A Diet of Treacle

Chapter 10

The detective said: “You never learn. You have to push your luck. You have to lean until you fall. Now you fall.”

The running water in the sink was very loud. Anita took tentative steps toward Joe, but an unmistakable motion from Samuelson halted her.

“A long fall,” the detective said. “A long, long fall. Possession with intent. Rather obvious intent. You had a chance last time and you blew it, you damned fool.”

What happened next occurred in slow motion. Shank unwound like a cobra. He stood up and grabbed Anita in one fluid movement. Then Anita was being propelled swiftly at Detective Samuelson. His gun was pointed between her breasts but he did not fire it.

And Shank moved behind her. He moved with the grace of a dancer. His legs thrust him forward while his hand dipped in his pocket and brought out his knife.

The knife danced in his hand and the blade leaped out, alert.

Anita’s softness bounced into the detective. She fell away, limp, and Shank’s knife bit, cobralike, into the man with the gun. Slow motion. The knife sneaking between ribs, ripping upward. The gun, still unfired, dropping from limp fingers and clattering inanely on the bare floor.

The detective’s hard body losing its hardness. A hand clutching at the hole the knife had made, the man trying to hold life in place. The knife withdrawn, and flowers of ruby blood blossoming from a hole in a chest.

A body falling slowly, crumpling, folding to the floor.

A suppressed scream from Anita, a gasp from Joe.

Then quietude, except for the running water slap-ping at the dirty dishes in the sink.

A tragicomedy in one act, a quick act. A gun on the floor, unfired. The knife dripping the detective’s blood.

The detective on the floor.

Dead.

The water in the sink was still running.

Anita spoke first. Her voice was a loud whisper. “You killed him. Oh, God, God in heaven, you killed him. He’s dead and you killed him.”

“I had to.”

“Had to? A year and a day for possession of pot. That’s what you would have gotten. Now you’ll get the electric chair. Murder. Murder in the first degree. The electric chair. Holy mother of God!”

Shank’s brain was swimming. This was what it felt like, he thought. This is how killing felt. A strange feeling of power combined with the damnedest emptiness. A funny sort of a feeling.

“A year and a day. That’s what they would have given you. Possession of pot.”

Shank grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Possession of pot,” he snapped. “You think that’s what it is, huh? You think that’s the whole ball game. You know all the answers, don’t you? You think you know just what your man sells, baby. You’re all mixed up. All wrong.”

Then he opened the dresser drawer, took out the little box. He opened it and showed her the capsules of heroin and smiled when she drew in her breath sharply.

“God!”

“A year and a day,” Shank said savagely. “Try ten years. Try fifteen or twenty. And not just for me. For me and for your man, Joe. For both of us with a little bit thrown in for you just for being here. How would you like to do a few years?”

“Murder,” she said, numb. “Heroin. God in heaven.”

Joe sat and stared. He, too, was numb, unable to think straight. It had happened so quickly while he simply sat and watched. The detective, the gun, the knife. Death, so quick. He felt left out now. But he stood up. He walked to Anita, put an arm around her. He looked at Shank.

“What do we do now?”

“We move,” Shank said. “We get out of town. What else can we do?”

“We have to run?”

Shank shook his head impatiently. “The cop let the world know where he was. If he doesn’t call in within an hour they’ll come looking for him. Even if we ditch the body it won’t do us any good. They’ll shake us down until they break us. They’ll nail us to fourteen different crosses. They’ll hang us, put us in the chair, whatever they do. We’ll die.”

“You’ll die,” Anita told him, “You killed him. We didn’t do it.”

“Read another law book. You’re guilty, too, sweetheart. Possession with intent to sell is a felony. We all possessed with intent. And if somebody kills in the commission of a felony, it’s murder one. The detective was killed and we were all here. We all get the chair.”

“But—” Joe began.

“So we run,” Shank said. “We got two hours to get out of town. Breeze to Grand Central and take the first train out. Get out far and fast. They won’t know where to look. We leave the state and keep going and they call it unsolved. We leave New York and we stay living. Otherwise we die. I don’t want to die.”

“You can go,” she said. “Joe and I don’t have to go. They’re not after us. They’re after you. We didn’t do anything and we don’t have to run with you.”

“They’ll catch you,” Shank said. “They’ll pick you up and they’ll squeeze you. They’ll ask you where I went.”

“Don’t tell us. Then we won’t be able to tell them anything because we won’t know.”

“They’ll call you accessories,” Shank said. “They’ll put you in jail.”

