Young and Violent (14 page)

It is intermission when the Jungles stage their fall-in. The band has left the stand, and everyone is standing around in groups talking, pouring shots of whisky from hip-pocket bottles into Cokes and ginger ale, and waiting for just what happens then.

Gober is sitting at a table with Baby-O, Braden and Marie, when Pontiac suddenly strolls between the plaster nudes, and steps to the head of the ballroom. For the event Pontiac sports a blue cigar holder, and as he stands there he reaches in his pocket for a gold nail and a cigar and punctures the end of the cigar with the nail in a studied air of sophistication; then he lights the cigar, and rocks back and forth on his heels with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Whatta pig!” Braden exclaims.

“I been waiting for this,” Gober says. He grabs a hold of Baby-O’s hand and grasps it tightly, masterfully, in his lap.

Filing past Pontiac now in a single line are the Jungles. They amble blithely across the middle of the dance floor and over to the tables, where sit the smiling Junglettes. Before each one takes his place beside a Junglette, he bows exaggeratedly from the waist.

“Now ain’t that just too too hoity-toity for words,” Braden smirks.

“Looks like a pansy fall-in,” Two Heads Pigaro says from the next table.

Then the room is tense. Pontiac is moving directly toward the table Gober and Baby-O occupy. His steps are deliberate, each one emphasized by a puff of cigar smoke.

“Give him a real brush, Baby,” Gober says.

Baby-O answers, “You know me.”

Then Pontiac stands with his shoulders thrown back, looking down at them.

“If the smell of my cigar is offensive,” he states, “please say so.”

Braden says, “It stinks, but you stink worse!” Gober remains sullen, feigning oblivion to Pontiac’s presence.

“I am directing my question to the ladies, dad.”

“I
like
it, personally,” Marie Lorenzi says.

Gober thinks he should have known better than to trust that box, but wait until Baby-O sounds. Gober believes it is beneath his dignity as King of Kings to notice Pontiac at all.

“I’ve been thinking, Marie,” Pontiac says, “that maybe you would be more comfortable at another table.” “Maybe you’re right,” Marie says. “Big loss!” Braden croaks.

Pontiac puts his hands on the back of Marie’s chair. “May I?”

Two Heads Pigaro says, “Why not? Everybody else has.” Pontiac holds the chair back while Marie slips out of it. smoothing her blue dress with her hands, flushing excitedly, but nervously too. Baby-O seems not to be aware of any change taking place. She smokes a cigarette and stares at it wordlessly. But just wait, Gober thinks. Pontiac is taking something from his pocket. It is a piece of cellophane with a white carnation inside.

“Real flowers for a real chick!” he says elegantly.

“From a real lily!” Braden snickers.

Marie takes the flower and Pontiac points toward the Junglettes table. “Be our guest,” he says.

“Thanks,” Marie murmurs, walking rather awkwardly toward the seat which Blackie Buttoni leaps up to offer to her. Almost everyone in the Aphrodite Ballroom is watching the scene with intense fascination.

“And now,” Flat Head Pontiac drawls, “Miss Limon, Would you care to dance?”

“Did you bring your own band too, Flat Head?” Braden says, but Gober punches him on the knee under the table. Gober wants Baby-O to turn it on Pontiac now.

Baby-O comes alive then. She turns halfway in her chair, her hand stubbing out the cigarette she is smoking. Her teeth flash in a wide, warm smile. Gober is dumfounded to hear her say, “I would.”

He stays frozen to his chair while Pontiac debonairly pulls Babe’s chair out, and gives her the bow-from-the-waist routine. His eyes watch dully as Pontiac takes from his lapel the carnation he wears, and hands it to Baby-O. Then, to the horrified amazement of the Kings of The Earth and the triumphant pleasure of the Jungles, Baby-O and Pontiac take to the dance floor and waltz there by themselves, without any music….

• • •

It’s a good thing he don’t have to sit down to git where he’s goin’ because he couldn’t if he wanted to, and that’s a fact. Four times he was on the point of giving his mother the slip when the eyes she got in the back of her head seen him, and he got his behind wasted.

Now he’s made the scene and he’s headin’ towards 102nd Street, jet-propelled.

When he sees Gober, has he got news!

O
NE THING
I know,” Braden says as he buckles his Sam Browne belt around his waist, “is that them Jungles are gonna get the surprise of their rotten lives about one hour from now.”

