Savage Streets

by William P. McGivern

  “Is that so?” Mr. Resnick said, scratching his ear with the stem of his pipe. He laughed. “I guess kids do some pretty funny thinking, all the same. You see ’em running around and hollering and you wouldn’t think there was a thought in their heads. Now you talk about understanding Duke. Well, I can’t say I understand him myself. I’ve tried to, I’m the boy’s stepfather, after all, but he never likes to talk things over very much. And his teachers had the same feeling, so I guess I’m not the only one. But a funny tiling, he always had friends. Other kids always flocked after him.”

  “Perhaps they admire things in him we don’t understand!”

  “Well, that could be the truth of it,” Mr. Resnick said and nodded thoughtfully; he reacted as if Farrell had quoted an incontestable proverb. “Kids like to pal around together, don’t they? Well, Duke will get himself a steady job one of these days, and get in with a serious crowd of fellows. That will straighten him out. I was lucky, see. I got on at the railroad yards when I was eighteen. Working as a laborer around the rip track. The yardmaster told me to put in for a switching job, and a couple of years later I made the extra board. I bucked that board...” Resnick scratched his ear again with the stem of his pipe. “Well, let’s see. Four years anyway. Had to be up every morning and report in case somebody turned up sick. Finally I piled up enough seniority to work steady. Nights at first, until I had enough time to buck me a day job.” Mr. Resnick was smiling at these memories, his eyes brightening behind the rimless glasses. He seemed to have forgotten about Duke. “I saw a lot of funny things in that yard. Now that I’m retired I get to thinking those were pretty happy days. The yardmaster used to go duck hunting out on the Island, and he made a stew he called Duck Bergoo. Lord knows what all went into it, but when he got a lot of birds he’d make a big mess of Duck Bergoo and bring it down to the yard piping hot in gallon lard cans.”

  Mr. Resnick pointed his pipe suddenly at Farrell. “Dangerous work, too, if you didn’t keep your eyes open. One night a man in my crew flagged a switch engine to buckle up a couple of gondolas. They were sitting on a curve of what we called the В lead. It led into the В yard, see. Well, the couplings were out of line account of the curve.” He made fists of his hands and bumped them together several times. “Like that, see? Wouldn’t lock. So this fellow reaches in and takes hold of the tongue to pull it into line when just then the switch engine comes back with another little bump. Well, the tongue locked that time all right, and caught this fellow’s hand. The pins turned in the knuckle of course, and that fellow’s whole arm was pulled into the coupling.” Mr. Resnick shook his head. “Round and round, turning slow mind you, flattening that fellow’s whole arm out until it wasn’t no thicker than a piece of paper. Well, he hung there until we could back the engine off and unhook the cars, and you never heard no human being make sounds like he did. Couple of fellows in the crew went off and threw up. I had to get him loose by myself. Funny, but I always had a good stomach. I can go and stare at an accident where people have been hurt and it doesn’t bother me a bit. You’re sorry, of course, a time like that, but not looking doesn’t do anybody any good!

  “Well, I got to wandering, didn’t I? Now you was asking about Duke.” Mr. Resnick applied a match to his pipe and peered through the small leaping flame at Farrell. “You just go right on.”

  “Well...” Farrell paused to swallow a dryness in his throat. “Do you know these friends of his? The crowd that calls itself the Chiefs?”

  “Sure, I’ve met ’em.” Mr. Resnick laughed, obviously amused at some chance recollection. “Look, come out to the kitchen. I’ll show you what I had to do about them Chiefs.”

  Farrell followed Mr. Resnick through a stale-smelling dining room to a large kitchen equipped with cupboards and a wall of appliances. Mr. Resnick pointed with his pipe to the cupboards which were secured by padlocks. “Last summer those kids got in the habit of stopping by here after swimming to make themselves iced tea and sandwiches. Remember there used to be a quarry over near where you live? Filled up with rain water in the spring and the kids used it for a swimming hole.”

  Farrell remembered; the quarry had been condemned as a hazard by the Rosedale City Council after complaints from a committee of Faircrest residents. It was dangerous for small children, and the Council had agreed to fill it in. Bulldozers did the job in one day.

