Children of the Streets

by Harlan Ellison

  ‘What kind of a showdown?’ he asked, the frown deepening.

  I shrugged, my hand on the doorknob. ‘Don’t know, but there’s got to be one. They want me real bad—or they will when they find out that cliff didn’t finish me—and I want them real bad. I can’t stop moving, because if I do, they cool me. And they can’t show themselves, because when they do I’ll get to them.’

  I closed the door quietly behind me.

  I went home and sacked-in with my clothes on. I didn’t sleep too well. The .45 was a hard nubbin under the pillow, and I had a lousy nightmare about a switchblade cab that was trying to push me off a cliff into a sea of diamonds.

  I woke up about four in the afternoon, reeking of my own sweat. The world was shattering inside my skull, there was a painful lump where the kid had tapped me the night before, and I had a horrible itch to find those kids one by one and hammer their molars back down their throats.

  I showered, dressed, and phoned in to Liggett, told him I’d be right down. He told me I could work the six-to-four shift. I told him to let word seep through the vine that Campus had been jumped and dumped—but had come back.

  He asked me what I meant, so I fired the story over the line real quick. I heard a gasp, and he said he’d let the word out. ‘But why the hell don’t you just cut out and forget the whole thing?’ he asked.

  ‘Reasons,’ I answered, thinking about Korea and being pushed too far.

  Then I hung up and went downstairs, to take up where I’d left off the day before.

  Things went cozy that day. I got finished with my tour of duty about four-oh-five and went home. This time I made sure I was alone when I got out of the cab.

  I sacked in, and this time the sleep was better. Not perfect, but a whole lot better.

  Next morning I shoved the .45 into my belt and put my jump-jacket over it. Then I went down to the cab. I got in, took out my route book, and scribbled my tie-in time. I stuck the key in the ignition.

  Then I pushed the starter.

  And the bomb went off. The whole goddam universe exploded. I felt myself being shoved in the chest. It was the steering wheel. The car exploded, erupted, whanged away with a boom, and the doors flew off their hinges, thank God! I was parked next to a church. The explosion tossed me up against the holy walls.

  I lay there on my face on the sidewalk, blood all over me from abrasions, while screaming metal and broken glass fell on top of me. I heard people screaming and windows flying up, and knew it must have been one hell of an explosion. I reprimanded myself mentally for swearing mentally in front of a church. Even if I was lying on my kisser.

  It was obvious, of course. They’d planted a souper in the engine of the cab.

  If the hack hadn’t been so strong—mainly due to my reinforcing sections of it on my days off—I’d have been spattered across the wall of that church permanently.

  I rather supposed they hadn’t rigged it properly. If they had, no matter how strong that cab was, I would have been decapitated. These kids were novices when it came to installing a juice-box in a crate. I started to faint.

  I heard people running up to me, and I tried to sit up. I managed to get my feet under me and pull myself up on the church stair railing. Someone produced a glass of something that tasted like bad sherry, and I sipped a bit, listening to the mingled bird-sounds of the people’s horror-cooing.

  I staggered erect, and bumbled into the house to call Lig. He could handle Harrison, if that crumb was assigned to this deal.

  I wanted to call Lig to thank him for spreading the word. He’d done it real fine—the bastards knew I was still kicking.

  Now it was a case of hide-and-seek.

  If I was ‘it,’ I’d be ‘it’ with a slug in my tummy or a switch shaft sticking out of my throat. If they were ‘it,’ I’d be rapping a few skulls good and hard, real soon.

  I moved later that day. Across town to a furnished flea trap. But it would do till I came up with something other than a cracked skull and empty hands.

  Then started a week of real nightmare. I borrowed Jerry’s car and went looking. New York’s a big town. You can go for years without running into anyone you know; on the other hand, you might walk into the street and meet a guy you haven’t seen in ten years. Funny, like that. But a full week without more than three hours sleep a night—running on No-Doz and black coffee—I patrolled the streets in Jerry Saha’s car. All the way from Astoria to Brooklyn.

  It wasn’t hard to get the other hackies I knew to keep half an eye open for the kids I’d described, also.

