Chapter Eight:

Monday Morning,Monday Night

Beside him in the dirty, rumpled, sweat-reeking sheets, the slim body of a strange girl lay humped and sleeping. He stared across and down at her for a long moment, trying to place her—then it all came back in sequence and his hatred for himself became even greater. She had cried and he had hit her in the face. She had not left him. He recalled dimly that he, too, had cried, and that was the reason she had stayed, clinging close to him in binding misery.

But the stench of sour liquor pervaded the cheap hotel room, seeping in and out of the cracked yellow paint, rolling around the rusty shank of the fire extinguisher pipe jutting from one wall at ceiling level.

The place was hot and muggy. He stumbled from the bed, dragging a sheet with him and stamped furiously at it, finally disengaging its cloying weight. He threw up the water-stained blind and the dim light of the gray airshaft poured across the bed. He turned in the face of it and stared at her naked body, sprawled sidewise across the mattress. It had been a lousy night. Poor slob of a broad. He slumped down in the seedy, overstuffed armchair near the silent radiator.

The picture of Dolores came back and he could hardly help comparing her with this girl in the bed. It was not a flattering comparison, and then he remembered this girl had one thing his sister had lost.

Her life.

He twisted in the chair, and bit his fist. He beat at the arm of the chair and golden spores of dust rose twistingly in the weak shafts of light from the window. He could feel the tears coming, he could feel his heart breaking. God, he could feel the edge of the Earth up-ending to send him screaming into the Pit. Rusty had never known such a pain, worse than switch, and worse than zip, and worse than broken bottle. It was the worst. It was so low, it crawled.

Moms was all alone. He had to get home. That had been bad yesterday. Real bad. Leaving her like that. He must be crazy, he must of been out of his skull. He had to get back.

He moved rapidly, then, and paused in his dressing for only a moment, considering whether he should waken the girl and say good-bye, take her to breakfast. He decided not to do it. The nights were one thing, but the days were another. For a minute he stood watching her deep, even breathing, watching her small breasts rise and fall, half covered by the not-quite-clean sheet. He felt terribly sorry for her, and for himself as well. He started to reach for his wallet—perhaps a dollar would help her out—then stopped his hand. She wasn't a whore, he berated himself sharply. She wasn't cheap although she was lonely. She wasn't a slut just because she was afraid.

He reached into his hip pocket and took out his wallet.

In an inner pocket he found the souvenir Spanish coin he had been given by his mother, many years before, to keep as a good luck piece. ("Keep this in your pocket, and you'll never be broke.") The boy stared at it intently for a long second.

He laid it down on the soiled towel that lay across the bureau top as a doily.

He closed the door quietly behind himself.


The subway was nearly deserted. As he sped uptown, he could see trains zipping past in the opposite direction, laden with early morning office workers, their faces blank with half-sleep, their eyes directed to their newspapers, folded lengthwise for column-reading, and to avoid jostling the riders on either side. But Rusty's train was nearly empty.

The train roared clankingly through the tunnels, the stanchions zipping by outside the window till they became one vertical blur. An old woman sat huddled against the far wall, beneath a spaghetti ad, looking as though the sauce was dropping on her, weighing her down. A young man with a tweed topcoat lounged across and up a few feet from Rusty, reading the day-old book review section of theTimes. Every few minutes he would rub the bridge of his nose.

The constant machine thrummmm of the train somehow soothed Rusty. He thought of the million times he had ridden the underground, and it was a familiar thing. It made his thoughts easier, his thoughts clearer.

He thought of the times he had ridden this subway with his sister. She had been so gentle and slim beside him. Her face the playground of a thousand smiles. Her eyes the lights that lit the darkness. She was gone now. Dead. The family had two dead ones now—Dolores and Pops. He was as good as dead. He was no use to anyone and she was cold and gone.

Then his mind shifted, a camera playing across a landscape. He thought of the night before while the train lulled him. He had come to face his past again, last night, and though he had allowed himself to sink lower than he could ever remember, he now saw it all as clearly as in a crystal, and he knew there was a direction to everything.

