A few weeks later a black-haired young man in slovenly, baggy pants, a coat salvaged from a rag pile, shoes that didn’t match but were whole, slouched along East 23rd Street in New York City. No one paid any attention to him as he elbowed his way through others who were dressed much as he was. No one raised his eyes high enough to see the steady gray eyes that were bright and inquisitive and not at all dulled by hunger and hopelessness.
It was Blake of course. He had learned that his golden mop of hair was a dead giveaway when he didn’t want to be recognized, and as good as a banner on a staff when he did. He chose on this trip to remain unrecognized. He knew that Obie was after him seriously now. Heffleman’s was under surveillance suddenly. He had eluded three men staked out there, but there had been a fight, and two of them would no longer be of any use to the MM’s. That had been a surprise. They must be covering every place that he had been in the past. If they had been certain of his appearance at Heffleman’s they would have had a dozen men there, not the three who had been as startled as he was when the confrontation took place. He shuffled along, grinning at the sidewalk, remembering the fight. It had been a good one, the first one he’d had in three or four years. He was still in shape.
At the corner he paused and glanced at the store across the street, a used clothing store. The meeting place. A tall thin man was standing in front of it, trying to look at home here in the slums, and failing. Blake grinned again. Derek was Matt made over. He crossed the street, to all appearances oblivious of the official traffic, but getting through it unscathed, so obviously his unconcern was not real. The traffic was made up of taxis, buses, trucks, no private cars at all, and the professional drivers were mean, considering pedestrians their natural enemy, to be cancelled out whenever the opportunity arose.
Blake was pushed roughly by three boys under fourteen, who were sizing up Derek. He snarled at them under his breath and made a hand sign that no kid in the slum who wanted to stay alive failed to learn by the time he was six. The boys held their ground for less than a second, then turned and shoved their way through the crowds, mouthing’ asterisks. Blake waited fifteen feet from Derek, examining the crowds carefully for the sign of a tail. There was none, he was certain. Give Derek credit for that anyway. Blake knew the shadows could be posted in any of the buildings about them, using scopes and telltale devices to keep Derek in check, but unless they were down on the streets, they could be shaken easily enough.
It was a cold day, drizzly, not quite freezing, but so near that the fine mist glazed what it touched before It melted away. People were out, as they always were, day and night, in order to line up for food rations, for water, for unemployment benefits, for medical care, simply to get out of the cramped rooms where eight or more of them lived together in the crumbling tenements. Many of the rooms were occupied on a staggered basis. A family could have the room for half of the day only, departing when the other family arrived for its occupancy. So they were on the streets. Mothers wrapped in blankets, holding squirming babies; kids who were old enough to walk were out walking; school-age kids were, thankfully, out of sight, packed into the schools where little learning took place, but where. there was heat and free lunch consisting of meal and water, and fish crackers. They were the lucky ones. By fourteen, or twelve, if the kid looked older, they were allowed to drop out, and they were on the streets after that.
Derek looked frozen, he had been waiting for an hour, and had almost given up hope when the unkempt youth touched his arm roughly and muttered. “Start walking, Dek, I’ll tag along.”
Derek didn’t look at the stranger a second time, but jerked away from the building front and got into the masses shuffling up the street. He didn’t see Blake again for almost half an hour. Then he was there at his side, his hand hard on Derek’s arm, guiding him down an alley. It was worse here because of the people sleeping on and under newspapers and rags. Derek shivered not this time from the cold, and Blake hurried him on. They entered a basement and stopped.
“Strip,” Blake said. He put a small light on the floor. It was blue and made his lips look purple.
Derek looked around. “Why?”
“Just do it,” Blake said.
Derek stared at him for a moment, then very slowly started to take off his clothes. Blake examined each item, then Derek got dressed again. Blake looked at the envelope with his name on it curiously, but didn’t open it yet. He put it in an inside pocket.
“I came prepared to take you with me, if you want, to.”
Derek hesitated only a moment, then nodded. They picked their way through the darkness to a door on the other side of the basement. For the next half hour this was the pattern. Blake knew his way through the basements and the alleys like a rat finding his way through a familiar maze. Suddenly they were at the riverfront.
Derek looked about quickly. The wind coming off the fetid water was cold and evil-smelling and constant. There was a black warehouse looming behind them, on both sides of them, and the river before them. Nothing else. They had lost the mobs, and might have been alone in the city.
Derek was bitterly cold. The mist here at the river was freezing, coating everything with dirty ice. Blake left him, felt around one of the lower boards of the warehouse, withdrew a thin pencil-shaped object. He put it to his lips and blew once, then put it in his pocket. He motioned to Derek to follow him and went down to the edge of the pier and waited. After a moment there was a stir in the black water. A homing device, Derek realized. He had an ultra-sonic homing device to bring his boat to him when he whistled. The craft broke through the water and floated easily alongside the pier. It was shaped generally like a ground effect car, circular, disklike, but it was black and featureless. Blake ran his hand over the thing and a hatch opened. He went inside with Derek following. A few seconds later they were sinking down into the water again.
“We’ll take off from the bay,” Blake said. “Less risky there.”
Derek was warming up now and he studied the interior of the craft with interest. Blake had modified it until all traces of the original vehicle had been erased. It was roomy inside, and warm, with a simple-looking dash-control board that housed a four-inch-square screen which now was showing the river and its banks in a continuous sweep. The strangeness Derek felt for this Blake persisted and he remained silent. Blake also was silent, giving his attention to the screen and the controls he operated. They were in the bay. There were National Guards craft, and some navy ships, several tugs, a pleasure cruise ship at anchor.
“Wouldn’t it be safer to wait until dark?” Derek asked.
“Don’t think so. They’ll rely on instruments after dark, but now they’ll sight us visually. Much easier to fool their eyes than their instruments.” Blake grinned then; and all at once the stranger was gone, and they were kids playing together in a tree house again. Derek grinned back.
They shot up from the water like a flying fish, climbing straight up through the cloud cover to three thousand feet before Blake leveled their flight and headed west. Below them there was excitement as instruments and men clashed over what had happened. Radar was turned to scan the sky, but by then Blake had dropped to skim over the treetops and so escaped the magic eye.