Savage Streets

Chapter Five

Ат home Farrell changed into slacks and a sweater, thinking he might do an odd job or two around the house. He went downstairs and glanced into the study. Angey was watching television with two of her friends, the overhead lights on and the record-player spinning silently in the comer. They had been playing dress-up and wore high heels, slips of Barbara’s pinned up under their armpits, and vivid, inexpertly applied eyeshadow and lipstick. Farrell went down the hallway to the kitchen. Barbara was checking the freezer. “Are you playing golf?” she asked him.

“I don’t think so. Look, how about telling Princess Angela to turn off the damned lights and record-player when she’s watching television. She and her pals are the electric company’s best friends. They all look like miniature street walkers, incidentally!”

“Oh, let’s don’t pick on her today. Everyone seems crabby lately. Are you hungry?”

“Not particularly.”

“We’re having soup and salad for lunch, a roast for tonight. All right?”

“Fine.” He lit a cigarette and looked out at the back lawn. Jimmy’s wagon lay on its side and one of the chains on the swing was broken; the wooden seat turned slowly with the wind, dragging back and forth on the ground.

“I couldn’t help feeling a little bit sorry for Det,” she said. “He is dumb but Baldwin can be awfully hard to take. Did you ever notice how he looks when anyone tries to make small talk with him? You know what I mean? He kind of grins as if to say, ‘Oh come off it now. Do you seriously expect me to discuss traffic and weather with you? Really!’ He’s just so above all that, he lets you know.”

“I feel kind of sorry for everybody,” Farrell said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just a philosophical generalization,” Farrell said. “In the original Latin it has more bite.”

“Ho, ho,” Barbara said.

Farrell drifted back to the living room. He was in a restless, uneasy mood; the scene at the Detweillers’ had been ugly enough, but even worse had been the raw excitement generated by Detweillers proposal to form something in the nature of a vigilante committee. Everything seemed set for an explosion.

Farrell picked up the telephone book and looked up Duke’s address. There it was, prosaic and respectable in the columns of neat agate type: Resnick, Thomas, 324 Royal Street, Ohio 6-7845. Frowning he put the book down. He wandered about the room for a few seconds, stared out the windows, straightened a pile of magazines. Finally he made up his mind; he went into the hallway and put on his topcoat. He called casually to Barbara: “I’m going to run down to the village for the paper.”

“Do you want to take jimmy? He’s moping around upstairs.”

“No, I’ll be right back.”

She came to the kitchen door. “Anything on your mind but deep philosophical generalizations?”

“Not a thing,” he said.

Farrell hesitated with a hand on the door of his car, then changed his mind and walked down the block to Wayne Norton’s home. Norton’s son answered his knock. He told Farrell that his mother was resting and that his father was working in the basement. “Do you want me to call him?”

“No, I’ll go on down,” Farrell said, and tousled the boy’s hair.

Norton had changed to jeans and a T shirt. He had a paint brush in his hand and was working on a chest of drawers, a dark and ugly piece of furniture with ball-and-claw feet and elaborate carving around the brass handles and keyholes. There were newspapers spread on the floor to catch spatterings of paint remover, but everything else was clean and tidy; shelves of canned goods were ranged against one wall, and the tools above Norton’s workbench were lined up as neatly as rows of tin soldiers.

Norton smiled at him in surprise. “I thought you’d be out with the golfers.”

“I didn’t feel up to it,” Farrell said. He rubbed his fingers over the top of the chest of drawers. “We inherited quite a few pieces like this when Barbara’s father died. I refinished a couple of them, a chair and a little sewing table, but it was quite a job. A week of steady rubbing and scraping equaled about a square foot of surface, I think.”

“You don’t know the trick,” Norton said. “Scraping won’t get you anywhere. Watch.” He splashed a generous amount of liquid paint remover onto the top of the chest of drawers, and spread it about with his brush in a slow, rotary motion. “No rubbing, no scraping,” he said. “Let the paint remover do the job. But the trick is to use enough of it so that it will stand in puddles and soak into the paint. See, it’s loosening up already.”