He might never get to be the industrial designer he sometimes thought of himself as being, sometime in the future. He might never get free of the scum and filth of the streets.

But he knew one thing. He knew it sharp and clear and brightly shining the way a switch brightly shines. He was going to find the bastard who had killed his sister.

No heroics. No big man stuff. No fancy movie acrobatics. He was going to do it because it had to be done and because he knew he was the one to do it. The cops'd never find the guy. They didn't know where to look. The cops'd never find him. They didn't know who to ask. But Rusty knew. Rusty was part of it. He had helped—Dolores along. He had fought with her that night, driven her into the waiting streets. He knew who to look for to give him the straight words and he knew how to make those people talk. He had the way and he had the drive. So it had to be him. He knew this as surely as he knew he would kill that man when he found him.


This time the apartment wasn't dead stone quiet. This time Mrs. Ramirez and Mrs. Givens and Mrs. Guzman-Rolon from the building were there. This time a white-jacketed interne from the Charity Hospital was writing out a prescription and handing it to Mrs. Marroquin, who accepted it with furrowed brow and a pinched expression on her little brown, wrinkled face. This time Moms was down for an awful long count.

Collapse, he heard the interne say, before the man picked up his black bag and shouldered past, looking about with distaste at the shabby surroundings-not at all like the home of his parents on Central Park West.

This time it was bad. When it couldn't get worse, it got lousy and lousier.

Rusty came through the open door with stark bewilderment shining dully in his eyes. The women turned as he came forward. Three of them sniffed the air, said something soft in Spanish, and slipped past, carefully, avoiding touching him. Rusty was alone with Mrs. Givens. He stared at her in mute appeal. She stared back with contempt on her dark face.

"You been away." She said it so distinctly, even the accent was muffled. She said it with venomous undertones. Rusty was bewildered. Another shock right now was more than he could take and keep his balance.

"I—I stayed with a friend … overnight," he stumbled. Her eyes mocked him. Her mouth twisted. She looked away, and her head tilted in a slight, peculiar movement.

"Su madre,"and he knew Moms was lying in there, where the sunlight was cut to nothing by the drawn blinds. He knew she would be pale and gaunt between the white, white sheets, and he did want to go in to see her.

"How … how is she …" he could not finish.

"Sinverguenza!"she cursed him. "She is sick. She will die if she does not find some love. You live here, you don't know her, you never know her! Now you all she got—and thatborrachon —you don't deserve to see her ever!"

Rusty flinched at mention of his father, but knew the woman was right. Pops was a drunkard, and a waste, and a bastard! He turned away, and wanted to run. She stopped him with a word, softly.

He turned back and she was bobbing her head in solemn understanding. There was no malice in her, just pity for the children of Angelita Santoro. She continued the up and down movement, her little head nodding evenly. Rusty felt the need to touch someone, to seek comfort somewhere. He moved toward the bedroom door, and she stepped back out of his way. She had been left by the protecting women of the building as a watchdog. She relinquished her guard only in crisis. She moved back for Rusty.

He looked down at her with a film over his eyes, as he passed, and his heart was very tight and very dry within him."Muchisimas gracias," he said softly, and watched his hand as it touched briefly at the thin fabric covering her shoulder. She bowed away without a word, and as he turned by the door, he saw only her back. She stared down from the window at the bedlam street outside. It was good to have friends.

He went into the room.

When he came out, when the sun had ceased its mechanical baking of the streets, when the night sky had rolled in across Manhattan, he was determined. Moms had come awake for a little while. She had slept deeply and it seemed to be nothing more than weariness that had felled her, but when she slowly rose up on her elbows—as he kneeled beside the bed, touching the edge of the sheet—he saw reason flood into her eyes. Then she looked at him and the message passed so clearly, so completely, so finally, there was no need for words. She put her white hand across his own tanned one and he kissed it fiercely. It was the message, and for the first time, really, the meaning to everything. There was a drive and a purpose and a goal. It might not have been the finest goal in the world, nor the most uplifting, but it was a real one. It was not something built in the mind; it was the stuff of blood and bone and flesh. Dolores' bone and blood and flesh.

