The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

BLACK PUDDING David Goodis

They spotted him on Race Street between Ninth and Tenth. It was Chinatown in the tenderloin of Philadelphia and he stood gazing into the window of the Wong Ho restaurant and wishing he had the cash to buy himself some egg-foo-yung. The menu in the window priced egg-foo-yung at eighty cents an order and he had exactly thirty-one cents in his pocket. He shrugged and started to turn away from the window and just then he heard them coming.

It was their footsteps that told him who they were. There was the squeaky sound of Oscar’s brand-new shoes. And the clumping noise of Coley’s heavy feet. It was nine years since he’d heard their footsteps but he remembered that Oscar had a weakness for new shoes and Coley always walked heavily.

He faced them. They were smiling at him, their features somewhat greenish under the green neon glow that drifted through after-midnight blackness. He saw the weasel eyes and buzzard nose of little Oscar. He transferred his gaze to the thick lips and puffed-out cheeks of tall, obese Coley.

“Hello, Ken.” It was Oscar’s purring voice, Oscar’s lips scarcely moving.

“Hello,” he said to both of them. He blinked a few times. Now the shock was coming. He could feel the waves of shock surging towards him.

“We been looking for you,” Coley said. He flipped his thick thumb over his shoulder to indicate the black Olds 88 parked across the street. “We’ve driven that car clear across the country.”

Ken blinked again. The shock had hit him and now it was past and he was blinking from worry. He knew why they’d been looking for him and he was very worried.

He said quietly, “How’d you know I was in Philly?”

“Grapevine,” Oscar said. “It’s strictly coast-to-coast. It starts from San Quentin and we get tipped off in Los Angeles. It’s a letter telling the Boss you been paroled. That’s three weeks ago. Then we get letters from Denver and Omaha and a wire from Chicago. And then a phone call from Detroit. We wait to see how far east you’ll travel. Finally we get the call from Philly, and the man tells us you’re on the bum around Skid Row.”

Ken shrugged. He tried to sound casual as he said, “Three thousand miles is a long trip. You must have been anxious to see me.”

Oscar nodded. “Very anxious.” He sort of floated closer to Ken. And Coley also moved in. It was slow and quiet and it didn’t seem like menace but they were crowding him and finally they had him backed up against the restaurant window.

He said to himself, They’ve got you, they’ve found you and they’ve got you and you’re finished.

He shrugged again. “You can’t do it here.”

“Can’t we?” Oscar purred.

“It’s a crowded street,” Ken said. He turned his head to look at the lazy parade of tenderloin citizens on both sides of the street. He saw the bums and the beggars, the winos and the ginheads, the yellow faces of middle-aged opium smokers and the grey faces of two-bit scufflers and hustlers.

“Don’t look at them,” Oscar said. “They can’t help you. Even if they could, they wouldn’t.”

Ken’s smile was sad and resigned. “You’re so right,” he said. His shoulders drooped and his head went down and he saw Oscar reaching into a jacket pocket and taking out the silver-handled tool that had a button on it to release a five-inch blade. He knew there would be no further talk, only action, and it would happen within the next split second.

In that tiny fraction of time, some gears clanged to shift from low to high in Ken’s brain. His senses and reflexes, dulled from nine years in prison, were suddenly keen and acutely technical and there was no emotion on his face as he moved. He moved very fast, his arms crossing to shape an X, the left hand flat and rigid and banging against Oscar’s wrist, the right hand a fist that caught Coley in the mouth. It sent the two of them staggering backward and gave him the space he wanted and he darted through the gap, sprinting east on Race Street toward Ninth.

As he turned the corner to head north on Ninth, he glanced backward and saw them getting into the Olds. He took a deep breath and continued running up Ninth. He ran straight ahead for approximately fifteen yards and then turned again to make a dash down a narrow alley. In the middle of the alley he hopped a fence, ran across a backyard, hopped another fence, then a few more backyards with more fence-hopping, and then the opened window of a tenement cellar. He lunged at the window, went in head-first, groped for a handhold, couldn’t find any, and plunged through eight feet of blackness on to a pile of empty boxes and tin cans. He landed on his side, his thigh taking most of the impact, so that it didn’t hurt too much. He rolled over and hit the floor and lay there flat on his belly. From a few feet away a pair of green eyes stared at him and he stared back, and then he grinned as though to say, Don’t be afraid, pussy, stay here and keep me company, it’s a tough life and an evil world and us alleycats got to stick together.

But the cat wasn’t trusting any living soul. He let out a soft meow and scampered away. Ken sighed and his grin faded and he felt the pressure of the blackness and the quiet and the loneliness. His mind reached slowly for the road going backward nine years . . .

It was Los Angeles, and they were a small outfit operating from a first-floor apartment near Figueroa and Jefferson. Their business was armed robbery and their work-area included Beverly Hills and Bel-Air and the wealthy residential districts of Pasadena. They concentrated on expensive jewelry and wouldn’t touch any job that offered less than a ten-grand haul.

There were five of them, Ken and Oscar and Coley and Ken’s wife and the Boss. The name of the Boss was Riker and he was very kind to Ken until the possession of Ken’s wife became a need and then a craving and finally an obsession. It showed in Riker’s eyes whenever he looked at her. She was a platinum-blonde dazzler, a former burlesque dancer named Hilda. She’d been married to Ken for seven months when Riker reached the point where he couldn’t stand it any longer and during a job in Bel-air he banged Ken’s skull with the butt end of a revolver. When the police arrived, Ken was unconscious on the floor and later in the hospital they asked him questions but he wouldn’t answer. In the courtroom he sat with his head bandaged and they asked him more questions and he wouldn’t answer. They gave him five-to-twenty and during his first month in San Quentin he learned from his lawyer that Hilda had obtained a Reno divorce and was married to Riker. He went more or less insane and couldn’t be handled and they put him in solitary.

