Vode brought his hand up, as though to slap her, but Paulie grabbed it tightly at the wrist, twisting it up behind his back.
Vode gave a sharp scream, and gritted his teeth against the pain.
Fifteen came a little closer to Cherry. His eyes were half-veiled, running up and down her lush form. “That’s what we wanted to ask ya about, Cherry honey. In fact, we got a question to ask ya. Your boy friend here,” he tossed a thumb in Vode’s direction, “he says he got Checker stacked crooked with that copper, because of you. He says it was on your account, and you’ll straighten him with us.
“Otherwise…” His face became a featureless mask of granite, etched with acid in the lines of a death-head, “…we square him our own way.”
He moved back out of the way, and Cherry could see the cool Sharkmouth, savoring the sight of his wild switchblade.
She looked at the knife, at the crowd of anxious boys with the scent of death hanging on their hands, and at the white, terribly frightened face of Vode.
“Crap!” she said sharply. “Crap! He didn’t do nothin’ for me!” She said the last matter-of-factly. There was no other answer.
“No!” Vode got out, before they had him by the underarms and were hustling him from the store. He kicked his legs futilely.
“Thanks, Cherry,” Fifteen said, eyeing her lewdly.
“Any time, Fifteen.” She smiled, and turned back to her Coca-Cola. The pimply boy, pale and perspiring, turned also.
To them, with Vode gone, kicking and moaning, the incident was dead.
Fifteen walked toward the door. He turned to Paulie and Fat Jules. “And kick that crumb’s teeth down his throat,” he directed, pointing to the pimply-faced boy, drinking his Coke through a straw. “It’ll teach Cherry she’s a Striker deb, and it ain’t healthy to date off-turf.”
Fifteen walked out of the malt shop, even as Paulie and Fat Jules advanced on the pale and still perspiring boy.
Cherry watched quietly. She didn’t dare scream.
Old Man Straubing was a veteran of the First World War. He had taken on a load of mustard gas at Belleau Wood, and the cough he had gotten as a bonus was familiar in his neighborhood.
As familiar as Old Man Straubing himself, with his drooping, barely respectable handlebar mustache and his mock-ferocious attitude toward the children.
“A free bobble gom I should giff you yet!” he would complain in thick accent, to the smiling youngster. “Free yet!”
He would inevitably purse his lips till the mustache trembled, let a bit of fire from his eyes, then break down into a smile, and a chuckle. “Ja, ja, free it would be, if you don’t godt the pennies.”
Old Man Straubing seemed to be the neighborhood Santa, and he could afford to be. He charged ten cents more on each malted milk than anyone else. He bought popsicles for $1.90 for two dozen, and sold them for ten cents each. He had picked up the mustard gas cough at Belleau Wood, but he had also picked up a firm dislike for these snot-nosed Americans who rode around in their Cadillacs and dropped ashes all over his linoleum floor.
He had fought at Belleau Wood, but no one in the neighborhood realized he had fought on the other side. Capture and repatriation had brought with them a desire to come to this land where the gold bricks lay in the street.
Everyone in the neighborhood complained about the Old Man’s prices, but then, he was a neighborhood Santa to the little kids.
Vode had known Old Man Straubing since he had been old enough to beg free bubble gum. Robbing him didn’t seem right, somehow.
“Listen, Paulie,” Vode pleaded in the alley next to the candy store, “why can’t I get the dough someplace else? I pick up some change around; I can get the dough to square up with you guys someplace else! Look, I know the old guy! I don’t want to…”
Paulie’s thick face sprang lines of determination. His fists clenched warningly.
“In there, Vode,” he said with finality, “in there. You get the money to square with the Strikers in there! No place else. That’s the way we planned it; that’s the way it’s gonna ride.” He turned to the thin, black shadow of Sharkmouth.
“Ain’t that right, Shark?”
The angle-faced boy in black cracked a wet smile, and brought the naked switchblade up to sight in his ebony-gloved hand. “That is ever so right,” he agreed, softly.
