Web of the City

  The blinded Cherokee was lying on his side, crying loudly, running his fingers over his cheeks, feeling his eye socket where nothing but a pulped mass remained. He bit his lips and fainted.

  The girl stared at him for a moment, then bent over and began to apply the pipe to Fish with accuracy and ferocity. Rusty watched her for a moment, hardly believing the cool methodicalness with which she was beating him to death. Then he high-leaped over two boys wrestling on the floor before him, and was on her. He grabbed the pipe as it came up and twisted the girl by the shoulder with his free hand.

  The girl turned, surprised, and Rusty belted her as hard as he could in the mouth. Her lips tightened back against her teeth, her teeth broke and she fell over gasping.

  He turned, to escape, but there was no way out.

  A shot rang loud in the place and he knew someone had started with the zip guns. The one in his pocket felt too big, too unhealthy and he tried to get back through the crowd to the club rooms—to escape through the rear exit.

  He saw Candle in a clash with a blond knifeman from the Cherokees. Each was slashing at the other with a long Italian switch. Candle eased back, walloped the boy’s arm away and caught him dead center in the thigh with the blade. In and out it went quicksilver fast and the boy slumped over. Candle went to work with his stomping boots.

  All over the room kids were clubbing each other, working the rubberband-driven zip guns, firing guns, slashing high and hard with warm steel, and he was getting sick again, for the smoothly polished hardwood alleys were starting to become slippery.

  A thick-faced Cherokee with a scar over his left eye came at Rusty with a length of chain, and the whip of it was a banshee wail in his ears. Rusty tried to duck away, but he fell toward the assailant.

  Rusty fumbled in his pocket, and came up with the zip. He had somehow loaded one of the .22 slugs into the sawed-off car antenna that was the gun’s barrel and now he pulled back the firing pin, let it zip into the barrel.

  The gun exploded with a slam and the bullet took the Cherokee high in his right arm. A hole as big as a crater opened and bloody cartilage sprayed back, filthying Rusty’s shirt and tie. The boy screamed at the pain, dropped the chain and limped back into the mob. Rusty fished in his pocket for the remaining slugs and with the zip threw them from him, under a row of lockers.

  The siren wail of police cars broke through the gang screams and the swearing and the sounds of battle, and everyone stopped again, for just a split-second. Then joined in a common bond of hatred for The Men, they started tumbling over one another to get to the exits—occasionally taking a slash or a swipe at an enemy nearby.

  But the cops had the place surrounded already. Before anyone could escape—leaving the injured writhing on the floor—the place was crowded with blue-jacketed shapes and the horde began to pull together. Rusty saw one boy try to dive through the front window, saw him leap, saw him nearly grabbed by a fuzz. The kid sailed through the air, his foot was snared by the cop, and the boy went only partially out the window. He landed with a crash, belly-slammed through the glass, the plate window shattering on all sides. When the cop dragged him out, his hands and face were bleeding, shredded meat.

  All around him Rusty heard the screams of frightened kids and he wished he had not lingered at the dance. He wished high and hard. This was bad, particularly with him in Pancoast’s custody. But there seemed no way out, no way to escape being dragged in. It somehow, terrifyingly, seemed predestined. He was forging his own chains. He never should have come down here tonight where the hell was out.

  Then he was ducking past a heavy blue sleeve and a hard face and running for the back way. A path cleared before him miraculously and he dove through, thinking he was free.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Candle go down under a cop’s billy and he spurred himself on. His shoulder was numb from the tire-chain smash he had suffered. The way was blocked by two girls who were still fighting; the one girl clubbing the other in the breasts with a brick.

  He elbowed them aside roughly and plunged through the doorway, letting the battered broad’s screeches slip past his consciousness. Inside the club rooms things were even worse, if that was possible. The cops had somehow discovered the back way—probably waiting for just something like this to instigate a raid on the Cougars—and the rooms were filled with battling cops, Cherokees and Cougars. The howls of the broads was a wide tapestry of sound and beat almost physically at Rusty.

