“Yes, sir,” said Stevenson.
The day after Jerome Higgins went berserk, the afternoon mail brought a crank letter to the Daily News:
Dear Mr. Editor,
You did not warn your readers. The man who shot all those people could not escape the Scorpion. The Scorpion fights crime. No criminal is safe from the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS.
Sincerely yours,
Unfortunately, this letter was not read by the same individual who had seen the first one, two months before. At any rate, it was filed in the same place, and forgotten.
III
Hallowe’en is a good time for a rumble. There’s too many kids around for the cops to keep track of all of them, and if you’re picked up carrying a knife or a length of tire chain or something, why, you’re on your way to a Hallowe’en party and you’re in costume. You’re going as a JD.
The problem was this schoolyard. It was a block wide, with entrances on two streets. The street on the north was Challenger territory, and the street on the south was Scarlet Raider territory, and both sides claimed the schoolyard. There had been a few skirmishes, a few guys from both gangs had been jumped and knocked around a little, but that had been all. Finally, the War Lords from the two gangs had met, and determined that the matter could only be settled in a war.
The time was chosen: Hallowe’en. The place was chosen: the schoolyard. The weapons were chosen: pocket knives and tire chains okay, but no pistols or zip-guns. The time was fixed: eleven P.M. And the winner would have undisputed territorial rights to the schoolyard, both entrances.
The night of the rumble, the gangs assembled in their separate clubrooms for last-minute instructions. Debs were sent out to play chicken at the intersections nearest the schoolyard, both to warn of the approach of cops and to keep out any non-combatant kids who might come wandering through.
Judy Canzanetti was a Deb with the Scarlet Raiders. She was fifteen years old, short and black-haired and pretty in a movie-magazine, gum-chewing sort of way. She was proud of being in the Auxiliary of the Scarlet Raiders, and proud also of the job that had been assigned to her. She was to stand chicken on the southwest corner of the street.
Judy took up her position at five minutes to eleven. The streets were dark and quiet. Few people cared to walk this neighborhood after dark, particularly on Hallowe’en. Judy leaned her back against the telephone pole on the corner, stuck her hands in the pockets of her Scarlet Raider jacket and waited.
At eleven o’clock, she heard indistinct noises begin behind her. The rumble had started.
At five after eleven, a bunch of little kids came wandering down the street. They were all about ten or eleven years old, and most of them carried trick-or-treat shopping bags. Some of them had Hallowe’en masks on.
They started to make the turn toward the schoolyard. Judy said, “Hey, you kids. Take off.”
One of them, wearing a red mask, turned to look at her. “Who, us?”
“Yes, you! Stay out of that street. Go on down that way.”
“The subway’s this way,” objected the kid in the red mask.
“Who cares? You go around the other way.”
“Listen, lady,” said the “kid in the red mask, aggrieved, “we got a long way to go to get home.”
“Yeah,” said another kid, in a black mask, “and we’re late as it is.”
“I couldn’t care less,” Judy told them callously. “You can’t go down that street.”
“Why not?” demanded yet another kid. This one was in the most complete and elaborate costume of them all, black leotards and a yellow shirt and a flowing black cape. He wore a black and gold mask and had a black knit cap jammed down tight onto his head. “Why can’t we go down there?” this apparition demanded.
“Because I said so,” Judy told him. “Now, you kids get away from here. Take off.”
“Hey!” cried the kid in the black-and-yellow costume. “Hey, they’re fighting down there!”
“It’s a rumble,” said Judy proudly. “You twerps don’t want to be involved.”
“Hey!” cried the kid in the black-and-yellow costume again. And he went running around Judy and dashing off down the street.
“Hey, Eddie!” shouted one of the other kids. “Eddie, come back!”
Judy wasn’t sure what to do next. If she abandoned her post to chase the one kid who’d gotten through, then maybe all the rest of them would come running along after her. She didn’t know what to do.
A sudden siren and a distant flashing red light solved her problems. “Cheez,” said one of the kids. “The cops!”
“Fuzz!” screamed Judy. She turned and raced down the block toward the schoolyard, shouting, “Fuzz! Fuzz! Clear out, it’s the fuzz!”
But then she stopped, wide-eyed, when she saw what was going on in the schoolyard.
The guys from both gangs were dancing. They were jumping around, waving their arms, throwing their weapons away. Then they all started pulling off their gang jackets and throwing them away, whooping and hollering. They were making such a racket themselves that they never heard Judy’s warning. They didn’t even hear the police sirens. And all at once both schoolyard entrances were full of cops, a cop had tight hold of Judy and the rumble was over.
Judy was so baffled and terrified that everything was just one great big blur. But in the middle of it all, she did see the little kid in the yellow-and-black costume go scooting away down the street.
And she had the craziest idea that it was all his fault.
Captain Hanks was still in his realistic cycle this morning, and he was impatient as well. “All right, Stevenson,” he said. “Make it fast, I’ve got a lot to do this morning. And I hope it isn’t this comic-book thing of yours again.”
“I’m afraid it is, Captain,” said Stevenson. “Did you see the morning paper?”
“So what?”
“Did you see that thing about the gang fight up in Manhattan?”
Captain Hanks sighed. “Stevenson,” he said wearily, “are you going to try to connect every single time the word ‘scorpion’ comes up? What’s the problem with this one? These kid gangs have names, so what?”
“Neither one of them was called ‘The Scorpions,’ ” Stevenson told him. “One of them was the Scarlet Raiders and the other gang was the Challengers.”
“So they changed their name,” said Hanks.
“Both gangs? Simultaneously? To the same name?”
“Why not? Maybe that’s what they were fighting over.”
“It was a territorial war,” Stevenson reminded him. “They’ve admitted that much. It says so in the paper. And it also says they all deny ever seeing that word on their jackets until after the fight.”
“A bunch of juvenile delinquents,” said Hanks in disgust. “You take their word?”
“Captain, did you read the article in the paper?”
“I glanced through it.”
“All right. Here’s what they say happened: They say they started fighting at eleven o’clock. And they just got going when all at once all the metal they were carrying — knives and tire chains and coins and belt buckles and everything else — got freezing cold, too cold to touch. And then their leather jackets got freezing cold, so cold they had to pull them off and throw them away. And when the jackets were later collected, across the name of the gang on the back of each one had been branded ‘The Scorpion.’ ”
“Now, let me tell you something,” said Hanks severely. “They heard the police sirens, and they threw all their weapons away. Then they threw their jackets away, to try to make believe they hadn’t been part of the gang that had been fighting. But they were caught before they could get out of the schoolyard. If the squad cars had showed up a minute later, the schoolyard wouldn’t have had anything in it but weapons and jackets, and the kids would have been all over the neighborhood, nice as you please, minding their own business and not bothering anybody. That’s what happened. And all this talk about freezing cold and branding names into jackets is just some smart-alec punk’s idea of a way to razz the police. Now, you just go back to worrying about what’s happening in this precinct and forget about kid gangs up in Manhattan and comic book things like the Scorpion, or you’re going to wind up like Wilcox, with that refrigerator business. Now, I don’t want to hear any more about this nonsense, Stevenson.”