Don Winslow: A Cool Breeze on the Underground

Stealing something is relatively easy; getting out with it is something else again. A thief is basically confronted with two choices: bluff or run. He needs to know himself and his gifts, his strengths and his weaknesses. A successful thief must possess an unusual amount of self-knowledge. Neal had some information, readily available from the swift observation that is part and parcel to a poor city kid. He knew that he was in an Irish bar with two more or less sober micks, that he was eleven years old, and that there was no way in hell that he was going to bluff these two guys. He also knew that there was no way on God’s good earth that either of these middle-aged guzzlers could ever catch him in a flat-out race. Baseball might be a spectator sport; theft is strictly participatory. He analyzed this data in the space of about a second and a half, and headed full speed for the door.

Graham hadn’t felt his wallet being lifted, but he sure felt it was gone. Joe Graham never had much money, so he tended to know where it was and where it wasn’t, and even a Roger Maris shot over the left-field fence couldn’t mask the fact that his money wasn’t in its right and proper place in his pocket. He turned around, to see the back of a little kid running out the door.

Graham didn’t pause to comment. Those who take the time to say something like, “That little bastard just took my wallet!” are acknowledging a fait accompli. He shot out the door after the kid, intent on the recovery of his property and the punishment of the perpetrator.

Neal took a hard right out of the door and headed up Amsterdam, then jagged a left on Eighty-first Street. Halfway down the block, he decked right, spun left, and plunged into the alley, where a chain-link fence and an unlocked basement door promised haven. He hit the fence at full stride, digging in with the toe of his sneaker and pulling up with his arms. Neal knew from his childhood days of ringalevio that he could take a fence faster than any kid in the neighborhood. He knew he was being chased, but he also knew that by the time this jerk got over that fence, he would be separating fives from tens in the cool of the basement. He was in the middle of this pleasant thought when something hard and heavy hit him about kidney height in the back and dropped him off the fence. He was sucking for air for just a moment before he blacked out.

Graham had seen as soon as he turned into the alley that this kid was a sprinter and that he wasn’t going to catch him. His clean shirt was soaked with sweat now and four beers were bouncing around in his belly and threatening worse. He knew that if this kid got over that fence, his wallet was history. So he grabbed his artificial right arm, a heavy hard-rubber affair, and jerked it out. Then, with his overdeveloped left arm, threw it at the thief.

When Neal came to, he saw a mean little leprechaun leering down at him-a one-armed leprechaun.

“Life stinks, doesn’t it?” observed the man. “You think you’ve picked yourself up a couple of bucks, you just about got it made, and some guy takes his arm off, for Chrissakes, and flattens you with it.”

He grabbed Neal by the shirt and hauled him to his feet.

“C’mon, let’s go see McKeegan. My beer’s getting warm.”

He frog-marched Neal back to Meg’s. Nobody on the street took any notice. Graham slammed Neal down on a bar stool. Neal watched with fascinated horror as Graham put his arm back on and roiled his sleeve down over it.

“Neal, you little fuck,” said McKeegan.

“You know him?” Graham asked.

“He lives in the neighborhood. His mother’s on the needle.”

“Lucky for you you didn’t have time to spend any of this,” Graham said to Neal. Then he slapped him hard across the face.

“You want the cops?” asked McKeegan, reaching for the phone.

“What for?”

Neal knew enough to keep his mouth shut. There wasn’t any use trying to deny the obvious. Besides, he was a little demoralized, having just been cornered and beaten up by a guy with one arm. Life sure does stink, he thought.

“You do this a lot? Pick pockets?” Graham asked.

“Only since last Friday.”

“What happened last Friday?”

“I took a bath in the market.”

“You got a smart mouth for a pick who gets caught so easy. I were you, I’d work on my technique, let Jackie Gleason do the jokes.”

Graham looked real hard at this child. He was just pissed off enough to call the cops and make the kid take the trip to juvenile hall. But a younger Joe Graham had found more than one meal in someone else’s pocket. And you never knew when a smart kid could be useful.

“What’s your name?”

“Neal.”

“You a rock-and-roll star, or you got a last name, Neal?”

“Carey.”

“McKeegan, how about making a cheeseburger for Neal Carey?”

McKeegan gestured behind him. “Do you know what this is?”

“A grill.”

“A clean grill, and it’s going to stay a clean grill until five o’clock. I’ll not be dirtying it up for a sneaky thief who’s after robbing my customers. I rob my customers.”

“How about a turkey sandwich?”

“That, I’ll make.”

McKeegan turned to the counter to make the sandwich. Graham turned to Neal.

“Your mother takes dope?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you take dope?”

“I take wallets.”

Neal was confused. Generally speaking, people whose pockets have been rifled don’t buy lunch for the rifler. This was the first time in a two-year career that he’d ever been caught. He knew from neighborhood wise guys what to expect from the cops, but this was another thing altogether. He contemplated another run for it, but his back still hurt from the last attempt, and from the corner of his eye he could see a thick turkey sandwich on rye with mayonnaise. Knowing that a full stomach beat an empty one, he decided to play along for a while.

“Your mother get money from you?”

“When she can.”

“You eat regular?” “I get by.” “Right.”

McKeegan delivered the food and Neal wolfed it down.

“You eat like an animal,” said Graham. “You’ll get sick.”

Neal barely heard him. The sandwich was wonderful. When McKeegan, unbidden, served up a Coke, Neal thought he might like to get caught more often.

When he was finished, Graham said, “Now get out of here.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot. And if there’s ever anything I can do for you-”

“You can get out of my sight,”

Neal headed for the door. He wasn’t one to push his luck.

“And Neal Carey…”

Neal turned around.

“If I ever catch you in my pocket again… I’ll cut your balls off.”

This time, Neal ran.

A week later, Neal was hiding in an alley. It was pretty late at night, but his mother was entertaining a customer and Neal didn’t feel like going home. People in the neighborhood lived on the streets on summer nights like this one, a sticky New York City night, the air as hot and black as tar. The multicolored carnival of a West Side night went on around him, but he was only dimly aware of the decadent beauty that made up this world. He was savoring a Hershey bar filched from a local bodega on Eighty-fifth Street. He was in a quiet mood, wanting to be alone, and that was why he was sitting in an alley, resting, in a position to see a very large man in his underwear come pounding down a fire escape in pursuit of a fleeing Joe Graham.

“I’ll kill you, you bastid.” The fat man huffed, his sweaty gut bouncing over his Jockey shorts.

Neal heard a woman’s voice and looked up to see a naked blond lady screaming out the window: “The film! Get the film!”

Joe Graham didn’t pause a second when he glimpsed Neal Carey. With a quick backhand toss, he flipped the camera down to the boy and kept running. Neal didn’t have to be told what to do. When you are holding an item urgently desired by a furious three-hundred-pound man in his underwear, there is only one thing to do. Neal took off down the alley and into the street, where he soon lost himself in the crowd.