The Deadly Streets

by Harlan Ellison

  They passed a crosstown street and turned up. A girl was walking along ahead of them. Wally nudged Rally, who made an obscene gesture and started after her.

  The girl turned at the sound of hurrying footsteps, and her mouth made a dainty little O as she saw Wally getting nearer. She wasn’t particularly good-looking, Tricky thought, but hell, a piece was a piece. They started after Wally.

  Wally had the girl boxed in now. She was up against the wall of a building, and Wally was standing over her with his arms on either side, keeping her pinned. “What’s ya name?” he asked, his voice laden with menace. She quivered and would not answer. “Come on, come on, we onny wanna ask ya name? What they call ya?”

  The girl finally managed to say, “Diane,” and the boys all laughed at that, for no good reason.

  Wally leaned in closer and said, “How’d ya like to come into the alley and maybe show us a good time, huh?”

  He leaned in even closer and said something else, too low for Tricky to hear, but the girl turned pale, and forced his hand away from where it had fallen on her shoulder. “You leave me alone,” she cried.

  Wally did not like that. He moved back, and his hand dropped to her small breast. She screamed then, good and loud. Her cry rang up in the night, and Wally got sore. He leaned back, and hauled her one in the face. The girl slewed sidewise, and fell to the street. Wally bent over and lifted her skirt. “No good puta,” he said loud enough for her to hear, and dragged his switchblade from his pocket. She saw the blade snap open, and her eyes opened wide with it.

  “Don’t—don’t hurt me!” she wailed. Wally leaned over, and held her as best he could with one hand. She struggled, and he said, “Hey, Tricky. C’mere. Hold her for me.” Tricky did not like what was happening; did not like to see girls hurt this way, but he knew better than to buck his buddy Wally. He braced the girl’s shoulders against the building, while Wally slashed her thigh with his initials. “That’s to remember me by,” Wally said, and teed off on her jaw again. She lay there unconscious, and bleeding, and Tricky watched her for a second, till he realized the other two had hurried away.

  “Hey! Wait up!” he yelled, but they were already around the corner.

  Just then a light flashed down the street, caught Tricky in its glare, and the huddled form of the girl, and a police siren started to wail. Tricky was paralyzed for a moment, and then galvanized into action. He sprinted around the corner, just as the cop car yanked alongside the girl, and he heard a rough, heavy voice call out, “Stop! Stop or we’ll shoot!”

  But Tricky was already gone. Around the corner, and into the open front door of a drugstore. He stayed inside for a minute, then slid out the side way and wandered back to the thoroughfare, looking for his buddy Wally and Rally.

  It took him an hour to find them, and they were sitting on the fence at Washington Square, waiting for a Queen to walk by. “Hey,” he said angrily. “Wha’s’a idea walkin’ off and leavin’ me there for the fuzzes? They was comin’ down the street; they almost got me.” His bright, small face was flushed, and he felt angrier than he ever had before.

  “Hey,” Wally said, slipping off the fence. “You lookin” for lumps? Huh, you wanna get bashed? I didn’t run out on you, and personally, I don’t give a flyin’ damn if they do pick ya up.”

  Tricky felt something go cold in him. Was this his buddy talking? Then it dawned on him, as though Wally’s words were clearing something away at last that had been clouding him. Wally was using him for a stooge. He just wanted to make fun of Tricky, liked to feel like a big man helping out the little guy. Well, he’d show him. Soon…real soon.

  Wally was about to swing, when Rally called out, “Hey, man. Here comes the Queen-O to end ’em all. Check this character.” Wally turned away from Tricky with his fists still doubled, and saw the young man walking toward them. He walked with a sprightly step, coming off the balls of his feet, and his clothes were very Ivy League. His hands were delicate and manicured, and his face was as unlined as that of a baby. Tricky knew he was a queer at once; only a queer would wear clothes like that.

  Rally moved into the fellow’s path, and muttered something insulting at him. The man stared for a moment, saw the other two and tried to walk around them. Rally moved after him, and tripped him with a swift movement. The man sprawled face first into the sidewalk, tearing the flesh on the left cheek, and Wally was upon him immediately.