A sharp feeling of disquiet raced through Vode’s mind. Why did they want him to rob Old Man Straubing? Why the old man, who probably didn’t even have a hundred bucks in the till? Why this store, with Shavers, the cop, pounding a beat right past the front door every half hour? Why? Why?
Was it the Old Man’s gun, kept in an empty Clark Bar box behind the candy counter? The smooth, slick black Luger the Old Man had bought from Ansie Padio when Ansie had come back from the war. Was that it? Did they want him to get his brains blown out?
Then Vode remembered having seen Old Man Straubing talking with Shavers one day.
He had been drinking a coke, and Straubing had been saying, his moustache waltzing, his voice strange and tight: “Ja, I’ve godt the permit for the gun. And I’ll use it on any sonofabitches vhot come in here undt try to rob me!”
And he’d looked so happy saying it, as though he didn’t really like the kids, but tolerated them. Vode remembered that as soon as he’d gotten old enough to earn money, Straubing had stopped giving him free gum and had started asking full price on everything—even malts. As though he’d just waited for Vode to grow old enough to take him.
The picture of that look on the Old Man’s face…and the gun…came to him sharply.
“I won’t do—” he began, but the sharp sting of Fifteen’s hand across his jaw stopped him. Things were getting rougher every second. A chill wind blew down the alley. Vode shivered.
He remembered the night Checker had died, in the rain and wet. He had felt this way then.
Fifteen’s voice floated to him coldly. “You’ll do it! You’ll do it!” The boy’s voice was brick steady; there was no fooling with the Strikers. Vode knew they would drive that switchblade into his flesh right here in the alley, leave him to die, if he didn’t go through with it.
“Okay. Okay, I’ll do it,” Vode said. His jaw muscles ached from gritting his teeth, trying to figure a way out of this. His thumb was raw from rubbing against his fist. But he knew there was no way out for him.
“We got something for you to use,” Fat Jules said. He motioned Sammy Silence forward, and from the dummy’s shirt they took the gun.
He saw his hand reach out and wrap itself around the crisscrossed butt of the pistol. It felt warm and impersonal, where it had grown warm and impersonal next to the dummy’s skin.
Vode looked up and saw the staring, beseeching eyes of Sammy Silence, holding to his own. Sammy was saying something, but he couldn’t tell what it was.
“Don’t worry about it none,” Fat Jules added, pointing to the gun. “It ain’t loaded.”
Vode looked down at the gun, and it changed suddenly, as he watched, into an open switchblade, lying on a black leather glove, then back to a gun again.
He shook his head, a film of tears forming over his eyes.
“Come on,” he said swiftly.
He moved out of the alley, and the Strikers followed close.
Vode went into the candy store first.
The old man was bending over, filling in the empty spaces in the cigarette racks behind the counter with fresh cartons. “Mr. Straubing?” Vode ventured querulously.
The old man straightened and saw the sallow-faced boy. A smile broke across his seamed face, and the handlebar mustache twitched with ill-disguised affection.
It had been a long time since he’d seen Vode. “Ah!” he exclaimed, putting down a half-full carton on the counter. “Ah! Vode, how are you? I haffen’t seen you vor so long, I thoughdt you musdt haff forgot…”
The gun came into sight above the counter, rising straight and steadily, as though on a string, as though controlled by someone other than
Vode.
“Vhat is idt, Vode?” the old man asked, still not comprehending.
“I—I—I want all the money in your…your register,” the boy said, trying to brazen it, though his lips trembled, his hand and voice did the same.
The other boys moved forward, ranging behind Vode, their faces hard, cold, ugly, immobile, defiant. Strikers.
The old man looked at Vode. The boy’s eyes cried don’t believe I am with them; I am not one of them, sir!
The dead, staring face of Checker swam before Vode’s eyes, and he cursed himself for the lust Cherry had inspired.
“Ja, ja. I understand,” the old man said. “I vill giff you my money…”
He moved a short step to the register, rang a button and withdrew a thin sheaf of bills. He handed them across to Vode.
Fifteen stepped forward, as did Sharkmouth.
