This was no ordinary signal for help that Baby-John was radaring to outer space, but a call that had to be heeded, for he had just seen two hard guys go down for the final count—Riff, whom he admired and wept for with affection, and Bernardo, whom he hated but also had to admire because he had proved himself a hard guy.
True, Tony Wyzek hadn’t been a slouch—the way he had used the knife was artistry—but it was his fault that Riff and Bernardo were dead. Riff was eighteen, Bernardo about the same, Baby-John figured, and he was fourteen, which meant that if he ever succeeded in becoming as hard a character as Riff or Bernardo, he only had four years to live, maybe five. Which wasn’t much time at all, especially if he might be spending two or three of the four or five years in the reformatory.
Only minutes before Baby-John had scaled one of the fences of the auto yard, wondered how far he could walk along the top, and decided to find out. With arms extended, fingers stiff, he moved slowly along the fence top so that his heroes, from Batman to Orbit Oscar, could see that he was worth saving. Baby-John sent them hard thoughts, because someone had better come get him before the cops did.
They had seen how he’d just got away from Schrank and Krupke—man, he had really spilled Krupke on his ass—but the cops would be bound to catch him eventually and Krupke would use the stick on him without mercy. A telephone pole was only inches from the end of the fence and Baby-John reached over to stand with his right foot on the cleats.
Suppose he left the yard, found Krupke and Schrank and tried to do them in with the icepick? Or suppose he just ran down Columbus Avenue and gave it to every man or boy PR over ten that he saw? What headlines he would get! But suppose he ran into—Tony Wyzek?
Baby-John held to the pole with both hands to keep from falling, he had become that dizzy. Would he kill Tony? Or was it his duty to defend Tony against the Sharks? Right now he needed leadership. If Batman and Robin wanted to find him it would be easy for they had X-ray eyes and hearing keen enough to tune in on his thoughts. But until his heroes came, he wanted someone up front in the Jets to tell him what to do.
Who’d asked the PR’s to come here? Baby-John sobbed as he slid down the pole, looked around, and started toward the truck. Who’d asked them to come here and kill Riff, a really good guy?
“Anybody in there?” Baby-John whispered into the darkness of the truck. “This is Baby-John sending.”
“Shut up and come in,” A-Rab replied. “Over and out.”
“It’s good to be with someone,” Baby-John sighed after he cleared his throat, wiped at his eyes and nose, and raised his grimy right hand in signal to any and all of his heroes, so that they would know where he was. “Krupke and Schrank—I came around a corner and there they were. For a second I thought it was all over for sure.”
“All right.” A-Rab was impatient. “You got a smoke? You know where some of the other guys are? You seen Tony?”
“Nobody has,” Baby-John answered the last question and flipped his last cigarette to A-Rab, who was trembling as if he needed a fix. “I guess the other guys’ll show up soon, I hope. Maybe they went home.”
“Are you nuts?” A-Rab lit the cigarette and flicked the match at Baby-John. “That’s where the cops’re gonna look first. So don’t you go home for at least a coupla days,” he warned.
“I won’t, A-Rab. Say, did you get a look at ’em?”
“Look at who?”
“Riff and Bernardo, after they got it. You know, there’s lots of blood in people.”
“Shut up!” A-Rab shuddered. “I’m gonna clout you one if you don’t shut up.”
“I’m only talking. Gee, I wish it was yesterday.” Baby-John sighed. “Or tomorrow. Only there shouldn’t’ve been a today. A-Rab, whad’ya say we run away?”
A-Rab slid to the floor of the truck and smoked with his head bowed low. “You’re scared?”
“If you’ll keep it a secret—yeah.”
“Then you cut it out,” A-Rab warned him. “You’re making me scared and that scares me.”
At the sound of a police siren in the black street outside the yard and the sound of running feet, A-Rab dropped to the floor and Baby-John crouched in a corner where the shadow was deepest. A prowl car raced down the street and Baby-John was sure he heard a cop shout that he was going to use his gun if the runner didn’t stop.
