Web of the City

by Harlan Ellison

  A picture had been revolved upward on the wall, and now hung upside down, grotesquely framing the gray-haired man who yanked at something in the safe, and abruptly spun full-face to Rusty—a gun in his hand.

  Without thinking Rusty threw himself forward. He hit the bed just as the revolver went off and behind him he heard the bullet smash into the wall. He bounced off the bed and came at the gray-haired man from the side. Tackling him as he would have brought down a man on the football field at a pick-up game, Rusty caught Morlan around the knees and dug in.

  They fell backward and Morlan crashed to the floor, still holding onto the revolver. He tried to bring it down on Rusty’s head, but the boy threw up a protecting arm and caught the other’s wrist as it came down.

  Rusty swung over his head at the older man’s face. He could not see, but he felt and heard the blow land. The other slumped back on the floor, and the hand that held the revolver opened. Rusty took the weapon, and got to his feet. The bedroom was a wreck.

  For a moment Rusty considered using the gun to beat what he wanted from this man, but the memory of Boy-O was still tonight-fresh, and he turned and thrust it back into the wall safe. He slammed the circular plug and spun the tumbler knob. He revolved the picture back into place.

  Behind him on the floor, the man said levelly, “If I hadn’t been so nervous and forgot the combo to my own safe, I’d have gotten that gun sooner—and I’d of killed you!”

  Rusty did not smile. He dragged the man to his feet and pushed him ahead, back into the living room. “But you didn’t get it in time, so we’re right back where we started from.”

  He shoved the man into a deep wine-colored armchair. Rusty stood watching him carefully for a second. “You Morlan?”

  The gray-haired man looked up with a surly, confused, frightened expression on his face. “I have no money on me. It’s all locked in my office downtown. You’re wasting your time. I have a few dollars…” he contradicted himself, “you can have that if you get out right now—”

  “What about your safe in there, where we were?” Rusty asked sarcastically, indicating the bedroom with a jerk of his head.

  “You little whelp bastard!” the man’s voice was rough and angry, but lit with fear. He studied the boy before him with an intense wariness.

  “No dough. That ain’t what I’m here for. I want some talk with you, mister. That’s all I want.” Rusty marveled to himself how calmly he was talking to this animal who had murdered and defiled his sister and whom he was about to kill.

  A change of expression came over the man’s face and he sat forward, massaging the back of his head. “Who the hell are you?”

  “You Morlan?”

  “Yes, goddamnit! I’m Emil Morlan, now what do you want?”

  Rusty took a deep breath. He had known it, of course, but to hear him say it, was something else entirely. The end of the road. All screwed up and confused and no reason for suspecting this man—except here was the camel’s hair coat—but here he was. He’d forced his way into a swanky apartment and he was about to commit a murder. Not a switch stand or a zip duel or a brick in the head in an alley—but cold, sharp murder. He would stomp this man to dust beneath his boots.

  “Why’d you kill my sister?”

  Morlan’s face went back into shadow. His eyes opened wider. He let his mouth move and his hand came away from the bruise on the back of his head. “You’re that kid from way downtown. What’s your name—”

  “Santoro,” Rusty tossed it at him, hard. “Russell Santoro, an’ my sister’s name was Dolores. Remember now?”

  He started forward and had his hand wrapped in the full, thick cloth of the camel’s hair coat before Morlan yelled, “Wait a minute! Hold it! For Christ’s sake, hold it, not me, not me! I didn’t touch her! I wasn’t anywhere near her! I can prove it. Stop!”

  Rusty was close to him, bending over the chair, half-dragging Morlan erect. “Then talk mister, talk so fast, ’cause I’m gonna do something, one way or the other. Talk now and make it good, or Jeezus I’ll k-kill ya…” Rusty’s voice broke, and he found himself trembling with fury. The shaking concentrated in a tic and it battered hot and fast in his cheek, and the pain hit him in the gut again when he thought of Dolores and the days of looking, and now it was almost finished. Everything was almost finished.

  Morlan tried to talk, but Rusty had him too close under the chin with the coat wrapped in his fist. He motioned futilely and struggled to speak. Rusty backed off a little, letting loose of the coat.

