Ed Mcbain - Mischief

“I’m sorry,” she said again, into the very wet handkerchief now.

“Hey, no,” he said again, but without as much conviction as last time.

The coffee came. He watched as she spooned four teaspoons of sugar into it, they had sweet tooths, these Latinos. Just a dollop of milk, she liked it dark. She was under control again. He hoped that this time he could get some answers from her before she turned on the tears again.

“Did he belong to a gang?” he asked.

Flat out. Get to it. Get it over and done with.

“No,” she said.

“Anybody putting any pressure on him to join one?”

“Not that I know about.”

“I have to ask this, was he into dope?”

“What do you mean? Using dope? No, Alfredo never…”

“Using it, dealing it, I have to ask. Was he in any way connected with narcotics?”

“No.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Positive.”

Brown eyes flashing something very close to anger now.

“Did you know he was a wall-writer?”

“No. A what? What’s that, a wall-writer?”

“A graffiti artist. A person who sprays graffiti on walls. With paint.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“We’re pretty sure that’s what he was doing when he got shot. Unless somebody went to a lot of trouble putting his fingerprints on the spray can, your son’s. Ever see him leaving the house with a spray can?”

“No.”

“Ever see any spray cans around the house? This one was red, ever see any red spray cans around? These cans that spray paint?”

“No, never.”

“Ever hear the name Spider?”

“No.”

“Do you know that’s what your son was called on the street?”

“No.”

“But you say he didn’t belong to a gang.”

“He did not belong to a gang.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Her eyes said You better.

“Will you need help with funeral arrangements?” he asked.

For Christ’s sake, don’t bust out crying again, he thought.

“I’ll give you a hand with that, you need help,” he said.

“Por favor,” she said, and lowered her head to hide the tears that were brimming in her eyes again.

Parker felt something like genuine sympathy.

THIS WAS A CITYon the thin edge of explosion.

Everywhere you looked, you saw anger seething just below the surface.

The Deaf Man liked that.

One out of every two teenagers in this city owned a handgun. You saw some kids up to some kind of mischief in the street, you didn’t tell them to behave themselves, you had to be crazy to do that because if there were four of them, two of them might be the ones packing the guns. You had to be very careful about people getting angry in this city.

You hailed a taxicab in this city, and you didn’t see the guy standing on the corner with his hand raised to call the same cab, and the cab stopped for you instead of him, and the guy came running over yelling, “You fucking asshole, didn’t you see I had my hand up?” and when you told him, “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you, take the cab,” he said, “Don’t lie to me, you fucking asshole, you saw me all the time,” not happy with your giving him the cab, not happy with your apology, wanting to extend the argument, wanting to get even somehow for something you didn’t even do, hurt you somehow for some imagined offense you hadn’t committed.

This was a city waiting to erupt.

Good, the Deaf Man thought.

You’re waiting on a street corner for the light to change, and finally the signal turns toWALK and you start across the street and a limo makes a left turn into the block, almost knocking you over when he’s supposed to stop for a pedestrian crossing with the light and you raise your eyebrows and spread your hands as if to say Hey, come on, gimme a break, willya, and he leans over the seat and yells through the window on the passenger side, “What the fuck you want me to do, you cocksucker, drive up on the sidewalk?”—but it’s best not to argue. He’s not a teenager, he’s maybe thirty-three, thirty-four years old, but the anger is there and who knows whether or not he’s got a gun in the glove compartment, teenager or not.

Ready to flare.

Ready to take offense.

Ready to strike out.

The Deaf Man liked all that.

THAT NIGHT,as the temperature began to drop again, two kids were larking around under the lamppost on the corner of Mason and Sixth. One of the kids was eleven years old. The other was twelve. They were just clowning around, making a little mischief on a night at the beginning of spring, you know how kids are. The guns they were packing were made of plastic, super squirt guns with a capacity of two gallons, capable of shooting water fifty feet or more. The kids were running around the lamppost, squirting water at each other, their breaths feathering out of their mouths on the frosty air. It was a cold night, but spring was already three days old, and the sap was beginning to run someplace in America, so they were running around having a good time, what the hell. Giggling as they ran around the lamppost squirting each other with water, these huge jets of water gushing out of the plastic guns every time they squeezed the trigger, yelling and screaming like Indians surrounding the cavalry in the days of the Wild West. But this wasn’t the Wild West, this was the big bad city. And there was anger in this city.

The man who happened to be walking by had his hands in his pockets and his head was bent and he wasn’t paying any attention to the kids and their game because he had problems of his own. The first he even knew they existed was when some drops of water splashed onto his sleeve. He turned with an angry scowl on his face, started to say “What the fuck…?” and that was when the second jet of water hit him in the face. He turned at once, furiously screaming “You fuckin little shits,” and a gun came out of his jacket pocket. This gun was not made of plastic, this gun was made of steel, this gun was a Colt .45 caliber automatic, and he fired it three times, killing the eleven-year-old on the spot, and shooting the twelve-year-old through the left lung.

He ran off into the night while the kid who was still alive twisted on the sidewalk, gasping for breath and coughing up blood and crying for his mama.

OUT ON THE SPIT,there’d been lightning, and the old lady in the backseat had begun whimpering each time the lightning flashed. Here in the city, there wasn’t any lightning at all, but she was still mewling back there. Rocking back and forth where she sat against the window on the right-hand side of the car, keening like a widow at an Irish wake, but softly and weakly, as if she didn’t have the strength to let out a real cry of terror. He kept his eye on her in the rearview mirror, alternating his gaze from the road ahead to where she sat whimpering and looking bewildered.

“You don’t have to worry,” he told her. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. This is for your own good.”

The old lady said nothing, just kept whimpering in that soft weak way, rocking, rocking.

“This is an act of love,” he told her.

Whimpering. Whimpering.

“That’s why I’m doing this. You’ll be better off, wait and see.”

Fuck am I trying to explain anything to her, he thought. She doesn’t even know her own name anymore. Still, she had to understand this wasn’t an act of cruelty. He wouldn’t do anything cruel to her or anyone else. Wasn’t in his nature to do anything cruel or even thoughtless. This was a merciful act here, what he was doing.

“This is a merciful act,” he told her.

“Where are we?”

Her words came out of the blackness behind him, as startling as a gunshot explosion, surprisingly strong and clear and demanding.