Chapter Twelve:

Saturday Night

Rain had come and gone so swiftly, it had hardly been at all. The streets were slick-shined from it and small galaxies of oil made rainbow auras on the black tar landscape. Darkness was a live thing that walked with terrible softness through the city. The air was clean and cool, but there was a tautness in everything that overlay the calm, making the city a waiting animal, hungry for what was to come. It breathed in and out quietly, hunkered down on black haunches, its million-window glittering eyes aware of every scene, every life, every conclusion. It waited.

Rusty made it back to the neighborhood in a cab. It had been the second time in his life he had squandered money so recklessly. The first time had been when he and two Cougars had taken a cabbie over the rocks. They had made the hackie drive them all the way from West One Hundred Fourteenth Street and Broadway, deep into Cougar turf and the meter had read three bucks and fifty. Then they had jumped the cab and started to run away. But the cabbie had caught Rusty and taken a five-dollar bill for his trouble. Then he had booted Rusty into the gutter. That had been the first time. This time was something entirely different.

His nerves were ticking. He had St. Vitus Dance of the innards. He couldn't stand still and a subway did not seem as fast as a cab. So he laid out the money, the last of his money, and hit Cougar turf just after the bars had begun to close. He got off near the apartment building where Boy-O lay bound in the basement, and paid the cabbie with a ten-cent tip.

"Thanks," the cabbie sneered. He held the change in his hand and snorted an obscenity about late night non-tippers. As the cab's tail lights winked off around the corner, Rusty stood undecided. How was he going to get The Beast?

In any event, he had to let Boy-O go.

He hit for the basement, and found the junkie sleeping in his bonds. Boy-O's back was up against the furnace pipe, his wrists raw and bloody from trying to break the ropes that held him. Rusty found a piece of glass from a broken window-fronted cabinet and slashed the ropes off Boy-O's arms. The pusher woke almost immediately and the fear returned. Rusty pulled the gag from his mouth, and Boy-O started whimpering. "Don't kill me, man. D-don't kill me. I stooled for ya, I to'dja what ya wanted to know, din't I? Lemme alone …"

Rusty settled back on his haunches and ran a hand through his hair. An infinite weariness passed up his body and he wanted to lie down there and sleep. But he held the weariness off, because sleep was something he couldn't afford—not just yet. He had to find someone first.

"Look, Boy-O," he began, his eyes closed, staring at the ceiling because he could not look at the dried blood on the junkie's face, the condition of the junkie's body, "I wanna find The Beast. You know where I can locate him?"

Boy-O shook his head rapidly, fear driving it back and forth.

"Uh-uh. I don't know where he hangs, man. I got nothin' ta do with that stud. He's mean. I don't know nothin' about him—" He added with hurried fright, "An' that's the God's truth, Rusty, man, s'help me, honest!"

Rusty nodded slowly, understanding and futility in his movements. "Okay," he said softly, as though talking to himself because no one else was left, "Okay. I know. That's okay."

He got to his feet, and started for the stairs. He stopped with one hand on the bannister and looked back into the darkness of the basement, lit by only that one swinging bulb.

"I'm—I'm sorry, man," he said. Then he was gone.


How to find The Beast? Rusty sat on the roof of his building with the summer chilliness enfolding him and he wanted to know, worse than anything else. How was he going to smoke The Beast out, smoke him out so he could get his hands on him? Not for a moment did Rusty consider how he was going to kill a giant of The Beast's size. Not for a moment did he worry about what happened to him if he did. All he wanted to do was smoke The Beast out.

Smoke …

He got up, and stood staring off across the city. He saw the broken black line that was the building tops against the lighter dark of the sky. The strange angles and spires of TV antennas, the towers that were chimneys, the box-shapes and chicken-wire of pigeon roosts. He saw it all and knew what would smoke The Beast out.

He went downstairs, into the apartment and Mrs. Givens was there. She had not left for more than fifteen minutes since Moms got sick. Who was watching after her kids, Rusty did not know. But there she was, in the big chair, almost asleep. She woke as he came through the door and a quizzical expression lit her face. It was very, very late.

"Miz Givens," he said, not closing the door, "keep the shades down, an' keep the windows closed. Don't let nothin' bother ya t'night, an'—an' don't let Moms hear the noise." He started to close the door, but she motioned him back with a thin, white hand.

"What noise? What you mean?" He waved her off.

"You'll know real soon."

He smiled at her and her face was so strained he wondered if she was not sick herself. "Don't worry," he said. Then he closed the door and went downstairs and over to the corner, and found the fire-box, and pulled the lever down. Then he went back up to the roof to wait for the fire engines.


He had known it would be just this way. The sirens, the red, winking lights, the long engines with their ladders tucked down and all the noise. Noise! That was it. If there was anything that could drag the neighborhood from its beds at this hour, if there was anything that could bring the blackjack players out of the back room, if there was anything that would smoke The Beast from whatever warren he was using tonight, it would be the complete pandemonium of a false alarm fire. The engines pulled in to the curb near the alarm box and the firemen climbed down, looking for the blaze.

