by Mike Resnick
Even if they were never together, just knowing that a perfect creature like Barbara Harding could love a mucker like him, well . . . it gave him hope. He would not fail her.
Before long, the neighborhood beat cop came along, and Billy slipped back around the corner. Once the copper was past and headed for the Hardings’, Billy went back to waiting.
The lookout, to his credit, was a cool customer. He did not rabbit when the officer went up the stairs and rang the bell. The kid somehow managed to stay put even when Smith opened the door and spoke to the officer. It was only when the copper went inside and was behind a closed door that the young lookout skedaddled. To Billy’s good fortune, the kid came in his direction, though across the way.
Billy followed the lookout south on Riverside Drive, keeping the street between them, until the kid cut east on 72nd. Billy crossed Riverside and followed the boy, lagging back enough to not arouse suspicion. When the kid hopped a trolley south at Broadway, Billy jumped on the step at the back.
The lookout appeared nervous as he found a seat, pulled off his cap, and mopped his brow. His eyes darted around the trolley and the passing neighborhood, but he did not take in anything to make him jumpier, especially with Billy appearing interested only in the passing architecture.
Billy figured that as long as the kid stayed on the trolley, his job would be easier. He kept his gaze off the lookout, who seemed to calm as the trolley clattered south; instead Billy just glanced over from time to time to make sure the kid was still in his seat.
At 23rd, the lookout jumped off and cut west. The afternoon sun was low in the sky, and Billy knew he might have to stay closer than he’d like to make sure he didn’t lose the lookout in the coming darkness.
They went west all the way to the Hudson and the Chelsea Piers. As the kid ducked in and out between crates that were in the process of getting loaded onto ships, Billy was stunned to look up at the liner he had heard of but never seen—the Mauretania—and stunned as well by the sheer size of the British passenger liner. A four-stacker, the Mauretania was larger than any vessel, and, for that matter, most buildings, that Billy had ever seen in his life. For a moment, the mucker allowed his attention to waver, and when he looked back, the lookout had been swallowed by darkness.
Cursing himself, Billy hurried ahead, trying not to make any noise or draw any attention as he scoured the dock area. Panicked, Billy looked back and forth as his speed increased. Evening was settling over the city, cool and indifferent to his plight, and the lookout was nowhere to be seen.
Then, coming to the end of the warehouse, Billy heard someone yell, “Hey, you . . . kid! You ain’t supposed to be here!”
As Billy rounded the corner, he saw the lookout being held by a dockworker. Even though the boy was kicking and biting, he was making no progress in breaking the grip of the towering dockworker, a man even bigger than the mucker.
Slowing down, making like he was out of breath, Billy approached the struggling pair.
The kid was yelling now, “Let me go, you big lummox! If you don’t let me go, I’ll croak ya.”
The dockworker chuckled until he saw the mucker coming. Then his face turned serious. “This wharf rat your’n?”
Billy shook his head and smiled, blew out a couple of breaths like he had been running all night. “Naw. I been chasin’ him for a good long while, though.”
“You a cop?” the dockworker asked.
Palming Barbara’s note, Billy flashed it like a badge, and, when the man looked in that direction, Billy cold-cocked him with an overhand left. The dockworker went down, taking the kid with him. The two of them hit the ground, the man out cold, the kid rolling away.
Before the boy could regain his feet and run off, Billy grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him up to eye level. The kid reared to kick him in the groin, but this was not Billy’s first alley fight. He turned and took the blow off his hip, then spun the kid face-first into a crate.
Billy let go, and the kid sagged to the ground, cut, bleeding, and covering a broken nose.
“Where they holdin’ Mallory?” Billy asked.
The boy sat sullenly, rubbing the various broken parts of his face.
Billy waited, and when he got tired of that, he grabbed the boy and picked him up to eye level again, then repeated his question.
“Geez, I can’t tell ya. They’ll kill me!”
