The Deadly Streets

by Harlan Ellison

  A guy could fall from a car going fifty, sixty, and there wouldn’t be enough left of him to spread on toast in the morning.

  They left in a car Theresa had borrowed from a friend in the Blooded Royals. She had met Pinty, and they had gone to find Policy George. Luckily, he was alone—otherwise Theresa would have had to bushwhack anyone with him into not coming—and they were able to quickly talk him into an evening at the Island.

  It was an old Plymouth convertible, with the top down, and Theresa drove fast and close to the stanchions. On the way out, since it was almost ten o’clock, the traffic thinned to nothing, and Theresa, who had arranged everything with Pinty, nudged the dummy. They were passing the oil tanks, not yet technically on the Belt Parkway, when Pinty, who sat in the middle, grabbed Policy George and got to his knees in the front seat.

  Chuckling, laughing, thinking what a scare old George was gonna have, he lifted George partly, and held him over the side. “Now we wanna scare ya, Georgie, so’s ya like my girl, T’resa.”

  Policy George’s handsome dark face was white with fear. He hung half out of the car, traveling at an ever-increasing speed, with the dummy clutching his jacket.

  “Pinty! Pinty!” he screamed.

  “Well…”

  “Pinty! Lemme back, Pinty, man, stop it!”

  Policy George screamed as the wind hit his face, blew his long black hair out in a wild mass, as the breeze stung his eyes, forcing them closed, as he saw the streets flashing by—far, far, far below.

  “’Zat enough, T’resa? I’ll bring’m in now. He’s really plenty scared, ain’t he, T’resa. I’ll bring him—”

  She had been driving very close to the aluminum bars that sided the Parkway. Now she cut sharply, throwing her elbow into Pinty as she did it.

  Pinty could not hold his grip.

  The car jerked, slewed, and righted, but Policy George had been lifted, thrown, and dropped over the railing.

  For a few seconds, as they sped away, Theresa thought she could hear his scream. His hundred-and-thirty-foot scream to the cement.

  But that was probably just imagination. Coney was ahead. People were always screaming there…

  Pinty had not said anything, for the longest time.

  Theresa decided a trip out to the Island, and a few hours of fun and games would straighten him out better than a quick explanation while they were speeding back into the city. So they went out to Coney Island.

  Pinty sat ever so quietly, wringing his hands from time to time, muttering to himself, and looking out over the side of the car into the wind that had whipped Policy George away. He did not look at the full-bodied girl who sat straight, behind the wheel, a vague, unplaceable half-smile on her face.

  They drove for the better part of an hour. Once Theresa got lost, in among all the sea food houses; but finally she found the route, and pulled in on the main street—the street of booths and side shows—of Coney Island.

  Pinty still had not spoken, and Theresa leaned over, drew him close, and kissed him full on the lips. Pinty did not respond for a long moment, but the insistence of her lips, the heat of her hands, excited him, and he rolled in toward her.

  She whispered in his ear. “Don’t worry, Pinty baby, it was a accident, y’know. It’ll be okay, you’ll see.”

  Pinty murmured in a hurt voice, the voice of a dog who had been unnecessarily kicked: “George’s gone, in’t he?”

  Theresa leaned in once more, to avoid answering, and swallowing her disgust, kissed him again.

  He was about to pull her down on the seat, right there on the main street, with hundreds of passersby watching, when the spiel of the side show barker cut in.

  “Ayy now, ayy now! I want you all to step right up here, step in close. The New York Police Department says we cannot block the sidewalk, so allow us to give you a better free show here, ladyzz an’ gennulmen, by just kindly movin’ on in here.”

  He went on and on, talking about the half-woman half-baby inside, Lola the monkey-faced girl, and all the rest of them. They sat and listened for a minute, and when the barker said: “Okay now, here’s the prices. For adults, it’s just fifty cents, that’s half a dollar, the splittin’ of a buck! You can go in now, stay as long as you want, come out when you’re ready. For kids, it’s twenty-five cents and…

  “Gus, Gus hold up sellin’ any more of those fifty cent tickets, hold it up Gus! That’s right, just hold it up. Okay now! It’s bargain day at Coney Island. For the next two minutes, whoever gets over to Gus—now I said stop sellin’ those fifty centers, Gus—and gives him a quarter, that’s just twenty-five cents, gets in for kiddies’ prices. No matter how old you are it’s just a quarter.”