Farrell saw that this was true; the hard, glazed surface of paint was cracking here and there, going pulpy under the soft pressure of the brush.

“I’ll be through by supper,” Norton said, in a cheerful, contented voice. “When I’m down to the wood I’ll put on a coat of white paint and then rub that off in a hurry before it gets dry. That gives the wood a streaky, limed look. Then I’ll rub it down with linseed oil to bring up a nice warm glow.”

“Well, that’s better than my method,” Farrell said.

“I’ll give you a hand some evening if you like,” Norton offered. “With the two of us working we could get quite a lot done.”

“You enjoy this, don’t you?”

“Well, I don’t mind it, put it that way.” Norton smiled at Farrell. “When I’m worried about something, you know, a problem at the bank maybe, I find that a few hours of work like this helps me to forget all about it.” He paused, frowning slightly then, and looked at Farrell. “What did you think about that business at the Detweillers?”

“It seems to me Det is talking up a big mess of trouble. And that’s what I came over to see you about. What was your reaction?”

“I’m not sure I know. Maybe that’s why I decided to come down here and go to work this afternoon. I feel kind of stirred up inside. I’m worried, I guess. My home and family are all I’ve got, and naturally I don’t want anything to happen to them.”

“Naturally,” Farrell said. “But we aren’t going to solve anything Det’s way.”

“That’s not what’s bothering me.” Norton made a restless gesture with his hand. “As far as going out and beating up those kids, well, that’s idiotic. And I’m not sure Det was really serious about it. But the way Chicky was making a play for Baldwin disturbed me. She kind of cut herself loose from her husband, it seemed. It was like she was announcing to every man in the room that she was ready for some kind of action.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Farrell said. The turn of the conversation surprised him, and he felt his face becoming warm. “She likes to show off occasionally, that’s all it amounts to.”

“Well, that makes it worse,” Norton said, rather grimly. “What’s she trying to do? Stir people up for the fun of it?”

“She doesn’t bother me,” Farrell said, smiling.

“That’s different.” Norton paced the floor and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “She knows Janey’s pregnant, I presume. So why doesn’t she lay off? I mean, doesn’t she know the score? She makes it damn plain that she’s around, is what I’m trying to say. The other night she asked me to tie her apron on when we were alone in the kitchen. And when she was leaving here the other day she couldn’t get into her boots because she had high heels on or something, and it was me she called on for help.” Wayne picked up the paint brush and began working vigorously on the chest. He was quite pale. “Maybe I’m just imagining things,” he said. “I guess I sound like a soldier in a barracks waiting for a furlough.” He nodded at the surface of the chest. “See how it’s coming off now? No nibbing, no sweat at all. You know, we might get at some of your furniture tonight, if you’re not doing anything.”

“I don’t know what Barbara’s got planned,” Farrell said. “Let me check, and I’ll give you a ring.”

“Okay. My nights are pretty clear.”

Farrell left after another few minutes. The street was soft and drowsy with the Sunday afternoon stillness; sunlight dappled the trees and birds called aimlessly in the quiet air. Farrell went down the street and got into his car. He felt very sorry for Norton.

The Resnick home was old and graceless but its tiny plot of lawn was well-tended and the dark brown paint was fresh. The rest of the neighborhood was in decay; there were disorderly piles of rubbish at the curb, a tom overshoe, a tire, a pair of tattered overalls, empty paint cans, a section of canvas from the top of a convertible — a prideless collection, the sort of things most people would cart off to junk yards. The man who answered his knock was of medium height and thin except for a plump stomach that bulged as symmetrically as a basketball against his clean blue work shirt. He was freshly shaven, with sparse gray hair and rimless glasses which enlarged his dull but amiable gray eyes.

“Are you Mr. Resnick?”

“That’s right.” The voice was dry and strong. “What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to see your son if he’s in.”

“Duke? No, he’s over at the golf course, I expect. Or at that club of his.” Mr. Resnick studied Farrell’s sweater and open shirt collar. “You’re not a cop, I guess.”

“No. My name’s Farrell. I live in Faircrest. Could I talk to you for a moment, Mr. Resnick?”

