Web of the City (15 page)

Moms had said it silently.

He had heard, and he would act on her words.

He would find the man. And when he did, that would be the end. Perhaps to his own life, perhaps, but definitely, it would be the end of the man’s life. Whoever he was.

Mrs. Givens was still at the window. He had no idea whether she had moved from that spot or stood there the whole long time. He closed the door, making certain the loose knob did not clank, and she turned half-around, cocking her head to one side. He came across the room and stopped near the outer door.

“Missus Givens?” She faced him slowly and he saw that the angled planes of shadow had changed her from a little nut-brown image to a pixie. Her eyes shone brightly by the lone lamp’s shine from the table.

“Watch her for me,” he said. She nodded briefly. She knew what he felt and she knew what had to be done. He was being given his freedom, to do what had to be done.

She turned back to the window and he left silently.

Monday night. Quiet out and an occasional cat in a back alley, battling it with another tom for a fish head. Cars mostly away for the night, and the office crowd preparing themselves for the sweaty day ahead. Hot and sticky. The T-shirts snug up under the armpits and the body heat melts you. The sound of TV sets filters dimly, like voices from another world, and snatches of beer commercials hit between the ball game patter. Natural night. Quiet night. Night to stay home and out of trouble.

Trouble night for Rusty Santoro.

The fuzzes rolling the streets in prowl cars, watching for auto strippers and sneak thieves. The beat cops carrying their billies with the wrist thongs dangling. Too hot to wind the stick. Everybody too weak and wet to move much.

Rusty walked past the bowling alley. Boarded up. The beat cop came around the corner as Rusty stopped before the nailed-up door. Rusty caught the flicker of T-shirt white at the cop’s open shirt neck, the shine of brass buttons, and he moved on slowly. That meant the Cougars were meeting somewhere else, if they were meeting tonight. And after what had happened to their drag, a definite rumble would be in the planning stages. He knew how they thought, and right now their thoughts were completely tied up with evening the score to the Cherokees.

He had to figure where they would go. To Tom-Tom’s? Not likely. The baby-faced soda clerk would probably close early, having heard about the trouble Friday night. He would want no difficulty so soon after a hot period like that. To someone’s home? Possibly, if the kid could get his parents out of the apartment. But that was still dubious, because a war council usually turned into an orgy—as did most club gatherings. The garage? Not again. Fedakowski who owned it had taken to carrying a Stillson wrench since the kids had been coming around. And he was too big and Polish to be screwing around with.

Rusty slumped down on a standpipe for a minute, and let his mind kick the ideas around. Where would they be? Finally he had two possible answers.

They were either on the roof at Fish’s building, which faced on an empty lot and was pretty well secluded or they were in the condemned warehouse on Wharton Street.

He checked the first out, and it was silent, black, with the silhouettes of pigeon coops among the TV antenna tendrils. The Cougars were not “high” on the roof tonight.

But they
were
in the warehouse.

They had put blankets up around the broken windows on the third floor, but Rusty was not a cop walking the beat and ignoring a warehouse about to be torn down. He was a member of that select clan of delinquents who knew what he was looking for and where to go to find it. They were having a war council in the guts of what had been a toy factory—till the building was done dirty by the man who owned it, who had it planted for arson, who had the insides fire-gutted and then got nabbed for the job—and they were after Cherokee hide. They were gonna get it too, sure as lights light and breath goes in and out. Rusty made it by the back way, up the stairs, close to the wall, so the steps didn’t creak and let on he was upcoming. Halfway up, the stairs just quit and charred planks ran across. He went back down a ways, and climbed into a hole burnt through the wall. The structural boards were somehow still there, and he walked inside the wall, past the spot where the stairs were gone, though he almost took a header three times.

Finally he made the right floor, and climbed back out through another hole, just below the door level. He stopped on the stairs, and saw a thin wash of dim yellow light under the ajar door. Another gloss of yellow watered down the right-hand wall, where the door was partways open.

He crouched down, and stuck his ear close to the opening, to listen.

He could hear them, clear and smooth, and right down the line, the way it had been when he had been Prez.

“Now, who wants to be War Councilor?” It was Candle, being the big wheel, as per usual.

