Outside, New Jersey stretched quiet and drab. In dull cities, squares worked under the eyes of the Hypos who lounged on catwalks, quick with knives and curses. The Hypos were only around when they felt like it, but the squares kept at it because sure as they flagged there’d be a Hypo around — because he felt like it. Squares and families of squares nested in sordid little villages of identical clapboard houses, living as quietly as possible, subdued by the terrifying brashness of youth.
Aroused by the sound of soft breathing, Fairhaired Johnny lurched to his feet and closed his hands about a muscular throat. He shook himself awake and took a look at the person who stood, unmoving, between his hands.
“Oh, it’s you.” He tightened his grip a little.
“Lay off, Johnny. I come along to help.” It was Netta Rampo. She raised heavy forearms and broke his hold.
He started to hit her.
“Wait a minute, Johnny. You got a plan?”
He lowered his head and kicked at a piece of glass.
“Okay.” She drove her hands into her pockets and looked at him, all business. “I do. We cross the marker and grab a guy. Maybe I pretend I’m a Judy and go up to this guy and distract him, and you jump him. We make him tell us where the bomb is and we go on from there. Okay?”
He hesitated.
“It’s more plan than you’ve got.”
“Okay, Netta, you’re on. But don’t go getting yourself knocked off. You’ve got three good years left. You’re only seventeen.”
“Let’s go to Squaresville and get a meal.”
They stopped in one of the square villages — a miserable Levittown — and one of the nurse-women gave them some cake and cheese. They sprawled on the lawn, eating, and watched the neighborhood kids. Johnny, who had run in packs since his childhood, had never talked to another person alone. Sharing the food gave him a strange sense of intimacy. They began to talk.
“You grow up in a place like this?” Netta asked.
“From when I was two until I was old enough to join a pack. My old lady shot herself the same day my old man got his. He was a brave one.” Johnny’s eyes softened. “Did it with a belly-bomb — wiped out fifty guys in a rumble with the Bishops’ mob.”
“I had a mother,” Netta sneered. “The old lady didn’t have the guts to die when Pop got his. Said she was only eighteen and she couldn’t see cashing in just because it was time for Pop to die.”
“You going to do that?”
“I’ll die with my guy — if I ever get a guy — if I don’t get one, I’ll just go when it’s time. I’ll find a way.” She spat.
“It’s gonna be soon for me.” Johnny looked thoughtful.
In the days when the young ruled, a guy was through at twenty, and he did the only decent thing a guy could do when his life was over. He went out in a rumble and got his, and if he couldn’t do it that way he found some other way to die.
With girls it didn’t matter so much. If they lived there were always kids they could raise. There had to be a lot of kids.
You could spot the guy who was too chicken to die while you were still a kid, running in one of the neighborhood packs, and you never let him earn his jacket and become one of the gang. He stayed in Squaresville all his life and he worked his fool head off for you, because if he worked, and kept his nose clean, the gang might let him live. He got squarer and squarer. He got old.
Johnny and Netta were ready to go when a pack of kids spotted their jackets and came over, shrilling a thousand questions and jumping up and down. When they were on their ‘cicles, the pair discovered that the kids had stolen Netta’s knife. It made them proud.
They circled over the marker that divided the Hypos’ territory from the land of the Judas Gang, and at dark they went over the Delaware River, looking for a scout from the other gang. They set down near a roadhouse, where noise and yellow light spilled out into the dark, and hid their ‘cicles in the bushes. Crouched in the darkness, they watched the Judas guys and their Judys come out, two by two, and go into the shadows to neck. A guy came out alone and Netta gave Johnny a dig in the ribs. He nodded and she stood up, reversing her jacket so the Hypo silver was turned to the inside, and made a low sound that could mean only one thing, no matter which gang you ran with. The Judas flipped a knife into the tree just behind Netta’s head. She grinned.
“Well, well, well…” He ambled forward until he saw her face — then his lip crinkled in distaste and he started to back away, but it was too late. Johnny was on him. When they got him into the bushes Netta, remembering the look, hit him especially hard.
“Easy, or we’ll never get anything out of him,” Johnny said. Then, as she sat astride the Judas’s chest, waiting for instructions, he said, “You were pretty good about that knife.”
“Enh.”
“Let’s find out about the bomb.” Johnny gave their prisoner’s ear a twist. “Where’s the bomb?”
“Bug you.”
“Where’d you get the bomb?”
“Cash in.”
He twisted a little harder, while Netta gave the Judas a well-calculated dig in the ribs. They kept at it until the Judas raised his head limply and said, “Okay, okay. I’ll tell. Knock it off.”
“Well?”
“Got the bomb from Daddy-o.” Johnny gave Netta a puzzled look and hit him again. “Daddy-o gave it to us. With that bomb, man, the Judas gang is on top!”
“Where is it?”
“Bug you.”
They worked on him a little harder, and when they finished, he told them the bomb was in the center of Judas territory, and when Johnny applied a special hold he knew, he told them it was under guard in the safest spot in town — the top of the Washington Monument. When Johnny hit him again, he said the bomb was for the Comradskis, but the Hypos would get theirs, and the Dragons and the Bishops too, and man the Judas Gang would take over the world, because they had a bomb and there were more where that came from. Netta and Johnny asked him what he meant, but all he would say was “Ask Daddy-o.”
Afterward they threw him in the bushes and took his jacket. Netta got a Judy before the girl even knew what had happened, and then she had a Judas jacket too.
It was nearly daylight when they got on their ‘cicles again and there was no hurry. They didn’t want to try the monument until after dark. They spent the day in Wilmington, hanging around the joints and finding out what they could find. Everybody seemed to know about the bomb and they talked about it with a frantic pride, but underneath the cockiness there seemed to be some sort of fear. Conversations were spotted with talk about the Big Bang, and the catchword in all the places was, “Ask Daddy-o.”
Johnny picked a fight because there was nothing better to do. He flipped the elbows from under a guy propped at a bar and the two squared off. Johnny lunged with the wild joy of a Hypo feeling his stuff, and then he backed away.
“Creep. What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t feel like it, man. Ask Daddy-o.”
“Enh.” Johnny waded in again, but the tangle was no fun. The Judas fought with a strange unsureness, like a man who is off his feed. When Johnny closed in on him he clawed frantically, baring sharp teeth like a cornered rabbit. Disgusted, Johnny flung him in a corner.
“You just watch it” The Judas’s voice was high and hysterical. “Watch out for Daddy-o.”
Johnny tried it several more places, but all he got was the same nervous, girlish scratching that left him puzzled and disgusted. He and Netta headed out of Wilmington and set down in Hyattsville for something to eat A square served them at the cheap lunch counter, and when they finished their hamburgers and started to leave he said, “Don’t I get paid?”