Later they had him in the infirmary, chained to the bed, and they tried some psychology. They told him he’d regain his emotional health if he’d talk and name some names. He laughed at them. Whenever they coaxed him to talk, he laughed in their faces and presently they’d shrug and walk away.

His first few years in Quentin were spent either in solitary or the infirmary, or under special guard. Then, gradually, he quieted down. He became very quiet and in the laundry-room he worked very hard and was extremely cooperative. During the fifth year he was up for parole and they asked him about the Bel-Air job and he replied quite reasonably that he couldn’t remember, he was afraid to remember, he wanted to forget all about it and arrange a new life for himself. They told him he’d talk or he’d do the limit. He said he was sorry but he couldn’t give them the information they wanted. He explained that he was trying to get straight with himself and be clean inside and he wouldn’t feel clean if he earned his freedom that way.

So then it was nine years and they were convinced he’d finally paid his debt to the people of California. They gave him a suit of clothes and a ten-dollar bill and told him he was a free man.

In a Sacramento hash-house he worked as a dishwasher just long enough to earn the bus-fare for a trip across the country. He was thinking in terms of the town where he’d been born and raised, telling himself he’d made a wrong start in Philadelphia and the thing to do was go back there and start again and make it right this time, really legitimate. The parole board okayed the job he’d been promised. That was a healthy thought and it made the bus-trip very enjoyable. But the nicest thing about the bus was its fast engine that took him away from California, far away from certain faces he didn’t want to see.

Yet now, as he rested on the floor of the tenement cellar, he could see the faces again. The faces were worried and frightened and he saw them in his brain and heard their trembling voices. He heard Riker saying, “They’ve released him from Quentin. We’ll have to do something.” And Hilda saying, “What can we do?” And Riker replying, “We’ll get him before he gets us.”

He sat up, colliding with an empty tin can that rolled across the floor and made a clatter. For some moments there was quiet and then he heard a shuffling sound and a voice saying, “Who’s there?”

It was a female voice, sort of a cracked whisper. It had a touch of asthma in it, some alcohol, and something else that had no connection with health or happiness.

Ken didn’t say anything. He hoped she’d go away. Maybe she’d figure it was a rat that had knocked over the tin can and she wouldn’t bother to investigate.

But he heard the shuffling footsteps approaching through the blackness. He focused directly ahead and saw the silhouette coming towards him. She was on the slender side, neatly constructed. It was a very interesting silhouette. Her height was approximately five-five and he estimated her weight in the neighborhood of one-ten. He sat up straighter. He was very anxious to get a look at her face.

She came closer and there was the scratchy sound of a match against a matchbox. The match flared and he saw her face. She had medium-brown eyes that matched the color of her hair, and her nose and lips were nicely sculptured, somewhat delicate but blending prettily with the shape of her head. He told himself she was a very pretty girl. But just then he saw the scar.

It was a wide jagged scar that started high on her forehead and crawled down the side of her face and ended less than an inch above her upper lip. The color of it was a livid purple with lateral streaks of pink and white. It was a terrible scar, really hideous.

She saw that he was wincing, but it didn’t seem to bother her. The lit match stayed lit and she was sizing him up. She saw a man of medium height and weight, about thirty-six years old, with yellow hair that needed cutting, a face that needed shaving, and sad lonely grey eyes that needed someone’s smile.

She tried to smile for him. But only one side of her mouth could manage it. On the other side the scar was like a hook that pulled at her flesh and caused a grimace that was more anguish than physical shame. Such a pretty girl. And so young. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five. Well, some people had all the luck. All the rotten luck.

The match was burned halfway down when she reached into the pocket of a tattered dress and took out a candle. She went through the process of lighting the candle and melting the base of it. The softened wax adhered to the cement floor of the cellar and she sat down facing him and said quietly, “All right, let’s have it. What’s the pitch?”

He pointed backward to the opened window to indicate the November night. He said, “It’s chilly out there. I came in to get warm.”

She leaned forward just a little to peer at his eyes. Then, shaking her head slowly, she murmured, “No sale.”

He shrugged. He didn’t say anything.

“Come on,” she urged gently. “Let’s try it again.”

“All right.” He grinned at her. And then it came out easily. “I’m hiding.”

“From the Law?”

“No,” he said. “From trouble.”

He started to tell her about it. He couldn’t understand why he was telling her. It didn’t make sense that he should be spilling the story to someone he’d just met in a dark cellar, someone out of nowhere. But she was company and he needed company. He went on telling her.

It took more than an hour. He was providing all the details of events stretched across nine years. The candlelight showed her sitting there, not moving, her eyes riveted to his face as he spoke in low tones. Sometimes there were pauses, some of them long, some very long, but she never interrupted, she waited patiently while he groped for the words to make the meaning clear.

Finally he said, “ – It’s a cinch they won’t stop, they’ll get me sooner or later.”

“If they find you,” she said.

“They’ll find me.”

“Not here.”

He stared at the flickering candle. “They’ll spend money to get information. There’s more than one big mouth in this neighborhood. And the biggest mouths of all belong to the landlords.”

“There’s no landlord here,” she told him. “There’s no tenants except me and you.”

“Nobody upstairs?”

“Only mice and rats and roaches. It’s a condemned house and City Hall calls it a firetrap and from the first floor up the windows are boarded. You can’t get up because there’s no stairs. One of these days the City’ll tear down this dump but I’ll worry about that when it happens.”

