The Deadly Streets

by Harlan Ellison

  The rifle kicks against my shoulder and pow! I miss. The bullet sails over her head and through the top half of the window, sprayin’ glass all over the place. Then I hear it hit something in the crummy apartment and shatter that, too.

  But I ain’t quittin’. Before she knows what the hell’s happening and can jump back outta the way, I got the round ejected and her all lined up again fast. This time you ain’t got a chance, you bitch, ’cause I’m a dead shot!

  Pow!

  She caught it in the chest, and listen to that scream. It’s like a cat climbin’ a blackboard, gettin’ higher and higher and higher. Man! I gotta clomp my hands over my head ’cause those screamin’s really hurt inside. Now she’s standin’ up tall, and wailin’ and I think I better…put…another…one…inta…her!

  Pow!

  Blew the top of her head away. I’m aimin’ too high. But that got her. She slips and out the window she comes, right down on top of that Buick. Smashes a big goddam dent in the top, and slides down off, right down next to that fat slob. And she’s all twisted up, with her skirt over her ugly head, but she’s an old slob and there ain’t nothin’ to see. But the skirt is gettin’ darker and darker and the blood is runnin’ down into the gutter.

  I see her old man come to the window, and he looks down and automatic-like he gives a yell. But he don’t look too unhappy about it I bet he’s glad. I done you a favor, didn’t I, old man?

  I better get outta here. Windows is bangin’ up all over the street, and I hear feet hittin’ the hot jelly-squish asphalt. I better get outta here!

  Besides, I got more things to do tonight.

  But I don’t gotta worry. I’ll get “em done. I never miss.

  I’m a dead shot! Yes.

  Jackie and me broke up ’cause she says I’m nuts. She don’t know. She don’t know nothin’! I’ll show her who’s nuts.

  I got my rifle, and that’s all that counts. I got that rifle and I can shoot anybody. I can be God or death or anything I damned well please. I’ll show you.

  See that man over there.

  The one that’s got the old squashy hat on his head, and he’s fishin’ around in the wastebasket for somebody’s newspaper? See him? Yeah, that’s the one.

  He’s a bum. A real stewie. I hate them bastards, too, cause it was one like that killed my old man with a chair leg. One of them and I don’t know which one it was. So I’m gonna get ’em all.

  I’m gonna kill every stewie I see.

  I’m in this here doorway, see. And the stewie is across the street, walkin’ past a bunch of garbage cans, and I get a real close look at him.

  He looks like all the rest, with their filthy beards and their toeless shoes and their goddam walk that looks like they didn’t know whether they was alive or not.

  I hoist up the rifle and snap off a quick one.

  Pow!

  I’m a dead shot!

  Caught him in the shoulder, low, almost on the bicep. He gets tossed around like he was a spinnin’ top and they yanked the string off too fast. He spins and now he stumbles and now he’s sayin’ something, but ain’t nobody gives a flyin’ damn what he’s sayin’ ’cause he’s just a stewie and they always mumble in their beards, the bastards.

  Wish to hell I hadda silencer on this rifle.

  He don’t fall, and I start to take another shot. But the clip is empty. So I yank it out and load it from my shirt pocket, and slap it back in with the flat of my palm.

  Now I’m gonna let him walk a ways. That way it’ll hurt more. Nobody seems to have heard the shot, and that’s good. Of course, if they did. they’d look out and just see this old stewie stumblin’ around and nobody else out this late, and they’d think it was a backfiring car, maybe.

  But he’s walkin’ down the street.

  Too goddam drunk to know he’s been shot. But he staggers and bumbles and now he pitches onto his kisser, pulling over the big wire trash basket. It rolls into the street, and he just lays there for a minute. Now he’s gettin’ up again and leanin’ against the fire call-box, breathin’ real heavy, and holdin’ his arm.

  Crap! All the fun’s gone from this pot. I’m gonna finish him off and get to the big business. I got big business tonight, real big. Like I’m gonna settle with Jackie.

  Dead shot!

  Pow!

