Children of the Streets

by Harlan Ellison

  He downed the chocoke and realized he wanted a beer real bad. So he walked out without paying, throwing at the jerk a particularly vicious string of curse words.

  Who was that in the doorway across the street?

  Frenchie saw a group of the Laughing Princes coming down the sidewalk, a block away. They were ranged in their usual belligerent formation, strung out across the cement so that anyone wanting past had to walk in the gutter. They looked too mean to play with today. He’d cut, and see ’em when they were mellower.

  He broke into a hump, and rounded the corner. At Rooney’s he turned in. Nine beers later he was ready for Mr Wiseguy Mestman. Darkness lapped at the edge of the town.

  He parked the Studebaker in his own folks’ garage, and cut through the hedge to Mestman’s house.

  The French windows at the back of the house were open, and he slipped in without realizing he was doing it. A fog had descended across his thinking. There was a big beat down around his neck some place, and a snare drummer kept ti-ba-ba-ba-powing it till Frenchie wanted to snap his fingers, or get out the tire jack and belt someone or get that fraykin’ cat and slice it again.

  There was a woman in the living room.

  He stood there, just inside the French doors, and watched her, the way her skirt was tight around her legs while she sat watching the TV. The way the dark line of her eyebrows rose at something funny there. He watched her and the fog swirled higher; he felt a great and uncontrollable wrenching in his gut.

  He stepped out of the shadows of the dining room, into the half-light of the TV-illuminated living room.

  She saw him all at once, and her hand flew to her mouth in reflex. ‘What do you—what…’

  Her eyes were large and terrified, and her breasts rose and fell in spastic rhythm. He came toward her, only knowing this was a good-lookin’ broad, only knowing that he hated that bastard Mestman with all his heart, only knowing what he knew he had to do to make the Princes think he was a rough stud.

  He stumbled toward her, and his hand came out and clenched in the fabric of her blouse, and ripped down…

  She was standing before him, her hands like claws, raking at him, while shriek after shriek after shriek cascaded down the walls.

  He was going to rape her, damn her, damn her louse of a big-dome husband, he was going to…

  Someone was banging at the door, and then he heard, ever so faintly, a key turning in the lock, and it was Mestman, and he bolted away, out the French doors, over the hedge, and into the garage, where he crouched down behind his Stude for a long time, shivering.

  HERBERT MESTMAN

  He tried to comfort her, though her hysteria was beginning to catch. He had followed the boy after he had come home and found the cat. Sir Epicure had been a fine animal; quick to take dislike, even quicker to be a friend. They had struck it off well, and the cat had been a warmth to Herbert Mestman.

  First the peeping, then the trouble on the Bluffs Road, and so terribly this evening, Sir Epicure, and now—now—

  This!

  He felt his hands clenching into fists.

  Herbert Mestman was a calm man, a decent man; but the game had been declared, and it was no game for children. He realized, despite his pacifist ways, there were lice that had to be condemned.

  He huddled Margaret in her torn blouse closer to him, soothing her senselessly with senseless mouthings, while in his mind he made his decision.

  FRENCHIE MURROW

  Mornings had come and gone in a steady, heady stream of white-hot thoughtlessness. After that night, Frenchie had stayed away from Mestman and his house, from even the casual sight of Mestman’s house. Somehow, and he was thankfully frightened about it, Mestman had not reported him.

  Not that it would have done any good—there was no proof and no way of backing up the story, not really. A stray fingerprint here or there didn’t count too much when they lived next door and it might easily be thought that Bruce Murrow had come over at any time, and left them.

  So Frenchie settled back into his routine.

  Stealing hubcaps for pocket money.

  Visiting Joannie when her old lady was swing-shifting it.

  And then there were the Laughing Princes:

  ‘Hey, man, you wanna get in the group?’

  Frenchie was amazed. Out of a clear field of vision, this afternoon when he come into the malt shop, Monkey had broached the subject.

  ‘Well, hell, I mean yeah, sure!’

  ‘Okay, daddy, tell you what. You come on out to the chickie-run tonight, and we’ll see you got gut enough to be a Prince. You dig?’

