Chapter 2

On his bench in Brooklyn, Fallon snapped open his eyes and looked down at his hands. They were trembling. He got hold of a cigarette and got it going, smoked it. His hands went on trembling. He stood up and started to walk away, trying to shake the feeling that was going through him. This wasn't easy. He had lived with that feeling now for a little more than a month. It was becoming a part of him, a basic component of the man who was Lee Fallon. It wasn't easy to shake it.

After he had raped the girl, after he had kicked her and left her, he had behaved like a machine. He drove the car out to the road and down the road and out of the state of Ohio. He crossed the Pennsy line and picked up the Turnpike and hung on it, aiming at New York like a swallow aiming at Capistrano. He didn't know why he was going to New York. He knew that it would not be safe to stay in Colver City, and that it would be best not to stay in Ohio. And he knew that New York was big, very big, and that you could hide in it. And Fallon had to hide.

If they got him, they would beat the hell out of him. And after that they would put him on trial, and they would find him guilty, and they would send him to prison. Not for a short time, either. Maybe twenty years. Maybe life.

He didn't want that.

He had sold the car outside of New York for two hundred and fifty dollars, which seemed like a lot for the old wreck. And he wandered through New York, drifting finally into Brooklyn and taking a room at the place called Rooms. He had paid more than sixty dollars in rent so far, and more than that for food, and some for liquor, and some for movies.

He had twenty-seven dollars left.

He walked and smoked. It was getting down to the wire, he thought. The money was running out, and he would have to push to make it last another week. And there was no money coming in. He could work, maybe, but any job he could get would be another hotcha forty bucks a week deal, and he didn't want that.

Besides, they might spot him. If he got a job they would ask for references, and they would check on him, and they would probably check back as far as the Ohio prison system, and then they would find out that he was wanted for rape, and they would ship him back to Colver City and put him on trial and he would wind up in a little cell for the rest of his life. No.

No, not that.

Not ever.

He wouldn't let them take him back. They could kill him first, he decided. They would have to kill him first, because he would die before he went to jail again.

He stopped, stared into a store window. Maybe he was making a big production out of it, he thought. After all, there was always a good chance that the girl had not reported him in the first place, or that the police would not know who he was. Still-

And they didn't check your references. Not for the kind of job he could get. Forty a week washing dishes-hell, you didn't need references to be a dishwasher. All you needed was the ability to stand the work and the smell and the low pay and the lousy hours and all the rest of it.

But who needed it?

He started thinking then, and the thoughts came fast, and he knew that he had to stop and think it all out, take it easy, sit down somewhere and let his mind work on it. He found another diner, a little cleaner and fresher than the place where he usually had breakfast. He sat down and ordered a cheese Danish and a cup of coffee, ate the Danish and drank the coffee and smoked more cigarettes and let his mind work it all over. Thinking never came too easy for him. He was no genius and he realized it. But the coffee and the pastry relaxed him and his mind was able to go to work on the problem at hand.

The big thing was this-he was a criminal now, a criminal all the way. If he got caught-and he was pretty sure to get caught sooner or later, no matter what he did and no matter how he played his cards-it meant back to Ohio and back to jail for a long time.

Now he could do one of two things before he got caught. He could go on living like a pig, wearing one change of clothes and working at a crummy job and taking hell from everybody, and then get caught. Or he could take life easy and live big and high, with lots of money in his pocket and a closet full of clothes and all the rest of it, and a broad whenever he wanted her, and then get caught.

When you looked at it that way, it got pretty obvious. If you were going to get it in the neck sooner or later anyway, you might as well live as big as you could in the meantime. It all ended in zero, all wound up the same. So the play was to have all the good stuff you could until they got you.

Sure.

And you did this by taking what you wanted. Not working for it, not being a slob. Taking it.

He was already a crook. He was already going to get it in the neck, sooner or later. And when you had a rape hanging over your head, you didn't sweat at the thought of committing robbery or burglary or any of those small-time deals. When you had twenty years of life staring you in the face, the small crimes seemed fairly insignificant and nothing much to worry about.

