The Deadly Streets

by Harlan Ellison

  The tall boy stared down accusingly at Petey.

  Petey smiled tentatively. “It’s…it’s P-Polish…” he said slowly.

  “You gettin’ wise with me?” Snake asked suddenly, his face tightening like a marble bag when someone had drawn the drawstrings. His mouth lined out to almost white tightness.

  Petey just stared. He didn’t know what to do. Abruptly, three other boys came down the block, at a run. They were panting, and when they saw him they stopped, catching their breath. He saw their faces lit with troublemaking. They didn’t even know him, but there was an air about the stoop, and they knew here was a goat. Here was someone they could stomp.

  “Whassa trouble, Snake?” Arnie asked, his dull eyes fluttering.

  Snake emulated the big boy’s tone, elbowing the stupid Arnie in the belly. “Whassa trouble, whassa trouble! Whaddaya think’s the trouble? Here’s a little Polack punk in our territory, and he don’t even know enough to bow down to the prez of the Knifemen!”

  That was the first time Petey heard the name of the gang. But he also heard the word Polack…a fighting word…just as Spic or Kike or Dago or Wop would have been. He stood up and raised a fist.

  He was about to say, “Listen, you, take that back!”

  But he never got the chance. Snake’s fist arced around, from nowhere, and caught Petey on the right temple. He slid off the stoop, banging against the stone bannister, and fell at the feet of the Knifemen.

  They were on him in a moment, stomping. The boots came up and down with piston regularity, and Petey felt the pain blossoming in his groin and chest and head and back and legs. The pain over and over again! The boots never seemed to stop, they’d go on forever, and them bleating out, you lousy little Polack punk, lousy little punk, lousy, little, little, little…

  Till the final foot came down and Petey’s head swam off into the darkness. Just as he heard an old lady stick her head from an upstairs window and scream for the police.

  Strangely, she was screaming, “Police, police, leese, leez, leezle, leetle, little, little, little…

  But he had only heard part of it, there in the growing dark.

  Suddenly Petey sat up, there on the roof. He had it! He had to get the Knifemen off his back. And he had to cover with the cops. He’d gotten an idea, and the more he thought about it, the surer he was it would work. He’d go down to the clubroom where the Knifemen met and stand up to them tall. When they saw the .45 they’d have to let him join. They’d even make him the new prez, and he’d get them to swear he hadn’t cooled Snake. That was the answer! That was the way to solve the problem fast and clean. That would do it. Then he’d have the run of the block, and he could walk with a swagger the way the rest of them did. That would be cool.

  He’d do it!

  The warehouse was dark and wet-smelling as he kicked through the old papers and rusty cans. It was dank and evil-smelling, as though a million rotten thoughts had come here to live their last moments. He suddenly hated the place, and feared it a little. He was going to the Knifemen to show them he was little, but could stand tall. And that he could kill if he had to do it!

  He went out through the window, and as his foot passed across the window ledge, as he stepped onto the sidewalk, he felt released. It was as though his smallness was at an end and he was ninety-eight feet tall, ready to get away from everything behind him and be the tall man.

  That’s all you had to do to show the Knifemen you were a cool stud. Just have guts enough to kill. He fingered the warm bulk of the .45 in his jacket pocket.

  They had gathered to decide what to do about Petey.

  Twenty-six of them sat together in the basement, and wondered what could be done about the little kid with the big gun. The black leather was deep as ink across a snow-field. And their hands never rested. Clenching and unclenching as though at an invisible fury they could not comprehend. The children of the streets had gathered to solve their problem. And the solution was the same as always: death!

  “Man, you shoulda seen him,” Arnie was saying, his idiot-faced stare swinging between the Knifemen. “He wuz like uh…like uh…crazy man with that gun. he wuz!”

  Farmer sat in the big leather chair Snake had occupied before his death, and shook a meaty finger at the other gang members. “No kiddin’, he was nuts. He potted Snake right inna kisser, almost blew off his head. He was a mean cat with that rod in his mitt.”

