It took two cops to drag the blond-haired kid from the midst of the rumble. His name was Tommy Kilpatrick and he had a long Italian stiletto, with a viciously-honed blade…and they got to him a few seconds after he had ripped open a black boy’s belly.
They brought in six altogether: four white boys and two blacks. The rest had scattered into the shadows of the parking lot at the sound of sirens. The cops herded them into the wagon, and put two officers in with them. They would have sliced each other up with their fingernails, otherwise.
When the wagon pulled up to the Central Police Building, the kid tried to make a break. He took a step down off the back of the wagon, and kicked the assisting officer in the groin with the pointed toe of his heavy shoe.
The blond-haired boy screamed something high and keening and leaped for the street, the open halves of his black leather jacket flapping out behind him. He almost made it.
The cop still in the wagon, frantically grabbing, managed to connect with the boy’s heel, as he leaped. It ruined the kid’s attempt, and he slipped face forward, his arms flailing wildly, and landed with a crash on the cement.
When they picked Tommy Kilpatrick up, a raw-meat sandpapering from the cement had bloodied the right side of his thin, hungry face all the way to the blond hairline. The boy looked about dazedly. His shoulders in the black leather jacket slumped as he recognized where he was.
“Finally got here,” he said softly.
They walked him into the station house.
There hadn’t been a booking session yet. Tommy wondered about that for a while, even after they’d taken his belt, his butts, the contents of his pockets, and put them in the big manila envelope. As he was writing his name on the check slip that certified just what was in the envelope, he concluded it was because they wanted him in the show-up first.
Then a pair of blank-faced cops herded all of them down a hall and into the elevator. They went up two floors, and the elevator jerked to a stop. They were herded out again and put in a small room with benches around the wall and a thick door at either end. There was a little pane of glass in each door, with chicken-wire inside, and Tommy looked through. He could see nothing; he tried the other door.
There were women on the other side. Over a dozen of them, of all ages. Slatterns with stringy white hair and toothless gums. Young chippies with tight skirts and mouths smeared with red, gum-chewing. Women who stared at the floor, and women who rubbed themselves. Then, one of them saw Tommy and let out a yell. She pointed, and Tommy drew back.
He went back to the bench, knowing these were other prisoners, scheduled for the line-up. They never showed men and women together.
He sat there staring at the floor between his feet, till he heard a tap-tap-tapping on the window. It was the young broad he’d seen on the other side. The glass was fogged from being so old, and having had so many people smash at it, but he could still see her plainly. She was beckoning.
He got up and walked over. She moved an inch away from the glass, and began making dirty motions, lifting her skirt slightly, urging him to come into the room if he could. He watched the dirty tramp for a few seconds, snorted, and turned away.
All the time till the cops came to get them, she scratched at the glass, urging him to get out somehow. She was a hungry-looking girl, even as Tommy was a hungry-looking boy. Yet she repelled him. She was dirty, and her hair hung in wheat-shock looseness, and she had a smoldering black eye that discolored her face almost to the cheekbone.
He stared stolidly at the floor between his feet till the other door, the one through which he could see nothing, clanged as they shot back the bolts, and swung outward.
Two cops stood there waiting. They weren’t the same two blank-faced ones as before, but they were equally as guilty of being nonentities as the others.
They stared into the room for a moment, and one of them pointed at Tommy. “Him?” he asked, inquisitively.
The other one nodded his head briskly, and the first one shook his in wonderment. Tommy didn’t understand any of it, but he wasn’t worried.
He knew it had something to do with his father.
He knew he’d never be booked, mugged, printed, clapped in a cell with the other kids. He knew he had a smooth out—a ticket to freedom every time. Not only was he a minor, which was a good hooker angle, but he had an ace in the hole.
Tommy Kilpatrick’s father was the Captain of this precinct.
He’d get out. He’d get back to the gang. It was a dyed-gold cinch. He’d get out, and the rest would go up to the Work House for a while. But not him…his old man was a cop!
“Okay, you birds,” the first cop yelled chopping off his words sharply, “let’s go get ourselves famous. Line-up!”
Line-up. The sun-glare of the kliegs, shining across his smooth-planed, hungry face. His blue eyes reached into the darkness beyond, trying to place the sounds that occasionally came to his ears:
The banging of seats as people sat down. The hurried cough of someone who was embarrassed to be here. The clatter of a cop dropping his clipboard and pencil, swearing softly. Then there was the brief snap flare of a cigarette lighter flaring in the darkness, then complete darkness again.
