I looked up and he was staring at dead, dead Fat Benny. Then he turned and looked at me. “You killed him. You did it!”
“I saved your stinking life, lover boy!” I replied.
“Yeah. Yeah,” he said. He said it real thoughtful, like an entirely new angle was coming to him. I didn’t like that tone. I liked that goddamned smile of his even less.
“How ’bout you being my drag now, Chickie?” he asked.
“What?” I almost yelled. He was out of his mind.
“Don’t you think you’d better?”
“You’re screwloose!”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “But what if I was to tell the cops what I know? What if I was to tell them you’d cooled Fat Benny here? They’re gonna be really looking for the characters did him out. Whaddaya think they’d do to you if they knew it was you?”
Then I caught the bit. That rat! That slob! That bastard! I’d saved a louse like that? I shoulda had my head examined.
I looked at his pimply, pocked face in the reflected streetlight. He was looking at me like I was a ripe fruit! He looked like hell.
Then I heard the sirens.
“Better make it quick, Chickie. You wanna marry up with me?”
I thought quick all right. No harm in going along with the gag for now. “Yeah. Yeah, sure, Twist honey. I’ll marry ya.”
He boosted me over the wall, then came over himself. While he was boosting me, even with the cops roaring up, he copped a cheap feel off me. That lousy crumb!
We started off down the alley on the other side.
Yeah. Yeah, sure I’ll marry you, you stinking bastard. I thought to myself. Sure. Marriages are made in Heaven. This one was made in hell. And that’s where you’re goin’ just as soon as I can arrange it. Twist lover!
We ran down the alley, Twist chuckling almost in my ear. I chuckled, too.
I looked down at my hand.
I was still carrying that smooth switch.
STUDENTS OF THE ASSASSIN
Tony and Pepper had it down to a ritual. Tony would walk up and ask the pigeon for a light, while Pepper curved in from the bushes. They always made certain there were bushes handy.
While the pigeon was busy putting the light to Tony’s ciggy. Pepper would lace him a couple times with a gloveful of half-dollars. Half-dollars worked best. No matter how broke they were—no matter how desperately their finances demanded they go on a job—they always had the half-dollars around. They worked best, that was all.
Then Tony would catch the pigeon and lower him away into the bushes. One, two, three and they were a block away, with the pigeon’s wallet, watch, rings and tie neatly shoved into the waistband of their slacks, of course, where any bulge made by the stuff they’d pinched would be covered by the fall of their flashy sports jackets.
It was Pepper who had started swiping the pigeon’s ties. Pepper was a real clotheshorse. He was a slim boy with dark hair and wise, old eyes that made him seem far older than the sixteen years indicated by his birth certificate. He was a quiet boy, with a nervous habit of biting the inside of his cheek when he was thinking. Tony couldn’t figure him.
The first time Pepper had unknotted an unconscious pigeon’s tie, Tony had said to him, “What the hell you wanna swipe that guy’s tie for?”
And Pepper had answered: “When I hit a drag at the Club, I want to look sharp, man. Why should I blow three, three-fifty, when most of these guys we’ve been rolling got nice ties I can’t afford? All I have to do is haul the tie off and use it myself! That ought to be easy enough to dig. Dig?”
“I dig, I dig.” Tony had answered, sucking his cheeks with annoyance. He’d never figure this Pepper. He’d known the kid two years, ever since he’d moved into Tony’s neighborhood, and they’d rolled maybe fifteen, twenty marks in the park. Yet, he still couldn’t figure the dark-haired boy.
Pepper didn’t seem to have the attitude of a good mugger. He didn’t want to wear the black leather jacket or jeans most of the kids affected when park-prowling. When Tony had first approached Pepper about jack-rolling, the dark-haired boy had looked up at him wisely from the tenement’s front steps, and asked, “We do it the way you guys been doing it? Jackets and jeans? Mug, then run like hell?”
Tony had spread his hands. “There’s another way?”
“If I start mugging pigeons with you,” Pepper had said, “we got to work it my way. My way once, twice and always! Dig?”