So-

He ordered another cup of coffee. He had the feeling that he wouldn't be going back to Rooms, not that night, not ever again. He might go to jail, sooner or later, or he might wind up in a coffin, sooner or later, but that was just part of the game. No more Rooms, and no more eating in outhouses, and no more needing a woman and not being able to have one.

No more of that stuff. Lee Fallon was on the move, ready to roll. Lee Gallon was going to go out in style.

When you are in New York and you do not know the city and you are ready for action, almost any kind of action, you sooner or later get to Times Square. It always works this way. The cops know this, and they know that the odds of finding a runaway kid from some other town somewhere among the bright lights and third-run movies and hustling storefronts packed like sardines around the intersection of Broadway and 42nd Street. It's no place for a runaway kid to hide, because that is where the cops always look first, but that is where the kids always go. It just seems to work that way.

Not just for kids. For everyone. Times Square is a magnet, fast and grimy and ugly and hard, and you get there sooner or later when you know nothing about the city except that you are looking for action. It is in the center, it is the hub around which all the wheels of New York revolve. If you are on the run or on the prowl or on the go, the magnet that is Times Square will draw you.

It drew Fallon.

He didn't go back to Rooms. There was nothing there-no clothing to be packed, no possessions, nothing but his sweat and his fear and his dreams. He didn't go back. He wandered, and he stopped for a beer, and he got on a subway and got off at Times Square, and he was there.

He had been there before, once or twice. But then he was a scared man trying to burrow away from the world, and Times Square was too brightly-lit for him, and whenever he came he stayed just a little while before scurrying back to the protective anonymity of Brooklyn.

Now he wasn't afraid.

Not of anyone.

He walked over Forty-second Street, past the small shops that sold nude pictures and pocket books, past the theaters, past the hot dog stands and the malted stands and the fruit juicieries, past the shooting gallery and the Fascination parlor. He walked up Broadway and into a Woolworth's, and he walked over to the toy department and looked at the toy soldiers.

Toy soldiers used to be made of lead, and brightly painted, and you could play with them and get the feeling that they were soldiers, all right, good legitimate toy soldiers, and that their guns shot real bullets and their leaden bodies held real blood. Toy soldiers are now made of colored plastic, and the illusion of reality has gone out the window. You can't really play with plastic soldiers. You can't have the same fun you could have with the old lead soldiers. Nothing's the same any more. Not even the price, because the crummy new plastic soldiers cost a lot more than the old ones ever did. This world is falling apart, all right.

Fallon didn't give a hot damn about soldiers, lead or plastic. He was just killing time, trying to be casual. He moved past the bin of plastic soldiers and found a bin of toy guns, and these he checked over carefully. Some of them were plastic-everything, he thought, is plastic-but a few were metal, and one or two looked authentic enough. Can't play around with guns, he thought. The little jerks have to play with authentic guns, don't they?

He picked up one and looked at it. Black metal, sleek and shiny, built along the lines of a Police Positive .38. He had seen a gun like that close up. He had looked down the barrel of one, when they picked him up on the auto theft charge.

A salesman appeared magically. He asked Fallon if he could help him.

Fallon said: "My sister, I'm going to visit her, and she's married. You know, she's got a kid, I wanted to bring a present along. Maybe a gun."

"If there's one thing kids like, it's a gun," the salesman said. He was an oily louse, Fallon thought.

"Yeah," he said. "I was thinking this one. How much is it?"

It was seventy-nine cents. That seemed like a lot of money for a hunk of metal, but a real gun was around fifty bucks and you needed a permit. It was a hundred bucks without a permit, if you could find somebody who would sell it to you.

Fallon gave him a dollar.

"You'll want caps," the salesman said.

"Forget it."

"It's a cap gun," the salesman said. "The little nipper wouldn't want a cap gun without caps, would he?"

Little nipper, Fallon thought. He said: "I think the kid's got caps at home."

