Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 3, March, 1953

Dead Men Don’t Dream by Evan Hunter

Charlie had been a nice guy. Now he lay in a coffin with his throat cut.

The old neighborhood hadn’t changed much. I was looking out at it now, standing near the window in Charlie Dagerra’s bedroom. The tenements stretched across the cold winter sky like a grey smear. There was no sun. The day was cold and gloomy and somehow forbidding, and that was as it should be because Charlie Dagerra lay in a casket in the living room.

The undertaker had skillfully adjusted Charlie’s collar so that most of the knife slash across his neck was covered. He’d disguised the rest with heavy make-up and soft lights, but everyone knew what lay under the make-up. Everyone knew, and no one was talking about it.

They passed the bottle, and I poured myself a stiff hooker. I’d come to the wake mostly because I knew there’d be liquor there. Charlie and I had been kids together, hitching rides on the trollies that used to run along First Avenue. That was a long time ago, though, and I hadn’t seen Charlie since long before I’d lost my license. I probably would never have seen Charlie again, dead or alive, if I hadn’t run into the Moose down on Fourteenth Street. He’d told me about Charlie, and asked me to come pay my respects. He didn’t mention the fact that I had a three-day growth on my face, or that my eyes were rimmed with red, or that I stank of booze. His eyes had traveled briefly over my rumpled suit and my matted hair. He ignored all that and asked me to come pay my respects to a dead childhood friend, and I’d accepted. But mostly because I knew there’d be liquor there.

“So how you been?” the Moose asked now. He was holding a shot glass between two thin fingers. The Moose is a very small man with his hair thinning in an oval on the back of his head. He’d been a small kid, too, which was why we tagged him with a virile nickname.

“So-so,” I told him. I tossed off the drink and held out my glass. One of Charlie’s relatives filled it, and I nodded my thanks.

“I read all about it in the paper, Matt,” the Moose said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” The Moose shook his head sadly. “She was a bitch, Matt,” he said. “You should have killed that guy.”

He was talking about my wife, Trina. He was referring to the night I’d found her in my own bedroom, after four months of crazy-in-love marriage, with a son of a bitch named Garth. He was recalling the vivid newspaper accounts of how I’d worked Garth over with the butt end of my .45, of how the police had tagged me with an A.D.W. charge — assault with a deadly weapon. They’d gotten my license, and Garth had gotten my wife, but not until I’d ripped a trench down the side of his face and knocked half his goddamn teeth out.

“You should have killed him,” the Moose repeated.

“I tried to, Moose. I tried damn hard.” I didn’t like remembering it. I’d been putting in a lot of time forgetting. Whiskey helps in that category.

“The good ones die,” he said, shaking his head, “and the bad ones keep living.” He looked toward the living room, where the flowers were stacked on either side of the coffin. I looked there, too, and I saw Charlie’s mother weeping softly, a big Italian woman in a black dress.

“What happened?” I asked. “Who gave Charlie the knife slash?”

The Moose kept nodding his head as if he hadn’t heard me. I looked at him over the edge of my glass, and finally his eyes met mine. They were veiled, crowded with something nameless.

“What happened?” I asked again.

The Moose blinked, and I knew what the something nameless was then. Fear. Cold, stark, unreasoning fear.

“I don’t know,” he said. “They found him outside his store. He ran a tailor shop, you know. You remember Charlie’s father, don’t you, Matt? Old Joe Dagerra? When Joe died, Charlie took over the shop.”

“Yeah,” I said. The whiskey was running out, and the tears were running in all over the place. It was time to go. “Moose,” I said, “I got to be running. I want to say goodbye to the old lady, and then I’ll be...”

“Sure, Matt. Thanks for coming up. Charlie would have appreciated it.”

I left Moose in the bedroom and said goodbye to Mrs. Dagerra. She didn’t remember me, of course, but she took my hand and held it tightly. I was a friend of her dead son, and she wanted to hold everything he’d known and loved for as long as she could. I stopped by the coffin, knelt, and wished Charlie well. He’d never harmed a fly as far as I could remember, and he deserved a soft journey and maybe a harp and a halo or whatever they gave them nowadays.

I got to my feet and walked to the door, and another of Charlie’s relatives said, “He looks like he’s sleeping, doesn’t he?”

I looked at the coffin, and at the red, stitched gash on Charlie’s neck, where it was already beginning to show through the makeup. I felt sick all of a sudden. “No,” I said harshly. “He looks dead.”

Then I went downstairs.