Billy dropped the kid to the ground. When the boy tried to stand, he could only plop into a sitting position, where the mucker towered over him. Billy took out Mr. Harding’s revolver and let the kid get a good look down the endless black beyond its snout. “Or you could not tell me, and I’ll kill you.”
The kid said nothing. The tough little bastard reminded Billy of himself. Then the mucker drew back the revolver’s hammer until it clicked, such a small sound, such a loud sound . . .
The kid went white and his eyes bugged. “You can’t,” the young man pleaded. “I’m just a kid!”
“And you’ve seen how many kids die in your time, boyo?”
“Please . . . please . . .”
Changing tack and his tone slightly, Billy asked, “What’s your name, son?”
“John. John Diamond.”
“Do they call you ‘Jack’?”
He shook his head. “They call me ‘Legs.’”
“’Cause you can run.”
“’Cause I can run.”
“Just not fast enough. Legs, my lad, look into my eyes and tell me if you see anything there to convince you I won’t shoot you when I count three . . . if’n you ain’t told me where Mr. Mallory is.”
The kid didn’t cry, but tears brimmed at the edges of his eyes.
“One.”
Billy could see the kid was trembling now.
“Two.”
The boy hung his head.
Damn. Would this kid call his bluff?
“Thr—”
“At the far end of the warehouse!” the kid blurted. “The back end. Nobody goes in that way. Well, almost nobody.”
Billy wondered if he really would have shot the kid at the count of three. He was glad he hadn’t had to find out. “Who’s holding him?”
“Jake Orgen’s gang.”
The mucker had heard of them. “The Little Augies?”
“Yeah.”
“How many?”
“Four, maybe five.”
“Orgen hisself in there?”
The kid shook his head. “He don’t like bein’ around the blood-and-thunder stuff. He’s the brains.”
Billy thought that over. Then he looked into a young face drawn with despair and said, “Don’t go thinkin’ you’re a stoolie, Legs. Not unless they gave you so much dough you feel beholden.”
“A whole buck. That’s good money.”
“Not dying-over money.”
“No. Not that.” The kid sniffed and hung his head.
Billy squatted next to the boy. “Look, it ain’t my place to tell you whether to hang with these lowlifes or not.”
The kid looked confused.
“But you done good. You held out when most others woulda long since caved.”
“But . . . but I ratted.”
“You didn’t owe them nothing.”
“But I ratted.”
Well, he’d tried. Rising, Billy said, “You get your ass home. I see you followin’ me, I will drill you between the damn eyes.”
The kid nodded, frowning, because the mucker’s tone hadn’t been as strong as his words.
“Those guys in there?” Billy nodded toward his goal. “They ain’t never gonna know from me that it was you told me where to find them. Far as they know—in the unlikely event any of ’em live through me comin’ to call—I just tracked ’em down my own self.”
“Why you protectin’ me, mister?”
“Let’s just say once upon a time, I stood where you do now. I coulda been good, but I chose to be bad.”
The kid didn’t seem to understand.
/> “Look where it got me. I’m on the docks in the middle of a beautiful Saturday night pointin’ a pistol at a kid and gettin’ ready to go free a man who thinks the world would be a better place if your buddies were to fill me full of lead.”
The kid seemed confused, and why shouldn’t he? Young Legs Diamond had had his bell rung pretty good, including a broken damn nose, and Billy knew this little wiseguy would eventually do whatever he felt like, anyway.
“So they call you ‘Legs’ ’cause you’re so damn fast?”
“I am good and damn fast, mister.”
Billy let him see the gun again. “Show me.”
The kid got off and ran like hell back toward the city.
Making his way down the long wall of the warehouse, night surrounding him now, water lapping at the pier, Billy actually felt at home. This river rat’s paradise certainly was no place for Barbara Harding; but the mucker felt like he had just come home from some nameless war, ready to do combat again.