He looked at her. “You live here in the cellar?”

She nodded. “It’s a good place to play solitaire.”

He smiled and murmured. “Some people like to be alone.”

“I don’t like it,” she said. Then, with a shrug, she pointed to the scar on her face. “What man would live with me?”

He stopped smiling. He didn’t say anything.

She said, “It’s a long drop when you’re tossed out of a third-story window. Most folks are lucky and they land on their feet. I came down head first, cracked my collar-bone and got a fractured skull, and split my face wide open.”

He took a closer look at the livid scar. For some moments he was quiet and then he frowned thoughtfully and said, “Maybe it won’t be there for long. It’s not as deep as I thought it was. If you had it treated—”

“No,” she said. “The hell with it.”

“You wouldn’t need much cash,” he urged quietly. “You could go to a clinic. They’re doing fancy tricks with plastic surgery these days.”

“Yeah, I know.” Her voice was toneless. She wasn’t looking at him. “The point is, I want the scar to stay there. It keeps me away from men. I’ve had too many problems with men and now, whenever they see my face, they turn their heads the other way. And that’s fine with me. That’s just how I want it.”

He frowned again. This time it was a deeper frown and it wasn’t just thoughtful. He said, “Who threw you out of the window?”

“My husband.” She laughed without sound. “My wonderful husband.”

“Where is he now?”

“In the cemetery,” she said. She shrugged again, and her tone was matter-of-fact. “It happened while I was in hospital. I think he got to the point where he couldn’t stand to live with himself. Or maybe he just did it for kicks, I don’t know. Anyway, he got hold of a razor and cut his own throat. When they found him, he was very, very dead.”

“Well, that’s one way of ending a marriage.”

Again she uttered the soundless laugh. “It was a fine marriage while it lasted. I was drunk most of the time. I had to get drunk to take what he dished out. He had some weird notions about wedding vows.”

“He wasn’t faithful to you?”

“Oh! It wasn’t that. No. He went out of his way to throw me into the company of other men. At first I thought it was odd, but then I found that it was deliberate, calculated. He expected me to compromise myself and then he’d demand money and if I didn’t cooperate he’d beat me. It was a hell of a thing to happen to anyone with any decent ideals. I don’t like blackmail – even now. But then it was mental torture to me. So I got it in the neck either way. I used to have bad dreams about it, and I mean bad. I still have them sometimes, so then I need sweet dreams, and that’s when I reach for the pipe.”

“The pipe?”

“Opium,” she said. She said it with fondness and affection. “Opium.” There was tenderness in her eyes. “That’s my new husband.”

He nodded understandingly.

She said, “I get it from a Chinaman on Ninth Street. He’s a user himself and he’s more than eighty years old and still in there pitching, so I guess with O it’s like anything else, it’s all a matter of how you use it.” Her voice dropped off just a little and her eyes were dull and sort of dismal as she added, “I wish I didn’t need so much of it. It takes most of my weekly salary.”

“What kind of work you do?”

“I scrub floors,” she said. “In nightclubs and dance-halls. All day long I scrub the floors to make them clean and shiny for the night-time customers. Some nights I sit here and think of the pretty girls dancing on them polished floors. The pretty girls with flowers in their hair and no scars on their faces—” She broke it off abruptly, her hand making a brushing gesture as though to disparage the self-pity. She stood up and said, “I gotta go out to do some shopping. You wanna wait here till I come back?”

Without waiting for his answer, she moved across the cellar toward a battered door leading to the backyard. As she opened the door, she turned and looked at him. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “There’s a mattress in the next room. It ain’t the Ritz Carlton exactly, but it’s better than nothing.”

He was asking himself whether he should stay there.

He heard her saying, “Incidentally, my name is Tillie.”

She stood there waiting.

“Kenneth,” he said. “Kenneth Rockland.”

But that wasn’t what she was waiting for. Several moments passed, and then somehow he knew what she wanted him to say. He said, “I’ll be here when you come back.”

“Good.” The candlelight showed her crooked grin, a grimace on the scarred face. But what he saw was a gentle smile. It seemed to drift toward him like a soothing caress. And then he heard her saying. “Maybe I’ll come back with some news. You told me it was two men. There’s a chance I can check on them if you’ll tell me what they look like.”

He shook his head. “You better stay out of it. You might get hurt.”

“Nothing can hurt me,” she said. She pointed her finger at the wreckage of her face. Her tone was almost pleading as she said, “Come on, tell me what they look like.”

He shrugged. He gave a brief description of Oscar and Coley. And the Olds 88.

“Check,” Tillie said. “I don’t have 20–20 but I’ll keep them open and see what’s happening.”

She turned and walked out and the door closed. Ken lifted himself from the floor and picked up the candle. He walked across the cement floor and the candle showed him a small space off to one side, a former coal-bin arranged with a mattress against the wall, a splintered chair and a splintered bureau and a table stacked with books. There was a candleholder on the table and he set the candle on it and then he had a look at the books.

It was an odd mixture of literature. There were books dealing with idyllic romance, strictly from fluttering hearts and soft moonlight and violins. And there were books that probed much deeper, explaining the scientific side of sex. There was one book in particular that looked as though she’d been concentrating on it. The pages were considerably thumbed and she’d used a pencil to underline certain paragraphs. It was clear that she was faced with the hell of a personal problem she was trying to solve intelligently and couldn’t.

He shook his head slowly. He thought, It’s a damn shame . . .