A mumbled jumbling of high and medium voices, and finally Boy-O’s watery piping. “Hey, Jack! Lemme go, I wanna be a hero this time.” Laughter filled the room.

Then Candle Shaster’s voice rose up above the babble, annoyed and peremptory. “Shaddup. You just wanna go up there to peddle your snuff. They’d cut you up and drop ya down a manhole. Shaddup!”

Boy-O said something frail and the laughter rose again. Someone chimed in with another remark and the noise grew. Then Candle said, “Okay, wise guy. You so smart,
you
can be War Councilor.
You
go on up there with the white rag.”

Rusty heard Poop’s voice, querulous and angry. “Hey, why the hell me? Lotta other guys goofed off. Don’t toss that crap at me, man.”

Candle said something low, barely distinguishable in the rising clamor, and for a moment Rusty thought there would be a fight. But Poop backed down and the rumble discussion went on.

Rusty decided now was the time to make his play.

He stood up and threw the door open wide. It banged against the wall of the stairwell, sounding like the report of a pistol in the shallow confines of the passage. For a moment, while his eyes were adjusted to the gloom of the stairwell, he did not see those inside in sharp focus. Then the light flooded in, and Candle came through nasty-looking and a little frightened at who was before him.

Beside the new Cougar Prez was Weezee.

Her eyes banged open wide till the blue of them was a color contrast with the white of her painted face. Her hand flew to her mouth and for a moment she looked to Rusty as though she would faint. Everyone else remained motionless.

They were all there. The Greek, Poop, Johnny Slice, Tiger and the broads. But most of all, and it hurt on top of all the rest, there was Weezee, sitting beside Candle. He had his big, hairy spade of a hand on her knee. She didn’t mind. Times change, people change. Maybe. Not down inside. What’s there is there, and you’re screwed if you think what’s there is what you want it to be. She was here, now, and that was what counted. There were no excuses in the jungle. Live or die was all that counted. Rusty had long since decided he would live.

The guy who had killed Dolores…
He
would die.

The room was silent for a long minute and then there was lots of movement. Rusty wished in that instant he had borrowed a gun from somewhere, but there had been no place, and all he had was the stuff he was born with. He knew it was bluff or get stomped. He was no longer a Cougar, so he had to make a fast place for himself here, right this instant.

“Okay, knock it off!” he yelled. And stepped into the room.

The place was rotting away. Fire had consumed one entire wall, leaving the skeleton structure of old wood and plaster showing through. Metal, small-holed sheeting was peeled away within the walls, as though a giant hand had crumpled it up. The floor sagged noticeably. The ceiling was shrouded in darkness and the three kerosene lamps they had brought with them cast a fitful wavering glare across the room, down the now-empty stairwell.

They were stopped by his command for a moment. He had burst in and the time was not that far past that they had looked up to him as Prez of the club. He seemed to have momentary authority, for he had found them in an illegal place. Rusty came through the door, pulling it closed behind him. He walked across the room, staring straight into Weezee’s wide, frightened eyes. She had begun to nervously twist her ponytail.

Candle stood up, dropping his hand from her, and advanced a short step. Rusty bawled at him, “Sit down! I wanna talk to ya for a minute, and you’d damn well better feed me straight…”

Three of the club members moved in toward Rusty. He edged to the side, closer to Candle. The Prez of the Cougars had not sat down. He had moved a step further away from the girl, but he had not sat down. Rusty came on straight, and in one sharp movement had the Prez by the arm. He whipped it back so fast and he yanked it so hard, Candle screamed sharply in pain, and then the arm was up behind in the ridge of his back, and the knife from the sleeve was in Rusty’s hand.

The hand moved a fraction of an inch, the blade snicked open, and the point was indenting the cloth just between the fifth and sixth ribs on the right side of Candle’s body.

“Now,” Rusty forced his bluff, “now, if you wanna see how hot I am to get to know what I wanna know, then you brace me, all you fraykin’ rocks, and I’ll slide this so easy he won’t know it’s in till it’s out.”

His false bravado rang like tin on his ears, but the knife was in Candle’s side, and he had come bursting in suddenly, and he did look like he wasn’t playing around. The three members backed off. Candle struggled.