  “Well, they piled in here after swimming,” Mr. Resnick said, still smiling reminiscently. “They brought their own food, but you know how kids are, they don’t leave things very tidy, so I put locks on the cupboards. Put one on the icebox too, so now tilings don’t get messed up. My wife always said I was the real housekeeper in the family.”

  “I see,” Farrell said drily. “And if Duke is hungry he has to ask you for the keys?”

  “That’s turned out to be the best system. He eats out a lot anyway. You know how kids are. They’ll eat hot dogs and french fries any day rather than a good meal at home.” Mr. Resnick opened a door beside the icebox and pointed to a flight of stairs leading down to a basement. “That’s where Duke sleeps. Talk about understanding that boy. He’s got a perfectly good bedroom upstairs, right next to mine, but he’s fixed up this place instead.” From his angle of vision Farrell saw the foot of a made-up cot, a table with magazines on it, and a few glossy photographs tacked to the wall. “He uses the cellar door, comes and goes without any fuss at all. Like I told you, he’s no trouble.”

  “I can see that,” Farrell said.

  Mr. Resnick accompanied him to the door. Farrell was eager to leave; he felt he could accomplish nothing by staying, and he found the sterile, inhuman atmosphere of the house depressing. Duke’s father lived like a clean, inoffensive animal, comfortable and well-fed; the reward of twenty-five years of faithful service to the railroad represented in his pipes and pulp magazines, plus random memories of a horrible accident and a stew of something or other called Duck Bergoo. He was not a case-history delinquent father — evil, drunken or vicious; but something had been left out of him. Where his heart should have been there was probably a clean, well-oiled metal pump. And Farrell found his indifference discouraging; there would be no help from that quarter.

  “I’ll tell Duke you stopped by,” Mr. Resnick called to him from the porch. “Take it easy now.” He turned back into his house, his step brisk, his face set in an expression of mild contentment.

  Farrell sat for a moment with the motor running, a cigarette burning away between his fingers. Barbara would be expecting him home about now, but he decided not to give up yet; there was a chance he might find Duke at the Chiefs’ clubhouse.

  Sergeant Cabella had mentioned the address: the dead-storage garage on Matt Street.

  The entrance to the Chiefs’ clubhouse was below street level, an unmarked wooden door at the bottom of a short flight of wooden steps. The garage was six stories high, a dark massive building with steel-shuttered windows and a network of fire escapes crawling up it in an orderly rusty growth.

  Farrell hesitated an instant before descending the steps. A group of youngsters in the next block were playing stick ball, and from across the street he heard music from a radio or TV. Everything looked peaceful enough, a typical Sunday afternoon scene that could be duplicated in a thousand cities across the country, kids playing noisily along the sidewalks, dads having a beer and watching television, young girls strolling along arm-in-arm, eyes cocked for boys — it was typical and prosaic, but Farrell didn’t feel at ease. He felt out of place. The thought occurred to him that Duke and Jerry probably thought he was rich.

  Farrell lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and went down the stone steps. But the boy who answered his knock brought an involuntary little smile to his lips; he was about fourteen, a Puerto Rican obviously, clean and small, with amusing brown eyes shadowed by heavy dark lashes. He looked like an ad for Orphan Relief, Farrell thought, innocent and wistful with his tousled curly hair and ragamuffin clothes. A cherub in sepia.

  “Is Duke Resnick here?”
Farrell asked him.

  “I don’ know,” the boy said, slurring the words together in a liquid murmur.

  Another voice — a girl’s — called sharply from beyond the door. “Enrique! Who is it?”

  “I don’ know,” the boy said, shrugging and turning away from the door.

  Farrell hesitated. The boy had drifted out of sight. Music was playing — a jazz record with the volume turned down — and he saw layers of cigarette smoke drifting around a naked electric light bulb. He didn’t know what to do next. Finally, irritated at his indecision, he stepped through the doorway.