  The boots. Up and down, one two three, and the man lay, his hands protecting his groin as the feet came up and went down on his neck, his back, his face. Then he sprawled over, motionless.

  “Come on, fast,” Wally said, bending down, and turning out the man’s pockets. “Get his wallet.”

  But before the other two could do anything, he had the wallet and the change from the pants’ pocket, and they were strolling up the street as fast as they could. Behind them the pedestrian lay in an untidy heap.

  When they got to a place where the lights were brighter, Rally stopped Wally and said, “Come on. Cough it over now. I want my share of the poke.”

  Wally glared at him, remembered the potato, and dug into the wallet. “He only had seven dollars,” Wally said, not showing them inside. “Here’s your half.” And he handed Rally three one dollar bills.

  “What ya mean, my half?” Rally yelled. “This is only three bucks.”

  Wally took out the knife and held it loosely, absently. “I did all the work on him. Any arguments?”

  Rally had none, and they walked on.

  Finally, Tricky managed to say, “Hey, Wally, where’s my share?”

  “I’m keepin’ it for ya,” Wally said, not turning around. “You’d spend it if I wasn’t watchin’ out for ya. We’re buddies ain’t we?”

  Tricky did not answer. What was there to say?

  But as they passed a souvenir shop, Tricky said, “Hey, Wally. I know you’re my buddy, but how’s about you buyin’ me that knife in the window there. I might need it some time. Ya know the Sabres been seen around where I live. Come on, Wally, buy me the knife.”

  So Wally looked at the knife and saw it was not a switchblade, and it only cost a buck and a half, so he felt like the big man.

  “Okay, buddy-O, glad to do it with your dough. You’re my ace-buddy, ain’tcha?”

  Tricky nodded, and Wally went inside to buy him the knife.

  It wasn’t as good as a switchblade, but Tricky had seen how a fast man could flip the blade of one of those things so it was almost as fast as a switch. And he had reason to want to be fast.

  He had a buddy he was going to square up with soon. Real soon….

  THE HIPPIE-SLAYER

  She was blonde, the sun-bottle way all Malibu surfer teenies are blonde. She was button cute, the way all groupie teenies are cute. And her ripe young body was outlined in the minidress the way all descendents of Cleopatra, the queen teenie, show their snaring sexuality in foxy gear.

  And, like all the teenie-boppers, petrified to be out of it, she was turned on.

  She was grooving heavy behind the most luxurious acid she had ever scored: her world was hot pink and orange.

  None of which saved her, as she tripped just three inches too far out of the Now. Over the edge of the building’s roof, where she had been turning on with friends, plunging three flights end-over-end, showing milk-white body as the miniskirt covered her face.

  She hit the skylight going fifteen miles an hour, and crashed through, screaming. The glass tore out her throat, cutting off the scream; she landed twisted on the parquet floor of the restaurant that was beneath the skylight.

  Her death drew three lines on a back page of the Los Angeles Times. The next day only the few high school friends who had tripped with her remembered she had died, and that her name had been Connie.

  Only a few friends, and her father. Jack Gardiner, her father, who had raised her alone after Francine had died. Who had lived for nothing but Connie, who had loved no one but Connie, who remembered nothing now but Connie.


  And in the terror that filters through after shock, he knew it had been their fault, them, the freaks, the longhaired boys and amoral girls who had killed his daughter.

  Jack Gardiner waited several months, letting the hate build in him, letting it pass the fiery stages of slashing and rending, where unreason lay, waiting for it to melt down and cool, to congeal into solid purpose so he could pursue vengeance in a methodical manner, with a sweet sense of calm. And when the time came, he went out; out with a blade as thin and sharp as the glass that had ripped her throat. Out, with the blade…and the memory of Connie…and the hate…

  Ricky Marigold was his name up at the commune. He was seventeen, had run away from home in Pacoima and was a righteous grasshead. He wasn’t a bad kid, just fucked-up. He was for: love, truth, gentleness, getting high, staying high, good sounds, pleasant weather, funky clothes and rapping with his friends. He was against: Viet Nam, the Laws with their riot sticks, violence, bigotry, random hatred, nine-to-five jobs, squares who tried to get you to conform, grass full of seeds and stems, and bringdowns in general.