Tony had looked skeptical for a second, then dropped down next to Pepper on the steps. “So tell me what your way is.”
Pepper had told him, and though the idea was different to Tony, it seemed cool, and looked like it might work. So they had dressed in their best clothes: topcoats, jackets, slacks, gloves—and the half dollars—and taken to the park.
After they had rolled a guy, they joined the crowd, and no cop had yet stopped them. They just didn’t look like juvies. They were too well-dressed. Juvies always mugged wearing black jackets and heavy stomping boots.
It had worked fine, real fine, the last six months. They’d mugged twice as many marks as any other kids in the Club, and hooked twice as much dough. Pepper seemed to be a natural for this racket. A real mastermind!
Still. Tony felt ill-at-ease with Pepper. The kid was too quiet. Too sure of himself. All the Club members were sure of themselves—hell, Tony could swagger with the best of them—but not like Pepper. It was an animal grace, the way he walked. Like some cat-thing that knows someone might jump him at any second.
But as long as the money kept being as easy to pick up as it had been these last six months, Tony didn’t give a flying damn if Pepper walked on his hands!
Tony’s peace of mind might not have been the most serene with Pepper, but his faith had grown tremendously over the months. Now, tonight, they were going to take the second step. Tonight they would mug more than one person! You could stay in the peanut division only so long—then you had to move up.
Tonight: two pigeons would get cooled properly.
The evening was cool, but they hadn’t worn topcoats. The first twinges of spring were coming off the Hudson, and the park was loaded. Necking couples lay barefoot in each other’s arms, whispering inanities. Old women sat toothlessly humming on the Drive, staring at the tugs on the river. Mothers with socks and flats walked baby carriages, feigning nonchalance, inviting bench-warmers to coo at their kids. The park was loaded.
“Plenty of dough kicking around here tonight,” Pepper said, as they came down the hill into the Park.
Tony squinted against the sparkling light of the lamp posts. The evening was graying down, and shadows were starting to deepen across the grass. “Yeah. Maybe too much. How we gonna be able to pull anything off without anybody spotting us?”
Pepper grinned, revealing even, only slightly-stained teeth, and nudged him in the side. “Man, there ain’t no place better to pull off a job than in the center of a crowd. Specially in New York.”
They walked the pavements, watching the people, sizing up the crowd, making certain they knew where the cops were at all times.
The cops weren’t really as much of a problem as they had thought they’d be when they’d first started. There were only so many harness boys, and the few couldn’t be everywhere at once.
They left the sidewalk, after a while, and took to the paths leading through the bushes. It was always a soft touch if you could spot a guy making love to some chick in the bushes. They never set up a squawk till after you’d left—and the girl had fixed herself up. By then you could be blocks away; and with the foolproof disguise they had, they were a cinch to make it clean.
They were rounding a bend in the path, going up a slight slope around a boulder, when they spotted the first mark.
He was a young guy, walking with his arm around the waist of a girl in a flowery summer dress.
“He look like he’s got anything?” Tony asked. The occasional whine in the boy’s voice broke out, and was distinct as he asked the question. He was
a year younger than Pepper, and it bothered the hell out of him.
Pepper turned halfway toward his companion, his voice lowered so the young couple should not hear. The wide grin spread once more. “He sure does. He looks like he’s got plenty to take his dollie out. That suit ain’t no Robert Hall item. We’ll take ’em. Dig?”
“Dig,” Tony replied emphatically. They prepared themselves, while the couple disappeared around the next bend in the path.
They hadn’t worn topcoats or gloves. It had turned too warm. But Pepper slipped the single black leather glove out of his inside jacket pocket, and dropped the eight half dollars into it. He held out his hand, and Tony funneled the other eight into the glove. The sixteen weights made a hefty fistful. The boys parted, slipping off the path, coming up on the strolling couple from either side of the path.
The boy was a tall, almost gangling fellow, freckles dotting his face, and an unruly head of auburn hair. He talked intently to the girl, leaning over and looking closely into her face.
