The drizzle had brought early dusk to the city. The lights glowed mystically through the darkness, and the people moving on Rampart Street in the shadow of the Games Building were only insubstantial shadows, as Richards knew he must be himself. He breathed deeply of the wet, sulphur-tainted air. It was good in spite of the taste. It seemed that he had just been let out of prison, rather than from one communicating cell to another. The air was good. The air was fine.
Stay close to your own people, Killian had said. Of course he was right. Richards hadn’t needed Killian to tell him that. Or to know that the heat would be heaviest in Co-Op City when the truce broke at noon tomorrow. But by then he would be over the hills and far away.
He walked three blocks and hailed a taxi. He was hoping the cab’s Free-Vee would be busted-a lot of them were-but this one was in A-1 working order, and blaring the closing credits of The Running Man. Shit.
“Where, buddy?”
“Robard Street.” That was five blocks from his destination; when the cab dropped him, he would go backyard express to Moue’s place.
The cab accelerated, ancient gas-powered engine a discordant symphony of pounding pistons and manifold noise. Richards slumped back against the vinyl cushions, into what he hoped was deeper shadow.
“Hey, I just seen you on the Free-Vee!” the cabbie exclaimed. “You’re that guy Pritchard! ”
“Pritchard. That’s right,” Richards said resignedly. The Games Building was dwindling behind them. A psychological shadow seemed to be dwindling proportionally in his mind, in spite of the bad luck with the cabby.
“Jesus, you got balls, buddy. I’ll say that. You really do. Christ, they’ll killya. You know that? They’ll killya fuckin-eye dead. You must really have balls.”
“That’s right. Two of them. Just like you.”
“Two of ‘m!” the cabby repeated. He was ecstatic. “Jesus, that’s good. That’s hot! You mind if I tell my wife I hadja as a fare? She goes batshit for the Games. I’ll hafts 347
reportcha too, but Christ, I won’t get no hunnert for it. Cabbies gotta have at least one supportin witness, y’know. Knowin my luck, no one sawya gettin in.”
“That would be tough,” Richards said. “I’m sorry you can’t help kill me. Should I leave a note saying I was here?”
“Jesus, couldja? That’d be-”
They had just crossed the Canal. “Let me out here,” Richards said abruptly. He pulled a New Dollar from the envelope Thompson had handed him, and dropped it on the front seat.
“Gee, I didn’t say nothin, did I? I dint meanta-”
“No,” Richards said.
“Couldja gimme that note-”
“Get stuffed, maggot.”
He lunged out and began walking toward Drummond Street. Co-Op City rose skeletal in the gathering darkness before him. The cabbie’s yell floated after him: “I hope they getya early, you cheap fuck! ”
Minus 078 and COUNTING
Through a backyard; through a ragged hole in a cyclone fence separating one barren asphalt desert from another; across a ghostly, abandoned construction site; pausing far back in shattered shadows as a cycle pack roared by, headlamps glaring in the dark like the psychopathic eyes of nocturnal werewolves. Then over a final fence (cutting one hand) and he was rapping on Molie Jernigan’s back door-which is to say, the main entrance.
Molie ran a Dock Street hockshop where a fellow with enough bucks to spread around could buy a police-special move-along, a full-choke riot gun, a submachine gun, heroin, Push, cocaine, drag disguises, a styroflex pseudo-woman, a real whore if you were too strapped to afford styroflex, the current address of one of three floating crap-games, the current address on a swinging Perverto Club, or a hundred other illegal items. If Molie didn’t have what you wanted, he would order it for you.
Including false papers.
When he opened the peephole and saw who was there, he offered a kindly smile and said: “Why don’t you go away, pal? I never saw you.”
“New Dollars,” Richards remarked, as if to the air itself. There was a pause. Richards studied the cuff of his shirt as if he had never seen it before.
Then the bolts and locks were opened, quickly, as if Molie were afraid Richards would change his mind. Richards came in. They were in Moue’s place behind the store, which was a rat warren of old newsies, stolen musical instruments, stolen cameras, and boxes of black-market groceries. Moue was by necessity something of a Robin Hood; a pawnbroker south of the Canal did not remain in business long if he became too greedy.