“My sister got it last night. You know that. You all know it. You guys’re sittin’ here and my kid sister’s downtown in the chill house. Now I’m gonna know who did it like, or so help me god like I’m standin’ here, I’ll scream fuzz so loud, you’ll all stay pokey till you drop.

“I know enough to get ya all canned in the Home for five years, and you,” he drove the point of the knife a little deeper into Candle’s side, “ya sonofabitch, I’ll cut out ya gut if ya don’t open up.”

Candle Shaster’s mouth opened wet and wide. He wanted to speak, but there was sharp, tiny pressure alongside his ribs, and the fright was big in him, so damned big. He squirmed in Rusty’s grip, but the boy was a rock, and held the knife tight to the cloth. It was the only thing between him and the violence the Cougars could unleash in a second, if they overcame the cold sweat of the switch in his hand.

“Talk, damn ya!” Rusty said tightly, edging the point of the knife in more sharply.

Candle could not speak. He could only squirm, and he did that with abruptness that threw Rusty off-balance. In a moment he had a wedge with his hip against the boy’s side, and an imperfect lunge tossed Rusty away from him. Rusty went sidewise, into the crate on which Weezee sat, frightened and still toying unknowingly with her ponytail. He slammed into her and she went over, her legs flashing brown and slim as she tumbled to the dirty floor. Then Rusty had his hand under him for steadying and was coming erect. The gang moved in fast.

The first three who had attempted to take him when he had entered the room came at him again and Candle was right alongside. The blades flashed wickedly in the glare of the kerosene lamps, but Rusty was on his feet and backing away.

This was it, so this was it, damn it this was it.

Close, but not nearly close enough. He knew there was something here, but now he was stopped. He was going to be stopped good and proper in a minute. How much blood could three switches draw?

He saw a flash of big movement from the corner of his eye and then the three Cougars were being elbowed aside. One of them turned to the newcomer, his blade rising, and a thick hand came down from the darkness, plucked the knife from the boy’s fingers and it leaped upward, was stuck far above in the ceiling. The thunk of the knife sticking into the charred wood of the exposed ceiling stopped the others. All but Candle.

He kept coming, not quite realizing he was alone again, and facing Rusty’s knife. The activity to his left had been so swift, so complete, he had not realized what it meant.

Rusty saw it all. He saw the gigantic hulk that was the Beast come out of the shadows where he had lain slumped against the wall. He saw the huge idiot face contort in anger and violence as the Beast shouldered aside the three Cougars, and he saw the dummy rip the knife from the boy’s hand, and with a movement more agile than any Rusty had believed the Beast could employ, had seen him throw the knife, quivering, into the ceiling.

Now Rusty bent forward at the knees and the knife came out before him, like the head of a snake, swaying, swaying, deadly and waiting. Candle came on solid and then he realized he was alone. He brought up short and started to turn, but a hairy arm went around his chest and he was lifted clear of the floor. He hung there, thrashing for a long instant, and then another hand caught him under the crotch. Candle went up, up, over the matted, caked filth of the Beast’s hair, went up bubbling and trembling and the Beast pitched him forward heavily.

Rusty watched as Candle Shaster swung through the air and fell heavily. The boy hit, and then flopped onto his belly. He lay there for a moment, then heaved and lay still. He was not unconscious, but the sharp, tiny exclamations of pain that escaped him showed he was not going to get up soon.

Rusty stood staring into the round, idiot eyes of the Beast. The eyes that said nothing at all. The eyes that were filled with a great void, a great sadness, a great uncaring, unknowing nothingness. They were windows to the house of his soul and they were dead windows. Rusty saw the great face in its rigid immobility, nearly incapable of expression with meaning. The putty wart of a nose sucked air in, quivered as the air sped back on its outward journey. Rusty watched the Beast’s face for a moment, letting the full, unpleasant picture register clearly.

He had seen the Beast around the neighborhood for years. He was a traditional joke, taunted by the younger punkies around Tom-Tom’s place, avoided by women and snapped at by the fuzz. He was always in some alley, or under a pile of newspapers in an apartment building’s basement. What he did to keep himself alive was a mystery, though from time to time rumors flashed about him. Robbery, breaking and entering, assault, mugging. Lord knew he was capable of any of them—but there was never any real inquiry into his affairs.