The Jungle Kids

by Ed McBain

  Ferdy is a guy about my height and build, except he’s got straight black hair and brown eyes, and my hair is a little curly and my eyes are not brown really, they’re amber—that’s what Marie says, and she ought to know, dad. I been makin’ it with Marie since we was both thirteen, and that makes it close to three years now, so she knows the color of my eyes, all right, and if she says amber, amber it is, and I like to meet the guy who wants to contradict it.

  “This the straight dope?” Ferdy asked. Ferdy used to be on H, but we broke him of it ’cause there’s no room in our bunch for a hophead. We broke him by locking him in a cellar for about two weeks. His own mother didn’t even know where he was. We used to go down there and give him food every day, but that was all. He could cry his butt off, and we wouldn’t so much as give him a stick of M. Nothing till he kicked the heroin monkey. And he kicked it, dad. He kicked it clear out the window. It was painful to watch the poor bastard, but it was for his own good, so we let him claw and scream all he wanted to, but he didn’t get out of that mother-lovin’ cellar. Pot is okay, ’cause it don’t give you the habit, but anybody wants to hang around me, he don’t have no needle marks in his arm. He can bust a joint anytime he likes, but show me a spoon, and show me a guy’s bowing to the White God, and I break his ass for him, that’s the truth, that shows you the kind of guy I am.

  “Django’s up there,” I told Ferdy.

  “How you like that?” Beef said. Beef must weigh about two thousand pounds in his bare feet. He don’t talk English so good because he just come over from the old country, and he ain’t yet learned the ropes. But he’s a big bastard, and a good man to have in the bunch, especially when there’s times you can’t use hardware, like when the bulls is on a purity drive or something. We get those every now and then, but they don’t mean nothing, especially if you know how to sit them out, and we got lots of patience on our street.

  “What took you guys so long?” I said.

  “A only just reached us,” Ferdy said.

  “A’s turnin’ into a real slowball,” I said. “Look at them goddamn rooftops. How we gonna watch this now?”

  The boys looked up and seen the crowd.

  “We shove in,” Beef said.

  “Shove this,” I told him. “There’s grownups up there. You start shoving with all them bulls in the street, and they’ll shove you into the Tombs.”

  “What about Tessie?” Ferdy said.

  “What about her?”

  “Her pad’s right across the way. We stomp in there, dad, and we got ringside seats.”

  “Her folks,” I said sourly.

  “They both out earnin’ bread,” Ferdy said.

  “You sure?”

  “Dad, Tessie and me’s like that,” Ferdy said, crossing two fingers.

  “Who’s on top?” Aiello asked, and then we lit out for Tessie’s pad.

  She didn’t answer the door ’til we told her who we was.

  Even then, she wasn’t too keen on the idea. She played cat and mouse with Ferdy, and he’s honeying her up, come on doll, open the door, and all that kind of crap until I tell her to open it or I’ll bust the goddamn thing right off the hinges. She begins to whimper she ain’t dressed then so I told her to throw something on because if that door ain’t open in three flat I’m going to bust it open.

  She opened the door then, and she was wearing a sweater and skirt, and I said, “You’re a fast dresser, huh?” and she nodded, and I wanted to paste her in the mouth for lying to me in the first place. There’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s anybody who lies.

  We go over to the windows and throw them open, and Tessie says, “What’s, all the noise about?” and Ferdy tells her Django’s in the apartment across the way and maybe we’ll see some lead soon. Tessie gets the jitters. She’s a pretty enough broad, only I don’t go for her because Marie and I are that way, but you can bet Marie wouldn’t get all excited and shaking because there might be some gunplay. Tessie wants to clear out, but Ferdy throws her down on the couch and she sits there shaking as if she’s got pneumonia or something. Beef goes over and locks the door, and then we all pile onto the window sills.

