Pulling A Train

by Harlan Ellison

  The words came out before he knew he was saying them. It was habit. It was the Great American Fencing Game, but this wasn’t a ponytailed gang girl. This was a woman. She brought her hand back and slapped him full in the mouth. Deek’s head jerked sidewise and he regained with a four-pronged red welt across his face. He grabbed both her biceps and yanked her in front of him.

  “Listen, doll, nobody, but nobody does that to me. You ever slap me again, sweetheart, I’ll bust you up good.” He shoved her away, and she stumbled back a step.

  The look she gave him was half pity, half something else entirely. Then she spun on her heels, and walked away stiffly.

  Deek stared after her till the image and anger had faded entirely.

  Then he began to wonder—and worry—about the car with the two girls in it. He had recognized the dark-haired one with the band-aid on her face. It didn’t look good.

  They weren’t old enough, either of them, to own a car like that. It had to be a heisted short. That didn’t look good, either. They probably had studs for boyfriends who would lean on him if they found him.

  Deek Cullen felt boxed in only slightly. And the pot hadn’t been as good-cut as Scudball had indicated. It had turned into a bum trip all around.

  That social worker…that broad with the fine body…

  His mouth still stung where she had clipped him. But she was fine stuff to look at. Maybe soon, maybe one day real soon.

  He decided on the instant to cool it for a while. No sense walking the turf when there was a kooky broad who wanted to run him down.

  There wasn’t any place to hole up, that was the problem. Sol With The Glasses had been sent to the Lexington farm—those stupid nabs thought they’d get the monkey off Sol With The Glasses’ back if they spooked him for a while. They were wrong. That stud had no monk, it was an orangutan, that big, that bad it was.

  Pinchy was shacked with a working broad who didn’t like any of the coolsters around; she was grooming him for the strait jacket. The thought of Pinchy being hugged in wedlock was such a downer Deek had to smile. Old Pinch babe with his lech for little chicks like nine or ten. That working broad was going to have some nights that were real flakes. Poor Pinchy. Poor working broad.

  That wasn’t going to solve the problem, though. It had to be coolsville for a week at least. But where? How about Gary Teshlik? No, Gary’s old man was still around and Deek didn’t feel like a philosophy bout with the old guy. He had a thing about cats that didn’t work steady. Road to ruin and all that jazz.

  Abruptly, and odd that it hadn’t come sooner, Deek knew immediately where he could duck out for a week.

  Demoiselle’s house.

  And there was always the possibility of knocking off a little piece. After all, with thirteen girls in the building, and the smut campaign in town keeping the clientele to a minimum, there had to be a couple of the whores at least, who needed servicing.

  Yeah, like nutty. Demoiselle’s pad. Quicksville.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Cat House

  PATTY OPENED THE DOOR. She was dressed in a pair of tight toreadors and a white cashmere sweater. She gave Deek a strange look, as though to ask what he was doing there.

  Deek shouldered past her and closed the door behind himself. “Where’s Demoiselle?” he asked, mispronouncing it, warping it to “Dem-wazelll.” Patty nodded toward the study. She shrugged her shoulders, as if unable to cope with the problem—with any problem—and hip-switched away.

  Deek looked around the front hall of the house. It had been almost a year since he had worked for Demoiselle, doing odd jobs and acting as bouncer. But the old faceless brownstone still felt the same.

  It was no secret in the neighborhood that this building was the biggest brothel in the city, but oddly enough, the payoffs to the cops lapped over onto the neighborhood; the cops watched out for the rest of the folks, too. So nobody said anything, nobody complained, the customers were quiet, the neighborhood a lot safer than others nearby. It was a reciprocating agreement between Demoiselle and the families surrounding the house.

  Now Deek had returned to the house.

  It still had that faint sex odor, like the warm, musky smell of a woman’s body. He inhaled, and it brought back memories.

  Then he knocked on the study door.

  “Come on in, whoever,” a mellow voice called through the oak paneling.

  Deek opened the door and walked in. Demoiselle was at the secretary, writing in her check book. The woman kept her accounts religiously; it was a business to her, and she operated it with acumen and good taste.

