweating and scared. I didn’t rape her and I didn’t kill her. I only said hello to her that day. I had lied to the police by not telling them about Knucks. I wondered if the lie was a mortal or venial sin.

I hadn’t been to confession since before the murder.

“They got your pal,” Mr. Butler said a couple of days later. He wore a kind of delirious smile.

“What do you mean?”

“That Knucks kid. They got him sticking up a grocery store out Wilkins Avenue. He tried to shoot it out with a cop and that was it.”

He showed me the headline in the
News-Post: “Sandbox Killer in Deathbed Confession.”
A caption below it read,
“Accomplice Sought.”

“You’re next,” he said.

What if Knucks said that I was with him? I had seen things like that happen in the movies and heard about them on my radio stories. The cops told lies about what people said so they could get other people to confess.

“Not me,” I said.

“Paper says he had somebody with him. My guess is it was you.”

“Not me,” I said, but I bought the paper.

Apparently, Knucks was trying to rob a grocery store and an Officer C. J. Braddock caught him in the act. When he tried to run, the officer shot him and took a deathbed confession. William R. Hagen, also known as Knucks, died before he reached the hospital.

I decided not to tell my grandmother and grandfather about Knucks. I was afraid I would confuse them with the details and they would think I was in on it.

That night I dreamed I was with Birute again, and Cooper the Cop caught us in the sandbox. I was saying, “No, no, no, I didn’t do it,” and my grandmother woke me up. I sat straight up in my bed. I was sweating even though it was a cool night.

I thought about the dream all day, and I was still thinking about it when I came home from school. I started to think about other things that happened and I was scared.

The next day was another Saturday, but I knew that cops worked swing shift. They worked every day of the week but at different times. I thought it was dangerous to go up to the Southwest police station on Calhoun Street, because it was on the other side of the B& tracks. We did not have a telephone in our house, so I used a pay phone and asked to speak to Detective Kastel.

“He works out of Homicide. Who is this?” When I recognized the voice, I got scared and hung up.

I asked my grandmother if she had the number Detective Kastel gave her, and she went wide-eyed.

“I need it for something,” I said.

“No,” she replied in English.

“I think I know something,” I said.

She told me in Lithuanian that Knucks was dead. She didn’t use his name, though, and I figured she must have been talking to one of her Lithuanian friends about the murder—maybe Birute’s mother.

“Please, can I have the number?”

The way she tried to hide it from me made me think that she suspected I was going to confess.

“I need it,” I said, but she would not give it to me. She kept saying no in English and telling me that I didn’t have anything to do with it, but that part was in Lithuanian.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said, but she still would not give me the number.

Finally, I took the trolley downtown. Instead of transferring, I walked along Fayette Street all the way to the Central Police Station. When I found the right door to go in, Cooper the Cop was standing there in uniform.

“Where you going?” he asked.

I did not want to tell him, but I was stuck—I mean, really stuck.

I had been putting things together. Cooper going toward the store when Birute came out. Cooper was always friendly with everybody and always pumping about crimes, but he disappeared from the neighborhood after the murder and didn’t pump anybody about anything.

Apparently, he never said a thing about me and the
“Buack, buack, buack”
business or about me and Knucks on the corner. We never knew his full name. We just called him Cooper or Cooper the Cop. The officer who killed Knucks was C.J. Braddock. I did not know for sure what the C stood for, but I was betting it was “Cooper.”

“Come with me,” Cooper said, and he took my arm.

“No.” I resisted because he was trying to take me away from the station.

“You’re coming with me,” he said. Two other officers were approaching the door.

“No!”

“Now,”
Cooper said.

“This man is trying to kill me!” I called out, and my eyes were filling with tears.

“Gotta take him to Southwestern,” Cooper said.

“He killed that girl in Pigtown!” I said, but the other door had already swung shut and nobody else heard.

Cooper was a lot bigger than I was and he was holding my arm tight as he tried to pull me away from the door. I was attempting to stand my ground, but he was dragging me.

“No!” I screamed. “Help! Murder!”

He slapped me across the face, but I did not stop shouting. Finally, he pulled the gun from his holster and pushed me against a wall. There was nobody around. I was sure he was going to kill me.

“I’ll be quiet,” I said.

“And act calm too,” he said through his teeth. I thought he was going to lead me to where the radio cars were parked, but instead he took me in the opposite direction. “You both did it, didn’t you?”

“Shut up,” he said, and he continued to push me along.

He was going to kill me and I had made it easier for him, I thought. I started to resist and he reached for his gun again.

“Hold it there,” someone said. It was Detective Kastel from the window of an old Plymouth coupe.

“Gotta take this kid to Southwestern,” Cooper said, and he slipped his revolver back into his holster.

“I’ll give you a lift,” Kastel offered.

“He’s trying to kill me,” I said.

“Sure he is,” Kastel replied and chuckled.

“He’s the accomplice in the Ludka case,” Cooper said.

“Sure he is,” Kastel said, with the same sarcasm. He was out of his car and he had his own revolver drawn. “Let the kid go.”

“Hagen told me this kid was with him,” Cooper said.

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

“Let him go,” Kastel said.

“These kids are full of lies.”

“I know.”

“Put that gun away,” Cooper said, but he had nothing to bargain with now that his own pistol was in the holster.

“It’s homicide, let’s go back into the station,” Kastel said. He was talking about the Central Station, now half a block away. I guess he was going to leave his car at the curb.

“He killed both of them,” I said, and Kastel started to chuckle.

“How about putting the gun away,” Cooper said again.

“Kid’s dangerous. You go on ahead with him.”

Cooper still had me by the arm and he was marching me back to the entrance at Central.

“You don’t need the gun with two of us watching him,” Cooper said.

“I know,” Kastel said, but he didn’t put his gun away.

In rapid succession, Cooper swung me around and pushed me into Kastel. He drew his own pistol and pulled me back. I was in worse shape now, because Cooper had his pistol and he was now using me as a shield.

“You back away, detective,” Cooper said.

Something about the way he said it made me think he was going to kill me and Kastel too. Kastel must have thought that as well, because he aimed his gun at Cooper’s head. Cooper could no longer afford to hold his own gun on me and he raised it—but he didn’t fire.

The flash of Kastel’s gun stung my face and blinded me for a moment. I heard the crack, but I heard no sound from Cooper or his gun. He squeezed my arm hard. I looked over my shoulder to see a bloody hole where his left eye had been. He was just standing there, holding his gun with one hand and my arm with the other.

I had no idea whether Cooper held me a few seconds or a couple of minutes, but it seemed like forever before he finally released me and slumped sideways onto the sidewalk. His gun fell into the street.

I did not feel safe until Kastel checked his pulse and told me he was dead.

Apparently, my grandmother had finally figured out that I was looking for Kastel not to confess but to tell him who I thought had killed Birute. A friend who spoke English had found him at home. He was on his way to the Central Police Station when he saw Cooper Joseph Braddock, C.J. Braddock, Cooper the Cop, pulling me along the sidewalk.