And then, for some unaccountable reason, he thought of Hilda. She flowed into his mind with a rustling of silk that sheathed the exquisite contours of her slender torso and legs. Her platinum-blonde hair was glimmering and her long-lashed green eyes were beckoning to say, Come on, take my hand and we’ll go down Memory Lane.

He shut his eyes tightly. He wondered why he was thinking about her. A long time ago he’d managed to get her out of his mind and he couldn’t understand what had brought her back again. He begged himself to get rid of the thought, it was a white-hot memory that disturbed him profoundly. Without sound he said, Goddamn her.

And suddenly he realized why he was thinking of Hilda. It was like a curtain lifted to reveal the hidden channels of his brain. He was comparing Hilda’s physical perfection with the scarred face of Tillie. His eyes were open and he gazed down at the mattress on the floor and for a moment he saw Hilda on the mattress. She smiled teasingly and then she shook her head and said, Nothing doing. So then she vanished and in the next moment it was Tillie on the mattress but somehow he didn’t feel bitter or disappointed; he had the feeling that the perfection was all on Tillie’s side.

He took off his shoes and lowered himself to the mattress. He yawned a few times and then he fell asleep.

A voice said, “Kenneth—”

He was instantly awake. He looked up and saw Tillie. He smiled at her and said, “What time is it?”

“Half-past five.” She had a paper bag in her hand and she was taking things out of the bag and putting them on the table. There was some dried fish and a package of tea leaves and some cold fried noodles. She reached deeper into the bag and took out a bottle containing colorless liquid.

“Rice wine,” she said. She set the bottle on the table. Then again she reached into the bag and her hand came out holding a cardboard box.

“Opium?” he murmured.

She nodded. “I got some cigarettes, too.” She took a pack of Luckies from her pocket, opened the pack and extended it to him.

He sat up and put a cigarette in his mouth and used the candle to light it. He said, “You going to smoke the opium?”

“No, I’ll smoke what you’re smoking.”

He put another cigarette in his mouth and lit it and handed it to her.

She took a few drags and then she said quietly, “I didn’t want to wake you up, but I thought you’d want to hear the news.”

He blinked a few times. “What news?”

“I saw them,” she said.

He blinked again. “Where?”

“On Tenth Street.” She took more smoke into her mouth and let it come out of her nose. “It was a couple hours ago, after I come out of the Chinaman’s.”

He sat up straighter. “You been watching them for two hours?”

“Watching them? I been with them. They took me for a ride.”

He stared at her. His mouth was open but no sound came out.

Tillie grinned. “They didn’t know I was in the car.”

He took a deep breath. “How’d you manage it?”

She shrugged. “It was easy. I saw them sitting in the car and then they got out and I followed them. They were taking a stroll around the block and peeping into alleys and finally I heard the little one saying they might as well powder and come back tomorrow. The big one said they should keep on searching the neighborhood. They got into an argument and I had a feeling the little one would win. So I walked back to the car. The door was open and I climbed in the back and got flat on the floor. About five minutes later they’re up front and the car starts and we’re riding.”

His eyes were narrow. “Where?”

“Downtown,” she said. “It wasn’t much of a ride. It only took a few minutes. They parked in front of a house on Spruce near Eleventh. I watched them go in. Then I got out of the car—”

“And walked back here?”

“Not right away,” she said. “First I cased the house.”

Silly Tillie, he thought. If they’d seen her they’d have dragged her in and killed her.

She said, “It’s one of them little old-fashioned houses. There’s a vacant lot on one side and on the other side there’s an alley. I went down the alley and came up on the back porch and peeped through the window. They were in the kitchen, the four of them.”

He made no sound, but his lips shaped the word. “Four?” And then, with sound, “Who were the other two?”

“A man and a woman.”

He stiffened. He tried to get up from the mattress and couldn’t move. His eyes aimed past Tillie as he said tightly, “Describe them.”

“The man was about five-ten and sort of beefy. I figure about two hundred. He looked about forty or so. Had a suntan and wore expensive clothes. Brown wavy hair and brown eyes and—”

“That’s Riker,” he murmured. He managed to lift himself from the mattress. His voice was a whisper as he said, “Now let’s have the woman.”

“She was something,” Tillie said. “She was really something.”

“Blonde?” And with both hands he made a gesture begging Tillie to speed the reply.

“Platinum blonde,” Tillie said. “With the kind of a face that makes men turn round and stretch their necks to look at. That kind of a face, and a shape that goes along with it. She was wearing—”

“Pearls,” he said. “She always had a weakness for pearls.”

Tillie didn’t say anything.

He moved past Tillie. He stood facing the dark wall of the cellar and seeing the yellow-black play of candlelight and shadow on the cracked plaster. “Hilda,” he said. “Hilda.”

It was quiet for some moments. He told himself it was wintertime and he wondered if he was sweating.

Then very slowly he turned and looked at Tillie. She was sitting on the edge of the mattress and drinking from the bottle of rice wine. She took it in short, measured gulps, taking it down slowly to get the full effect of it. When the bottle was half empty she raised her head and grinned at him and said, “Have some?”

He nodded. She handed him the bottle and he drank. The Chinese wine was mostly fire and it burned all the way going down and when it hit his belly it was electric hot. But the climate it sent to his brain was cool and mild and the mildness showed in his eyes. His voice was quiet and relaxed as he said, “I thought Oscar and Coley made the trip alone. It didn’t figure that Riker and Hilda would come with them. But now it adds. I can see the way it adds.”

“It’s a long ride from Los Angeles,” Tillie said.

“They didn’t mind. They enjoyed the ride.”

“The scenery?”

