Web of the City (29 page)

It sounded oddly brassy coming from such a young girl, but she was very close, and obviously wanted to be kissed, so Frenchie pulled her in close, and put his mouth to hers. Her lips opened and she kissed him with the hunger and ferocity of adolescent carnality.

Then he broke away, winking at her, and throwing over his shoulder, “Watch my dust, sweetheart,” as he headed for the Stude.

A bunch of boys were milling about the car as he ran up.

“Good luck,” one of them said, and a queer grin was stuck to his face. Frenchie shrugged. There were some oddballs in this batch, but he could avoid them when he was a full member.

He got in and revved the engine. It sounded good. He knew he could take them. His brakes were fine. He had them checked and tightened that afternoon.

Then Monkey was driving out on to the road that ran down the center of the old field, over the grade atop the culvert pipe. His Ford stopped, and he leaned out the window to yell at Gloria. “Okay, baby. Any time!”

The girl ran into the middle of the road as the three racers gunned their motors, inching at the start mark. They were like hungry beasts waiting to be unleashed.

Then she leaped in the air, came down waving a yellow bandana, and they were away, with great gusts of dirt and grass showing behind.

Frenchie slapped gears as though they were all one, and the Studelac jumped ahead. He decked the gas pedal and fed all the power he had to the engine.

On either side of him, the wind gibbering past their ears, the other two hunched over their wheels and plunged straight down the field toward the huge steel pipe and the deep trench before it.

Whoever turned was a chicken, that was the rule, and Frenchie was no coward. He knew that. Yet—

A guy could get killed. If he didn’t stop in time, he’d rip right into that pipe, smash up completely at the speed they were doing.

The speedometer said eighty-five, and still he held it to the floor. They weren’t going to turn. They weren’t going… to… turn… damn… you… turn!

Then, abruptly, as the pipe grew huge in the windshield, on either side of him the other cars swerved, as though on a signal.

Frenchie knew he had won.

He slapped his foot on to the brake.

Nothing happened.

The speedometer read past ninety, and he wasn’t stopping. He beat at it frantically, and then, when he saw there was no time to jump, no place to go, as the Studelac leaped the ditch and plunged out into nothingness, he threw one hand out the window, and his scream followed it.

The car hit with a gigantic whump and smash, and struck the pipe with such drive the entire front end was rammed through the driver’s seat. Then it exploded.

It had been most disconcerting. That hand coming out the window. And the noise.

A man stepped out of the banked shadows at the base of the grove of trees. The fire from the culvert, licking toward the sky, lit his face in a mask of serene but satisfied crimson.

Monkey drove to the edge of the shadows, and walked up to the man standing there half-concealed.

“That was fine, son,” said the tall man, reaching into his jacket for something. “That was fine.

“Here you are,” he said, handing a sheaf of bills to the boy. “I think you will find that according to our agreement. And,” he added, withdrawing another bill from the leather billfold, “here is an extra five dollars for that boy who took care of the brakes. You’ll see that he gets it, won’t you?”

Monkey took the money, saluted sloppily, and went back to his Ford. A roar and he was gone, back into the horde of hotrods tearing away from the field, and the blazing furnace thrust down in the culvert ditch.

But for a long time, till he heard the wail of sirens far off but getting nearer, the most brilliant student of Elizabethan drama in the country, perhaps the world, stood in the shadows and watched fire eat at the sky.

It certainly was not—not at all—a game for children.

Originally published in the September, 1956 issue of
Guilty Detective Story Magazine

It wasn’t pretty, the way they were beating him to death. They were using bricks.

I’ve been driving a hack in New York ever since I picked up a hunk of shrapnel in my elbow, on the backwash of the Yalu. I’d seen some pretty rough things in Korea, and I’ve seen some even rougher behind the wheel of that cab, but the way they were working that guy over—cool, smooth and without a wasted movement—made my throat dry out.

I turned my cab into 25th Street, off Second Avenue, a few blocks from the East River—I’d just taken an old-maid schoolteacher home and was cutting back to the main drag—when my headlights caught the six of them.

