Web of the City

  It surprised him, suddenly, that he should think of his sister. She meant a great deal to him, and yet he hardly gave her a thought; the gang had taken up too much of his time. But she figured in this big. He had to watch himself. And then his ma. She would be bugged in the street. His old man…

  That crumbum wouldn’t have to worry, but if he was here, maybe he could have done something, maybe he could have helped. Rusty set those bitter thoughts aside. Pa Santoro was a wine-gut, and there was no help coming from that angle.

  The heap pulled around a bend, and Rusty saw a dozen or so cars all drawn into a circle, their noses pointed into the center. The place was crawling with kids, and a great cheer went up as they saw him in the front seat.

  Rusty’s belly constricted. He didn’t want to fight Candle; he didn’t want to fight anybody. He wanted to go home and lie down, put on some records and lay very very still. His belly ached.

  Fish took off at top speed around the ring of cars, spraying dirt in a wide wedge as he rounded the circle on two wheels. It was all Rusty needed to finish the nerve-job on him. He leaned against the right side of the car, and puked so hard he thought the tendons in his neck would split.

  Fish was spinning the wheel as Rusty came up with it, and his eyes bugged. “Hey, man! What the hell ya doin’?”

  He slammed his foot on to the brake pedal and the Plymouth ground to a skittering halt, the tires biting deep into the dirt of the dump grounds and spinning wildly.

  The car stalled, and Fish was out, around the other side and opening the door in an instant. He grabbed Rusty by the collar of the boy’s jacket, and hauled him bodily from the car.

  The kids were running over from the circle, violence lighting up their faces. What was happening there? This was a real kick!

  Fish pulled Rusty down and the Puerto Rican boy fell to his knees in the dirt, Fish still clinging to his jacket. He began dry-vomiting, hacking in choking spasms.

  Finally he slapped Fish’s hand away, and laid his palms flat on the ground, tried to push himself up; it took three cockeyed pushes till he was standing unsteadily. Everything was fuzzy around the edges and he could only vaguely hear the jeers coming from the crowd.

  “Man, what a punk he turned into!”

  “Chicken all the way. No guts.”

  “Candle’s gonna slice you up good, wait an’ see.”

  Every face was one face; every body was a gigantic many-legged body. He was swaying, and he felt a hand shoved into his back, and, “Stand up, fer chrissakes!”

  His throat chugged and he thought for an instant he was going to bring up what little of his lunch was left lying uneasily in his stomach. But it passed as he gulped deeply, and he began to get a clear picture of what was around him.

  He saw all the faces. Poop and Boy-O, Margie, Connie, Cherry, Fish beside him looking angry and worried at the same time, Shamey, the Beast, Greek, Candle with his eyes bright and daring, and—he stopped thinking for a moment, when he saw her.

  Weezee. She was here too. Who had brought her?

  He started forward in her direction, but Candle moved in and stopped him. “She came with me. I brought her. Any complaints?”

  Before he could answer, Weezee started to say something. “I couldn’t help it, Rusty. He saw me—”

  “Shaddup!” Candle snapped over his shoulder. He turned back to Rusty. “You got any beefs, you can settle ’em the knife way.”

  The sickness and the fear had passed abruptly. Rusty was quite cold and detached now. If it was a stand Candle wanted, all the rest of these sluggy bastards wanted, then that was what they’d get. Right now.

  “Who’s got the hankie?” he yelled.

  Magically, a handkerchief fluttered down on to the ground between the two boys. Neither touched it. Candle’s arm moved idly in his sleeve, and the switchblade dropped into his hand. Even as he pressed the stud and the bright blade flicked up, Rusty was bending sharply, and he came erect with his own weapon in his fist, already open.

  They faced each other across the white handkerchief, and then Candle watched stonily as Rusty bent down and picked it up. From the crowd cries of “Get him! Sling him!” and, once in a while, “Go, go, go, chickie-man!” rang out.