A-Rab crawled along the floor until he reached Baby-John. “What’re we gonna do?”
“Wait here, I guess,” Baby-John whispered. “That’s what Action wants. Is he taking over?”
“I guess so,” A-Rab replied. He twisted Baby-John’s arm.
“Whatever happens, no deals with the cops? No tellin’ them anything we know about tonight?”
“Nothing, I swear.” Baby-John raised his hand. “The same movie is playing that I saw when them Sharks got me. So if I tell you about the action we’ve got us alibis.”
A-Rab mussed the younger boy’s hair. “Hey, you got a brain!”
“If we went to the movies what’re we afraid of? Why’re we hiding here?”
“Shut up and tell me about the movie,” A-Rab said. “And make it interesting.”
Caught up in the excitement of hiding from the police, the knowledge that he was no longer play acting, that A-Rab was depending on him, and that they were going to be told what to do by Action, who had never been afraid of anything, made Baby-John feel better and less dependent upon his heroes, busy elsewhere.
Suppose Action decided that they take over a roof, get a real arsenal up there, and see how long they could stand off the cops! Man, wouldn’t that be a way to go out like a man! If Action didn’t have a plan to get them out of this jam, standing off the cops was better than going to the reformatory. Baby-John could see it—cops all around, TV cameras and reporters all over the place, and there they’d be, up on the roof wearing gas masks so they couldn’t be smoked out by gas.
“We gotta get gas masks,” he said to A-Rab.
“Gas masks? What for?”
“To stand off the cops.”
“What the hell’re you talking about?”
“You’ll see.” Baby-John was cagey. “Things’re gonna get worse because they’ll be looking all over for us, like you said. So we gotta have some plan of action. So Action—I guess it’s Action now?”
“Either him or Diesel,” A-Rab agreed. “No, it’s gotta be Action because he’s got more up here.” He touched his head. “At least I think—hope so. So Action is gonna have to tell us what to do.”
“You think he can?” Baby-John was uncertain whether this made him feel good. If Action made the decisions, he would never get the chance to offer his plan. “Maybe he’ll ask what we think.”
“Maybe,” A-Rab agreed and told Baby-John to be quiet because someone was whistling a signal. “That makes six guys who’re here now,” he said. “Not bad.”
Gathered in the body of the truck, seated on cushions taken from other cars, they waited for more members of the Jets to show. Anybodys was talking her head off about the crowbar she had found which would be the greatest thing for prying open windows and doors, and could also serve as a weapon. But no one listened, for they were waiting impatiently for Action to finish his cigarette and tell them what to do.
Action counted heads—there were eight—no, nine Jets present, if he counted Anybodys—and ground his cigarette into the floor of the truck. “I guess we’d better get started,” he said, “because I figure some of us must’ve got picked up. Now, are there any objections to my taking over?”
“Suits me,” Mouthpiece said.
“Fine,” Action continued after everyone had murmured that he was leader. “Who’s got a plan?”
“I have,” Anybodys said before Baby-John could speak. “We gotta save Tony. Because some certain parties are lookin’ for him.”
“So I say let’m find him and save us the trouble,” Diesel said. “Action, don’t you think we’ve had enough? We gotta get outa here before we’re taken downtown for photog
raphing with a number ’cross our chests. Certain parties are looking for Tony—I hope they find him. Dirty bastard.” He spat. “If it wasn’t for him Riff would be alive and I woulda taken Bernardo.”
“Who’s lookin’ for Tony?” Action ignored Diesel.
Anybodys shifted to a part of the cushion through which the springs had not broken. “The Sharks,” she said. “After everybody scattered, I figured I oughta infiltrate the PR territory. See what was goin’ on. It doesn’t take much of a shadow to hide me and I can move like nothin’ most people ever saw.”
“You are something most people never saw,” Snowboy said. “So stop building and get on with it.”
“You’ve got something to tell us?” Action asked Anybodys. “We’re listening.”