In a few moments they would realize it was a false alarm, then they would tear off again, leaving the neighborhood for the cops to comb for the alarm setter. Leaving the crowds to disperse, asking each other, "What happened, what went on, what was that all about?"

Before then, The Beast had to come out of his hole, had to come into the crowd to see what was happening. He had to.

Rusty watched carefully, straining his eyes to make out the faces of everyone down there, in the street-lamp light, and the glare of the engine's headlights. He saw the women, in their nightgowns, with the terrycloth bathrobes pulled across their fat stomachs. He saw the balding men, their heels red and bare in bedroom slippers. He saw the young girls and some of them reminded him of Weezee and some reminded him of Dolores, but that was too long ago to think about. But he did not see the gigantic hulk that was The Beast. He saw nothing like that.

Then the firemen were cursing loudly and they were piling back onto the engines, and scream-roaring away. Then the street faded into silence and the crowd milled around for a few minutes asking what had happened and then they started to disperse, as Rusty had known they would.

He had failed. He had fouled up again.

Then he saw The Beast.

The big man was standing in the alley across the street. The fire engine's headlights had blinded Rusty before, but now he could see the monstrous slovenly shape angled against the brick wall, watching everything, taking it all in, the gaping mouth wet and wide, those little eyes, like two spots of hell, ripped free and thrust into a doughy face, the two meat-chunk hands, those fingers, each as big as a sausage.

Thishad raped Dolores?

Rusty felt nausea grip him. He leaned his face against the cold brick of the roof's ledge and he prayed. He said to the sky and the night and the God he was so sure no longer knew him, "Please Oh dear God above hear me hear what I'm saying tonight and forgive me for what I'm gonna do."

Then he stood up and lit a cigarette.

He saw The Beast's face swivel upward and he saw the eyes cold and deadly staring into his own, across that space. He raised his hand against the sky and motioned The Beast to come up. "I set it," he said. He said it loud enough to carry to the street and hoped a cop did not hear it, too.

The Beast hesitated a moment, then looked both ways on the street and started across. He disappeared from Rusty's sight under the angle of the building, and Rusty knew he was on his way up. Neat. The sonofabitch still thought Rusty didn't know. He still thought Rusty was looking for the man in the camel's hair coat. Neat. The sonofabitch. Sure he had given Rusty the tip. So Rusty would look the other way and find Morlan and take care of him, The Beast hoped, before Rusty could find out Morlan had been nowhere near Dolores when she had been killed. That would get Morlan out of The Beast's way and get Rusty cooled permanently, too.

Neat. So neat Rusty had run around like a chicken with its head detached, following up a trail that meant nothing. No wonder there had been no connection between the dope and the death of Dolores. How could there be?

The only connection had been there all along and Rusty had been too dumb to see it. Now the connecting link was on its way upstairs.

The door to the stairwell banged open and the huge shape of The Beast was there.

He came across the tarpaper roof and he grew monstrous in Rusty's eyes. His arms swung to his knees and below, and he seemed more a gigantic parody of some pithecanthropoid than a human. Rusty stared at the man who walked toward him and all the cold fury, all the hatred, all the brutality he had been driven to in the name of his sister, washed over him. He was going to kill this cold-blooded sonofabitch without remorse and without compunction. He was going to tear out his tongue and tear off his manhood, and stomp what was left into a runny pulp, and then—

And then he was going to give himself up. The future was dead, but so was The Beast. He didn't know it, but he was already dead.

"Hi," he said. Rusty did not answer, just watched.

"I say, Hi."

The Beast stopped, uncertainty in his face. "You ever hear anything 'bout that guy I told ya I saw?" He licked his fat, gross lips.

Rusty wished he had the knife. But his hands would do.

"Whutsa matter? I ain't seen ya in a while. Where ya been stayin', huh?" Rusty looked around for a weapon. He needed something. Those arms of The Beast's could crush him in a second. He saw nothing.

"Whutsa matter with you? Can'cha talk?"

Rusty got up, moved to the side. He rested his, hand on the aluminum stalk of a TV antenna, knowing he could not pull it loose from its moorings to use as a weapon. But at least he was touching something. The antenna was right at the edge of the roof, where the ledge rose up. He wanted a weapon, desperately. Something to beat this giant to his knees with. Something with which to pound in that ape-face.

"I saw Morlan tonight," Rusty threw at him in the silence. For a moment The Beast's face was lax, devoid of expression, then the name must have registered, for his eyes narrowed and the stare left his face.

It was miraculous. Rusty watched as the imbecile light left him, and a look of craft and cunning came over the coarse features. This was no idiot. This was a man who had played the part for a long, long time, but was not a moron at all.

"You killed my sister …"Rusty said.

The Beast stared back in silence. His eyes never left Rusty's face and his jaw worked slowly. "Oh? Makes you think that?"