  Over he goes, still kickin’ and moanin’. Now they hear the shots and they got the windows open and the streets are fillin’ up and they’re all comin’ to the old stewie. Man, he’s kickin’ his can away. He don’t wanna die. You’d think all that boozin’ and cuttin’ around and him bein” a lousy old stewie, he wouldn’t mind kickin’ off—but no sir, he just don’t wanna die. The crowd’s too big to try again. I gotta go.

  Wish I could put another one into that bum.

  Jackie said I was nuts. Well, I showed her good. I’m. as okay as she is.

  I stop outside her house. She lives in a double house with another family and I yell. “Jackie, hey Jackie! Come on out, baby!” And the window flies up in the top floor and she sticks her head out. Mmmm, she is good to look on.

  She got blonde hair and blue eyes and long eyelashes and she got a twenty-six-year-old body on her—just a kid of sixteen she is, too. She’s somethin’! And in the back seat of Willie Dignan’s car, she’s real mmmm!

  “What do you want down there?” she asks.

  “Baby, I wanna give you a big kiss. You gotta come on down here and let me give you a big big big one!”

  I’m startin” to unzip my jacket.

  “I told you to get away from me. Tommy. I don’t want nothin’ more to do with you after last night! I’m gettin’ all black and blue from the hittin’ I took. My old man’s gonna kill you if he sees you, Tommy, so you better go on away right now!”

  She’s all steamed and yellin’ at me so’s the whole neighborhood can hear. I don’t like that.

  I got the iacket open, I’m reachin’ around for the butt of the rifle. I’ll show her who’s a dead shot!

  “Now you get the heck away from here!”

  She starts to slam the window down and I get the rifle up and pullin’ the trigger without even botherin’ to aim, I’m so damned mad. Damn! I pulled it; I should of squeezed it!

  Pow!

  The bullet plows into the wood frame of the window and she lets out a screech I know they can hear a mile away. Damn that bitch! I’m gonna take her out good!

  I stand there and keep pumpin’ away good. Till the clip’s empty, and then I reload it so fast I get the rounds in cockeyed and have to straighten them again before I can shove the clip back in.

  People are yellin’ all over the place, and I see lights goin’ on in windows up the street.

  I put another one in the frame and she’s been gone since the first shot, but if I keep shootin’ I’ll get her. She’s somewhere down back inside and she thinks I can’t hear her.

  Well, I can and there ain’t gonna be much of her left when I get done!

  I hear a whistle and there’s a cop runnin’ down the block at me.

  Damn cops. I hate cops like I hate the old women and the stewies and that goddam twist Jackie.

  He’s got his revolver out and he’s aimin’ at my head, but that don’t scare me none. He’s gettin’ closer and I got my rifle up and I’ll put him down but good. I’m a dead shot!

  I squeeze careful, but before my rifle goes off I see the big red fire in his hand, and I hear a loud one.

  Pow!

  There’s a zip, and somethin’ caught me right in the chest. It throws me back and I drop my rifle. I didn’t get to hit him.

  OhmiGod. he hit me! But he can’t kill me! I’m…

  I’m a dead shot…

  SHIP-SHAPE PAY-OFF

  I left the ship early Friday morning, just after we’d docked. The sun was coming up over the Palisades, and the Hudson lay dirty and swollen beside the docks.

  My duffle was heavier than usual, but that didn’t bother me; I knew I had to shoulder it all the way uptow
n on the subway.

  My duffle was heavier than usual because I had Willie in there. Willie the cabin boy—and a tightly-knotted rope around his throat.

  He didn’t weigh much, even as cabin boys go, but I felt his head banging against my rear at every step, and I didn’t like it.

  I hit off down the dirty street toward the subway, poor Willie getting heavier with every step. I gave the man in the change booth some nickels, got a token, dropped it in, and grabbed the uptown express. That time of day, it wasn’t much crowded. I wondered how long it would be before Willie would start to stink.

  I slouched in a corner of the car, propped my duffle between my legs in front of me, and tried to remember what Willie had looked like. He was starting to blur already—and it hadn’t been more than an hour since I’d let him have it. All I could remember of his face were the sharp cheekbones and the big, wide staring eyes that looked older than Willie’s twenty-eight years. Eyes that had seen too much, that afternoon off Paramaribo in First Mate Crayeley’s cabin; the eyes that had bugged like swollen grapes when I got the hawser around his throat an hour ago.