“Sure, come on in. I know Duke’s in some trouble. The police were here for him yesterday morning. But Mr. Garrity, he’s our committeeman, called and told me everything was all right. Kind of a mistake all around. You know Mr. Garrity? A fine gentleman, and that’s the Gospel.”

“Is it?” Farrell said.

“Indeed it is.”

The living room was tidy, impersonal, and severely clean. A framed picture of a lake at twilight hung above the high, blond wood mantelpiece, and beside what Farrell judged to be Mr. Resnick’s chair was a table supporting a stack of pulp magazines, a rack of pipes and a pound tin of tobacco.

“Just take a seat,” Mr. Resnick said. He laughed, his teeth unexpectedly strong and white in the commonplace face. “I just finished the housework so everything’s clean. Now what’s the trouble — the name is Farrell, you say?”

“That’s right.” Farrell told him what had occurred between their sons, but made his account as neutral as possible; he hadn’t come here to quarrel with Resnick.

But Resnick seemed neither concerned nor angry. He shook his head thoughtfully and said, “Well, Duke’s no angel, I guess. But then your boys wouldn’t say he was the one bothering them. Maybe it’s just all a mistake, like Mr. Garrity said.”

“That’s possible, of course. As far as I’m concerned, the damage has been done, and the thing now is to prevent any more trouble. Some of my friends, to put it bluntly, are mad as hell about what’s happened, and if there are any more incidents they’re just likely to do something violent and foolish.” Farrell paused to light a cigarette. He found Mr. Resnick’s polite but noncommittal interest a bit disconcerting; he had a feeling Resnick would listen with about the same emotion to a discussion of the weather. “I don’t know your son at all, Mr. Resnick,” he went on. “I’ve only seen him twice, and I haven’t had a chance to talk with him. Perhaps he’s a bit wild, but that’s part of growing up, don’t you think?”

“Well, I guess so.” Mr. Resnick was filling a pipe, his fingers working with the deftness of long habit. “Some kids are wild, and others just go along nice and easy. It’s funny.”

“Was Duke a difficult boy to raise?”

“Difficult? Well, no. Actually he sort of raised himself, you might say.” With his pipe drawing well Mr. Resnick became more expansive. “I’m the boy’s stepfather, see. I married his mother when he was just two. She died four years later, and I had the whole job to myself then. But he wasn’t any trouble. He didn’t like other people doing for him. He was independent, you could say. For instance now, he didn’t like me to fix his meals, and that was lucky because I was working every day in the switching yards. And he didn’t like me to put him to bed or fuss over him. No, you couldn’t say he was any trouble.”

“How did he do in school? Does he have any particular ambitions?” Farrell smiled. “I hope you don’t mind these questions. I think if I knew him better I could talk to him.”

“He did okay in school. He was on some teams too — football and basketball. He’s good at things like that.” Mr. Resnick smiled, and Farrell was again surprised by his white teeth. “There’s no money in games, I told him that, but they keep a boy out of mischief. He doesn’t have a steady job, and I just don’t know what his plans are in that way. But he makes good money caddying.” Mr. Resnick laughed. “Damn it, but it beats me the way grown men will pay a kid five dollars to carry a pack of golf clubs around for them. But if they’ve got it to waste, I guess it’s all right. Duke pays board, but that’s his idea, not mine. I’m happy to board him, but he likes to be on his own.”

“You know, sometimes that kind of independence can be an act,” Farrell said. “A boy may want help and direction the worst possible way, but can’t bring himself to ask for it. It isn’t easy to ask for things like that — ideally, they should just be there for the taking, like fresh air.”

Mr. Resnick looked surprised. “Well, I don’t see why if a person’s got a tongue he can’t speak up for what he wants.”

“It’s not that simple,” Farrell said. “At least that’s the opinion of people who study these problems. If a child has been pushed too quickly into maturity — if a lot is demanded of him through the death of a parent, for instance, he may feel guilty about asking for the help he deserves. What I mean is that a child can feel that it’s a sign of weakness not to stand on his own two feet. Even when that’s too much to expect of him.”

