Web of the City

by Harlan Ellison

  Rusty’s brow furrowed. What was this all about? It was the truant deputy who came around when a kid cut school, not a teacher. Unless it was someone like Carl Pancoast, and Miss Clements had never taken that sort of interest in her pupils. Why was she so interested in him? Rusty bit his lower lip in thought and worried.

  “I come in here, make sure she din’t wake Angelita; what she wants with you?” Mrs. Givens’ face was drawn in concern.

  Rusty was at a loss to answer. Whatever the woman wanted, it seemed she was going to a lot more trouble than one day of missed schoolwork demanded. “Don’t worry, Miz Givens,” Rusty smoothed her concern, “it’s about school. I missed a couple classes. It’ll be okay, so now don’t worry.”

  The little woman nodded her head as though she was reluctant to believe such mad actions could have a basis so slight. But her nod finally changed to one of acceptance. She frowned so two tiny dimples fell in her cheeks, and she said, very, very softly, “Mama is very sick. Very sick. Not so good, but maybe tomorrow she’ll be fine. We’ll see.” Her words had ceased to be conversation. She talked to herself now, the old people way, the old country way. She walked back across the room to the window and stood staring out through the rip in the shade. It cut in sections the silver falling across the room.

  Rusty took another look at Moms and renewed his promise. It would be kept, that promise. Finally.

  He went back into the living room.

  Miss Clements was testing for dust along the top of one low cornice, with a long, white finger. She brought her hand down self-consciously as Rusty came into the room.

  Somehow, that meant something. That and the fact that her eyes were very odd looking and her manner was high-strung and her complexion was fish-belly white. All that meant there was more to Rusty’s side of this than she wanted him to know. He felt a new strength in her presence invade his manner, his voice.

  “What’d you want, Miss Clements?”

  She took a long moment to begin and her hesitation was coupled with a turning of the little handbag. “You shouldn’t miss classes, Rusty,” she said. It wasn’t what she had wanted to say at all.

  Rusty did not answer. It was her hoop, let her roll it.

  “What I mean is,” she went into her frigid classroom tone, “there are ways and means of making you people attend school when you are required to do so. If you persist in cutting classes, I will be forced to go to the Prin—”

  Rusty cut her off with a half-cough, half-chuckle that had been waiting to emerge for two semesters. It stopped her. She licked her thin, icy lips.

  She started again. “I’m, I’m very sorry to hear about your sister. I’ve seen her many times in the halls and she seemed like an intelligent little girl with a remarkable capacity of learning.”

  It died. It just fell down and croaked. Rusty stared at her with hatred bubbling in his eyes. Bull! That was what she was spitting, just plain bull!

  “Whaddaya want from me, Miss Clements?”

  Her look became one of huntedness. To Rusty it was sadistically fascinating to make her squirm, as she made him squirm in class. She hated Puerto Ricans. She had often spoken of them as “You People” as though they were untouchables, and now one of Those People had her wiggling on the end of the rod.

  She tried to start several times, then gave it up and murmured a good-bye. She started for the door, but Rusty stopped her with a word. She turned and the real reason for her appearance here came out in a flooding rush.

  “You’ve got to stop this running around and—and looking for people, Santoro!” She spat out his name as though it were coated with alum. It typified her attitude in class; bitter, nasty, tactless. “You’ve got to buckle down and stop this senseless, this stupid…” She waggled her hands for emphasis, came up with another thought entirely. “Do you want to flunk History?”

  Rusty eyed her coldly. It was apparent, she was threatening him with the one weapon at her disposal. She would lay the skids to him in school. Well, then, okay, lady. Do your sleazy damnedest!

  He shrugged. “Don’t care.”

  She bit her lip. Desperation rang in her voice. “I’m warning you, Santoro,” her voice rose sharply, “if you don’t cease this childish melodramatic detective business, I’m going to take you to the Principal. You wouldn’t like that. You listen to me!” she was almost screaming, for Rusty had half-turned away in restrained fury.

