The expression on his face was almost farcical in its extreme fear. The boy was reminded of the comical fellows on that game show Swim the Crocodiles. He would have laughed if he hadn’t been so frightened himself.
“You ain’t the devil,” the boy said.
“You’ll think I am if you yell.”
365
“I ain’t gonna,” the boy said contemptuously. “What you think, I wanna get my balls cut oft? Jesus, I ain’t even big enough to come yet.”
“You know a quiet place we can go?”
“Doan kill me, man. I ain’t got nothin.” The boy’s eyes, white in the darkness, rolled up at him.
“I’m not going to kill you.”
Holding his hand, the boy led Richards down the twisting, littered alley and into another. At the end, just before the alley opened onto an airshaft between two faceless highrise buildings, the boy led him into a lean-to built of scrounged boards and bricks. It was built for four feet, and Richards banged his head going in.
The boy pulled a ditty swatch of black cloth across the opening and fiddled with something. A moment later a weak glow lit their faces; the boy had hooked a small lightbulb to an old cracked car battery.
“I kifed that battery myself,” the boy said. “Bradley tole me how to fix it up. He’s got books. I got a nickel bag, too. I’ll give it to you if you don’t kill me. You better not.
Bradley’s in the Stabbers. You kill me an he’ll make you shit in your boot an eat it.”
“I’m not doing any killings,” Richards said impatiently. “At least not little kids. ”
“I ain’t no little kid! I kifed that fuckin battery myself!”
The look of injury forced a dented grin to Richards’s face. “All right. What’s your name, kid?”
“Ain’t no kid.” Then, sulkily: “Stacey.”
“Okay. Stacey. Good. I’m on the run. You believe that?”
“Yeah, you on the run. You dint come outta that manhole to buy dirty pos’cards.” He stared speculatively at Richards. “You a honky? Kinda hard to tell wif all that dirt.”
“Stacey. I-” He broke off and ran a hand through his hair. When he spoke again, he seemed to be talking to himself. “I got to trust somebody and it turns out to be a kid. A kid. Hot Jesus, you ain’t even six, boy.”
“I’m eight in March,” the boy said angrily. “My sister Lassie’s got cancer,” he added.
“She screams a lot. Thass why I like it here. Kifed that fuckin battery myself. You wanna toke up, mister?”
“No, and you don’t either. You want two bucks, Stacey?”
“Chris’ yes!” Distrust slid over his eyes. “You dint come outta no manhole with two fuckin bucks. Thass bullshit.”
Richards produced a New Dollar and gave it to the boy. He stared at it with awe that was close to horror.
“There’s another one if you bring your brother,” Richards said, and seeing his expression, added swiftly: “I’ll give it to you on the side so he won’t see it. Bring him alone.”
366
“Won’t do no good to try an kill Bradley, man. He’ll make you shit in your boot-”
“And eat it. I know. You run and get him. Wait until he’s alone.”
“Three bucks.”
“No.”
“Lissen man, for three bucks I can get Cassie some stuff at the drug. Then she won’t scream so fuckin much.”
The man’s face suddenly worked as if someone the boy couldn’t see had punched him.
“All right. Three.”
“New Dollars,” the boy persisted.
“Yes, for Christ’s sake, yes. Get him. And if you bring the cops you won’t get anything.”
The boy paused, half in and half out of his little cubbyhole. “You stupid if you think I do that. I hate them fuckin oinkers worse than anyone. Even the devil.”
He left, a seven-year-old boy with Richards’s life in his grubby, scabbed hands.
Richards was too tired to be really afraid. He turned off the light, leaned back, and dozed off.
Minus 065 and COUNTING
Dreaming sleep had just begun when his tight-strung senses ripped him back to wakefulness. Confused, in a dark place, the beginning of the nightmare held him for a moment and he thought that some huge police dog was coming for him, a terrifying organic weapon seven feet high. He almost cried aloud before Stacey made the real world fall into place by hissing:
“If he broke my fuckin light I’m gonna-”
The boy was violently shushed. The cloth across the entrance rippled, and Richards turned on the light. He was looking at Stacey and another black. The new fellow was maybe eighteen, Richards guessed, wearing a cycle jacket, looking at Richards with a mixture of hate and interest.