The neighborhood looked almost the same, but not quite. There was still the candy store huddling close to the building on the left, and the bicycle rental shop on the right. The iceman’s wagon was parked in the gutter, and I remembered the time I’d nearly smashed my hand fooling with the wagon, tilting it until a sliding piece of ice sent the wagon veering to the gutter, pinning my hand under the handle. I’d lost a nail, and it had been tragic at the time. It got a smile from me now. The big white apartment house was across the street, looking more worn, and a little tired now. The neighborhood had changed from Italian-Irish, to Italian-Irish-Puerto Rican. It was the same neighborhood, but a different one. I shrugged and walked into the candy store.

The guy behind the counter looked up when I came in, squinting at my unfamiliar face.

“Pall Mall,” I said. I fished in my pocket for change, and his eyes kept studying me, looking over my clothes and my face. I knew I was no Mona Lisa, but I didn’t like the guy’s scrutiny.

“What’s with you?” I snapped.

“Huh? I...”

“Give me the goddamn cigarettes and cut the third degree.”

“Yes, sir. I... I’m sorry, sir.”

I looked into his eyes and saw the same fear that had been on the Moose’s face. And then I recalled that the guy had just called me “sir”. Now who the hell would call a bum “sir”? He put the cigarettes on the counter and I shoved a quarter at him. He smiled thinly and pushed the quarter back at me. I looked at the quarter and back into his eyes. In the days when I’d been a licensed private eye, I’d seen fear on a lot of faces. I got so I could smell fear. I could smell it now, and the odor was almost overpowering.

I pushed the quarter across the counter once more and said, “My change, Mac.”

The guy picked up the quarter quickly, rang it up, and gave me my change. He was sweating now. I shrugged, shook my head, and walked out of the store.

Well, Cordell, I told myself, where now?

I knew where, of course. The nearest bar. Like a homing pigeon. Matt Cordell, boy bird.

“Matt?”

The voice was soft, inquisitive. I turned and found its owner. She was soft, too, bundled into a thin coat that swelled out over the curves of her body. Her hair was black, as black as night, and it curled against the oval of her face in soft wisps that didn’t come from a home permanent kit. Her eyes were brown, and wide, and her lips looked as if they’d never been kissed — but wanted to be.

“I don’t think I know you,” I said.

“Kit,” she said. “Kit O’Donnell.”

I stared at her hard. “Kit O’Donn...” I took another look. “Not Katie O’Donnell? I’ll be damned.”

“Have you got a moment, Matt?”

I still couldn’t get over it. She’d been a snot-nosed brat when last I’d seen her. “Sure,” I said. “Plenty of time. More than I need.”

“There’s a bar around the corner,” she said. “We can talk there.”

I grinned and pulled up the collar on my coat. “That’s just where I was heading anyway.”

The bar was like all bars. It had whiskey and the people who drink whiskey. It also had a pinball machine and two tables set against the long front window. We sat at one of the tables, and she shrugged out of her coat. She shrugged very nicely. She was wearing a green sweater and a loose bra, and when she shrugged I leaned closer to the table and the palms of my hands itched.

She didn’t bother with a preamble. “Matt,” she said, “my father is in trouble.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“You’re a private detective. I’d like you to help.”

I grinned. “Katie... Kit... I’m not practicing any more. The Law took my ticket.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, doesn’t it?”

“Matt, it’s the whole neighborhood, not just my father. Charlie... Charlie was one of them. He... they...”

She stopped talking, and her eyes opened wide. Her voice seemed to catch in her throat, and she lowered her head slightly. I turned and looked at the bar. A tall character in a belted camel hair coat was leaning on the bar, a wide grin on his face. I stared at him and the grin got bigger. Briefly, I turned back to Kit. She raised her eyes, and I was treated to my third look at fear in the past half-hour.

“Now what the hell?” I said.

“Matt, please,” she whispered.

I shoved my chair back and walked toward the bar. The tall character kept grinning, as if he were getting a big kick out of watching a pretty girl with a stumble bum. He had blond hair and sharp blue eyes, and the collar of his coat was turned up in the back, partially framing his narrow face.

“Is something wrong, friend?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He kept grinning, and I noticed that one hand was jammed into a pocket of the coat. There was a big lump in that pocket, and unless the guy had enormous hands, there was something besides the end of his arm there.

“You’re staring at my friend,” I said.

His eyes flicked from the swell of Kit’s breasts where they heaved in fright beneath the green sweater.