  It’s pretty good because we can see the apartment where Django’s holed up, right across the alleyway and only one floor down. And we can also see the street on the other side where the bulls are mulling around. I can make out Donlevy’s strut from up there, and I feel like dropping a flowerpot on his head, but I figure I’ll bide my time because maybe Django’s got something better for that lousy bull.

  It’s pretty quiet in the street now. The bulls are just about decided on their strategy, and the crowd is hushed up, waiting for something to happen. We don’t see any life coming from the apartment where Django’s cooped, but that don’t mean nothing.

  “What they doing?” Beef says, and I shrug.

  Then, all of a sudden, we hear the loudspeaker down below.

  “All right, Manzetti. Are you coming out?”

  A big silence fell on the street. It was quiet before, but this is something you can almost reach out and touch.

  “Manzetti?” the loudspeaker called. “Can you hear us? We want you to come out. We’re giving you thirty seconds to come out.”

  “They kidding?” I said. “Thirty seconds? Who they think he is? Jesse Owens?”

  “He ain’t goin’ out anyway, and they know it,” Ferdy said.

  Then, just as if Django was trying to prove Ferdy’s point, he opens up from the window below us. It looks like he’s got a carbine, but it’s hard to tell because all we can see is the barrel. We can’t see his head or nothing, just the barrel, and just these shots that come spilling like orange paint out of the window.

  “He got one!” Beef yells from the other window.

  “Where, where?” I yelled back, and I ran over to where Beef was standing, and I shoved him aside and copped a look, and sure as hell one of the bulls is laying in the street, and the other bulls are crowding around him, and running to their cars to get the ambulance because by now they figure they’re gonna need it.

  “Sonofabitch!” I say, “can that Django shoot!”

  “All right,” the loudspeaker says, “We’re coming in, Manzetti.”

  “Come on, you rotten bastards!” Django yells back. “I’m waiting.”

  “Three cops moving down there,” Ferdy says.

  I look but I can only see two of them, and they’re going in the front door. “Two,” I say.

  “No, Donlevy’s cuttin’ through the alley.”

  I ran over to Ferdy’s window, and sure enough Donlevy is playing the gumshoe, sneaking through the alley and pulling down the fire-escape ladder and starting to climb up.

  “He’s a dead duck,” I said.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Aiello answered, and there’s this gleam in his eyes as if he’s enjoying all this with a secret charge. “Django can’t see the fire escape from where he is.”

  “Yeah,” I said slow. “That’s right, ain’t it?”

  “I want to get out of here,” Tessie said. “He might shoot up here.”

  “Relax,” Ferdy told her, and then to make sure she relaxed, he sat down on the couch and pulled her down in his lap.

  “Come on,” she said, “everybody’s here.”

  “They only the boys,” Ferdy said, and he starts mushing her up.

  You can hear a pin drop in the street down there. Everybody on the rooftops are quiet, too.

  “What do you think …” Beef starts, and I give him a shot in the arm to shut him up.

  From inside the building across the way, and through Django’s open window, I can hear one of the cops talking. At the same time, while they’re pulling Django over to the door of the apartment, Donlevy’s climbing up that fire escape. He’s up to the fourth floor now, and going quiet like a cat.

  “How about it, Django?” the cop in the hallway yells, and we can hear it plain as day through Django’s open window.

  “Come and get me!” Django yells
back.

  “Come on out. Throw your gun in the hallway.”

  “Screw you, cop!”

  “How many guns you got, Django?”

  “Come in and count them!”

  “Two?”

  “Fifty-two,” Django yells back, and that one really busts me up.

  I stop laughing long enough to see Donlevy reaching the fifth floor, and making the turn in the ladder, going up to the sixth.

  “He’s gonna plug Django in the back,” I whisper.

  In the hallway, the bull yells. “This is only the beginning, Django. We haven’t started playing yet.”

  “Your friend in the street don’t think so,” Django answered. “Ask him if we started or not. Ask him how that slug felt.”