“No,” he said. “They weren’t looking at the scenery. They were thinking of the setup here in Philly. With Oscar putting the blade in me and then the funeral and Riker seeing me in the coffin and telling himself his worries were over.”

“And Hilda?”

“The same,” he said. “She’s been worried just as much as Riker. Maybe more.”

Tillie nodded slowly. “From the story you told me, she’s got more reason to worry.”

He laughed lightly. He liked the sound of it and went on with it. He said, through the easy laughter, “They really don’t need to worry. They’re making it a big thing and it’s nothing at all. I forgot all about them a long time ago. But they couldn’t forget about me.”

Tillie had her head inclined and she seemed to be studying the sound of his laughter. Some moments passed and then she said quietly, “You don’t like black pudding?”

He didn’t get the drift of that. He stopped laughing and his eyes were asking what she meant.

“There’s an old saying,” she said. “Revenge is black pudding.”

He laughed again.

“Don’t pull away from it,” Tillie said. “Just listen to it. Let it hit you and sink in. Revenge is black pudding.”

He went on laughing, shaking his head and saying, “I’m not in the market.”

“You sure?”

“Positive,” he said. Then, with a grin, “Only pudding I like is vanilla.”

“The black tastes better,” Tillie said. “I’ve had some, and I know. I had it when they told me he had done away with himself.”

He winced slightly. He saw Tillie getting up from the mattress and moving towards him. He heard her saying, “That black pudding has a wonderful flavor. You ought to try a spoonful.”

“No,” he said. “No, Tillie.”

She came closer. She spoke very slowly and there was a slight hissing in her voice. “They put you in prison for nine years. They cheated you and robbed you and tortured you.”

“That’s all past,” he said. “That’s from yesterday.”

“It’s from now.” She stood very close to him. “They’re itching to hit you again and see you dead. They won’t stop until you’re dead. That puts a poison label on them. And there’s only one way to deal with poison. Get rid of it.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll let it stay the way it is.”

“You can’t,” Tillie said. “It’s a choice you have to make. Either you’ll drink bitter poison or you’ll taste that sweet black pudding.”

He grinned again. “There’s a third choice.”

“Like what?”

“This.” And he pointed to the bottle of rice wine. “I like the taste of this. Let’s stay with it until it’s empty.”

“That won’t solve the problem,” Tillie said.

“The hell with the problem.” His grin was wide. It was very wide and he didn’t realize that it was forced.

“You fool,” Tillie said.

He had the bottle raised and he was taking a drink.

“You poor fool,” she said. Then she shrugged and turned away from him and lowered herself to the mattress.

The forced grin stayed on his face as he went on drinking. Now he was drinking slowly because the rice wine dulled the action in his brain and he had difficulty lifting the bottle to his mouth. Gradually he became aware of a change taking place in the air of the cellar; it was thicker, sort of smokey. His eyes tried to focus and there was too much wine in him and he couldn’t see straight. But then the smoke came up in front of his eyes and into his eyes. He looked down and saw the white clay pipe in Tillie’s hand. She was sitting on the mattress with her legs crossed, Buddha-like, puffing at the opium, taking it in very slowly, the smoke coming out past the corners of her lips.

The grin faded from his face. And somehow the alcohol-mist was drifting away from his brain. He thought, She smokes it because she’s been kicked around. But there was no pity in his eyes, just the level look of clear thinking. He said to himself, There’s only two kinds of people in this world, the ones who get kicked around and the ones who do the kicking.

He lowered the bottle to the table. He turned and took a few steps going away and then heard Tillie saying, “Moving out?”

“No,” he said. “Just taking a walk.”

“Where?”

“Spruce Street,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”

He shook his head. He faced her and saw that she’d put the pipe aside. She was getting up from the mattress. He went on shaking his head and saying, “It can’t be played that way. I gotta do this alone.”

She moved toward him. “Maybe it’s goodbye.”

“If it is,” he said, “there’s only one way to say it.”

His eyes told her to come closer. He put his arms around her and held her with a tenderness and a feeling of not wanting to let her go. He kissed her. He knew she felt the meaning of the kiss, she was returning it and as her breath went into him it was sweet and pure and somehow like nectar.

Then, very gently, she pulled away from him. She said, “Go now. It’s still dark outside. It’ll be another hour before the sun comes up.”

He grinned. It was a soft grin that wasn’t forced. “This job won’t take more than an hour,” he said. “Whichever way it goes, it’ll be a matter of minutes. Either I’ll get them or they’ll get me.”

He turned away and walked across the cellar toward the splintered door. Tillie stood there watching him as he opened the door and went out.

It was less than three minutes later and they had him. He was walking south on Ninth, between Race Street and Arch, and the black Olds 88 was cruising on Arch and he didn’t see them but they saw him, with Oscar grinning at Coley and saying, “There’s our boy.”

Oscar drove the car past the intersection and parked it on the north side of the Arch about twenty feet away from the corner. They got out and walked toward the corner and stayed close to the brick wall of the corner building. They listened to the approaching footsteps and grinned at each other and a few moments later he arrived on the corner and they grabbed him.

He felt Coley’s thick arm wrapped tight around his throat, pulling his head back. He saw the glimmer of the five-inch blade in Oscar’s hand. He told himself to think fast and he thought very fast and managed to say, “You’ll be the losers. I made a connection.”

Oscar hesitated. He blinked puzzledly. “What connection?”

He smiled at Oscar. Then he waited for Coley to loosen the armhold on his throat. Coley loosened it, then lowered it to his chest, using both arms to clamp him and prevent him from moving.

