II
Shield 8805
This candy store is called Chris's. There must be ten thousand like itin the city. A marble counter with perhaps five stools, a display caseof cigars and a bigger one of candy, a few dozen girlie magazineshanging by clothespin-sort-of things from wire ropes along the wall. Ithas a couple of very small glass-topped tables under the magazines. Anda juke--I can't imagine a place like Chris's without a juke.
I had been sitting around Chris's for a couple of hours, and I wasbeginning to get edgy. The reason I was sitting around Chris's was notthat I liked Cokes particularly, but that it was one of the hanging-outplaces of a juvenile gang called The Leopards, with whom I had beentrying to work for nearly a year; and the reason I was becoming edgy wasthat I didn't see any of them there.
The boy behind the counter--he had the same first name as I, Walter inboth cases, though my last name is Hutner and his is, I believe,something Puerto Rican--the boy behind the counter was dummying up, too.I tried to talk to him, on and off, when he wasn't busy. He wasn't busymost of the time; it was too cold for sodas. But he just didn't want totalk. Now, these kids love to talk. A lot of what they say doesn't makesense--either bullying, or bragging, or purposeless swearing--but talkis their normal state; when they quiet down it means trouble. Forinstance, if you ever find yourself walking down Thirty-Fifth Street anda couple of kids pass you, talking, you don't have to bother lookingaround; but if they stop talking, turn quickly. You're about to bemugged. Not that Walt was a mugger--as far as I know; but that's thepattern of the enclave.
* * * * *
So his being quiet was a bad sign. It might mean that a rumble wasbrewing--and that meant that my work so far had been pretty nearly afailure. Even worse, it might mean that somehow the Leopards haddiscovered that I had at last passed my examinations and been appointedto the New York City Police Force as a rookie patrolman, Shield 8805.
Trying to work with these kids is hard enough at best. They don't likeoutsiders. But they particularly hate cops, and I had been trying forsome weeks to decide how I could break the news to them.
The door opened. Hawk stood there. He didn't look at me, which was a badsign. Hawk was one of the youngest in the Leopards, a skinny, very darkkid who had been reasonably friendly to me. He stood in the open door,with snow blowing in past him. "Walt. Out here, man."
It wasn't me he meant--they call me "Champ," I suppose because I beatthem all shooting eight-ball pool. Walt put down the comic he had beenreading and walked out, also without looking at me. They closed thedoor.
* * * * *
Time passed. I saw them through the window, talking to each other,looking at me. It was something, all right. They were scared. That'sbad, because these kids are like wild animals; if you scare them, theyhit first--it's the only way they know to defend themselves. But on theother hand, a rumble wouldn't scare them--not where they would show it;and finding out about the shield in my pocket wouldn't scare them,either. They hated cops, as I say; but cops were a part of theirenvironment. It was strange, and baffling.
Walt came back in, and Hawk walked rapidly away. Walt went behind thecounter, lit a cigaret, wiped at the marble top, picked up his comic,put it down again and finally looked at me. He said: "Some punk bustedFayo and a couple of the boys. It's real trouble."
I didn't say anything.
He took a puff on his cigaret. "They're chilled, Champ. Five of them."
"Chilled? Dead?" It sounded bad; there hadn't been a real rumble inmonths, not with a killing.
He shook his head. "Not dead. You're wanting to see, you go down Gomez'scellar. Yeah, they're all stiff but they're breathing. I be along soonas the old man comes back in the store."
He looked pretty sick. I left it at that and hurried down the block tothe tenement where the Gomez family lived, and then I found out why.
* * * * *
They were sprawled on the filthy floor of the cellar like winoes in analley. Fayo, who ran the gang; Jap; Baker; two others I didn't know aswell. They were breathing, as Walt had said, but you just couldn't wakethem up.
Hawk and his twin brother, Yogi, were there with them, looking scared. Icouldn't blame them. The kids looked perfectly all right, but it wasobvious that they weren't. I bent down and smelled, but there was notrace of liquor or anything else on their breath.
