Chapter 10
High overhead on the interstate bridge, traffic hummed.
The trash fires in the river dump gleamed and guttered, suffusing the bank with clouds of acrid smoke. The thick clouds made Rita Danilov cough, wracked her lungs deeply as she pulled her cheap cloth coat around her shoulders and lifted her wristwatch so she could see the gleaming numerals on the dial of her six-dollar watch.
A quarter past ten already.
A quarter past ten at night. The lights of the apartment houses across the river were golden-bright. They looked comfortable, secure.
Rita fumbled in her coat for the crumpled cigarette pack, recalled she'd finished the last half an hour ago. She flung the wadded paper away into the night.
A hideous scree-scree made her start. Pink feral eyes gleamed a few feet away. Rita's hand flashed out, found a rusty can on the bottom of the big overturned, machinery packing crate in which she'd crouched for protection against the biting autumnal wind. Savagely she threw the can. It bounced and clanked against broken glass. The pink eyes vanished. The swollen, hairy rat skipped off across a trash mound, screeing.
That thin, piping sound somehow turned Rita's blood watery and made her cry.
Abruptly she wished she were back in the frowsy, dismal flat above the market. So warm it would be there this evening.
A moment later she reached to her buttocks fingering the half-healed weals Danilov's belt had left on her flesh. The weals were painfully tender even yet.
Rita must stick by the decision she'd made in the chilly hours before dawn yesterday: She must escape her brutal, emotionless father forever. She'd crept upstairs to find her coat and her coin purse and run from Hamilton Street.
She'd roamed the uptown streets during the daylight hours, trying to forget Simon Danilov and Whitey Noonan, especially trying to forget the man Fontaine and how he'd been so tender and exciting at the same time. He'd taught her to know love, when always before copulation had been merely an animal act.
Quickly Rita supressed memories of Fontaine's flesh upon her. Cold as she was, cold to the marrow as she wished for food and warmth, the thought of Fontaine was enough to bring a quickening tremor to her legs. Enough to heat her breasts under her coat.
All day Rita Danilov had wandered through the city, until the stupidity of her own rash act caught up with her and drew her inexorably back to Hamilton Street.
All the money in her coin purse was gone, squandered on lunch and supper at cheap restaurants. When she'd run away in the morning she'd felt she was escaping the source of her trouble-the street and its degrading life. As the hours wore by and she tramped past faceless, uncaring crowds, realization of the truth ate away her new confidence.
What could she do, a seventeen-year-old girl that everyone said was sick in mind and body? How could she support herself?
She had no education to speak of. Had never liked school. She carried only the clothes she wore upon her back. Yet Fontaine had made it impossible for her to continue in her old life, made it impossible by opening, if only for an instant, gates onto a world of tenderness and love which other, more fortunate women must somehow, somewhere enjoy.
Fontaine and her father's cruel beating had finished forever her subserviance to the life on Hamilton Street. For a few blessed hours roaming the city, she'd felt free.
But as dim perception of her true state broke through the haze of false confidence, Rita found herself wearily dragging her body back to Hell's Half Mile.
A whipped animal, she'd wandered to the dump, even though she was aware that Whitey might be lurking somewhere about. What did she care? Better that Whitey find and kill her. Of what use was her life anyway?
What chance did she have with her flesh always craving lewd satisfaction and mindless thrills?
Rita Danilov realized she couldn't go back to her father and the market and Whitey's vile touch. But at the same time, neither did she have the resources to escape completely.
What if she went uptown again? How could she live? By whoring?
Boys said whores were well-paid. The uptown ones had sleek apartments and perfumed bodies. Maybe before she'd met Fontaine that would have been an acceptable out. It was no longer.
Confused, trapped between unacceptable alternatives, Rita Danilov wandered lost between heaven and hell, knowing not in educated words but only in the form of a vague hurt, that the best place for her, the only place, was in the filth and wretchedness of the dump-A smoking purgatory of garbage, a wasteland: a dead end.
Rubbing her hands together, Rita watched the rippling lights cast by a harbor patrol tug chuffing past beneath the bridge. The befouled water danced and gleamed. And suddenly, with heart-breaking simplicity, the answer was there, the complete escape.
Feet flying, Rita Danilov ran down the sloping shore of the dump toward the water.
A laugh of pain and triumph tore from her lips as she reached the edge.
She began to cry, face pressed into her palms.
Oh God-oh blessed God! Why didn't she have the strength to do it?
But she knew she hadn't.
At that instant Rita heard the sound of someone walking in the dump behind her.
Terrified, thinking only that Whitey had returned, Rita spun on her heels and searched the dark for a sign of the interloper. Drifting fumes and .smoke made her eyes smart. Half-crouched, breath hissing rapidly over her gleaming-wet lips, Rita tried to make out the direction of the noise. She took a few steps to the right, then to the left. Under her brassiere her heart slugged ferociously.
As she waited, uncertain in which direction to run, a figure materialized from the blowing smoke, thin and drooping. She recognized the dark jacket, dug her knuckles into her teeth, but to suppress a scream. One of the Cobras-
The boy's head lifted. Distant lights from the apartments on the opposite shore flashed and winked on big spectacles.
"J. B.! Don't yell! Please, for sweet Christ's sake, don't call Whitey over here!"
The emaciated boy peered in hangdog fashion through the blowing fumes.
"Whitey? I left him an hour ago. He's not around here."
All at once Rita could tell that J. B. told the truth. His expression was so doleful, so sick and unhappy, that he couldn't possibly be lying.
