Harlan Ellison - Web of the City

Smoke…

He got up, and stood staring off across the city. He saw the broken black line that was the building tops against the lighter dark of the sky. The strange angles and spires of TV antennas, the towers that were chimneys, the box-shapes and chicken-wire of pigeon roosts. He saw it all and knew what would smoke the Beast out.

He went downstairs, into the apartment and Mrs. Givens was there. She had not left for more than fifteen minutes since Moms got sick. Who was watching after her kids, Rusty did not know. But there she was, in the big chair, almost asleep. She woke as he came through the door and a quizzical expression lit her face. It was very, very late.

“Miz Givens,” he said, not closing the door, “keep the shades down, an’ keep the windows closed. Don’t let nothin’ bother ya t’night, an’—an’ don’t let Moms hear the noise.” He started to close the door, but she motioned him back with a pudgy, brown hand.

“What noise? What you mean?” He waved her off.

“You’ll know real soon.”

He smiled at her and her face was so strained he wondered if she was not sick herself. “Don’t worry,” he said. Then he closed the door and went downstairs and over to the corner, and found the fire-box, and pulled the lever down. Then he went back up to the roof to wait for the fire engines.

He had known it would be just this way. The sirens, the red, winking lights, the long engines with their ladders tucked down and all the noise. Noise! That was it. If there was anything that could drag the neighborhood from its beds at this hour, if there was anything that could bring the blackjack players out of the back room, if there was anything that would smoke the Beast from whatever warren he was using tonight, it would be the complete pandemonium of a false alarm fire. The engines pulled in to the curb near the alarm box and the firemen climbed down, looking for the blaze.

In a few moments they would realize it was a false alarm, then they would tear off again, leaving the neighborhood for the cops to comb for the alarm setter. Leaving the crowds to disperse, asking each other, “What happened, what went on, what was that all about?”

Before then, the Beast had to come out of his hole, had to come into the crowd to see what was happening. He had to.

Rusty watched carefully, straining his eyes to make out the faces of everyone down there, in the streetlamp light, and the glare of the engine’s headlights. He saw the women, in their nightgowns, with the terrycloth bathrobes pulled across their fat stomachs. He saw the balding men, their heels red and bare in bedroom slippers. He saw the young girls and some of them reminded him of Weezee and some reminded him of Dolores, but that was too long ago to think about. But he did not see the gigantic hulk that was the Beast. He saw nothing like that.

Then the firemen were cursing loudly and they were piling back onto the engines, and scream-roaring away. Then the street faded into silence and the crowd milled around for a few minutes asking what had happened and then they started to disperse, as Rusty had known they would.

He had failed. He had fouled up again.

Then he saw the Beast.

The big man was standing in the alley across the street. The fire engine’s headlights had blinded Rusty before, but now he could see the monstrous slovenly shape angled against the brick wall, watching everything, taking it all in, the gaping mouth wet and wide, those little eyes, like two spots of hell, ripped free and thrust into a doughy face, the two meat-chunk hands, those fingers, each as big as a sausage.

This had raped Dolores?

Rusty felt nausea grip him. He leaned his face against the cold brick of the roof’s ledge and he prayed. He said to the sky and the night and the god he was so sure no longer knew him, “Please oh dear god above hear me hear what I’m saying tonight and forgive me for what I’m gonna do.”

Then he stood up and lit a cigarette.

He saw the Beast’s face swivel upward and he saw the eyes cold and deadly staring into his own, across that space. He raised his hand against the sky and motioned the Beast to come up. “I set it,” he said. He said it loud enough to carry to the street and hoped a cop did not hear it, too.

The Beast hesitated a moment, then looked both ways on the street and started across. He disappeared from Rusty’s sight under the angle of the building, and Rusty knew he was on his way up. Neat. The sonofabitch still thought Rusty didn’t know. He still thought Rusty was looking for the man in the camel’s hair coat. Neat. The sonofabitch. Sure he had given Rusty the tip. So Rusty would look the other way and find Morlan and take care of him, the Beast hoped, before Rusty could find out Morlan had been nowhere near Dolores when she had been killed. That would get Morlan out of the Beast’s way and get Rusty cooled permanently, too.

Neat. So neat Rusty had run around like a chicken with its head detached, following up a trail that meant nothing. No wonder there had been no connection between the dope and the death of Dolores. How could there be?

The only connection had been there all along and Rusty had been too dumb to see it. Now the connecting link was on its way upstairs.

The door to the stairwell banged open and the huge shape of the Beast was there.

He came across the tarpaper roof and he grew monstrous in Rusty’s eyes. His arms swung to his knees and below, and he seemed more a gigantic parody of some pithecanthropoid than a human. Rusty stared at the man who walked toward him and all the cold fury, all the hatred, all the brutality he had been driven to in the name of his sister, washed over him. He was going to kill this cold-blooded sonofabitch without remorse and without compunction. He was going to tear out his tongue and tear off his manhood, and stomp what was left into a runny pulp, and then—

And then he was going to give himself up. The future was dead, but so was the Beast. He didn’t know it, but he was already dead.

“Hi,” he said. Rusty did not answer, just watched.

“I say, Hi.”

The Beast stopped, uncertainty in his face. “You ever hear anything ’bout that guy I told ya I saw?” He licked his fat, gross lips.

Rusty wished he had the knife. But his hands would do.

“Whutsa matter? I ain’t seen ya in a while. Where ya been stayin’, huh?” Rusty looked around for a weapon. He needed something. Those arms of the Beast’s could crush him in a second. He saw nothing.

“Whutsa matter with you? Can’cha talk?”

Rusty got up, moved to the side. He rested his hand on the aluminum stalk of a TV antenna, knowing he could not pull it loose from its moorings to use as a weapon. But at least he was touching something. The antenna was right at the edge of the roof, where the ledge rose up. He wanted a weapon, desperately. Something to beat this giant to his knees with. Something with which to pound in that ape-face.

“I saw Morlan tonight,” Rusty threw at him in the silence. For a moment the Beast’s face was lax, devoid of expression, then the name must have registered, for his eyes narrowed and the stare left his face.

It was miraculous. Rusty watched as the imbecile light left him, and a look of craft and cunning came over the coarse features. This was no idiot. This was a man who had played the part for a long, long time, but was not a moron at all.

“You killed my sister…” Rusty said.

The Beast stared back in silence. His eyes never left Rusty’s face and his jaw worked slowly. “Oh? Makes you think that?”

“You told me about Morlan. Morlan says he wasn’t near her. Says he came down here to stop you from cutting in on his dust route. Where you raise the poppies? In that weedy lot behind the dry cleaner’s place?”