I SET OFF FOR GARDEN STREET THE MINUTE school got out that afternoon. The hold-up man’s Blue Hawks cap was pulled down on my eyes. That cap had gotten to be a big part of my outfit. I don’t know why, but I felt more professional in it. I could answer questions in class better when I wore it. I got a 78 on a math test when I wore it, too, which was a big record for me. I was hoping it would help me again.
Going across Washington Boulevard wasn’t something I especially wanted to do. I knew I had to, though. Somehow, I was going to bring Oggie’s wallet back to him. He was depending on me to do it, just like I was depending on him not to tell Mom about him getting mugged. We were depending on each other, and neither one could let the other one down. That’s what things had come to. There was nobody else to count on.
Oggie and me sticking together had gotten even more important lately because of something else that was happening. Dad and Cyndi weren’t getting along too well anymore.
Anyone who’d been living around them could have seen it. Where they used to hold hands and call each other sweetie and honey, now they got into fights. They’d yell about which movie to watch on TV or what they were going to have for dinner. Dad said Cyndi’s panty hose made the bathroom look like a French underwear factory and Cyndi called him a born-again control freak. The way it looked, even with California on the way, things were starting to fall apart.
Meanwhile, Mom and Dad had been talking a lot more on the telephone. Not always great conversations, but at least they were in touch. It gave Oggie and me a little ray of hope. What I kept telling Oggie was, if we could just keep Mom and Dad talking, maybe they’d start getting back together. People do get together again, even after they’re divorced, right? You hear about it happening with movie stars all the time.
I was thinking about this while I was walking along, trying to get myself pumped up for the Night Riders. And I WAS getting pumped—until I turned onto Garden Street. Then a terrible smell hit me in the face. I looked down and saw a skinny brown dog puking up a big lump of something right in the middle of the sidewalk.
It was a rat.
You could still see the gray fur and the flesh-colored tail and the feet. The little mutt must have been so hungry, he swallowed a whole rat in one gulp.
That almost got me. I had to hold my breath to keep my stomach down. I pulled my cap lower and walked by fast. I started checking numbers on the buildings for where 5446 was. After a couple of minutes I was okay, but it was a close call.
Not only dogs are in bad shape on Garden Street. You hate to even look at the people around there because they’re so beat-up. Everybody has their hand out for a quarter, or they’re lying slumped over in a doorway. Nobody has a job over there. Most of the stores moved away. The ones that are still in business have bars over the windows and sell things like brass knuckles and triple-bolt locks.
On one block is what everybody knows is a crack house. It’s boarded over in front, but these bad-looking guys are always lounging around the back. They’re the runners who deliver the stuff, supposedly, and compared to them, the Night Riders are nothing. Some of these guys have already been in jail. A bunch of us from school would ride our bikes over for a look sometimes. A kid had told us where the house was. The hair would kind of rise on my neck whenever we passed that place.
It was starting to rise again, right then, as I walked along, but I kept going, checking for the Riders’ building number. Finally I saw 5446 painted on a board that was nailed over a broken window. My heart kind of jumped. The building wasn’t as rundown as the crack house, but it didn’t look good, either. The front porch was half falling off.
Something Shades had said about me the night before came into my mind.
Fast on his feet and good with a gun, he’d said.
At first I thought he was kidding me. Then I decided he must have some reason for hiring a younger kid like me, so maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he really thought I was fast on my feet. Which was pretty funny because that’s the one thing I’ve never been. I never could get on the soccer team, even after trying out three years in a row.
As for being good with a gun, up to that night in Mr. Wong’s, I’d never held a gun in my hand.
I’d SEEN plenty of guns, on TV and in movies. And once, when a bunch of us were walking around across Washington Boulevard (we’d make these trips over there on foot, to kind of see the sights), there was a man sitting in a lawn chair on his front stoop with a shotgun across his knees.
Somebody said he was waiting for his wife to come home.
Afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about that. I kept wondering what happened to her. I never heard if he shot her, though, so maybe things ended up okay.
I went around back of 5446 the way Shades had told me. There wasn’t anything but a closed door, so I tried it. It opened.
“Hey! Yo! Anybody home?”
Everything was dark inside. Some stairs went down, that’s all. It was like Amory Ellington staring into a slurp hole.
Way off somewhere, there was a scuffle of feet. I stayed by the door. I didn’t want to go in unless I knew who was in there.
Finally, somebody came. It was a girl.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I came about the job.”
“Oh, yeah. They said somebody was coming.”
We walked downstairs, went through another door and along a dark hall with doors on both sides.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Archie.”
“I’m Raven,” she said. She wasn’t that old, probably about my age. I was surprised to see someone that young in a gang like that. I thought maybe she was somebody’s sister.
“What job am I going to get, do you know?” I asked.
“That’s up to the Cat Man.”
“Who’s that?”
“You know, the dude who invited you to come here. Cat Man. He calls himself that.”
I was having this feeling of my mouth drying up into the Sahara Desert, so I didn’t say anything. It was starting to hit me, what I was doing. I was heading into trouble, I knew, going down into something I’d be better off quitting right then, before it got too late.
I didn’t quit, though. I kept following Raven.
We went into a room with a lot of pipes running across the ceiling and there was Shades—or Cat Man, rather. Whatever, he was still wearing the sunglasses.