There were five kids, all in black leather jackets, and a guy with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. The kids had him up against the wall of a clothing factory, and they were clipping him in the head and belly with those bricks. I roared down the street at them, going over the sidewalk to keep them in the beams, and honking my horn like mad.

When they heard me, they backed off, and the guy fell on his face. They thought that was a good deal, thought they could finish him quicker that way, and went back at him.

The kids started stomping him in the groin when he tried to struggle to his knees, then they kicked his head. They were wearing heavy army boots, and the guy on the sidewalk started bleeding. I could see it all as clearly as if it were daylight.

They must have figured they’d done all they could to the guy, because they bent down trying to get the briefcase off him. I saw one of the kids bring his foot down full on the guy’s wrist.

I screeched the cab to a stop right beside them and hauled my Stillson wrench off the floor.

Then I was out the door and around the cab. “Hey!” I yelled, not actually thinking it would do any good, but what the hell, at least it would keep them off that bleeding slob on the sidewalk.

Two of them came at me, both with bricks in their hands. Those kids weren’t sloppy street-fighters. They knew what they were doing. I’m a big boy, almost six-two, and they could see that; one came in high, the other low. The other three were busy breaking the guy’s wrist, trying to get that briefcase off him.

The first kid was a puffy-nosed character, with long brown hair combed back into a duck’s-fanny hairdo, and he swung his brick the long way, aiming it at my chops. I swiveled a hip, and tossed a foot out. He stumbled over it, and I only hesitated a moment before chopping him with the wrench. I didn’t much care for the idea of clobbering a kid, but I saw the size of that brick, and my mind changed itself
so
fast!

The wrench caught him alongside the head and he yowled good and loud. Then he went down, spilling into the gutter just as his buddy smashed me in the middle with
his
brick!

It felt like someone’d overturned a cement wagon on me. The pain shot up my body, ran through my nerves, tingled in my fingertips, and numbed my legs, all at the same time. What a shot
that
kid was!

I spun aside, before he could get leverage for a second pot at me, and kicked out almost wildly. It was my numbed leg, and I wasn’t quite sure what the damned thing would do. But it caught him on the knee, and his almost handsome face screwed up till he looked like I’d ripped out his liver. I took a short step and chopped him fast with the flat of my hand behind his ear. The kid moaned once and went down on one knee. I used my good leg and brought a knee up under the chin. A K.O. real fast; he went the way of his buddy.

I started to spin halfway around to get the other three. All I saw was the guy lying there, bleeding like a downed heifer, and two of the kids tearing that briefcase off him, swearing like Civil War veterans. I had about a half-second to wonder where the third punk was; then I found out real fast.

He was right beside me, with a sockful of quarters. They must have been quarters. Pennies wouldn’t have put me to sleep that quickly. One full-bodied swipe.

I went down, and everything was ever so black.

Coming out of it was sicker than going down. I remembered when I had come to in the field hospital five miles from the front in Korea. I’d thought I was in a long white corridor, and somebody was calling my name, over and over, echoing down that long corridor of my mind for ever and ever.

That’s what it was like. Someone was standing over me saying, “Campus, Campus, Campus,” over and over again, and it was echoing in my head
so
loud.

I screwed my eyes shut as tight as I could, and right about then the little man turned on his trip hammer inside my skull. He was mining for gray matter, and I thought sure my brains would tumble out of my ears. “W-water,” I managed to gasp.

A shadowy thing extended a tentacle, and there was a glass of water on the end of it. When another shadow propped me up, I let a little of the water slop into my mouth, and slowly my eyes sank back into my head. They cleared and I looked up into a four-day growth of beard.

The growth was on a cop. I shut my eyes carefully; the last thing on this Earth I wanted to see was a cop. “Go away,” I muttered, getting a nauseating taste of my own raw-blood lips.

“You’re Neal Campus, right?” he asked. His voice matched his face. His face had been hard, rough, and grizzled. I looked up at him again.

“I wasn’t doing more than fifty, so help me god!” That was when I realized I was in the hospital. “What the hell am I doing here?” I almost shouted. I tried to sit up, but someone on the other side of the bed that I hadn’t seen before pushed me back.

