Эд Макбейн - Learning to Kill - Stories

One of the men poured the coffee into a tin cup, and the strong aroma reached his nostrils, clung there. He wanted that coffee very badly, he wanted it almost desperately. The man handed the cup to Bugs, and the steam rose in the orange glow of the grill.

Bugs said, facing Johnny squarely now, “You want the coffee, punk?”

“I’d like a cup,” Johnny said warily.

“You got money to pay for it, punk?” Bugs asked. Maybe that was it. Maybe all they wanted was money. But suppose...

“No,” Johnny lied. “I’m broke.”

“Well now, ain’t that a shame?” Bugs said, winking again at the other men. “How you ’spect to get any coffee unless you pay for it? Coffee don’t grow on trees now, does it?”

“I guess not,” Johnny said slowly. “Forget the coffee. I’ll do without.”

“Now, now,” Bugs said, “no need to take that attitude, is there, boys? We’re willing to barter. You know how to horse-trade, punk?”

“I don’t want the coffee,” Johnny said firmly. He was already figuring how he’d make his break because he knew a break was in the cards, and the way the cards were falling he’d have to make the break soon.

Johnny wet his lips and moved closer to the glowing grill. Bugs kept eyeing him steadily, the vacuous, stupid smile on his face.

“All right,” Johnny said nervously. “Give me the cup.”

Bugs extended the steaming tin cup. “That’s a good little punk,” he said. “That’s the way we like it. No fuss and no muss. Now go ahead and drink your coffee, punk. Drink it all down fine. Go ahead, punk.”

He handed the cup to Johnny, and Johnny felt the hot liquid through the tin of the container and then he moved. He threw the coffee into Bugs’s face, lashing out with his left hand. He heard Bugs scream as the hot liquid scalded him and then Johnny’s foot lashed out for the grill, kicking wildly at it, hooking the metal under the glowing coils. The grill leaped into the air like a flashing comet, hung suspended hot at the end of its wire, and then the wire pulled free of the outlet, and the grill glowed for an instant and then began to dwindle, its coils turning pale.

He was already running. Bugs was screaming wildly behind him, and he heard footsteps, and he heard another scream and knew that the wildly kicked grill had burned someone else. He headed for the steps, with the sounds angry behind him, the footsteps thudding against the bare floor. His own feet hit the iron rungs of the stairs, the echoes clattering up the stairwell, down, down to the main floor and then across the darkened room with the piled, dusty furniture, the shouts and cries behind him all the way. He leaped up for the window, jimmied it open, and then shoved the loose bar aside.

“I’ll kill the louse!” he heard Bugs shout but he was already outside and sprinting for the fence. He jumped up, forced to use both arms, with the blood smearing across the fence in a wild streak. And then he was over, just as Bugs squeezed through the bars and ran for the fence. He was tired, very tired. His arm hurt like hell, and his heart exploded against his rib cage, and he knew he couldn’t risk a prolonged chase because Bugs would surely catch him.

He was at the corner now and Bugs still hadn’t reached the fence. He spotted the manhole and he ran for it quickly, stooping down and expertly prying open the lid with his fingers. He’d been down manholes before. He’d been down them when the kids used to play stickball and a ball rolled down the sewer and the only way to get it was by prying open the manhole cover and catching it before it got washed away to the river. He was in the manhole now, and he slid the cover back in place, hearing it wedge firmly in the caked dirt, soundlessly settling back into position. He clung to the iron brackets set into the wall of the sewer, and he could hear the rush of water far below where the sewer elbowed into the pipes. There was noise above him, the noise of feet trampling on the iron lid of the manhole. He held his breath because there was no place to go from here, no place at all. The footsteps clattered overhead and the iron lid rattled and then the footsteps were gone.

He waited until he heard more footsteps, figured them to belong to Bugs’s followers.

He was safe. They didn’t realize he’d ducked into the manhole. They were probably scouting Third Avenue for him now and they’d give up when they figured they’d lost him.

To play it doubly sure, he edged his way down deeper into the sewer, holding on to the iron brackets with his good hand. The stench of garbage and filthy water reached up to caress his nostrils. He was tempted to move up close to the lid again but it was darker down below and if someone did lift the lid, chances were he wouldn’t be seen if he went deeper.

The walls around him were slimy and wet, and they smelled, too, or at least he thought they did. His nose was no longer capable of determining the direction of the stink. It was all around him, like a soggy vile blanket. He felt nauseous and he didn’t know whether the nausea came from his dripping arm or the dripping slime of the sewer.

He only knew that he was safe here, and that Bugs and the boys were upstairs, and so he descended deeper until the elbow of the sewer was just beneath his feet and he could hear the rush of water loud beneath him.

He was very weary, more weary than he’d been in all his life. The weight of the entire city seemed to press down on him, as if all the concrete and steel were concentrated on this one hole in the asphalt, determined to crush it into the core of the earth.

He hooked his left arm into one of the brackets, and he hung there like a Christ with one arm free. The free arm dangled at his right side, the bandage soaked through now, the blood running down and dropping into the rushing water below.

Drop by drop, it hit the slimy surface of the brown water while Johnny hung from the rusted iron bracket praying no one would lift the manhole cover. Drop by drop, it mingled with the brown water, flowed into the elbow where manhole joined sewer pipe, rushed toward the river, bright red on the brown, rushed with the water carrying the smell of fresh blood.

And the rat clinging to the rotted orange crate lodged in the sewer pipe turned glittering bright eyes toward the manhole opening, and his nostrils twitched as he smelled the blood. His teeth gnashed before he plunged into the water and swam toward the source of the blood.

Marie Trachetti got the news from Hannihan, the cop on the beat. She threw on her high school jacket and went into the streets looking for Johnny.

She had known from the moment Angelo got shot that Johnny would be tagged with it. She had known, and she had sought him then, hoping to warn him, but she had not found him, and the next thing she knew a search was out for him and he was suspected of the killing.

All that was over and done with now. This Ryan fellow had confessed to shooting Angelo, a crime for which he should have been awarded a medal. But Johnny was clear now, and Johnny had to be told, and so Marie took to the streets in search of him.

She did not, in all truth, know where to look for him. Johnny and she did not run in the same circles. She had her friends, and he had his, and except for that run-in with Angelo, their separate social paths hardly ever crossed.

She started looking in the pool parlors and when she had no luck there, she tried the movies. She met some of Johnny’s friends but none of them had seen him, and so she tried all the restaurants, walking up 125th Street and then down Lexington Avenue.

From Lexington Avenue, she walked down to Third, frightened because it was very late at night and because she knew she was an attractive girl in a dark, exotic-looking way. Her brush with Angelo had taught her that.