There are about ten Kings in the basement on 102nd Street, Gober among them. Gober is not saying much, but his eyes show the way he feels. They are like hard dark beads. He is already dressed and waiting for the others. Five or six Kings are still at the Aphrodite, keeping up a front. The ten here are to dress and plant themselves around the tenement at 109th where the Jungles always go with their bims after the dance. Then when the others change and join them, they all close in and pull the jap. Owl gets Pontiac downstairs first, by telling Flat Head Gober wants to arrange a fair fight, and Gober is waiting out front. Flat Head is one who digs the formalities and buys scenes like that. Flat Head is one who will insist Blackie Buttoni, the Jungle War Counselor, comes down with him; and waiting for Blackie is Blitz. Owl goes back up to say more should come down; and one by one the Jungles get worked over. Eventually they get the hang of things and see they are being japped, and then Rumblesville is alive.

“Remember,” Pigaro warns, as he stuffs a sock with a brick, “if the Junglettes take it into their heads to join the rumble, which is not likely — but if they do, they get the same treatment, and maybe a little fun on the side, should time permit.”

“And also remember,” Gober says, “I get Pontiac to myself!”

“You gonna waste him, man?” Blitz asks.

“I’m going to play with him,” Gober says. “If he dies of fright, I wouldn’t be surprised. But I’m not going to fry for him, that’s sure, trigger-happy though I am!”

“C’mon,” Braden says. “It’s ten to twelve now, and the dance breaks in ten minutes. We gotta move!”

Their sweet clothes secure on hangers, their rumble gear stuffed with knives, rocks, razors, can openers, and various other crude, homemade weapons, the Kings lumber out of the basement room and up into the warm night air. Gober tells them, “Split up, now, so we don’t look conspicuous. And on the double. At the corner take different routes.”

He keeps his hand on his Smith & Wesson, tucked in the belt of his jeans. Leading the others, he strides down 102nd with long, resolute steps. Midway, he hears his name being called.

“F’Chrissake!” he moans, “who the hell’s yelling my name out — ”

Pigaro turns around and sees the skinny figure running toward them in the distance, coming from Madison Avenue as they go in the direction of Park.

Pigaro says, “Goddam that Nothin’ Brown. He’s got a voice like a loudspeaker!”

“Hey, Gobe — ” the voice stretches itself — ”I been huntin’ you. I been huntin’ you here and at the dance hall and back here. I got see you, Gobe!”

“Oh, f’Chrissake!” Gobe moans. Then he shouts, “Shut your mouth, Nothin’, or I’ll bust it open!”

But Nothin’ persists. “I gotta see you!” He keeps running.

“Jesus!” Gober cusses. “Move on,” he tells the Kings. “I’ll catch up. Don’t forget to split by the lot at the corner.”

The Kings are almost at the corner. Gober stands impatiently waiting for Nothin’ to reach him. Nothin’ Brown’s legs are worn out but he makes them go, coming toward Gober like a wild horse. When he reaches Gonzalves, he is out of breath, ready to drop. He pants, “Listen, Gobe, I gotta tell you somethin’ — ” and that is all he gets out of him before the high shouts sound from the lot at the corner of 102nd and Park. Like a whip, Gober whirls when he hears them, and starts running. He sees the shadowy forms crop up from behind the wall, pouncing on the Kings as they pass; pouncing and swinging long objects in the air over their heads, and yelling — making the rumble noises like Gober never before heard them.

Gober runs, and behind him, somehow, Junior Brown runs, falling, skinning his knees, getting up again, and running. Nothin’ never stops shouting the whole way down to the lot. “Wait, Gobe! Listen! Wait — listen!”

A rock hits the street lamp and kills its light. Gober’s eyes try to know the dark. He sees a King — Braden? Blitz — drop from the impact of a brick-stocking
kiss.
On the lot, everyone around him is falling down or knocking someone else down. He hears grunts and groans and shrill cries of pain, and he hears the yowls of victors, and he pulls his gun and keeps it under his sweater and crouches along at the side of the wall, looking for Pontiac.

“Gobe, it wasn’t the Jungles!” Nothin’ is yelling behind him.

He could kick Nothin’ Brown’s teeth in. “Gobe, Tea done it, and — ” Goddam Nothin’ Brown. He could plug him. Then near the end of the wall, Gober hears a new voice.

“Over here, Gonzalves. Right over here. Right near the tin-can pile, Gonzalves. Get your knife out, dad!”

This is what he wanted to know.

He moves in slowly, making sure no one’s behind him — -no one but goddam Nothin’ Brown, still squealing his guts out.