  Rusty shook out the hankie and put one corner in his mouth, wadding it slightly behind his clenched teeth. He extended the opposite corner to Candle delicately, and when Candle took it, his eyes were sharp on Rusty’s own.

  Caution: when you knife fight, don’t bother watching the knife as much as the other guy’s eyes. They tell when he’s gonna strike.

  Candle knew it, and took the hankie in his mouth with care. He maneuvered his tongue and teeth a bit till the cloth was settled properly. They were separated across a two foot restraining line of taut cloth, their backs arched, their bodies curved to put them as far away at swinging level as possible.

  Then they circled.

  Keeping the knife tight in the fist, keeping the hankie tight in their mouths, they stirred the dust with their heavy stomping shoes as they walked around each other.

  Then Rusty swung.

  He came out with the blade from the right, swinging hard and flat-stepping in. Candle jumped back, sucking in his belly just as the knife zipped past. Rusty sliced nothing but air. Then he was off-balance, and Candle jumped, bringing the blade up from underneath in a splitting swing. Rusty careened sidewise, dragging Candle with him, and the knife lanced past the Puerto Rican’s right shoulder.

  Circling again, circling carefully as Candle bit down harder on the hankie, and Rusty made a fist with his free hand. They moved around each other slowly, like two tigers smelling each other’s spoor.

  Every few seconds one would make a sharp, starting movement, and the other would leap back, dragging the other with him. They were feeling each other out.

  Suddenly Candle cut sidewise, let the hankie loosen and sag in the middle, and he was in close. One arm snaked around Rusty’s shoulder, and his knife arm came back for the kill.

  Rusty screamed loudly through the hankie, and twisted hard, throwing his hip into Candle. The stout boy was rocked by the blow, and fell back. Then Rusty was on him.

  The knife came up once…

  … and down once.

  And Candle was through fighting.

  Rusty stood looking down at the boy. The blood had begun to stain the ground around him, and a fine trickle emerged from the Mongoloid mouth. Candle died as he watched, with a sucking gasp and open, staring eyes.

  There it was. All laid out cold and empty. There it was, and Rusty knew he was trapped again. Knew he was boxed in and nailed shut again. He had almost been free, but now the truth of it all came to him.

  There was no freedom in these deadly streets. The kids of the gutter gang were never really free. There was always a claim, a tag, a rescinding order that canceled their freedom.

  From close by he heard the wail of police sirens. Had Pancoast called them, or had a passer-by seen the kids and phoned in? Maybe a million answers, but none of them mattered. He was caught, and there was only one way out.

  With a leaden heart he said, “Listen, listen to me.” The Cougars and the Cougie Cats looked at him with renewed respect as he buried the knife in a pile of garbage where it could not be found.

  “I’m prez of the Cougars again, see. An’ nobody, but nobody, talks about this. We just found him out here. The gang that did it ran away. Got that?

  “Listen to me and we’ll be okay. We’ll get away free.”

  They nodded. It would be all right; but was it all right? They would not go to jail—at least not now—but the deadly streets had called them back once more.

  They knew inside them what it meant.

  The gutters had claimed their own.

  NO GAME FOR CHILDREN

  Originally published in the May, 1959 issue of Rogue

  Herbert Mestman was forty-one years old. He was six feet two inches tall and had suffered from one of the innumerable children’s diseases at the age
of seven, leaving him with a build that was decidedly sink-chested and just barely slim to the point of emaciation. He had steel-gray hair and wore bifocals. It was his avocation, however, that most distinguished him from all other men: Herbert Mestman knew more about Elizabethan drama than anyone else in the country. Perhaps even in the world.

  He knew the prototypes and finest examples of that genre of drama known as the “chronicle history.” He knew Marlowe and Shakespeare (and believed firmly the original spelling had been Shexpeer), he was on recitation terms with Dekker and Massinger. His familiarity with Philaster and Jonson’s The Alchemist bordered on mania. He was, in essence, the perfect scholar of the drama of Elizabeth’s period. No slightest scrap of vague biographical or bibliographical data escaped him; he had written the most complete biography—of what little was known—on the life of John Webster, with a lucid and fantastically brilliant errata handling all early versions of The Duchess of Malfi.

