- rusty santoro
It was like nothing but hell with screams.
The first bunch of Cherokees came sliding and stomping across the hardwood alleys, their heavy army boots leaving big black marks on the polished wood. The glitter of knife blades and the dull black of revolvers was mixed with the red of faces and the white of staring eyes. They came in fast and the Cougars met them without hesitation. Fish was the first one forward and the glass end stick came down and jabbed a Cherokee with such impact, the point of the glass entered the boy's right eye, sending him spilling backward.
The boy screamed so shrilly, everyone paused a quarter-instant in mid-step, and then went back to clashing. The boy lay there, feeling the runny wetness that had been his right eye and Fish remained stock-still where the force of the strike had stopped him. Sick, he stared at the mess and started to turn, to run away.
A girl materialized from nowhere with a lead pipe and with a round-cross slam caught Fish alongside the ear. He gurgled something low and pitched over, the side of his head bleeding, the stick and glass dropping to the alley unnoticed.
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 and be half 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-halfed through the glass, and the plate window shattered on all sides. When the cop dragged him erect, his hands and face were bleeding violently.
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 himself 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 so easily. He cursed himself for having slipped—so easily, sogoddamned 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, Rawwsull!"
Rusty stiffened, but continued to stare at the plump, dark-eyed sergeant above him. The officer lifted a phone, spoke into it softly and settled back 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 lethim go, you gotta let usall 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.
He sat down on the trough, then remembered the last prisoner had peed in it and got up before he felt moisture. He slouched against the wall and then decided he, too, wanted a smoke. He had the cigarette in his mouth before he remembered he had no matches.
"You wanna send them matches back?" he asked.
For a second he saw relationships all too clearly, and was sure the Negro would say, "Go screw yaself. I got 'em, they're mine."
The Negro said, "Sure 'nuff, man," and they skittered across the floor, sliding up against the cell door. Rusty reached down in the darkness and found them.
As he was lighting up, the other prisoner remarked, "A real bitch, man." As though they were not in jail, merely neighbors. A casual remark, so incongruous.
Rusty looked up. "What's that?"
"They get you in here and they let you have butts, but no matches; so we got to keep one butt goin' all night or nobody smoke. You know?"
Rusty grunted understanding.
"I 'member one night they's about six of us in here and all with butts, none with matches. One guy was lit-up when he got in, an' we hadda roll them butts back an' forth all night, till we was near shook, man, we got so nervous."
Silence for a while. Then, "They take your shoe laces and belt, jack?"
Rusty leaned his head against the wall. "Not my laces. Took my belt an' tie, though. Yours?"
"Mmm. Took mine." The Negro laughed deeply, it rumbled. "But then, I'm a veteran. I'm tank bait, man."
"Why they take that stuff?"
"You know, like some cat gets the lows. Tries to coot hisself with his belt. Ties it up to that screen 'round the light thing in the ceilin', and hangs hisself with it. That makes a bad smell for the coppers, somebody goes out the hangin' way overnight. So they takes the stuff. They must not of booked you if you still got your laces an' matches."
Rusty grunted agreement. "No, they didn't."
The Negro went on. "That explains it. They can't take ya stuff they just holdin' ya, in procoo or like that."
"What's procoo?"
"Man, you sure 'nuff new to this, ain'tcha?"
"I been in the cooler a couple times. With some other guys. I been around."
The Negro chuckled wryly. The calf trying to be the bull. "Yeah, sure, jack. Didn't mean no harm. Sure you been around, you say so, it's so."
"What's procoo?"
"Protective cust'idy, man. Like they's holdin' you for your own good. A crock. You know, so they know where you are overnight."
Rusty stood up. He leaned his head against the thin, cool metal of the bars. "What you in for?"
The Negro laughed cheerily. "Sheet, man. Nothin' much. They makin' a big thing outta nothin'."
"Oh? What?"
"Sheet, man. I just cut someone, thass all."
"Who'd you cut?"
The prisoner hesitated, and Rusty heard a deep drag on the cigarette. The Negro's voice came in a deeper, more strained, more worried tone, belying his words. "Oh, no one much. I just cut my old lady a little. She peed me off and I took the blade to her, is all."
Rusty slid back along the wall, staring up at the ceiling, staring at nothing. He didn't want to talk to the guy; that was nowhere. He had to think. He had to give it a long, long think.
Was Pancoast going to come down tomorrow and bail him loose? Was he going to sit in the can till his tail turned blue? He thought of Moms and he thought of Dolo and the last thought worried him.
Where was she? She had been at the dance, he was certain of that, but she had gone and not come back. For some reason he worried the thought about and found it singularly unpleasant. He wanted to get out, fast—to check home with Moms.
That had been a rough time and anything could have happened. Rusty realized he was foolish to be worrying about Dolores when he was so deep in trouble himself, but he could not help himself. The darkness of the cell did nothing to reassure him.
He took his handkerchief out and moved in the cell till his thighs hit the trough-bunk. He struck a light and swabbed out the trough as best he could. It wasn't much to sleep on, but he had to try.
He loosed a flood of cursing at the sight, but did the best he could with it. He prepared to lie down, finally. A deep tone sounded from the cell across the way.
"Whatyou in for, man?"
Rusty turned, and tried to make out the face of the man in the cell opposite. For some strange reason, he wanted to see his face, to engrave it with bitterness in his mind. He never wanted to come back here again.
"Nothing, mac. Just—nothing at all," the boy answered.
He lay down in the shallow trough and the hard, unyielding metal seemed right, somehow. He knew it was foolish, the same as Moms' religion kick every now and then, but he wanted the bunk to be hard; he had done wrong tonight, very wrong. He had let himself slip back a little, thinking release from everything he had been and done was so easy to come by. He knew better now. It was a constant thing, a steady thing. He had to work at it and keep himself clean and away from it. It was like pot or liquor. It got to you and sucked you down every time, if you weren't careful.