  Along about Thursday, I got word from Lig that Harrison had been around looking for me. I told Lig to stall the bull, tell him I was on routes with a new cab, tell him anything, but to stall the slob. He did, and I kept looking, cutting my sleep down to nothing.

  Nothing. That’s what I got on Friday.

  Saturday was more of the same. A stoned loss.

  But Sunday night the break came.

  I was cruising on Central Park South, in the Fifties, when I saw one of them. I suddenly knew how these kids had escaped being picked up till now. He wasn’t in a black leather jacket. That was cornball stuff for these punks. It was a uniform, a disguise. He had on a charcoal-gray flannel suit and he looked like the spoiled brat of a wealthy advertising executive. He was walking uptown.

  I spotted him dead at once. It was the kid with the Barrymore profile and the sleepy eyes.

  I fell behind him a half block, and tagged him all the way. He turned in at a flashy apartment house in the plush section of the Park South. When he’d gone in, I parked the car around the corner and flat-footed it over to the building. The kid was gone.

  But there was a doorman.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, smiling, tipping my cabbie cap back on my head so the license button showed real plain. ‘Say, did a young boy in a charcoal suit just come in here?’

  He looked at me leery. ‘Why?’

  I yanked out my hack license, flipped it at him. ‘I just brought that fare up here from downtown, with a two-buck placket on the meter. He said he was broke and would run upstairs to get me my fare. I’d like to make sure he comes back. Can you tell me where he went?’

  The doorman looked at me hard for a minute, then nodded his head. ‘Yes, I suppose so. He went up to Mr Steckman’s penthouse. That’s Mr Fritz Steckman, the broker. I’m sure the boy’s all right if he’s a friend of Mr Steckman’s. Probably a nephew or something. Mr Steckman has a good many young people visiting him—mostly relatives, I guess.’

  ‘Yeah. Sure.’ I smiled at him. ‘Thanks. I’ll wait in the cab. Hope he shows soon; I’d like to catch another fare.’

  I went out and got in the car, drove around the block, parked down and across the street. Then I waited.

  About a half-hour later, the kid came out and started walking crosstown. I didn’t follow him—I knew where his home roost was.

  I was about to make as big a play as I could. Pray? You bet your life I did!

  I called Richie Ellington on the Daily News and got some poop from him on this Steckman.

  Big operator. Wealthy. In the social register, and a large investor in the stock market. Summer home, winter home, two yachts and a hunting lodge in the Canadian Rockies. Impeccable taste—one of the Best Dressed Somethings-or-other—and unmarried. Nominated Very Eligible Hunka Meat by some group of young debs coming out, recently.

  I thanked Ellington, inquired about his cats and his booze, and then started to get ready.

  I changed into my charcoal-gray suit, and made sure the slide on the .45 was working smoothly. Then I piled into Jerry’s car and headed crosstown to Central Park South. I parked up the street from Steckman’s building, and waited till the doorman went off duty. When he’d been gone ten minutes, I climbed out and went into the building.

  The alternate doorman opened the door for me. I brushed past him without a glance, as though I knew where I was going and as if I had every right to be there.

  I climbed int
o the elevator, and pushed the button for the top floor.

  But the top floor wasn’t the penthouse. There was a separate elevator for that. But I didn’t take it. I took the fire stairs. When I got to the top, the door was locked; but another flight went up, and I figured it must go to a service shed atop the penthouse.

  I kept climbing, and a minute later opened the fire door to the outside. I was standing next to a metal ladder that went up into a water tank.

  I slammed the door, and walked around the platform. It was parked far back at the rear of the penthouse area. I didn’t see anyone outside the house, so I jumped into the grass.

  I rolled under a bush, all in the same movement, and came up with wet grass on my back and the pistol in my hand.

  The glass-doored greenhouse-looking penthouse was right across from me. I figured to lay there till it got dark enough inside and outside so that no one would see me. I wasn’t sure just how many were in there.

  It took a long time getting dark, and I had a long chance to get some thinking done.