He made no attempt to move. He went on smiling at Oscar, and saying, “An important connection. It’s important enough to louse you up.”

“Prove it,” Oscar said.

“You’re traced.” He narrowed the smile just a little. “If anything happens to me, they know where to get you.”

“He’s faking,” Coley said. Then urgently, “Go on, Oscar, give him the knife.”

“Not yet,” Oscar murmured. He was studying Ken’s eyes and his own eyes were somewhat worried. He said to Ken, “Who did the tracing?”

“I’ll tell that to Riker.”

Oscar laughed without sound. “Riker’s in Los Angeles.”

“No he isn’t,” Ken said. “He’s here in Philly.”

Oscar stopped laughing. The worry deepened in his eyes. He stared past Ken, focusing on Coley.

“He’s here with Hilda,” Ken said.

“It’s just a guess,” Coley said. “It’s gotta be a guess.” He tightened his bear-hug on Ken. “Do it, Oscar Don’t let him stall you. Put the knife in him.”

Oscar looked at Ken and said, “You making this a quiz game?”

Ken shrugged. “It’s more like stud poker.”

“Maybe,” Oscar admitted. “But you’re not the dealer.”

Ken shrugged again. He didn’t say anything.

Oscar said, “You’re not the dealer and all you can do is hope for the right card.”

“I got it already,” Ken said. “It fills an inside straight.”

Oscar bit the edge of his lip. “All right, I’ll take a look.” He had the knife aiming at Ken’s chest, and then he raised it and moved in closer and the tip of the blade was touching Ken’s neck. “Let’s see your hole-card, sonny. All you gotta do is name the street and the house.”

“Spruce Street,” Ken said. “Near Eleventh.”

Oscar’s face became pale. Again he was staring at Coley.

Ken said, “It’s an old house, detached. On one side there’s a vacant lot and on the other side there’s an alley.”

It was quiet for some moments and then Oscar was talking aloud to himself, saying, “He knows, he really knows.”

“What’s the move?” Coley asked.

He sounded somewhat unhappy.

“We gotta think,” Oscar said.

“This makes it complicated and we gotta think it through very careful.”

Coley muttered a four-letter word. He said, “We ain’t getting paid to do our own thinking. Riker gave us orders to find him and bump him.”

“We can’t bump him now,” Oscar said. “Not under these conditions. The way it stacks up, it’s Riker’s play. We’ll have to take him to Riker.”

“Riker won’t like that,” Coley said.

Oscar didn’t reply. Again he was biting his lip and it went on that way for some moments and then he made a gesture toward the parked car. He told Coley to take the wheel and he’d sit in the back with Rockland. As he opened the rear door he had the blade touching Ken’s side, gently urging Ken to get in first. Coley was up front behind the wheel and then Oscar and Ken occupied the rear seat and the knife in Oscar’s hand was aimed at Ken’s abdomen.

The engine started and the Olds 88 moved east on Arch and went past Eighth and turned south on Seventh. There was no talk in the car as they passed Market and Chestnut and Walnut. They had a red light on Locust but Coley ignored it and went through at forty-five.

“Slow down,” Oscar said.

Coley was hunched low over the wheel and the speedometer went up to fifty and Oscar yelled, “For Pete’s sake, slow down. You wanna be stopped by a red car?”

“There’s one now,” Ken said, and he pointed toward the side window that showed only the front of a grocery store. But Oscar thought it might really be a side street with a police car approaching, and the thought was in his brain for a tiny fraction of a second. In that segment of time he turned his head to have a look. Ken’s hand moved automatically to grab Oscar’s wrist and twist hard. The knife fell away from Oscar’s fingers and Ken’s other hand caught it. Oscar let out a screech and Ken put the knife in Oscar’s breast just over his heart. The car was skidding to a stop as Ken stabbed Oscar to finish him. Coley was screaming curses and trying to hurl himself sideways and backwards toward the rear seat and Ken showed him the knife and it didn’t stop him. Ken ducked as Coley came vaulting over the top of the front seat, the knife slashing upward to catch Coley as he came on. It buried itself deep enough into his breast to reach the heart and left Coley collapsed with his legs still over the front seat and his body sprawling across the lifeless form of Oscar in the back.

“I’m dying,” Coley gurgled. “I’m—” That was his final sound. His eyes opened very wide and his head snapped sideways and he was through for this night and all nights.

Ken opened the rear door and got out. He had the knife in his pocket as he walked with medium-fast stride going south on Seventh to Spruce. Then he turned west on Spruce and walked just a bit faster. Every now and then he glanced backward to see if there were any red cars but all he saw was the empty street and some alley cats mooching around under the street lamps.

In the blackness above the roof-tops the bright yellow face of the City Hall clock showed ten minutes past six. He estimated the sky would be dark for another half-hour. It wasn’t much time, but it was time enough for what he intended to do. He told himself he wouldn’t enjoy the action, and yet somehow his mind was suffused with a kind of anticipatory satisfaction. It looked like Tillie had been right about that black pudding.

He quickened his pace just a little, crossed Eighth Street and Ninth, and walked faster as he passed Tenth. There were no lit windows on Spruce Street but as he neared Eleventh the moonlight blended with the glow of a street lamp and showed him the vacant lot. He gazed across the empty space to the wall of the old-fashioned house.

Then he was on the vacant lot and moving slowly and quietly toward the rear of the house. He worked his way to the sagging steps of the back porch, saw a light in the kitchen window, climbed two steps and three and four and, peering through the window, saw Hilda.

She was alone in the kitchen, sitting at a white-topped table and smoking a cigarette. There was a cup and saucer on the table, the saucer littered with coffee-stained cigarette butts. As he watched, she got up from the table and went to the stove to lift a percolator off the fire and pour another cup of coffee.