  Morlan started to talk fast and he did not stumble or hesitate. He could not afford to be slow or inarticulate. His life hung on his glibness. He tumbled it all out in one wild rush of words.

  “I didn’t do it. I had nothing to do with it. I heard from one of my contacts all about it and that someone had given you my name, or what I looked like. I tell you I was nowhere near there that night. I was down in your neighborhood, but I was nowhere near your sister. You’ve got to believe me. I was down there—because—because—”

  Rusty tried to stop the trembling with an abrupt movement and nodded his head sharply. “I know you push the stuff into my turf—an’ Cherokee turf, too—so stop the crappin’ around. Gimme the scoop, or I’ll put you down final, right now.”

  Morlan continued, anxiously spilling it all out. “I went down there with a couple of friends to see a man who’s been cutting in on our trade. He’s been raising his own stuff in a deserted lot behind this dry cleaning place. He’s got it in the middle of a thick patch of weeds. Nobody would recognize what it is, even if they should stumble on it. Just some pretty flowers—”

  Rusty tried to remember: he had gone through that empty lot a hundred times. In fact, he had been through it just the last week, looking for Boy-O. So someone was raising tea in that field. He turned his attention back to Morlan.

  “This guy’s been supplying a few people and for a time it didn’t bother us, he was on such a small scale. But he’s been branching out, starting to grind up more snuff. Then a few weeks ago he tried to put the scare into my pusher down there—” Rusty knew he must mean Boy-O, “—so my pusher told my contact man to put a scare into this creep. I went down there with a pair of buddies who used to box a little, to scare him off our territory. We don’t kill people. I’m a businessman. I got interests all over town, I can’t afford that kind of stuff.”

  Rusty found himself believing Morlan, though he knew with each bit of belief his solution to Dolo’s murder was dissolving. But he could not bring himself to kill that easily. He wanted a passage out.

  “When I got down there, I saw the guy, and he wouldn’t be scared off. He was pretty big and it would have been a bad fight if my friends had jumped him. Anyhow, he ran away when my two friends tried talking to him. I saw my pusher down there and told him we’d handle this guy and not to worry about it.

  “That was when this affair at the bowling alley occurred. My pusher told me they were high on my snuff and I warned him that I didn’t want to be involved.

  “Then my two friends and I came back. I went on to a party—I can prove it—and the next day I got word that a girl had been killed, and one of my sources down there—” again Rusty knew Morlan meant Boy-O, “—told me this big guy that has been cutting in on us, he had given you a description of me and told you I did it.”

  Rusty stopped him. “What proof you got that you was at this party, and not down in Cougar turf?”

  Morlan started to rise. Rusty made to stop him, then let him get up. Morlan went to an ornate Oriental-engraved breakfront and pulled open a drawer. Rusty moved over to make certain it was not another gun the gray-haired man was getting. Morlan pulled out a folder and opened it. The folder was an eight-by-ten nightclub photograph in a white cardboard frame. It showed Morlan at a table with several brassy-looking women and a half dozen other men all of his approximate age, all wealthy and shifty looking. A newspaper clipping was tucked into one corner of the photo.

  He picked it out a
nd showed it to Rusty. It was a replica of the larger photograph, with a gossip columnist’s story attached, giving the date the party had occurred, and noting that in the background could be seen on the stage the remarkable new comedian—it gave a name Rusty did not know—in his first show.

  Morlan went to the phone, dialed a number and said, “Is this the Golden Sparrow?” That was the name of the nightclub where the picture had been taken. “Let me speak to the manager.” A pause, then Morlan said, “I’d like you to tell a friend of mine at what times the show goes on at your club.” He said hold it a second and handed Rusty the receiver. Rusty took it and listened. The cultured voice of a man told him the hours of the two regular shows each night. In the background he could hear music and the noise of a crowd. Morlan was leveling.

  He hung up, and handed Morlan the photo and clipping. Morlan put them away. Rusty was convinced. The first show, the show at which Morlan had been seen and photographed, had been on at almost precisely the time Dolores had been attacked in the alley. Morlan was plainly not the man.

