Charlie Hogan waxed positively lyrical: ‘You little keyhole-peeping cunt-
licking bungwipe! I ought to beat the living shit out of you!’
‘Yeah? Well, try it!’ Teddy brayed suddenly. His eyes were crazily alight
behind his rainspotted glasses. ‘Come on, fightcha for ‘im! Come on! Come on, big
men!’ Billy and Charlie didn’t need a second invitation. They started forward together and Vern flinched again–no doubt visualizing the ghosts of Beatings Past and
Beatings Yet To Come. He flinched… but hung tough. He was with his friends, and
we had been through a lot, and we hadn’t got here in a couple of cars.
But Ace held Billy and Charlie back, simply by touching each of them on the
shoulder. ‘Now listen, you guys,’ Ace said. He spoke patiently, just as if we weren’t all standing in a roaring rainstorm. ‘There’s more of us than there are of you. We’re
bigger. We’ll give you one chance to just blow away. I don’t give a fuck where. Just
make like a tree and leave.’ Chris’s brother giggled and Fuzzy clapped Ace on the
back in appreciation of his great wit. The Sid Caesar of the set.
‘Cause we’re takin’ him.’ Ace smiled gently, and you could imagine him
smiling that same gentle smile just before breaking his cue over the head of some
uneducated punk who had made the terrible mistake of lipping off while Ace was
lining up a shot. ‘If you go, we’ll take him. If you stay, well beat the piss outta you and still take him. Besides,’ he added, trying to gild the thuggery with a little righteousness,
‘Charlie and Billy found him, so it’s their dibs anyway.’
‘They was chicken!’ Teddy shot back. ‘Vern told us about it! They was fuckin’
chicken right outta their fuckin’ minds!’ He screwed his face up into a terrified,
snivelling parody of Charlie Hogan.’ “I wish we never boosted that car! I wish we
never went on no Back Harlow Road to whack off a piece! Oh Billee, what are we gonna do? Oh Billee, I think I just made a pile in my Fruit of the Looms! Oh Billee -“‘
That’s it,’ Charlie said, starting forward again. His face was knotted with rage
and sullen embarrassment. ‘Kid, whatever your name is, get ready to reach down your
fuckin’ throat the next time you need to pick your nose.’
I looked wildly down at Ray Brower. He stared calmly up into the rain with
his one eye, below us but above it all. The thunder was still booming steadily, but the rain had begun to slack off.
‘What do you say, Gordie?’ Ace asked. He was holding Charlie lightly by the
arm, the way an accomplished trainer would restrain a vicious dog. ‘You must have at
least some of your brother’s sense. Tell these guys to back off. I’ll let Charlie beat up the four eyes el punko a little bit and then we all go about our business. What do you say?’
He was wrong to mention Denny. I had wanted to reason with him, to point
out what Ace knew perfectly well, that we had every right to take Billy and Charlie’s
dibs since Vern had heard them giving said dibs away. I wanted to tell him how Vern
and I had almost gotten run down by a freight train on the trestle which spans the
Castle River. About Milo Pressman and his fearless–if stupid–sidekick, Chopper the
Wonder-Dog. About the bloodsuckers, too. I guess all I really wanted to tell him was
come on, Ace, fair is fair.
You know that. But he had to bring Denny into it, and what I heard coming
out of my mouth instead of sweet reason was my own death warrant: ‘Suck my fat one,
you cheap dime-store hood.’
Ace’s mouth formed a perfect O of surprise–the expression was so
unexpectedly prissy that under other circumstances it would have been a laff riot, so
to speak. All of the others–on both sides of the bog–stared at me. dumbfounded.
Then Teddy screamed gleefully: “That’s telling ‘im, Gordie! Oh boy! Too
cool!’
I stood numbly, unable to believe it. It was like some crazed understudy had