  He tried to get back out, found himself boxed in. He saw a cop fasten his eyes on him, and tried to duck away. But the cop had him and the hand closed tightly about his neck, painfully. He choked and kicked back with his leg, missing the cop, kicking someone else. The cop dragged him by the collar toward the back exit and when Rusty tried to snake away the cop grabbed his arm, twisted it back and up till the socket felt as though it were lined with sand.

  The pain was great, so Rusty settled down quietly.

  He only tried to kick free once more, as the cop shoved him up the steps of the riot car. But it was no good. And the paddy wagon was dark inside, like somebody’s belly, all full of kids…

  The squad room was crowded and the kids milled about uncertainly, eyeing the door with a wary craftiness. Once in a while one of the Cherokees would say something guttural to a Cougar and a mild flare-up would start. But circulating cops with ready billies kept the noise to a minimum.

  Rusty stood in a corner, by himself, smoking quietly. This was hell on skates! Of all the stupid things to have happen to him, this was the topper. To get himself picked up now, when he was released in Pancoast’s custody, when he had gotten away from the gang. He cursed himself for having slipped—so easily, so goddamned easily—back into his old ways. Then he realized that the poison was not completely neutralized; it still swirled in his veins and he knew he had to watch himself carefully all the time.

  This was going to be rough as banana peels, and he didn’t know how he was going to get out of it.

  Fish slid over to him from the bench where he sat and spoke from the corner of his mouth, hardly moving his lips, so the cops could not see him speaking. “Hey, man, you got any sticks on you?” His head was completely swathed in bandages.

  Rusty shook his head.

  Fish nodded satisfaction. “That’s your tail if they catch you with pot.”

  “I know it.”

  “Man, you shoulda gone home early. Why were you hangin’?”

  “My sister, you jerk. I thought she was comin’ back and I went to knock off a piece while I waited. She musta come back and left or somethin’ while I was with that stupid Goofball, Mary, whatever the hell her name was. So I was a stupe, so I’m here, so I—”

  “Hey! You!”

  A bull-faced desk sergeant, behind the high counter, was motioning through the cigarette smoke and the crowd at Rusty. Rusty played it cool for a minute, looked around, as if to say, who—me? The cop motioned again. “Yeah, you, the one with the butt in his face. C’mere.”

  Rusty touched Fish with his elbow, and shoved away from the wall, walked forward slowly. A Cherokee gave him the elbow hard as he went past, but Rusty paid no attention.

  He walked slowly, and hit the counter with his head high.

  “Yessir?”

  “Weren’t you in here a couple months back, on a rumble rap?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Maybe.”

  “Don’t ya know?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “Not sure, huh?” His voice became all-business, hard. “Name?”

  “Santoro.”

  “First name, wise guy.”

  “Rusty.”

  “What’s your given name? None of that gang crap.”

  Rusty bit his lip. Oh hell, all right! “Russell.”

  One of the Cherokees in back said in a falsetto, “Oh, Raww-sull!”

  Rusty stiffened, but continued to stare at the plump, darkeyed sergeant above him. The officer lifted a phone, spoke into it softly and settled ba
ck with his arms folded across his chest.

  “Can I go back now, sir?” Rusty said bitterly.

  “Stay put,” the cop replied.

  Rusty stayed and waited, knowing they were yanking the book on him. The file, the dossier, the grave-sheet, the record of the sins he had built. He waited and died a little bit inside, knowing he was back on the treadmill, knowing only a minor miracle would save him now.

  In a few minutes another officer came in from a side door and tossed the folder to the desk, looking at Rusty with curiosity. “Real juicy,” he said, cocking a thumb at the boy.

  Silence descended heavily in the squad room as the kids listened to hear the sum total of Rusty’s offenses, to see how rough a stud he was.

  The sergeant opened the file, and read the make-sheet. “Arrested August 1955, car stripping; first offense. Released into custody of mother. Arrested June 1956, mugging, released on insufficient evidence; arrested March 1957, breaking and entering, assault with a deadly weapon, released in the custody of Carl Pancoast.”

  He looked down heavily and his dark eyes bored into Rusty’s gray ones with rock hardness. Rusty stared back implacably. They weren’t gonna make him buckle.