  “We got to get him. He swore he’d get the lot of us. Said he’d come after us and get to be Prez of the Knifemen. That fuckin’ little punk…we gotta get ta hi…”

  They saw the basement window behind him shatter, before they heard the shot. They turned and saw little Petey Cosnakof standing there, very rigid and very white, his face drawn up in a grimace of hate.

  “I told ya I’d getcha, and I’d even it up with you bastards!”

  Then he fired again. He caught Farmer in the collarbone, and the pain opened the fat boy’s mouth wide, though no sound came out. He staggered erect from the chair, then flopped to the basement floor. He lay there, sobbing, clutching at his shattered collarbone, and making soundless screams.

  The other twenty-five Knifemen stared in horror at the black, snake-eye mouth of the .45, pointing in at them, aching to belch more smoke and flame. They had no idea how many rounds were fired from that gun, and there was no sense being a hero with a bloody head.

  “I’m gonna be prez of the club!” Petey yelled in at them. He stood at the foot of the basement stairs, aiming into the crowd of them. His hand was whitely shaking on the gun, and their eyes grew wider as they saw his unsteadiness with that death wrapped into his fist.

  Yo-Yo Thomas came forward a step. “Sure, sure, Petey, you can be prez! We’d like that…we wuz just talkin’ a minute ago about askin’ ya to join up as prez…on account of you got the rod and all like that…”

  He had been moving steadily forward, but Petey stopped him flat with an abrupt movement of the gun.

  The little boy’s face settled slowly into a grin. His voice became earnest, very earnest, and little-boyish, as he was little-boyish. Yet that death hung suspended, waiting. “Ya mean it? Ya really, honest-ta-God mean it?”

  “Sure, Petey,” Yo-Yo reassured him. “Come on down.”

  Petey took a tentative step from the stairs. He stepped onto the basement’s concrete floor and moved through the crowd. Behind him, several boys made aggressive movements, but Petey whirled suddenly, shoving the gun into their faces.

  “Move! Go on, move! That’s what I want! I want to even it with you…go on…make a step for me and I’ll kill ya!”

  The boys subsided, terrified. They had seen guns in the movies, and some of the older boys who hung at the pool-room had them, but the perfectly round, black hole in that square automatic was a fearsome thing. They made no further movement.

  Yo-Yo walked Petey up to the big leather chair.

  Petey watched that chair with dawning wonder. He was finally going to make it into the gang. He was going to be in with them—with the boys who had guts. He’d show them…they’d see…he’d be a good prez…he wanted to be a good president, and make them like him. All they had to do was given him a chance and he’d…

  They had helped the bleeding, whining Farmer from the floor, and now two boys worked over him feverishly, trying to stanch the flow from his shoulder and neck. “We gotta get him to a hospital,” one of them said.

  Petey jumped up from the chair. “He don’t go nowhere, the sonofabitch! He’s lucky I didn’t put it through his head! Let him lay!”

  The boys were slow in moving away, and Petey fired at the floor between them. More as reflex than anything else, yet the bullet whanged and plowed a hole in the concrete. They jumped, and left the moaning Farmer propped against the wall, shoving his fingers awkwardly into the torn shoulder.

  “Shuddup, ya bastard, or I’ll kill ya!”

  Petey’s face crimsoned and he made a fist, leveling the gun at the stricken Knifeman. This was the first t
ime the gang had ever been held at bay, with death so close to each of them. This was being held out at arm’s length by a very tall, very frightening person, with no way to strike back. They watched frozen. Farmer’s ash-gray face twitched terribly for a moment, and he bit his tongue. Then he was silent.

  Petey went back to the chair, anxiously. He looked up with an almost pathetic intensity at Yo-Yo Thomas. “Now! Elect me prez!”

  That was all he wanted. To be in with them, to show them he was tall now—tall with guts.

  The gang boys watched him with hatred in their eyes. But he held the gun. Petey knew there were only three more shots in the .45, but the Knifemen didn’t, and that was good for him.

  Yo-Yo started forward, and Petey brought the gun up, again reflexed, from fear and remembrance.

  “Take it easy, Petey. I only wanna present ya formal-like to the members.”

  Petey watched with open wariness. “Okay, but watch ya goddam self.”