He heard the continual banging of men taking seats, and he thought he caught the flash of a badge. But there was nothing definite, nothing real. Just this stage, and the brief platform on which he stood with the others captured in the rumble.
The lights were fixed in the ceiling before him, shining down hot and sticky. Behind him, on the wall, the height markings marched progressively up to six feet. He knew where he stood…just under five-six. He was fourth in line, but he was certain they wouldn’t get all the way to him. As soon as someone connected his name with the name of the Captain, they’d have him off that platform, then there’d be no identification, no booking session, and he’d go home to a warm bed and a bottle of his old man’s beer, if he could swipe it without attracting attention. Have to move the bottles around in the icebox so it looked as though there were still the same number there, that none, were missing.
He dragged his thoughts away from home and concentrated on here, on now. As long as he was experiencing this for the first time, he might as well see it all, feel it all. It’d make good conversation in the clubhouse. He was caught, but this wasn’t the end, as it was for those other jerks in the string lined up. His thin mouth twisted tightly together, till he felt the pressure on his back teeth.
He was fourth in line. To his right three shapes were clear, and yet somehow foggily shaded, in the light of the merciless kliegs.
The first, a tough black from the Wild Gentlemen, almost six feet tall, with a scar running black down his face. The second was Whippy from his own gang, the BackBlasters. Whippy had gotten whaled with a club during the rumble, and he held his head to the side, occasionally tamping a finger down on the painful lump. Then third was Carlos, dark and handsomely ugly; fourth was himself.
He knew what he looked like to those cops out there. A short kid, just under five-six, with blond hair and a scarecrow face. Sharp nose and high cheekbones. He touched one cheek now, felt the rawness his fall had produced. But it wouldn’t scar. It’d heal and he’d still be okay-looking. He knew he looked a lot like his old man; they’d recognize him. When they did, he was going to go free. He was sure of it.
Next in line was Leaper, from the BackBlasters, thin and smart-alecky. Then another stud from the Wild Gentlemen, with a massive afro and deep-set eyes. Those lousy bastards…coming over into Blaster turf. They got what they damned well deserved! And if they showed up again, the BackBlasters’d shove ’em all down the sewer balls first! Lousy slobs! The black kids were on the ends of the string. They hadda put ’em like that, Tommy thought viciously, otherwise they’d of been beat ta death!
He watched each of them, edging forward from the wall so he could see their faces, see their bodies tensed, see them standing with hands behind their backs, or at their sides. He was the only one that seemed at ease. But that was because he knew nothing was going to happen to him. He had an in…he had a way out. He was the only one of the bunch who wasn’t going to get booked. He knew!
“All right, you kids…stand up straight. You there on the end, take that hat off!”
The hollow gigantic voice from the microphone spit up at them, and the end boy, the scarred, six foot Wild Gentleman, whipped the soft dark fedora from his head. The boy stared out slickly at the darkness, his face moist, his eyes very white and large and frightened-looking.
He seemed to sense he had gotten off to a lousy start.
It was as though this were the first day of school, and it was vitally important to make a good and lasting impression on the class and the teachers. He licked his thick lips.
“Now I want everybody to pay close attention to what these boys look like. You can ignore what their answers are, for the most part, because they usually lie. But if you recognize someone up there, please tell the officer sitting next to you…” he went on in a dull monotone, as though he had spoken these same lines, these same inflections, since the dawn of time, since the Earth was only a gaseous, fiery ball.
What the hell’s he bored about? Tommy mused angrily, We’re the ones standing up here, not him, the bastard!
Tommy knew what this was. They were up here for two reasons. The first, so that they could be identified by witnesses of the rumble, so they could pin a heavier charge than disturbing the peace on them.
The second was so that if they were ever arrested again, or seen on the streets, the cops would recognize them, be able to keep tabs on them. It was an identification session. The face-up. The line-up.
The other boys all fidgeted, standing with their weight first on one foot, then the other. Only the blond, watchful boy stood calm. He knew he had it figured.
The microphone blurted again. “All right there, you, the first boy. Step forward.”
The big black kid took a halting step forward, toward the edge of the wooden platform. His feet echoed hollowly in the silent room, as a cough rattled from the darkness. The boy’s big shadow fell against the wall, with its height markings in bold relief.
Absently, he crushed his hat between huge, catcher’s mitt hands.
The microphone voice of the invisible interrogator cleared its invisible throat, and there was a sharp series of clanks and clicks as the cop adjusted the microphone more to his liking. Then the session started…
“Your name’s Jesse Carpenter?”