“No—”

“You got no choice. We hang together or we hang separately. You’ve got to come with me.”

Joe was nodding. “He’s right,” he said. “But not all the way. I’ve got to go with him, Anita.”

“No you don’t. No—”

“I’ve got to,” Joe said again. “But you don’t. They don’t know anything about you. You can disappear. Go back to Harlem. Forget about us. We’ll run and we’ll get away but you can go on living. The fuzz doesn’t know who you are. You can forget us and live your own life.”

Shank nodded. “I’ll buy it,” he said. “She could get away. But Joe and I have to run.”

Anita hesitated only for a moment. She knew she was making the wrong decision but she knew also it was the only decision she could possibly make. She was committed. She shared their guilt in her own small way. And she and Joe were thrust together. She could not walk away from him. Not now, not ever.

“I’ll come with you,” she said.

“You don’t have to.”

“I have to. I have to, now, forever. I’ll come with you, I will.”

“No time to pack,” Shank was saying. “We take what we can carry. We head first for Buffalo. It’s a big junk town. I can sell there. We can get some money together.”

They were short on money. Shank had fifty dollars in cash and the cop’s wallet yielded another twenty-five. Joe had a few dollars, Anita a few more. Enough to get them to Buffalo and pay for a hotel room, maybe a meal. Nothing more.

“All that money in the bank,” Shank said. “All that goddamn money and the bank doesn’t open until Monday. Can’t risk it. Can’t stay around. They’ll tip to us by then. And they won’t let up. The police take care of their own. Kill a cop and they turn the town inside-out looking for you. Someday I’ll come back, clean out that bank account. Not now.”

Shank and Joe stuffed the cop’s hard body into the closet. They covered the bloodstains with newspapers.

“They’ll find him,” Shank said. “Maybe this will keep them an extra hour. Maybe two hours. Every minute helps.”

Curiously, Anita remembered to turn off the water running in the sink, thinking as she did so that the water would have washed nothing away, anyhow. The scum on the dirty dishes was very thick.

They took a cab to Grand Central. Their timing was fortunate. A train left for Buffalo at 8:02 and they were on it. Shank had his knife in one pocket and the cop’s gun in the other. Joe was carrying the heroin. There was a lot of it—Shank had connected recently with Basil.

“We’ll sell it in Buffalo,” he said. “Lay over a few days, sell what we can, then head west. Buy a car. It’s safer by car. Trains make me nervous.”

The train stopped at Albany. A porter rolled through a sandwich cart. Shank bought three sandwiches and he, Joe and Anita wolfed them down without tasting them. The train started up again and sped west.

“Chicago,” Shank said. “We can hole up in Chicago. I know a cat from the coast, he’s in Chicago. An old friend. We can connect with him, hide out there. Set ourselves up, get rolling again. Just so we get out of the state. New York’s going to be too hot.”

Utica. Syracuse.

Joe wondered what was going to happen. It was bad now, very bad. It could only get worse. A man was stuck in a closet with a hole in his chest and they had put him there.

You could defend a lot of things, rationalize a lot of actions. You could defend smoking, defend selling. Somebody had to sell it, Joe’s mind ticked off the thoughts.

Murder was different.

Run, he thought. Run all you want. But where can you hide? How far can you run before they catch you?

Joe looked at Anita and wondered why she had tagged along. He was somehow a little glad she was with them. He needed her. He took her hand now and held it. If only that cop had stayed away. He and Anita would have had their own place. And finally he would be money ahead and he could get a job and everything would be all right, good and clean and proper.

Not running.

Not looking for a place to hide.

Why had she come along? Of the three, she alone was safe. She alone could go home, back to Harlem, back to something approaching sanity. She could stay away from police, she could be safe. Nobody knew her. Nobody was looking for her.

And yet she had chosen to be with him. Now she was breaking the laws. Accessory to and after the fact. Guilty, now.

Why?

Rochester. Batavia.

Anita sat in her seat and tried to sleep but could not. She wondered when she would be able to sleep again. Sometime, maybe.

Joe was holding her hand, squeezing it. She wanted to squeeze back but she was still numb and she could not move. She felt as if she were not really alive. Everything was a dream. A big bad dream. A nightmare she was somehow living her way through. A bad nightmare that would have a dismal ending.

They were running. First to Buffalo. Then to Chicago, then to somewhere else. She wondered when they would be able to stop running. Never, she decided. They would run until they dropped, run until they were caught and tried and electrocuted. She wondered if she would be killed with the others. She wondered if it made any difference, if anything made any difference any more.