  Herbert Mestman lived in a handsome residential section in an inexpensive but functional split-level he owned without mortgage. There are cases where erudition pays handsomely. His position with the University was such a case, coupled with his tie-up on the Britannica’s staff.

  He was married, and Margaret was his absolute soulmate. She was slim, with small breasts, naturally curly brown hair, and an accent only vaguely reminiscent of her native Kent. Her legs were long and her wit warmly dry. Her eyes were a moist brown and her mouth small. She was in every way a handsome and desirable woman.

  Herbert Mestman led a sedentary life, a placid life, a life filled with the good things: Marlowe, Scarlatti, aquavit, Paul McCobb, Peter Van Bleeck, and Margaret.

  He was a peaceful man. He had served as a desk adjutant to the Staff Judge Advocate of a small southern Army post during the Second World War, and had barely managed to put the Korean Conflict from his notice by burying himself in historical tomes. He abhorred violence in any form, despised the lurid moments of television and Walt Disney, and saved his money scrupulously, but he was not a miser.

  He was well-liked in the neighborhood.

  And—

  Frenchie Murrow was seventeen years old. He was five feet eight inches tall and liked premium beer. He didn’t know the diff, but he dug premium. He was broad in the shoulders and wasped at the waist. The broads dug him neat. He had brown hair that he wore duck-ass, with a little spit erupting from the front pompadour to fall Tony Curtis-lackadaisical over his forehead. He hit school when there wasn’t any scene better to make, and his ’51 Stude had a full-race cam coupled to a ’55 Caddy engine. He had had to move back the fire wall to do the soup job, and every chromed part was kept free of dust and grease with fanatical care. The dual muffs sounded like a pair of mastiffs clearing their throats when he burned rubber scudding away from the Dairy Mart.

  Frenchie dug Paul Anka and Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon and Bill Haley. His idols were Mickey Mantle, Burt Lancaster (and he firmly believed that was the way to treat women), Tom McCahill, and his big brother Ernie who was a specialist third class in Germany with the Third Infantry Division.

  Frenchie Murrow lived in a handsome residential section in an inexpensive but functional split-level his old man had a double mortgage on. His old man had been a fullback for Duke many years before, and more green had been shelled out on the glass case in the den—to hold the trophies—than had been put into securities and the bank account.

  Frenchie played it cool. He occasionally ran with a clique of rodders known as the Throttle-Boppers, and his slacks were pegged at a fantastic six inches, so that he had difficulty removing them at night.

  He handled a switch with ease, because, like, man, he knew what he could do with it.

  He was despised and feared in the neighborhood.

  Herbert Mestman lived next door to Frenchie Murrow.

  HERBERT MESTMAN

  He caught the boy peering between the slats of the venetian blind late one Saturday night, and it was only the start of it.

  “You, there! What are you doing there?”

  The boy had bolted at the sound of his voice, and as his head had come up, Mestman had shone the big flashlight directly into the face. It was that Bruce Murrow, the kid from next door, with his roaring hot rod all the time.

  Then Murrow had disappeared around the corner of the house, and Herb Mestman stood on the damp grass peculiarly puzzled and angry.

  “Why, the shitty little Peeping Tom,” he heard himself exclaim. And, brandishing the big eight-cell battery, he strode around the hedge, into Arthur Murrow’s front yard.

  Margaret had been right there in the bedroom. She had been undressing slowly, after a wonderful evening at the University’s organ recital, and had paused nervously, calling to him softly: “Oh there, Herb.”

  He had come in from the bathroom, where the water still ran into the sink; he carried a toothbrush spread with paste. “Yes, dear?”

  “Herb, you’re going to think I’m barmy, but I could swear someone is looking through the window.” She stood in the center of the bedroom, her slip in her hand, and made an infinitesimal head movement toward the venetian blind. She made no move to cover herself.