At last, he came to a dingy window. He had to stand on his toes to see in, and the dirty glass made it hard to see. But there in plain view, under one naked lightbulb hanging like the condemned from a scaffold, sat William Mallory—still in his fifty-dollar suit, bound tightly to a straight-back wooden chair. Five feet away, four guys sat around a table playing cards. Even through the filth, Billy could see the guns on the table amid the money and cards.
As Billy headed to the back, he could hear shoes scraping just around the corner. Peeking, he saw a lookout lumbering toward him, a lookout who was no damn kid. The mucker waited and, when the big oaf got to the corner, doubled him over with a right, then knocked him cold with a rabbit punch left. The guy went down like a sack of wheat and, after a kick in the head, was just as motionless.
Billy stepped over him and stood before the door, gun in hand. If he could do just this one thing, and do it right, he could give Barbara a shot at happiness in that foreign world she was accustomed to . . .
He took a long, deep breath, blew it out, and kicked the door open. The guy on the far side of the table rose first and for that won the prize of a red-as-lipstick kiss-pucker bullet hole in the chest, falling over backward, fingers never finding the gun on the table. The goon to the fallen guy’s left did manage to grab his gun, but that was all, a bullet tearing into his gut and sitting him down, on the floor not his chair; then he sprawled and twitched and bled and worked on dying. The kidnapper with his back to the door rolled out of his chair to the right, a bullet kicking up cement from the floor as he slipped behind a crate, gun in hand.
This all gave one other thug time to rise, seize his pistol, and fire a round that clipped Billy’s shoulder, tearing more material than skin.
Billy swivelled and fired a round that gouged a hole in a wooden beam as the goon slipped behind it.
Two down, two to go . . . and only two bullets left.
Deuces were wild in this game, it seemed.
The one behind the crate was up now, grinning in a face dirty with a several day-old beard, his gun pressed to the temple of the trussed-up William Mallory.
“Drop yer gun, laddiebuck, or the swell gets it in his noodle!”
Billy had come so close. Now he had one to his left and one to his right . . . and the latter had a gun to Mallory’s head.
He was glad the wild-eyed, squirming Mallory was gagged—whatever the man had to say, Billy didn’t want to hear it. Other than looking like an unmade bed, the gent appeared to be otherwise unharmed. Billy hoped to keep it that way, but was unsure about how. Just getting out alive his own damn self was looking dicey . . .
“I told you to drop it, boyo!”
Billy let his weight sag and let his aim drop from the man holding the gun to Mallory’s head.
“All right,” Billy said, sounding defeated. It wasn’t hard to act that part. “All right . . .”
Billy started to squat as if to lay the gun carefully on the floor.
The thug at Mallory’s left grinned wider.
As the weapon reached his waist, Billy brought the barrel up slightly, then fired. The bullet hit the goon in one eye, leaving surprise in the other, as the gunman slumped dead to cement and the bound Mallory just sat there.
Even before the smoke had cleared, Billy rolled left as the remaining goon fired a shot past him.
The one thing Billy hadn’t counted on was the gut-shot goon finding the strength to rejoin the fight. Billy practically rolled right into him as the gut-shot man pulled the trigger. Something hot burned as it slipped past Billy’s right side, carving flesh. The two men rolled together now, and Billy used his last shot to give the guy a second shot to the gut. This one killed the bastard, but the remaining goon got off two more shots, each just barely missing Billy.
Grabbing the dead man’s pistol, Billy turned and fired twice, the first shot parting the man’s hair, the second punching a hole damn-near dead center in his forehead. That was the shot that dropped him dead to the cement.
Rushing to Mallory, Billy pulled off the man’s gag and started cutting the ropes with his jackknife.
“Byrne,” Mallory gasped. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“Chicago, originally,” Billy said coolly. “Thought you knew that.”
Mallory shook his head, dazed, shaken.
Billy asked, “Can you walk?”
“I’m fine,” Mallory said, nodding. “I’m fine. A little roughed up, but shipshape.”