Moms had said it silently.

He had heard, and he would act on her words.

He would find the man. And when he did, that would be the end. Perhaps to his own life, perhaps, but definitely, it would be the end of the man's life. Whoever he was.

Mrs. Givens was still at the window. He had no idea whether she had moved from that spot or stood there the whole long time. He closed the door, making certain the loose knob did not clank, and she turned half-around, cocking her head to one side. He came across the room and stopped near the outer door.

"Missus Givens?" She faced him slowly and he saw that the angled planes of shadow had changed her from a little nut-brown image to a pixie. Her eyes shone brightly by the lone lamp's shine from the table.

"Watch her for me," he said. She nodded briefly. She knew what he felt and she knew what had to be done. He was being given his freedom, to do what had to be done.

She turned back to the window and he left silently.


Monday night. Quiet out and an occasional cat in a back alley, battling it with another tom for a fish head. Cars mostly away for the night, and the office crowd preparing themselves for the sweat day ahead. Hot and sticky. The T-shirts snug up under the armpits and the body heat melts you. The sound of TV sets filters dimly, like voices from another world, and snatches of beer commercials hit between the ball game patter. Natural night. Quiet night. Night to stay home and out of trouble.

Trouble night for Rusty Santoro.

The fuzzes rolling the streets in prowl cars, watching for auto strippers and sneak thieves. The beat cops carrying their billies with the wrist thongs dangling. Too hot to wind the stick. Everybody too weak and wet to move much.

Rusty walked past the bowling alley. Boarded up. The beat cop came around the corner as Rusty stopped before the nailed-up door. Rusty caught the flicker of T-shirt white at the cop's open shirt neck, the shine of brass buttons, and he moved on slowly. That meant the Cougars were meeting somewhere else, if they were meeting tonight. And after what had happened to their drag, a definite rumble would be in the planning stages. He knew how they thought, and right now their thoughts were completely tied up with evening the score to the Cherokees.

He had to figure where they would go. To Tom-Tom's? Not likely. The baby-faced soda clerk would probably close early, having heard about the trouble Friday night. He would want no difficulty so soon after a hot period like that. To someone's home? Possibly, if the kid could get his parents out of the apartment. But that was still dubious, because a war council usually turned into an orgy—as did most club gatherings. The garage? Not again. Fedakowski who owned it had taken to carrying a stilson wrench since the kids had been coming around. And he was too big and Polish to be screwing around with.

Rusty slumped down on a standpipe for a minute, and let his mind kick the ideas around. Where would they be? Finally he had two possible answers.

They were either on the roof at Fish's building, which faced on an empty lot and was pretty well secluded or they were in the condemned warehouse on Wharton Street.

He checked the first out, and it was silent, black, with the silhouettes of pigeon coops among the TV antenna tendrils. The Cougars were not "high" on the roof tonight.

But they were in the warehouse.

They had put blankets up around the broken windows on the third floor, but Rusty was not a cop walking the beat and ignoring a warehouse about to be torn down. He was a member of that select clan of delinquents who knew what he was looking for and where to go to find it. They were having a war council in the guts of what had been a toy factory—till the building was done dirty by the man who owned it, who had it planted for arson, who had the insides fire-gutted and then got nabbed for the job—and they were after Cherokee hide. They were gonna get it too, sure as lights light and breath goes in and out. Rusty made it by the back way, up the—stairs, close to the wall, so the steps didn't creak and let on he was upcoming. Halfway up, the stairs just quit and charred planks ran across. He went back down a ways, and climbed into a hole burnt through the wall. The structural boards were somehow still there, and he walked inside the wall, past the spot where the stairs were gone, though he almost took a header three times.

Finally he made the right floor, and climbed back out through another hole, just below the door level. He stopped on the stairs, and saw a thin wash of dim yellow light under the ajar door. Another gloss of yellow watered down the right hand wall, where the door was partways open.

He crouched down, and stuck his ear close to the opening, to listen.

He could hear them, clear and smooth, and right down the line, the way it had been when he had been Prez.