“I heard Chino talking to some of the Sharks. I was real close to them and they didn’t know it.” She could not resist the tone of accomplishment. “And he was telling them something about Tony and Bernardo’s sister. Then he started to swear in spic but I understand a little.” Again she paused. “Swore if it was the last thing he did, he was gonna get Tony.”
“Tony’ll knock his effen head off,” Diesel said. “I mean the old Tony could.”
“Could be,” Anybodys agreed. “That’s if Chino doesn’t blow Tony apart first. I saw the gun he showed them.”
“Goddamn them!” Action was on his feet. “Them lousy PR’s don’t let up! I don’t wanna hear nothing outa you that sounds like double-crossing talk. I got no love for Tony, but if anybody fixes him it’s us. No spics. Do I hear any objections?”
Standing before each of the Jets, Action moved on when he saw each of them move his head to signify that he was making the decisions, and like them or not, they were binding on all of them.
“We’ve gotta find him,” Action said. “So we’ll spread out. Anybodys, you think you can find Graziella and the other chicks?”
“I guess so,” she said.
“Then tell them to look too. And whoever finds Tony brings him back here. So somebody’s gotta stay. Somebody who’s not afraid of being alone in the dark.”
“That’s me,” Baby-John said.
“Then you stay. And if anybody shows give them the word. If Tony shows he stays here with you. Understand?”
“Sure.” Baby-John nodded. “But maybe Anybodys’ll lend me her crowbar.”
“If I get it back.”
Action gestured for them to follow him from the truck, and as Baby-John settled himself with the crowbar at his side he began to send out hard thoughts again to his heroes.
A little sad, he wondered if his trouble was just too small for them to bother with. Maybe, on his way through outer space, Riff might put in a good word for him.
CHAPTER NINE
Yes, she had kissed him as he lay on the bed, and in desperation he had clung to her, pressed his lips to her mouth. In anguished desperation he had grasped her, as if dying, and his right hand had touched her breast, hesitated, then with his palm cupped the warm flesh that beat under the fabric. And the knowledge that their lives together would be ended within minutes—at best within an hour or two—had compelled him to pull her over and across him, so that they were together on the bed.
He trembled again and attempted to leave the bed, so she had moved to the other pillow and listened as he wept, then slept. Soon her mother and father would be coming up the stairs—or were they on the way to the undertakers? Or would Bernardo be taken to the morgue?
She felt the bed shake as Tony trembled convulsively and drew up his legs as if in the throes of the bends. Groping through chaos, he gasped for breath and attempted to leave the bed.
“Stay,” she said to him.
“Maria?” she heard him whisper, “Maria, I gotta go.”
Not giving him time to speak again, she embraced him and fitted her breasts, her stomach, her loins to his body, and desire overcame fear, joy overcame sorrow, until a siren wailed in the street below.
Suddenly he thrust free and fumbled for his shoes. Terror rose in her throat and she pressed her lips against his cheek to keep the cry within her so that it would not escape to frighten the boy in whose arms she had lain.
“We are married,” she sobbed. “This afternoon we were so happy. Tonight waiting for you I was so happy.”
“You’re young,” he said. “You’ll be happy again. With someone better than me. That’s what I see for you.”
She shook her head. “Be my husband.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I’m a murderer.”
“Then be my lover.”
“I can’t.” He turned away not to see her eyes. “Bernardo won’t let me. My God, Maria, I killed him!”
“And he killed your friend. The boy who was like your brother.”
“No.” He had to deny it. “That was long ago. Just talk, nothing more. He was never my brother. At the end I don’t even think he was my friend.”
“To kill for him, he had to be more than a friend,” she continued in her low, calm voice. “Tell me about him.”
“What’s there to tell?” He trembled with grief. “Riff was a good joe. He had guts, he wasn’t afraid of anybody, and he was always looking for a fight to prove it.”
Maria shook her head. “Like Bernardo.”
“I guess so,” Tony said. “The Jets meant a lot to him.”