  He looked at his watch interestedly. “Okay! Beginning—right—NOW!” There was a dash and a clogging, and Gus was swamped. Dozens of people fell for the carny dodge and put down their quarter…which was the regular admission price.

  Theresa looked at Pinty. “Ya wanna go in there an’ see th’ freaks, Pinty?” He hesitated, then nodded his head.

  “I c’n pay for ya, T’resa.”

  He opened the door and climbed out, letting her slide after him. He dug in his pockets till he came up with a dollar and handed it to the ticket-taker. He got his tickets and change, and they went inside.

  On the stage, a dingy podium-affair at the rear of the canvas tent, a group of unhappy looking people sat in straight-back chairs, occasionally murmuring lowly to one another.

  The monkey-faced girl, Lola, was dressed in a pair of Arabian pantaloons, of some substance intended to imitate muslin. She wore a halter, and she was knitting. Her face was that of an orangutan. Round, prognathous jaw, beady inset eyes, and hair completely covering her skin. She was a creature who had happened to be born resembling an ape, and rather than marriage and a home, this was her life.

  The others all sat around. The thin man, the fat, the bearded lady, the half-woman half-baby who had an almost normal-size head and a body so small she could sit on two hands held together.

  Theresa shoved toward the front, dragging Pinty, and studied them for a while. Then she whispered, “Ain’t they frantic, Pinty? Man, they are a riot.” She started to snicker, and then chuckle, and could not stop herself. One of the freaks began to snicker with her, and in a moment the entire tent was adrift with laughter. The freaks did not seem to mind sitting there for hours, with hundreds gaping at them, anything was better than disgust and silence. And they all joined in. The place was filled with laughter, which helped the barker outside make his sell.

  But Pinty did not laugh.

  He stood there confused, staring at the sick bodies, and he knew it was wrong to laugh. He began to speak, softly, hardly within hearing: “Hey…don’t laugh…stop that stuff!” Then he grew louder. “Stop it! Stop that laughin’!”

  Still they paid no attention, and he felt the pain of their laughing in his own head, and he knew he was one with those sick people on the stage, and why was everyone laughing? Theresa had started the laughing, and she shouldn’t have done that…

  “Stop it! Stop laughing, damn ya!”

  His screaming was finally heard. The laughter died away, and in the silence, they turned to him, and Theresa moved away slightly. Was he cracking, this dummy?

  “Don’t laugh at them folks,” he said. He turned and left the tent. For a minute Theresa considered junking him, leaving him here to get back on his own.

  Then she remembered the trip out; she thought of the prowl cars which were now probably trying to locate witnesses to the accident on the Parkway. No, she had to stay with Pinty till he was no longer interested in what had happened to his friend Policy George.

  She went after him, and found him waiting in the street, staring oddly at the car.

  “C’mon, Pinty.” She jollied him. “Let’s go on some rides! Let’s have us a ball, huh boy. To kinda forget the bad luck ya had tanight.”

  Pinty snapped a quick look at her.

  As though he were seeing her for
the first time.

  “Y-yeah,” he said slowly, “we’ll go on some rides and stuff. An I’ll win ya a kewpie doll in a place here, huh, T’resa?” She nodded.

  “That’s just fine, Pinty.”

  So they walked down the line, and at the booth with the cats on shelves, Pinty spent three and a half dollars to knock down three of them and win Theresa a kewpie doll. It was a pink one, with little wings, and a slit in the back of the head to put in pennies, and Theresa kissed Pinty on the cheek. She hated the sight of the miserable thing, but she had to carry it.

  Then they passed the Cyclone, and Theresa got another idea. Past the Cyclone was the Tunnel of Love.

  Pinty was the only one who knew what had happened. Pinty would have to be removed: she had been putting off thinking of that, because Policy George had just died, and too soon for Pinty to go. But what a natural spot. The Tunnel of Love. With that knife nestling in her bra, so warm and ready.

  “Let’s go onna roller coaster, Tresa,” Pinty said, interupting her thoughts.