  ‘I dig.’

  And here he was, close to midnight, with the great empty field stretching off before him, rippled with shadows where the lights of the cars did not penetrate.

  It had been good bottom land, this field, in the days when the old city reservoir had used water deflected from the now dry creek. Water deflected through the huge steel culvert pipe that rose up in the center of the field. The culvert was in a ditch ten feet deep, and the pipe still rose up several feet above the flat of the field. The ditch just before the pipe was still a good ten feet deep.

  The cars were revving, readying for the chickie-run.

  ‘Hey, you, Frenchie! Hey, c’mon over here!’

  It was Monkey, and Frenchie climbed from his Stude, pulling at his chinos, wanting to look cool for the debs clustered around the many cars in the field. This was a big chickie-run, and his chance to become one of the Princes.

  He walked into the group of young hot-rodders clustered off to one side, near a stunted grove of trees. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him. There were perhaps fifteen of them.

  ‘Now here’s the rules,’ Monkey said. ‘Frenchie and Pooch and Jimmy get out there on either side of the road that runs over the cul. On the road is where I’ll be, pacin’ ya. And when Gloria’—he indicated a full-chested girl with a blonde ponytail—‘gives the signal, you race out, and head for that ditch, an’ the cul. The last one who turns is the winner, the others are chickie. You dig?’

  They all nodded, and Frenchie started to turn, to leave. To get back in his Stude and win this drag.

  But the blonde girl stopped him, and with a hand on his arm, came over close, saying, ‘They promised me to the man who wins this run, Frenchie. I’d like to see you bug them other two. Win for me, will ya, baby?’

  It sounded oddly brassy coming from such a young girl, but she was very close, and obviously wanted to be kissed, so Frenchie pulled her in close, and put his mouth to hers. Her lips opened and she kissed him with the hunger and ferocity of adolescent carnality.

  Then he broke away, winking at her, and throwing over his shoulder, ‘Watch my dust, sweetheart,’ as he headed for the Stude.

  A bunch of boys were milling about the car as he ran up.

  ‘Good luck,’ one of them said, and a queer grin was stuck to his face. Frenchie shrugged. There were some oddballs in this batch, but he could avoid them when he was a full member.

  He got in and revved the engine. It sounded good. He knew he could take them. His brakes were fine. He had them checked and tightened that afternoon.

  Then Monkey was driving out on to the road that ran down the center of the old field, over the grade atop the culvert pipe. His Ford stopped, and he leaned out the window to yell at Gloria. ‘Okay, baby. Any time!’

  The girl ran into the middle of the road as the three racers gunned their motors, inching at the start mark. They were like hungry beasts waiting to be unleashed.

  Then she leaped in the air, came down waving a yellow bandanna, and they were away, with great gusts of dirt and grass showing behind.

  Frenchie slapped gears as though they were all one, and the Studelac jumped ahead. He decked the gas pedal and fed all the power he had to the engine.

  On either side of him, the wind gibbering past their ears, the other two hunched over their wheels and plunged straight down the field toward the huge steel pipe and the deep trenc
h before it.

  Whoever turned was a chicken, that was the rule, and Frenchie was no coward. He knew that. Yet—

  A guy could get killed. If he didn’t stop in time, he’d rip right into that pipe, smash up completely at the speed they were doing.

  The speedometer said eighty-five, and still he held it to the floor. They weren’t going to turn. They weren’t going…to…turn…damn…you…turn!

  Then, abruptly, as the pipe grew huge in the windshield, on either side of him the other cars swerved, as though on a signal.

  Frenchie knew he had won.

  He slapped his foot on to the brake.

  Nothing happened.

  The speedometer read past ninety, and he wasn’t stopping. He beat at it frantically, and then, when he saw there was no time to jump, no place to go, as the Studelac leaped the ditch and plunged out into nothingness, he threw one hand out the window, and his scream followed it.

  The car hit with a gigantic whump and smash, and struck the pipe with such drive the entire front end was rammed through the driver’s seat. Then it exploded.

  HERBERT MESTMAN

  It had been most disconcerting. That hand coming out the window. And the noise.