I tossed a look at the guy—it was an interne—and it must have been a pretty vicious look, because he let go quick. I sat up again. “I said what the hell am I doing here?” I was so confused, I didn’t realize I was fainting again till they all slid off my vision, and black gushed into my head.

The next time I came up the cops were gone and it was semidark in the room. The sterilized odor almost made me puke, and I came upright on the bed, clawing out.

They pushed me back—or I should say
she
pushed me back. It was a nurse. As sweet and virginal-looking a thing as Johns Hopkins ever issued.

Her voice floated to me, almost detached from her body. “You’ve had a nasty spill, Mr. Campus. Take it easy now.” I let her push me back without any trouble.

“How—how long have I been here?” I asked. My throat was dry as an empty gas tank.

“Three days, Mr. Campus. Now just lie back and take it easy. Doctor Eshbach said you were coming along nicely.”

Three days. I’d been in the hospital three full days. Suddenly, faces came back to me. Three. Three days. Three faces on three hoods. A puffy-nosed kid with brown hair, slightly pudgy. An almost handsome kid with a Barrymore profile and sleepy eyes. A kid with buck teeth and a crew-cut—bringing an argyle sock full of coins down on my head.

They were so clear in my mind, I felt I could reach out and touch them. I tried it. She took my hand. Then I peeled off again.

This time the cop was clean-shaven, but it didn’t help his general appearance much. He said he had been to see me two days before—which made it five I’d been in the hospital—and that his name was Harrison, operating out of Homicide. I don’t quite know how I knew he was a cop, because he wasn’t in uniform. But I knew. He was stockily built, square and almost immovable looking. His face was a pasty white, broken by dark shadows and black, bushy eyebrows. He looked like a short stack of newspapers.

Harrison wore glasses—the old thin-rimmed wire kind—but it didn’t distract from his ferocious appearance. There was something in the rock-ribbed squareness of his jaw, the snapping expression in his flinty eyes, that instantly made me aware this cookie wasn’t playing games.

They must have told him I was ready for visitors; he hurri-caned into the room, slung a chair away from the wall and banged it down next to the bed.

“You’ve been able to conk out of answering a few questions for five days now, Campus, but they tell me you’re okay today. I suggest you answer fast and straight. There’s an electric chair waiting if you don’t!”

He spat it out fast, without any room for niceties or subtleties. He meant it. I didn’t know what he was talking about, though.

“Why the chair?” I was surprised at my voice; it was a duck-rasp. It rattled out like hailstones and fell onto the floor.

He worked his jaw muscles. The guy looked like he was trying to hold back from belting me. I didn’t know why he was so damned angry
—I
hadn’t done anything but get clobbered! Then he told me why they had the chair greased and waiting.

“Pessler was dead when we got to him. His head stomped into raspberry jelly and three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of uncut diamonds missing. I was sent down there, Campus, and I saw that guy. He looked real bad.”

I’ve seen and dealt with a lot of cops. The ones that gave me tickets, and the ones that took my statement at accidents; the ones that broke up tavern brawls and the ones that hauled me in with MP bands on their uniforms. I’ve seen them mad and indifferent, annoyed and savage. But I never saw one like this Harrison.

“Look, fella,” I said, “maybe you better back off some and let me in on what this is all about. All I know is that five kids were clubbing a guy, and when I tried to help him out, I got smacked for my trouble.”

“Maybe that’s what you
wanted
it to look like,” he shot back at me.

I could feel my face getting red, like it does when I’m boiling, and my duck-rasp had a real waspish tone. “Now you come patty-caking in here trying to whipsaw me and scare me with tales of the fry-seat. I don’t much care for it! So unless you got something logical to say, or a charge to make, or a warrant to back you, or you want to talk more civilly, beat it. I don’t feel so hot right now.” I turned toward the wall.

Instead of cowing him, it got him all the madder. He grabbed me by the shoulder, yanked me back facing him. He was all the harder looking.

“Listen, Campus, this isn’t any catered affair! We’ve been having trouble with this bunch of juvie hoods for six months now, and we’ve got a hunch they aren’t figuring out three hundred thousand dollar muggings on their own. We’ve got a hunch someone is ringing these jobs for them—and we’ve got a hunch the guy that’s been spotting for them is you.”