  Theresa had always disliked the dipping, flying rattlers, had always gotten sick on them, but she knew better than to try and buck the dummy when he had his mind set on it. Particularly when he was still disturbed about Policy George.

  “Yeah, sure, okay, Pinty. Then well, uh, well go in the Tunnel of Love, an’ uh…” She smiled at him disarmingly.

  He did not smile back, but he held her arm tightly.

  Oh, is this stupe sold on me, Theresa thought, as Pinty bought two tickets.

  He gave them to the leader, and they got in the last car. Theresa was glad they weren’t up front.

  A few minutes later the Cyclone rattled slowly away from the loading dock, and started the first climb. The winch clanked, and Theresa snuggled in to Pinty, more in fright than anything else. Another half hour and he’d be sunk in the water of the Tunnel of Love, with a slashed gut.

  They were almost to the summit of the first hill, the big one, the one Coney Island advertised as the highest, most thrilling dip in the world.

  Then Pinty turned to her and said, quietly, “You shouldn’a made me do that ta my best friend, T’resa.” He leaned her back against the seat…the car aimed at the sky…he shoved her back, and grabbed her legs…she beat at his head, and started to yell…then they went over the top, and everyone was screaming…she wasn’t secure in the seat, under the bar any longer…she wasn’t holding on…she was falling…“Pinty! Don’t, I’m your girl, Piiiiii—”

  She fell off sidewise, and she didn’t have a straight fall. She bounced from stanchion to girder to bracing, back and down and smash and down and finally down down down and then the bottom, and she was dead. Badly dead. Not all of her landed. And her scream continued for a long time after.

  The Cyclone car sped on, down into the dip, up, around the bend, down again, and off, till the ride was ended.

  Pinty left Coney Island after the ride.

  He didn’t like it there at all.

  People were always screaming there…

  SOB STORY

  After thirty-one years behind the desk, Kneeland was pretty fed up with blubbering women who were looking for their husbands. This Flagg woman, with her dyed blonde hair metallic under the cold lights of the station house, wasn’t any different from the rest of them.

  “He said he hadda go to the bat’room,” she sobbed, and Kneeland winced at the smell of cheap liquor. “I had another drink and waited, Officer, but he never come back!”

  She was wringing her hands. A washed-out woman who had gone out for one night on the town, in a life of too few nights out. Her hands were red and stiff from dishwashing. “What am I gonna do? He had the pay check—he got it today. There ain’t nothin’ in the house for the kids. We was only havin’ one lousy little drink and—”

  Kneeland rubbed a sweaty hand up the side of his face, feeling the heavy ridge of the scar. “Wait a minute, lady. Let’s get this straight: you were in a bar, right?”

  The woman nodded dumbly.

  “And your husband went back to the bathroom, and just never came back?” His face was split by an incredulous grin.

  “I think maybe you just had six or eight too many. You better go back with an officer and see maybe he didn’t just fall down behind the can. Or maybe he’s at home. You think so? Maybe?”

  He was prodding the woman into agreement, but she didn’t comply, merely kept shaking her head. Kneeland frowned deeply.

  “All right,” he said grudgingly. “What’s the name of this joint?”

  “Oakie’s. It’s only four blocks from here.” She clutched across the desk at his shiny blue sleeve. “Please, Officer! Help me, willya? I gotta find my Harry!”

  “Oakie’s?” Kneeland’s frown got deeper and wider. “Well, maybe I’ll go over with you and have a look…”

  “Would you? Would you please? I mean, it’s only four blocks—”

  “I said I would, didn’t I?” He was grumbling. “Hey! Casey!” The thin, balding sergeant in the doorway looked over. “Take the desk, willya? Got a little local emergency.”

  He shoved the chair back, got up and stretched. It had been three hours since he’d actually moved. His joints were stiff and he realized he’d been aching for a reason to get outside anyhow. He strapped on his revolver, got his jacket off the coat tree, and pulling his cap down, ushered the woman before him.

  It was a helluva nuisance, actually, with the fog meandering through the streets, and this caterwauling stew-bug, but it was outside.

  Oakie’s. A drink, too, while he was about it. Oakie was always free to Kneeland with the hooch. Maybe not so bad after all.

  Mrs. Flagg was saying something, but he only half-listened.