  A man stepped out of the banked shadows at the base of the grove of trees. The fire from the culvert, licking toward the sky, lit his face in a mask of serene but satisfied crimson.

  Monkey drove to the edge of the shadows, and walked up to the man standing there half-concealed.

  ‘That was fine, son,’ said the tall man, reaching into his jacket for something. That was fine.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said, handing a sheaf of bills to the boy. ‘I think you will find that according to our agreement. And,’ he added, withdrawing another bill from the leather billfold, ‘here is an extra five dollars for that boy who took care of the brakes. You’ll see that he gets it, won’t you?’

  Monkey took the money, saluted sloppily, and went back to his Ford. A roar and he was gone, back into the horde of hot-rods tearing away from the field, and the blazing furnace thrust down in the culvert ditch.

  But for a long time, till he heard the wail of sirens far off but getting nearer, the most brilliant student of Elizabethan drama in the country, perhaps the world, stood in the shadows and watched fire eat at the sky.

  It certainly was not—not at all—a game for children.

  The Rough Boys is fiction. In most of the other stories in this collection there was a thematic grain of origin. A germ that gave me the idea for the story, from what I had seen in the streets. A girl with jeans too tight across her hips, egging on a pair of young studs to rumble over her; a carload of rocks playing ‘the dozens’ with another carload of gang members from a rival turf, forcing a stand or a chickie-run; a fourteen-year-old boy sitting on the front steps of a brownstone, honing a switchblade on his boot sole—any one of these might be the lodestone from which a true picture of the children of the gutters might come. But this story had no such beginning. It was a pure fiction idea based solely on the knowledge that these kids are not yellow, or big bluffs or cowards. They are too frightened and helpless to be any of these. They are driven like animals under hunt to be ruthless, brutal and merciless. They would make excellent guerrilla fighters, as you will see in the following pages.

  THE ROUGH BOYS

  Vince and Terry had to lie low after they’d cooled the stoolie. They had been hired in from Detroit to help Gongo and his outfit. They’d been hired to put the silence on a guy named Robbison, and they’d done it.

  Two days after they’d left the plane at Idlewild, they’d cornered Robbison entering a parking lot and pumped eight shots into him.

  The job had been done, but the payment was still forthcoming. It wasn’t a matter of a double-cross—Gongo knew better than that, and he always paid off properly for a job properly done—but Vince and Terry had gotten word that the D.A. was boiling mad over this job. So they’d had to go into hiding.

  Vince and Terry were big boys from the syndicate, out of Detroit, and they could see the big picture. This Robbison had probably been about to put the finger on Gongo for the D.A. and the cooling had come just in time. So much in time, perhaps, that the D.A. saw a beautiful indictment going up in smoke. So the heat was on.

  Gongo couldn’t take a chance on sending someone over with the payoff, and they couldn’t telephone him because the line was probably spooked. So it was a matter of staying here in this greasy Broadway furnished room till the word came through that the heat was off.

  It wouldn’t be much longer, they knew, but still, being cooped up with just each other—meals being sent in with the papers—was making Vince and Terry jumpy.

  ‘How far’d you get with that MacElhone girl?’ Vince said, from the broken-down armchair.

  ‘Far? She wouldn’t know from far. A real dummy, that one,’ Terry answered from the bed. He grinned and waved all thoughts of the girl from his head.

  ‘Far, schmar, I couldn’t wish any harder that she was here, locked up with us for a week or so. It’d kill the time a little better than two-handed poker, which is abysmal, and reading these miserable paper-backed novels.’ He kicked at a stack of badly thumbed books on the floor.

  They looked alike, in the smooth, efficient way all syndicate assassins looked smooth and efficient.

  Vince was tall and slim; dark, wavy hair and an unlined, almost adolescent face. He looked more like a college senior than a hired killer. He wore a charcoal-gray, single-breasted Brooks Brothers suit, with a white button-down shirt, conservative gray rep tie, and black shoes.

