Baltimore Noir

“Sure did. I followed you to the theater. If you hadn’t come out soon, I was going to go in and get you, but your mother was right. She said you always go to the bathroom at least once in every movie. Sometimes two times.”

Tom felt himself blush. The enormity of it was too much for him. “The old witch,” he said. “And the Ruth Anne thing…”

“That was her idea, too. She said she knew you were in love with her when you were a kid, but she never thought the girl was good enough for you, so she told Ruth Anne to buzz off and keep away from you.”

“What?” Tom said. “She did what?”

“Yeah, Ruth Anne always liked you but your mother pushed her away. Anyway, she knew you’d come with me if I said Ruth Anne was having a party. Your mother is wild. She’s so imaginative. Man, she’d make a great con artist.”

“Yeah.” Tom suddenly felt like he was going to puke. But he had to fight it back. It just wouldn’t do to puke on a dead man’s body stuck beneath him in the sewer.

“Well, I guess we ought to be getting back home,” Ty said. “That’s enough fun for one night, huh?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tom said. “But Ty, I mean… what’s going to happen when the cops find Louis’s body?”

“In this neighborhood? Nothing. They find five or six bodies a week around here. Gangs, drugs, home invasions. This is Baltimore, son. And Louis was a scumbag. Hey, we just did Charm City a favor. Don’t you worry your Hollywood head about it, pal. They only catch killers in the movies.”

“Okay,” Tom said. “Listen, Ruth Anne? Do you really know where she is?”

“As a matter of fact I do. She’s living downtown. I wrote her name and number on a piece of paper for you. The part I told you about her divorce, coming home? That was the real deal. And she does want to see you.”

“No shit?” Tom said, as they drove away from the moonlit sewer.

“No shit,” Ty echoed, turning down the Alameda and stepping hard on the gas. “But if I were you, Tom, this time I wouldn’t say a word about it to your mom. She’ll try to sabotage it again. She’s the kind of old lady that wants you all to herself, you know?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said, suddenly flooded with a terrifying euphoria. “You got a point there, Ty. In fact, I don’t think I’m going to be seeing my mother anymore. Ever.”

“Now wait. You can’t turn your back on your moms. You know that.”

“Why, because she’s my mother?” Tom said. “Big fucking deal.”

“No, not because she’s your mother,” Ty answered, laughing. “Because she’s such a unique kinda monster. I mean, nobody could resist a monster like that.”

Tom found himself laughing along in spite of himself. “Well, I’m going to try. I really am.”

“Fat fucking chance,” Ty said. “Fat fucking chance.”

They drove on through the night. Tom looked up at the sky, hoping for some kind of cosmic release. But the stars looked like a patch of teenage acne and the moon was large and bloated, just like Flo’s demented face.

PIGTOWN WILL SHINE TONIGHT BY JACK BLUDIS

Pigtown

Everything had gone up in price since World War II ended the year before. Coddies were a nickel, so were the big, sour pickled onions. Cigarettes cost two for a nickel, but only in the little store across the street from the Carroll Park playground could you buy them by the stick.

I gnawed the first layer of the pickled onion and made a sour face.

“You been here long enough,” Mr. Butler said.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

I didn’t want to leave the store because Knucks was still on the corner smoking one of the cigarettes he had just pinched.

I was what the neighbors called “a good kid.” For a few pennies or a nickel I would go to the store for them. From old people I wouldn’t even take that. It was the way my mother taught me before she died.

Birute Ludka, the D.P. girl, was coming around the corner from Herkermer Street, watching her feet go one in front of the other and holding her arms under her breasts so they wouldn’t bounce. I watched, but I tried not to think about her breasts because I didn’t want to tell it in confession. The “e” end of Birute’s name had a tough “eh” sound. Most people couldn’t pronounce it, so they called her Ludka.

“Hello,” she said to me.

I said, “Hi,” and stepped out of the way so she could go into the store. She wore her skirt shorter than the other girls. She was growing so fast that her clothes didn’t fit her. She went to one of the Catholic schools, Fourteen Holy Martyrs, on the other side of the B &O tracks. She didn’t go to St. Alphonsus, the Lithuanian school where I went, even though she had come over from Lithuania.

“What are you, some kind of Romeo?” Knucks said.

“What do you mean?”

“‘Hello?’ ‘Hi?’” He mocked both of us with his exaggerated tones. “I’d sure like to get into that,” he added.

He was a big guy who was always beating up other kids. His real name was Billy Hagen, and he lived just on the other side of the B &O bridge. They called it Pigtown up there too.

“How about you?” Knucks said.

“How about me, what?”

“Would you like to screw her?”

“Yeah,” I said in self-defense, though I was embarrassed to say it.

“What’s D.P. mean anyways?” Knucks asked.

“Displaced Person. It means her family got away from the Nazis and came to America.”

“How old is she?”

“Thirteen or fourteen.” I was guessing that she was my age. She was tall. She might have been older than that, but I didn’t think so because she was still in grammar school.

“Old enough to bleed,” Knucks said, then grinned.

The last part of it was usually “old enough to butcher.” I was not sure what that meant, but some of the older guys always said it about younger girls.

“When she comes out, you grab her and I’ll feel her up.”

“You’re crazy,” I said.

“Chicken.”

“Yeah, I’m chicken,” I said, and I left the corner. It was getting dark and my grandmother wanted me home.

“Buack, buack, buack,” he called after me, making the chicken sound from some gang movie. He called out the same sound, only louder, as I approached Cooper the Cop, who was standing on the corner of Bayard and Herkermer, swinging his club. His regular beat was on the other side of the tracks where Knucks lived and Birute went to school, but he spent a lot of time down on Bayard Street with us.

“What’s that noise all about?” Cooper asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

I looked back and saw Birute coming down the steps from Butler’s with an ice-cream cone. Knucks was saying something to her and she smiled. Then he started to follow her.

I turned the corner toward my grandmother’s house, which was across from the coal yard.

I thought about what Knucks said about getting into Ludka. I knew the dirtier words for that. I even knew the word intercourse I thought about it a lot but I figured I was too young for that. So was Birute. You were supposed to be married before you did that.

I stood on my grandmother’s scrubbed marble steps waiting for Ludka to turn the corner and come down so I could say hello again and see her smile. It was out of the way to her house, but it was the way she always came.