She moved with a slow weaving of her shoulders and a flow of her hips that was more drifting than walking. He thought, She still has it, that certain way of moving around, using that body like a long-stemmed lily in a quiet breeze. That’s what got you the first time you laid eyes on her. The way she moves. And one time very long ago you said to her, “To set me on fire, all you have to do is walk across a room.” You couldn’t believe you were actually married to that hothouse-prize, that platinum-blonde hair like melted eighteen-karat, that face, she still has it, that body, she still has it. It’s been nine years, and she still has it.

She was wearing bottle-green velvet that set off the pale green of her eyes. The dress was cut low, went in tight around her very narrow waist and stayed tight going down all the way past her knees. She featured pearls around her throat and in her ears and on her wrists. He thought, You gave her pearls for her birthday and Christmas and you wanted to give her more for the first wedding anniversary. But they don’t sell pearls in San Quentin. All they sell is plans for getting out. Like lessons in how to crawl through a pipe, or how to conceal certain tools, or how to disguise the voice. The lessons never paid off, but maybe now’s the time to use what you learned. Let’s try Coley’s voice.

His knuckles rapped the kitchen door, and his mouth opened to let out Coley’s thick, low-pitched voice saying, “It’s me and Oscar.”

He stood there counting off the seconds. It was four seconds and then the door opened. It opened wide and Hilda’s mouth opened wider. Then she had her hand to her mouth and she was stepping backward.

“Hello, Hilda.” He came into the kitchen and closed the door behind him.

She took another backward step. She shook her head and spoke through the trembling fingers that pressed against her lips. “It isn’t—”

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

Her hand fell away from her mouth. The moment was too much for her and it seemed she was going to collapse. But somehow she managed to stay on her feet. Then her eyes were shut tightly and she went on shaking her head.

“Look at me,” he said. “Take a good look.”

She opened her eyes. She looked him up and down and up again. Then, very slowly, she summoned air into her lungs and he knew she was going to let out a scream. His hands moved fast to his coat pocket and he took out Oscar’s knife and said quietly, “No noise, Hilda.”

She stared at the knife. The air went out of her without sound. Her arms were limp at her sides. She spoke in a half-whisper, talking to herself. “I don’t believe it. Just can’t believe it—”

“Why not?” His tone was mild. “It figures, doesn’t it? You came to Philly to look for me. And here I am.”

For some moments she stayed limp. Then, gradually, her shoulders straightened. She seemed to be getting a grip on herself. Her eyes narrowed just a little, as she went on looking at the silver-handled switch-blade in his hand. She said, “That’s Oscar’s knife—?”

He nodded.

“Where is Oscar?” she asked. “Where’s Coley?”

“They’re dead.” He pressed the button on the handle and the blade flicked out. He said, “It’s a damn shame. They wouldn’t be dead if they’d let me alone.”

Hilda didn’t say anything. She gave a little shrug, as though to indicate there was nothing she could say. He told himself it didn’t make sense to wait any longer and the thing to do was put the knife in her heart. He wondered if the knife was sharp enough to cut through ice.

He took a forward step, then stopped. He wondered what was holding him back. Maybe he was waiting for her to break, to fall on her knees and beg for mercy.

But she didn’t kneel and she didn’t plead. Her voice was matter-of-fact as she said, “I’m wondering if we can make a deal.”

It caught him off balance. He frowned slightly. “What kind of deal?”

“Fair trade,” she said. “You give me a break and I’ll give you Riker.”

He changed the frown to a dim smile. “I’ve got him anyway. It’s a cinch he’s upstairs sound asleep.”

“That’s fifty percent right,” she said. “He’s a very light sleeper. Especially lately, since he heard you were out of Quentin.”

He widened the smile. “In Quentin I learned to walk on tiptoe. There won’t be any noise.”

“There’s always noise when you break down a door.”

The frown came back. “You playing it shrewd?”

“I’m playing it straight,” she said. “He keeps the door locked. Another thing he keeps is a .38 under his pillow.”

He slanted his head just a little. “You expect me to buy that?”

“You don’t have to buy it. I’m giving it to you.”

He began to see what she was getting at. He said, “All right, thanks for the freebee. Now tell me what you’re selling.”

“A key,” she said. “The key to his room. He has one and I have one. I’ll sell you mine at bargain rates. All I want is your promise.”

He didn’t say anything.

She shrugged and said, “It’s a gamble on both sides. I’ll take a chance that you’ll keep your word and let me stay alive. You’ll be betting even-money that I’m telling the truth.”

He smiled again. He saw she was looking past him, at the kitchen door. He said, “So the deal is, you give me the key to his room and I let you walk out that door.”

“That’s it.” She was gazing hungrily at the door. Her lips scarcely moved as she murmured, “Fair enough?”

“No,” he said. “It needs a tighter contract.”

Her face was expressionless. She held her breath.

He let her hold it for a while, and then he said, “Let’s do it so there’s no gamble. You get the key and I’ll follow you upstairs. I’ll be right in back of you when you walk into the room. I’ll have the blade touching your spine.”

She blinked a few times.

“Well?” he said.

She reached into a flap of the bottle-green velvet and took out a door-key. Then she turned slowly and started out of the kitchen. He moved in close behind her and followed the platinum-blonde hair and elegant torso going through the small dining-room and the parlor and toward the dimly lit stairway. He came up at her side as they climbed the stairs, the knife-blade scarcely an inch away from the shimmering velvet that covered her ribs.