Probably not.

She lit a cigarette from the butt of another and the smoke scratched her throat and clouded her lungs.

She coughed out a cloud of smoke and her head swam. Nothing mattered any more. Nothing would ever matter. She and Joe were together, they would run together, they would be caught together, they would die together. Nothing mattered. Nothing would ever matter. Buffalo.

The train jolted to a stop and they stood up together and walked out of it.

Buffalo was gray in the morning. Anita, Joe and Shank left the railroad station and took a taxi to a dilapidated hotel on Clinton Street where the desk clerk asked no questions. They paid ten dollars in advance and the clerk gave them a room on the third floor whose window opened out on an air shaft. The room was dirty, the two beds unmade.

“It’s quiet,” Shank said. “And we won’t be here long. A day, two days. Then we clear out and head west. We leave this town behind us. A bad town to begin with. And in the wrong state—for us. There are forty-nine other states. We’ll do better in any one of them. Not New York.”

He took the heroin from Joe, put it in the dresser drawer. “You stay here,” he said. “The two of you, stay in the room, keep it quiet. I’ll be back in an hour, two hours. Wait for me.”

He went out and left them alone.

For several minutes they sat by themselves and said nothing. Then Joe broke the silence.

“You didn’t have to come,” he said.

“I know.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess I had to be with you. I don’t know why.”

“You were nuts to come. I don’t know how we’re going to get away.”

She said nothing.

“But I’m glad you came,” he went on. “I’m selfish, but I’m glad you came. I would go nuts without you. I need you, Anita.”

She looked at him.

“Anita,” he said. “I love you, Anita.”

She went to him and sat on the bed with him. He put his arms around her, slowly, tentatively, and their mouths came together and they kissed. A long kiss. A good kiss, a kiss saying many things.

“We have to stay together. We need each other, Anita. And some day we’ll get out of this. Out all the way. It’ll be the two of us forever.”

“I hope so, Joe.”

“It will. It will, honey. I love you, honey, I love you and I need you and—”

It happened like a dream. There was no need to talk any more. They were lost in their overwhelming need, a need that could only be satisfied through the merging of flesh with flesh, body with body, soul with soul. They undressed automatically and they came together with no preceding love-play, no kisses, no caresses. His flesh claimed her and they joined in a dreamlike version of reality, bodies seeking, hearts pounding, minds clouded with love.

When it was finished they lay in each other’s arms, holding themselves together, trying to right their lives with the sudden enormity of their love for each other. In the peak of passion they had managed to lose the horror of reality, the true nature of their situation. Now, as they basked in the glow of after-love, that horror filtered through to them once again. But they had each other, and somehow this lessened the horror. As long as they were together they could survive it.

Finally, they slept…

Shank let them sleep. He let himself into the hotel room, walked to the dresser and removed the capsules of heroin from the drawer. He seated himself at the table and took out the things he had purchased. Carefully he opened each capsule and diluted it with the milk sugar he had bought. He converted the thirty capsules into ninety capsules, each one-third as strong as the original ones had been. His investment was quickly tripled. He had three times the capital he had started with.

Of course, each capsule was now worth one-third of what it had originally been worth. It was, in the junkie’s jargon, beat stuff. But the buyers did not have to know this. They would discover this only when they would use the capsules and derive a lesser kick from them than what they had been accustomed to. By that time Shank and Joe and Anita would be on their way, and goodbye Buffalo.

It was a bad town, anyway. A dull gray town. Shank would connect now, and sell the ninety capsules as quickly as possible, and then the three would blow town. So long, Buffalo. Later for you, suckers. He slipped out of the room without waking Joe and Anita and took the heroin to the customers.

They were awake when he returned. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s move. We’ve got to get out of town.”

“What’s the matter?” Joe said.

“Nothing,” he said. “No more horse. All sold.”

“How?”

“Sold it for three bucks a cap,” he said. “A good price. Junk comes high in Buffalo. I was selling for half price. The buyers were very hungry. I holed up in a little bar in the middle of Spadesville and the trade was fast and thick. Half a dozen customers and we were all out and the store was closed. So we have to scram in a hurry.”

“Why the rush?”

Shank explained the customers would be ready to kill him in a very short time. He explained that he had sold one-third strength heroin for a heavy price, all things considered, and a lot of people would be mad at him when they would discover they had been taken.