  A teen-aged girl sat at a bar that was made of planking supported by two high sawhorses. The Puerto Rican boy had flopped down in a sofa. There was no one else in the long, smoky room. The girl said. “Duke’s not here, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “He comes and goes. Now you see him, now you don’t. That’s Duke.”

  She was doll-like in her prettiness, with a painted and petulant little mouth, bright, naughty eyes, and jagged black bangs framing a square, chalk-white face. Her clothes amounted to a uniform: glossy black loafers and white wool ankle socks, a short, tightly pegged black skirt, and a black, turtleneck sweater that stretched without a wrinkle across the gentle swell of her breasts. The harsh overhead light glinted on her ankle bracelet, and made a silvery sheen on the hairs of her slim bare legs. She was about sixteen, Farrell guessed, and probably weighed about ninety pounds.

  He smiled and took off his hat; she reminded him a bit of Angey playing dress-up — far too young for the part, but disturbingly good at it nevertheless. “Would you mind if I waited for him?” he asked her.

  “Be our guest,” she said, with a theatrically weary wave of her hand.

  “Thanks.” Farrell sat on a stool a few feet from her and glanced around. “You’ve got a nice place here.” The room had the dimensions of a railroad car, with concrete floors and walls, and a low, plastered ceiling. The air smelled damp. There was a mirror behind the bar, several bottles of wine, and a crudely lettered sign which read: WIGWAM INN. The motif of the decor was Indian; illustrations and photographs of braves and chiefs, war parties and tomahawks were tacked to the walls on cardboard squares of uniform size.

  A green curtain divided the room in two sections. In the front half, where Farrell sat, was the bar, a sofa, and a half-dozen folding chairs. Enrique hunched forward on the sofa and ignored Farrell; he was painting and retouching golf balls, taking the old ones from a bucket at his feet and placing the refurbished ones to dry on newspapers spread on the floor. He frowned at his work, turning the balls deftly with nimble fingers, squinting with a critical eye as he camouflaged cuts and flakes with a long, pointed brush. In the strong overhead light he was all dimples and curves and ringlets of glossy hair. He looked cute as a button, Farrell thought, and was probably a fine hand with a switchblade.

  “Is Duke caddying today?” Farrell asked the girl.

  The question obviously struck her as square; she sighed and said, “You don’t know him, I guess.”

  “Not well.”

  “If you knew him you wouldn’t ask if he caddied.”

  “I see. He’s too smart for that, eh?”

  “Head of the class, Pop. He and Jerry see that the Braves keep busy, that’s all.”

  “They’re executives, eh? With an eye on the big picture?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing. It’s kind of a gag.”

  She looked at him curiously. “What’s your name?”

  “Farrell, John Farrell. What’s yours?”

  “Cleo.”

  “As in Cleopatra, eh? Well, that fits.” He smiled. “She was about your age when she had Mark Antony flipping.”

  She lit a cigarette and said casually, “You don’t sound so square, after all.” Her foot was swinging slowly and the light moved like quicksilver against the shining whiteness of her bare leg. Farrell suddenly felt uncomfortable; he realized with a confusing prick of guilt that he had resented her indifference to him. He hadn’t liked being called Pop and treated as a tiresome old man. The age difference wasn’t that great; and he realized that he wanted her to understand that. He wondered if she were Duke or Jerry’s girl.

  “What’d you want to see Duke about?” she asked him.

  “Nothing very serious. I’ll drop back another time.”

  Something moved behind the curtain that divided the room. There was a sound of voices, unintelligible murmurs that occasionally rose into crooning giggles. The sound of it sent a chill down Farrell’s back. The girl smiled indulgently. “All right, calm down back there. You hear?”

  The laughter came again, giddy and uncontrolled, and Enrique looked up from his work, his smooth little face hardening with anger. “Make them rupture heads shut up, Cleo.”

  Cleo got down from the stool and pulled the curtain back with a swift, impatient gesture. There were two men sitting cross-legged on the floor with a bottle of wine between them. One seemed quite old, with sunken cheeks on which his beard gleamed like moss, and weak blue eyes that were bright now with a mindless confusion and anger. The other could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. He looked like an idiot, drooling and blank-eyed, with dull blond hair covering his small head like a dunce cap made of fur. They were dressed in ragged clothing, tom, patched and filthy, secured against complete disintegration by bits of string and safety pins. Their shoes were cracked and ripped. Neither wore socks; their bare heels were black with grime.