  Looking at Demoiselle was always an experience for Deek. He had never slept with her, yet every time he laid eyes on her, his hands went clammy with hunger. She was short, barely five feet tall, with raven-black hair that fell to her shoulders in smooth, perfumed waves. Her breasts were gigantic for a woman that size, but firm and upswept and well-formed. Rumor had it—though Demoiselle neither affirmed nor denied—she had been a streetwalker in London’s Shepherd Market, and had married a GI who had ditched her once they arrived in America.

  “Well, if it isn’t the errand boy.” Her smile was a sweet thing, a deadly thing: like a box of poisoned chocolates, and Deek’s body ached with hurt for her. He could picture her small but exquisitely-formed body under him, writhing on the bed, on the floor, on the sofa…anywhere.

  “What’s new, Demoiselle?”

  “A good question, boy. What do you want here?” She had a blunt way of avoiding questions she did not want to answer. Now she had put Deek completely on the defensive.

  Deek wet his lips with his tongue. “I need a place to pad out for about a week?”

  She shook her head. “No go, Deek. I can’t afford to front no cops right now! It’s all I can do, putting in the fix to keep the Assistant D.A. and those porn-campaign bastards off my tail. You’d be an extra handicap.”

  “It ain’t the cops,” Deek explained hurriedly. “I’ve got some, uh, gang kids lookin’ for me. They been scourin’ the turf. All I need is a pad for about a week; I’ll work it off the same way I did last time.”

  Demoiselle’s eyes, dark twins of caraway seeds, narrowed. “Last time, Deek? Do you remember why I fired you? You almost killed that Betty when you got to her that night. I don’t want my girls bothered, Deek.”

  Deek Cullen smiled ruefully. “I’ll be a real good boy, Demoiselle. I’ve grown up a lot since then.”

  She smiled, her thin lips bringing a dimple to sight in her left cheek. She appraised him boldly. “Yes, you have, Deek. Yes, you have. You’ve grown up quite a lot. You’re closer to a man than a boy now.” Her eyes swept across the tight thighs of his jeans, examining every indentation and bulge of fabric. “Yes you have,” she murmured.

  Deek felt Christmas coming.

  Demoiselle shoved back the chair and stood up. She continued to examine the character lines of his face, the way he carried himself. “All right, Deek. You can stay here for a while. But try to be a good boy.”

  The way she said it made Deek’s face flame.

  “I’m always a good boy.”

  “I know you’d like to be a good boy. I think you could be, too, Deek.”

  Deek Cullen looked at the woman carefully. “There’s only one thing I want. I want to be the biggest cat in the bunch. I want to be able to growl and watch ’em duck for cover. I want to be the biggest.”

  Demoiselle smiled indulgently. “Big hopes, Deek.”

  “I’m a big boy, like I said,” he replied.

  She smiled enigmatically. “Okay, Deek. You’ve made your point.”

  She went to the door and called into the hall. “Ginny, Ginny, come down here a minute.” She turned back to Deek. “I’ve got six new girls in, Deek. They’ve been good here, they like the job, don’t louse it up for me. I don’t want any more Betty kind of business, do you understand?”

  “Like I dig, take it easy. I’ll be real best behavior, no sweat.”

  Then Ginny came t
hrough the door. She had the most magnificent breasts Deek had ever seen. They were like the rubber bumpers on a Cadillac. They came out at you and aimed over your head like a pair of 30 mm cannons, so you looked back over your shoulder to see at what they were aimed.

  Ginny was taller than Deek, wearing high heels and an expensive Japanese kimono that was sheer enough to show Deek the hard, tight brown circles of the areolas surrounding Ginny’s nipples. Deek’s mouth felt flat and dry.

  “Ginny, this is Deek. He’s a friend. He’ll be staying here for a while. I owe him a few favors, but you girls don’t owe him a thing. So if he shoves, let me know. Until then, we’ll accept him as a friend. You understand that, Deek?”

  He nodded and smiled at Ginny.

  She watched him through half-shrouded eyes.

  Like a big sexy snake, Deek thought.

  “Find him a place to sack out upstairs, will you, Ginny.”