“Shove them in your pocket,” Fifteen snapped at Vode.
The boy stuffed the money into his pants pocket, and at the same instant Fifteen grabbed the gun away from him, shoving it at Sammy Silence, who thrust it into the rear of his waistband, and zippered up his jacket quickly.
Vode looked around confused, and the events of the next few seconds happened with such terrifying speed, yet so clearly, they were each sharp and vivid.
Sharkmouth, with the switchblade reaching from his black gloved hand, leaned across the counter, and drove the knife into Old Man Straubing’s throat.
The old man gurgled hideously as the blood spurted out. His hands crept to his gashed neck, and a split-second later he was on the floor, gasping to death.
Sharkmouth stepped back and roughly grabbed Vode’s hand to him. Vode felt the chill steel of the knife in his fingers. Felt blood on his hand. He dropped the knife instantly, but now he knew! He knew what it was all about then:
Sharkmouth had worn gloves.
His own prints were on the knife.
The gun was gone from sight.
He was being framed—set up the same way Checker had been set up.
“No! No, you gotta give me a break, let me outta here!” He was yelling, struggling to get past the boys, out the door. They didn’t touch him, yet they blocked his path by weight of numbers. He shoved through them slowly.
Then they let him go.
He was four steps out the door when they began yelling.
“Stop! Stop him! Stop that boy, he killed Mr. Straubing!”
Vode twisted and shoved and elbowed through the crowds on the street, just doing their Thursday night shopping, while the stores were open late. Hands reached out from the crowd at him, clutched at his clothes, tried to hold him. He twisted away, and the crowd closed in on him.
More hands came down on him, and a foot was crossed over his path. He tripped and went down, the sidewalk scraping him viciously across the palms of his hands and the bridge of his nose.
He ground to a stop, and hands lifted him up roughly, jerking him, pulling him many ways at once.
Then the blue coat and silvered shield of Shavers, the cop. came into his sight. He let out a scream.
“Framed! I’m being framed! I didn’t kill him!”
“Kill who? Kill who, you little street tramp?” Shavers demanded, his thick hands closing around the boy’s collar.
A woman leaned into Vode’s vision, and her birdlike mouth spat the words, “…killed Old Man Straubing from the candy store…” and disappeared back into the crowd.
Then he was being bodily dragged back to the shop, with the crowd following, with the Strikers following, watching as he was shoved through the front door of the candy store, and Mr. Straubing was lifted up from behind the counter, the blood dropping wetly from the handlebar mustache.
A woman screamed shrilly then.
The cop swore and his fist cracked agonizingly against Vode’s face. “You little bastard!” he said.
Someone called out that an edge of a bill was protruding from the sallow-faced boy’s pocket. It was a Striker voice, but no one recognized it as such. The money was dragged away from him. “Thief! Murderer! Kill him!” The cries went whispering through the crowd, blossomed into yells, thundering into demanding roars.
“No, no, no,…I didn’t…I…didn’t…do…it…” He was breathless, his throat was clogging.
The cop stooped and picked up the knife in a handkerchief. “We’ll just see if you did it.”
Vode twisted in the cop’s grasp, saw the Strikers leaning in through the door, mock shock on their faces.
“Them! They’re the ones that done it!” He shrieked, twisting, pulling, trying to get at them.
“Hold him!” someone said, from the crowd. “Don’t let the lousy little killer get away!”
The cop looked out through the front door at the boys there.
“You know him?” Shavers asked.
Fifteen leaned in, took a close look at Vode, said earnestly, “Never saw the dirty little killer before in my life, sir.”
“They did it, they did it!” Vode shrieked.
He caught a glimpse of the sad, pleading face of Sammy Silence, behind Fifteen. Even as he watched it, the face aligned itself into a deep resignation.
Fifteen winked at Vode when no one was watching.
“Ask the dummy, ask the dummy, ask that boy there!” Vode pleaded, pointing to Sammy Silence. “Ask him, he’ll tell you it’s a frame; he can talk!”