A switchblade clicked out and glittered in Bradley’s hand. “If you’re heeled, drop it down. ”
“I’m not.”
“I don’t believe that sh-” he broke off, and his eyes widened. “Hey. You’re that guy on the Free-Vee. You offed the YMCA on Hunington Avenue.” The lowering blackness of his face was split by an involuntary grin. “They said you fried five cops. That probably means fifteen.”
“He come outta the manhole,” Stacey said importantly. “I knew it wasn’t the devil right away. I knew it was some honky sumbitch. You gonna cut him, Bradley?”
“Just shut up an let men talk.” Bradley came the rest of the way inside, squatting 367
awkwardly, and sat across from Richards on a splintery orange crate. He looked at the blade in his hand, seemed surprised to see it still there, and closed it up.
“You’re hotter than the sun, man,” he said finally.
“That’s true.”
“Where you gonna get to?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got to get out of Boston.”
Bradley sat in silent thought. “You gotta come home with me an Stacey. We gotta talk, an we can’t do it here. Too open.”
“All right,” Richards said wearily. “I don’t care.”
“We go the back way. The pigs are cruising tonight. Now I know why.”
When Bradley led the way out, Stacey kicked Richards sharply in the shin. For a moment Richards stared at him, not understanding, and then remembered. He slipped the boy three New Dollars, and Stacey made it disappear.
Minus 064 and COUNTING
The woman was very old; Richards thought he had never seen anyone as old. She was wearing a cotton print housedress with a large rip under one arm; an ancient, wrinkled dug swayed back and forth against the rip as she went about making the meal that Richards’s New Dollars had purchased. The nicotine-yellowed fingers diced and pared and peeled. Her feet, splayed into grotesque boat shapes by years of standing, were clad in pink terrycloth slippers. Her hair looked as if it might have been self-waved by an iron held in a trembling hand; it was pushed back into a kind of pyramid by the twisted hairnet which had gone askew at the back of her head. Her face was a delta of time, no longer brown or black, but grayish, stitched with a radiating galaxy of wrinkles, pouches, and sags. Her toothless mouth worked craftily at the cigarette held there, blowing out puffs of blue smoke that seemed to hang above and behind her in little bunched blue balls. She puffed back and forth, describing a triangle between counter, skillet, and table. Her cotton stockings were rolled at the knee, and above them and the flapping hem of her dress varicose veins bunched in clocksprings.
The apartment was haunted by the ghost of long-departed cabbage.
In the far bedroom, Cassie screamed, whooped, and was silent. Bradley had told Richards with a kind of angry shame that he should not mind her. She had cancer in both lungs and recently it had spread upward into her throat and down into her belly. She was five.
Stacey had gone back out somewhere.
As he and Bradley spoke together, the maddening aroma of simmering ground beef, vegetables, and tomato sauce began to fill the room, driving the cabbage back into the corners and making Richards realize how hungry he was.
“I could turn you in, man. I could kill you an steal all that money. Turn in the body.
Get a thousand more bucks and be on easy street.”
368
“I don’t think you could do it,” Richards said. “I know I couldn’t.”
“Why’re you doing it, anyway?” Bradley asked irritably. “Why you being their sucker? You that greedy?”
“My little girl’s name is Cathy,” Richards said. “Younger than Cassie. Pneumonia.
She cries all the time, too.”
Bradley said nothing.
“She could get better. Not like . . . her in there. Pneumonia’s no worse than a cold. But you have to have medicine and a doctor. That costs money. I went for the money the only way I could.”
“You still a sucker,” Bradley said with flat and somehow uncanny emphasis. “You suckin off half the world and they comin in your mouth every night at six-thirty. Your little girl would be better off like Cassie in this world.”