Billy severed the last of the man’s bindings. “Then we need to get out of here. Orgen may be coming to finish you off, once he realizes there’s no ransom being paid. Or the coppers will show ’cause of the gunfight. Either way, it would be better if we weren’t around.”
“Agreed,” Mallory said. “But you’re bleeding, man! Your shoulder, your side . . .”
Billy shook his head. “These are nothin’. Now, move!”
Once they were well clear of the Chelsea Piers, the two men finally slowed to a walk.
On a darkened street, with no one else in sight, the night growing a little chilly, Mallory put his hand on Billy’s sleeve and stopped him.
“Look,” Mallory said. “Uh . . . what can I say but ‘thank you?’”
Billy couldn’t look at the man. “I didn’t do it for you.”
“I know. You did it for her.”
They walked on, slowly now.
“Why?” Mallory said.
“You got it right the first time.”
“No I mean—why did you telephone me? And send me to her?”
Stopping, Billy made himself look into the man’s eyes. “Same answer.”
Mallory nodded slowly. “Okay. Just so you know—I won’t let you down. By not letting her down. Understood?”
“Understood. ’Cause if you don’t do right by her? What I gave those goons back there won’t be nothin’ compared to the medicine you take from me.”
“That thought doesn’t scare me as much as the thought of letting her down.”
Billy smiled, just a little. “We have that much in common.”
They walked in silence for almost a block.
Finally, Billy said, “Find the nearest police station. Tell them what happened. Tell them some hardcase did all that back there at the piers, and you have no idea who the hell it was. Musta been some rival gang. Do you get me?”
“I get you. You were never there.”
“I knew you were smarter than you look.”
“Where will you go? What should I tell Barbara?”
“I have something to take care of back home,” Billy said. He handed Harding’s pistol over to Mallory. “Tell Barbara to tell her father thanks for use of the hog leg. I’m just sorry I couldn’t clean it and reload it before returning it.”
Mallory stared at Billy. “Byrne, you are an odd man. I don’t think I will ever know what to make of you.”
Billy shrugged. “Haven’t you figured me yet? I’m just a mucker.”
And they went their separate ways.
If this is the longest of the original stories in this book, that’s only logical—for of all of ERB’s fantastic worlds, less is known about Poloda than any other. Now, thanks to Todd McCaffrey, who took a sabbatical from the wildly popular Pern series to write this, our knowledge has increased considerably.
—Mike
To the Nearest Planet
As told to Todd McCaffrey
As everyone knows, the craziest place in the world is the United States. Of course, in the US, everyone will say, “We’re not crazy! It’s those people in California!”
Californians will say, “No, it’s the people in Los Angeles.”
In Los Angeles they’ll argue the point. Not about that L.A. is the craziest place on Earth, but over which exact place in L.A. is the craziest. Some say Hollywood, some say Venice Beach.
Others say, “It’s the Valley, man!” They’ll mean the San Fernando Valley, of course. Home to Universal Studios, ABC and NBC, Disney Studios, Warner Brothers—it’s probably hard to argue the point.
But even in the Valley, there’s still disagreement. Some will say Burbank, others will say Chatsworth, still others will say Woodland Hills—and all have their reasons.
There is, however, a strong argument for Tarzana. It’s the township that was originally bought by the famous Edgar Rice Burroughs and named in honor of his famed character, Tarzan. Mr. Burroughs had the idea of setting up an artists’ and writers’ community, which sadly (though predictably) failed, leaving the city to rise from its ashes.
Nowadays it’s hard to separate Tarzana from the rest of the Valley, but there are a few places.
Like the old pawn shop I came across the other day as I was browsing through some of the back streets of the city. What caught my eye was the old typewriter in the window.
I’m a writer, and while I’m thoroughly grounded in the 21st century and you can have my Apple when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands, I still had a soft spot for the old manual typewriters. People liked to say that back then was when the real stories were written—pounded out on the keyboard and written on carbon paper, stuffed hopefully into envelopes and sent out to sink or swim in the rags of the day.