"You told me about Morlan. Morlan says he wasn't near her. Says he came down here to stop you from cutting in on his dust route. Where you raise the poppies? In that weedy lot behind the dry cleaner's place?"

The Beast stood still, framed against the stars and no moon at all. The night seemed part of him, like something from the dawn of time. He was a caveman out bravely in the night, looking for meat. But this was no strong, brave man of pre-dawn. This was a filthy, butchering bastard who had killed an innocent girl.

"You haven't said a thing yet, Santoro," The Beast said. "The only thing you're saying is you don't know nothing."

Rusty found himself marveling. "You ain't a dummy at all. You ain't stupid. You been pretendin'."

The Beast's face crinkled in a hideous grin, a travesty of a grin. "Oh," he said sarcastically, "you finally figured it out, huh?"

"You been two people all along," Rusty said in amazement.

"You was sayin'—" The Beast took a step forward.

Rusty moved back an equal step, toward the edge of the roof. "Th-the only thing I knew about Morlan was what you told me. That he was down here, in a camel's hair coat. You knew I'd finally get to Boy-O and find out who was pushing through him and then check back. You were hoping I'd kill him, weren't you, you sonofabitch? You were hoping I'd kill off your competition—then that would put me away, too. Then you'd have the whole turf for your own dust."

"I saved your life," The Beast said. He moved forward. Rusty saw the step. But he could move no further and still be on the roof. It was seven floors to the street.

"Sure you saved—saved me," nervousness ticked in Rusty's words. "I hadn't done the job for you yet."

The Beast jumped. He grabbed for Rusty and caught him by the jacket. Rusty struggled and struck out blindly, feeling himself falling. The Beast dragged him back and held him in a crushing bear-hug. Rusty gasped, and ooophed as every rib in his body was crushed inward. He spread both hands and tried to shove the huge chest away from him, but it was no good. The Beast gasped deeply, sucking in more air for the job, and bent Rusty backwards, till the boy felt the night breeze blowing his hair. His head was over the side of the building. He could barely feel his legs. There was no strength from his waist down. He had to get away.

He—had—to—get—away—

Rusty's legs brushed the brick of the roof ledge. It was a bare reflex, but he planted what he thought must be his heels against the brick, and shoved. The Beast stumbled a step backward, and his grip loosened just a fraction. Rusty brought both hands up from his waist, and dug the crooked fingers into the two small, evil eyes before him. He dug and felt wetness.

The Beast screamed. His voice let out across the canyon of the tenements and rattled down to the street. Rusty dug in deeper, feeling something under his left hand go soft and moist and start to run down The Beast's cheek. He gagged at the thought, but shoved harder. His fingers broke into the clear and the screams continued. The Beast retched down across Rusty's jacket and the smell was terrible. But the screams were worse. He let go, then, and Rusty fell on his back.

The Beast clutched at his streaming face, at the black pits that had been eyes, and as he stumbled he tripped across the shank of the TV antenna. His arms flailed out and he started to fall, holding tight to the antenna.

The shaft of the antenna bent and creaked and the bolts held, but the length of it swayed and gave. The Beast tumbled over the side of the apartment building, still holding tight to the antenna. He hung there, on the end of the bent aluminum, like a fish on a line. He swayed and bumped the building, and his great weight put a strain on the aluminum. It started to crack and the metal bent even more, rubbing against the brick.

The Beast's screams had not ceased for a moment and now the street was again dotted with a crowd. People stared and pointed up at the great hulk who was suspended on a spider-web from nowhere.

"Aaah! Help me! Help me!" The Beast screamed and Rusty stared down at him. A dazedness had come over the boy when he had been released. He had risen to his feet only with the greatest difficulty. Pain thrashed about in him, dying and pulling his nerves along with it.

He looked down at the blind hulk that had killed his sister. "Why'd you do it?" he asked, leaning over, hardly realizing The Beast was on the edge of oblivion. He had to know. It was a compulsion in there somewhere. He had to know why this thing had started.

He knew when it had started, back when he was born, but why.

The Beast screamed again and more windows flew up. Heads popped out and the entire neighborhood watched—and listened. A woman yelled, "Call a cop!" But no one moved. They watched, immobile. The Beast swayed some more. The bolts creaked. Rusty asked him again, "Why'd you kill my sister?"

"I din't, I din't mean to do it! Help me! Help me!"

"Why, tell me why!"

"I saw'r, that was all. I saw'r and she was all alone—she left the dance—an' I asked her for a kiss and she laughed at me, an' I—I—ya gotta help me, ya gotta …"

A cop rounded the corner and looked up and dashed for the building.

The bolts creaked and one snapped loose and the aluminum straightened a little as its length was pulled over the edge. Rusty turned away and started walking.

He passed the cop on the stairs.

The cop was too late. Rusty heard the crash in the street below as he opened the door to the apartment. Then, when he closed the door, he heard nothing more from the street—except one high-pitched woman's wail—for Mrs. Givens had done as he had asked. Moms was asleep.

All the windows were closed.


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