  Donlevy is almost on the seventh floor now. He steps onto the fire escape as if he’s walking on eggs, and I can see the Detective’s Special in his fist. I hate that sonofabitch with every bone in my body. I almost spit out the window at him, and then he’s flattening himself against the side of the building and moving up to Django’s window, a step at a time, while the bull in the hallway is talking, talking, and Django is answering him. Donlevy gets down on his knees, and he’s got that gun in his right hand, and he’s ready to step up to the window and start blasting.

  That’s when I started yelling.

  “The window, Django! The window!”

  Donlevy looks up for a second, and I can see the surprised look on his face, but then he begins to back off, but he’s too late. The slugs come ripping out of the window, five in a row, as if Django’s got a machine gun in his mitts. Donlevy grabs for his face, and then the gun flies out of his hand, and then he clutches at his stomach, and then he spins around and he’s painted with red. He stumbles forward to the fire escape, and then he crumbles over the railing and it looks as if he’s going to hang there for a second. The crowds on the rooftops are cheering their heads off by now, and then Donlevy goes all the way over, and Django is still blasting through that window, pumping slugs into Donlevy’s body, and then Donlevy is on his way down, and the cheers get cut off like magic, and there’s just this godawful hush as he begins his drop, and then a lady in the street starts to scream, and everybody’s screaming all at once.

  “He got him!” I said, and my eyes are bright in my head because I’m happier than hell. “He got Donlevy!”

  “Two down,” Beef said.

  “They’ll get him,” Aiello said, and he’s got a worried look in his eyes now.

  “You sound like you want that,” I tell him.

  “Who me?”

  “No, the man in the moon. Who you think who?”

  “I don’t want them to get Django.”

  “Then stop praying.”

  “I ain’t praying, Danny.”

  “There ain’t a bull alive can take Django,” I inform him.

  “You can say that again,” Ferdy says from the couch where he’s working up a sweat.

  Tessie ain’t saying nothing any more. She figures she might as well play ball or Ferdy will get nasty, and she knows Ferdy’s got a switch knife in his pocket.

  A phone starts ringing somewhere across the alleyway. It’s the only sound you can hear on the block, just that phone ringing, and then Django’s head pops up at the window for just a second, and he waves up, not looking at us, not looking at anybody, just looking up sort of, and he yells, “Thanks,” and then his head disappears.

  “You saved his life, Danny,” Ferdy said.

  “And he appreciates it, dad,” I answered.

  “Sure, but what’re they gonna throw at him next?” Aiello says, and from the tone of his voice I figure like he wants them to throw a Sherman tank at him.

  “Look, meatball,” I tell him, “just keep your mouth shut. You talk too much, anyway.”

  “Well, what the hell. Django ain’t nothing to me,” Aiello said.

  “Hey,” Ferdy said, “you think the bulls are gonna come up here and get us?”

  “What the hell for? They don’t know who yelled. It coulda been anybody on the roof.”

  “Yeah,” Ferdy said, and he kisses Tessie and Tessie gets up and straightens her skirt, and I got to admit Ferdy knows how to pick them, but she still don’t compare to Marie. She goes in the other room, and Ferdy winks and follows her, and I figure we lost a good man for the proceedings. Well, what the hell. There’s just me and Beef and Aiello in the room now, and we’re watching through the window, and it suddenly dawns on me what Aiello said.

  “What do you mean, Django ain’t nothing to you?”

  “He ain’t,” Aiello said.

  “A,” I told him, “you’re looking for a cracked head.”

  “I ain’t looking for nothing. What the hell, he’s a killer. He’s wanted everywhere.”

  “So what?”

  “So that don’t make him my brother, that’s all. I never killed nobody.”

  “He’s from the neighborhood,” I said, and I tried to put a warning in my voice, but Aiello didn’t catch it.

  “So it’s not my fault the neighborhood stinks.”

  “Stinks!” I walked away from the window and over to Aiello. “Who said it stinks?”

  “Well, it ain’t Sutton Place.”

  “That don’t mean it stinks.”

  “Well, a guy like Django …”

  “What about Django?”