  I knew why they wanted to get me so bad. I was the only boy who could identify them. There was a sweet setup here, but I wasn’t sure just what it was. Who was Steckman, and how did he figure into this? What were those punks doing, coming to visit him?

  I wanted some answers, but more, I wanted all those kids—and the guy that was operating them. Him, most of all. I knew I couldn’t call the cops till I had all of them, the whole batch of them. Let one lone juvie get away, and my days were even more numbered than right now. Those kids hold grudges longer and harder than any adult. I had to get them all together, or my life wouldn’t be worth starting fare on my meter.

  It pitched-out around 9:30, and I started my creep toward the penthouse.

  The grass was dry now, and the sounds of traffic filtered up the face of the building. The .45 was warm in my mitt. I suddenly realized I’d been hanging on to it for over three hours, while I’d been waiting.

  I crawled over to the big windows and looked inside. At first I didn’t see anyone. The living room was empty. Just an overplush apartment, decorated ultramodern with hanging lamps, screwy-looking wire clocks on the walls—the works.

  In a few minutes a man came into the room with a drink in his hand; he was wearing a wine-colored satin smoking jacket, with a silk scarf knotted about his throat. The guy was about forty, or forty-five, hair graying at the temples, a smooth, unlined face, almost like a baby’s. He looked hard, but the mark of dissipation was on him. As though he’d just gotten rich and was letting himself go to fat enjoying it.

  It was Steckman all right. Richie Ellington had described him almost perfectly. I waited a few minutes to make sure he was alone; then I shoved in.

  The French doors were unlocked. He must have felt pretty secure up there in the clouds. When I stepped through into his living room, the .45 aimed at the spot behind his brandy snifter, he turned a fish-belly white.

  ‘Who—who are you?’ he asked. Real hacky phrase—no inventiveness, this guy. I disliked him more and more. But I told him anyhow.

  ‘The name’s Campus, Mr Steckman. Neal Campus. I’m the boy you don’t like.’

  He started sputtering something about getting out, and who the hell did I think I was, but I cut him off sharply.

  ‘I know you don’t like me, Mr Steckman, because you had a few of your kindergarten associates clobber me, then toss me over a cliff, then plant a bomb in my hack. They really tried everything but staking me out and letting the ants eat me alive. Now unless that’s the way you recruit new members for the Social Register, I’m certain you don’t care for little old Neal Campus.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind. Get out of here before I call the police!’

  ‘Oh, you’ll do some calling, all right, Mr Steckman, but not right now. First I want to thank you in my own charming way for all the attention you’ve paid me.’

  I laid the gun down on top of the spinet piano, and chucked off my jacket.

  Steckman was almost as tall as me, but he was heavier by a good twenty pounds. And he wasn’t that soft.

  I came at him, and he did something really old hat: he tossed the brandy in my face. Glass and all. The damned stuff burned like lye, and I fell back. The next thing I knew he had a foot in my groin, and I was getting pitchforks of pain in my abdomen.

  I staggered back against the spinet and grabbed out blindly for him, while I prayed my eyes would stop tearing.

  All I could see was a vague blur, but I threw a left hook at it, and it connected. He tumbled backwards over a modern chair, and brought up short against the opposite wall, next to the fireplace.

  I shook my head a couple of times, and my eyes cleared just nicely so that I could see him coming whole-hog at me with an andiron in his big mitt.

  He swung the thing like a golf pro, and it sizzled past my temple, parting my hair. The thing smashed into the wall, shattering a shadow box and a couple of little Chinese figurines.

  I dove for him, low, and caught him around the legs. Then I was on top of him, and all the anger and frustration of the past weeks let loose. I clobbered that guy real good. I don’t think I’d have stopped, except his kisser started looking like a pound of prime ground round. I figured it was time to back off him.

  I hauled him to his feet, shoved him into a chair, and emptied the water from the bottom of an ice bucket in his face. He jerked like I’d harpooned him when the ice water hit, and I jerked him erect by his satin lapels.

  ‘All right, Mr Steckman, how’s about you letting Uncle Neal in on what the pitch is here. Why the juvies? Why all the muggings?’

  He seemed reluctant to talk, so I tossed him a couple of open-hand cracks across his bleeding mouth, and he came around real fast.

