William McGivern - Night of the Juggler

He had been lucky on more than one time in the Ramble. Once he had made almost four hundred dollars from three big Texans. The Ramble was a kinky, dangerous place, and something feverish in its menacing atmosphere stirred the blood of transvestites and the leather boys.

What were they looking for? All those cops and those noisy helicopters? He’d give it just fifteen minutes, Manolo thought, try his luck that long and then split and work the lobby of the St. Regis and the Plaza again.

Gus Soltik had heard Manolo coming through the woods. Alarmed, he had turned from “white legs” and climbed silently down the side of a knoll. Now, drawn by compulsions and feelings he didn’t understand, he stepped into the clearing to stare at the slim young man.

Manolo turned to him, a teasing, professional smile on his lips, but his heart thudded with panic because he smelled weirdo. The man was huge, wore a dirty brown sweater and a small leather cap, and his forehead bulged wide above muddy, puzzled eyes.

Maybe not, Manolo thought, and wet his lips with the tip of his pink tongue. The crazies who wanted to twist your arms or burn your belly with cigarettes usually came on fast and violent. But this big stud, ugly as he was, didn’t look like that kind of trouble. But the man’s rank odor disgusted Manolo and he decided to trust his first instincts: weirdo.

They stood looking at each other in the little glade with moonlight on the hoarfrost and the winds now soft but cold in the big oak trees.

The word forming in Gus Soltik’s mind as clearly as if it were written there in bold letters was “black-sweet.” This mnemonic unit equated with a concept of “safe” in Gus Soltik’s peculiar lexicon. In blackness he would not be seen and therefore felt safe. And sweet things of all kinds, jellies, sugars, candies, made him feel warm and secure. This , which looked at him with eyes outlined by curling dark lashes, was “safe.” Gus Soltik experienced a strange excitement. He was confused but not angered by a physical sensation he hadn’t known before, or, at least, never so acutely. It was blended of the silence, the moonlight, the soft swell of sexual organ he saw molded by tight blue trousers and a fragrance like that of cherries when they broke in his hands in the store, and he knew that clean, cloying scent came from the boy’s dark, curling hair.

In damp, silent woods about fifty yards from that clearing, Kate Boyd lay helpless on slick, mossy ground, wrists and ankles bound excruciatingly tight with thin nylon rope. A broad patch of adhesive tape was plastered across her lips. She was crying now, trying desperately but vainly to free herself from the cruelly knotted ropes.

Within a foot of her eyes Gus Soltik’s airlines bag lay on its side, and she could see the big hunting knife near a cigarette lighter and a gun.

Drifting casually toward Kate Boyd at this time were a pair of black teen-agers, whose names were Billy Smith and Hugo Thomas.

They were in a lighthearted and light-headed mood, larking their way through the Ramble, sucking on joints, and occasionally breaking into pointless but helpless giggles. They weren’t out for trouble, although they might have rolled a drunk if they had lucked on to one. They weren’t pushing anything; they weren’t looking to hurt anyone; they were simply young and turned on and curious to find out what all the cops were doing in Central Park that night.

“Please,” Gus Soltik said. He was terribly confused, but excited; he felt as if his whole body were glowing pleasantly and warmly, but it was a sensation he relished, “black-sweet,” for he realized there was no need to create that dreadful, guilty exhilaration by teaching him lessons. And he realized again, though very dimly, that no one would hurt him or beat him for the rush of emotion now surging through his veins. “Please,” he said again.

Manolo knew this big man could break his back with those huge hands. But he hadn’t survived the streets and alleys of New York for five years without learning how to take care of himself.

“You got any money?” Manolo asked him with a teasing little smile.

Gus Soltik shook his head slowly.

“Can you get some?” This worked sometimes, Manolo knew: a freak would go off to find bread, whip-dick dumb enough to expect you to wait for him.

Gus Soltik was thinking about money. He knew the coins in the heels of his boots wouldn’t. . and he thought of Lanny then. He began to hope. Lanny would help him. Give him some money.

Lanny talked slow and soft to him. And that was why he always knew what Lanny meant.

Billy Smith and Hugo Thomas stood stock-still, smoke from their joints curling up around their startled, incredulous eyes, staring in fear and bewilderment at the little white girl lying gagged and trussed on the ground.

“God damn! ” Hugo said, his voice tense and anxious.

“We caught here, we get blamed,” Billy Smith said. “Cops’ll be whipping our heads till hell dries up. We split this mothering scene, Hugo.”

“No, wait.” Hugo moved closer to Kate Boyd, looking into her tear-bright, hysterical eyes. “It’s the honkie chick Sam put out the word on.”

“You gonna be a hero?”

“Well, I ain’t gonna leave a little kid like this. See, she’s scared simple.”

He knew from the store how to say it.

“How much?” Gus Soltik asked Manolo, blurting out the words, his excitement frenzied now.

This was the tough, the dangerous part of it. Name a price too high, you ran the risk the weirdo might take you right on the ground, probably rip hell out of your fancy gear and all of it for free. Manolo moved slowly away from Gus Soltik, smiling at him over his shoulder trying to increase his advantage without making the big man suspicious.

“Ten dollars,” he said.

Lanny would give him ten dollars, Gus Soltik thought. Yes, ten dollars.

“Yes,” he said “Yes.”

Manolo smiled. “Go get it, lover man.”

“Wait?”

“Why sure. Think I’d skip this kind of action? You’ll see.” Manolo’s pink tongue moved slowly between his full, wet lips.

From somewhere deep in the woods came the hideous sound of a child’s screams.

Gus Soltik wheeled with amazing speed for his great bulk and ran across the clearing, but suddenly he stopped as if he had collided with a physical obstacle and turned and looked desperately at the slim figure of Manolo. Gus Soltik was like a giant racked by forces of tremendous and almost equal strength; one half of him was pulled agonizingly toward the sound of Kate’s screams, while another part of him was torn with the need to be with this smiling boy.

“Come back?” he cried to Manolo.

“Sure,” Manolo called to him, and ran with relief into the shadows of the trees.

Hugo and Billy had pulled the adhesive tape from Kate’s mouth. And that was when she had screamed. But she wasn’t screaming now, for they were working feverishly and rapidly to untie the knots which fastened the ropes searingly about her slim wrists and ankles.

“Hurry,” she cried softly. “Use the knife.” They heard him coming then, smashing and clawing his way through underbrush like a wild beast, and before they could finish untying the intricate knots, he burst into sight among the trees and charged at the terrified black boys.

Gus Soltik struck Hugo across the side of the head and knocked him sprawling, but Billy dodged behind Soltik and hit the back of his legs with a rotting tree limb he had scooped up from the ground. The blow sent Gus staggering to his knees. To break his fall, he braced his weight with both hands on the ground, and the sudden, excruciating pressure on the wound in his upper arm made him bellow with pain.

Before he could regain his feet, the two black boys were running off through the trees, insubstantial as a pair of midnight shadows.