It was obvious they were very much in love, for the girl stared back with an intentness equal to his own. She was a slim girl, rough-featured, but with beautiful, glossy black hair. They seemed lost in one another.
“Young love—ain’t it grand?” Tony jibed, pushing a bush aside, stepping onto the path behind them.
The freckle-faced boy dropped his arm from the girl’s waist, turning at Tony’s voice. “What…?”
He never finished the sentence. Pepper struck from slightly in front of the young couple, now that the boy had his back turned. He broke onto the path from the concealing bushes, swinging the heavily-laden glove. The weight crashed into the back of the boy’s skull, spinning him slightly. A second blow, almost before the first had finished its arc, caught him in the left eye, even as he tried to turn.
The second blow threw the boy back, and he staggered against the girl. “Oh, my God, Roger!” the girl screamed. Her eyes had grown wide and white in her pale face. She looked as though the white snow of her face had been spattered with ink.
“Ease it quiet, sister!” Tony snapped, stepping next to her. He grasped her by the upper arm, and drew her around.
“Leave him alone!” She screamed again, and this time spun on Tony. Surprisingly, her fingernails raked down the mugger’s face. Four thin lines of red welled up, though the skin was not broken.
Rage mottling his face, Tony threw a fist into the girl’s face, the fingers so tightly clenched they crackled at the knuckles. The fist caught the girl on the cheek, and she flailed back into the bushes. She fell heavily, swinging her weight around awkwardly on the foliage as she tried to grab a handhold. She fell to the ground, her skirt hiking up to reveal thin legs.
Pepper had pursued the boy, during Tony’s trouble with the girl. Again he lashed out with the weighted glove. This time the boy rolled with the blow, and swung on Pepper.
“You miserable…rotten…what do you think…you’re…” he panted, trying to land a wild blow on the agile Pepper. The first strike had affected him, however, and he stumbled after Pepper, who dodged quickly. The boy tripped on the rough ground.
He fell to his knees with a thud, and Pepper was in quickly. The young mugger grasped the boy’s long hair in both hands. The weighted glove gripped in his teeth, Pepper brought his knee up sharply, pulling the boy’s face down to it with savage viciousness. There was a crack! as they met and the boy’s nose skewed to the side, beginning to bleed. Again Pepper jack-kneed him, and this time the freckled boy’s eyes rolled up, as a hoarse moan slipped past his lips.
He fell sideways, doubling over.
Pepper took a deep breath, looked around for Tony. His partner was kneeling over the girl in the bushes. All Pepper could see of her was the pale white of legs and thighs protruding onto the path.
“For crine out loud! You miserable raunch, you!” Pepper spat at him, through thinned lips. “What a helluva time for you to pick a cheap feel! Get the hell out here and help me run over this guy before someone comes down the path!”
In a minute they had searched the boy, cleaned his wallet, removed his watch and ring; they removed the girl’s watch and rings also.
“Let’s go,” Pepper said, shoving the rings into the inner lining of his waistband, through the pockets.
Tony was looking down at the girl, still breathing raggedly, though unconscious. Her dress had been torn open at the neck, and one breast was nearly revealed. “Pity to let that stuff just lie there.” He shook his head sadly.
Pepper swung him around by the arm, cracked a flat hand into the boy’s face. A spot of angry red appeared, “Are you nuts?” Pepper seethed with incredulousness. “You want to stay here and greet the cops when this chick wakes up?”
Tony pursed his lips in undisguised anger. “Don’t you ever hit me like that again. I don’t give a damn how many guys we rolled together, I ain’t…”
Pepper stepped in to him quickly. “Oh, shut up, for Chrissakes. Don’t start bein’ a hero. Let’s pile outta here!”
They strode quickly back the way they had come. Around the bend past the boulder, down the slope, and across the darkening sidewalk. In a few minutes they were a block away, walking nonchalantly. No one could possibly have connected them with the mugging.
“That’s enough for tonight,” Tony said.
“You chickie?” Pepper goaded him. “We said two tonight, and two it’s gonna be. Dig?”
His anger still apparent, Tony mumbled, “Dig!”