He closed his eyes. But sleep would not come.
Finally, the lights behind his eyes dimmed away to a darkness deeper than that of the tank and he slipped away to weird, disquieting, running dreams.
Just before the curtain slid down completely, he thought he heard the fuzzy, indistinct, deep voice from nowhere saying, "You got to be good, man, or they set you in the jailhouse. An' that's so bad, man, so bad …"
It registered. Rusty slept.
The morning dawned muggy and gray. Rusty slipped out of the trough, and his back was a mass of aches. His neck was stiff and he had a chill that ran through his bones. It wasn't the most pleasant awakening of his life, but somehow things seemed all clear now, all clean, all fresh and ready for a start.
The turnkey came to open the cell doors at nine o'clock, and as the bars slid into the wall with a thump, Rusty turned away from the sink, his face wet, his eyes feeling strange and gritty in their sockets, even with the cold water doused in them.
He stood there and watched the other man come out of the cell across the way.
Rusty knew he would remember what the big Negro looked like. Not the color of his skin or the range of his arms or the skew of his nose, but the lines of the face, the meaning in the eyes, the whole composite thing. The whole, damned-forever thing. And it wasn't nice, but he knew he would keep it close and any time he might need it there would be no trouble getting it out where he could look at it tightly.
The man did not speak and Rusty did not come out of the cell. But when the big man went down to the far end of the tank to rattle the bars and scream for breakfast Rusty knelt down on the sandpapery floor and shut his eyes.
"Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed—"
Later, the turnkey came to get him. The officer walked Rusty back down the corridor and into the squad room. The beefy sergeant from the night before was gone. In his place was a sallow-faced officer with a Madison-Avenue haircut and large ears. Rusty had seen this man around the neighborhood from time to time. His name was Bedzyk. It seemed right, for this morning.
No matter what happened, Rusty felt very, very clean.
The desk officer looked up as he came in and his eyes frosted over quickly. No emotion before these street punks. Bedzyk hated the gangs. A group of hoods one afternoon had followed his bride of eight months, calling filthy suggestions after her as she walked down the street to her apartment. But there was nothing he could do to rough it on them this time. He examined the notation.
"You Santoro, Russell?"
Rusty nodded.
"Answer when I speak to you!" Bedzyk's voice was hard and deadly. Rusty felt himself averting the man's snake-like gaze.
"Yessir."
Bedzyk grudgingly acknowledged the boy's thumbing-under. "I got a release order here for you, left by Sergeant Dohrmann. Says some man named Pancoast okayed your release. You're supposed to report to his place this evening. You know where to go to see him?"
Rusty answered sharply, "Yessir."
"Okay. Then remember this, kid. I ever see you in here again, I'm going to personally see that the book's tossed at you. Understand me,comprende? "
Rusty bristled at the offhand remark, but answered humbly, "Yessir."
"Okay then, get the devil out of here. I can't stomach looking at your ugly face."
Rusty felt anger frying the insides of his gut, but he held it back. He needed some information. "'Scuse me, sir."
Bedzyk looked up blackly. "You still there?"
"'Scuse me, sir, but can you tell me like if they let out the other guys?" He thought of the blood in the bowling alley.
The cop stared the boy down for a long instant, then his neck cords began to stand out, and in a terribly soft slow voice he said, "Get the hell out of here."
Rusty left as quickly as possible.
Outside, Boy-O was slouching against a wall, an ordinary cigarette dangling from his unshaven face. He smelled even stronger than usual and the wild, junkie-stare was so bad Rusty could have sworn a pair of diamonds were screwed into the sockets, blazing out.
Boy-O took a shove away from the wall, approached Rusty. The other tried to swerve around him, but the junkie said, "Hey, Rusty, hold up a second."
Rusty stopped and looked at the hophead. "Whaddayou want?"
"I been waitin' till they let the gang out. Some of the guys needed carfare like. They're holdin' three or four of the guys."
So that explained what had happened to the Cherokees and the Cougars, but Rusty was impatient to be away from the great gray hulk of the police building. "So? Why you stoppin' me?"
"I just wanted to tell ya I was sorry ta hear what happened."
Rusty was puzzled. Boy-O never had been a good friend. What did he care if Rusty Santoro spent the night in a cell on a metal trough?
"For what? I'm out, ain't I?"
Boy-O looked surprised, then shocked, then partial understanding filtered through to his dreamy brain. "Oh, hey, man, then you don't know. Hey, that's right, they didn't find her till this mornin', so you didn't get the word yet."
A chill slipped up Rusty's neck and he grabbed the junkie by his filthy lapels. "What? What are you talkin' about? Come on, you sonofabitch, open up or I'll cream ya!"
He knew, somehow, horribly; even before Boy-O spoke.
"Your sister, man. They found her this mornin'. Somebody—uh—raped her and left her in an alley behind Tom-Tom's joint."
Rusty felt the anchors of his jaws tighten and he thought for a moment he would drop into the street. He had to know.He had to know—
"Tell me! Talk, you dustie, talk! How is she?"
Boy-O looked terrified, as though he were face to face with something alien. He wanted to run away, but Rusty had him fast and was choking him without knowing it.
He stammered and Rusty hit him across the mouth. "Talk!Talk! " He bit his lips in fury and screamed loud so the whole clean, fine, nice start-all-over day would know, "Tell me—how is she?"
"Gee, man, I'm sorry. … She's dead like. Somebody stuck a knife inta her."
The past screamed and Rusty heard.