A long black sedan drifted around the corner and crawled up behind them. It was remarkably like an undertaker’s car. When the man at the wheel flipped his lights twice the Ford pulled out. The sedan followed. They took Pine to Presidio, cut over to Balboa, and drove out through the dark still Avenues decorously, like a funeral procession. Falkoner’s head ached and he felt sick to his stomach. When he looked at the unfamiliar face of the driver the man in the back seat said “Don’t try it, Sweets.” The driver stayed hunched over with both hands on the wheel. They would not let him smoke a cigarette.
Surf grumbled against the cement breakwaters as the Ford turned left onto the Great Highway at Playland on the Beach. Only a few rides and stalls were open, for a chill March mist had rolled in off the Pacific. The wipers monotonously sucked haze from the windshield. After several miles they swung in facing the ocean on a wide dirt lot where neckers parked on moonlit nights. The sedan drew up behind them, parallel to the highway, with dimmed lights. There were no other cars. A tangled hedge of dark twisted cypress, bent and gnarled by the incessant wind, screened them from the houses beyond the highway.
The doorhandle felt cold and slippery to Falkoner’s fingers. Bitter words flooded his mouth like bile and his lips bled keeping them in: Jack Falconer is not afraid, Jack Falkoner is not afraid... He flung open the door and threw himself at the opening. Behind him something plopped twice. Eyes staring in disbelief, he fell dizzily out of the half-open door and crashed down on one shoulder. He tried to say something, he wanted to say it, it was important: the whole significance of his life had been only death. He had meant no more than a casual accident or a mild epidemic that snuffs out a few people by blind chance. If they would just give him a little time for change, another month for living... Before he could ask, orange flame spurted and lead ripped his throat, slamming his head into the dirt with an ineluctable finality.
“Pay me,” chortled Mr. David in high good humor. The sedan had turned by Fleishaker Zoo and was threading through an expensive residential district on broad Sloat Avenue.
The man in the back seat with him was dressed in a camel’s hair coat and had crisp wavy hair receding from his forehead. He had once been a lawyer but had been disbarred. With obvious reluctance he took a hundred dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to his employer.
“I still don’t see how you knew he’d come up here. I thought one of the boys along the border would tag him.”
Mr. David chuckled richly. He wore too much cologne in a vain effort to disguise the constant odor of perspiration that clung to his obese body like the smell of bad cooking. His heavy features were shadowed by his hatbrim.
“Psychology, Norman, psychology. Jack wasn’t afraid of me or the Organization or Old Nick himself. It was his sort of stunt, to try and take me with him. I’m sorry about Red, though. I told him to be careful but you know how kids are.”
“How can you be so sure Falkoner got him?”
“The Ford. Jack would never have had that car if Red was alive, that for sure. And Jack was a bad one, at that.”
“I like ’em bad,” put in the man in the middle of the front seat. He was removing a steel cylinder from the muzzle of his .32, his deadly hands fondling the revolver with the quick and supple movements of a musician fingering his guitar. “And you can’t tell me Sweets wasn’t scared. I saw his face when he went under.”
Mr. David delicately shifted his ponderous bulk and belched. His weight made the seat coils creek slightly.
“We’ll never know now, will we?” he demanded with unction. As the car stopped for the light on 19th Avenue he added: “Take a left here, Freddie. I’ve got a date with a new girl.”
Down toward Playland a motorcycle siren whined thinly, like a short-haired mongrel in cold weather. The chilled huddle of people could see the flat pink glow of its close-set red eyes coming up at them through the fog. Moaning wind tore their breaths away in grey tatters. Occasional cars whipped past, wet tires hissing on the shiny pavement. By the white empty glare of their prowl car spotlight, two wet-tunicked policemen resembled grave robbers rolling bodies as they lifted Falkoner’s corpse by one shoulder to see if it bore any life. On his face, almost ferocious in its intensity, was frozen an immutable expression of pure terror.
“Give me a break”
by Norman Struber
Some punks expect miracles. I catch him crossing me, and he expects me to listen when he pleads...
“Cops!” Punchy yelled.
I slammed my hand on the keys and the cash register drawer shot open with a clang. A searchlight flashed in my eyes from the front window of the store, and I yanked the bills out of the compartments fast as I could and ducked under the counter. The old guy laying there let out a moan and I bashed the heel of my .38 against his skull, four, maybe five times, fast.
“Out the back way!” I yelled, and scooted along behind the counter to the little room in back, tripping over Punchy’s heels and falling flat on my face. I scrambled to my feet and gave him a hard shove as a gun exploded out front and liquor bottles crashed and splattered on the shelves over my head. “Move, you dumb jerk!” I screamed at him. “The door!”
Right at that moment I realized more than ever it pays to case a joint before you move in. We got out into the backyard, over to the fence and climbed to the roof of a low, flat-topped brick garage. The string of garages ran clear to the next street and we tore along the roofs, and at the last one we swung over the side and hung by our hands and then dropped to the ground. Just the way I’d figured it. We ran two blocks and ducked into an alley that led onto Fulton Street. It was early yet and most of the stores were open and we eased out of the alley and started walking along slow with the rest of the shoppers. Cool. Like two innocent guys out for a stroll.
Punchy started flicking his head around, nervous-like, and I shoved my elbow into his ribs. “Relax, jerk!” I told him. “Just walk.”
Ten minutes later we were in that crumby basement, where Punchy lived with his old lady and six brats upstairs. The old man left nothing but dirty laundry when he kicked off, so the old lady worked while Punchy’s aunt watched the brats. His name was really Poncho, Poncho Santos, but him being a pretty stupid guy it wasn’t long before the guys got around to calling him Punchy. It was kind of a natural switch, and he was dumb enough not to care. Me and him got along swell. I told him what to do and he did it. I found out that’s the only kind of a guy you can really trust. The smart ones, the wise guys, you never know when they’re going to pull a fast one. They give you the slick smile and they act like they dig you as top man, and all the time they’re just waiting to slip that knife in your back. Like Manny Kojak.
Yeah. Like Manny.
We went back by the furnace and Punchy pulled the chain on the dirty yellow light. “Jeez!” he said, staring at me with those big black eyes, “I figure we gon get hung up good that time, Rick.”
“Yeah, you clumsy jerk.”
“Jeeze, Rick...”
“Next time I say move, man, you really move! See?”
“But, Rick, there was tha’ chair an’...”
“Shut up!” I started taking the crumpled bills out of my pockets, straightening them out and tallying the take.
Punchy’s eyes lighted up as he watched me. He was a short weasel-like guy with pocky dark skin and thick curly black hair. He came from the Islands seven years ago with his folks. That time there was only four of them. After they moved the old man must’ve got inspiration or something. Punchy figured he was seventeen maybe. Same as me. But not in the head.