They reached the top of the stairs and she pointed to the door of the front bedroom. He let the blade touch the velvet and his voice was a whisper saying, “Slow and quiet. Very quiet.”

Then again he moved behind her. They walked slowly toward the bedroom door. The blade kissed the velvet and it told her to use the key with a minimum of sound. She put the key in the lock and there was no sound as she turned the key. There was only a slight clicking sound as the lock opened. Then no sound while she opened the door.

They entered the room and he saw Riker in the bed. He saw the brown wavy hair and there was some grey in it along the temples. In the suntanned face there were wrinkles and lines of dissipation and other lines that told of too much worry. Riker’s eyes were shut tightly and it was the kind of slumber that rests the limbs but not the brain.

Ken thought, He’s aged a lot in nine years; it used to be mostly muscle and now it’s mostly fat.

Riker was curled up, his knees close to his paunch. He had his shoes off but otherwise he was fully dressed. He wore a silk shirt and a hand-painted necktie, his jacket was dark grey cashmere and his slacks were pale grey high-grade flannel. He had on a pair of argyle socks that must have set him back at least twenty dollars. On the wrist of his left hand there was a platinum watch to match the large star-emerald he wore on his little finger. On the third finger of his left hand he had a three-karat diamond. Ken was looking at the expensive clothes and the jewelry and thinking, He travels first-class, he really rides the gravy train.

It was a bitter thought and it bit deeper into Ken’s brain. He said to himself, Nine years ago this man of distinction beat you up and left you for dead. You’ve had nine years in Quentin and he’s had the sunshine, the peaches-and-cream, the uninterrupted and desirable company of the extra-lovely Mrs Riker while you lived alone in a cell –

He looked at the extra-lovely Mrs Riker. She stood motionless at the side of the bed and he stood beside her with the switchblade aiming at her velvet-sheathed flesh. She was looking at the blade and waiting for him to aim it at Riker, to put it in the sleeping man and send it in deep.

But that wasn’t the play. He smiled dimly to let her know he had something else in mind.

Riker’s left hand dangled over the side of the bed and his right hand rested on the pillow. Ken kept the knife aimed at Hilda as he reached toward the pillow and then under the pillow. His fingers touched metal. It was the barrel of a revolver and he got a two-finger hold on it and eased it out from under the pillow. The butt came into his palm and his middle finger went through the trigger-guard and nestled against the back of the guard, not touching the trigger.

He closed the switchblade and put it in his pocket. He stepped back and away from the bed and said, “Now you can wake up your husband.”

She was staring at the muzzle of the .38. It wasn’t aiming at anything in particular.

“Wake him up,” Ken murmured. “I want him to see his gun in my hand. I want him to know how I got it.”

Hilda gasped and it became a sob and then a wail and it was a hook of sound that awakened Riker. At first he was looking at Hilda. Then he saw Ken and he sat up very slowly, as though he was something made of stone and ropes were pulling him up. His eyes were riveted to Ken’s face and he hadn’t yet noticed the .38. His hand crept down along the side of the pillow and then under the pillow.

There was no noise in the room as Riker’s hand groped for the gun. Some moments passed and then there was sweat on Riker’s forehead and under his lip and he went on searching for the gun and suddenly he seemed to realize it wasn’t there. He focused on the weapon in Ken’s hand and his body began to quiver. His lips scarcely moved as he said, “The gun – the gun—”

“It’s yours,” Ken said. “Mind if I borrow it?”

Riker went on staring at the revolver. Then very slowly his head turned and he was staring at Hilda. “You,” he said. “You gave it to him.”

“Not exactly,” Ken said. “All she did was tell me where it was.”

Riker shut his eyes very tightly as though he was tied to a rack and it was pulling him apart.

Hilda’s face was expressionless. She was looking at Ken and saying, “You promised to let me walk out—”

“I’m not stopping you,” he said. Then, with a shrug and a dim smile, “I’m not stopping anyone from doing what they want to do.” And he slipped the gun into his pocket.

Hilda started for the door. Riker was up from the bed and lunging at her, grabbing her wrist and hurling her across the room. Then Riker lunged again and his hands reached for her throat as she tried to get up from the floor. Hilda began to make gurgling sounds but the noise was drowned in the torrent of insane screaming that came from Riker’s lips. Riker choked her until she died. And even then he stayed where he was and went on screaming at her.

Ken stood there, watching it happen. His mind absorbed and recorded every detail of the scene. He thought, Well, they wanted each other, and now they got each other.

He walked out of the room and down the hall and down the stairs. As he went out of the house he could still hear the screaming. On Spruce, walking toward Eleventh, he glanced back and saw a crowd gathering outside the house and then he heard the sound of approaching sirens. He waited there and saw the police cars stopping in front of the house, the policemen rushing in with drawn guns. Some moments later he heard the shots and he knew that the screaming man was trying to make a getaway. There was more shooting and suddenly there was no sound at all. He knew they’d be carrying two corpses out of the house.

He turned away from what was happening back there, walked along the curb toward the sewer-hole on the corner, took Riker’s gun from his pocket and threw it into the sewer. In the instant that he did it, there was a warm sweet taste in his mouth. He smiled, knowing what it was. Again he could hear Tillie saying, “Revenge is black pudding.”

Tillie, he thought. And the smile stayed on his face as he walked north on Eleventh. He was remembering the feeling he’d had when he’d kissed her. It was the feeling of wanting to take her out of that dark cellar, away from the loneliness and the opium. To carry her upward toward the world where they had such things as clinics, with plastic specialists who repaired scarred faces.

The feeling hit him again and he walked faster.