  He met Jack Gardiner on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Sunset, across from Schwab’s where the starlets went to show off their asses. He saw Jack Gardiner as a little too old to be making the scene, but the guy looked flaky enough: lumberjack shirt, good beard, bright eyes; and he seemed friendly enough.

  So Ricky invited him to come along.

  They walked up Laurel Canyon, hunching along next to the curb on the sidewalkless street. “Gonna be a quiet scene,” Ricky said. “Just a buncha beautiful people groovin’ on themselves, maybe turning on, you know.” The older man nodded; his hands were deep in his pants pockets.

  They walked quite a while, finally turning up Stone Canyon Road. A mile up the twisting road. Jack Gardiner slipped a step behind Ricky Marigold and pulled out the blade. Ricky had started to turn, just as Connie’s father drove the shaft into Ricky’s back, near the base of the spine. Ricky was instantly paralyzed, though not dead. He slipped to the street, and Jack Gardiner dragged him into the high weeds and junk of an empty lot. He left him there to die.

  Unable to speak, unable to move, Ricky Marigold found all the love draining out of him. Slowly, for six hours, through the small of his back.

  Sitting on the curb in front of Gazzarri’s, watching the Strip traffic go by. Gina wished she had not had the fallout with Zal. Now he was up the hill, with all that fine stash, getting high with three other birds, and she was cooling it without where-to-go. She was toying with the thong laces on her calf-high boots when she realized there was someone standing in front of her. She looked up, letting her eyes travel up the faded chinos, over the wide brown belt, across the broad chest expanse of the lumberjack shirt, clocking the three strings of Hindu holy beads around the neck, and up to the face. The guy was smiling down at her. He had a nice face. A little old, but a nice face.

  “What’s happening?” he asked.

  Gina shrugged. The guy sat down beside her.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  Gina shrugged again. Then she started getting worried. You never knew with these old farts. Some of them were cool, were into the thing; but others were cruisers, they just hawked the Strip, trying to make all the young meat. She had once serviced a dude in a blue serge suit, in the front seat of his car, only going down, nothing more, to get the ten bucks for two tickets to see James Brown at The Trip, when it was open. But that had been last year, and the Man had been cracking down on girls who thumbed the Strip just to make the nut for a night’s sounds.

  But this guy seemed okay…the vibrations he was putting out were okay…yeah, he seemed okay.

  “Quiet night.” He made small talk. Gina nodded.

  “Where’s it happening?”

  Gina shrugged again.

  “You look really drug with things.” the old guy said. Gina looked up at his face; he was smiling.

  She smiled back. “Just on a bummer, that’s all. A guy I was living with burned me for a load of—”

  She was about to say grass, but there was really no telling who this dude was. He could be just a very hip, very good at his trade, Man. So she tapered off the sentence with a lazy shrug. A silent eloquence that said all sorts of things without saying anything at all. It was her conversational stock in trade, a much-used gambit.

  He caught it all.

  “Hey!” He laughed. “I’m cool. Some guy sprang with your grass, yeah?” Gina just stared.

  “Yeah, well, I know how it is.” Even though he spoke to her, he was staring across the street. “This girl I was running around with, she found out where I kept my stash and cut out one night with about three pounds of really clean stuff. Burned my ass, it really did. But it happens, y’know.”

  Gina grinned.

  “If that’s all that’s hackin’ you.” the guy said, “I’ve got enough speed up at my place to turn on the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.”

  He nudged Gina gently. She smiled awkwardly. “Hey,” he said, “I’ve got more’n I need. You want to turn on, come on along.” He got up and started walking. He stopped and turned around and looked back at her. She wasn’t coming. He smiled and motioned for her to follow. Gina got up and followed him.