“So we run,” he explained. “I got better than two and a half bills. Ninety caps, bargain rate of three bucks a cap. We can buy a car. Not the best short in the world but one that will move for us. Let’s go.”

On the way to the used car lot Joe bought an evening paper. The Buffalo paper had the story on a back page. Detective First Grade Peter J. Samuelson was dead as a lox. The police were searching for his killers.

Shank bought a seven-year-old Chevy for two hundred dollars. It was worth less than half of that but the dealer knew something was wrong. Shank had to pay his price, and did.

The car was a lemon. It rattled at fifty-five miles an hour. The brakes were in bad shape. The clutch could not work smoothly. The gears ground half the time. But it would do.

Joe drove. He had no license but neither did Shank nor Anita. Joe knew how to drive so he drove. He took Route 20 out of town and headed for Cleveland. Cleveland would be safe for a day or two. They could scrape together a little more money. Head for Chicago. Anita sat next to him in the front seat. Shank slept in the back. Joe drove slowly and steadily. He could not have exceeded the speed limit if he had wanted to, and he did not want to. Not when he had no license. Not when the three were wanted for murder. Murder.

They stopped twice on the way. They had hotdogs in Lodi and hamburgers in Ashtabula. Joe drove all the way until they were in Cleveland. He found a place to leave the car and they looked for a hotel. They found one at 13th and Paine. It bore a startling resemblance to the one they had occupied in Buffalo. Again they paid in advance. Again the room was a mess. Joe was tired from the drive and went to sleep at once. Anita stayed with Joe while Shank went out to find a beanery for a meal. On the way he stopped at a newsstand selling out-of-town papers, where he bought a copy of the New York Times.

It carried the story.

The cops knew too much. They had determined that two men and a girl had been involved in the murder. They had descriptions of Shank and Joe. They had lifted fingerprints from the apartment. They had one name—Shank Marsten. They did not have Joe’s name, or at least it had not been released by the newspapers so far.

The police further figured the trio had left town; consequently, a state-wide alarm was out. There was a report the three had showed in Buffalo. Shank read that part and cursed quietly and methodically. He wondered how the cops had ascertained that. He wondered how much else they knew.

Shank ordered a chopped steak with home fries and a cup of coffee. The meat was good, the potatoes a little greasy, the coffee weak. He ate everything on his plate and drank two cups of coffee.

He tipped the waitress. He gave her a smile and she returned it. She was a pretty girl. Light red hair. And a good pair the white uniform could not hide. A nice rear end. He wondered if he could make a pass at her. He decided not to, even though she looked as if she would be fun in the sack. Too risky.

He smiled again and she gave him back such a good, wide, toothy smile he knew she would be flat on her back the minute he asked her. He wondered what she would say if she would find out he was a vicious killer. That was what the papers called him. A vicious killer. The waitress would be scared green.

“I get off at one,” she told him.

“I’ll be back,” he said. Let her think so if she wanted to, Shank thought. Let her wait—for a vicious killer. He left the beanery and wandered back to the hotel. A vicious killer, he chuckled to himself. He remembered how it had felt, killing the cop. A strange feeling. Equal parts of power and emptiness. A funny sensation.

Now the trio was running. Running fast and running scared. In a day or so the cops would know about the car. It would have to be ditched, Shank knew. Maybe trade it in for another one. Where would they get the money?

A vicious killer. He did not feel very vicious. He remembered the way he had moved in, using the girl as a shield, his knife moving in on the cop. He remembered the funny feeling of power and emptiness. He wondered if he would have to kill again, and how it would feel a second time.

The trio stayed close to home. Two would remain in the hotel room, sleeping or waiting, while the other would prowl the gray streets of Cleveland. Shank looked for people he knew, racket people, junk people. He was on the make for some sort of a connection—and came up with nothing.

And time bled them. The hotel took its cut and the diners took their cut. And the money went—quickly, too quickly, while the car sat alone on a quiet street as the trio waited for the time to head for Chicago. Each reacted in his own way. Shank was always searching for a way, a chance, a shot in the endless dark. He tried the bars in the Negro section where horns wailed all night long and sleek dark women wiggled their hips in open invitation. He tried the waterfront, the lake shore, where bars overflowed with dock workers and where the mouths of the whores were bloody with lipstick. He tried the waiting places—the bus station, the railroad terminal, the park.

He came up with nothing.

