The Deadly Streets

by Harlan Ellison

  “New lock,” Kneeland said.

  Oakie grinned up over his shoulder nervously. “Yeah. Yeah. Had to buy it three days ago to lock the thing up.”

  “I thought you said two days ago, boy?” Kneeland remained blank-faced. Oakie didn’t answer. The door was open. Kneeland gave it a kick.

  It was empty.

  Kneeland took one long, slow look at the ragged, gaping hole in the rotten floorboards, and his mind got a fast, frightening picture of the black descent to the cellar below. Of the crushing, sickening impact of flesh and bone on damp, hard concrete. He swallowed hard, and pulled the door shut again.

  He set his jaw and walked out to the front booth where Mrs. Flagg was waiting, dewy-eyed, over a half-empty glass of cheap rye.

  “Mrs. Flagg…”

  “What happened?” Her eyes were wild and hopeful. “Did you find my Harry?”

  Kneeland hesitated a moment.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Flagg. There’s not a sign of him. He must have slipped out the back way.” He leaned forward earnestly. “You’ve just got to face it, Mrs. Flagg. I’ve seen a hundred cases like this. Your husband’s left you…”

  The tears started. Thick, maudlin tears.

  “Harry! My Harry!” she moaned. “How could you do this to me?”

  Kneeland helped her out of the booth, holding her elbow with all the gentleness his big hand possessed.

  Oakie, back behind the bar, looked up and caught his eye. His hand was picking up a thin sheaf of bills from the bar top. He rapped the money against his chin, and smiled pure gold in the direction of the policeman.

  LOOK ME IN THE EYE, BOY!

  It took two cops to drag the blond-haired kid from the midst of the rumble. His name was Tommy Kilpatrick and he had a long Italian stiletto, with a viciously-honed blade…and they got to him a few seconds after he had ripped open a black boy’s belly.

  They brought in six altogether: four white boys and two blacks. The rest had scattered into the shadows of the parking lot at the sound of sirens. The cops herded them into the wagon, and put two officers in with them. They would have sliced each other up with their fingernails, otherwise.

  When the wagon pulled up to the Central Police Building, the kid tried to make a break. He took a step down off the back of the wagon, and kicked the assisting officer in the groin with the pointed toe of his heavy shoe.

  The blond-haired boy screamed something high and keening and leaped for the street, the open halves of his black leather jacket flapping out behind him. He almost made it.

  The cop still in the wagon, frantically grabbing, managed to connect with the boy’s heel, as he leaped. It ruined the kid’s attempt, and he slipped face forward, his arms flailing wildly, and landed with a crash on the cement.

  When they picked Tommy Kilpatrick up, a raw-meat sandpapering from the cement had bloodied the right side of his thin, hungry face all the way to the blond hairline. The boy looked about dazedly. His shoulders in the black leather jacket slumped as he recognized where he was.

  “Finally got here,” he said softly.

  They walked him into the station house.

  There hadn’t been a booking session yet. Tommy wondered about that for a while, even after they’d taken his belt, his butts, the contents of his pockets, and put them in the big manila envelope. As he was writing his name on the check slip that certified just what was in the envelope, he concluded it was because they wanted him in the show-up first.

  Then a pair of blank-faced cops herded all of them down a hall and into the elevator. They went up two floors, and the elevator jerked to a stop. They were herded out again and put in a small room with benches around the wall and a thick door at either end. There was a little pane of glass in each door, with chicken-wire inside, and Tommy looked through. He could see nothing; he tried the other door.

  There were women on the other side. Over a dozen of them, of all ages. Slatterns with stringy white hair and toothless gums. Young chippies with tight skirts and mouths smeared with red, gum-chewing. Women who stared at the floor, and women who rubbed themselves. Then, one of them saw Tommy and let out a yell. She pointed, and Tommy drew back.

  He went back to the bench, knowing these were other prisoners, scheduled for the line-up. They never showed men and women together.