  The bedroom door popped open and Mrs. Givens emerged, her plump little hands twitching in brown circles. “Go ’way! Go on, go ’way! You making more sickness here! G’wan, get out!” She lapsed into deep Spanish, and the force of her tirade drove the bone-thin teacher before her, as though whiplashed.

  Miss Clements cast a frantic look at Rusty who had turned his back and was clutching the fabric of the easy chair with unbelievable tenseness. He was deaf to her, his eyes were closed to her. School? Nothing, next to finding the man in the camel’s hair coat. No matter how much she warned him, and cajoled and threatened, he was on his way somewhere, and no one would stop him. No failure meant anything, next to that final failure.

  Mrs. Givens’ low but furious words sent the teacher to the door. Miss Clements tried to hurl one last threat at the boy, but the little Puerto Rican woman had the door open and the teacher was outside before she could stop herself.

  The door slammed in her face, softly.

  Rusty was alone with Mrs. Givens. She knew enough to say nothing. She went back to the bedroom, to resume her vigil, and as she passed within, the trembling words, “So much trouble…” trailed like smoke behind her.

  Rusty stood clutching the fabric of the easy chair till it ripped with the intensity of his grip. Then he dropped his hands free, and sank into the chair, despair choking him.

  That was the first incident.

  The second incident was much less complicated, affected Rusty less violently and promised much more trouble.

  He had left the apartment, again pacing the street in search of an answer. Several times he left the beaten track of the neighborhood, and sought nothing at all on the rooftops, in the big weed-high lot between a deserted dry cleaning plant and the back of a row of apartment buildings, in the alleys. He searched and found nothing. The city had drawn in its lines to him. He was seeking and they wanted no part of him as he trudged that road.

  He received the warning as he entered Tom-Tom’s joint. The baby-fat sphere that was the soda jerk came out of the back room, the shine of sweat across his forehead. Nipping at the Tokay again. Well, that was okay, too. Everybody had a skeleton. Tom-Tom’s didn’t rattle as much as some.

  “I got a message for you,” the fat little man said, coming up behind the counter.

  Rusty had swung up automatically on a stool. It was the way he did it when he came in, and reflex carried him. “From who?”

  Tom-Tom shook his head in an indefinite bobble. “Don’t know, y’know. Some kid, one of these kids that hang with the little kids around the stoop up the street, y’know, he brought it around, said to give it to you.”

  He reached up onto the mirror and from behind a stud that held the mirror in place he withdrew a folded envelope. Dirty and frayed. He handed it to Rusty, and moved away.

  Rusty tore it open sloppily, and drew out the single sheet of notepaper. It was from a three-ring notebook such as the type used in his high school.

  In a painstaking print that tried valiantly to be anonymous, the note said, STAY OUT OF CHEROKEE TURF AND STOP TRYING TO STICK YOUR BASTARD NOSE IN WHERE IT DON’T BELONG. COUGARS.

  So that was the second warning, was it? Now the gang was afraid he was getting too close to something. What the hell was all this? So far Rusty had found out nothing, really. He had two bits of information that were valuable and a round cipher of nothing for the rest. He sought a man in a camel’s hair coat, and somehow that man was tied up with dope. Other than that—nothing.

  He read the note again. The Cougars had changed a lot since he had been Prez. They were wilder
now, though they had never been chicken-gut while he was top man, and there seemed to be something about them they did not want known, even to the gutter-runners who knew them so well.

  Rusty tapped the note against his fingernail for a moment. Then he laid it down on the counter. A wet ring, left from a Coke bottle, darkened through, and the paper lay flat to the micarta surface. He stared at it for a long time, and then folded it up, put it in his pocket. Bull! It meant nothing, except that someone was putting the screws to the neighborhood. Whoever had shuffled the Cougars onto him was not going to stop with anything as simple as this. He wondered for a moment why they hadn’t just taken him into the alley and leaned on him heavily. Then he remembered the Beast and the night before, and he knew they were not going to fool around any more than they were forced to.

  Rusty had a silent, hulking protector there and that bothered him, too.

