Web of the City (22 page)

Rusty found himself believing Morlan, though he knew with each bit of belief his solution to Dolo’s murder was dissolving. But he could not bring himself to kill that easily. He wanted a passage out.

“When I got down there, I saw the guy, and he wouldn’t be scared off. He was pretty big and it would have been a bad fight if my friends had jumped him. Anyhow, he ran away when my two friends tried talking to him. I saw my pusher down there and told him we’d handle this guy and not to worry about it.

“That was when this affair at the bowling alley occurred. My pusher told me they were high on my snuff and I warned him that I didn’t want to be involved.

“Then my two friends and I came back. I went on to a party—I can prove it—and the next day I got word that a girl had been killed, and one of my sources down there—” again Rusty knew Morlan meant Boy-O, “—told me this big guy that has been cutting in on us, he had given you a description of me and told you I did it.”

Rusty stopped him. “What proof you got that you was at this party, and not down in Cougar turf?”

Morlan started to rise. Rusty made to stop him, then let him get up. Morlan went to an ornate Oriental-engraved breakfront and pulled open a drawer. Rusty moved over to make certain it was not another gun the gray-haired man was getting. Morlan pulled out a folder and opened it. The folder was an eight-by-ten nightclub photograph in a white cardboard frame. It showed Morlan at a table with several brassy-looking women and a half dozen other men all of his approximate age, all wealthy and shifty looking. A newspaper clipping was tucked into one corner of the photo.

He picked it out and showed it to Rusty. It was a replica of the larger photograph, with a gossip columnist’s story attached, giving the date the party had occurred, and noting that in the background could be seen on the stage the remarkable new comedian—it gave a name Rusty did not know—in his first show.

Morlan went to the phone, dialed a number and said, “Is this the Golden Sparrow?” That was the name of the nightclub where the picture had been taken. “Let me speak to the manager.” A pause, then Morlan said, “I’d like you to tell a friend of mine at what times the show goes on at your club.” He said hold it a second and handed Rusty the receiver. Rusty took it and listened. The cultured voice of a man told him the hours of the two regular shows each night. In the background he could hear music and the noise of a crowd. Morlan was leveling.

He hung up, and handed Morlan the photo and clipping. Morlan put them away. Rusty was convinced. The first show, the show at which Morlan had been seen and photographed, had been on at almost precisely the time Dolores had been attacked in the alley. Morlan was plainly not the man.

Rusty had almost killed an innocent man.

Then why had he been after this Morlan and his camel’s hair coat? Why? He knew, of course, but Morlan was speaking again.

“I never thought you’d get this far. I had a few feelers put out, to keep you away. I told my pusher down there to keep you off the scent, to get those kids to keep their mouths shut or we’d cut off their supply. I told him to find some other people to warn you away—” Rusty thought of Miss Clements and his own father and his stomach heaved, “—and they did it because they were afraid we’d stop their snuff if they didn’t. The cops got nothing, so I figured
you
wouldn’t get to me.”

Rusty realized how lucky he had been. By bulling his way through to Mirsky—strictly by chance—and finding out the Cherokees had been doped up, he had traced it back to Boy-O, who had cracked and revealed his boss by the only possible torture method that would have worked. Then he had found Morlan, and though the police had found nothing, and Morlan did not suspect, Rusty knew one thing neither of them knew. The connecting link.

“Who is this guy that’s been raising tea?” Rusty asked.

“I don’t know his name. He’s a big man, very big, with a face like an animal.” Morlan seemed over-anxious to explain why he had tried to stop Rusty’s search. “We were afraid with all the notoriety that fight had, it would come out that the kids were hopped-up. We paid to have it kept quiet, but with you running around, stirring up trouble, there was no way of telling how far you’d go. We had to keep you away, but we couldn’t take a chance on hurting you. That would have started the rumors all over again, twice as loud.”

“So why didn’t you cool this guy since the rumble?”

Morlan spread his hands. “We couldn’t do anything in that territory. Another killing would have really made it so hot we couldn’t have covered it if we’d put all the money in the world into it. He’s been cutting into our concession, but for now we have to let him have his way. We supply a lot of the city—you don’t think we make our dough off school kids do you?—but we can’t afford anyone cutting in, or pretty soon we’d have nothing left. You understand, don’t you?”