  He sat there staring at the floor between his feet, till he heard a tap-tap-tapping on the window. It was the young broad he’d seen on the other side. The glass was fogged from being so old, and having had so many people smash at it, but he could still see her plainly. She was beckoning.

  He got up and walked over. She moved an inch away from the glass, and began making dirty motions, lifting her skirt slightly, urging him to come into the room if he could. He watched the dirty tramp for a few seconds, snorted, and turned away.

  All the time till the cops came to get them, she scratched at the glass, urging him to get out somehow. She was a hungry-looking girl, even as Tommy was a hungry-looking boy. Yet she repelled him. She was dirty, and her hair hung in wheat-shock looseness, and she had a smoldering black eye that discolored her face almost to the cheekbone.

  He stared stolidly at the floor between his feet till the other door, the one through which he could see nothing, clanged as they shot back the bolts, and swung outward.

  Two cops stood there waiting. They weren’t the same two blank-faced ones as before, but they were equally as guilty of being nonentities as the others.

  They stared into the room for a moment, and one of them pointed at Tommy. “Him?” he asked, inquisitively.

  The other one nodded his head briskly, and the first one shook his in wonderment. Tommy didn’t understand any of it, but he wasn’t worried.

  He knew it had something to do with his father.

  He knew he’d never be booked, mugged, printed, clapped in a cell with the other kids. He knew he had a smooth out—a ticket to freedom every time. Not only was he a minor, which was a good hooker angle, but he had an ace in the hole.

  Tommy Kilpatrick’s father was the Captain of this precinct.

  He’d get out. He’d get back to the gang. It was a dyed-gold cinch. He’d get out, and the rest would go up to the Work House for a while. But not him…his old man was a cop!

  “Okay, you birds,” the first cop yelled chopping off his words sharply, “let’s go get ourselves famous. Line-up!”

  Line-up. The sun-glare of the kliegs, shining across his smooth-planed, hungry face. His blue eyes reached into the darkness beyond, trying to place the sounds that occasionally came to his ears:

  The banging of seats as people sat down. The hurried cough of someone who was embarrassed to be here. The clatter of a cop dropping his clipboard and pencil, swearing softly. Then there was the brief snap flare of a cigarette lighter flaring in the darkness, then complete darkness again.

  He heard the continual banging of men taking seats, and he thought he caught the flash of a badge. But there was nothing definite, nothing real. Just this stage, and the brief platform on which he stood with the others captured in the rumble.

  The lights were fixed in the ceiling before him, shining down hot and sticky. Behind him, on the wall, the height markings marched progressively up to six feet. He knew where he stood…just under five-six. He was fourth in line, but he was certain they wouldn’t get all the way to him. As soon as someone connected his name with the name of the Captain, they’d have him off that platform, then there’d be no identification, no booking session, and he’d go home to a warm bed and a bottle of his old man’s beer, if he could swipe it without attracting attention. Have to move the bottles around in the icebox so it looked as though there were still the same number there, that none, were missing.

  He dragged his thoughts away from home and concentrated on here, on now. As long as he was experiencing this for the first time, he might as well see it all, feel it all. It’d make good conversation in the clubhouse. He was caught, but this wasn’t the end, as it was for those other jerks in
the string lined up. His thin mouth twisted tightly together, till he felt the pressure on his back teeth.

  He was fourth in line. To his right three shapes were clear, and yet somehow foggily shaded, in the light of the merciless kliegs.

  The first, a tough black from the Wild Gentlemen, almost six feet tall, with a scar running black down his face. The second was Whippy from his own gang, the BackBlasters. Whippy had gotten whaled with a club during the rumble, and he held his head to the side, occasionally tamping a finger down on the painful lump. Then third was Carlos, dark and handsomely ugly; fourth was himself.

  He knew what he looked like to those cops out there. A short kid, just under five-six, with blond hair and a scarecrow face. Sharp nose and high cheekbones. He touched one cheek now, felt the rawness his fall had produced. But it wouldn’t scar. It’d heal and he’d still be okay-looking. He knew he looked a lot like his old man; they’d recognize him. When they did, he was going to go free. He was sure of it.