  Terry was darker-complexioned, but his hair was almost blond. He wore turtle-shell glasses, and had a tiny white scar at the corner of his mouth. He had gotten it in Korea, shortly before he cut away seven men in a bunker, with a flame thrower. He had won a medal for that. He wore a charcoal-gray, single-breasted Brooks Brothers suit, with a white button-down shirt, conservative blue challis tie, and black shoes.

  Neither one looked like what he was. A paid killer. But they earned their money, and had been doing so, in Vince’s case for eight years, and in Terry’s for five. They were the top rough boys in the syndicate’s stable of gunsels, and they knew it.

  There wasn’t anyone in the organization who would dispute it. For this reason, they wore their handsome composures as they wore their suits: almost as if they had been born with them; pressed, sharp, and casual.

  Vince sighed deeply, smacked his lips loudly. ‘Want to take a chance on seeing a movie?’ He looked over at Terry on the bed.

  Terry bit the inside of his cheek, swung his legs off the bed and sat up. ‘Don’t know,’ he said slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Might not be a bad idea. Take the edge off us, at any rate. Anything good in the neighborhood?’

  ‘We can always hop the subway to Times Square if there isn’t,’ Vince reminded, turning to the movie pages of the Daily News. He caught Terry’s shake of the head with the corner of his eye.

  ‘Uh-uh,’ said Terry, reaching over to the bureau for his cigarettes. ‘No sense fouling it up now. We can wait. If there’s anything good up the block, we’ll take it in. If not’—he waved his hand in resignation—‘then it’s another night of playing ostrich.’

  Vince agreed in silence. ‘Here’s Rose Tattoo at Leow’s 83rd. That’s just up in the next block. Supposed to be pretty fair piece of work.’

  Terry shook his head, blowing a thin plume of smoke at the floor between his feet. ‘Saw it in Detroit. Good picture.’

  Vince nodded understanding, turned his attention back to the newspaper. A minute later he said, ‘Place called the Thalia on 95th off Broadway. They’ve got Fernandel in The Sheep Has Five Legs and something else with Gina. I suppose this is one of those little art theaters where they serve black coffee in the lobby.

  ‘I’d like to take those in. I’m getting sick of those celluloid horrors with Sheree North and her ilk.’

  Terry looked up with frank amusement on his face. ‘And you’d heave her out
of the sack for eating saltines.’

  Vince smiled, tossing a mock blow at his companion. ‘Don’t push me, friend. You want to go or not? If you’re too lowbrow, say so now and I’ll go edjucate myself alone.’

  Terry chuckled deep in his throat, got off the bed.

  They were very literate, these ex-college boys turned professional. Their tastes were very refined.

  ‘Sounds okay with me,’ said Terry. He walked over to the mirror, began tightening his tie. ‘What if we get spotted?’

  He asked the question absently, bending over to get a clear spot in the mirror. The quicksilver had worn off its back, and leprous spots covered most of the glass.

  ‘What if we get spotted?’ he heard Vince repeat. He saw Vince’s reflection in the mirror as it dipped a hand to its belt. The reflection came up with a .32 with smoked sights. ‘Then we get unspotted. Like Congo said the other night, we’re real rough boys.’ He smiled boyishly.

  ‘That clod,’ Terry replied, grinning back, pulling the knot high between the points of his collar.

  ‘He’s not far wrong though. We are rough,’ Vince persisted, carrying the gag a bit.

  ‘Well, bang bang!’ joked Terry, making a gun with his left hand, straightening the tie with his right. ‘Yeah. Rough. Now will you please get your goddam coat on so we can go see some Fernandel?’

  ‘We should forget Gina, maybe?’ Vince added with a broad wink.

  They both laughed, and prepared to see the art movie.

  On a slab downtown, a guy named Robbison lay caked with his own blood—let out through eight direct hits in his chest and face.

  They walked slowly down Broadway, back toward 82nd Street. Keeping to the shadows, smoking carelessly, their nubby tweed topcoats collared-up, their heads bare, conversing casually. Typical. Two typical men walking on Broadway.

  ‘Good show,’ said Terry, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘Mmm,’ Vince agreed. Then he changed the subject quickly: ‘Lord, but I’m hungry. Want to stop in at Schrafft’s?’