Rusty let Morlan finish, a note of apology in his voice.

He took a step backward and turned. “S-sorry. Sorry I bothered ya. I’m… I’ll be goin’ now.” He was dazed. It had dawned on him suddenly, a mixture of his own information and Morlan’s description. It all fitted in now and it fitted properly. Except there was still no sense to it, down at the bottom. He should have known from the first. There had only been one link between Dolores and this man in the camel’s hair coat. The rumble and the dope, they had been one thing, and Dolo’s murder had been another. Two separate tracks, joined at only one place.

One link, and that link without verification. He had been going on the word of one man. And that man had been leading a double life. That man had lied to him, to create the link, so Rusty would come here and kill Morlan—who stood in the way.

It had been chance that the rumble had occurred the same night as Dolo’s murder. Or perhaps Dolores’ murder had been accomplished with the rumble as a distraction. If he had not driven Dolores out that night, if she had not gone to the dance to spite him, if he had not surrendered himself to his old vices when he had gone after her—he might have saved her.

But the murderer had used the hopped-up rumble as a club to get Rusty to do his dirty work. He had used Rusty as a tool, with one simple lie.

All birds with one stone.

So damned, completely obvious now and he had stumbled about like a blind man. Now he knew. Finally, he knew. You can’t trust anyone. No one is a friend. It’s a jungle and it’s a web and it’s quicksand, and you can’t trust anyone.

He made his way to the door, somehow, and behind him he heard the now-indignant voice of Morlan telling him he was going to let him go free, this time, but Rusty had been damned lucky the cops weren’t called in. He was bluffing and Rusty knew it. Morlan could no more afford the fuzz than he could.

Rusty heard nothing more because he was thinking of one ending, one person, one job, one final goal. He had to get back to the deadly streets he knew. Back to the gutters, for that was where his ending lay waiting, somewhere. He had to get back to the old neighborhood.

He had to find the Beast.

• rusty santoro
  
• the beast
  
• the death
  

Rain had come and gone so swiftly, it had hardly been at all. The streets were slick-shined from it and small galaxies of oil made rainbow auras on the black tar landscape. Darkness was a live thing that walked with terrible softness through the city. The air was clean and cool, but there was a tautness in everything that overlay the calm, making the city a waiting animal, hungry for what was to come. It breathed in and out quietly, hunkered down on black haunches, its million-window glittering eyes aware of every scene, every life, every conclusion. It waited.

Rusty made it back to the neighborhood in a cab. It had been the second time in his life he had squandered money so recklessly. The first time had been when he and two Cougars had taken a cabbie over the rocks. They had made the hackie drive them all the way from West One Hundred Fourteenth Street and Broadway deep into Cougar turf and the meter had read three bucks and fifty. Then they had jumped the cab and started to run away. But the cabbie had caught Rusty and taken a five-dollar bill for his trouble. Then he had booted Rusty into the gutter. That had been the first time. This time was something entirely different.

His nerves were ticking. He had St. Vitus Dance of the innards. He couldn’t stand still and a subway did not seem as fast as a cab. So he laid out the money, the last of his money, and hit Cougar turf just after the bars had begun to close. He got off near the apartment building where Boy-O lay bound in the basement, and paid the cabbie with a ten-cent tip.

“Thanks,” the cabbie sneered. He held the change in his hand and snorted an obscenity about late-night non-tippers. As the cab’s taillights winked off around the corner, Rusty stood undecided. How was he going to get the Beast?

In any event, he had to let Boy-O go.

He hit for the basement, and found the junkie sleeping, still tied up. Boy-O’s back was up against the furnace pipe, his wrists raw and bloody from trying to break the rope. Rusty found a piece of glass from a broken window-fronted cabinet and slashed the ropes off Boy-O’s arms. The pusher woke almost immediately and the fear returned. Rusty pulled the gag from his mouth, and Boy-O started whimpering. “Don’t kill me, man. D-don’t kill me. I marked for ya, I to’dja what ya wanted to know, din’t I? Let me ’lone…”

Rusty settled back on his haunches and ran a hand through his hair. An infinite weariness passed up his body and he wanted to lie down there and sleep. But he held the weariness off, because sleep was something he couldn’t afford—not just yet. He had to find someone first.