"They get used up. And not all rolls of caps fit all guns, you know."

Fallon didn't know. He didn't really care, either. He let the clown sell him three rolls of caps. The salesman put them in a paper bag with the gun, gave him fourteen cents change from the dollar, and went away. Fallon walked out of the store. Caps yet, he thought. Caps he needed like a broken spine. It would have been a damn sight easier to steal the gun, and the hell with the salesman and his little nipper bit.

Outside, Fallon took the gun from the bag and stuck it in his pocket. He threw the bag and the caps with it into a trashcan that had a sign asking if he had made New York dirty today. He hadn't, but it sounded like a good idea.

He went back to 42nd Street and watched a movie, something about Ma Barker. She was the head of a gang of bandits in the thirties and the picture was pretty bloody. In one scene, she and her sons made her husband play Russian Roulette until he blew his brains out. The sight of the terrified man, forced to hold a pistol to his head and shoot a hole in his head while his wife stood there laughing, got Fallon so excited that he had to leave his seat and go to the men's room. He came back, though, and watched the rest of the picture. He enjoyed it.

He walked out wondering how it would feel to kill a girl and watch her die.

At ten that night he was ready. Not to kill a girl and watch her die, though the thought tempted him. He was ready to get started on the Lee Fallon campaign for a better life. The cap pistol was snug in his pants pocket. He got on the IRI subway at 42nd Street and rode uptown. He got off at 86th Street and Broadway and lit a cigarette. His eyes focused upon ,the glowing end of the cigarette, just as they had upon the end of another cigarette the night he had raped the girl. He looked up from the cigarette and scanned the street, watching. He walked up to 78th Street and saw the store he was looking for, just a few doors east of Broadway.

A liquor store. That was the natural one to hit, he thought. Liquor stores were getting held up all the time, day in and day out. Anybody who needed a few bucks in a hurry hit either a liquor store or a gas station, and liquor stores were easier to come by in New York City. Liquor dealers were getting held up constantly and they knew how to play it cool during a holdup. They didn't turn green and they didn't charge the robber and they didn't start screaming for the cops. They just opened the register and shelled out the money and prayed that they wouldn't get a hole shot in their chest any minute.

They were all insured and they were all used to the idea of facing a gun. So they were the logical place to start, and this store was as good as any. Fallon hoped it was a successful store, and he hoped there was plenty of bread in that cash box.

He threw the cigarette away and crossed the street. He was a little nervous, but the excitement he felt managed to override the nerves. He walked past the store once, checking it out. There were two customers inside. One man behind the counter, short and bald and old.

He crossed the street and merged in the shadows, waiting. One man left the store, a package under his arm. Another came in. Another left. There was now one customer in the place. Fallon finished his cigarette and threw it away and the other customer left the liquor store.

Fallon crossed the street again. His hand patted his pocket where the bulk of the toy gun greeted him reassuringly. He opened the door, went into the liquor store, walked not too slowly and not too quickly to the counter.

"Well," the liquor dealer said. "Warm enough for you?"

Fallon just nodded. "Can I help you?"

Why not? He might as well get a bottle out of the deal, along with the money. He looked at the shelf and saw a bottle of Jack Daniels at seven-fifty a fifth. A lot better than the slop he usually drank. A lot more expensive. But why shouldn't he start drinking the good stuff for a change? It wasn't going to cost him anything. What the hell.

He said: "Jack Daniels."

"A pint or a fifth?"

'You better make it a fifth,"

The man turned around. FaTIon looked at him, thought how round and soft he was. His hand dipped into his pocket and came out with the gun. The liquor dealer took the bottle from the shelf and wiped dust off it and turned around and saw the gun. His eyes went very wide.

"Put the bottle in a bag," Fallon said levelly. "Then open the register and put all the bills in the bag. You can keep the change."

The man nodded. "I don't want trouble," he said. "I got a wife, kids."

"Open the register."

