by Ed McBain
See Them Die
Ed Mcbain
1
July.
Heat.
In the city, they are synonymous, they are identical, they mean one and the same thing. In the 87th Precinct, they strut the streets with a vengeance, these twin bitches who wear their bleached blond hair and their bright-red lipstick slashes, who sway on glittering rhinestone slippers, who flaunt their saffron silk. Heat and July, they are identical twins who were born to make you suffer.
The air is tangible. You can reach out to touch it. It is sticky and clinging, you can wrap it around you like a viscous overcoat. The asphalt in the gutters has turned to gum, and your heels clutch at it when you try to navigate the streets. The pavements glow with a flat off-white brilliance, contrasting with the running black of the gutter, creating an alternating pattern of shade and light that is dizzying. The sun sits low on a still sky, a sky as pale as faded dungarees. There is only a hint of blue in this sky for it has been washed out by the intensity of the sun, and there is a shimmer over everything, the shimmer of heat ready to explode in rain.
The buildings bear the heat with the solemnity of Orthodox Jews in long, black frock coats. They have known this heat. Some of them have withstood it for close to a century, and so their suffering is a silent one; they face the heat with the intolerant blankness of stoics.
Scrawled onto the pavement in white chalk are the words: JES&S VIENE, PREPARENSE FOR NUESTRA REDENCION!
The buildings crowd the sidewalks and prepare neither for their redemption nor their perdition.
There is not much sky on this street.
There are places in the world where the sky is big, where it stretches from horizon to horizon like a gaudy blue tent, but such is not the case on this street. The sky here seems to have been wedged down over the uneven silhouette of the buildings, crammed into place because it would not fit properly, battered with a grimy fist until it tightly capped the street and contained the heat there.
The street is quiet.
It is only 8:40 in the morning, and it is Sunday.
There are unfluttering scraps of newspapers in the gutters; they share the gummy asphalt with empty tin cans and broken bottles and sticks ripped from orange crates. In the empty lot on one corner, there are the charred remains of bonfires, a torn and soiled crib mattress, the trailing white snakes of used condoms. The fire escapes are hung with the trivia of life: blankets, pillows, beer cases, potted plants, and here and there a guitar. A man sleeping on one of the fire escapes moves his arm, and it dangles down through the iron bars for a moment, swings idly, and then comes to a rest.
This is the only movement on the street.
The air is fetidly still. The heat is a self-contained, lifeless unit which does not stir and which discourages the motion of anything it embraces. It has baked itself into the brick fronts of the tenements, and the asphalt, and the pavements, and the sky. It has baked itself into these things and onto these things like orange enamel on copper.
Somewhere in the distance, the church bells toll, for this is Sunday morning, but even the bells ring qut on the air with a harsh flatness, a metallic unevenness that must force its way through layers and layers of heat. Beneath that, like a rushing counterpoint, the elevated train roars past two blocks south, and then the train sound dies, and the bell sound dissipates in the sticky silence of the air, and the street is still once more.
Two people will die on this street today.
The boy's name was Zip.
He was seventeen years old and he erupted from the mouth of the tenement like a hand-grenade explosion. He came onto the stoop lightly, and then almost danced down the steps. He looked up at the waking man on the fire escape, waved nonchalantly, and then glanced up the street. He was tall and thin, good-looking in a craggy way, with a light complexion and black hair which he wore in a high crown off his forehead. He was wearing tight black slacks and high-topped combat boots and a bright silk purple jacket with his name embroidered in yellow on the left breast.
He looked at his watch.
It was 8:45, and he noted the time and then nodded, as if he had correctly estimated the exact duration of each of his movements up to this moment, as if he and the universe were meshing gears correctly. He looked up the street again. There was an air of restless urgency about him, the air a business magnate wears when he is expecting to close a deal for the purchase of a new company. The attitude was curious on a seventeen-year-old. And yet, he looked at his watch again, a person captured by the intricacies of time, the mind of a fifty-year-old banker seemingly ensnared in the body of an adolescent.
