He needed money.
He grinned, thinking what his old man would have done. For his old man there was only one answer — you found a job and you worked. You worked your butt off for a buck an hour, but that was good clean work, the American way, and you were happy to get it.
Crap!
They could keep their jobs, he thought savagely. They could take them and stick them for all he cared. He needed money, all right, but he was damned if he was going to bust his hump and go hungry while he did it. To hell with that noise.
A smile spread on his face. There was an easier way to get money. There was always an easier way, if you had that necessary core of hipness that would rule out work and keep you grooving with enough bread in your pocket. Everybody had his own way. For Ricky it was pool. Ricky had a phenomenal talent that way. He knew just how bad to look without making it obvious that he was holding back, fluffing shots on purpose. Then when the heavy bread was on the table he made the shots and let the mark think he was making them with sheer luck. Eight-ball was Ricky’s favorite game. He’d line up an easy shot, then shoot it wrong and sink a very hard shot, making it look like on accident. The sap walked away thinking Ricky was a rotten player with a horseshoe up his rear. But Ricky was the slickest guy with a cue on the Upper West Side.
Or take Beans. Beans’s old lady taught him to boost from the supermarkets so they wouldn’t go hungry. She was too busy lapping up the sauce to do her own stealing, so she taught Beans the tricks of the game. Beans learned well. He had a working arrangement with a Third Avenue hockshop owner, and once a week Beans made a trip to Third Avenue with a cab loaded up with goodies. He was silky smooth in a store. He never got caught.
Or Long Sam. Long Sam was a heavy, not too brilliant between the ears, but nail-tough. The neighborhood was gang turf and any one of the gang would have liked to have Sam on their side. But the four of them liked to swing by themselves. They had no use for the gang bit. And nobody ever bothered them.
Sam did a little mugging when things got tight. He was on expert. He never hit anybody hard, never took a chance on falling into a murder mess. The arm around the throat, a gentle love tap behind one ear, a quick grab for wallet and watch and it was all over. He had his own angle and he never missed.
Johnny yawned, scratched his head. He had his own angle, he thought. He was an expert, too — and it paid off for him when it had to. Everybody had to have an angle and he had his.
It was women.
He didn’t know why it worked so well for him and he didn’t care. He wasn’t complaining. It was partly looks, he guessed, and partly self-confidence, and partly something you couldn’t quite put your finger on. Whatever it was he wasn’t going to kick it in the head. It worked fine for him.
For years women had been picking up tabs, paying the freight for him. Hell, all he had to do was give a broad a hard look and she was flat on her back panting.
And they didn’t have any complaints when he was done with them, either.
He closed his eyes, the smile growing wider and wider on his handsome face. He couldn’t remember them all — there had been too many of them, for one thing, and for another most of them had not been worth remembering. He’d done his best to forget them as soon as he was walking out the door with his desires satisfied and his clothes buttoned up.
Now he was remembering the first one. It hadn’t been so long ago, really. Not when you stopped to think about it. Just two years.
It seemed longer...
He was fifteen. He lived with his old man in a fourth-floor two-roomer on Columbus. His old man was between jobs. Every day Walter Wells went out to look for work. He had a small breakfast at seven-thirty and didn’t eat again until he came home around six, his eyes downcast and his shoulders slumped. The unemployment money wasn’t enough. And the job the old man was looking for didn’t seem to turn up.
Johnny still went to school — it would be a year before the city decided he was old enough to kiss the books goodbye. But he didn’t show up at school too often. He walked around the park instead, or sat over a lukewarm coke in the Garden Candy Shoppe, or stood on a street corner and felt important.
He also stole milk.
He happened to like milk. It was ice cold and it tasted good, and it was supposed to be healthy. You drank milk and you got strong — that was supposed to be the gimmick. He wasn’t sure whether it worked or not. The strong-looking guys in the neighborhood mostly drank beer, although they said beer made a lush out of you. But he liked milk, and since his old man couldn’t afford more than two or three quarts a week, he stole it.
This was easy enough. You got up early and you went out and found a building or two to work. Most people bought their milk at the market, but one or two in every building had a milkman deliver it. If you timed things right, you hit the apartment after the milkman had made his delivery and before the customers had dragged the milk inside. Then you picked up the carton of milk and got the hell out of there.
Only this time it didn’t work.
He made two mistakes at once. For one thing, he hit an apartment that he’d been to just a week ago. For another thing, he got a late start that morning. He overslept, and it was eight-thirty by the time he was standing in front of a carton of milk.
He reached over for it. He just had his hand on the damn carton when the door opened.
There was a woman in the doorway.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” she said. “You’re the little thief who’s been swiping the milk. I got a baby to feed, you little rat. What’s the idea?”
Like a slow motion movie he released the carton of milk and straightened up slowly. He thought of turning and getting the hell out of the building. That was his first impulse but he stifled it. She’d run after him, or start shouting or something, and it would be a mess.
Maybe he could bop her one. She didn’t look too strong. A little punch in the head ought to take care of her, give him plenty of time to beat it. But that might not be too good. She lived less than a block away from him. She could run into him on the street and recognize him. Maybe she already knew who he was. It would mean taking a chance.
Besides, she probably wouldn’t call the cops. Not for a stinking quart of milk, not with him just a young kid.
So he stood where he was.
“A brave one,” she said. “You don’t say much, do you? You got a name?”
He didn’t answer her. She wasn’t bad-looking, he noted with some surprise. Not Miss America, but not bad. He placed her age at thirty, give or take a year. Her face would pass and what he could see of her shape wasn’t bad at all. She was wearing a cotton wrapper that didn’t exactly put her on display. But he could see that her legs were good from ankles to knees, plump at the calves and smoothly shaved. And even the wrapper couldn’t entirely conceal the thrust of her breasts.
“So you haven’t got a name,” she said. “Okay, No-Name. I guess that’s what I’ll have to call you, huh?”
“My name’s Johnny.”
She laughed aloud. “It talks,” she said. “You like milk, Johnny? Nice cold milk?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe I could let you have a glass of milk, Johnny. I’m an easy girl to get along with.”
“I don’t want any.”
“But you were trying to take mine, weren’t you?”
“I was just looking at it,” he said. “I wasn’t looking to steal it or anything. I ain’t a thief.”
It was an obvious lie and he didn’t care whether she believed it or not. But it bothered him when she laughed. She opened her mouth to laugh. She had full lips and she was wearing dark red lipstick. He wondered why she was wearing lipstick at eight-thirty in the morning. She didn’t even have clothes on but she was wearing lipstick.