  Petey’s face was a split mask of anxiety and pleasure, and cautious watchfulness. Yo-Yo started toward him. Suddenly he leaped, made a grab for the gun. He caught the bullet in the stomach, but before he could fall, the basement stairs were filled with police and then the sounds of nightsticks meeting skulls resounded off the walls.

  Petey leaped up wildly, threw the writhing Yo-Yo from him and dashed for the broken basement window.

  He clamped the .45 between his teeth, pulled himself up on the ledge, and wriggled through the broken glass pane before anyone could stop him. The glass cut his face and ripped his jacket, but the strength that had allowed him to break and run, had allowed him to climb through the window, kept him moving.

  He had lost his chance to get into the gang! To get with the boys with guts! He was alone again…

  Then he was on the street.

  Behind him he heard a cop’s voice screaming through the broken window. “Stop kid! Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  He kept running, pounding unendingly, unevenly across the pavement blocks that stretched on forever, bringing his knees up in jerking, stomach-wrenching movements. Behind him he heard the agonized voice of the cop, “Please stop, kid! Stop or I’ll…”

  And he turned, snapped one of the last two shots at the cop. The bullet slammed into the wall, and he fired again. The cop ducked as the bullet went through the window, ploughed into the basement wall.

  “Goddamn it!” he whispered, and drew a careful bead on the running boy.

  The Knifemen stood beside the cops. They stared down at the body of little Petey…twisted in on itself, but still clutching the gun tightly, as though it were everything in this world.

  They had run from the building, and heard his last words, “N-now nobody’ll push m-me around…. I got the g-guts and I g-got the gun, and…and…I’ll k-kill ta keep ’em. I’ll ki…”

  They shuffled and licked their lips and watched as the color faded from his thin cheeks. The crazy kid.

  One of the cops turned to Arnie, standing with hands in pockets, watching Petey’s life flow into the night, watching Petey’s body. Down the street the meat wagon came toward them from a great distance, clanging sacrilegiously.

  “We got a report of shots…this the kid was doing the firing?”

  Arnie bobbed his idiot’s head, kept looking at Petey from his height, so much taller than the brown-haired Polack had been. “Thass him. He was holdin’ us all in there. We didn’t do nothin’! Honest!”

  The cop’s face sagged in an expression of disgust at these metropolitan vermin, these children of the streets.

  “Funny thing is. I guess you don’t think you did. And maybe you didn’t. Who knows? This time…I guess you little bums didn’t do a thing.

  “But I wonder what made the crazy kid turn killer?”

  Three blocks away, four flights up, a slate-colored man wondered where his son was, but made no move to find out; and a mumbling old woman forgot a bit more, that she had ever had a son. She knew only that 1926 had been a hard year, a very hard year.

  Three blocks away, the meat wagon slid in to the curb, and a few minutes later the only evidence of what had transpired was a small spot of black liquid sinking into the broken pavement.

  The cop had rounded the corner, out of sight, the .45 impounded in his pocket. Petey’s strength—Petey’s guts—in his pocket.

  WITH A KNIFE IN HER HAND

  Theresa dragged deeply on her cigarette, till the full, pink hemispheres that were her cheeks drew in to form dimples. She moved her head slightly, swirling the long, black hair from her face, and watched the five boys carefully.

  “I been runnin’ this gang good for a year, ain’t I?” she asked.

  The five boys nodded almost in unison. Pinty mumbled a throaty, “Yeah sure,” and Jacksap gave her two-fingers of agreement. She continued to watch their every movement, their every expression; her eyes were those of a wary animal. Alert. Cunning. Dangerous.

  “Then what’s the beef? I brought ya out tonight ta do some cool movin’ and you’re all bellyachin’ at me? Now do ya want some scratch in ya jeans or don’t ya?” She let her expressive hands, that had been gesticulating broadly, fall to her sides. Absently, her hands smoothed the tight black skirt over her full hips; the five boys could not keep their five pairs of eyes from traveling with the hands. She smiled around her cigarette as she saw them watching the sensual movement.

  Then Policy George spoke up. He was a tall, dark boy with a faint white scar on his right cheek; his voice was soft as kitten’s fur, his body as hard as cat’s claws. “We got no beef with the way you’re runnin’ things, Theresa—”

  She cut in angrily. “Then what’s the beef?”

