Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

“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?”

“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?”