  Poor Willie. But five hundred is five hundred, and Miss Laura had asked awfully nice. I’d do things for her I wouldn’t do for her husband, Captain or no Captain. She’s all right, Laura. And a hot-lookin” dish she is, too! And if she didn’t want the old man to know what she’d been doing with Crayeley, I didn’t mind helping her out—for five hundred.

  The car rattled along uptown, and I figured 116th was about right. If I carried him down across the Drive and dumped him off the breakwater with a few rocks in the duffle bag, he wouldn’t come up till long after the fishes had eaten out his eyes. Those accusing eyes.

  I settled back and stared at the ceiling. It was hot. Even damned hot for July. The fans in the car clattered noisily and when the car stopped I opened one eye to see if any good-looking women got on. Their summer dresses blew up prettily with the fans going.

  But none got on, and the car rolled again. I settled back with my eyes closed once more. Man! Am I desperate, I thought idly, to need a cheap thrill like that! But six weeks on the ship without a woman was hard on a guy like me. No women, that is, except Laura.

  With my eyes shut I could picture her real easy. The high forehead and gold-flecked eyes. The copper hair blowing in the wind on the foredeck. The breeze and salt spray plastering the thin dress tight against her lush body. The firm thighs and full, high breasts. My mouth dried out, and I tried to put her from my mind.

  Her trips on the ship had been infrequent. Too infrequent. I guess because she was getting it from the First Mate on shore when the ship was in. Only when it got tough on her did she come aboard.

  Oh well, I wasn’t going to get any of that. She was pretty careful who she handed it out to. Crayeley, maybe, but not a slummer like me. Pity Willie’d seen her and threatened to tell the Captain. If he’d stayed out of there, not been so nosey, not asked for money to keep quiet, he’d still be walking the decks.

  And I wouldn’t get five hundred.

  Five hundred wasn’t much—but it was all a shipmate like Willie was worth to a guy like me.

  I carried him down the hill past the resident hotels, away from Broadway, and over the Hudson River Parkway. It took me fifteen minutes to get across—those damned commuters speed that road like maniacs, and close together as pig’s-knuckles in a barrel. I walked across the little patch of heat-scorched grass and down the rocks.

  It took me two minutes, blocked off from the road by the slope of the breakwater. The rocks were good and heavy.

  I laid Willie on his side, and gave him a healthy kick with my boot. He went slipping and rolling down the incline, disappeared with a tiny splash into the black, dead-fish laden water.

  “’Bye, shipmate,” I saluted him, watching the ripples spread.

  Now for the five hundred. A call to Laura at her apartment, and I was off to the pleasures of the big city.

  I walked back up the hill to a drugstore, whistling.

  I dropped the dime in, listened to it clink down, listened to the dial tone, listened to the sound of my own dialing. I listened to the phone ringing, once, twice, listened to Laura’s soft, husky voice saying, “Hello.”

  “Hi,” I said. “It’s me. Jack.”

  “Jack? What Jack?”

  “Jack!” I said. “From the Betsy B. You remember me, Mrs. Sefton, dont you?”

  She sounded mystified. “No, T can’t say that I do. Who did you say you were? From the ship?”

  I cautiously looked around the drugstore. The next booth was empty. Good. I didn’t want any extra ears.

  “You remember me,” I told her. “I had to wait till we docked so they’d think he went ashore and never came back. You owe me five hundred bucks. Now do you remember?”

  “Oh!” she said, very softly.

  “Oh,” I mimicked. “Yeah. Willie, remember? I’ve done the job, and I’m minded to collect. Now how about it?”

  There was a long silence at the other end. I drummed impatiently on the stippled walls of the phone booth.

  “I can’t hear you, Mrs. Sefton.”

  “There’s—there’s a difficulty…” she said hoarsely. “I—I can’t pay you just now…Jack.”

  Now it was my time to be quiet for a while. Finally I said. “Yeah?” My voice was harder than I’d thought it would be.