  Rusty had almost killed an innocent man.

  Then why had he been after this Morlan and his camel’s hair coat? Why? He knew, of course, but Morlan was speaking again.

  “I never thought you’d get this far. I had a few feelers put out, to keep you away. I told my pusher down there to keep you off the scent, to get those kids to keep their mouths shut or we’d cut off their supply. I told him to find some other people to warn you away—” Rusty thought of Miss Clements and his own father and his stomach heaved, “—and they did it because they were afraid we’d stop their snuff if they didn’t. The cops got nothing, so I figured you wouldn’t get to me.”

  Rusty realized how lucky he had been. By bulling his way through to Mirsky—strictly by chance—and finding out the Cherokees had been doped up, he had traced it back to Boy-O, who had cracked and revealed his boss by the only possible torture method that would have worked. Then he had found Morlan, and though the police had found nothing, and Morlan did not suspect, Rusty knew one thing neither of them knew. The connecting link.

  “Who is this guy that’s been raising tea?” Rusty asked.

  “I don’t know his name. He’s a big man, very big, with a face like an animal.” Morlan seemed over-anxious to explain why he had tried to stop Rusty’s search. “We were afraid with all the notoriety that fight had, it would come out that the kids were hopped-up. We paid to have it kept quiet, but with you running around, stirring up trouble, there was no way of telling how far you’d go. We had to keep you away, but we couldn’t take a chance on hurting you. That would have started the rumors all over again, twice as loud.”

  “So why didn’t you cool this guy since the rumble?”

  Morlan spread his hands. “We couldn’t do anything in that territory. Another killing would have really made it so hot we couldn’t have covered it if we’d put all the money in the world into it. He’s been cutting into our concession, but for now we have to let him have his way. We supply a lot of the city—you don’t think we make our dough off school kids do you?—but we can’t afford anyone cutting in, or pretty soon we’d have nothing left. You understand, don’t you?”

  Rusty let Morlan finish, a note of apology in his voice.

  He took a step backward and turned. “S-sorry. Sorry I bothered ya. I’m… I’ll be goin’ now.” He was dazed. It had dawned on him suddenly, a mixture of his own information and Morlan’s description. It all fitted in now and it fitted properly. Except there was still no sense to it, down at the bottom. He should have known from the first. There had only been one link between Dolores and this man in the camel’s hair coat. The rumble and the dope, they had been one thing, and Dolo’s murder had been another. Two separate tracks, joined at only one place.

  One link, and that link without verification. He had been going on the word of one man. And that man had been leading a double life. That man had lied to him, to create the link, so Rusty would come here and kill Morlan—who stood in the way.

  It had been chance that the rumble had occurred the same night as Dolo’s murder. Or perhaps Dolores’ murder had been accomplished with the rumble as a distraction. If he had not driven Dolores out that night, if she had not gone to the dance to spite him, if he had not surrendered himself to his old vices when he had gone after her—he might have saved her.

  But the murderer had used the hopped-up rumble as a club to get Rusty to do his dirty work. He had used Rusty as a tool, with one simple lie.

  All birds with one stone.

  So damned, completely obvious now and he had stumbled about like a blind man. Now he knew. Finally, he knew. You can’t trust anyone. No one is a friend. It’s a jungle and it’s a web and it’s quicksand, and you can’t trust anyone.

  He made his way to the door, somehow, and behind him he heard the now-indignant voice of Morlan telling him he was going to let him go free, this time, but Rusty had been damned lucky the cops weren’t called in. He was bluffing and Rusty knew it. Morlan could no more afford the fuzz than he could.

  Rusty heard nothing more because he was thinking of one ending, one person, one job, one final goal. He had to get back to the deadly streets he knew. Back to the gutters, for that was where his ending lay waiting, somewhere. He had to get back to the old neighborhood.

  He had to find the Beast.