“Look, Boy-O,” he began, his eyes closed for a moment. Silent for another moment, then, staring at the ceiling because he could not look at the dried blood on the junkie’s face, the condition of the junkie’s body, “I wanna find the Beast. You know where I can locate him?”

Boy-O shook his head rapidly, fear driving it back and forth.

“Uh-uh. I don’t know where he hangs, man. I got nothin’ ta do with that stud. He’s mean. I don’t know nothin’ about him—” He added with hurried fright, “An’ that’s the god’s truth, Rusty, man, s’help me, honest!”

Rusty nodded slowly, understanding and futility in his movements. “Okay,” he said softly, as though talking to himself because no one else was left. “Okay. I know. That’s okay.”

He got to his feet, and started for the stairs. He stopped with one hand on the bannister and looked back into the darkness of the basement, lit by only that one swinging bulb.

“I’m—I’m sorry, man,” he said. Then he was gone.

How to find the Beast? Rusty sat on the roof of his building with the summer chilliness enfolding him and he wanted to know, worse than anything else. How was he going to smoke the Beast out, smoke him out so he could get his hands on him? Not for a moment did Rusty consider how he was going to kill a giant of the Beast’s size. Not for a moment did he worry about what happened to him if he did. All he wanted to do was smoke the Beast out.

Smoke…

He got up, and stood staring off across the city. He saw the broken black line that was the building tops against the lighter dark of the sky. The strange angles and spires of TV antennas, the towers that were chimneys, the box-shapes and chicken-wire of pigeon roosts. He saw it all and knew what would smoke the Beast out.

He went downstairs, into the apartment and Mrs. Givens was there. She had not left for more than fifteen minutes since Moms got sick. Who was watching after her kids, Rusty did not know. But there she was, in the big chair, almost asleep. She woke as he came through the door and a quizzical expression lit her face. It was very, very late.

“Miz Givens,” he said, not closing the door, “keep the shades down, an’ keep the windows closed. Don’t let nothin’ bother ya t’night, an’—an’ don’t let Moms hear the noise.” He started to close the door, but she motioned him back with a pudgy, brown hand.

“What noise? What you mean?” He waved her off.

“You’ll know real soon.”

He smiled at her and her face was so strained he wondered if she was not sick herself. “Don’t worry,” he said. Then he closed the door and went downstairs and over to the corner, and found the fire-box, and pulled the lever down. Then he went back up to the roof to wait for the fire engines.

He had known it would be just this way. The sirens, the red, winking lights, the long engines with their ladders tucked down and all the noise. Noise! That was it. If there was anything that could drag the neighborhood from its beds at this hour, if there was anything that could bring the blackjack players out of the back room, if there was anything that would smoke the Beast from whatever warren he was using tonight, it would be the complete pandemonium of a false alarm fire. The engines pulled in to the curb near the alarm box and the firemen climbed down, looking for the blaze.

In a few moments they would realize it was a false alarm, then they would tear off again, leaving the neighborhood for the cops to comb for the alarm setter. Leaving the crowds to disperse, asking each other, “What happened, what went on, what was that all about?”

Before then, the Beast had to come out of his hole, had to come into the crowd to see what was happening. He had to.

Rusty watched carefully, straining his eyes to make out the faces of everyone down there, in the streetlamp light, and the glare of the engine’s headlights. He saw the women, in their nightgowns, with the terrycloth bathrobes pulled across their fat stomachs. He saw the balding men, their heels red and bare in bedroom slippers. He saw the young girls and some of them reminded him of Weezee and some reminded him of Dolores, but that was too long ago to think about. But he did not see the gigantic hulk that was the Beast. He saw nothing like that.

Then the firemen were cursing loudly and they were piling back onto the engines, and scream-roaring away. Then the street faded into silence and the crowd milled around for a few minutes asking what had happened and then they started to disperse, as Rusty had known they would.