  “I went back to the john, Officer,” she was saying, “but there was a guy in there, and he said there wasn’t nobody else inside, and why didn’t I get the hell away and stop botherin’ him. So I did, but Harry never come back. You gotta find him, Officer!”

  She ran on and on, telling how much she loved him, and what a good father he was, and how she’d kept going back again and again, till the bartender had tossed her out, yelling drunkie after her.

  The fog swirled around Kneeland’s legs. Why didn’t the damned woman keep her jack-yack shut?

  Oakie’s rose out of the fog in front of them, the high curtained window with the Piel’s Beer sign and the word “Oakie’s” glowing into the murk with neon brilliance.

  When they got inside, it looked as though the fog had followed them. But it was a different kind of fog; smoke-fog from a dozen burning cigarettes, whiskey and body-heat fog that filled the long, narrow room. The regulars and itinerants didn’t get excited about the solid blue figure striding up to the bar. They were used to cops; they tolerated them.

  Oakie himself was doing the chores tonight. He was dressed to kill, in an angular-striped, double-breasted business suit, ignoring the wet heat that had stripped everybody else to sweat-patched shirtsleeves. His real name was Johnson; Oakie himself had been killed by his own prohibition brand of booze. But everybody called the new owner Oakie.

  “Hi, Oakie!”

  “Hiya, Sergeant!” Oakie’s grin showed half a dozen gold teeth. “What can I do for you?”

  “Lookin’ for a guy.” He hiked a thumb at the woman who was leaning against his shoulder. “The lady’s husband. Name of Harry Flagg. Seems like he went to your can, and never got back.”

  A ripple of raucous laughter went down the bar at that. Oakie’s grin widened. But his face went white.

  Mrs. Flagg was peering into the gloom, back toward the men’s room. She didn’t see it, but Kneeland caught the flicker of eyelashes, the pasty hue that came over Oakie’s face.

  Oakie licked his lips. The bottle he held came down with a bang on the freshly-mopped bar counter. “Haven’t, uh, haven’t seen him, Sarge.” His voice was a croak. Kneeland knew the owner was hiding something.

  He stepped closer, leaned in toward Oakie.

  “Okay, bo
y, let me in on it. What’s the pitch?” He spoke low, looking squarely at the now-perspiring barkeep.

  Oakie thinned his fleshy lips to a tight line. “Come on back. I’ll show ya.”

  They started toward the back, Oakie coming out from behind the bar. Kneeland looked around for Mrs. Flagg but she was out of sight. Now where the hell did she go? he mused.

  Then he saw her. She was standing dumbfounded before the door to the men’s room. The bathroom was padlocked, and a big, hastily-scrawled sign had been tacked to the blemished wood:

  OUT OF ORDER! USE WOMEN’S ROOM BUT KNOCK FIRST! OAKIE!

  “They locked it! They locked it!” she screamed, turning a wild-eyed stare at Kneeland. “It was open I tell ya, it was open, and Harry went in there and then a guy told me to get the hell away and now it’s locked and Harry’s in there…”

  She was beating at the sergeant’s chest with wild but ineffectual blows, her hair tumbling, drool showing at the corners of her lips.

  “Now take it easy, lady, take it easy!” Kneeland placated her. He shoved her away firmly, glaring at Oakie with an expression that said, if there’s anything in there, Oakie, I’m gonna crack open your skull!

  “Phil!” Kneeland called to a thin, hungry-looking man on the last stool of the bar. “Take Mrs. Flagg over there into a front booth, willya?”

  After Phil had bodily dragged Mrs. Flagg away, and the sound of her imploring wails had faded, Kneeland faced around to the door and Oakie. “How long’s this been locked up?”

  “Two days,” the barkeep assured him with outstretched palms. His voice was honest and his face innocent. “We can’t get the plumber over here to clean it up. Stopped up. Smells real bad. You know.” He grinned sickly.

  “You don’t wanna go in there, Sarge. Ain’t nothin’ to see but a stinkin’ can…”

  “Open it, boy,” Kneeland said levelly. His tone was dangerous.

  Oakie leaned over and took a key from his jacket pocket. Reluctantly he began to open the lock. He started to say something, but Kneeland gave him a tiny prod and he clicked the key into the lock, and turned it. The padlock snapped open smoothly.