Joe retreated to a fantasy world. He spent his money on paperback books. He bought the books five or six at a time and took them back to the room. There he read one after another, letting the prose draw a curtain shutting out reality. When he spoke to Shank or to Anita his voice was loose and easy, flip and cool, an absolute denial of running and hiding. His fingers turned the pages of book after meaningless book, and his eyes vacantly scanned words to hurry on.

Anita turned into herself. But she could find neither salvation nor escape from reality. She, like Joe, spent the bulk of her time in the small room. But she did not read, although the many books Joe had discarded lay about her. Instead, she sat on the bed and stared at nothing. She spoke rarely, and then only in answer to a question from either Shank or Joe. She thought her own thoughts without attempting to share them. They were not happy thoughts. But they were hers, and she ran them again and again.

It was evening. Joe was lying on a bed, book in his hand, a western entitled A Sound of Distant Drums, by James Blue. Anita was sitting on the edge of the other bed and staring emptily across the room. The door opened. It was Shank.

“We got to move,” he said. He was holding a copy of the Cleveland Press in one hand. He folded it and tossed it to the floor.

“They made the car,” he said. “They got license, description, the works. They know we headed for Cleveland. We got to get out of here.”

“We take the car, man?”

Shank shook his head, impatient with Joe. “They made the car, damn it. They maybe already found it. They maybe have it all staked out just waiting for us to come back. We don’t touch the car. We don’t go near that car. We get the first bus to Chicago and we leave this town far behind. That’s what we do.”

“Now?” Joe said.

Shank lit a cigarette. “Problem,” he said. “A long problem.”

“Go on.”

“We’re out of bread. Not starving. But we can’t swing tickets to Chi.”

“All that money from Buffalo—”

“The car,” Shank reminded him. “And the hotel. And food. We’re broke, man. Broke.”

“What do we do?”

Shank considered. “Be ready to leave,” he said. “You and the chick, be ready to leave in a hurry. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Joe nodded, thought for perhaps three seconds, then returned his attention to A Sound of Distant Drums.

Anita remained motionless. They would be caught soon. Caught. And they could stop running, and they could stop hiding, and they could stop living.

And Shank went out, alone.

He could ditch them, Shank was thinking. He could leave them here to rot.

There was enough money left for one ticket to Chicago, Shank considered. Not enough for three, not nearly enough. But enough to get Shank there. Then he would find Bunky, he would turn over the whole town until he found him, and then Bunky would turn Shank on to the Chicago scene and everything would be all right again. Shank would find himself a gig again, a pushing gig or a boosting gig or something where the money came quick and easy. And the heat would go down a little at a time until it was cool again. Then he would go back to New York and empty his savings account and head somewhere else with all that money and find the right place and the right ticket.

Joe and Anita could make out for themselves, Shank figured. Maybe they would be clear, maybe the cops wouldn’t find them at all. They could stay alive. Anita could go out and hustle, turn a few tricks to keep Joe and herself eating regularly. Hell, the way it was the girl didn’t do a damned thing. Just sat around on her duff and took up space. No reason why she couldn’t turn a trick or two.

And Shank would be in Chi. Living free and clear and easy.

But he knew it wasn’t going to happen that way. He crouched in the alley, waiting, and he knew he was not going to run out on them. He wasn’t sure of his motives. He didn’t need them. They were excess baggage. They couldn’t think and they couldn’t act.

And yet he couldn’t ditch them.

He crouched in the alley and his fingers curled around the butt of the gun. The cop’s gun. The cop was dead now and his gun was in Shank’s hand. The gun was loaded all the way. The cop never had a chance to empty the gun, so now he was dead and Shank had the gun for himself.

Stupid cop, Shank thought. He should have shot the chick right off the bat, put a bullet in Anita, then stepped aside and let Shank have a slug in the face. But the cop was the chivalrous type. Wouldn’t shoot a woman. Wasn’t nice and proper. So the cop was dead and Shank was alive.

Shank kneeled in the alley. The ground was covered with gravel and it was uncomfortable. He wished somebody would come. He was getting a little edgy. The gun felt cold in his hand.

Maybe he could have sold the gun. A good piece was worth long bread to somebody who didn’t have a permit. A piece that couldn’t be traced. A nice safe piece. It could bring up to a hundred dollars, a long bill for a piece of metal with six bullets in it. But no. Instead, he would use the gun. Who knew what it would bring?

He heard footsteps.

His muscles went tense. He leaned out of the alleyway, his eyes keen and aware. He saw a woman, her hair bound up in a babushka, her coat cheap cloth, her shoes worn. A pocketbook hanging from one arm. But what could there possibly be in the pocketbook—maybe a hot two dollars in change?