  Next in line was Leaper, from the BackBlasters, thin and smart-alecky. Then another stud from the Wild Gentlemen, with a massive afro and deep-set eyes. Those lousy bastards…coming over into Blaster turf. They got what they damned well deserved! And if they showed up again, the BackBlasters’d shove ’em all down the sewer balls first! Lousy slobs! The black kids were on the ends of the string. They hadda put ’em like that, Tommy thought viciously, otherwise they’d of been beat ta death!

  He watched each of them, edging forward from the wall so he could see their faces, see their bodies tensed, see them standing with hands behind their backs, or at their sides. He was the only one that seemed at ease. But that was because he knew nothing was going to happen to him. He had an in…he had a way out. He was the only one of the bunch who wasn’t going to get booked. He knew!

  “All right, you kids…stand up straight. You there on the end, take that hat off!”

  The hollow gigantic voice from the microphone spit up at them, and the end boy, the scarred, six foot Wild Gentleman, whipped the soft dark fedora from his head. The boy stared out slickly at the darkness, his face moist, his eyes very white and large and frightened-looking.

  He seemed to sense he had gotten off to a lousy start.

  It was as though this were the first day of school, and it was vitally important to make a good and lasting impression on the class and the teachers. He licked his thick lips.

  “Now I want everybody to pay close attention to what these boys look like. You can ignore what their answers are, for the most part, because they usually lie. But if you recognize someone up there, please tell the officer sitting next to you…” he went on in a dull monotone, as though he had spoken these same lines, these same inflections, since the dawn of time, since the Earth was only a gaseous, fiery ball.

  What the hell’s he bored about? Tommy mused angrily, We’re the ones standing up here, not him, the bastard!

  Tommy knew what this was. They were up here for two reasons. The first, so that they could be identified by witnesses of the rumble, so they could pin a heavier charge than disturbing the peace on them.

  The second was so that if they were ever arrested again, or seen on the streets, the cops would recognize them, be able to keep tabs on them. It was an identification session. The face-up. The line-up.

  The other boys all fidgeted, standing with their weight first on one foot, then the other. Only the blond, watchful boy stood calm. He knew he had it figured.

  The microphone blurted again. “All right there, you, the first boy. Step forward.”

  The big black kid took a halting step forward, toward the edge of the wooden platform. His feet echoed hollowly in the silent room, as a cough rattled from the darkness. The boy’s big shadow fell against the wall, with its height markings in bold relief.

  Absently, he crushed his hat between huge, catcher’s mitt hands.

  The microphone voice of the invisible interrogator cleared its invisible throat, and there was a sharp series of clanks and clicks as the cop adjusted the microphone more to his liking. Then the session started…

  “Your name’s Jesse Carpenter?”

  Jesse Carpenter bobbed his big head, licked his lips. “Uh, yes…sir.”

  “Where do you live, Jesse?”

  “Right now?”

  “That’s right, Jesse. Right now.”

  “Well, right now I been livin’ for a while at the clubhouse.”

  “The—uh—Wild Gentlemen’s clubhouse, Jesse?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Where’s that located, Jesse?”

  “Well, it’s…uh…it’s over on the East Side.”

  “Where on the East Side, Jesse?”

  The big stud hesitated. “Near Chamberlain Street. Near there.”

  “You can’t be a little more specific, Jesse?”

  “What?”

  “I said…can’t you be a little more specific. Jesse?”

  “Well, I never noticed much where it was, sir. But it’s around there, someplace.” Laughter rattled through the unseen audience as the boy evaded the question. What a goddam clown, Tommy thought. The cop changed his approach, knowing he was not going to get the exact location of the gang’s hangout.

  “What does the name ‘Wild Gentlemen’ mean, Jesse? That doesn’t mean you look for trouble, does it?”

  “Uh, nosir.”

  “Well, then, what does it mean, Jesse?”