“Is that so?” Mr. Resnick said, scratching his ear with the stem of his pipe. He laughed. “I guess kids do some pretty funny thinking, all the same. You see ’em running around and hollering and you wouldn’t think there was a thought in their heads. Now you talk about understanding Duke. Well, I can’t say I understand him myself. I’ve tried to, I’m the boy’s stepfather, after all, but he never likes to talk things over very much. And his teachers had the same feeling, so I guess I’m not the only one. But a funny tiling, he always had friends. Other kids always flocked after him.”

“Perhaps they admire things in him we don’t understand!”

“Well, that could be the truth of it,” Mr. Resnick said and nodded thoughtfully; he reacted as if Farrell had quoted an incontestable proverb. “Kids like to pal around together, don’t they? Well, Duke will get himself a steady job one of these days, and get in with a serious crowd of fellows. That will straighten him out. I was lucky, see. I got on at the railroad yards when I was eighteen. Working as a laborer around the rip track. The yardmaster told me to put in for a switching job, and a couple of years later I made the extra board. I bucked that board...” Resnick scratched his ear again with the stem of his pipe. “Well, let’s see. Four years anyway. Had to be up every morning and report in case somebody turned up sick. Finally I piled up enough seniority to work steady. Nights at first, until I had enough time to buck me a day job.” Mr. Resnick was smiling at these memories, his eyes brightening behind the rimless glasses. He seemed to have forgotten about Duke. “I saw a lot of funny things in that yard. Now that I’m retired I get to thinking those were pretty happy days. The yardmaster used to go duck hunting out on the Island, and he made a stew he called Duck Bergoo. Lord knows what all went into it, but when he got a lot of birds he’d make a big mess of Duck Bergoo and bring it down to the yard piping hot in gallon lard cans.”

Mr. Resnick pointed his pipe suddenly at Farrell. “Dangerous work, too, if you didn’t keep your eyes open. One night a man in my crew flagged a switch engine to buckle up a couple of gondolas. They were sitting on a curve of what we called the В lead. It led into the В yard, see. Well, the couplings were out of line account of the curve.” He made fists of his hands and bumped them together several times. “Like that, see? Wouldn’t lock. So this fellow reaches in and takes hold of the tongue to pull it into line when just then the switch engine comes back with another little bump. Well, the tongue locked that time all right, and caught this fellow’s hand. The pins turned in the knuckle of course, and that fellow’s whole arm was pulled into the coupling.” Mr. Resnick shook his head. “Round and round, turning slow mind you, flattening that fellow’s whole arm out until it wasn’t no thicker than a piece of paper. Well, he hung there until we could back the engine off and unhook the cars, and you never heard no human being make sounds like he did. Couple of fellows in the crew went off and threw up. I had to get him loose by myself. Funny, but I always had a good stomach. I can go and stare at an accident where people have been hurt and it doesn’t bother me a bit. You’re sorry, of course, a time like that, but not looking doesn’t do anybody any good!

“Well, I got to wandering, didn’t I? Now you was asking about Duke.” Mr. Resnick applied a match to his pipe and peered through the small leaping flame at Farrell. “You just go right on.”

“Well...” Farrell paused to swallow a dryness in his throat. “Do you know these friends of his? The crowd that calls itself the Chiefs?”

“Sure, I’ve met ’em.” Mr. Resnick laughed, obviously amused at some chance recollection. “Look, come out to the kitchen. I’ll show you what I had to do about them Chiefs.”

Farrell followed Mr. Resnick through a stale-smelling dining room to a large kitchen equipped with cupboards and a wall of appliances. Mr. Resnick pointed with his pipe to the cupboards which were secured by padlocks. “Last summer those kids got in the habit of stopping by here after swimming to make themselves iced tea and sandwiches. Remember there used to be a quarry over near where you live? Filled up with rain water in the spring and the kids used it for a swimming hole.”

Farrell remembered; the quarry had been condemned as a hazard by the Rosedale City Council after complaints from a committee of Faircrest residents. It was dangerous for small children, and the Council had agreed to fill it in. Bulldozers did the job in one day.