“So I am,” he said softly.

“So cut it out.”

The grin appeared on his face again. He turned his head deliberately, and his eyes stripped Kit’s sweater off. I grabbed the collar of his coat, wrapped my hand in it, and yanked him off the bar.

He moved faster than I thought he would. He brought up a knee that sent a sharp pain careening up from my groin. At the same time, his hand popped out of the pocket, and a snub-nosed .38 stared up at my face.

I didn’t look at the gun long. There are times when you can play footsie, and there are other times when you automatically sense that a man is dangerous, and that a fisted gun isn’t a bluff but a threat that might explode any second. The knee in my groin had doubled me over so that my face was level with the .38. I started to lift my head, and I smashed my bunched fist sideways at the same time. I caught him on the inside of his wrist, and the gun jerked to one side, its blast loud in the small bar. I heard the front window shatter as the bullet struck it, and then I had his wrist tightly in my fingers, and I was turning around and pulling his arm over my shoulder. I gave him my hip, and he left his feet and yelled “Hey!”

And then he was in the air, flipping over my shoulder, with his gun still tight in my closed fist. My other hand was cupped under his elbow. He started coming down bottoms up, and the gun blasted again, ripping up six inches of good floor. He started to swear and the swear erupted into an “Argh!” as he felt the bone in his arm splinter. I could have released my grip when I had him in the air. I could have just let him drop to the floor like an empty sack. Instead, I kept one hand on his wrist and the other under his elbow, and his weight pushed down against his stiffened arm.

The bone made a tiny snap, like someone clicking a pair of castanets. He dropped the gun and hit the floor with a solid thump that rattled some glasses on the bar. His hand went instantly to his arm, and his face turned grey when he saw the crooked dangle of it.

The greyness turned to a heavy flush that mingled with raw pain. He dove headlong on the floor, reaching for the gun with his good arm. I did two things, and I did them fast.

I stepped on his hand first. I stepped on it so hard that I thought I heard some more bones crush. And then, while he was pulling his hand back in pain, I brought my foot back and let it loose in a sharp swing that brought my toe up against his jaw. His teeth banged together and he came up off the floor as if a grenade had exploded under him, collapsing against the wood flat on his face a second later.

“Get your broom,” I said to the bartender. I walked back to Kit and helped her on with her coat.

“Matt, you shouldn’t have,” she mumbled. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

She huddled close against me in the street. A sharp wind had come up, and it drove the newspapers along the gutter like furious sailboats in a hurricane. I kept my arm around her, and it felt good to hold a woman once more. Subconsciously my hand tightened and then started to drop. She reached up with one hand and pulled my fingers away, staring up into my face.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I sometimes forget.”

A sort of pity came into her eyes. “Where are you living now, Matt?” she asked.

“A charming little spot called the Monterey. It’s in the Bowery. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been there.”

“No. I... I...”

“Who was the joker?”

“What joker?”

“The one who’s picking up his arm.”

“He’s one of them. They’ve been... we’ve been paying them, Matt. All the storekeepers. My father with his grocery, and Charlie, everybody. That’s why he was killed. Charlie, I mean. And now my father. Matt, he’s refused to pay them any more. He told them they could... Matt, I’m frightened. That’s why I want your help.” It all came out in a rush, as if she were unloading a terrible burden.

“Honey,” I said, “I have no license. I told you before. I’m not a real eye any more. I’m more a... a glass eye. Do you understand?”

She turned her face toward mine. “You won’t help?”

“What could I do?”

“You could... scare them. You could make them afraid to take any more money.”

“Me?” I laughed out loud. “Who’d be afraid of me? Honest, Kit, I’m just a...”

“What do you want, Matt?” she asked. “I haven’t any money, but I’ll give you... whatever else you want.”

“What?”

“They’ll kill my father, Matt. As sure as we’re standing here, they’ll kill him. I’ll do anything.” She paused. “Anything you say.”

I grinned, only a little bit. “Do I look that way, Kit? Do I really look that way?”

She lifted her face, and her eyes were puzzled for a moment. I shook my head and left her standing there on the corner, with the wind whipping her coat around her long, curving legs.

