Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [19]
“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