He sees a form near the pile, at the end of the wall. He goes toward it, his fingers fondling the handle of the Smith & Wesson. He figures Pontiac won’t have one, but he can’t figure entirely on it, because Pontiac has been known to pack a piece before. He figures he’ll hold Pontiac and make him dance, before he hits him with the butt of the gun. As he gets near the form, he sees the flash of a silver blade and laughs to himself. He’s got Pontiac this time.

“C’mon,” Pontiac yells. “C’mon, dad!”

Gober walks slowly toward the form that is hunched over a little, in position to spring. He keeps his hand on the trigger, and comes closer and closer.

“Gobe, Gobe, wait!” Nothin’ screams. He has fallen on a rock pile there behind Gober, sprawled across it.

Gober is a few feet now from Pontiac.

“That’s right,” Pontiac says. “Come closer.”

“Don’t worry,” Gober says. And he walks right up to him, with the neck of the gun pointing; and his eyes suddenly seeing the face for the first time.

“Tea!” Gober says. “Tea, what the hell! You hopped up or something? Where the Christ is Ponti — ”

Pontiac says, “I’m around the wall, Gober, and to get me, you got to pass a King, Gober. A King with a knife!”

“Bags!” Gober says, letting the gun relax, “Bags! You crazy?” he says, walking toward his War Counselor.

• • •

All the front pages carried the story:

All trace of bravado drained away, confessed teenage killers Alto (Flat Head Pontiac) Moravia, and his dope-ridden accomplice, Salvatore (Tea Bag) Perrez, stood ashen-faced in court Monday with remorse showing in their eyes for the gang slaying of 17-year-old Rigoberto Gonzalves and a young Negro boy identified only as Junior Brown.

Ironically, Perrez was a member of the gang known as the Kings of The Earth, and it was he who knifed to death his leader, Gonzalves, when the war broke out between the Kings and a gang known as the Jungle Boys. The “rumble” took place shortly before midnight at a vacant lot on 102nd Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan. Fourteen boys, 14 to 16 years old, were seized by police shortly after the fracas got under way. The youths were armed with knives, clubs, lead pipe, axes, and other weapons, and by the time police arrived, Gonzalves was dead from repeated stab wounds in the chest and stomach, administered by Perrez, and Brown had been shot to death by Moravia with a Smith & Wesson gun.

The quarrel was touched off by an alleged attempt on the part of Moravia to steal Gonzalves’ girl friend. It was speculated that Perrez, under the influence of narcotics, was unaware of his victim’s true identity. Why Moravia murdered Brown, who was a member of neither gang, was not established.

In court neither boy was represented by a member of his family. Both still wore the clothes in which they were arrested. Perrez was said to be relieved of the suffering of the dope addict with “stand-up” shots given under police jurisdiction.

As Moravia and Perrez arrived outside the courthouse, a crowd of more than 150 watched from behind barriers across the street. Moravia, at the time of their arrest the swaggering, insolent member of the twosome, in sharp contrast to the bewildered Perrez, had lost the cocksureness that had led him to exclaim on Saturday morning, “You’re talking to a big man, dad!”

Quickly they were led from a detention cell to Youth Term of Magistrates Court for arraignment before Magistrate Mann on charges of homicide, and, in Moravia’s case, violation of the Sullivan law as well.

Bail for each was set at $50,000.

“If you ask me who is to blame,” Magistrate Mann declared, “I would say the people of the city. The press is awake, the police are, public officials are, but the public — not only the families of these two boys, but the public in general — is asleep. Until it wakes up, the situation will continue!”

The 14 other boys, members of both the Kings of The Earth and the Jungle Boys, were scheduled for hearings as juvenile delinquents, but their arraignments in Children’s Court were put off until May 31.

The Brown boy, difficult to identify at the time his body was delivered to the morgue, due to the fact that he carried nothing in his clothing other than two dried-up pieces of smoked oyster, was later identified by his grief-stricken mother, Bessie Brown, domestic, who is currently under a doctor’s care.

Gonzalves’ mother and father, neither of whom speak English fluently, told an interpreter that they had never heard of such a gang as the Kings of the Earth. Mrs. Gonzalves, near the point of collapse, said her son had ambitions to be a professional man, and that he was engaged to marry a girl named Anita Manzi.

Emblazoned on Gonzalves black leather jacket in bright gold letters were the words:
RIGOBERTO GONZALVES — KING OF KINGS.

THE END