“Well, they piled in here after swimming,” Mr. Resnick said, still smiling reminiscently. “They brought their own food, but you know how kids are, they don’t leave things very tidy, so I put locks on the cupboards. Put one on the icebox too, so now tilings don’t get messed up. My wife always said I was the real housekeeper in the family.”

“I see,” Farrell said drily. “And if Duke is hungry he has to ask you for the keys?”

“That’s turned out to be the best system. He eats out a lot anyway. You know how kids are. They’ll eat hot dogs and french fries any day rather than a good meal at home.” Mr. Resnick opened a door beside the icebox and pointed to a flight of stairs leading down to a basement. “That’s where Duke sleeps. Talk about understanding that boy. He’s got a perfectly good bedroom upstairs, right next to mine, but he’s fixed up this place instead.” From his angle of vision Farrell saw the foot of a made-up cot, a table with magazines on it, and a few glossy photographs tacked to the wall. “He uses the cellar door, comes and goes without any fuss at all. Like I told you, he’s no trouble.”

“I can see that,” Farrell said.

Mr. Resnick accompanied him to the door. Farrell was eager to leave; he felt he could accomplish nothing by staying, and he found the sterile, inhuman atmosphere of the house depressing. Duke’s father lived like a clean, inoffensive animal, comfortable and well-fed; the reward of twenty-five years of faithful service to the railroad represented in his pipes and pulp magazines, plus random memories of a horrible accident and a stew of something or other called Duck Bergoo. He was not a case-history delinquent father — evil, drunken or vicious; but something had been left out of him. Where his heart should have been there was probably a clean, well-oiled metal pump. And Farrell found his indifference discouraging; there would be no help from that quarter.

“I’ll tell Duke you stopped by,” Mr. Resnick called to him from the porch. “Take it easy now.” He turned back into his house, his step brisk, his face set in an expression of mild contentment.

Farrell sat for a moment with the motor running, a cigarette burning away between his fingers. Barbara would be expecting him home about now, but he decided not to give up yet; there was a chance he might find Duke at the Chiefs’ clubhouse.

Sergeant Cabella had mentioned the address: the dead-storage garage on Matt Street.

The entrance to the Chiefs’ clubhouse was below street level, an unmarked wooden door at the bottom of a short flight of wooden steps. The garage was six stories high, a dark massive building with steel-shuttered windows and a network of fire escapes crawling up it in an orderly rusty growth.

Farrell hesitated an instant before descending the steps. A group of youngsters in the next block were playing stick ball, and from across the street he heard music from a radio or TV. Everything looked peaceful enough, a typical Sunday afternoon scene that could be duplicated in a thousand cities across the country, kids playing noisily along the sidewalks, dads having a beer and watching television, young girls strolling along arm-in-arm, eyes cocked for boys — it was typical and prosaic, but Farrell didn’t feel at ease. He felt out of place. The thought occurred to him that Duke and Jerry probably thought he was rich.

Farrell lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and went down the stone steps. But the boy who answered his knock brought an involuntary little smile to his lips; he was about fourteen, a Puerto Rican obviously, clean and small, with amusing brown eyes shadowed by heavy dark lashes. He looked like an ad for Orphan Relief, Farrell thought, innocent and wistful with his tousled curly hair and ragamuffin clothes. A cherub in sepia.

“Is Duke Resnick here?” Farrell asked him.

“I don’ know,” the boy said, slurring the words together in a liquid murmur.

Another voice — a girl’s — called sharply from beyond the door. “Enrique! Who is it?”

“I don’ know,” the boy said, shrugging and turning away from the door.

Farrell hesitated. The boy had drifted out of sight. Music was playing — a jazz record with the volume turned down — and he saw layers of cigarette smoke drifting around a naked electric light bulb. He didn’t know what to do next. Finally, irritated at his indecision, he stepped through the doorway.

A teen-aged girl sat at a bar that was made of planking supported by two high sawhorses. The Puerto Rican boy had flopped down in a sofa. There was no one else in the long, smoky room. The girl said. “Duke’s not here, if that’s what you want to know.”