I walked for a long while, past the public school, past the Latticini, past the bars, and the coal joint, and the butcher, and all the places I’d known since I was old enough to crawl. I saw kids with glazed eyes and the heroin smell about them, and I saw young girls with full breasts in tight brassieres. I saw old women shuffling along the streets with their heads bent against the wind, and old men puffing pipes in dingy doorways. This was the beginning. Matt Cordell had started here. It had been a long way up, out of the muck. There had been four men working for my agency. I had gone a long way from First Avenue. And here I was back again, back in the muck, only the muck was thicker, and it was contaminated with a bunch of punks who thought a .38 was a ticket to the gravy train. And guys like Charlie Dagerra got their throats slit for not liking the scheme of things.

Well, that was tough, but that wasn’t my problem. I had enough troubles of my own. Charlie Dagerra was dead, and the dead don’t dream. The living do. They dream a lot. And their dreams are full of blond beauties with laughing eyes and mocking lips. And all the blondes are called Trina.

She startled me. She was almost like the dream come to life. I almost slammed into her, and I started to walk around her when she took a step to one side, blocking my path.

She had long blond hair, and blue eyes that surveyed me speculatively now. Her mouth was twisted in a small grin, her lips swollen under their heavy lipstick. She wore a leather jacket, the collar turned up, and her hands were rammed into her pockets. The jacket curved away from her throat in full-breasted defiance.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice rose on the last syllable, and she kept staring at me. It was getting dark now, and the wind was brisk on the back of my neck. I looked at her and at the way her blond hair slapped at her face.

“What do you want, sister?” I asked.

“It’s what you want that counts,” she said.

I looked her over again, starting with the slender, curving legs in the high heels, up the full rounded thighs that pressed against her skirt.

When my eyes met hers again, she looked at me frankly and honestly. “You like?”

“I like.”

“It’s cheap, mister. Real cheap.”

“How cheap?”

She hooked her arm through mine, pressing her breasts against my arm, tightening her hand there. “We’ll talk price later,” she said. “Come on.”

We began walking, and the wind started in earnest now, threatening to tear the grey structures from the sky.

“This way,” she said. We turned down 119th Street, and we walked halfway up the street toward Second Avenue. “This house,” she said. I didn’t answer. She went ahead of me, and I watched her hips swinging under her skirt, and I thought again of Trina, and the blood ran hotly in my veins.

She stepped into the dark vestibule of the house, and I walked in after her. She walked toward the end of the hall on the ground floor, and I realized too late that there were no apartments on that floor except at the front of the building. She swung around suddenly, thrusting a nickle-plated .22 at me, shoving me back against the garbage cans that were lined up underneath the stairway.

“What is this?” I asked. “Rape?”

“It’s rape, mister,” she answered. She flicked her head, lashing the blond hair back over her shoulder. Her eyes narrowed and then she lifted the .22 and brought it down in a slashing arc that sent blood springing from my cheek.

“This is for Lew,” she said. She brought the small gun back and down again, and this time I could feel the teeth rattling in my mouth. “And this is for Lew’s broken arm!”

The gun went back, slashing down in a glinting arc. I reached up and grabbed her wrist, pulling the gun all the way over to one side. With my other hand, I slapped her across the face, hard. I tightened my grip on her wrist until she let the gun clatter onto the garbage cans, a small scream coming out of her mouth. I slapped her again, back-handed, and she flew up against the wall, her mouth open in surprise and terror.

“We came here for something,” I told her.

“You lousy son of a bitch. I wouldn’t if you was the last man on earth.”

I slapped her harder this time, and I pulled the zipper down on her leather jacket and ripped her blouse down the front. My fingers found her bra, and I tore it in two. I pulled her to me and mashed my mouth down against hers. She fought and pulled her mouth away, and I yanked her to me, my hand against her. She stopped struggling after awhile.

The wind kept howling outside.

I left her slumped against the wall. I threw a five-dollar bill onto the garbage cans, and I said, “Tell Lew to keep his bait at home. I’ll break his other arm if he sends another slut after me. You understand that?”

“You didn’t seem to mind, you bastard,” she mumbled.

“Just tell him. Just tell him what I said.”

I walked out of the building. I was sore, very sore. I didn’t like being suckered, and most of all I didn’t like being suckered by blondes. Matt Cordell had been suckered by one blonde too many, and that had been a good many drinks back. The more I thought about it, the more it burned me.

I was ready to find this Lew character and really break his other arm. I was ready to rip it off and stuff it down his goddamned mouth. That’s the way I felt. The way I’d felt when I’d lit into Garth with the .45. Boiling inside, with a cold fury settling in my brain. You go to a funeral, you don’t expect a boxing match. You don’t expect punks shaking down a poor neighborhood. It was like rattling pennies out of a gum machine. It was that cheap. It stank, and the smell made me sick, and I wanted to hold my nostrils.