Jesse Carpenter bobbed his big head, licked his lips. “Uh, yes…sir.”
“Where do you live, Jesse?”
“Right now?”
“That’s right, Jesse. Right now.”
“Well, right now I been livin’ for a while at the clubhouse.”
“The—uh—Wild Gentlemen’s clubhouse, Jesse?”
“Yessir.”
“Where’s that located, Jesse?”
“Well, it’s…uh…it’s over on the East Side.”
“Where on the East Side, Jesse?”
The big stud hesitated. “Near Chamberlain Street. Near there.”
“You can’t be a little more specific, Jesse?”
“What?”
“I said…can’t you be a little more specific. Jesse?”
“Well, I never noticed much where it was, sir. But it’s around there, someplace.” Laughter rattled through the unseen audience as the boy evaded the question. What a goddam clown, Tommy thought. The cop changed his approach, knowing he was not going to get the exact location of the gang’s hangout.
“What does the name ‘Wild Gentlemen’ mean, Jesse? That doesn’t mean you look for trouble, does it?”
“Uh, nosir.”
“Well, then, what does it mean, Jesse?”
“It just mean we lookin’ for our kicks.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, uh, you know…like we want a good time.”
“Is that what you call that rumble, Jesse? A good time?”
The black boy fidgeted, crushing the hat terribly. “Nosir, I mean, we was bushwhacked. We didn’t want night trouble, nosir!” There was an answering mumble of anger from the BackBlasters at that.
“Why are you living at the clubhouse, Jesse? Don’t your folks want you to live at home?”
Tommy listened closely. It was always the same routine. If they couldn’t get the info out of you one way, they tricked you into telling it another. They got you talking first, so the creeps in the audience could place your voice, then they got you booked, mugged, printed—you had a record till you died—and then they stacked you away in the House. But not this time…not him. Tommy Kilpatrick was going out. Out!
“Jesse,” the voice from the darkness said, “it says here you were caught with a zip gun. That true?”
“If it say that, sir, I guess maybe it true.”
“Don’t you know?”
“Man, I just walkin’ long that street, and next thing I know they was studs an’ cops all over mah back.”
“You mean you weren’t in on the planned raid of the Wild Gentlemen into BackBlaster territory tonight, Jesse?”
“Thass right, sir. I didn’t even know they’s gonna have one of them. I thought it’s just a social visit like.”
More laughter, and the microphoned voice snorted in disbelief. “All right, Jesse, that’ll be all. Step back.”
The big black slid back to the wall, crushed his hat some more, and stared at the floor, occasionally licking his lips with a tongue-tip.
Whippy stepped forward before the officer could tell him to do it. He took one big step toward the front of the platform and stopped, tamping the lump on the side of his head.
He was a slim white boy, with deep purple rings beneath his brown eyes. His pupils were large and glassy. The lower left corner of his mouth jerked spastically, irregularly, pulling his face down twitchingly from time to time. He looked as though he found it difficult getting to sleep at night.
“What’s you name, Anxious?”
“Whippy, what’s yours?”
“Don’t get cute, boy! What’s your Christian name?”
“Ain’t got one.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I ain’t Christian. I’m Buddhist.”
Everybody laughed, and the BackBlasters doubled over as their buddy got one-up on the cop. But the speaker’s voice deepened with anger. He didn’t like these street kids getting the better of him in cross-conversation.
“Okay, you. Now just shut your mouth and answer when you’re asked. And no wisecracks or we’ll toss the key away on you.”
“You mean I ain’t even gonna get a trial, Ossifer?”
“I thought I told you to clap your yap?”
“I guess maybe you did. So solly!”
The cop was getting plenty mad. The blond boy watched into the blackness, and even without light could feel the thickset cop’s face get red. He could feel the heat burning out at him. He had never seen the cop, but he knew the man was thick, and fleshy, and just ripe for a switchblade in the gut bucket
The cop started again, after the snickering died down.
“Is your name Leon Gross?”
“Naw. It’s Whippy. Ask any—”
“It says here your name is Leon Aaron Gross. Is that right, boy? Answer me straight, or you’ll be plenty sorry.”
Whippy got a sullen look on his face. He nodded. “Yeah, that’s my name.”
“You ever been arrested, Gross?”
“You should know…you got the record in front of ya.”
“Yeah, I’ve got the record. 1951 Suspicion of Robbery; 1952 Suspicion of Breaking and Entering. No conviction either time. 1953 Served six months in the Work House for Assault and Battery. 1954 Arrested for Possession of Narcotics. 1955 the same. Released in the custody of your father, Meyer Gross.