“When will he be back?”

“He comes and goes. Now you see him, now you don’t. That’s Duke.”

She was doll-like in her prettiness, with a painted and petulant little mouth, bright, naughty eyes, and jagged black bangs framing a square, chalk-white face. Her clothes amounted to a uniform: glossy black loafers and white wool ankle socks, a short, tightly pegged black skirt, and a black, turtleneck sweater that stretched without a wrinkle across the gentle swell of her breasts. The harsh overhead light glinted on her ankle bracelet, and made a silvery sheen on the hairs of her slim bare legs. She was about sixteen, Farrell guessed, and probably weighed about ninety pounds.

He smiled and took off his hat; she reminded him a bit of Angey playing dress-up — far too young for the part, but disturbingly good at it nevertheless. “Would you mind if I waited for him?” he asked her.

“Be our guest,” she said, with a theatrically weary wave of her hand.

“Thanks.” Farrell sat on a stool a few feet from her and glanced around. “You’ve got a nice place here.” The room had the dimensions of a railroad car, with concrete floors and walls, and a low, plastered ceiling. The air smelled damp. There was a mirror behind the bar, several bottles of wine, and a crudely lettered sign which read: WIGWAM INN. The motif of the decor was Indian; illustrations and photographs of braves and chiefs, war parties and tomahawks were tacked to the walls on cardboard squares of uniform size.

A green curtain divided the room in two sections. In the front half, where Farrell sat, was the bar, a sofa, and a half-dozen folding chairs. Enrique hunched forward on the sofa and ignored Farrell; he was painting and retouching golf balls, taking the old ones from a bucket at his feet and placing the refurbished ones to dry on newspapers spread on the floor. He frowned at his work, turning the balls deftly with nimble fingers, squinting with a critical eye as he camouflaged cuts and flakes with a long, pointed brush. In the strong overhead light he was all dimples and curves and ringlets of glossy hair. He looked cute as a button, Farrell thought, and was probably a fine hand with a switchblade.

“Is Duke caddying today?” Farrell asked the girl.

The question obviously struck her as square; she sighed and said, “You don’t know him, I guess.”

“Not well.”

“If you knew him you wouldn’t ask if he caddied.”

“I see. He’s too smart for that, eh?”

“Head of the class, Pop. He and Jerry see that the Braves keep busy, that’s all.”

“They’re executives, eh? With an eye on the big picture?”

“What’s that mean?”

“Nothing. It’s kind of a gag.”

She looked at him curiously. “What’s your name?”

“Farrell, John Farrell. What’s yours?”

“Cleo.”

“As in Cleopatra, eh? Well, that fits.” He smiled. “She was about your age when she had Mark Antony flipping.”

She lit a cigarette and said casually, “You don’t sound so square, after all.” Her foot was swinging slowly and the light moved like quicksilver against the shining whiteness of her bare leg. Farrell suddenly felt uncomfortable; he realized with a confusing prick of guilt that he had resented her indifference to him. He hadn’t liked being called Pop and treated as a tiresome old man. The age difference wasn’t that great; and he realized that he wanted her to understand that. He wondered if she were Duke or Jerry’s girl.

“What’d you want to see Duke about?” she asked him.

“Nothing very serious. I’ll drop back another time.”

Something moved behind the curtain that divided the room. There was a sound of voices, unintelligible murmurs that occasionally rose into crooning giggles. The sound of it sent a chill down Farrell’s back. The girl smiled indulgently. “All right, calm down back there. You hear?”

The laughter came again, giddy and uncontrolled, and Enrique looked up from his work, his smooth little face hardening with anger. “Make them rupture heads shut up, Cleo.”

Cleo got down from the stool and pulled the curtain back with a swift, impatient gesture. There were two men sitting cross-legged on the floor with a bottle of wine between them. One seemed quite old, with sunken cheeks on which his beard gleamed like moss, and weak blue eyes that were bright now with a mindless confusion and anger. The other could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. He looked like an idiot, drooling and blank-eyed, with dull blond hair covering his small head like a dunce cap made of fur. They were dressed in ragged clothing, tom, patched and filthy, secured against complete disintegration by bits of string and safety pins. Their shoes were cracked and ripped. Neither wore socks; their bare heels were black with grime.