  TWELVE:

  SATURDAY NIGHT

  rusty santoro

  the beast

  the death

  Rain had come and gone so swiftly, it had hardly been at all. The streets were slick-shined from it and small galaxies of oil made rainbow auras on the black tar landscape. Darkness was a live thing that walked with terrible softness through the city. The air was clean and cool, but there was a tautness in everything that overlay the calm, making the city a waiting animal, hungry for what was to come. It breathed in and out quietly, hunkered down on black haunches, its million-window glittering eyes aware of every scene, every life, every conclusion. It waited.

  Rusty made it back to the neighborhood in a cab. It had been the second time in his life he had squandered money so recklessly. The first time had been when he and two Cougars had taken a cabbie over the rocks. They had made the hackie drive them all the way from West One Hundred Fourteenth Street and Broadway deep into Cougar turf and the meter had read three bucks and fifty. Then they had jumped the cab and started to run away. But the cabbie had caught Rusty and taken a five-dollar bill for his trouble. Then he had booted Rusty into the gutter. That had been the first time. This time was something entirely different.

  His nerves were ticking. He had St. Vitus Dance of the innards. He couldn’t stand still and a subway did not seem as fast as a cab. So he laid out the money, the last of his money, and hit Cougar turf just after the bars had begun to close. He got off near the apartment building where Boy-O lay bound in the basement, and paid the cabbie with a ten-cent tip.

  “Thanks,” the cabbie sneered. He held the change in his hand and snorted an obscenity about late-night non-tippers. As the cab’s taillights winked off around the corner, Rusty stood undecided. How was he going to get the Beast?

  In any event, he had to let Boy-O go.

  He hit for the basement, and found the junkie sleeping, still tied up. Boy-O’s back was up against the furnace pipe, his wrists raw and bloody from trying to break the rope. Rusty found a piece of glass from a broken window-fronted cabinet and slashed the ropes off Boy-O’s arms. The pusher woke almost immediately and the fear returned. Rusty pulled the gag from his mouth, and Boy-O started whimpering. “Don’t kill me, man. D-don’t kill me. I marked for ya, I to’dja what ya wanted to know, din’t I? Let me ’lone…”

  Rusty settled back on his haunches and ran a hand through his hair. An infinite weariness passed up his body and he wanted to lie down there and sleep. But he held the weariness off, because sleep was something he couldn’t afford—not just yet. He had to find someone first.

  “Look, Boy-O,” h
e began, his eyes closed for a moment. Silent for another moment, then, staring at the ceiling because he could not look at the dried blood on the junkie’s face, the condition of the junkie’s body, “I wanna find the Beast. You know where I can locate him?”

  Boy-O shook his head rapidly, fear driving it back and forth.

  “Uh-uh. I don’t know where he hangs, man. I got nothin’ ta do with that stud. He’s mean. I don’t know nothin’ about him—” He added with hurried fright, “An’ that’s the god’s truth, Rusty, man, s’help me, honest!”

  Rusty nodded slowly, understanding and futility in his movements. “Okay,” he said softly, as though talking to himself because no one else was left. “Okay. I know. That’s okay.”

  He got to his feet, and started for the stairs. He stopped with one hand on the bannister and looked back into the darkness of the basement, lit by only that one swinging bulb.

  “I’m—I’m sorry, man,” he said. Then he was gone.

  How to find the Beast? Rusty sat on the roof of his building with the summer chilliness enfolding him and he wanted to know, worse than anything else. How was he going to smoke the Beast out, smoke him out so he could get his hands on him? Not for a moment did Rusty consider how he was going to kill a giant of the Beast’s size. Not for a moment did he worry about what happened to him if he did. All he wanted to do was smoke the Beast out.

  Smoke…

  He got up, and stood staring off across the city. He saw the broken black line that was the building tops against the lighter dark of the sky. The strange angles and spires of TV antennas, the towers that were chimneys, the box-shapes and chicken-wire of pigeon roosts. He saw it all and knew what would smoke the Beast out.

  He went downstairs, into the apartment and Mrs. Givens was there. She had not left for more than fifteen minutes since Moms got sick. Who was watching after her kids, Rusty did not know. But there she was, in the big chair, almost asleep. She woke as he came through the door and a quizzical expression lit her face. It was very, very late.