“You still on the dream-dust, Leon?”
No answer.
“I asked you, are you still on—”
The white boy interrupted angrily, “No! I ain’t on it any more. I put down months ago, now whyinabell don’cha lemme alone!” His face was red, and his mouth jerked fiercely.
They went around and around for another few minutes, till the officer had established that Whippy was still getting a snootful regularly, but that the Wild Gentlemen had clobbered him before he’d gotten a chance to use the long stick with the jagged bit of glass on the end.
Then Carlos was told to step forward.
“Your name is Carlos Arando?”
No answer.
“I asked you what your name was, boy.”
No answer.
“Can you hear me, Arando? Speak up!”
Still no answer, and handsome Carlos lifted his head to stare directly into the lights. His mouth was a fine, tight, visibly black line, closed.
“Look me in the eye, boy! I’m speaking to you.”
No answer, and in disgust the officer said, “Step back. We’ll see you later.”
Then it was Tommy’s turn.
“Step up there, kid.”
The boy stepped forward. Not arrogantly, not hesitantly, not comically. He merely stepped forward and stood, hands in pockets, calmly looking out at the ebony curtain between the microphone and himself.
“Your name’s Thomas Kilpatrick?”
“That’s it.”
“We have it here that you stabbed a boy named Daniel Johnson, during the rumble tonight with the Wild Gentlemen. That right?”
Before Tommy Kilpatrick could answer, even before the words could be formed, a deeper voice came out of the darkness behind the speaker at the microphone. It cut the boy off before he could admit his crime.
“I want to talk to that boy, Sergeant. Send him into my office.”
The Sergeant’s tones were tentative, inquiring, but he answered, “Yes, sir. Right away, Captain.”
A face materialized at the foot of the stage, just inside the ball of light where Tommy stood. “Okay, kid, down off there…you got an appointment.”
Tommy let the edge of a grin slide onto his lips. Stinkin’ cops. He knew how they operated, he knew he had figured it right the first time. His old man wasn’t going to let his son stand up there and get booked for assault with intent to kill. Let the rest of the BackBlasters go sit on their cans in the pokey, get booked for life. He was going to walk away from this free!
“I’m coming…Sir,” he replied, starting toward the stairs that led down from the platform, the grin flickering wider.
The officer with the bad breath brought Tommy into the office, and closed the door, staying outside.
The boy stared at the big man behind the desk for a moment, then grinned. “Hi, dad.” The boy walked to the chair across from the desk, and slumped into it.
He lifted one leg and threw it laconically over the arm of the chair. He stared for a moment at the thin dossier file in front of the man, and knew it was his own. He let his eyes roam about the office, taking in the framed certificates of graduation from the police academy, the citations, the letters of commendation. “Quite the office ya got here, dad. This’s the first time I been in it. How come ya never brought me here before?”
Then he looked at his father.
Big, with a square jaw, and crew-cut light brown hair. Blue eyes much like his son’s. Eyes that snapped a bit at a person’s nerves. A nose that half-skewed across his blocky face. The face of an ex-pug. The face of a hard man who knew when to be hard.
“I guess you wanted to see me.” Tommy said. “I’d like to make it fast, Dad, ’cause there’s a couple good shows on tv tonight, and I can make ’em if I get home real fast.”
His tone was condescending, violently rude.
The Captain’s face hardened even more. His jaw was a curved line of rigidity, and his mouth moved faintly, as though he were trying to drown a word or an emotion, a feeling or a decision.
“Tommy…” he murmured, as though the word were a speech of great meaning in itself. The boy cocked an eyebrow humorously, inquisitively.
“Did you kill that boy?”
“What do you think?” He looked away, at the door that separated him from freedom and the television. He would be going out that door in a little while.
“Look me in the eye, boy!” Tommy recognized that brutal edge to his father’s tone. The tone he had employed often at home. And he knew how the microphone cop could have picked up his father’s phrase; it was one of the Captain’s favorites. Even at home he never let anyone forget who was on top, who was the Man, who was in charge.
“Dum da dum-dum…” The boy grinned.
The Captain’s hand on the desk clenched into a fist, till the knuckles whitened out. “I’ve told you a million times not to get snotty with me. I’m your father, and I’ll crack open your foul little mouth if you don’t answer straight, boy!”