  “It just mean we lookin’ for our kicks.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, uh, you know…like we want a good time.”

  “Is that what you call that rumble, Jesse? A good time?”

  The black boy fidgeted, crushing the hat terribly. “Nosir, I mean, we was bushwhacked. We didn’t want night trouble, nosir!” There was an answering mumble of anger from the BackBlasters at that.

  “Why are you living at the clubhouse, Jesse? Don’t your folks want you to live at home?”

  Tommy listened closely. It was always the same routine. If they couldn’t get the info out of you one way, they tricked you into telling it another. They got you talking first, so the creeps in the audience could place your voice, then they got you booked, mugged, printed—you had a record till you died—and then they stacked you away in the House. But not this time…not him. Tommy Kilpatrick was going out. Out!

  “Jesse,” the voice from the darkness said, “it says here you were caught with a zip gun. That true?”

  “If it say that, sir, I guess maybe it true.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Man, I just walkin’ long that street, and next thing I know they was studs an’ cops all over mah back.”

  “You mean you weren’t in on the planned raid of the Wild Gentlemen into BackBlaster territory tonight, Jesse?”

  “Thass right, sir. I didn’t even know they’s gonna have one of them. I thought it’s just a social visit like.”

  More laughter, and the microphoned voice snorted in disbelief. “All right, Jesse, that’ll be all. Step back.”

  The big black slid back to the wall, crushed his hat some more, and stared at the floor, occasionally licking his lips with a tongue-tip.

  Whippy stepped forward before the officer could tell him to do it. He took one big step toward the front of the platform and stopped, tamping the lump on the side of his head.

  He was a slim white boy, with deep purple rings beneath his brown eyes. His pupils were large and glassy. The lower left corner of his mouth jerked spastically, irregularly, pulling his face down twitchingly from time to time. He looked as though he found it difficult getting to sleep at night.

  “What’s you name, Anxious?”

  “Whippy, what’s yours?”

  “Don’t get cute, boy! What’s your Christian name?”

  “Ain’t got one.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I ain’t Christian. I’m Buddhist.”

  Everybody laughed, and the BackBlasters doubled over as their buddy
got one-up on the cop. But the speaker’s voice deepened with anger. He didn’t like these street kids getting the better of him in cross-conversation.

  “Okay, you. Now just shut your mouth and answer when you’re asked. And no wisecracks or we’ll toss the key away on you.”

  “You mean I ain’t even gonna get a trial, Ossifer?”

  “I thought I told you to clap your yap?”

  “I guess maybe you did. So solly!”

  The cop was getting plenty mad. The blond boy watched into the blackness, and even without light could feel the thickset cop’s face get red. He could feel the heat burning out at him. He had never seen the cop, but he knew the man was thick, and fleshy, and just ripe for a switchblade in the gut bucket

  The cop started again, after the snickering died down.

  “Is your name Leon Gross?”

  “Naw. It’s Whippy. Ask any—”

  “It says here your name is Leon Aaron Gross. Is that right, boy? Answer me straight, or you’ll be plenty sorry.”

  Whippy got a sullen look on his face. He nodded. “Yeah, that’s my name.”

  “You ever been arrested, Gross?”

  “You should know…you got the record in front of ya.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got the record. 1951 Suspicion of Robbery; 1952 Suspicion of Breaking and Entering. No conviction either time. 1953 Served six months in the Work House for Assault and Battery. 1954 Arrested for Possession of Narcotics. 1955 the same. Released in the custody of your father, Meyer Gross.

  “You still on the dream-dust, Leon?”

  No answer.

  “I asked you, are you still on—”

  The white boy interrupted angrily, “No! I ain’t on it any more. I put down months ago, now whyinabell don’cha lemme alone!” His face was red, and his mouth jerked fiercely.

  They went around and around for another few minutes, till the officer had established that Whippy was still getting a snootful regularly, but that the Wild Gentlemen had clobbered him before he’d gotten a chance to use the long stick with the jagged bit of glass on the end.