“Bernardo loved the Sharks.”
“I guess they were alike.”
Maria nodded as she sat on the bed and traced the damp outline of Tony’s head on the pillow. She pitied Tony and Riff, who had been so like Bernardo. She had never seen Riff’s eyes, but knew they had been like Bernardo’s, ever restless and vicious, searching out hatreds as if to prove over and over again that he was a man, and always failing.
What future could there have been for Riff or Bernardo? None that she could see. In the warped years of their youth, they had seen, witnessed, found joy and participated in enough violences to age a dozen men. They loved nothing and destroyed everything, although they protested that it was one thing only that they hated—each other. So she pitied Riff as she pitied her brother, and would have willingly, at that moment, given her life for either of them.
But to what purpose? That they might kill other men? Eventually they had to die: in a bar or outside a poolroom, at some dance or in the back seat of an automobile, along a lonely stretch of highway or on some tenement roof. But not in bed. For boys like Riff and Bernardo preyed upon each other and were in turn preyed upon by every man and woman who could cater to and find profit in their violence. If they had lived to grow a little older, they would never grow wiser.
“That is why they both had to die,” she said. “And that is why you must not. Because you were like them, once. But you wanted to be different—I know. And Riff and my poor brother did not.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “I killed Bernardo. Doesn’t it mean anything that he was your brother? And that I did it to him?”
“You did not want to go there tonight,” she said, speaking for sorrowing women everywhere. “I sent you. I made you promise to go.”
“You did,” he said quickly, to keep her from sharing any part of his guilt. “But you didn’t want me to kill your brother. Don’t you love him? Can’t you cry for him?”
“Must you ask when I can cry for all the world? ’Nardo was my brother, and you are the man I love.” She shook him. “I want to love everything in the world. Not only the things I know but the things and people I do not know and will never see or meet. Do you understand?”
“Look at us.” He stared around the dark room, heavy with heat and shadows. “We’ve gone from living and loving to dying. It happened too fast.”
A finger suddenly placed by Maria across his lips silenced him, and they heard the hard tap of high heels and Anita’s frantic voice as she called out in the kitchen. “Maria?”
Anita knocked on the bedroom door. “Maria, it’s Anita. Why are you locked in?”
Maria gestured for Tony
to remain silent. “I didn’t know it was locked.”
“Open the door.” Anita rattled the knob again. “I need you.”
Tony placed his hand full across Maria’s mouth. “Give me a second,” he whispered. “Tell her to wait a second.”
“One moment, Anita,” Maria called. “I was asleep, and it is still in my eyes.” She turned to Tony. “Where are you going?”
“To Doc’s,” he continued in a whisper. “If you’ll go away with me, I’ll wait there. You know where it is?”
“I walked by today to see if I could see you.”
“He’ll help us with money,” Tony whispered as he stepped over the sill. “You’ll meet me?”
Maria was silent as Anita tried the door again. “You’re talking to someone,” she called through the closed door. “Maria!”
“At Doc’s.” Maria placed a finger on Tony’s lips. “As soon as I can.” She watched Tony go quickly down the fire escape, then moved slowly toward the door. “Coming, Anita!”
Anita pushed by to look from the bed to the window to Bernardo’s sister in her slip and bare feet.
“Did you see Chino?” Maria asked. “He was here before, and he was like a wild man.” She paused because Anita continued to stare at her. “All right,” she challenged Anita. “Now you know.”
“You tramp!” Anita screamed and darted toward the window to slam it shut. “There isn’t a whore in the world who would have done what you did! He killed your brother and you rewarded him by going to bed with him? What would you do if he killed your father and mother? Walk the streets for him?”
She was too spent, too tired to explain. She reached for Anita’s hand, but Anita retreated to a corner of the room, to stare as if Maria were something so unclean, so ghoulish, she would never admit having seen her.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Maria said to the sobbing girl. “And he feels the same way.”
“He should have died instead of his friend! Bernardo should have killed him!”
West Side Story Page 11