“We’re doing all right without…” said a tall, well-muscled boy with a deeply underslung jaw.
“We’re not, Larry,” Ace said. “Not if we want to-”
“What I wanted, when I joined, was to… I don’t know, be with a club. Have a place where we could bring girls, drink a little wine, smoke some gauge, you know what I’m saying. I mean, sure, bop with anyone who calls us out. But I don’t want to be a gang man for my whole life.”
“What do you want to do, then?” Ace confronted the challenger. “Go work in the plant, like your daddy did? The plant’s fucking closed, man.”
“I was thinking about the army.”
“The army?”
“My brother went in. Oscar. He was-”
“Oscar didn’t have no choice,” Ace said. “He was a Hawk, too, remember? The judge told him it was the state pen or the army. A lot of guys went in the same way.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Larry said. “But Oscar ended up liking it. He was supposed to go in for four years, but when that was done, he signed up again. He’s a sergeant. He’s always writing me, telling me I should do it, too. It’s a pretty good deal. He never has to worry about losing his job. And he can even retire when he’s younger than my father is right now. Have a salary for life. He’s got a new car, and he’s saving for a ‘Vette. They get free doctors and free-”
“Free? He’s not free, man. He’s got to take orders.”
“Everybody takes orders from somewhere,” Larry said, stubbornly. “It doesn’t sound so bad to me.”
“That’s because your brother, when he came up, it was a different time. He didn’t have the… opportunities, like we’re going to have.”
“I don’t-”
“What’s your hurry, man? I know all about that army thing. You got to be seventeen to go in, even if your folks sign for you. Just wait until after Wednesday, okay? You’ll see.”
“I’m just saying-”
“Who gave you that gun, anyway?” Hog asked, deliberately redirecting the growing tension in the basement.
“All I know is Mr. White and Mr. Green,” Ace told the others. “They said they’d been scouting us. Liked what they saw.”
“You think maybe they were from Mr. Dioguardi’s-?”
“Oh, man, come on!” Ace said. “Those guys, the way they talked, I know where they’re from.” He paused dramatically, waiting for everyone’s close attention. “They were the Klan,” Ace said, rapturously. “The way they talked, they got to be.”
1959 October 04 Sunday 21:05
“It’s your turn,” Ruth told the busty girl in the white babydoll nightgown. “You want it or not?”
“What do you mean, my turn?” the girl who called herself Lola asked. Her dull-brown hair fell limply on either side of even duller-brown eyes.
“You know the trick,” Ruth said, tapping a yellow pencil against the frame of her cat’s-eye glasses. “I told you about it when you first came here. And you’ve talked about it with other girls, girls who’ve done it.”
“I didn’t-”
“Yes, you did. There’s something else I told you, told you from the beginning,” Ruth said, sternly. “In this house, you can turn down a trick-any trick-and still stay. But you lie to me, even one time, and you’re out on your ass.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Ruth. I didn’t mean to-”
“He’s going to be here soon, all right? Now, either you say yes, so we can get you down to the blue room, or you say no, and I get someone else.”
“I…”
“This isn’t a punishment, you dumb bitch,” Ruth said, sharply. “It’s a fifty-dollar trick. Ever get that much before? In your whole life? There’s girls here who never even heard of such a thing, except when they’re lying to each other. The way it works is, the man calls, and I spin the wheel. Whoever’s name comes up, they-”
“What wheel?”
“There is no wheel,” Ruth sighed. “It’s just an expression. What I actually do, since it’s so important to you to know, I write every girl’s name on a card, like this one,” Ruth said, holding up a plain white index card, with the letter “L” written on it in a composition-book hand, “and I put them all in a bowl, face-down. Then I close my eyes, mix them all around, and pull one out. That one, it’s the winner, not the loser.”
“Does it… does it hurt?”
“You never…?”
“No. I don’t think it’s…”
“And you never asked Barbara? Or Lorraine? They both-”
“I did ask Lorraine. But I know how some of the girls are. They’ll say things…”
Ruth pointedly looked at her wristwatch, a black oval on a thin gold band.
“Does he ever tip?” the dull-eyed woman asked.
1959 October 04 Sunday 21:20
“You better not be calling me from work,” the voice said.
Cold and hard, Carl thought, like a diamond. A perfect pure-white diamond. “No, of course not,” he said aloud. “I would never-”
“-disobey,” the voice finished the sentence for him.
“Never!” Carl said, excitement rising in that part of him he kept buried under his many shields.
“Don’t say ‘never’ to me like that, you sniveling little baby! I told you, no more notes. Didn’t I?”
“Yes, but-”
“Yes?” the voice said, the undercurrent of threat closer to the surface.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I only wanted to-”
“What you want isn’t important. Is it?”
“No, sir.”
“And you know what is important, don’t you?”
“Yes. I… Yes, sir, I know. Please?”
“What time is your shift over?”
“Eleven. But then I have to close down the-”
“Oh four hundred hours,” the voice said. “That will give you plenty of time to prepare yourself.”
1959 October 04 Sunday 21:34
I got to get closer, refrained through Holden’s labyrinth mind. I got to get closer, so I can make my report. He moved as cautiously as a weasel approaching a henhouse, his passage disturbing the underbrush less than a gentle breeze. The night creatures were used to Holden’s presence-his scent didn’t alarm them, his movements didn’t send them scurrying. He was one of them: a resident, not a visitor.
That’s the one, he said to himself. That same ’55 Chevy. That’s why he didn’t back all the way in, the way most of them do-he wouldn’t want to get that beautiful paint all scratched up.
Music drifted out onto the night air, so softly that even Holden’s forest-trained ears could barely pick it up. Unlike the lumbering gait he automatically fell into whenever he had leave the safety of his forest, Holden moved with an almost sinuous grace as he closed the gap. The bruised-and-blue sounds of Bobby Bland’s “I’ll Take Care of You” floated over to him, but Holden didn’t recognize the song. He’s going to run down his battery, playing the radio with the engine turned off like that, he thought.
The moon refracted against the Chevy’s windshield, blocking Holden’s view of the interior as effectively as a curtain. It’s a warm night. Maybe they have the side windows down. I know that Chevy’s a hardtop, so even if they’re in the back seat…
Holden was so close that he tested each footstep before committing to it. From long experience, he knew that hiding behind a tree wasn’t as effective as standing in the open, blending with the night. His green-and-brown camouflage jacket and matching hat-gifts from his friend, Sherman-coupled with his ability to stand perfectly, soundlessly still, were all he had ever needed.
Holden didn’t like radios. They masked the sounds he coveted. The secret sounds he replayed in his mind, back in his room. They were his, those sounds. He owned them.
Holden often wanted to tell Sherman about the sounds. He thought his friend would understand. But… but he couldn’t be sure. Besides, Sherman was a policeman. A detective, even. Maybe there was a law Holden didn’t know about…