Farrell felt his stomach him. “Who are they?” he asked the girl.

“They’re Duke’s pets, I guess you could say. They’re winos. You know? They’re like babies. Except instead of drinking milk they drink wine. That’s all they want. It’s funny.”

“We heard you, Cleo,” the older man said, his lips writhing painfully to form the words. The anger in his eyes was like the last live coal in a bed of ashes: hopeless, dying. “You got no call,” he said. “We kin talk. Like anybody.”

“I can’t stand that crazy laughing, that’s all,” Cleo said. She took the bottle away from them and put it on the bar. “Maybe I’ll give it back to you in a little while if you’re good. But then again, maybe I won’t.”

“What are they doing here?” Farrell said. The gruesome and pathetic helplessness of the two men was almost enough to make him sick. “Who are they?”

“Don’t ask me.” Cleo shrugged. “Duke found them in New York — in the city, you know. Living under a bridge, can you imagine that! They can’t do anything, work or stuff like that, I mean. So he brought them out here. He likes to have them around. They do everything he tells them, just like they were kids and he was their father. It’s funny.”

“I’m sure it is,” Farrell said.

“Well, they’re better off here than they were in New York. One of the braves found a place for them to sleep in his basement, and they get enough wine to stay happy. That’s all they care about, I guess.”

“Why do you suppose Duke likes to have them around?”

“I don’t know. He just does. He says they should be a lesson to everybody, whatever that means.” She put the bottle of wine back between the two men. “All right, there you are,” she said, in a sprightly, little-mother voice. “Just remember about the laughing.” They looked gratefully at her, nodding quickly, vacant smiles replacing the dumb worry on their faces. Then they turned to one another, foreheads almost touching, giggling softly like naughty children. “We should have a pic-nic,” the old man whispered. “With white bread.”

“And milk,” the other said, in a hissing little voice.

Cleo pulled the curtain back in place. “They’ll be off again soon.”

“And Duke thinks they’re a good lesson to everybody,” Farrell said. “What do you suppose he means by that?”

“I don’t know. He’s full of funny ideas.”

“You think he’s quite a guy, don’t you?”

She started to answer but Enrique said, “Look! What’s he want?” in an angry, querulous voice. He walked toward Farrell in what seemed to be a well-rehearsed swagger, arms swinging lazily, every movement of his body marked with significant deliberation. He reminded Farrell of an altar boy trying to imitate Hollywood’s concept of a gunman or gangster. But there was nothing funny about this; it wasn’t quite make-believe. Enrique’s act was as disquieting as Cleo’s air of experienced boredom and provocatively crossed legs. Both of them were playing at what they really wanted to be; it was as if their innocence and youth were troublesome but accidental liabilities they wanted to get rid of as quickly as possible.

“What you want?” Enrique said, frowning at Farrell. “You a cop?”

“No, I’m not a cop,” Farrell said.

“Maybe you’d better come back when Duke’s here,” the girl said.

“Okay, just tell him I stopped by.” Farrell smiled and got to his feet. “The name is Farrell.”

She blew a thin stream of smoke at the naked electric light bulb. “I’ll remember, don’t worry.”

Farrell went out to his car and started for home. What he had just seen and heard had shaken him; the worlds of Hayrack and Faircrest were farther apart than he had known, and now, driving through the thin sunlight, through the dullness of Sunday afternoon, he was eager to get back where he belonged: to a world whose values he understood, where swings had to be repaired, where children were told pleasant stories at bedtime, and where there was a sense of purpose to life. And to hell with Duck Bergoo, he thought, and teen-aged trollops and pet winos and sullen little Puerto Ricans whose arrogance cried out for nothing so much as a great big hand across their bottoms. Let somebody else worry about them.

A car he did not recognize was parked in front of his home. Barbara opened the door before he put his key in the lock. “There’s someone here to see you,” she said.

“Oh? Who is it?”

“A gentleman named Mr. Malleck.”