I kept burning, and before I knew it, I was standing in front of O’Donnell’s grocery. I walked in when I spotted Kit behind the counter. She was wearing a white apron, but even that couldn’t hide the curves of her lush body.

“I’ll take six cans of beer,” I told her.

Her head jerked up when she heard my voice. “Matt,” she said, “one of them was just here!”

“What? Where is he?”

“He just left. He said we’d better have the money by tomorrow or...”

“Which way did he go?” I was already halfway to the door.

“Toward Pleasant Avenue,” she said. “He was wearing a tan fedora, and a green coat.”

I didn’t wait for more. I headed out of the store and started walking down toward Pleasant. I caught up with him about halfway down the block. He was big from the back, a tall guy with shoulders that stretched against the width of his coat. I walked up behind him and grabbed one arm, yanking it up behind his back.

“Hello,” I said, “my name is Matt Cordell.”

“Hey, man, you nuts or something?” He tried to pull his arm away but I held it tightly.

“Take me to the cheese,” I said. “The head punk.”

“Man, you’ve flipped,” he whined. I still couldn’t see his face, but it sounded like a kid talking, a big kid who’d lifted weights once. “Come on, man, leggo.”

“You want to carry your arm away?” I asked.

“Cool it, man. Cool it.” He tried to turn but I held him tightly. “What’s your gripe?” he asked at last.

“I don’t like shakedowns.”

“Who does? Man, we see eye to eye. Loosen the flipper.”

I yanked up on it and he screamed. “Cut the jive,” I shouted. “Take me to the son of a bitch behind all this or I’ll leave a stump on your shoulder.”

“Easy, easy. Man, easy. I’m walking. I’m walking.”

He kept walking toward Pleasant, and I stayed behind him, ready to tear his arm off if I had to.

“He ain’t gonna cut this nohow,” the weight-lifter said. “He ain’t gonna cut this at all.”

“He’s done enough cutting,” I said. “He cut Dagerra’s throat.”

“You don’t dig me, Joe,” the weight-lifter said. “You don’t dig me at all.”

“Just keep walking.”

He kept walking, and then he stopped suddenly. “Up there,” he said, gesturing with his head. “He’s up there, but he ain’t gonna cut this...”

“At all. I know.”

“Just don’t drag me in, man. Just leave me be. I don’t want no headaches, thanks.”

I shoved him away from me, and he almost fell on his face on the sidewalk. “Keep your nose clean,” I said. “Go listen to some of Dizzy’s records. But keep your nose clean or I’ll break it for you.”

I saw his face for the first time. He was a young kid, no more than twenty-one, with wide blue eyes and pink cheeks. “Sure, man, sure.” He scrambled to his feet and ran down the street.

I looked up at the redfront building, saw one light burning on the top floor, with the rest of the windows boarded up. I climbed the sandstone steps and tried the door. When it didn’t open on the second try, I pitted my shoulder against it, and it splintered in a hundred rotting pieces. The hallway was dark.

I started up the steps, making my way toward the light on the top landing. I was winded when I reached it, and I stopped to catch my breath. A thin slice of amber light spilled onto the floor from under a crack in one of the doors. I walked up to the door and tried the knob. It was locked.

“Who is it?” a voice called.

“Me, man,” I answered.

“Zip?”

“Yeah. Come on, man.”

The door opened a crack, and I shoved it all the way open. It hit against something hard, and I kicked it shut and put my back against it. All I saw, at first, was Lew with his arm in a plaster cast, hanging in a sling above his waist.

His eyes narrowed when he saw who it was, and he took one step toward me.

“I wouldn’t,” I told him. My voice was soft. “I wouldn’t, Lew.”

“He’s right,” another voice said. There was only one bulb burning in the room, and the corners were in shadow. I peered into one corner, made out an old sofa and a pair of blue slacks stretched the length of it. I followed the slacks up the length of the body, up to a hatchet face with glittering eyes, down again to the open switch blade that was paring the nails of one hand.

“Are you Mr. Punk Himself?” I asked.

The long legs swung over the side of the sofa, and the face came into the light. It was a cruel face, young, but old, with hard lines stretching from the nose flaps to the thinly compressed lips.

“The name’s Jackie,” he said. “Jackie Byrne. What’s your game, mister?”

“How old are you, Jackie? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”

“Old enough,” he said. He took another step toward me, tossing the knife into the air and catching it on his palm. “How old are you, mister?”