  “Out there, Margaret? Someone out there?” A ring of fascinated annoyance sounded in his voice. It was a new conception; who would be peering through his bedroom window? Correction: his and his wife’s bedroom window. “Stay here a moment, dear. Put on your robe, but don’t leave the room.”

  He went back into the hall, slipped into the guest room and found an old pair of paint-spattered pants in the spare closet. He slipped them on, and made his way through the house to the basement steps. He descended and quickly found the long flashlight.

  Upstairs once more, he opened the front door gingerly, and stepped into the darkness. He had made his way through the dew-lipped grass around the house till he had seen the dark, dim form crouched there, face close to the pane of glass, peeking between the blind’s slats.

  Then he had called, flashed the light, and seen it was Arthur Murrow’s boy, the one they called Frenchie.

  Now he stood rapping conservatively but brusquely on the front door that was identical to his own. From within he could hear the sounds of someone moving about. Murrow’s house showed black, dead windows. They’ve either got that television going in the den, or they’re in bed, he thought ruefully. Which is where I should be. Then he added mentally, That disgusting adolescent!

  A light went on in the living room, and Mestman saw a shape glide behind the draperies drawn across the picture window. Then there was a fumbling at the latch, and Arthur Murrow threw open the door.

  He was a big man; big in the shoulders, and big in the hips, with the telltale potbelly of the ex-football star who has not done his seventy sit-ups every day since he graduated.

  Murrow looked out blearily, and focused with some difficulty in the dark. Finally, “Uh? Yeah, what’s up, Mestman?”

  “I caught your son looking into my bedroom window a few minutes ago, Murrow. I’d like to talk to him if he’s around.”

  “What’s that? What are you talking about, your bedroom window? Bruce has been in bed for over an hour.”

  “I’d like to speak to him, Murrow.”

  “Well, goddammit, you’re not going to speak to him! You know what time it is, Mestman? We don’t all keep crazy hours like you professors. Some of us hold down nine-to-five jobs that make us beat! This whole thing is stupid. I saw Bruce go up to bed.”

  “Now listen to me, Mr. Murrow, I saw—”

  Murrow’s face grew beefy red. “Get the hell out of here, Mestman. I’m sick up to here,” he slashed at his throat with a finger, “with you lousy intellectuals bothering us. I don’t know what you’re after, but we don’t want any part of it. Now scram, before I deck you!”

  The door slammed anticlimactically in Herbert Mestman’s face. He stood there just long enough to see the shape retreat past the window, and the living-room light go off. As he made his way back to his own house,
he saw another light go on in Murrow’s house.

  In the room occupied by Bruce.

  The window, at jumping-height, was wide open.

  FRENCHIE MURROW

  Bruce Murrow tooled the Studelac into the curb, revved the engine twice to announce his arrival, and cut the ignition. He slid out of the car, pulling down at the too-tight crotch of his chinos, and walked across the sidewalk into the malt shop. The place was a bedlam of noise and moving bodies.

  “Hey, Monkey!” he called to a slack-jawed boy in a stud-encrusted black leather jacket. The boy looked up from the comic book. “Like cool it, man. My ears, y’know? Sit.” Frenchie slid into the booth opposite Monkey, and reached for the deck of butts lying beside the empty milk shake glass.

  Without looking up from the comic book Monkey reached out and slapped the other’s hand from the cigarettes. “You’re old enough to smoke, you’re old enough to buy yer own,” he commented, thrusting the pack into his shirt pocket.

  He went back to the comic.

  Frenchie’s face clouded, then cleared. This wasn’t some stud punky from uptown. This was Monkey, and he was prez of the Laughing Princes. He had to play it cool with Monkey.

  Besides, there was a reason to be nice to this creep. He needed him.

  To get that Mestman cat next door.

  Frenchie’s thoughts returned to this morning, when the old man had accosted him on the way to the breakfast table:

  “Were you outside last night?”

  “Like when last night, Pop?”

  “Don’t play cute with me, Bruce. Were you over to Mestman’s house, looking in his windows?”

  “Man, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”