"No trouble," the man said. "A wife and kids." He opened the cashbox and started putting all of the bills in the bag with the bottle of Jack Daniels. He started to to close the register, but Fallon stopped him and made him lift up the box in the drawer. There were more bills under it.

Testing him, Fallon said: "A smart guy. I ought to shoot you for that."

"Please," the man said.

He was sweating now. Fallon liked that. He remembered the picture, remembered the way Ma Barker made her husband shoot a hole in his own head, remembered the stimulation and raw excitement of the scene. He took a breath and jabbed the muzzle of the toy gun into the bald man's gut. The guy's eyes bugged out and he looked sick.

"Easy," Fallon said. "I'm not gonna kill you. Just be smart, you louse."

He turned and ran. He bolted out of the store and raced almost to the corner of Broadway, then slowed his pace abruptly and turned the corner. He walked at a regular pace now, just an ordinary guy with a package under his arm. He walked a little ways, then stepped to the curb to flag a cab.

He was inside the cab before he first heard the liquor dealer yelling for the cops.

The cab dropped Fallon at the King William Hotel on Forty-Fifth Street. He had cruised the place earlier that day, had figured that it was just right for him. The rates were reasonable but not cheap, the place was close enough to plush, and it was on Forty-Fifth between Sixth and Seventh, which was where he wanted to be. Right in the middle of things.

In the cab, he scooped a handful of money from the bag and transferred it to his wallet. Then he closed the bag tightly. He paid the cabby with a single, went into the hotel lobby and up to the desk. He told the desk clerk he wanted a single, and he wanted to rent it by the week. The clerk told him he had a room with private bath for thirty-four dollars a week. Fallon said that would be fine.

The clerk hesitated. "Uh ... you have no luggage, sir?"

"Not with me."

"I'm afraid I'll have to ask for some of the money in advance, then."

Fallon paid him a week's rent in advance. There was still money in the wallet, plus whatever was in the bag He signed the register Lee Fullmer. The clerk asked him if he was related to the boxer, and Fallon said he wasn't.

The room was clean and large and well decorated. The bathroom had a tub and a stall shower. Fallon gave the bellboy a buck and sent him away happy. Then he locked the door and pulled the window shade and threw tht bag of money and liquor on the bed. He just stood there looking at it for a moment, waiting. Then he opened the bag and counted.

The liquor store had had a fairly good night. There was a little less than two hundred bucks in the bag, not counting the thirty-four for the room or the two bucks for cab and bellhop. There was still thirty left in the wallet. All in all, the liquor dealer was out about two and a quarter. His insurance would cover it, though. Come to think of it, the louse would probably report that he had been taken for four or five hundred. So he'd make a profit on the deal before he was through.

Hell, Fallon thought. There was no honesty left in the world. Everybody was crooked.

He grinned. Things were starting to move, he thought. He was getting ready to roll. Next he would have to pick up some decent clothes, so he could walk through the hotel lobby without feeling like some kind of repairman on a call. The clothes would give him a good front, and once he had that, he had it made.

He could see it now, all nice and cool and easy. Just play it down right, living at the hotel, showing enough money but not too much money. Pull a fast job whenever the money started to run dry. Drink the good stuff, like this Jack Daniels. Love all the right women, the cool-and-hot expensive women who wouldn't give you a tumble unless you came on strong.

And no work. Why work?

Stealing was easier, and more profitable.

And more fun.

He broke the seal on the bottle of Jack Daniels, unscrewed the cap, poured liquor into a water tumbler from the bathroom. He inhaled the aroma of the liquor, took a preliminary sip. It was smoother than silk, with a good full-bodied taste to it but no bite and no harshness. Charcoal filtering, that was what did it-that and aging. Good booze. The best.

He sipped it, working slowly but surely and emptying the glass. Nothing but the best, he thought. When you were drinking good booze, rich man's booze like this stuff, you didn't have to throw it down the hatch full speed. You could take your time and enjoy it, you could roll it around in your mouth and get the full good taste of it, you could sip it slowly and pleasurably without wondering whether it was cut with Sterno or shellac or both.