  ‘I’ve had some serious losses in the stock market of late,’ he explained, ‘and I had to recoup the money somehow.’

  ‘Pretty high living you’re doing here. Ever think if you moved back to Earth with us poverty-struck commoners you might be able to get along on less?’

  He glared at me, and continued: ‘I got in touch with a boy named Boots, and told him to get a few of his friends in the gang, and bring them over; that I’d like to talk to them. So I brought them over and showed them how to avoid being caught—’

  I interrupted, ‘Like changing to charcoal suits and hiding the leather jackets when they were off duty, right?’

  He nodded. ‘Then I planned a few jobs for them, with myself handling the disposal of non-cash merchandise—’

  ‘Like Pessler’s diamonds,’ I put in.

  ‘Like Pessler’s diamonds,’ he agreed, dabbing at the trickle of blood running out of his mouth. ‘But I never told them to frame you, or to kill anyone. They did that on their own. I swear to God! I never told them—’

  ‘You’re lying like a rug, Steckman!’ I accused him. ‘No matter how sharp those kids are, it would take a lousy fagin like you to think up that cliff deal, or the bomb.’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘Shut up, Steckman. You make me sick to my belly. How many are there in the gang, fagin?’

  He gritted his teeth—those he had left—and told me there were eight of them, all members of a gang called the Falcons.

  ‘Get them over here,’ I told him.

  He looked at me sharply. ‘Get them!’ I snapped.

  He went to the phone, lifted it and dialed. He spoke to someone on the other end, and asked them if he could speak to Boots. They must have told him Boots wasn’t there, because he asked who was there in the Falcs.

  Then he said, ‘All right, let me talk to Stick.’ He waited about a minute, then he said, ‘Hello, Stick?’ He paused and licked his lips, started to say something, but I stepped over quickly and prodded him with the .45 in the back of the head.

  ‘This is Steckman. Yes, that’s right. Come on up immediately. I’ve got—what’s that? Yes, that’s right, a big job for you. Bring the rest of the boys.’ He waited, listening, then said, ‘Yes, all of them. E
ven Carpy and Second.’ I stepped in front of him and mouthed that Stick should get Boots, too, in particular. ‘Oh, and Stick—be sure Boots is with you.’ He muttered a few more things, then hung up, sweating like a pig. I’d had the muzzle of that .45 behind his ear all the time he’d been talking.

  Steckman looked scared.

  ‘Sit down again,’ I told him. He walked over and folded up into his contour chair. I wondered about one thing more, so I asked him, ‘How did you know guys like Pessler would be carrying that much with them, or where they’d be?’

  He shrugged sullenly, answered, ‘Friends of mine, or acquaintances I’ve met at parties. It was easy to get them to drop word of where they were going, or where they’d be at certain times, and if they were carrying much money. Then all I had to do was make sure the kids were there.’ He seemed proud of his little fling into crime.

  A real nice guy this Steckman. ‘Where are those kids coming from now?’ I asked.

  He hesitated a second, then said, ‘Way over from Brooklyn. Why?’

  I knew I couldn’t handle all of them alone, that I’d need the help of Harrison and his Homicide boys, but I wanted those kids here first. I didn’t want any of them walking up as the cops showed, and then blowing.

  So I waited. After half an hour, I dialed the operator. ‘Get me the police! This is an emergency!’

  Then a short wait, and finally a voice said, ‘Police Headquarters. Can I help you?’

  ‘Homicide!’ I bellowed. There wasn’t any reason to yell, but I thought it might get me faster service.

  In a minute I heard Harrison’s dulcet tones. I briefed him in fast, and gave him the address, told him to blast over.

  ‘Is this a gag, Campus? I know Fritz Steckman, and he doesn’t front any bunch of juvie hoods!’

  ‘Look, Harrison,’ I shouted at him, ‘either you get over here within the next ten minutes, or you’re going to find a cache of corpses. And I can bet you either Mr Steckman or myself will be among them. Now for Christ’s sake, back me up on this, at least till you find out whether I’ve got hold of something or—’