“No you won’t. You won’t touch me and I know it. You don’t want those cops out there to know your son runs with a gang of juvies. You got your rep-yoo-tayshun to watch out for…”
The man leaned across and flat-handed the blond boy with a violence that snapped the boy’s head around. He turned back, and the hatred blazed up like an inferno in his blue eyes. “You done that before. You can do better, can’cha?”
“Why did you stab that boy?”
“Because he got in my way. I’ll slice anybody gets in my way. You can remember that…dad.” He spat the final word as though it were poison.
The older man’s face softened momentarily. His eyes gathered a luster of pleading. “You don’t have to run the streets.”
“Why not? Anything better for me to do?”
“You’ve got a good home. Tommy. God knows I’ve had a difficult time bringing you up since your mother died, but I’ve done my best, tried—”
The boy laughed roughly. “Some home. Three rooms and no old lady.”
“What’s that got to do with it? Lots of kids have no mother. And you know I’ve been saving all our money for that farm when I’m on pension. That’s why we haven’t got a bigger place, but there are just the two of us—”
“That goddamn farm. That’s your idea. Always your ideas, all the time what you want when you’re on pension. Slops to that!”
“That’s got nothing to do with it. What’s the matter with you? Are you really rotten inside the way you’re making me think you are? What’s wrong with you?”
“I got a bastard for an old man, that’s all’s wrong with me.”
He stared straight at the Captain, as though daring him to make an issue of it, to slap him again, to ask more questions. The arrogance was an open thing now, the swagger of the streets in his tones. The Captain watched him, shook his head sadly, put a hand rubbingly across his eyes.
Softly. “That bad?”
“Yeah, that fucking bad. I can’t stomach you, with your lousy holier-than-anybody way, and you got no guts when you need guts!”
“I think you hate everybody, Tommy.”
“Pretty close.”
“And I think I’ve helped you get that way.”
The boy laughed raucously, confirming the statement.
“What will you do if you get out of here?”
“Go back and slice some more of those black bastards. And then some spic bastards, and then some white bastards! And maybe even someday you…Dad.”
The Captain let the hand slide from his eyes. His face hardened. He pressed the intercom button on his desk.
A nasal voice came through the box. “Yes, sir?”
“Come on in here, Stenson.”
The boy shifted in the chair. His leg slapped down on the floor abruptly. What was this? This wasn’t in the calculations. What was his old man pulling? He knew the old man was hard when he should have been soft, and soft when he should have been tough, but Tommy hadn’t figured this. What was he going to do? Provide an honor guard home to make certain he didn’t get into any mischief tonight? Well, he didn’t have to worry about that. Tonight was dead…but there was always tomorrow. And all the tomorrows that would make up his life.
The Captain stared at his son, and the boy’s eyes grew wide, he licked his lips. He looked as though anticipation was not the proper attitude now. He looked as though he didn’t quite know what was going to happen, but he suspected.
The door opened, and the officer with bad breath came into the room He stood waiting.
“Something I can do. Captain Kilpatrick?”
“Take this boy back to the desk.” he said shortly.
His voice was very quiet, and he stared down at the dossier.
The line of his jaw was rigid, yet his cheeks contracted and expanded, as though his tongue were working within his mouth.
He said, “Stenson, this is my son. I want him treated exactly as those other boys were treated. Do you understand?
The officer nodded, started to take Tommy by the arm. The boy leaped up. “Look at me, dad. Look at me, for Chrissakes! I’m your only kid.”
The older man looked up, and the boy’s glance fell. “Look me in the eye, boy!” he said, as cold and flat as an artic wasteland. Tommy stared at the cold, hard blue eyes, and the Captain said, “I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong with you. I don’t know if I’m fulfilling my obligation, or righting the wrong I did to you and to all the people you’ve harmed, or whether I’m letting you down again…I don’t know. But this is the only way I can do it.”
He turned his eyes back to the dossier.
The boy’s voice came out slowly, disbelievingly.
“You’re kiddin’. Tell him you’re kiddin”! You ain’t gonna do it to me?”
“Take him away, Stenson.”
The officer grasped the boy by his upper arms, started to drag him from the room. The boy struggled, turned, inched back toward the desk, spat violently on the Captain’s desk.
The officer dragged the boy toward the door, stopped and looked back at the Captain, holding tightly to the struggling boy. “Should I return him to the line-up, Captain?”
The ex-pug face sank into a soft expression of complete, final, utter defeat. “Don’t bother with that,” he said.
He didn’t raise his bleak eyes from the dossier.
The defeat in his voice hung like smoke in the air.
“Book him,” he said.