Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [20]
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.