Nothing but the best.

He killed half the bottle. It lasted him two hours, two hours of sitting in the room with bottle at elbow and glass in hand, two hours of relaxing and unwinding and getting his bearings. Things were going to be groovy from here on in for Lee Fallon. Things were going to swing.

And he knew damned well what made the difference. The difference, pure and simple, stemmed from the pure and simple fact that he was not afraid any more. Not of getting caught, not of losing out, not of being broke, not of dying. Not of anything at all. Because it was the fear that kept a man down. If you stayed afraid of everything you never got any place, never had the money you wanted or the free time you wanted, never got the women you wanted and did to them what you had always ached to do.

He had learned things about himself. He learned something from the viciously satisfying rape of the girl named Sally. He learned something else from his reaction to the Ma Barker movie, and learned still more from that moment when he had shoved the muzzle of the toy pistol into the liquor dealer's soft belly.

He got his kicks that way.

He wasn't a queer or a nut, nothing like that. But there were some men who found their pleasure by uniting sex with love, and there were others who found their pleasure through the union of sex and pain.

And he was one of the second group. He was a sadist.

Well, that was the word for it. A week ago he would have turned away from the world, his forehead beaded with sweat and his eyes troubled and withdrawn. But he was not the same man as he had been a week ago, and he could look at the word and let it bubble through his brain and toss it from hand to hand and not get his rear in an uproar. He could recognize it and he could admit it and it did not bother him.

There were kicks coming, big kicks, boss kicks. He knew this. There were kicks coming from crime and kicks coming from women, and he would get his share of both. There would be kicks coming, too, from combining crime with women. Rape, pain-just dwelling on the words was. enough for him to get high with the sweet thoughts of forbidden pleasures.

He finished a drink and stared at the empty glass. Someday, sooner or later, he would kill. He might kill a great many people before they got him. There was no way of telling, but he did know that sooner or later he would kill.

He picked up the toy gun and fondled it, his hands caressing that gun the way the hands of other milder men would caress the sweet bodies of women. It was good, that gun. It would serve well. But sooner or later, he thought, smiling, it would be nice to trade it in for one that would spit real bullets, one that would kill. The toy would do for a job or two, but in time he would want a real gun, and he would get it.

He put down the cap pistol and went back to the bottle.

It was almost noon when he woke up. He had gotten out of his clothes and under the covers before he passed out, and then he had slept a corpse-like sleep for hours and hours, and now he was awake, his body damp and crawling with sweat, his stomach screaming its post-alcoholic thirst to the skies. He went into the bathroom and stood under the shower for ten minutes, scrubbing the dirt and sweat out of his skin. He dried off and stood at the sink, drinking glass after glass of cold water. Then he looked at himself in the mirror. There was a stubble of coarse beard on his face and he didn't even own a razor. He had left one at Rooms in Brooklyn; the only thing he had left there. Well, hell. There were a lot of things he didn't have.

He got dressed, sick of wearing his only clothes. He went downstairs and ate breakfast at a coffee shop next to the hotel and crossed the street to a barbershop where he got a shave and a haircut and read a morning paper. There was nothing in the paper about the liquor store hold-up. A liquor store holdup in New York City is not exactly prime front-page news. It's as commonplace as a stabbing on Lenox Avenue, and unless somebody gets killed it never rates a mention in a New York paper.

Well, one of these times someone was going to get killed.

His skin tingled pleasantly from the shave. It was nice to let a barber shave you instead of doing it yourself. You got a closer shave and you didn't get cut, and instead of doing the work yourself you just sat there with your eyes closed and felt cool and happy.

He left the barbershop and stopped at a small clothing store on Sixth Avenue that was going out of business for the third time that year. The store perpetually went out of business. It was owned jointly by two brothers, and every other month one brother sold it to the other, transferring title and thus qualifying for a going-out-of-business sale. Since customers flock to a down-and-out store just as rats flee a sinking ship, the store made a go of it by looking as though it wasn't making a go of it. They would take a twenty dollar suit, list it for two weeks at fifty dollars, and then sell it for twenty at the going-out-of-business sale, and then everyone, was happy.

