“Bus. Third Avenue,” Rick said.
“I’ll walk you down,” Josh said.
“Good,” Rick answered.
They went out of the bar and into the darkness of the street. The street lights had come on, casting a warm yellow glow on the concrete. The sky was a dense black, studded with stars, streaked with scudding purple clouds. Rick looked up at the sky, receiving an abstract impression of blackness and pinwheeling stars, and realizing it was probably later than he thought.
“Got to get home,” he said. “Got to hurry.”
“Okay,” Josh agreed.
They staggered down the street together, arm in arm, their heels echoing on the pavement.
“Le’s cut down to Third,” Rick said.
“Okay,” Josh answered agreeably.
They took a narrow side street behind the department stores that crowded Third Avenue. A street lamp burned at the far end of the block, but this end was in darkness. They started down the street, and heard the footsteps behind them almost instantly.
“Somebody comin’,” Josh said without turning.
“Let ’em come,” Rick answered, trying to concentrate on Anne, and worried lest she was worrying, but not able to focus his thoughts clearly through the alcoholic haze on his mind. They staggered down the street, sometimes on the sidewalk and sometimes in the gutter. Rick clung to his briefcase with one hand, the other slung around Josh’s shoulder.
They heard the footsteps grow closer, and then move up on their left, and then pass them, and they glanced up disinterestedly.
“Bunch of kids,” Josh said.
There were three of them, boys of about seventeen or so, and they walked past Josh and Rick without even looking at them. Their shoes clattered on the asphalt, and then the darkness swallowed them up. Josh and Rick kept walking, unsteady on their feet, the air sharpening the effect of the martinis.
“Tha’s funny,” Josh said abruptly.
“What? Wha’s funny?”
“Still footsteps behin’ us.”
Rick listened, hearing the even cadence of footsteps behind them, like marching feet in a German parade, listening to them and wondering at the same time what had happened to the footsteps that had been in front of them.
Something came alive in his mind. He whispered, “Josh!” and he wished desperately that he were sober.
The boys struck at the same instant.
There were seven all told. The three who had gone ahead, passing Rick and Josh just a few moments before, suddenly came out of the darkness, blocking the path. Rick turned unsteadily and looked up the street, trying to focus the other four boys who were closing fast.
The street lamp was a good way off, down at the other end of the block, and the area of ambush was in almost complete darkness, darkness enough to have effectively hidden the three boys who’d gone ahead and then doubled back. They were far enough from Third Avenue, too, to make any cries for help worthless. Rick shook his head, trying to clear it, wondering why the hell he had to feel so dizzy when he knew he was going to have a fight any minute. He found himself thinking of Bob Canning, good old “Bob” who’d been assaulted on his way to the subway.
Well, this was good old Rick and good old Josh, and they were on their way home, too, and God knows how long these kids had patiently waited outside the bar while they’d been drinking themselves silly. The gang in the schoolyard, when he and Josh had been leaving — were these those boys? That seemed so long ago, such a long time to wait.
What does such long waiting do to an appetite hungry for blood?
“Hello, Daddy-oh,” the voice came out of the darkness, and if he’d had any doubt before, there was no doubt now, none at all. Josh stiffened beside him, and his voice came softly, still slurred with alcohol.
“Back to back, Rick,” he said.
The boys were glad about how things had worked out.
The boys couldn’t have been gladder, because this was an ideal trap, worthy of guerillas, worthy of cutthroats anywhere. They’d have liked it better if Daddy-oh had been alone, but the shrimp with him was nothing to worry about, and if he didn’t take off his glasses he was going to be picking glass slivers out of his nose.
The street was dark, nice and dark. They were seven, and there were only two of the enemy. With odds like that, you couldn’t lose, not even if you tried, and they weren’t going to be trying.
One of them shouted, “This is for Douglas Murray, you bastard,” and he threw his fist and felt it connect with flesh and bone. He felt Daddy-oh’s head lurch back, felt the teacher slam up against the shrimp’s back and then bounce off swinging wildly.
The shrimp had taken off his glasses and he was yelling, “All right, you bastards, all right, you bastards,” and swinging his fists like pistons. Daddy-oh wasn’t saying anything. Daddy-oh had his feet planted wide, and his back up against the shrimp’s, and Daddy-oh was taking this fight as if it was hard work.
Another boy slammed his fist on the back of Daddy-oh’s neck, and Daddy-oh grunted and bent forward, and another of the attackers brought his knee up, connecting with his groin. Daddy-oh grunted again, and then swung out and one of the boys felt his fist and backed away respectfully. But Daddy-oh was facing the side with four boys on it, and Daddy-oh hadn’t been in a street fight since that time in Panama when everyone on his ship had got drunk and turned on each other. That fight had been a good one, and a bloody one, but it had been a long time ago, when Daddy-oh had been twenty and considered a good fight an exciting thing. He was plainly not enjoying this one. He was plainly not enjoying it because any one of the attackers knew his blows were scoring. Even if they hadn’t seen the blood pouring from his nose, they’d have known they were scoring. They’d have known because their knuckles were getting sore from the pounding they were giving him. They felt flesh ripping, and they felt the grind of knuckle against bone, and they heard him grunt, and they knew his blows were getting weaker.
The shrimp just kept yelling, “All right, you bastards,” as if it was the only song he knew. Only the song was beginning to fade, like a radio program does just before an electrical storm.
The boys felt victory near. They felt it with the instinct of all good street fighters, and they were glad they hadn’t used anything but their fists. There was a certain pride attached to it this way. Hell, anybody can use a knife or a zip gun. You don’t have to be smart to beat somebody that way. They’d used only their fists, and they were still using those fists, climbing all over Daddy-oh now, wedging themselves between him and the shrimp, breaking the pair apart, and then really going to town.
One of the boys grabbed Daddy-oh from behind, struggled for a grip in his short hair, and then gave that up as a sorry task. He looped his arm around Daddy-oh’s neck, tightening his forearm across the mother-lover’s Adam’s apple, pulling his head all the way back. Another boy brought back his foot and gave it to Daddy-oh, right in the balls, and Daddy-oh yelled, and another boy whacked him in the mouth, tickled pink when he felt the blood spurt onto his fist.
“All right, you bastards,” the shrimp kept yelling, but the shrimp was on the ground now, and feet had taken over because it was easier to use feet when a guy was down. The feet connected with his rib case and his thighs and his groin and even his head. He kept yelling all the time, the same tune, over and over again like a goddamned broken record. And then somebody broke the record by kicking him under the chin, and the shrimp ended his song and his resistance, and he didn’t even feel the ensuing kicks that rained on his body like horseshoes.
You had to hand it to Daddy-oh because he went down swinging all the way. He hadn’t said a word all through this, one of those guys who take their fights seriously. He wasn’t saying anything now either. He was spitting blood, and his clothes were all torn, and his nose was running off into the gutter, but he kept swinging until they dragged him down to the pavement and gave him four sharp blows to the stomach. He stopped swinging then, but he didn’t stop struggling, and he didn’t stop bleeding. He couldn’t swing because his arms were pinned to his sides, but he could sure as hell struggle, even though he was bleeding like a whore on her legitimate day off.