I stood up. "We'd better get a doctor."
"Nay. You call the meat wagon, and a cop comes right with it, man," Yogisaid, and his brother nodded.
I laid off that for a moment. "What happened?"
Hawk said, "You know that witch Gloria, goes with one of the BoomerDukes? She opened her big mouth to my girl. Yeah, opened her mouth andmuch bad talk came out. Said Fayo primed some jumper with a zip and thepunk cooled him, and then a couple of the Boomers moved in real cool.Now they got the punk with the zip and much other stuff, real stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
Hawk looked worried. He finally admitted that he didn't know what kindof stuff, but it was something dangerous in the way of weapons. It hadbeen the "zip" that had knocked out the five Leopards.
I sent Hawk out to the drug-store for smelling salts and containers ofhot black coffee--not that I knew what I was doing, of course, but theywere dead set against calling an ambulance. And the boys didn't seem tobe in any particular danger, only sleep.
* * * * *
However, even then I knew that this kind of trouble was something Icouldn't handle alone. It was a tossup what to do--the smart thing wasto call the precinct right then and there; but I couldn't help feelingthat that would make the Leopards clam up hopelessly. The six months Ihad spent trying to work with them had not been too successful--a lot ofthe other neighborhood workers had made a lot more progress than I--butat least they were willing to talk to me; and they wouldn't talk touniformed police.
Besides, as soon as I had been sworn in, the day before, I had begun thepractice of carrying my .38 at all times, as the regulations say. It wasin my coat. There was no reason for me to feel I needed it. But I did.If there was any truth to the story of a "zip" knocking out theboys--and I had all five of them right there for evidence--I had theunpleasant conviction that there was real trouble circulating aroundEast Harlem that afternoon.
"Champ. They all waking up!"
I turned around, and Hawk was right. The five Leopards, all of a sudden,were stirring and opening their eyes. Maybe the smelling salts hadsomething to do with it, but I rather think not.
We fed them some of the black coffee, still reasonably hot. They werescared; they were more scared than anything I had ever seen in thosekids before. They could hardly talk at first, and when finally they camearound enough to tell me what had happened I could hardly believe them.This man had been small and peculiar, and he had been looking for, ofall things, the "Mafia," which he had read about in historybooks--_old_ history books.
Well, it didn't make sense, unless you were prepared to make a certainassumption that I refused to make. Man from Mars? Nonsense. Or from thefuture? Equally ridiculous....
* * * * *
Then the five Leopards, reviving, began to walk around. The cellar wasdark and dirty, and packed with the accumulation of generations in theway of old furniture and rat-inhabited mattresses and piles ofnewspapers; it wasn't surprising that we hadn't noticed the littlegleaming thing that had apparently rolled under an abandoned potbellystove.
Jap picked it up, squalled, dropped it and yelled for me.
I touched it cautiously, and it tingled. It wasn't painful, but it wasan odd, unexpected feeling--perhaps you've come across the "buzzers"that novelty stores sell which, concealed in the palm, give a sudden,surprising tingle when the owner shakes hands with an unsuspectingfriend. It was like that, like a mild electric shock. I picked it up andheld it. It gleamed brightly, with a light of its own; it was round; itmade a faint droning
sound; I turned it over, and it spoke to me. Itsaid in a friendly, feminine whisper: _Warning, this portatron attunedonly to Bailey's Beam percepts. Remain quiescent until the Adjustercomes._
That settled it. Any time a lit-up cue ball talks to me, I refer thematter to higher authority. I decided on the spot that I was heading forthe precinct house, no matter what the Leopards thought.
But when I turned and headed for the stairs, I couldn't move. My feetsimply would not lift off the ground. I twisted, and stumbled, and fellin a heap; I yelled for help, but it didn't do any good. The Leopardscouldn't move either.
We were stuck there in Gomez's cellar, as though we had been nailed tothe filthy floor.