  He calmed her with a hand and tried to explain. “We been kickin’ it around like, y’know, and we didn’t dig that bit the other night when we knocked over the candy store down in Hugo’s neighborhood.” He jerked a thumb at the stocky, Prussian-looking boy sitting on the garbage can. “Old Hugo here gotta live down there, woman. He don’t feature us knockin’ over marks in his block. I go along, and the other guys second it. Right, enough?” He looked at the four others in the alley. All but Pinty nodded decisively. Policy George gave Pinty a shove with his elbow, and the boy with the big eyes chimed in, “Yeah, sure sure, that’s right, Theresa.” He spoke with a halting, yet hurried speech that tripped and bumbled and meandered over itself. His face was an idiot’s open, wondering, always-pleased face.

  Theresa threw her hands in the air. “You buncha stiffs!” she snorted, her full breasts straining against her black sweater as she inhaled furiously. “I get you buncha crumbs together, I make ya into a hot-rock bunch, an’ ya got more jack in ya pocket than ever, an’ you bastards got the nerve ta tell me you’re unhappy with it. Okay,” she raged, “if that’s the goddamn way ya want it, that’s the way it’ll sit!”

  She started away from them, out of the alley, fury in her every step.

  Policy George grabbed her by her arm and dragged her back. She came abreast of him as he started to say, “Now look, Theresa—” and her knee flashed up, white and full, and caught him flush in the groin. He screamed with pain, and had barely an instant to watch as her hand came around and chopped hard, behind his right ear.

  Policy George crumbled against the building, still erect, but swimming in semi-consciousness. “Don’t none of you ever touch me, like I told ya before, unless I tell ya I want ya to, Dig?”

  They all nodded understanding hurriedly. No one moved to help Policy George. The handsome boy gasped, and dragged air into his lungs, and after a few minutes straightened up again. His eyes held respect, and hatred, and something else.

  He made no move of retaliation. There was an invisible barrier between himself and the girl. She had not even mussed her hair in the brief encounter. Now she shoved Hugo from the garbage can, and sat down herself. She studied the five for a long, silent moment. Then she blew air between her full lips, exasperatedly.

  “I ain’t never seen a buncha slobs like you,”
she yelled at them. “I came along and take ya outta the minors, start puttin’ some real money in your pockets, and alla sudden you start gettin’ temper’mental.

  “Now you bums listen good: I run this bunch, and I pick the jobs, and I say when you beef. Got that?”

  They agreed quickly. Policy George’s voice was slightly softer than the others. She caught his expression from the corner of her dark green eyes and frowned slightly.

  “Okay,” she said. “So now we got the org’nization stuff all set. Now, anybody got any great big fat-butt beefs about the bit for tonight?”

  Nobody answered. She nodded satisfaction.

  “That’s good.”

  She slid off the can, smoothing down the tight skirt again, and started out of the alley. “Okay, okay,” she yelled back over her shoulder, “let’s get this show onna road.”

  The five boys followed her. Pinty, Hugo, Jacksap, Jingles—everlastingly rattling a handful of coins in his pocket—and Policy George. Theresa was thinking about Policy George; thinking hard. He was good-looking and he was sharp, and that was maybe the trouble. He’d been too anxious to speak up for the bunch of them. Maybe he had ideas the bunch shouldn’t be run by a broad. She was going to have to watch out very carefully for Policy George.

  But right now there were pigeons to be knocked down and scratch to be made. They followed her to the subway and rode uptown from the Bowery till they hit the 4th Street stop of the subway.

  Then they got off and made it for Sullivan Street, in the Village, where the dough was waiting tonight. Tonight, because it was a Saturday night, and because the big Catholic church on Sullivan was staging a block party. A big, noisy, sprawling block party, where the scratch was floating, just waiting for Theresa and her kids to pick it up.

  But Theresa had to watch Policy George.

  She fingered the cleft in her breasts, feeling the heavy, deadly weight of the switchblade knife shoved into her bra. Policy George wouldn’t give her any trouble.

  Nobody gave Theresa trouble.