  The girl patted her dark hair and shrugged. “Where should I put him? You want the marks to see him when they start coming in?”

  Demoiselle extended her lower lip in a pout. “Put him next to you in the small bedroom. The maid won’t be back for a week or so,” she turned a smile on Deek, “until she dumps the monkey at Lexington Farm.”

  Ginny burst into a raucous laugh.

  Demoiselle’s scathing glance shattered the laughter into a billion ragged-edged remnants. Ginny moved toward the door. “Come on, kid.”

  Deek tossed a sloppy salute at Demoiselle and followed Ginny’s well-packed bottom out of the room and up the stairs. He watched her legs form and lose form inside the kimono as she led him down the second floor hall.

  The girl opened a door and stood aside to let Deek pass. “This is it, kid,” she said, waving at the small room, its bed, bureau, chair and washstand. “Not much, but it’s home.” She started to move away.

  “Hey,” Deek stopped her, “why the big hurry. I thought maybe you and me could get acquainted.” He laid a hand on her arm and pulled her up against himself, his other hand slipping inside the kimono, finding her breast. Ginny gasped at the abruptness of his movements.

  She tried to shove him away, warning, “Demoiselle said we didn’t have to take no crap from you, kid, so lay off.”

  Deek grinned hugely at her. He tried to pull her into the room but she freed one arm and swung her raking nails toward his face. Deek swung away and pinioned her arms to her sides, pressing her fleshy perfect breasts flat against his chest. “Now like take it easy, Ginny, and we can be buddies. I don’t want no trouble, I just want to make friends…”

  “You pay like anybody else, or you don’t get in me, and that’s the way it is, so…let…go!” Abruptly she brought up her knee. It caught Deek flush in the groin and he exploded with a sharp grunt of pain, falling up against the wall.

  Ginny stepped back a pace, leveled her gaze, and swung a roundhouse slap that took Deek high on the mouth, spinning him and dumping him through the door of the room. He lay on his back and watched the silken paleness of Ginny’s naked legs, in and out of the kimono as she walked away.

  His crotch felt like someone had gone over it with a steam drill.

  “I’ll be seeing you a little later,” he promised her retreating back. In a whisper.

  That night, Deek began earning his keep.

  In a city where organized vice was a commonplace item, the “small businessman,” such as Demoiselle, had twofold problems: the righteous, good citizens and their committees, campaigns and cops…and the Syndicate. Unionize the cribs was an old idea, and the Syndicate had done it many years before, but occasionally circumstances allowed a scrupulously clever entrepreneur such as Demoiselle to keep operating.

  But the pressure to come into the main organization was there. It was there, and that first night, Deek found out just how much pressure there could be.

  The marks started showing a little after seven-thirty.

  The first one was a short, fat, bald man who looked like a miniature Edgar Kennedy. He eyed the girls wetly and settled on a petite brunette with good legs and small hips. There wasn’t even time to con him into a byplay with a drink or dancing before he had her by the wrist and up the stairs. Demoiselle frowned, but said nothing.

  Then two buyers for a lingerie department in a Denver department store made the scene and were a bit more gracious. Ginny and a tall, statuesque, redhead, who shaved more than her legs to hide the fact that she wasn’t a natural redhead, took the buyer.

  After a while all fifteen of the girls were busy, and even Demoiselle had picked a John for a quickie, business was so good. There was a silent, but standing, order to “move ’em out” after they’d had their jollies, to allow the SRO crowd bed-space.

  Only once was Deek called on to quell a disturbance. A truckdriver type, intent on proving his masculinity, had tried to use a garrison belt on one of the girls and when Deek burst into the bedroom (none of the doors had locks on them) the weapon had been poised to fall on the naked girl.

  Deek had grabbed the belt as it swung back, and whipped the lantern-jawed trucker with it. One solid swipe with the leather glove filled with half dollars and the trucker was in a haulable condition. Deek had dumped him in the first passing taxi—after carefully removing only what Demoiselle had said was due—and told the cabbie Far Rockaway. Where in Far Rockaway? Any goddamn where in Far Rockaway, stupid. Here’s a twenty.

  That had been the only incident.

  Until the Syndicate arrived.

