Harlan Ellison - Web of the City

Rusty paused and wet his lips. He had to handle Boy-O delicately till he got him someplace where no one would interfere with the question-and-answer game he wanted to play with the pusher.

“Yeah. I wanna talk to ya about somethin’.”

Still with his back to Rusty, Boy-O handed the little packets from his pants to Clipper, and accepted the two five-dollar bills with the other hand. It was all one fluid movement without pause or fumbling. Clipper looked up at Rusty and the boy saw the nerve-jumping tension in the Cougar. Clipper was on it hard and he needed a fast mainline to get rid of the monkey. Even as Rusty thought it, Clipper pushed up from the booth and left the shop hurriedly, the packets in his pocket, his hand jammed tight down on them in protective adoration.

Boy-O turned then. He faced around and leaned against the table. He was the biggest junkie of all, bigger than his customers, bigger than any Rusty had ever seen. The scumbag was constantly broke, though he raked in a staggering amount of money, just from the neighborhood kids and junkies such as Finkel, the barber, and the boys who worked on the docks…

… and Miss Clements

… and Pops Santoro.

Yet he was always broke and filthy and sleeping in fifty-cent pads. He spent all he made on more of his own product. The face that looked up into Rusty’s was a lost one. It was devoid of purpose and strength, contained only the driving hunger for the dream-dust, the stuff that made a man temporarily twelve feet tall, and all trouble six miles away.

“Like what ya wanna talk about?” Boy-O said. “I don’t know we got anythin’ to talk about?”

“Sit down,” Rusty instructed him, with a friendly tone to the words. He waved his hand to the booth and then half-turned to call to Tom-Tom. “Hey! Tom-Tom! What’ll ya have, Boy-O?”

Boy-O shrugged his shoulders, surprised at this sudden friendliness on Rusty’s part, suspecting it, but philosophically deciding a free soda was a good deal anyhow. He slid into the booth, said, “A black an’ white, heavy onna syrup.”

“Tom-Tom, a Coke an’ a black an’ white shake, heavy on the syrup.” He slid down across from Boy-O and let a friendly smile play across his hard young face. “Hey, man, I haven’t seen much of ya lately.”

Suspicion flickered across Boy-O’s face, but he replied, “Oh, yeah, well, I been busy. You know.” Rusty knew all right. Busy getting the stuff to peddle and lying on his back in his pad with the light pastel dreams flitting by overhead and the holes like a million mosquito bites in his arms and thighs. Yeah, sure, busy. Hiding out!

“So? Whaddaya want?” Boy-O was too anxious to terminate the conversation. It showed nervousness and that he had something to be afraid about. That was good. For an instant Rusty felt bothered that he was going to have to use force again, but realized immediately there was no other way to get through to this hophead. The street called its own rules and a stud was a fool to play a kill-game by gentlemen’s rules. If it was going to be rough, then it was going to be rough. But was there no end of it, finally? Was the web always getting stickier, dragging him back always?

“Well,” Rusty began, feigning nervousness, twining his fingers, looking down at his hands, “I—uh—well, I didn’t wanna say anything here, y’know…” he nodded his head at Tom-Tom, busily fixing the milk shake. “But, I—uh—I gotta have some stuff. I been gettin’ kinda nervous, an’ I need a fix…”

Boy-O’s face jumped sharply and his eyes narrowed. Rusty was not a hophead. What did he want with the dust? Boy-O knew it was all wrong, right from the first sentence. This was some sort of trap, some sort of tie-in with Rusty’s sister and the hunt that had been going on the past weeks.

“What’re you tryin’ to pull?” the pusher said softly, his filthy face tense under the imperfect light of the malt shop. “You tryin’ to pull me into your trouble? You got some idea I was in that rumble with your sister?”

Rusty had to fight to hold back his desire to grab the junkie and throttle him. He held back and let an expression of hopelessness and doom cross his features. He shook his head sadly, lost, needing solace. “No, man, no, no…” His voice was a thready whisper, dripping with remorse and unhappiness. “I—I been sniffin’ a little and when my sister Dolores got it, I—I don’t know what happened to me, man. I just started hittin’ it like mad, y’know, an’ n-now I gotta have more. I been gettin’ it from—”

Tom-Tom came around the counter, bringing the Coke and the milk shake, and Rusty cut himself off. He did it only partially because the soda jerk was within earshot. The other part of his reason was that he had to quickly figure out a source for the stuff he was supposed to have been mainlining. Where could he get it, that Boy-O would not doubt, could not check on?

The baby-fat hand of Tom-Tom came into sight with the milk shake gripped in the fist and Rusty took a dollar from the pocket of his jeans. He laid it out alongside the glass, and kept his eyes on the light brown surface of the shake as he heard Tom-Tom clinking change. When the coins were down, Tom-Tom was gone and he saw the wet ring on the table where Boy-O had lifted his shake, he began again.

“I been gettin’ some stuff from a friend of mine crosstown in Harlem, but it’s all g-gone now, an’ ya gotta help me out, man.”

Boy-O did not reply. He sucked on the lip of the glass and his little feral eyes stared across the dark milky fluid and at Rusty. He knew the kid was lying. It was obvious. But he couldn’t refuse and not get himself creamed. Boy-O wanted out of this mess. There was no way to stay out of Santoro’s path, it seemed, without giving him what he wanted to know.

Rusty Santoro had changed. He was no longer a gutter fighter. He had changed. He was a steam roller now and that roller was bent on crushing anything—or anyone—that got in the way. Boy-O was wary of this kid. There was no sense tangling with him if it could be avoided.

“What you wanna know, Rusty?”

Rusty’s eyebrows went up. Startled, he said, “I dunno what you mean, man. Like all I want is some dust, and we’re wheelin’ an’ dealin’, y’know.”

Boy-O went back to his drink. He wasn’t getting through. “Come on,” Rusty urged, a heavy edge to his words, “let’s fall up to your pad and find a pack. I need a shot right now.”

Boy-O looked up through half-slitted eyes and did not have the stomach to refuse. He slid out of the booth. He had snuff with him, Rusty knew that. Rusty wanted him away from here. To talk, it had to be!

Well, get the talk over and then he was free and clear. He preceded Rusty out of the malt shop, as Tom-Tom tried valiantly to raise Glazounov or Bach on the tiny radio behind the counter. As they hit the sidewalk, the radio let fly with—“Ohohoh, yes! I’m the grayyyte pre-ten-en-der…”

“Why din’t we go to my place?” Boy-O asked. Fear rippled deeply in his voice, and his face was white beneath the dirt film.

The basement was cool and dark and from somewhere behind stacks of old newspapers, rats moved in search of food. A bulb burned low, swinging at the end of a thick cord, its shadow-image here then there then back then there then back again as the bulb described an irregular arc. The ruined furniture that had been stored down here lay jumbled like strange burial mounds, chair legs and table extensions sticking up like the snarled, clutching arms of half-buried corpses. The ceiling was low and covered by softly rippling coverlets of cobwebs.

Boy-O looked around in open fear. Maybe Rusty didn’t just want to talk. Maybe—

“Siddown,” Rusty ordered the junkie. He pointed to a crate and when Boy-O hesitated, he shoved. Boy-O stumbled backward, tangled his scrawny legs and fell in a clattering heap, knocking aside the crate. He stared up from the floor, his eyes large and white with terror. He never should have humored this stud! Now he was solid trapped.