He let her pass and went on waiting.

Maybe he had picked the wrong place. What did he know about Cleveland? Shank felt doubts assail him. Maybe nobody ever walked around that street at night. Maybe people walked other streets. Maybe people did not walk at all in Cleveland at night. Maybe they all took cabs. Maybe they went to bed when the sun went down. Maybe—

More footsteps.

He peered out, cautiously. No good. Two kids, teenagers. Fifteen, sixteen years old. Punk kids, lousy little two-bit punk kids walking home.

Shank retreated into the alley, acting on instinct. And they, halting at the alley, turned into it. One of the punks took something from the pocket of his black leather jacket. A cigarette? A match flared. One drew on the cigarette, then passed it to the other. A waft of smoke found its way to Shank’s nostrils. Pot. For the everloving motherjumping love of Jesus Christ, the little punks had to pick his alley to blow pot in. A whole city to turn on in and they had to pick his alley! He raised the gun in his hand. He aimed carefully, holding the taller of the two kids in his sight. His finger was tense on the trigger. Kill ‘em. Blow their punk heads off—the desire raced through him. He lowered the gun, trembling slightly. He waited, impatiently, while they finished the joint and discarded the roach in the alley. Then he waited until they walked away. He took up his former position and hoped somebody would come in a hurry. He couldn’t wait much longer. Hurry up, hurry up, come on, damn you to hell, come on. He cursed softly and listened to silence. He heard an automobile horn blocks away on another street. He waited and time crawled at an incredibly slow pace. He stared at the cop’s gun. A complex machine, he nodded to himself. You aimed it, you squeezed the trigger. That drew the hammer back and released it. The hammer slammed the end of the cartridge and detonated the powder charge. The force of the explosion propelled the bullet, the slug of lead, through the chamber and out of the muzzle of the gun into whatever object at which the gun had been aimed. A complex mechanism. Not like the knife, no mechanism at all. The knife was simply a sharpened steel blade you stabbed directly into a person. The knife was an extension of your arm, a kind of long, sharp hand. He stared at the gun. He put his nose to the barrel and smelled. The cop had cared for his gun. It had been oiled recently. It had a good machine-oil smell to it. And it hadn’t been fired in a long time. There was no cordite smell. Shank waited. Then footsteps. Again he leaned forward slowly, carefully. He saw the person approaching. Not a woman with a babushka. Not a pair of punk kids. A man. The man was about fifty. He had gray hair and he wore wire-rimmed glasses. He was slender, medium height. He could have been either a small storekeeper or an accountant. He was the one. When he passed the alley, Shank was behind him. Before the man took two more steps, the gun was in the small of his back.

“Stop,” Shank said, very quietly. The man stopped in his tracks. “Now turn.” Shank calmly issued the directions. “Now into the alley. That’s the ticket. Keep walking. That’s right. Now stop, and don’t turn around.”

The man seemed unafraid. “You’re making a mistake,” he said. Shank told him to shut up. “Your wallet,” he said. “No tricks. Just take the wallet out and toss it over your shoulder.” The man’s hand dipped gracefully into his inside jacket pocket. The hand came out with a wallet. “Toss it over here. Nice and easy. No tricks.” The wallet arched in the air. Shank caught it in his left hand. His right hand held the gun. The wallet was expensive pigskin worn smooth by years of use. He flipped it open. Not too much money. But enough.

“I don’t begrudge you the money,” the man said now. “But you’re making a mistake. Embarking on a career of crime. Stop now, son. Before it’s too late. You sound like a young fellow. You have a full life ahead of you.”

“You know it all,” Shank said.

“A full life,” the man said. His voice was, if anything, too calm. “A man like me, I’m over the hill. I am what I am. I can’t change myself. But you can be whatever you want to be, son. Don’t be a criminal. It’s no life for a young man like yourself. No life at all. Running and hiding. Bad.” The gun was warmer now. The steel was not so cold. Shank’s hands had warmed the metal. “A wonderful thing to be young,” the man said. “Oh, these are bad times. No question about it. But a young fellow like you could find work. A good job. Chance for advancement. Not like me. Old man like me lands in a rut and stays in it. No choice for me. I’m over the hill. I’m at the end of my rope.” You don’t know how true that is, Shank thought. How very true indeed.