Molie took the rich uptown maggots as heavily as he could and sold in the neighborhood 348
at close to cost-sometimes lower than cost if some pal was being squeezed hand. Thus his reputation in Co-Op City was excellent, his protection superb. If a cop asked a South City stoolie (and there were hundreds of them) about Molie Jernigan, the informant let it be known that Molie was a slightly senile old-timer who took a little graft and sold a little black market. Any number of uptown swells with strange sexual tendencies could have told the police differently, but there were no vice busts anymore. Everyone knew vice was bad for any real revolutionary climate. The fact that Molie also ran a moderately profitable trade in forged documents, strictly for local customers, was unknown uptown.
Still, Richards knew, tooling papers for someone as hot as he was would be extremely dangerous.
“What papers?” Molie asked, sighing deeply and turning on an ancient gooseneck lamp that flooded the working area of his desk with bright white light. He was an old man, approaching seventy-five, and in the close glow of the light his hair looked like spun silver.
“Driver’s license. Military Service Card. Street Identicard. Axial charge card. Social Retirement card.”
“Easy. Sixty-buck job for anyone but you, Bennie.”
“You’ll do it?”
“For your wife, I’ll do it. For you, no. I don’t put my head in the noose for any crazy-ass bastard like Bennie Richards.”
“How long, Molie?”
Molie’s eyes flashed sardonically. “Knowin your situation as I do, I’ll hurry it. An hour for each. ”
“Christ, five hours . . . can I go-”
“No, you can’t. Are you nuts, Bennie? A cop comes pullin up to your Development last week. He’s got a envelope for your of lady. He came in a Black Wagon with about six buddies. Flapper Donnigan was standin on the corner pitchin nicks with Gerry Hanrahan when it transfired. Flapper tells me everythin. The boy’s soft, you know.”
“I know Flapper’s soft,” Richards said impatiently. “I sent the money. Is she-”
“Who knows? Who sees?” Molie shrugged and rolled his eyes as he put pens and blank forms in the center of the pool of light thrown by the lamp. “They’re four deep around your building, Bennie. Anyone who sent to offer their condolences would end up in a cellar talkin to a bunch of rubber clubs. Even good friends don’t need that scam, not even with your of lady flush. You got a name you want special on these?”
“Doesn’t matter as long as it’s Anglo. Jesus, Molie, she must have come out for groceries. And the doctor-”
“She sent Budgie O’Sanchez’s kid. What’s his name.”
“Walt.”
“Yeah, that’s it. I can’t keep the goddam spics and micks straight no more. I’m gettin senile, Bennie. Blowin my cool.” He glared up at Richards suddenly. “I remember when 349
Mick Jagger was a big name. You don’t even know who he was, do ya?”
“I know who he was,” Richards said, distraught. He turned to Moue’s sidewalk-level window, frightened. It was worse than he thought. Sheila and Cathy were in the cage, too.
At least until-
“They’re okay, Bennie, ” Molie said softly. “Just stay away. You’re poison to them now. Can you dig it?”
“Yes,” Richards said. He was suddenly overwhelmed with despair, black and awful.
I’m homesick, he thought, amazed, but it was more, it was worse. Everything seemed out of whack, surreal. The very fabric of existence bulging at the seams. Faces, whirling: Laughlin, Burns, Killian, Jansky, Molie, Cathy, Sheila-He looked out into the blackness, trembling. Molie had gone to work, crooning some old song from his vacant past, something about having Bette Davis eyes, who the hell was that?
“He was a drummer,” Richards said suddenly. “With that English group, the Beetles.
Mick McCartney. ”
“Yah, you kids,” Molie said, bent over his work. “That’s all you kids know.”
Minus 077 and COUNTING
He left Moue’s at ten past midnight, twelve hundred New Dollars lighter. The pawnbroker had also sold him a limited but fairly effective disguise: gray hair, spectacles, mouth wadding, plastic buck-teeth which subtly transfigured his lip line. “Give yourself a little limp, too,” Molie advised. “Not a big attention-getter. Just a little one. Remember, you have the power to cloud men’s minds, if you use it. Don’t remember that line, do ya?”