He lighted a cigarette, took several puffs on it, and then stamped it out under one booted foot. He looked at his watch again, stepped into the center of the street, and then started for the luncheonette on the corner. A huge sign traveled the corner of the building over the luncheonette like the marching electric letters of the Times Building in New York. These letters, however, were painted in red on a white field and they did not announce world-shattering events. They simply stated: luis luncheonette. The luncheonette occupied a space in the corner of the building. When the doors were rolled back, the luncheonette became an extension of the sidewalk, open on both sides, the avenue and the street. The doors were closed now. The corrugated iron presented the impregnable look of a fortress. The boy went to the door on the street side, tried it, found it locked, and kicked it in anger.
"What are you doing there?" a voice said. "Get away from there!"
The man who came up the street had spoken with a slight Spanish accent, a gentle accent which seemed molded exactly to his appearance. He was a stoop-shouldered man wearing a small black mustache, a man who seemed older than his fifty-odd years, who moved with an economy that somehow seemed tortured.
"Don't tell me you're finally gonna open this dump!" Zip said.
Luis Amandez walked to the huge iron door and said, "What are you doing? Trying to break in here, hah? That what you were trying to do?"
He reached into his pocket for the key to the padlock, inserted it, took off the lock, and prepared to roll the door back into its overhead tracks.
"Don't flatter the dump," Zip said. "Come on, come on, get the lead out. Open the goddamn doors."
"This is my place, and I'll open them as slow or as fast as I want to. You snotnoses..."
Zip grinned suddenly. "Come on, man," he said, and there was infectious warmth in his voice now. "You got to move! You want to get any place, you got to move."
Luis rolled back the first of the doors. "I wish you would move," he said. "To California."
"Dig the old bird," Zip said. "He's got humor." And he walked into the luncheonette and directly to the wall phone near the jukebox. Luis went around to the avenue side and took the padlock off the door there, rolling the door back, allowing the sunshine to rip through the corner stone like crossfire. Zip had taken the phone from its hook, reached into his pocket for a coin, and discovered that the smallest change he had was a quarter. He slammed the receiver onto the hook and went to meet Luis as he entered the shop.
"Listen, break a quarter for me," he said.
"What for?" Luis asked. "For the jukebox?"
"What's all the time 'What for?' Don't I buy enough in this crumby joint? I ask you for change, don't give me a Dragnet routine."
"It's too early to play the juke," Luis said calmly, going behind the counter and taking a white apron from a hook. "There are still people sleeping."
"In the first place, I don't care who's sleeping. It's time they were hustling. In the second place, I ain't gonna play the juke, I'm gonna make a phone call. And in the third and last place, you don't change this two bits for me, and one day you're liable to come in and find all your coffeepots busted."
"You threaten me?" Luis said. "I am a friend of the police. I tell them..."
"Come on, come on," Zip said, and again the warm grin flashed on his face. "You can sue me later. Right now, give me the change, huh? Come on."
Luis shook his head, picked up the quarter, and reached into his pocket. He made the change, and Zip picked it up and started for the telephone. He began dialing. Luis, since money matters had been brought to mind, walked to the cash register, reached into his pocket, and put in his day's starting money, laying the bills into the register drawer. He was about to break open a roll of dimes when Zip yelled, "Hey! Hey, Cooch! Over here!"
Luis turned. The second boy was also from the neighborhood, also wearing one of the purple silk jackets, but he was younger than Zip. Luis studied him from the distance of age, and wondered if he too had sported such a ridiculously thin and boyish-looking mustache when he was sixteen. He decided that he had not. The boy was short and squat, with thick powerful hands. His complexion was dark. He spotted Zip from the middle of the street and shouted, "Hey, Zipboy!" and then broke into a trot for the luncheonette. Luis sighed and cracked the roll of dimes on the edge of the cash drawer.
"What the hell kept you?" Zip asked. "I was just calling your house."