"Now, who wants to be War Councilor?" It was Candle, being the big wheel, as per usual.

A mumbled jumbling of high and medium voices, and finally Boy-O's watery piping. "Hey, Jack! Lemme go, I wanna be a hero this time." Laughter filled the room.

Then Candle Shaster's voice rose up above the babble, annoyed and peremptory. "Shaddup. You just wanna go up there to peddle your snuff. They'd cut you up and drop ya down a manhole. Shaddup!"

Boy-O said something frail and the laughter rose again. Someone chimed in with another remark and the noise grew. Then Candle said, "Okay, wise guy. You so smart,you can be War Councilor.You go on up there with the white rag."

Rusty heard Poop's voice, querulous and angry. "Hey, why the hell me? Lotta other guys goofed-off. Don't toss that crap at me, man."

Candle said something low, barely distinguishable in the rising clamor, and for a moment Rusty thought there would be a fight. But Poop backed down and the rumble discussion went on.

Rusty decided now was the time to make his play.

He stood up and threw the door open wide. It banged against the wall of the stairwell, sounding like the report of a pistol in the shallow confines of the passage. For a moment, while his eyes were adjusted to the gloom of the stairwell, he did not see those inside in sharp focus. Then the light flooded in, and Candle came through nasty-looking and a little frightened at who was before him.

Beside the new Cougar Prez was Weezee.

Her eyes banged open wide till the blue of them was a color contrast with the white of her painted face. Her hand flew to her mouth and for a moment she looked to Rusty as though she would faint. Everyone else remained motionless.

They were all there. The Greek, Poop, Johnny Slice, Tiger and the broads. But most of all, and it hurt on top of all the rest, there was Weezee, sitting beside Candle. He had his big, hairy spade of a hand on her knee. She didn't mind. Times change, people change. Maybe. Not down inside. What's there is there, and you're screwed if you think what's there is what you want it to be. She was here, now, and that was what counted. There were no excuses in the jungle. Live or die was all that counted. Rusty had long since decided he would live.

The guy who had killed Dolores …He would die.

The room was silent for a long minute and then there was lots of movement. Rusty wished in that instant he had borrowed a gun from somewhere, but there had been no place, and all he had was the stuff he was born with. He knew it was bluff or get stomped. He was no longer a Cougar, so he had to make a fast place for himself here, right this instant.

"Okay, knock it off!" he yelled. And stepped into the room.

The place was rotting away. Fire had consumed one entire wall, leaving the skeleton structure of old wood and plaster showing through. Metal, small-holed sheeting was peeled away within the walls, as though a giant hand had crumpled it up. The floor sagged noticeably. The ceiling was shrouded in darkness and the three kerosene lamps they had brought with them cast a fitful wavering glare across the room, down the now-empty stairwell.

They were stopped by his command for a moment. He had burst in and the time was not that far past that they had looked up to him as Prez of the club. He seemed to have momentary authority, for he had found them in an illegal place. Rusty came through the door, pulling it closed behind him. He walked across the room, staring straight into Weezee's wide, frightened eyes. She had begun to nervously twist her ponytail.

Candle stood up, dropping his hand from her, and advanced a short step. Rusty bawled at him, "Sit down! I wanna talk to ya for a minute, and you'd damn well better feed me straight …"

Three of the club members moved in toward Rusty. He edged to the side, closer to Candle. The Prez of the Cougars had not sat down. He had moved a step further away from the girl, but he had not sat down. Rusty came on straight, and in one sharp movement had the Prez by the arm. He whipped it back so fast and he yanked it so hard, Candle screamed sharply in pain, and then the arm was up behind in the ridge of his back, and the knife from the sleeve was in Rusty's hand.

The hand moved a fraction of an inch, the blade snicked open, and the point was indenting the cloth just between the fifth and sixth ribs on the right side of Candle's body.

"Now," Rusty forced his bluff, "now, if you wanna see how hot I am to get to know what I wanna know, then you brace me, all you fraykin' rocks, and I'll slide this so easy he won't know it's in till it's out."