The cop looked toward Sammy. Someone shoved the dummy out into the open. Everyone looked at him. He twisted his thin hands together, looked down at his feet.
A murmur went through the crowd.
Sammy took a quick sidelong glance at the Strikers. The ugly death-lust still flickered like heat lightning in their eyes, and the smiles of snide assurance lingered as they saw who Vode had called on to be their spokesman.
A dummy who couldn’t talk. A mute. They were safe.
“Ask him! Ask him!” Vode kept repeating hysterically.
The cop looked toward Sammy.
The dummy extended his hands out before him, palms upward, shrugging his shoulders in bewilderment.
The cop dragged Vode toward Sammy. “This kid says you saw the knifing. That right?”
Sammy said nothing. His wet tongue slipped against his lips.
“Well, answer me!”
The Strikers all laughed, the chuckles racing among them and into the rest of the crowd like a live thing.
Sharkmouth leaned over Fifteen’s shoulder. Vode saw that he had removed the bloody gloves, probably given them to one of the other Strikers, who had left the neighborhood. The small, thin boy with the gash mouth said to the cop, “You can tell the kid’s lyin’—probably nuts, too!”
Sharkmouth laughed. “He must be nuts, asking you to get the dummy here to tell you anything!
“He can’t talk!”
They all laughed then, and the cop looked from Vode to Sammy and back again. “That right?” he asked Vode, sensing he was being used as a joke.
Vode felt panic rising and rising, curling up like sticky smoke in his belly. “No! No! He can talk! Lemme talk to him, lemme try, you gotta let me try! It’s only fair, it’s only fair!”
The cop loosened his grip, knowing the mob of people blocked the exit.
Vode took a stumbling step, grabbed Sammy by the arms. He spoke close to the boy’s face, smelling the stench of the streets. “Sammy, you gotta talk, you gotta help me!
“They’ll fry me, Sammy. I’ll burn, and I didn’t do nothin’! Tell him, Sammy. Talk Sammy, talk, for God’s sake, say somethin’!”
The dummy stared into Vode’s eyes, and in his own a wetness swam to the surface. In his eyes Vode saw a message:
This is a jungle, Vode. I can’t do anything…or they’ll eat me alive. Don’t ask me to help you…I can’t!
“Sammy, talk! Talk, Sammy! Talk, talk, talk, talk…”
He was shaking the dummy, the words crisping out between clenched teeth, the tears coursing down the dirt of his cheeks. Frustration and terror and hat
red and fear all tied in one knot, slamming again and again inside his head.
The dummy turned away, back to the Strikers.
The cop snorted. “Lousy little tramp!”
The clutching hands tightened on Vode, and he felt the blackness of ultimate horror closing down over him, as they dragged him away. The sad, sorrowful, ever-pleading face of Sammy Silence in his mind. The phrase in his mind, too:
We take care of our dead!
They did, too. They made sure everybody squared-up with the gang. Squaring up was rugged, and the dummy knew when he was safe.
Sammy knew the phrase. That’s why he was Sammy Silence.
Because only the silent ones were allowed to live in peace.
But only in silence—of course.
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN TONGUE
Matthew Farley had been expecting the knock on his door for almost a week. He had stayed away from work, hoping the knock would never come. He had lived almost exclusively from the canned goods in the kitchenette of the tiny two room apartment, going out to shop only when milk and eggs ran out.
He had stayed home, hoping that if he did not show himself, they might not know he was in this neighborhood; perhaps think he was out of town or something. He had stayed home, but the knock had finally come.
It came again. Sharp and solid. Not the way he had expected it.
But then, he had expected a hail of machine gun bullets through the door, really; the same way the man in the billiards place had gotten it. The knock seemed so innocuous.
He tried to fight down the panic that swam to the top of the lake of fear in his mind.
Again, sharper, but still businesslike.
Not at all the way a killer would sound.
“Mr. Farley?” The voice was muffled by the closed door.
He hesitated a long, long minute.
“Mr. Farley? Are you there, sir?”
He kept silent, perhaps the man would go away.