A block later they had smoothed over their disagreement, and were looking for their second victim of the evening.
Two blocks behind them, in a stand of bushes, a dirt-smudged girl in a torn flowered print dress was coming to consciousness, to see the bloody beaten shape of her steady, lying doubled over. His skull was fractured.
The second mark, the second pigeon, was a natural. A twenty-four carat, diamond-encrusted natural. He was a tall, large-boned man with a sharp face, all planes and angles. He carried himself with an assured air, that wore well with his dark blue suit and grey snapbrim. He walked slowly down the sidewalk, between the trees, hands in pockets, a cigarette dangling at an impossible angle from his mouth.
Pepper looked at Tony. They were a double-dozen steps behind the man. Tony looked back at Pepper. An instant’s message flashed between them. This guy had been made for them! Pepper slipped off the sidewalk, into the dark area beside the route.
Tony shook a cigarette from his pack, stuck it in his mouth, and ambled up behind the man. An instant before the boy could tap the man on his shoulder, the man whirled.
He fastened an unwaveringly hard look on Tony, nearly a head and a half shorter than himself, and the words rapped out without inflection. “Something you want, kid?”
Tony stopped abruptly, the suddenness of the question throwing him momentarily off balance. He regained himself quickly, and tilted his face up to the man. The winking lights from across the river on the Jersey docks made diamonds in the tall man’s dark eyes. “Yeah. A light, if you’ve got one. I’m all out…” he said.
The man squinted an instant, then dipped a hand quickly into his jacket pocket, brought out a gold lighter. Tony stared at the instrument with open approval. It was a beautiful piece of equipment. He looked up quickly; the man had been watching him staring at the lighter.
The man clicked the lighter several times, till it lit, then offered his hand to Tony. It was rock-steady, and the flame moved only a fraction in the breeze. The boy edged closer, cupping his hands around the flame, keeping the wind off it, keeping the man’s attention fastened on himself.
From the corner of his eye, he could see Pepper edging out of the bushes behind the man, the glove hanging down tightly from Pepper’s upraised arm.
The barest flicker of Tony’s expression made the man’s eyes widen momentarily. Pepper was within a few steps of the man. bringing the gloveful of half dollars back even further for the strike, when the man spun around.
One thick hand
shot out, grabbed Pepper around the throat, and heaved him off the ground with tremendous strength. The boy’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, and his mouth dropped open, though nothing came out.
The man lifted Pepper bodily, and flung him around his own outstretched leg. The boy flew through the evening air, and crashed into Tony, who had moved forward automatically as the man had grabbed Pepper. He had moved quickly, but even so, too slowly for the swiftness of what happened next.
They came together with an audible thump, and tumbled together onto the grass on the other side of the sidewalk.
In an instant, the man was on Tony. Dragging him erect, the man flat-handed the boy across the face…crack, crack, crack…crack, crack. Five sharp sounds echoed from the trees, and Tony’s head hung down, his eyes closed, the corner of his mouth bleeding; unconscious.
Pepper was trying to scramble to his feet, trying to rush away from this suddenly terrifying pigeon who was beating hell out of them. He took two steps, then the man had him by the collar of his sports jacket, and Pepper felt the flat edge of a hand as it snapped quickly down—then away.
For a second he felt nothing. Then the blackness oozed over him, and he joined Tony.
They came to almost within seconds of each other. They were lying stretched out, under a tree, in full view of the night-lit Hudson and the Drive. Cars roared past them in a whishing stream, metallic blurs without meaning or rest. The night had closed down completely. The park lights were on, but fewer people bulked on the benches.
The man was sitting with his face in darkness, the orange snip of his cigarette showing against total shadow. He was sitting, with his hands clasped around his drawn-up knees, hat slipped back on his head.
Pepper fluttered his eyelids first, raised himself off the ground, then moaned weakly and fell back on the grass. The striking of his head made booming and lights in his skull; the tiny pinpoints of light erupted on the inner surface of his eyelids. “Oh. God!” he moaned, rising up a bit on flattened palms. “What s-slammed me? Oh God!”