  “Nice. Real nice,” the cop said with sarcasm. “Good record for a kid your age. This—uh—Pancoast know you were out tonight?”

  “I don’t know for certain, sir.”

  “Whaddaya mean, ya don’t know?”

  Rusty shrugged. “I’m just not sure, sir.”

  “What were you doing down there in that bowling alley tonight? You go there to fight?”

  “No, sir.”

  The cop leaned heavily forward on his fleshy arms. “Then what were ya doin’ there?”

  “I was looking for my sister, sir,” Rusty said, knowing he would not be believed.

  The cop looked quizzical. “Why?”

  “I didn’t want her to go to the dance. I knew there was gonna be trouble with them,” he nodded his head behind him, at the surly Cherokees standing in listening positions.

  The cop bit his lower lip. “Anybody know you was goin’ there for that?”

  Rusty shrugged. “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “You’re not so sure about anything, are you, kid?”

  Rusty remained silent. What was the point of answering?

  Suddenly, Fish spoke up from the rear. “I knew he was lookin’ for his sister.”

  And Greek stepped out, “Me, too. That’s what he said when he come in.”

  The cop looked up, surprised. This was not standard with the gang kids. Play dumb, that was the rule. And yet here were two of them, sticking their necks out for someone else. The sergeant pursed his lips, thinking.

  Rusty knew what it had taken for Fish and Greek to open their mouths. It made them stand out and that just wasn’t done in the streets; a stud could get hurt that way.

  “Who said that?”

  Fish did not answer. To corroborate Rusty’s story was one thing, to be singled out and brought forward—that was strictly another. “I asked who said that?” Still no answer.

  But another voice—Rusty recognized the heavy voice of the Greek again—chimed in, “That’s right, fuzz. He was there for his sister. He told me!”

  Then another, Poop it was. “Right, that’s right!” They were all following suit, for Rusty had not even spoken to Poop at the dance. But in a moment, all the Cougars were yelling it was so.

  The cops started moving through the crowd, uncertain, trying to stop the noise, but the desk sergeant slammed his beefy hand on the desktop, yelled, “Okay! Okay! No more of that, shut up or you all go into the tank for the night.” He looked down at Rusty uncertainly.

  Rusty stood with his hands deep in his pants’ pockets, not saying anything, neither recognizing the comments nor denying them. But a thin, satisfied look crept over his lips. They weren’t bad kids—good guys when they had the chance. Except who the hell ever gave them half a chance?

  The cop motioned to the officer who had brought in the dossier and the man came up closer to the counter, stood on tiptoe and leaned in. The sergeant leaned across and they spoke together for a few moments.

  Then the sergeant nodded, said, “I don’t know,” and the other said, “So give him a ring. It’s early. Maybe he can do something.”

  The sergeant nodded again and picked up the phone. He spoke into it, waited a moment, then looked down for something in the dossier. Rusty had a good idea what was happening and he wanted to croak.

  The cop was going to call Pancoast. What a bitch of a deal! There went all the teacher’s confidence in him.

  The cop started dialing and Rusty moved to stop him. The cop looked up and Rusty had an abrupt, terribly vivid impression of bars, between himself and the cop, and he said nothing.

  The cop got the number and listened. It rang. Again. Finally, after perhaps a minute, he hung up.

  He stared at Rusty for a moment, then leaned over, said, “You’re out on custody, you know.”

  There was no point to answering, so Rusty didn’t.

  “I said something to you, kid—Santoro.”

  Rusty nodded, “Yessir.”

  “You knew there was gonna be a rumble tonight?”

  Rusty spread his hands eloquently. “That’s why I went after my sister. I heard there was gonna be trouble.”

  “You know you’re skatin’ pretty thin ice, Santoro.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Go on home and we’re gonna call this Pancoast. He’s not answering now so we’ll call him tomorrow, and we’re gonna give him a report on this, let him decide if he still wants you under his custody. If not, you’ll sail into the pokey so fast it’ll make your butt ache. Be at home when we want you.”

  Rusty was amazed. Go home? Just like that? What was this? What was the catch?

  The boy turned and started toward the door.

  The Cherokees set up a howl.

  “Hey, man! That ain’t no fair!”