"Oh, man, don't ask," Cooch said. He spoke, as did Zip, without a trace of an accent. Both were total products of the city and the neighborhood, as far removed from Puerto Rico as was Mongolia. Studying them, Luis felt suddenly old, suddenly foreign. He shrugged, went to his stove, and began putting up his pots of coffee.
"My people are the eeriest, you know that, man?" Cooch said. He had large brown eyes, and he used his face expressively when he spoke, like a television comic going through a famous routine. "I think my old man must be on the Chamber of Commerce, I swear to God."
"What's your old man got to do with your being late? I said a quarter to nine, so here it is..."
"He gets a letter from Puerto Rico," Cooch went on blithely, "and right away he flips. 'Come stay with us,' he writes. 'Come live with us. Bring all your kids, and your grandma, and your police dog. We'll take care of you.'" Cooch slapped his forehead dramatically. "So all our goddamn barefoot cousins come flop with us. And every time another one shows up at the airport, my old man throws a party."
"Listen, what's this got to..."
"He threw a party last night. Out came the goddamn guitars. We had enough strings there to start a symphony. You shoulda seen my old man. He has a couple of drinks, right away his hands head for my old lady. Like homing pigeons. Two drinks, and his hands were on her ass."
"Look, Cooch, who cares where your old man's..."
"Judging from last night," Cooch said reflectively, "I should have another brother soon."
"All right, now how come you're late?"
"I been trying to tell you. The jump didn't break up until four a.m. I could hardly crawl outa bed this morning. I still can't see too straight." He paused. "Where's Papa? Ain' he here yet?"
"That's what I'm wondering. You all think we're playing games here."
"Who, me?" Cooch said, offended. "Me? I think that?"
"Okay, maybe not you," Zip said, relenting. "The other guys."
"Me?" Cooch persisted, astonished and hurt. "Me? Who was it first showed you around the scene when you moved up here?"
"Okay, I said not you, didn't I?"
"Where'd you come from? Some crumby slum near the Calm's Point Bridge? What the hell did you know about this neighborhood? Who showed you around, huh?"
"You did, you did," Zip said patiently.
"Yeah. So right away you hop on me. A few minutes late, and you..." -"Ten minutes late," Zip corrected.
"All right, ten minutes, I didn't know you had a stop watch. Man, I don't understand you sometimes, Zip. Saying I think we're playing games here. Man, if ever a guy..."
"I said not you! For Pete's sake, I said not you! I'm talking about the other studs." He paused. "Did you stop by for Sixto?"
"Yeah. That's another reason I'm late. You give me all these stops to..."
"So where is he?"
"He had to help his old lady."
"Doing what?"
"With the baby. Listen, you think it's kicks having a baby in the house? I never seen a kid could wet her pants like Sixto's sister. Every time you turn around, that kid is pissing."
"He was changing her pants?" Zip asked, astonished.
"He was powdering her behind the last time I seen him."
"I'm gonna powder his behind when he gets here!" Zip said angrily. "See, that's just what I mean. He thinks we're fooling around here. Then you wonder why we ain't making a name for ourselves. It's because nobody on this club's for real, that's why. Everybody expects me to do everything."
"We got a name, Zip," Cooch said gently.
"We got balls! You guys still think this is a goddamn basket ball team at the Boys' Club. When you gonna grow up? You want to walk the streets in this neighborhood, or you want to hide every time there's a backfire?"
"I don't hide from nothing!"
"You think anybody on the Royal Guardians is scared of anything?" Zip asked.
"No, but the Royal Guardians got two hundred and fifty members."
"So how do you think they got them members? By being late when there's a wash job scheduled?"
"Hey!" Cooch said suddenly.
"What's the matter?"
"Shhhh."
A woman was coming up the street, her ample breasts bobbing with the haste of her steps. Her black hair was pulled into a bun at the back of her neck. She looked neither to the right nor to the left. She walked with a purposefulness, almost a blindness, passing the boys who stood in the open street side of the luncheonette, turning the corner, and moving out of sight.
"You see who that was?" Cooch whispered.