  For a minute he contemplated going after the gang, trying to wring out of them the names of the persons who had made them send this note. It was obvious there was a line of communication between that Mirsky kid and the Cougars, or the gang would never have known he had been looking. The tie-up between such live enemies as the Cherokees and the Cougars brought the first faint tingle of tenseness to him. It had to be a strong tie, and one that put the fear of something into those knife-happy tenement kids. Rusty grew worried, and almost immediately discarded the idea of going looking for the gang.

  First, they were probably well gone by now. Second, he did not want to press his luck with shoving them. Once he had beaten Candle fairly. The second time he had been saved by the Beast, but a third time might shove the juvies a little too far.

  Tom-Tom walked back up, stopped in front of Rusty, and leaned a plump, pink arm on the counter. “Bad news?”

  Rusty looked up, and the natural belligerence he felt at being so helpless emerged. “Good news. They got a special on, down at the undertakers. They’ll let me have you embalmed for halfprice. Special on all busybodies.”

  Tom-Tom edged away, a lingering fear of the kids in his eyes. He busied himself with non-essentials.

  It was a dead bit, all the way around. Rusty slid off the stool, ambled toward the door. He stopped with one hand on the glass and turned to the little soda jerk with a stark expression on his face. “You see ’em, you give ’em the word. I don’t scare easy, man.”

  Then he hit the street. That was the second incident and it didn’t really matter.

  The third did. It was bad.

  If there was a tie-up between the Cougars and the Cherokees, if there was something in common, something already stated as important, it was the dope. The weed. The H. The white powder that had invaded the club since Rusty had left. Rusty had fought against the encroachment of dope since he had won the presidency of the gang from the previous leader in a fight. But after he had left, and Candle had come to power, he had heard many rumors.

  The kids were on. They were real high. Sky.

  Now the Cherokees had been hyped to a rumble and the Cougars were warning him away from that turf and the kid, Mirsky, had indicated a tie-up somewhere. So he had to find the source of dope in the neighborhood. Obvious. The pusher.

  But that would not be as easy as it looked.

  The pusher was Boy-O, naturally. Everyone knew that. But where did the scumbag get it from? The Horse didn’t come up out of the sidewalk and it didn’t fall from the sky like manna. It had to come in from Mexico, or it had to come ashore down at the docks. But it sure as hell didn’t spring full-blown into Boy-O’s reeky fingers. So just finding the little scumbag wasn’t enough. He had to find the hands that put the stuff into Boy-O’s hands and the hands that were behind those. And on, and on, until maybe even downtown was involved, and that was way the hell out of Rusty’s territory.

  What the hell had he fallen into? Or rather, what had the death of Dolores dragged him into? He had to find Boy-O. Then it hit him…

  Boy-O! That was part of the answer. The tie-up he had been seeking was now quite clear to him. He should have realized it when Mirsky said, “They kept callin’ him kid, or boy, or somethin’—”

  Boy-O, who ran tea in the Cougar turf—and now it was apparent he had a similar route in Cherokee turf—had been the other person Mirsky had not seen in the darkness of the garage. He had persuaded some of his addicts to warn everyone in the Cherokee turf that Rusty was around and not to spill anything. It had to be. Sure they had called the half-seen person “boy.” But it had been Boy-O, not just boy. The tie-up was there. Dope and Boy-O and the rumble and the silence of the gangs. Now Rusty knew why the Cherokees and the Cougars were silent to him. If they spilled anything, they would get their pot cut away from them and that was the worst that could happen to a bunch of junkies.

  But whether Boy-O had wanted silence simply because he was afraid Rusty would find out who had peddled the stuff that had gotten the Cherks high enough to rumble, or whether there was another tie-up between Boy-O and the death of Dolores he didn’t know. But he would find out.

  It was fairly obvious why Boy-O wanted so much silence. At best, peddling the snuff was a risky bit and with Rusty so hot to find out who had done his sister, there was always the chance Rusty might reveal the snuff-peddler’s name to the cops, either out of hatred (for the rumble had been taking place while Rusty might have stopped whoever raped his sister) or just out of spite. So the silence curtain had fallen.