“Hey. It’s the soccer star. C’mon over here and look at this, soccer star,” he said.
Four or five Night Riders were hanging out in the room, which had two TVs in it, a table and some chairs, and no windows that I could see. I looked at Raven. She gave me a little nod to get a move on, so I went over. Cat Man handed me a piece of paper. On it was written: Bolton Street and Summerville Ave. Green Ford Pinto.
“Know where that is?” Cat Man said.
Well, I knew where Summerville Avenue was. Dad’s apartment complex was on it. Bolton Street took me a minute. Then I remembered.
“It’s where the hardware store used to be. Now there’s just an empty building.” I was surprised Cat Man would have anything going over there because it was across Washington Boulevard, on the good side.
“Whew! This kid is smart!” Cat Man kind of sagged back on his heels as if he was blown away by my brainpower. Some Night Riders laughed. The guy was a real put-on artist.
“Do you know what a Ford Pinto looks like?” he asked next.
“Sure,” I said. Not that I’m so interested in cars, but if you live with Oggie, you get to know every car ever made. He learned them when he was about three and has been yelling them out to everybody ever since. Dad knows cars, Mom knows cars, even Mrs. Pinkerton and Cyndi got to know.
“Well, I know they teach you in school what the color green is. That’s all you have to know for this job,” Cat Man said. He made it seem as if he was kidding all the time, but underneath, something in his voice told you he was dead serious.
“You own a bike, right? Whew, I’m impressed. See, this job’s a delivery. You have to take this brown paper bag and go to this address. Then you wait for a green Ford Pinto to come by. You give the bag to the guy who’s driving, and he gives you another bag to bring back. Then you bring it back here. Got it?”
I nodded. I was looking for Oggie’s wallet the whole time he was talking, but I couldn’t see it. Cat Man didn’t have it in his pocket anymore.
“And for that you get ten bucks. Wow! Easy money, right?”
He handed me the paper bag. It wasn’t that heavy. Inside a couple of things rattled up against each other. I didn’t ask what. It was like my cigarette jobs for Cyndi. I didn’t want to know.
“When should I go?” I asked. I was still trying to see Oggie’s wallet. I checked out Cat Man’s other pockets and was looking around the room.
“Got a watch?”
I held up my arm to show him.
“You’re supposed to meet the Pinto at three forty-five. How long do you think it will take you?”
“I have to pick up my bike at home.”
“So?”
“A half hour?”
Cat Man smiled as if I’d passed some kind of test. He was older than I’d guessed last night, over twenty maybe. You could see he knew his business more than some kid would. Another thing was, he had a beautiful smile.
A lot of gang kids have yellow teeth or bad gums or something missing from a fight. Or maybe they’re too busy at night to brush right, I don’t know. Cat Man’s teeth were white and perfect, the most shining white teeth I ever saw.
“Listen, just so you understand, you’re only getting this job like special from me,” he said. “Most of my workers have to go through some initiation try-outs before I know they can do it. I already saw what you could do.”
“Thanks.” I wasn’t too enthusiastic. More and more, I knew I shouldn’t be getting into this. If I could’ve seen Oggie’s wallet lying around somewhere, I would’ve felt a lot better. At least then I wouldn’t be getting into it for nothing.
Behind his shades, Cat Man had his eyes on me.
“What’s up, you don’t want the job?” He was a quick read, no doubt about it. “Hey, no problem. I just thought a smart kid like you should be getting some action. Raven, honey, get him out of here.”
“No, no, I want it.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Real sure?” He looked me hard in the eye. I looked back just as hard.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, you got it. Go.”
Raven took me back upstairs. She seemed different from everybody else. Not a gang type. Also, I could tell she liked me. We were both younger kids.
“Do you do this, too?” I asked her. She had real short hair, like a boy’s. But it looked good on her.
“Sure. You won’t have any trouble.”
“When do I get the ten bucks?”
“When you get back.”
“I don’t know if I can get back for a while. I have to pick up my little brother at afterschool.”
Raven made a low noise under her breath and stepped up close to me.
“Listen, Archie, you got to get back quick,” she said. “That’s the whole thing. You pick up something for the Cat Man, you got to bring it right back. If you don’t, he gets worried. You don’t want to know the Cat Man when he gets worried. You read?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.” Whatever was in the paper bag shifted again. I jumped.
Raven smiled. “Don’t look so scared, people will notice. Anyway, Cat Man’s not into hard stuff. He has his own racket. Don’t ask what.”
“I won’t,” I said. I tried to smile back at her, but it didn’t come off too well.
She gave me a little push to get me going. I walked out the door and went around to Garden Street. I was kind of shaken up after what Raven had said about Cat Man getting worried. I mean, I knew a job with the Night Riders would probably be borderline, I just hadn’t thought what that would mean.
Right then, on the sidewalk in front of the house, I saw that dog again, the skinny one that had puked up the rat.
He looked terrible. His eyes were sunk in and his mouth was hung open with some kind of yellow drool coming out. He looked like he was about to die. Maybe he recognized me, too, because he started to come over. I jumped away and ran by him.
“Scram!” I yelled. “KEEP AWAY, you dirty mutt.” He was just a sad little thing asking for help, but this scared feeling had come into me about everything that was happening. I didn’t want him near me for anything in the world.