"That lady?"
"Yeah." Cooch nodded. "Alfie's mother."
"What?" He walked to the corner and stared up the avenue. But the woman was already gone.
"Alfredo Gomez's mother," Cooch said. "Man, was she in a hurry! Zip, you think he told her?"
"What do I care, he told her or not?"
"What I mean ... like this is his old lady ... like if he told her..."
"So he told her. How's that gonna help him?"
"You know how dames are. She might've got excited. She might've..."
"Stop crapping your pants, will you? You got nothing but small-time guts, you know that? You're just like my old man. He talks like a senator. A real wheel. Always telling me about Puerto Rico. Who cares about that damn island? I was born here, right in this city. I'm a real American. But he's always telling me what a big shot he was in San Juan. You know what it turns out he done there? I found out from one of my uncles. You know what he done?"
"What?"
"He fixed bicycles for a living. So that's the big wheel. Big talk that's all. But small-time guts."
"I got as much guts..."
"Sure, so you see Alfie's mother out for a stroll, and you start shaking. You know what you're gonna be when you grow up?"
"No. What?"
"A guy who fixes bicycles." , "Aw, come on. I..."
"Or a guy who shines shoes."
"I never shined a pair of shoes in my life!" Cooch said proudly. "I don't even shine my own shoes!"
"That's wflfy you look like a slob," Zip said, and then abruptly turned'his head. Someone was approaching.
2
The sailor had rounded the corner as Cooch spoke. He was a tall, blond man well, not exactly a man, and yet not a boy. He was perhaps twenty-two years old, and he had reached that mysterious boundary line which divided a man from a boy, but he was still straddling the line so that it was impossible to think of him as a boy, and yet stretching a point to consider him a man. Man or boy, he was quite drunk at the moment He walked with the sailor's habitual roll, but the roll was somewhat frustrated by his erratic drunken weaving. His white hat was perched precariously on the back of his head, a
nd his white uniform was spotlessly clean, reflecting the early-morning sunshine with a dazzling brilliance. He stopped on the corner, looked up at the sign over the luncheonette, mumbled something to himself, shook his head violently, and then continued up the street.
Zip stifled a laugh and nudged Cooch in the ribs.
"Ten bucks says I know what he's looking for," Cooch said, grinning.
"Never mind what he's looking for. Go get Sixto and Papa.
Tell them I'm waiting, and tell them I'm getting slightly p.o.'d. Now move."
"Don't get excited," Cooch said, but he moved up the street quickly, passing the drunken sailor who had headed back towards the luncheonette. The sailor was in that sort of haze where everything seems to involve a decision meriting vast concentration and deliberation. He stopped at each building, studied the numerals, shook his head solemnly, and finally wound up in front of the luncheonette again, still shaking his head. He studied the sign, considered the vast symbolism in the words luis luncheonette, pondered this symbolism for a while, shook his head again, and was beginning to retrace his steps down the street when Zip said, "Help you, sailor?"
"Huh?" the sailor asked.
"You look lost," Zip said. His manner was quite pleasant. He grinned warmly and the sailor responded to the grin immediately, the lost wanderer accepting the first friendly hand.
"Listen," he said drunkenly, "where's La ... La Galli... La ... Listen, I was talking to a guy inna bar downtown, you know? An' we began discussin'..." He stopped and studied Zip with drunkenly profound narrowness. "Listen, how old are you?"
"Seventeen," Zip said.
"Oh."
The sailor tabulated this silently, his mind whirring. He nodded. "Okay, then. I didn't wanna impair the morals of a ... so this guy an' me, we were discussin' ... well, I was sorta expressin' my desire for sorta climbin' into bed with a female, you know? A girl. You know?"
"So he sent you up here?"
"Yeah. No. Yeah, yeah, he did. He said there was a place up here called ... ah... La Gallina." He pronounced the word with a Western twang that brought a new smile to Zip's mouth.
"La Gallina, yes," Zip said, giving it the proper Spanish pronunciation.