Actually, they had some fairly good stock. Fallon bought a suit, a sport jacket, a pair of slacks, four decent shirts, and laid in a supply of socks and underwear. He picked out a couple of ties that he liked, added a black and a brown belt, and for kicks bought a hat. The whole operation fairly well flattened him. He paid for the clothes, then had the manager put them in the back room for him.

He walked two blocks downtown, then, and found a hockshop where he bought a good second-hand suitcase for ten dollars. He took the suitcase back to the men's wear shop and packed his purchases in the case. That way when he got back to the hotel they would see that he had gotten his suitcase from the locker or checkroom or wherever, and that he wasn't the kind of bum who walked in from the street without any luggage.

He went back to the King William, suitcase in hand, and went to his room. He unpacked all the clothes and changed into the slacks and jacket-he had been able to wear those off the rack, but the new suit still needed alterations and wouldn't be ready for a day or so. He put on clean clothes from top to bottom, clean underwear and clean argyle socks and a new shirt and one of the new ties. He felt like throwing the old clothes out the window, but instead he buried them in the closet and said a quick to hell with them. Then, dressed and shaved and showered and looking like a new man and, most important, feeling like a new man, he went outside and found a restaurant and had lunch. Steak for lunch, because he was damn well hungry now and hungry for good red meat.

The clothes had been selected with care, with special attention paid to his professional requirements. He had been blessed with the least memorable face and build in creation, and he didn't want to screw up this advantage by dressing in a unique fashion. The clothes he bought would be as good for work as for play. They were nothing special, not expensive and not cheap, not dashing and not square, just stuff that was in style without being overly stylish. The clothes, like Lee Fallon, would easily pass in a crowd.

Which was fine.

The steak was good. He ate quickly and enjoyed his lunch, then wandered down around Times Square and took in a movie-a double feature, a pair of gangster films. One of them was just the usual dull stuff, but in the second picture there was one scene where two of the gangsters kidnaped a policeman's wife and tortured her until she told them where her husband was hiding. They beat her up brutally, broke both her arms, burned her with cigarettes, and then, when she finally disclosed her husband's whereabouts, one of them gripped her in a bear hug around the waist while the other one split her skull open with a double-bitted ax.

That scene drove Fallon half-crazy.

He was trembling when he left the movie house, trembling with combined excitement and anticipation. Tonight, he knew, was going to be a good night. Tonight there would be money, because he was going to go out after money just as he had done last night. His cash was running low, and he wanted to have a fat wallet at all times.

But that wasn't all. Face it, he thought. The jobs gave him a kick, and the kick was going to build each time. Money and kicks-what more did anybody want?

He grinned. So he would make money that night. He would pull a job, or maybe a couple jobs, using the toy gun to front the job and getting in and getting out in nothing flat, with a big bag of money under his arm. No point in taking liquor each time, though-that could get to be a trademark, and he didn't want to leave trademarks around. He had seen enough crime movies to know that the quickest way to draw heat was to establish a pattern.

So he would pull a job or two and make money. And then, later in the evening, he was going to do something that would provide considerably more pleasure than the jobs.

A woman.

He would have a woman.

He smiled. First the jobs, to give him boss kicks and fill his wallet and get him warmer than hell. Then a woman to expand that heat and fan it into flames, sending him on a rocket to the moon and back. He didn't know what woman he would get, or how he would get her, whether he would pay her or force her or be nice to her or hurt her or what. But one way or the other he would get her and he would have himself a shrieking ball.

He smiled softly.

For dinner, he ate a hot dog at a corner stand and washed it down with pina colada. He wasn't hungry, not after that big steak in the middle of the afternoon. He had his hot dog and his drink and went to his room at the King William. He played the radio and drank one short shot of Jack Daniels-no more than that, not when he had work to do. He sipped the short drink and listened to mood music and let his mind walk all over the world.