  “You gonna let him go like that?”

  “You let him go, you gotta let us all go!”

  “Lousy fuzz-lover!”

  The sergeant bit his lower lip, regretting his decision. Then, “Hey, you. Santoro. Wait a minute.”

  The cop tapped a pencil against the desktop, then said resignedly, “Wiswell, put him in a cell, by himself, till tomorrow. Protective, call it. We’ll call this Pancoast tonight again and if he doesn’t answer, then tomorrow morning. Can’t just let him go without some word, y’know.” His voice was apologetic, to no one but himself.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” said Wiswell.

  “I know it,” the desk sergeant snapped back. “Do like I told you.”

  The officer named Wiswell took Rusty by the arm and led him from the squad room, down the corridor.

  They opened the cell block and Wiswell walked Rusty down the broad aisle between the cubicles. In the center of the room was a heavy wooden table and benches joined together like a picnic table, and bolted to the floor. Either wall was the barred face of a cell.

  Wiswell stopped before one of the empty ones and motioned to the end of the line. The turnkey there threw the bar and the cell door slid into the wall. Wiswell motioned Rusty forward and the boy walked into the cell.

  “Wait a minute,” said the cop. “We didn’t book you in because you’re not charged. But you better let me have your tie and belt. Any weapons hidden?”

  Rusty shook his head, and slipped off his tie. He pulled the belt loose with a swishhh and handed it over, too. Wiswell took them, said, “Ask the guard in the morning…I’m not going to bother with a receipt tonight. Too late.

  “Take it easy,” he added and left the cell.

  Once outside, he motioned again and the cell door slid to with a clump. Rusty looked around: a metal trough without a mattress suspended by clamps from the wall (bowed in the center, and smelling faintly of urine and the last man who had slept there); a toilet without seat or paper (a wall button for flushing); a sink with one hold-
in button (cold water only); a wire-shielded naked bulb in the ceiling.

  Even as he stared at it, the light went out, throwing the cell into striped duskiness.

  From a cell across the block, a Negro voice called out to him. “Ay, man.”

  Rusty moved to the bars, hooked his fingers through, and tried to stare across, to discern who was speaking. Finally, through the darkness, he got a dim picture of the big, ebony shape in the other cell. The man repeated his first greeting.

  “Whaddaya want?” Rusty answered, wary, though separated by two thicknesses of steel bar.

  “Ay, man, you got a cigarette there for me? I ain’t had one in fo’ hours.”

  Rusty fished in his pocket, came out with the deck and pulled one loose, then he realized they were beyond flipping distance and if he chanced it the cigarette would lay in the aisle till morning when they were turned loose into the tank.

  “How’m I supposed to get it over to you?” Rusty asked.

  The big Negro pressed up against the bars, instructed, “You lay it down on the floor, man, and then like you snap yo’r finger aside it, and it should roll right in here sweet-like. Okay?”

  Rusty did as he had been told, and snapped his finger against the tube, sending it spinning straight across. It rolled, and for a second he thought he had not tapped it hard enough, but the years playing “knuckles-down” in the streets had done their work. It skittered across and the man reached out, snaring it.

  “I got no matches, man.”

  Rusty threw him the matches. They struck the cell door, and rebounded, but not out of reach, and in a few moments he saw a firefly tail winking in the blackness across from him. He watched the dim shape silently, then heard the soft, “Thanks, man,” and grunted an acknowledgement.

  After a little while, Rusty realized he had been standing at the bars, his fingers hooked through, without movement, and though he knew no one could see him, he was aware that this was the traditional melodramatic pose of the prisoner and he stepped away from the cell door.

  There was a barred window far down at the end of the tank. Through it he could see the night sky. It was as though he were in a well, looking at the stars. But there were no stars. And no moon. And no clouds. And nothing up there but what should be there; the sky. Somehow it meant something to him. He wasn’t quite sure what, but he thought it meant something like inevitability. It was a cinch the sky was there and it was a cinch he was down here in the cell. That was the way it was and the way it would wind up. You’d never find the sky being used as a rug and you’d never find Rusty Santoro living the good life. Didn’t figure.