Harlan Ellison - Web of the City

There it was. All laid out cold and empty. There it was, and Rusty knew he was trapped again. Knew he was boxed in and nailed shut again. He had almost been free, but now the truth of it all came to him.

There was no freedom in these deadly streets. The kids of the gutter gang were never really free. There was always a claim, a tag, a rescinding order that canceled their freedom.

From close by he heard the wail of police sirens. Had Pancoast called them, or had a passer-by seen the kids and phoned in? Maybe a million answers, but none of them mattered. He was caught, and there was only one way out.

With a leaden heart he said, “Listen, listen to me.” The Cougars and the Cougie Cats looked at him with renewed respect as he buried the knife in a pile of garbage where it could not be found.

“I’m prez of the Cougars again, see. An’ nobody, but nobody, talks about this. We just found him out here. The gang that did it ran away. Got that?

“Listen to me and we’ll be okay. We’ll get away free.”

They nodded. It would be all right; but was it all right? They would not go to jail—at least not now—but the deadly streets had called them back once more.

They knew inside them what it meant.

The gutters had claimed their own.

Originally published in the May, 1959 issue of Rogue

Herbert Mestman was forty-one years old. He was six feet two inches tall and had suffered from one of the innumerable children’s diseases at the age of seven, leaving him with a build that was decidedly sink-chested and just barely slim to the point of emaciation. He had steel-gray hair and wore bifocals. It was his avocation, however, that most distinguished him from all other men: Herbert Mestman knew more about Elizabethan drama than anyone else in the country. Perhaps even in the world.

He knew the prototypes and finest examples of that genre of drama known as the “chronicle history.” He knew Marlowe and Shakespeare (and believed firmly the original spelling had been Shexpeer), he was on recitation terms with Dekker and Massinger. His familiarity with Philaster and Jonson’s The Alchemist bordered on mania. He was, in essence, the perfect scholar of the drama of Elizabeth’s period. No slightest scrap of vague biographical or bibliographical data escaped him; he had written the most complete biography—of what little was known—on the life of John Webster, with a lucid and fantastically brilliant errata handling all early versions of The Duchess of Malfi .

Herbert Mestman lived in a handsome residential section in an inexpensive but functional split-level he owned without mortgage. There are cases where erudition pays handsomely. His position with the University was such a case, coupled with his tie-up on the Britannica’s staff.

He was married, and Margaret was his absolute soulmate. She was slim, with small breasts, naturally curly brown hair, and an accent only vaguely reminiscent of her native Kent. Her legs were long and her wit warmly dry. Her eyes were a moist brown and her mouth small. She was in every way a handsome and desirable woman.

Herbert Mestman led a sedentary life, a placid life, a life filled with the good things: Marlowe, Scarlatti, aquavit, Paul McCobb, Peter Van Bleeck, and Margaret.

He was a peaceful man. He had served as a desk adjutant to the Staff Judge Advocate of a small southern Army post during the Second World War, and had barely managed to put the Korean Conflict from his notice by burying himself in historical tomes. He abhorred violence in any form, despised the lurid moments of television and Walt Disney, and saved his money scrupulously, but he was not a miser.

He was well-liked in the neighborhood.

And—

Frenchie Murrow was seventeen years old. He was five feet eight inches tall and liked premium beer. He didn’t know the diff, but he dug premium. He was broad in the shoulders and wasped at the waist. The broads dug him neat. He had brown hair that he wore duck-ass, with a little spit erupting from the front pompadour to fall Tony Curtis-lackadaisical over his forehead. He hit school when there wasn’t any scene better to make, and his ’51 Stude had a full-race cam coupled to a ’55 Caddy engine. He had had to move back the fire wall to do the soup job, and every chromed part was kept free of dust and grease with fanatical care. The dual muffs sounded like a pair of mastiffs clearing their throats when he burned rubber scudding away from the Dairy Mart.

Frenchie dug Paul Anka and Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon and Bill Haley. His idols were Mickey Mantle, Burt Lancaster (and he firmly believed that was the way to treat women), Tom McCahill, and his big brother Ernie who was a specialist third class in Germany with the Third Infantry Division.

Frenchie Murrow lived in a handsome residential section in an inexpensive but functional split-level his old man had a double mortgage on. His old man had been a fullback for Duke many years before, and more green had been shelled out on the glass case in the den—to hold the trophies—than had been put into securities and the bank account.

Frenchie played it cool. He occasionally ran with a clique of rodders known as the Throttle-Boppers, and his slacks were pegged at a fantastic six inches, so that he had difficulty removing them at night.

He handled a switch with ease, because, like, man, he knew what he could do with it.

He was despised and feared in the neighborhood.

Herbert Mestman lived next door to Frenchie Murrow.

HERBERT MESTMAN

He caught the boy peering between the slats of the venetian blind late one Saturday night, and it was only the start of it.

“You, there! What are you doing there?”

The boy had bolted at the sound of his voice, and as his head had come up, Mestman had shone the big flashlight directly into the face. It was that Bruce Murrow, the kid from next door, with his roaring hot rod all the time.

Then Murrow had disappeared around the corner of the house, and Herb Mestman stood on the damp grass peculiarly puzzled and angry.

“Why, the shitty little Peeping Tom,” he heard himself exclaim. And, brandishing the big eight-cell battery, he strode around the hedge, into Arthur Murrow’s front yard.

Margaret had been right there in the bedroom. She had been undressing slowly, after a wonderful evening at the University’s organ recital, and had paused nervously, calling to him softly: “Oh there, Herb.”

He had come in from the bathroom, where the water still ran into the sink; he carried a toothbrush spread with paste. “Yes, dear?”

“Herb, you’re going to think I’m barmy, but I could swear someone is looking through the window.” She stood in the center of the bedroom, her slip in her hand, and made an infinitesimal head movement toward the venetian blind. She made no move to cover herself.

“Out there, Margaret? Someone out there?” A ring of fascinated annoyance sounded in his voice. It was a new conception; who would be peering through his bedroom window? Correction: his and his wife’s bedroom window. “Stay here a moment, dear. Put on your robe, but don’t leave the room.”

He went back into the hall, slipped into the guest room and found an old pair of paint-spattered pants in the spare closet. He slipped them on, and made his way through the house to the basement steps. He descended and quickly found the long flashlight.

Upstairs once more, he opened the front door gingerly, and stepped into the darkness. He had made his way through the dew-lipped grass around the house till he had seen the dark, dim form crouched there, face close to the pane of glass, peeking between the blind’s slats.