His false bravado rang like tin on his ears, but the knife was in Candle's side, and he had come bursting in suddenly, and he did look like he wasn't playing around. The three members backed off. Candle struggled.

"My sister got it last night. You know that. You all know it. You guys're sittin' here and my kid sister's downtown in the chill house. Now I'm gonna know who did it like, or so help me God like I'm standin' here, I'll scream fuzz so loud, you'll all stay pokey till you drop.

"I know enough to get ya all canned in the Home for five years, and you," he drove the point of the knife a little deeper into Candle's side, "ya sonofabitch, I'll cut out ya gut if ya don't open up."

Candle Shaster's mouth opened wet and wide. He wanted to speak, but there was sharp, tiny pressure alongside his ribs, and the fright was big in him, so damned big. He squirmed in Rusty's grip, but the boy was a rock, and held the knife tight to the cloth. It was the only thing between him and the violence the Cougars could unleash in a second, if they overcame the cold sweat of the switch in his hand.

"Talk, damn ya!" Rusty said tightly, edging the point of the knife in more sharply.

Candle could not speak. He could only squirm, and he did that with abruptness that threw Rusty off balance. In a moment he had a wedge with his hip against the boy's side, and an imperfect lunge tossed Rusty away from him. Rusty went sidewise, into the crate on which Weezee sat, frightened and toying unknowingly with her ponytail. He slammed into her and she went over, her legs flashing brown and slim as she tumbled to the dirty floor. Then Rusty had his hand under him for steadying and was coming erect. The gang moved in fast.

The first three who had attempted to take him when he had entered the room came at him again and Candle was right alongside. The blades flashed wickedly in the glare of the kerosene lamps, but Rusty was on his feet and backing away.

This was it, so this was it, damn it this was it.

Close, but not nearly close enough. He knew there was something here, but now he was stopped. He was going to be stopped good and proper in a minute. How much blood could three switches draw?

He saw a flash of big movement from the corner of his eye and then the three Cougars were being elbowed aside. One of them turned to the newcomer, his blade rising, and a thick hand came down from the darkness, plucked the knife from the boy's fingers and it leaped upward, was stuck far above in the ceiling. The thunk of the knife sticking into the charred wood of the exposed ceiling stopped the others. All but Candle.

He kept coming, not quite realizing he was alone again, and facing Rusty's knife. The activity to his left had been so swift, so complete, he had not realized what it meant.

Rusty saw it all. He saw the gigantic hulk that was The Beast come out of the shadows where he had lain slumped against the wall. He saw the huge idiot face contort in anger and violence as The Beast shouldered aside the three Cougars, and he saw the dummy rip the knife from the boy's hand, and with a movement more agile than any Rusty had believed The Beast could employ, had seen him throw the knife, quivering, into the ceiling.

Now Rusty bent forward at the knees and the knife came out before him, like the head of a snake, swaying, swaying, deadly and waiting. Candle came on solid and then he realized he was alone. He brought up short and started to turn, but a hairy arm went around his chest and he was lifted clear of the floor. He hung there, thrashing for a long instant, and then another hand caught him under the crotch. Candle went up, up, over the matted, caked filth of The Beast's hair, went up bubbling and trembling and The Beast pitched him forward heavily.

Rusty watched as Candle Shaster swung through the air and fell heavily. The boy hit, and then flopped onto his belly. He lay there for a moment, then heaved and lay still. He was not unconscious, but the sharp, tiny exclamations of pain that escaped him showed he was not going to get up soon.

Rusty stood staring into the round, idiot eyes of The Beast. The eyes that said nothing at all. The eyes that were filled with a great void, a great sadness, a great uncaring, unknowing nothingness. They were windows to the house of his soul and they were dead windows. Rusty saw the great face in its rigid immobility, nearly incapable of expression with meaning. The putty wart of a nose sucked air in, quivered as the air sped back on its outward journey. Rusty watched The Beast's face for a moment, letting the full, unpleasant picture register clearly.