  He cut her throat from ear to ear, in the deserted lobby of an expensive apartment building on Wilcox. It only took a second; and then, carefully turning her so the blood spurted against the inlaid mirrors of the lobby, and not on him, he dropped her into the open and waiting elevator and punched the button for the fifth floor.

  After the light show, Kivo invited a couple of dozen friends and groovy-looking strangers to make it up to his place. They left the Cheetah in a caravan of cars festooned and decorated with stickers of hearts and flowers and Aubrey Beardsley detailwork.

  In the back seat of a VW that bore the legend JESUS IS ALIVE AND WELL IN MARY on its bumper, Jack Gardiner sat hunched down, hands in his pockets. His left hand was wrapped around the three sugar cubes he had saturated with strychnine three hours earlier. He had intended to drop them into drinks in the Cheetah, but when he had seen Kivo, he had known he’d found the most evil human being who had ever walked the Earth. Kivo was the titular leader of a group of wasted derelicts and misfits called The Eyes of the Universe. They were a layabout bunch, who showed up at every freak party, were omnipresent on the Strip, could be found till the early hours of the morning noshing on coffee cake and Cokes at Cantor’s, and were hired for a pittance by the management of rock clubs, to come and dance on the floor. They were grotesquely dressed, studiously filthy, sub-literate and when they danced, they gyrated and gesticulated in a manner midway between obscenity and devil-worship. One leaped up and down, his arms rising and falling as though he were doing calisthenics. They called him Grasshopper. Another was squat and square, built like the cartons in which Kotex gets delivered to grocery stores. They called him Turd. (Until recently: now he was called Wildflower: the idioms changed rapidly.) Another was covered with hair. Another was an epileptic. He was wild on the dance floor.

  And Kivo. Bearded, with licentious eyes, a mouth that had been drawn with a stick of charcoal, and a wife named MaKivo, who would screw a snake. It was said on the Strip that MaKivo would screw a bush if she thought there was a snake in it.

  Gardiner had decided to save the poisoned sugar cubes. In the privacy of Kivo’s infamous pad—where young girls and boys were turned on to various uglinesses—he would present them to Kivo in secret, let him drop them, and then leave.

  The VW climbed up toward Mulholland on Laurel Canyon, and turned left at the light. The stench of unwashed bodies gagged Gardiner. But it wouldn’t have to last much longer. He had been hard at work these past weeks. Connie would rest easy now. He had seen the headline in the Hollywood Citizen-News earlier that evening. Behind its plastic coin-box window, the headline had screamed:

  HIPPIE MURDERS CONTINUE UNSOLVED!

  And he had smiled. A secret, quiet, well-over-thirty smile that said Connie would rest easy when
he was finished. Nine of them, so far. Nine who would never pour their filth into the American bloodstream. If it took a little individual action on the part of a good citizen, a grieving father, then that was what he was prepared to do. To act as a one-man vengeance squad, to eliminate the taint of scum these foul degenerates had brought to his city, his country, his daughter and his world.

  The VW cut off Mulholland, up a private drive, and circled the hill to the top. There was a large, sprawling house set back over the edge, unseen from the road below, where Kivo and his black mass acolytes could corrupt teen-agers. unchecked by the inept police.

  The living room of the house was huge, and the smell of grass was already pervasive. Gardiner settled down on a stack of Oriental cushions, and waited his time.

  The heads settled down in one corner, broke out Kivo’s stash, laid it out on newspapers, and began straining it. When they had enough for a dozen joints, they began rolling. Gardiner watched them for a while.

  The speeders, the downer fools, the crystal freaks, were all in the center of the room: some were merely dropping dexy in pill and cap form, a few were honking their cocaine, and Kivo was working straight methadrine, shooting it like a stone junkie. He said he was just chipping. Gardiner was getting ill.

  One of the potheads scuttled over to Gardiner, and offered him a twisted joint of marijuana. “Here y’go,” he said. He was giving love. Gardiner was a stranger, and in that sub-society it was not to his advantage to stand out. He took the cigarette. A girl wearing strings of plastic beads lit him. He drew in, and automatically inhaled. They were watching him. He held it down, and felt…