  There was no warning. They came through the back door facing the alley, and they came right through into the front rooms without so much as a by-your-leave. But there were several split skulls as they passed customers in the halls. There were six of them, all packing Police Positives or .45s with silencers, and they came on like the Hole In The Wall gang.

  Demoiselle had packed her John off by that time, and was sitting cutting up a few touches with several SRO clients in the front room, when the hoods broke through.

  Deek had been lounging in a corner of the big, overstuffed sofa, eating a nectarine from the kitchen. But, wiping drool off his chin, he left the living room to dump the pit and wash the stickum off his hands. As he started to kick open the swinging door between living room and kitchen, he heard a thick commanding voice:

  “Stick tight, whoor, an’ nobody gets whacked.”

  Deek edged against the wall and nudged the door a fraction with his palm. He was rewarded by a slit of light from the living room, cut off by the doorjamb, that included Demoiselle’s bare knee, part of the sofa, the pant leg of a customer, and the barrel of a sturdy .38 Police Special, aimed about a foot and a half above the silken knee.

  Deek let the door slide back. Oh Jeezus! Some cooling pad! Here he was in the midst of some kind of a Syndicate action; he had long known Demoiselle was faking it out, trying to spook the Outfit either into leaving her alone or giving her a bigger cut on the proceeds, but he hadn’t dreamed it would go sour while he was cooling it here.

  All the same, he had to do something. Bad. Very bad. But it looks like I’m the only one that they haven’t got the drop on yet. They don’t know I’m here. So cool it. So cool it out the back way.

  It appealed. It appealed real good.

  But it was chickening, and Deek couldn’t make that scene, even though he knew it would be smarter if he did. He looked hungrily at the kitchen door that opened onto the air shaft and the basement windows across the shaft…the basement and the street beyond. From the living room he heard the vicious pop of a silencer and the crash of something heavy hitting a coffee table on its way to the floor. So the big boys had waited long enough, had bided their time long enough, and now weren’t bothering to argue. He heard another pop and a shrill, short scream.

  Deek bit the back of his hand. He had to do some God damn thing! Something! But what could he do? He looked around the kitchen, at the white enamel table, the big refrigerator, the sideboard and the mounted knife-rack, the huge containers of coffee Demoiselle
always kept filled for the marks…

  The boiling coffee…

  The knives…

  Deek grabbed a pot holder from the sideboard and removed one of the big dripolaters from the stove. He gripped it till it was so tight his hand went white. At least twelve, fifteen cups there. Plenty of hot, blinding stuff. He drew a serrated-edge bread knife from the rack and palmed it underhand, knife-fight-style, away from his body.

  Then he slid to the door, raised a foot, and kicked like a sonofabitch! The swinging door was hit with all he had in him.

  The door whanged open and slammed against the wall of the living room before starting back on its return trip. The three gunmen who had come into the living room—leaving their three companions elsewhere to clean up trouble—turned on the door and fired almost simultaneously. Deek leaped through without really thinking, and dodged to the side like a broken-field runner.

  With one convulsive movement he hurled the open container of scalding coffee at the two gunmen nearest him. The container flashed burning black liquid completely over the two and their shrieks of agony cut through like banshee wails. Deek dove forward and slid under the coffee table, the knife he held slashing up to shield his face.

  He drove the blade into the lower thigh of the third gunman, and ripped down.

  He felt bone and cartilage give, and the gunman fell with a wild, whimpering mewl. There was blood all over everything. Deek wrenched the blade out of the man’s leg and rose up over his victim, straight-arming the bread knife down once, twice and again, chest, neck, and neck for the killing blow. Then he had the man’s .45 and he found it a simple matter to pump four slugs across the room into the two blinded Syndicate men who stood scraping at their scarred and blistered faces.

  The living room was a debacle.

  Demoiselle was dead, lying across the sofa, her skirt hiked over her thighs, a bullet hole between her eyes like a dark, deadly period, as black as the finishing stroke it had been.

  The mark was dead, too, crumpled beside the broken coffee table matching the one Deek had dived under. The other mark was nowhere in the room. Deek was trembling so badly he thought he might vomit. He had already soiled his underwear.