“A fellow like you—”

That was all the old man said. Because Shank’s finger tightened on the trigger and the gun was a living creature, alive and leaping in his hand. The first bullet entered the small of the man’s back and he crumpled to the ground, all bent and twisted. The gun jumped. Shank lowered it and fired again. The second and third bullets smashed into the man’s head and made a mess out of it. The fourth and fifth and sixth bullets made holes between the man’s waist and back. There was a moment when time stopped, when the world was suspended in the middle of the air. Like killing the cop, Shank remembered. All that power and all that emptiness. The tremendous noise of the gun—six noises grouped into one—all that power and all that emptiness.

God!

The worn pigskin wallet fitted into Shank’s pocket. The gun—empty now, and useless—fell clattering to the ground. For a shadow of time, Shank stood poised in the alleyway, listening to the potent silence, waiting for something undefined. Then he ran. He raced out of the alley to the street, turned down the street and headed west as fast as he could go. He ran at top speed for three blocks without stopping, expecting the high-pitched squeal of police sirens, the whine of a bullet, the voice of a cop shouting, Stop or I shoot, stop or I shoot, the bullets whistling and hitting, piercing skin and flesh and bone. Still there was nothing but silence. So Shank halted for a moment, finally, and then began walking more slowly, forcing himself to stay cool, calm and cool, cool and collected. He stopped by a mailbox and removed the money from the wallet. Enough to get them to Chicago and not much more. The man had not been rich. An old man, a poor old man. Dead. The man had talked about youth. His whole life ahead of him. The future. Oh, the old man was wrong. Dead wrong. Run, Shank thought. Run, run, run. And you ran as fast as you could and you didn’t get anywhere. The most you ever got to was the one pretty minute of power, the gun smoking and a man all broken and bloody and dead. And then you had to run some more, and God in heaven there was never a place to hide, never a pillow to rest your head on, never a hiding place, hiding place, place to rest. God!

Shank walked to the bus station. Because there was no time to return to the hotel for Anita and Joe, no time at all. Soon the dead man would be found in the alley. Maybe ten minutes of grace remained—maybe an hour, a day. The cops would run down Shank. They could trace the gun, trace it to the dead cop with the hole in his chest, trace it to Shank and Joe and Anita. Cleveland was far too small. Too small to hide in, too small to stay in.

Run.

Run!

He ducked in a phone booth in the Greyhound station, dropped a dime in the slot. The man in the alley was dead. His wallet was in a mailbox. His money was in Shank’s pocket. Run, damn you. Run like hell and where do you hide? Where? He dialed the number of the hotel. The desk clerk answered, his voice thin, whiny.

“Room 304.”

Joe picked up the phone. His hello was guarded, frightened. We’re all afraid, Shank thought. Afraid and running, running scared. No way to do it.

“Greyhound station,” Shank said. “Fast as you can. Don’t waste any time.”

Joe rang off without reply. Shank walked to the ticket counter where he obtained the information that a bus was leaving for Chicago in less than an hour. He bought three tickets one-way.

He entered the Post House and ordered a cup of coffee. It was bitter, weak. He drank it anyway and went out to the waiting room. He felt conspicuous.

Joe and Anita came. They walked like somnambulists, their eyes open but sightless, their feet leaden. Shank told them they were going to Chicago. They nodded vacantly.

Anita sat on a hard wooden bench and stared at nothing. Joe took a paperback novel from his blue jeans and began to read.

The bus left on time. They were on it, nervous, waiting, headed for Chicago. The night was black and the sky was starless. The bus raced to Chicago and they raced with it. It went fast but not fast enough.

“Joe—”

He looked up. Anita was speaking to him. She had said hardly a word in days. She had lowered a copy of the Chicago Tribune to talk directly to him.

“He killed a man, Joe. In Cleveland. That’s how he got the money for the tickets. He stuck up a man and shot him six times in the back. He used the same gun he got from the cop in New York, He killed him, Joe.”

Joe had guessed as much. He wished Anita hadn’t said anything. It was bad this way. Best to forget it, to sink gracefully into immobility, to bury your head in the sand. Shank was out now. They were waiting for him in the hotel room that in effect reproduced the rooms in Buffalo and Cleveland.

Now Shank was looking for someone named Bunky. Bunky would give them money, or a connection, or something. Bunky would save the day. Then the trio would be safe again; the three could stop running. Joe wondered how it would feel to stop running. They had been running for a long time.