“I’m really old, punk. I’m all of thirty. Really old.”

“Maybe you won’t get any older. You shouldn’t complain.”

“Charlie Dagerra was about thirty, too,” I said. “He didn’t get any older, either.”

“Yeah,” Byrne said. “That’s just what I meant.”

“How long you been shaking down the local merchants, Jackie?”

He grinned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The merchants donate money to me. I’m their favorite charity. They like to give me money. I make sure no snot-nosed kids throw stink-bombs in their stores or break their windows. I’m good to them.”

“You think you’ve got a new dodge, don’t you?”

“What?”

“You heard me. You’ve stumbled upon a real easy game. Just point your knife and the storekeepers wet their pants. It’s been done before, Jackie. By bigger punks than you.”

“You don’t have to take that, Jackie,” Lew said. “You don’t have to take that from this bum.”

“You’ll find your girl on a garbage can in one of the hallways,” I told him. “She was missing some clothes when I left her.”

“Why, you son of a...” He lunged toward me and I whirled him around and shoved him across the room toward the sofa. He landed like a B-29, and his head clunked against the wall, making a hollow sound.

“All right, pop,” Byrne said. “Enough playing around.”

“I’m not playing, Jackie-boy.”

“Get the hell out of the neighborhood,” he said. “You got a long nose, and I don’t like long noses.”

“And what makes you think you can do anything about my nose, Jackie-boy?”

“A wise guy,” he said disgustedly. “A real wise guy.” He squeezed the knife shut and then pressed a button on its handle. The knife snapped open with a whistling noise.

“Very effective,” I said. “Come on and use it.”

“Nerves of steel, huh?” he asked, a small smile forming on his thin lips.

“No, sonny,” I said. “I just don’t give a damn, that’s all. Come on.” He hesitated, and I shouted, “Come on, you simple bastard!”

He lunged at me, the knife swinging in a glistening arc. I caught his arm and yanked it up, and we struggled like two ballet dancers under the bare bulb. I twisted his arm all the way up then, bringing up my foot at the same time. I kicked him right in the butt, hard, and he went stumbling across the room, struggling for his balance. He turned with a vicious snarl on his face, and then did something no expert knife man would ever do.

He threw the knife.

I moved to one side as the blade whispered past my head. I heard it bury itself into the door jamb behind me. I smiled then.

“Well! It does appear we’re even.”

I took one step toward him, remembering Lew when it was too late.

“Not exactly, pop,” Lew said.

I didn’t bother turning around because I knew sure as hell that Lew would be holding the .38 I’d taken from him once today. Instead, I dove forward as the gun sounded, the smell of cordite stinking up the small room. My arms wrapped around Byrne’s skinny legs, and we toppled to the floor in a jumble of twisting limbs.

The gun sounded once more, tearing into the plaster wall and Byrne shouted, “You dumb mug! Knock it off!”

He didn’t say anything else, then, because my fist was in his mouth and he was trying hard to swallow it. I picked him up off the floor, keeping him in front of me. I lifted him to his feet and kept him ahead of me, moving toward Lew on the couch.

“Go ahead, Lew,” I said. “Shoot. Kill your buddy and you’ll get me, too.”

“Don’t move,” he said.

I kept crossing the room, holding Byrne’s limp body ahead of me.

“I said don’t move!”

“Shoot, Lew! Fill Jackie-boy with holes. Go ahead, you damn fool, shoot!”

He hesitated a moment and that was all I needed. I threw Byrne like a sack of potatoes and Lew moved to one side just as I jumped. I hit him once in the gut and once in the Adam’s apple, almost killing him. Then I grabbed Lew by his collar, and Jackie by his, and I dragged them out of the room, and down the stairs, and out on the sidewalk. I found the cop not far from there.

I told Kit all about it later.

Her eyes held stars, and they made me think of a time when I’d roamed the neighborhood as a kid, a kid who didn’t know the meaning of pain or the meaning of grief.

“Come see me, Matt,” she said. “When you get the time, come see me. Please remember Matt.”

“I will, Kit,” I lied.

I left the grocery store and I walked over to Third Avenue. I grabbed the El there, and I headed for home.

Home.

If I hurried, I might still find a liquor store open.

The El rumbled past 120th Street, and I looked out of the window and down the high walls of the tenement cliffs. And then 120th Street was gone, and with it Matt Cordell’s boyhood.

I slumped against the seat, pulling my collar high, smiling a little when the woman next to me got up and changed her seat.