He had seen The Beast around the neighborhood for years. He was a traditional joke, taunted by the younger punkies around Tom-Tom's place, avoided by women and snapped at by the fuzz. He was always in some alley, or under a pile of newspapers in an apartment building's basement. What he did to keep himself alive was a mystery, though from time to time rumors flashed about him. Robbery, breaking and entering, assault, mugging. Lord knew he was capable of any of them—but there was never any real inquiry into his affairs.

He was just the thing called The Beast. And he was there. That was all.

Now he had made a definite step. He had done something concrete and had saved Rusty's life. Why? The boy could not recall ever having done anything to acquire the huge man's good will and friendship. Why?

The Beast looked down at Rusty and put out his hand. For a moment Rusty had no idea what he wanted, then he realized he was still gripping the switch, underhand. He rubbed a finger along the green plastic of the handle and then closed it reluctantly. The knife clicked as he lifted the lock at the back and he awkwardly handed it to the big man. The Beast shoved the knife into a side pocket of his rumpled, dirt-streaked slacks and turned away with a nod to Rusty.

The Beast walked back into the shadows and slumped down once more, his back edging down the wall till he lay in the angle of the charred walls.

Rusty pursed his lips. There seemed no sense to it. The Beast had never spoken more than three words to him and suddenly he had become Rusty's protector. The boy was confused, but sensed his advantage now. He took three short steps to the barely stirring body of Candle and hoisted the boy to his feet roughly. He shoved the squat Cougar leader to the wall that was bathed in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp, and systematically brought him to.

The almost-mongoloid features of the Prez began to flicker out of grogginess and he batted his eyes several times as Rusty shook and slapped him.

The Cougars watched in transfixed helplessness, knowing if they moved The Beast would move; and though fat and filthy, the dummy could crush any one of them easily. They stayed put and watched Rusty work Candle over thoroughly.

"Now, I wanna know," Rusty said, each word accentuated by a sharp, stinging slap of his palm. Candle's face was becoming flame red along one cheek, as Rusty tried to drag information from him by the only sure method he knew.

"Talk!"

The hand came out, flashed and cracked briefly against skin. Candle's head jerked. His eyes opened wide and he twitched as though he wanted to retaliate. From the shadows the red coals of The Beast's eyes, staring straight at the Prez, kept his hands at his sides, limply.

"Talk!"

Candle jerked his head away and Rusty's next slap landed against the shoulder. It went that way for ten minutes, as Weezee sat biting her fist, her eyes wide. Violence was loose and there was no telling when it would come her way.

"Who killed my sister?"

No answer. The bond of silence was tight. Candle could no more speak, if he knew anything, than he could throw himself off the Staten Island Ferry. He was tied to silence. Rusty grew furious with frustration. His blows became more violent, and the Cougars knew this was not the fake rah-rah they usually saw in fights and rumbles. This was serious, this was the next thing to slow death. Rusty Santoro was on the edge and he wanted the word. The straight stuff, and they knew he would work each of them over till he got it.

Then their silence was no longer challenged, for the one who had stopped them before spoke from the shadows.

The Beast's hoarse, unsteady voice came up in the room and he said, "I seen who took ya sister …"

Rusty was holding Candle against the wall with one white-knuckled hand, the other poised for a sidearm whack at the squat boy's face. The hand never landed. Rusty stepped away slowly, letting his grip loosen on Candle, and the boy slid in a bumbling shuffle, before he fell again and lay panting, angled against the wall.

Rusty turned to the dummy, and there was a strange lustre to the boy's glare. This was what he wanted, this was all of it. This was the beginning of the trail that would end with a dead man in a gutter or hallway or alley, a Santoro-driven knife in his gut. This was it on skates and Rusty wanted it all.

"I seen her come in, an' then I seen her go out, before you come to th' dance." The Beast mumbled scratchily. His voice was like a rusted saw laboring through tough wood. He stumbled over words and many of his sounds were mere suggestion. But the words were the right words.

"'N' then she come back again, y'know, an' when she left, I was outside lookin' fer some beer what they might've left inna cans they t'rew outside, y'know, an' I saw'r with a guy inna long coat …"

And then the dummy gave a remarkably lucid description of a camel's hair coat.


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