  Farrell felt his stomach him. “Who are they?” he asked the girl.

  “They’re Duke’s pets, I guess you could say. They’re winos. You know? They’re like babies. Except instead of drinking milk they drink wine. That’s all they want. It’s funny.”

  “We heard you, Cleo,” the older man said, his lips writhing painfully to form the words. The anger in his eyes was like the last live coal in a bed of ashes: hopeless, dying. “You got no call,” he said. “We kin talk. Like anybody.”

  “I can’t stand that crazy laughing, that’s all,” Cleo said. She took the bottle away from them and put it on the bar. “Maybe I’ll give it back to you in a little while if you’re good. But then again, maybe I won’t.”

  “What are they doing here?” Farrell said. The gruesome and pathetic helplessness of the two men was almost enough to make him sick. “Who are they?”

  “Don’t ask me.” Cleo shrugged. “Duke found them in New York — in the city, you know. Living under a bridge, can you imagine that! They can’t do anything, work or stuff like that, I mean. So he brought them out here. He likes to have them around. They do everything he tells them, just like they were kids and he was their father. It’s funny.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Farrell said.

  “Well, they’re better off here than they were in New York. One of the braves found a place for them to sleep in his basement, and they get enough wine to stay happy. That’s all they care about, I guess.”

  “Why do you suppose Duke likes to have them around?”

  “I don’t know. He just does. He says they should be a lesson to everybody, whatever that means.” She put the bottle of wine back between the two men. “All right, there you are,” she said, in a sprightly, little-mother voice. “Just remember about the laughing.” They looked gratefully at her, nodding quickly, vacant smiles replacing the dumb worry on their faces. Then they turned to one another, foreheads almost touching, giggling softly like naughty children. “We should have a pic-nic,” the old man whispered. “With white bread.”

  “And milk,” the other said, in a hissing little voice.

  Cleo pulled the curtain back in place. “They’ll be off again soon.”

  “And Duke thinks they’re a good lesson to everybody,” Farrell said. “What do you suppose he means by that?”

  “I don’t know. He’s full of funny ideas.”

  “You think he’s quite a guy, don’t you?”

 
; She started to answer but Enrique said, “Look! What’s he want?” in an angry, querulous voice. He walked toward Farrell in what seemed to be a well-rehearsed swagger, arms swinging lazily, every movement of his body marked with significant deliberation. He reminded Farrell of an altar boy trying to imitate Hollywood’s concept of a gunman or gangster. But there was nothing funny about this; it wasn’t quite make-believe. Enrique’s act was as disquieting as Cleo’s air of experienced boredom and provocatively crossed legs. Both of them were playing at what they really wanted to be; it was as if their innocence and youth were troublesome but accidental liabilities they wanted to get rid of as quickly as possible.

  “What you want?” Enrique said, frowning at Farrell. “You a cop?”

  “No, I’m not a cop,” Farrell said.

  “Maybe you’d better come back when Duke’s here,” the girl said.

  “Okay, just tell him I stopped by.” Farrell smiled and got to his feet. “The name is Farrell.”

  She blew a thin stream of smoke at the naked electric light bulb. “I’ll remember, don’t worry.”

  Farrell went out to his car and started for home. What he had just seen and heard had shaken him; the worlds of Hayrack and Faircrest were farther apart than he had known, and now, driving through the thin sunlight, through the dullness of Sunday afternoon, he was eager to get back where he belonged: to a world whose values he understood, where swings had to be repaired, where children were told pleasant stories at bedtime, and where there was a sense of purpose to life. And to hell with Duck Bergoo, he thought, and teen-aged trollops and pet winos and sullen little Puerto Ricans whose arrogance cried out for nothing so much as a great big hand across their bottoms. Let somebody else worry about them.

  A car he did not recognize was parked in front of his home. Barbara opened the door before he put his key in the lock. “There’s someone here to see you,” she said.