Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

“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.