Harlan Ellison - Web of the City

Then he had called, flashed the light, and seen it was Arthur Murrow’s boy, the one they called Frenchie.

Now he stood rapping conservatively but brusquely on the front door that was identical to his own. From within he could hear the sounds of someone moving about. Murrow’s house showed black, dead windows. They’ve either got that television going in the den, or they’re in bed, he thought ruefully. Which is where I should be. Then he added mentally, That disgusting adolescent!

A light went on in the living room, and Mestman saw a shape glide behind the draperies drawn across the picture window. Then there was a fumbling at the latch, and Arthur Murrow threw open the door.

He was a big man; big in the shoulders, and big in the hips, with the telltale potbelly of the ex-football star who has not done his seventy sit-ups every day since he graduated.

Murrow looked out blearily, and focused with some difficulty in the dark. Finally, “Uh? Yeah, what’s up, Mestman?”

“I caught your son looking into my bedroom window a few minutes ago, Murrow. I’d like to talk to him if he’s around.”

“What’s that? What are you talking about, your bedroom window? Bruce has been in bed for over an hour.”

“I’d like to speak to him, Murrow.”

“Well, goddammit, you’re not going to speak to him! You know what time it is, Mestman? We don’t all keep crazy hours like you professors. Some of us hold down nine-to-five jobs that make us beat! This whole thing is stupid. I saw Bruce go up to bed.”

“Now listen to me, Mr. Murrow, I saw —”

Murrow’s face grew beefy red. “Get the hell out of here, Mestman. I’m sick up to here,” he slashed at his throat with a finger, “with you lousy intellectuals bothering us. I don’t know what you’re after, but we don’t want any part of it. Now scram, before I deck you!”

The door slammed anticlimactically in Herbert Mestman’s face. He stood there just long enough to see the shape retreat past the window, and the living-room light go off. As he made his way back to his own house, he saw another light go on in Murrow’s house.

In the room occupied by Bruce.

The window, at jumping-height, was wide open.

FRENCHIE MURROW

Bruce Murrow tooled the Studelac into the curb, revved the engine twice to announce his arrival, and cut the ignition. He slid out of the car, pulling down at the too-tight crotch of his chinos, and walked across the sidewalk into the malt shop. The place was a bedlam of noise and moving bodies.

“Hey, Monkey!” he called to a slack-jawed boy in a stud-encrusted black leather jacket. The boy looked up from the comic book. “Like cool it, man. My ears, y’know? Sit.” Frenchie slid into the booth opposite Monkey, and reached for the deck of butts lying beside the empty milk shake glass.

Without looking up from the comic book Monkey reached out and slapped the other’s hand from the cigarettes. “You’re old enough to smoke, you’re old enough to buy yer own,” he commented, thrusting the pack into his shirt pocket.

He went back to the comic.

Frenchie’s face clouded, then cleared. This wasn’t some stud punky from uptown. This was Monkey, and he was prez of the Laughing Princes. He had to play it cool with Monkey.

Besides, there was a reason to be nice to this creep. He needed him.

To get that Mestman cat next door.

Frenchie’s thoughts returned to this morning, when the old man had accosted him on the way to the breakfast table:

“Were you outside last night?”

“Like when last night, Pop?”

“Don’t play cute with me, Bruce. Were you over to Mestman’s house, looking in his windows?”

“Man, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Don’t call me ‘man’! I’m your father!”

“Okay, so okay. Don’t panic. I don’t know nothin’ about Mr. Mestman.”

“You were in bed?”

“Like I was in bed. Right.”

And that had been that. But can you imagine! That bastard Mestman, coming over and squeaking on him. Making trouble in the brood, just when the old man was forgetting the dough he’d had to lay out for that crack-up and the Dodge’s busted grille. Well, nobody played the game with Frenchie Murrow and got away with it. He’d show that creep Mestman. So here he was, and there Monkey was, and—

“Hey, man, you wanna fall down on some laughs?”

Monkey did not look up. He turned the page slowly, and his brow furrowed at the challenge of the new set of pictures. “Like what kinda laughs?”

“How’d you like to heist a short?”

“Whose?”

“Does it matter? I mean, like a car’s a car, man.”

Monkey dropped the comic book. His Mongoloid face came up, and his intense little black eyes dug into Frenchie’s blue ones. “What’s with you, kid? You tryin’ ta bust the scene? You want in the Princes, that it?”

“Hell, I—”

“Well, blow, Jack. We told ya couple times; you don’t fit, man. We got our own bunch, we don’t dig no cats from the other end of town. Blow, will ya? Ya bother me.”

Frenchie got up and stared down at Monkey. This was part of it; these slobs. They ran the damned town, and they wouldn’t take him in. He was as good as any of them. In fact, he was better.

Didn’t he live in a bigger house? Didn’t he have his own souped short? Didn’t he always have bread to spread around on the chicks? He felt like slipping his switch out of his high boot-top and sliding it into Monkey.

But the Laughing Princes were around, and they’d cream him good if he tried.

He left the malt shop. He’d show those slobs. He’d get old busybody Mestman himself. He wouldn’t bother with just swiping Mestman’s crate either. He’d really give him trouble.

Frenchie coasted around town for an hour, letting the fury build in him.

It was four thirty by the car’s clock, and he knew he couldn’t do anything in broad daylight. So he drove across town to Joannie’s house. Her old lady was working the late shift at the pants factory, and she was minding the kid brother. He made sure the blinds were drawn.

Joannie thought it was the greatest thing ever came down the Pike. And only sixteen, too.

HERBERT MESTMAN

There was something about orange sherbet that made an evening festive. Despite the fact that no one these days ate real ice cream, that everyone was willing to settle for the imitation Dairy Squish stuff that was too sweet and had no real body, Herbert and his wife had found one small grocery that stocked orange sherbet—in plastic containers—especially for them. They devoured a pint of it every other night. It had become a very important thing to them.

Every other night at seven thirty, Herbert Mestman left his house and drove the sixteen blocks to the little grocery, just before it closed. There he bought his orange sherbet, and returned in time to catch the evening modern classics program pulled in on their FM, from New York City.

It was a constant pleasure to them.

This night was no different. He pulled the door closed behind him, walked to the carport, and climbed into the dusty Plymouth. He was not one for washing the car too often. It was to be driven, not to make an impression. He backed out of the drive and headed down the street.

Behind him, at the curb, two powerful headlamps cut on, and a car moved out of the darkness, following him.

It was not till he had started up the hill leading to that section of town called “The Bluffs” that Herbert realized he was being tailed. Even then he would have disbelieved any such possibility had he not glanced down at his speedometer and realized he was going ten miles over the legal limit on the narrow road. Was the car behind a police vehicle, pacing him? He slowed.