Harlan Ellison - Web of the City

But Sunday night the break came.

I was cruising on Central Park South, in the Fifties, when I saw one of them. I suddenly knew how these kids had escaped being picked up till now. He wasn’t in a black leather jacket. That was cornball stuff for these punks. It was a uniform, a disguise. He had on a charcoal-gray flannel suit and he looked like the spoiled brat of a wealthy advertising executive. He was walking crosstown.

I spotted him dead at once. It was the kid with the Barrymore profile and the sleepy eyes.

I fell behind him a half block, and tagged him all the way. He turned in at a flashy apartment house in the plush section of the Park South. When he’d gone in, I parked the car around the corner and flat-footed it over to the building. The kid was gone.

But there was a doorman.

“Hello,” I said, smiling, tipping my cabbie cap back on my head so the license button showed real plain. “Say, did a young boy in a charcoal suit just come in here?”

He looked at me leery. “Why?”

I yanked out my hack license, flipped it at him. “I just brought that fare up here from downtown, with a two-buck placket on the meter. He said he was broke and would run upstairs to get me my fare. I’d like to make sure he comes back. Can you tell me where he went?”

The doorman looked at me hard for a minute, then nodded his head. “Yes, I suppose so. He went up to Mr. Steckman’s penthouse. That’s Mr. Fritz Steckman, the broker. I’m sure the boy’s all right if he’s a friend of Mr. Steckman’s. Probably a nephew or something. Mr. Steckman has a good many young people visiting him—mostly relatives, I guess.”

“Yeah. Sure.” I smiled at him. “Thanks. I’ll wait in the cab. Hope he shows soon; I’d like to catch another fare.”

I went out and got in the car, drove around the block, parked down and across the street. Then I waited.

About a half-hour later, the kid came out and started walking crosstown. I didn’t follow him—I knew where his home roost was.

I was about to make as big a play as I could. Pray? You bet your life I did!

I called Richie Ellington on the Daily News and got some poop from him on this Steckman.

Big operator. Wealthy. In the social register, and a large investor in the stock market. Summer home, winter home, two yachts and a hunting lodge in the Canadian Rockies. Impeccable taste—one of the Best Dressed Somethings-or-other—and unmarried. Nominated Very Eligible Hunka Meat by some group of young debs coming out, recently.

I thanked Ellington, inquired about his cats and his booze, and then started to get ready.

I changed into my charcoal-gray suit, and made sure the slide on the .45 was working smoothly. Then I piled into Jerry’s car and headed crosstown to Central Park South. I parked up the street from Steckman’s building, and waited till the doorman went off duty. When he’d been gone ten minutes, I climbed out and went into the building.

The alternate doorman opened the door for me. I brushed past him without a glance, as though I knew where I was going and as if I had every right to be there.

I climbed into the elevator, and pushed the button for the top floor.

The top floor wasn’t the penthouse. There was a separate elevator for that. But I didn’t take it. I took the fire stairs. When I got to the top, the door was locked; but another flight went up, and I figured it must go to a service shed atop the penthouse.

I kept climbing, and a minute later opened the fire door to the outside. I was standing next to a metal ladder that went up into a water tank.

I slammed the door, and walked around the platform. Turned out the penthouse was a duplex, with an entrance up here at roof level. It was parked far back at the rear of the area, with a glass front and a large patch of neatly tended greenery surrounding it, grass and shrubs and whatnot. I didn’t see anyone outside the house, so I jumped into the grass.

I rolled under a bush, all in the same movement, and came up with wet grass on my back and the pistol in my hand.

The glass-doored greenhouse-looking penthouse was right across from me. I figured to lay there till it got dark enough inside and outside so that no one would see me. I wasn’t sure just how many were in there.

It took a long time getting dark, and I had a long chance to get some thinking done.

I knew why they wanted to get me so bad. I was the only boy who could identify them. There was a sweet setup here, but I wasn’t sure just what it was. Who was Steckman, and how did he figure into this? What were those punks doing, coming to visit him?

I wanted some answers, but more, I wanted all those kids—and the guy that was operating them. Him, most of all. I knew I couldn’t call the cops till I had all of them, the whole batch of them. Let one lone juvie get away, and my days were even more numbered than right now. Those kids hold grudges longer and harder than any adult. I had to get them all together, or my life wouldn’t be worth starting fare on my meter.

It pitched-out around 9:30, and I started my creep toward the penthouse.

The grass was dry now, and the sounds of traffic filtered up the face of the building. The .45 was warm in my mitt. I suddenly realized I’d been hanging onto it for over three hours, while I’d been waiting.

I crawled over to the big windows and looked inside. At first I didn’t see anyone. The living room was empty. Just an overplush apartment, decorated ultramodern with hanging lamps, screwy-looking wire clocks on the walls—the works.

In a few minutes a man came into the room with a drink in his hand; he was wearing a wine-colored satin smoking jacket, with a silk scarf knotted about his throat. The guy was about forty, or forty-five, hair graying at the temples, a smooth, unlined face, almost like a baby’s. He looked hard, but the mark of dissipation was on him. As though he’d just gotten rich and was letting himself go to fat enjoying it.

It was Steckman all right. Richie Ellington had described him almost perfectly. I waited a few minutes to make sure he was alone; then I shoved in.

The French doors were unlocked. He must have felt pretty secure up there in the clouds. When I stepped through into his living room, the .45 aimed at the spot behind his brandy snifter, he turned a fish-belly white.

“Who—who are you?” he asked. Real hacky phrase—no inventiveness, this guy. I disliked him more and more. But I told him anyhow.

“The name’s Campus, Mr. Steckman. Neal Campus. I’m the boy you don’t like.”

He started sputtering something about getting out, and who the hell did I think I was, but I cut him off sharply.

“I know you don’t like me, Mr. Steckman, because you had a few of your kindergarten associates clobber me, then toss me over a cliff, then plant a bomb in my hack. They really tried everything but staking me out and letting the ants eat me alive. Now unless that’s the way you recruit new members for the Social Register, I’m certain you don’t care for little old Neal Campus.”

“You’re out of your mind. Get out of here before I call the police!”

“Oh, you’ll do some calling, all right, Mr. Steckman, but not right now. First I want to thank you in my own charming way for all the attention you’ve paid me.”

I laid the gun down on top of the spinet piano, and chucked off my jacket.

Steckman was almost as tall as me, but he was heavier by a good twenty pounds. And he wasn’t that soft.

I came at him, and he did something really old hat: he tossed the brandy in my face. Glass and all. The damned stuff burned like lye, and I fell back. The next thing I knew he had a foot in my groin, and I was getting pitchforks of pain in my abdomen.