“He’s a killer,” Anita persisted. “He didn’t have to kill that man, Joe. He didn’t have to kill the cop, either. He could have let him live. He meant to kill him. You don’t shoot someone six times unless you want to kill him. He’s a murderer.”

“We’re all murderers.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe we are. I don’t know any more. We were going to live clean, Joe. Do you remember? Our own apartment on 19th Street near Gramercy Park. All by ourselves. You were supposed to have a good job and I would be keeping the apartment nice for you. So wonderful. It would have been so wonderful.”

“A dream, Anita.”

She looked at him.

“A dream,” he continued in a monotone. “Everything’s a dream. No apartment, no clean. No anything. Just running.”

“Can we ever stop?” Anita’s voice climbed higher.

“I don’t know.”

“They’ll catch us, Joe. He must know that. You can’t get away from murder by crossing a state line. You just can’t do it. They’ll catch us.”

“Maybe.”

“And then what? How far can we run? How fast? They’ll kill us. Just like he killed the cop. And just like he killed the man in Cleveland.”

Joe was silent.

“What next, Joe?”

“I think he wants to get out of the country.”

She laughed. Her laughter was low, bitter, humorless. “Of course,” she said. “Out of New York, out of the state, out of the country. Run like a rabbit and wind up dead as a doornail. Where to?”

“Mexico.”

She was all eyebrow.

“I think that’s what he wants to do,” he explained. “Connect with this Bunky. A guy he knew in Frisco or something. Connect with Bunky and get some bread together. Then head for Mexico. He thinks we’ll be safe in Mexico.”

“Until he shoots somebody. Then what? Guatemala? Brazil? Spain? Where next?”

“If we get to Mexico—”

“We won’t get to Mexico. We won’t get anywhere. We’ll be killed.”

Joe lit a cigarette. “You can still walk out,” he said “Shank won’t mind, he won’t even know where you went.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not being silly,” he said reasonably. “Chicago’s a big town. You can walk out on us and disappear. You’ll be safe. The cops know about you, sure. But they don’t know who you are. They don’t have your picture. You can find a niche for yourself and be safe.”

“Do you want me to do that?”

He glanced away from her. “I don’t know. I want you to be safe. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Joe—”

“I really don’t know,” he said. “I think I…this is silly, Anita. So silly.”

“Go ahead, Joe.”

“I still love you, Anita. Isn’t that silly? All washed up, the whole world, all falling in. And I just plain love you. I don’t understand it.”

“I love you, Joe.”

“Don’t talk silly. I ruined you, loused you up. You had a life.”

“It was an empty life.”

“This one’s worse.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe everything is the way it is and we can’t do anything about it.”

“Run, Anita. Before he gets back. We’ll make out. Shank and I. We’ll manage.”

“I can’t, Joe.”

“Leave me, Anita. I’m no good. I can’t move. So I’m impotent without you—so what? Leave me.”

“I can’t, Joe. I can’t.”

He took her in his arms. “There ought to be a way out,” he said. “Some way. There honest-to-God ought to. This is a mess.”

She stroked his forehead. He was sweating.

“What do we do, baby?” Joe said, hopelessly.

“I guess we stick together.”

“But how do we get out of this?”

“I wish I knew,” she said. “God in heaven, I wish I knew.”

They held each other and waited for Shank. Shank’s entrance was something special.

The door swung open. A second or two later Shank came through, his shoulders hunched, his white face more pale than usual. His eyes had a hunted look. He closed the door, slid the bolt home. He turned to face them. The smile on his lips did not include his eyes.

“I found Bunky,” he said.

They stared at him.

“It was tough,” Shank said. “Had to turn the town upside-down. Big city, Chicago. I figured Bunky would be on the North Side. I combed that North Side. Went to all the hip hangouts, all the places a cat like Bunky would probably hang. Took time. Too much time.”

“What happened?”

“I found him.”

“And—”

Shank sighed. “Good old Bunky,” he said. The smile grew but the eyes became more dead than ever. “He was glad to see me. Auld lang syne. That type of scene.”

They waited.

“Something funny,” he said. “Never would have expected it. Big change in Bunky. Fundamental difference from old Bunky. Big change.”

Why didn’t he get to the point? Anita and Joe wondered. He had connected with Bunky. The three could leave the country. Why did he have to drag it out forever?

“Funny,” Shank said. “You know what it is about Bunky? Funny. It makes a poem.”

They stared at him.

“Bunky is a junkie,” he said. “Bunky is a junkie with a forty-pound monkey. It rhymes, dig? Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that the funniest thing you ever heard?”