  But now Rusty knew the score. He had to find Boy-O. He might be the key—the key to the man in the camel’s hair coat.

  But where was Boy-O? He had gone underground. Would the neighborhood help Rusty find him?

  The neighborhood was cool and deadly these days. They were waiting, like a driver on a dynamite truck, waiting for the big boom that had to come. The word had filtered all through the turf and everyone knew the big trouble was brewing. When one of the gang turned on his fellows, when the club went after a lone stud, there was bound to be trouble. Worse than a rumble. There would be running and shooting and one morning the Department of Public Sanitation would find something messy in one of the gutters.

  Then the fuzz would start prowling and a lot of families would be broken up as kids were hauled away to the line-up. This was going to be a bad time and anyone who felt the chill wind of trouble in the neighborhood was clamming up, staying as far from the boom as possible.

  Doors were closed to Rusty.

  Duke Ferreira might have helped, but—

  “Look, kid, it’s not I don’t wanna give you the word. It’s not you ain’t a good kid. But I got a business here, an’ I can’t take the chance on goofin’ out. Y’know what I mean?”

  Rusty knew what he meant and left the horse parlor with the blare of the loudspeakers from Santa Anita, Belmont and Hialeah ringing in his ears. The next time Duke needed a runner in a hurry Rusty was going to be unavailable.

  Whitey Savest might also have helped, but—

  “Geddouda here. You’re a jinx. I don’t need no more fraykin’ trouble. You promised me protection when you was with them kids and when you got the boot that stinkin’ Shaster kid put the screws to me good. I got ten machines out of whack ’cause of them kids. So beat it. Now!”

  Rusty left the pinball joint with his ears stinging. He would see that Whitey had more trouble, if he could. But, hell, why bother? He didn’t care for revenge. Not on Whitey, at any rate.

  Weissenborn couldn’t help. Wouldn’t help. Mae Franco wouldn’t help. Swart wouldn’t help—he was out cold and snoring in a rear seat of the Tivoli, anyhow.

  So Rusty walked the streets till the evening closed down again, and Boy-O had laid out some place where he was unavailable.

  Then the third incident occurred.

  Rusty passed the black mouth of the alley separating two nameless apartment buildings and his mind was a welter of worry and indecision. So far, everything he had done had come to a blind end. He had been threatened, not very hard, but enough to warn him that he was treading dangerous gro
und. He passed the alley without pausing to steer away from it as he usually did at such empty holes.

  The arm came out and grabbed him around the neck. He slipped and fell, and the hand at the arm’s end grasped his collar, dragged him, sitting, into the darkness.

  He knew the odor instantly. He tried to blank it off, tried to pretend it was not happening. It was Pops.

  He could smell the odor of the sewers. The smell of doorways with copies of the Post beneath the man’s dirty suit jacket. The smell of desperation and over it all, stinking god, smelling like the slop it was, cheap wine.

  Tokay. California White. Sneaky Pete. Sweet Lucy. Rubbing alky. Radiator anti-freeze, filtered down through a three-day-old loaf of bread. High and smelling, a palpable aura around him, reeking, rising into the garbage odor of the alley. Rusty choked and his throat clogged and his eyes screwed tight-shut and he tried to get away, twisting on the pavement. He was dragged quickly, backward, the seat of his pants burning cement. In a moment the hand tightened, slung him forward against the brick wall of the building and Rusty scuttled around till he could see the dark shadow of his father, hulking before him.

  “You stay home an’ don’t go botherin’ nobody no more,” the man said. His breath was the foul stink of decayed teeth and rotten food. The air was filled with it and Rusty gagged again. He wanted to hunker over, pull his knees up and lay his head down, eyes closed. He wanted to get away from here.

  The man before him was a dimness, yet Rusty knew every inch and plane of his face. It was strange. He had spent years forgetting that face, blanking it so that each time he saw it, it passed out of his mind instantly. Yet now, so close to that face, but unable to see it, he knew it far better than anything in the universe—the puffy eyes with the black, humped rings beneath them, the flattened, putty blob of a nose, the fleshed pads of the lips, it was all there, so clearly, so real.