  “I mean it,” she said. “I just don’t have the cash. I’m sorry I asked you—”

  “You’re sorry? You’re sorry! What about me, who bumped off some guy I hardly knew, to keep your pretty pink undies clean? What about my five hundred bucks?”

  “Please deposit five cents for the next three minutes,” the operator said sweetly.

  I swore and dropped a nickel in. “Where’s my five hundred?” I asked again. “Come on, speak up!”

  “I don’t have it,” she said. “Please stop bothering me or I’ll call the police.” There was a click and the receiver went down.

  I swore again. I wished I hadn’t thrown that extra nickel in—good money after bad. I got out of the phone booth and stood undecided for a moment. Then I headed out into the street, clenching and unclenching my fists.

  Maybe she was going to run rings around Old Man Sefton—but I wasn’t going to put up with the same stuff.

  I knocked. “Laura?” I said.

  “Yes? Who’s there?”

  “Crayeley,” I said. “The Old Man home?”

  “No. Come on in. darling.”

  She threw the door open, and I stepped in out of the nice, clean hall. The Seftons really lived high off the hog. It made me happier about the whole thing to see the sort of place they lived in. She could pay up, if she only wanted to.

  “Jack!” The door started to swing shut on me, but it was too late by then. I was inside, my back flat against the door. I grinned. “Hello, Mrs. Sefton. Laura.”

  I stared at her. She was pale, but still gorgeous. Her satin dressing-gown had fallen partly open as she’d struggled to close the door, and I saw the milky-white of her breasts.

  Her belly was flat and flowed beautifully into rich thighs. She had long legs that were real class. She was all the good stuff of all the women I’d ever seen, from Rio to Singapore. And I knew she could swing it better than all of them at once.

  She caught my stare and the red flowed up from her breasts, right past her neck, and suffused her face. She drew the robe closer, and belted it tightly. It was better that way. She pushed against it like she really wanted out.

  She backed up. “What do you want?”

  “Five hundred bucks,” I said amiably. That’s all. Just five hundred.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “I’ve heard that song before.” I folded my arms. “Look, don’t go making deals if you can’t back them up. I got you off the hook with Willie, but I didn’t do it for exercise.”

  “My husband doesn’t let me have much cash,” she said weakly. “I’m sorry if I—”

&n
bsp; “I’m sorrier.” I was angry. I strode inside and looked around. “Nice place you’ve got here,” I said. A muscle in my cheek was snapping sixty. If Sefton walked in now, I’d really have had it. I felt the thick, modern curtains. “Real slick little home, you and the Old Man.”

  I whirled and looked at her. She was white-faced, arms crossed over those fantastic breasts, copper hair glinting brightly.

  “It’d be a real shame if the Old Man decided to kick you out of here on your pretty little butt, you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I smiled pleasantly. “I want the five hundred,” I said. “If I don’t get it, I’ll spill it all to your husband about the pleasant afternoon you spent screwing around in Crayeley’s cabin. I know the old boy is broadminded, but he draws the line at cutting in the First Mate. How’s that?”

  She came closer to me. Closer, till her jutting breasts touched my shirt. My back suddenly felt as though it had been greased with burning oil. I began to sweat. I could smell the musky perfume she had on, and the closeness of her hurt me. “I don’t have the cash,” she said for what seemed like the fiftieth time. Her lower lip slid out in a little-girl pout.

  “Don’t kid me with that sweet innocence act,” I said. “You’re not foolin’ anybody. And you don’t have any suckers around to knock me off, the way I gave it to Willie.”

  “I—I—can’t get it up,” she said resignedly.

  “You’ll get it up,” I said, getting nastier. The heat was in me now, but good! Then a thought came to me. And I added, “One way or the other. Money ain’t everything.”

  She stared at me blankly. Then a dawning light came into her beautiful gold-flecked eyes, and she drew in a breath sharply.

  “I can’t!” she gasped. “I can’t! I won’t!”

  “Oh, but you will. Because you got the same problem as before. Only Willie wasn’t too smart. I am. You’ll pay up—like I say, one way or another…”

  I took off my cap and threw it on the table. I moved toward her, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. She was twice as exciting-looking that way. A feeble little, “I can’t get it up…” trailed out softly.