  “He—well … he don’t help us none.”

  “Help us with who? What’re you talkin’ about?”

  “Help us with nobody! He stinks just the way the neighborhood …”

  I was ready to bust him one, when the shooting began again outside.

  I rushed over to the window. The shooting was all coming from the streets, with Django not returning the fire. It seemed like every cop in the world was firing up at the window. The people on the roofs were all ducking because they didn’t want to pick up no stray lead. I poked my head out because we were on the other side of the alleyway.

  “You see him?” Beef asked.

  “No. He’s playin’ it cool.”

  “A man shouldn’t walk around free after he kills people,” Aiello said.

  “Shut your mouth, A,” I told him.

  “Well, it’s the truth!”

  “Shut up, you dumb bastard. What the hell do you know about it?”

  “I know it ain’t right. Who’s he gonna kill next? Suppose he kills your own mother?”

  “What’s he want to kill my old lady for? You’re talking like a man with a paper.…”

  “I’m only saying, a guy like Django, he stinks up the whole works.”

  “I’ll talk to you later, jerk,” I said. “I want to watch this.”

  The cops were throwing tear gas now. Two of the shells hit the brick wall of the building, and bounced off, and went flying down to the street again. They fired two more, and one of them hung on the sill as if it was going in, and then dropped. The fourth one went in the window, and out it came again, and I whispered. “That’s the boy, Django,” and then another one came up and sailed right into the window, and I guess Django couldn’t get to it that time because the cops in the hallway started a barrage. There were firetrucks down there now, and hoses were wrapped all over the street, and I wondered if they were going to try burning Django out. The gas was coming out his window and sailing up the alleyway, and I got a whiff of the apple blossoms myself, that’s what it smells like, and it smelled good, but I knew Django was inside that apartment and hardly able to see. He come over to the window and tried to suck in some air, but the cop in the street kept up the barrage, trying to get him, and I felt sorrier’n hell for the poor bastard.

  He started firing then and throwing things out the window, chairs, and a lamp, and an electric iron, and the cops held off for just a few secs, and Django copped some air, but not enough because they were shooting more tear gas shells up there, and they were also firing and you could tell they had some tommies in the crowd because no .38 ever fired like that, and no carbine ever di
d either.

  I was wishing I had a gun of my own because I wanted to help Django, and I felt as if my hands were tied, but what the hell could I do? I just kept sweating it out, and Django wasn’t firing through the window any more, and then all of a sudden everything in the street stopped and everything inside the apartment was still, and we could hear Ferdy and Tessie in the other room, raising a hell of a racket.

  “Django!” the cop in the hallway yelled.

  Django coughed and said, “What?”

  “You coming out?”

  “I killed a cop,” Django yelled back.

  “Come on out, Django!”

  “I killed a cop!” Django yelled, and he sounded as if he was crying—from the gas those bastards had fed him. “I killed a cop, I killed a cop,” he kept saying over and over again.

  “You only wounded him,” the cop yelled, and I shouted, “He’s lying, Django.”

  “Get me a priest,” Django yelled.

  “Why he wants a priest?” Beef asked.

  “It’s a trick,” I said. “He wants a shield.”

  “No dice,” the cop answered. “Come on, Django, throw your weapons out.”

  “Get me a priest.”

  “Come on, Django.”

  “No!” he screamed. “You lousy bastard, no!”

  “Django …”

  “Get me a priest,” Django shouted. “I’m scared I’m gonna—get me a priest!”

  “What’d he say?” I said to Beef.

  “I didn’t catch,” Beef said, and then the firing started again.

  It must have gone on for about ten minutes, and then all of a sudden, just the way it started, that’s the way it stopped again.

  “They got him,” Aiello said.

  “Bull,” I answered.

  I kept watching the street. It was beginning to get dark now, and the cops were turning on their spots and playing them up at Django’s window. There wasn’t a sound coming from the apartment.

  “They got him,” Aiello said again.

  “You need straightening, you jerk,” I told him.