Eager for human companionship, Rita rushed to his side. She seized his arm. J. B. recoiled instantly, sobbing:
"Don't touch me! I ought to die. That's what I ought to do, for letting them-"
Rita whispered, "Letting who, J. B.?"
The immense spectacles flashed as the boy raised his head.
"You know Carol Ambrosio? The nice kid who worked part time at Peabody?" At Rita's anxious nod he rushed on, "Whitey's out for you, Rita. Out to fix you. Mae Lazar told him you were in Peabody last night, shacking with that guy Fontaine-"
"That filthy little bitch!"
"She got Whitey all worked up. Only-" Almost against his will, J. B. showed his defiance: "I told Whitey it was chicken to go after broads when the guy he really should have gotten, out in the open, was Fontaine. Fontaine scares Whitey, I can tell. Anyway, Carol went to Peabody this evening to see if she could help out. On her way back the gang-"
J. B.'s lips were colorless. His voice dropped to a ghastly whisper.
"Rita, I tried to stop 'em. They were gonna gang-bang her. But Whitey was the only one who got her. She fought him so hard he took hold of her throat-Rita, I'm scared. Kreeg will be down on us sure. I had to run away. It made me so sick I puked not three feet from that poor kid's body. Whitey raped her and-and choked her to death while he had her!"
The terrified boy, the boy who'd never really belonged with the older toughs of the Cobras, flung himself against Rita like an infant seeking its mother.
Rita put her arms around him. She led him slowly to the overturned packing case and drew him down inside, craddling his head on her sweater between her breasts. J. B. sobbed a long time. The convulsive crying jerked him from end to end. Suddenly Rita grew conscious of J. B.'s body against her, his head heavy between the sweatered ends of her breasts.
One of his hands had come to rest on the belly of her slacks.
Indecent fiery tremors started on the insides of Rita's legs.
Spasmodically her long nails dug into J. B.'s jacket. Not now! Now, when the whole world was crumbling into disaster-
But her loins burned with heat, she was beyond help. "J. B.?"
Rita lifted his chin.
"J. B., you're safe with me. Nobody will find you in here if Whitey's on the street. J. B.-honey-I'll be nice to you. Be nice to me back, will you?"
Ferociously Rita clamped her thighs together.
J. B. goggled.
"Rita, what's wrong?"
Before he could say more Rita hurled her mouth on his, a mouth out of control, a mouth whose lips fell open hungrily, wetly.
J. B. struggled. Rita managed to insert her tongue between his lips. In another moment his breathing grew strident. Rita ran her hands over his neck, holding his knee in place while her hips jerked.
"Gotta, J. B. lover. You know how it is with me. You just gotta or I'll die."
"No, Rita, let me go!"
He pulled away, lost his balance and tumbled into the far corner of the huge case. Rita leaped up. and tore away her coat.
She ripped off her sweater and threw herself on him like an animal.
"I can't help myself. I've got to have you!"
J. B. backed away again, bruising Rita's bra-clad breasts as he arose. The buckle of his belt brought pain to her nipples, pain that only increased the demanding agony making her a mad creature.
Hair falling wildly about her shoulders, hands white and restless, she backed J. B. into a corner and threw her arms around his knees.
"J. B., I won't let you out of here until you take care of me. Oh my God, don't you understand? I'm not doing this because I want to do it. It's only that when I start-when something starts me-I have to have a man. J. B., show me you're a man! Please, honey, show me!"
J. B. stumbled past her body. Rita grasped his leg and held on. He cursed in panic, struggling to reach the other side of the overturned case, and freedom. Rita held fast, her hands everywhere up and down his leg.
Lifting his foot, J. B. shook it hard. Rita tumbled away, cracking her head painfully. She saw J. B. limned against the back-drop of the interstate bridge. Rita humped toward him, bit her lips madly, screamed in the dark:
"Don't go, J. B.! Don't leave me to die! Honey, take me! YOU'VE GOT TO TAKE ME!"
"My God!" sobbed J. B., "How sick you are."
"Stop saying that! I'm not sick just because I need you-
Crack!
Crack, crack and crack!
Rita's head rolled to the side, terrifically jolted as J. B. backhanded her again and again and again.
The smack of her head on the splintery wood of the case beat some of the passion out of her quivering body. Dazed, Rita sat up and stared helplessly. J. B. was livid:
"The street's gonna explode tonight, Rita! Whitey's wild, out of his head, Rita, a girl got raped to death an hour ago! And all you want is a man!"
J. B.'s voice rose higher, nearly to a soprano pitch: "Kill yourself, Rita. Go drown yourself in that river and ask God to save your soul for being so filthy sick!"
Staring at him, his wasted, terrified face, Rita Danilov dropped all the way down to the deepest emotional hell.
The fires in her body went down. She began to cry. About to flee, J. B. was halted by the frenzy of those sobs.
He leaned on the packing case wall, getting his own breath, running a hand through his stringy hair and shaking his head from side to side in wonderment.
All at once Rita understood, completely and fully, what a rotten, depraved creature she'd become. She couldn't cover her heaving breasts quickly enough with the sweater. She climbed to her feet and stumbled toward J. B.
"Don't touch me!" J. B. wheezed. "Don't lay a hand on me, you crazy broad!"
"Bring help for me, J. B. I need help."
"What kind of help?" he sneered weakly. "All you want is-"
"No!" Rita's scream was knife-kneen, insistent. "I'm asking you, J. B., begging you-get Fontaine. Go to Peabody House and bring Fontaine here. He'll help us both. He'll take me to a doctor. And he'll know what to do about the dead girl. Can you do it, J. B.? We won't be safe, either of us, unless we have help."
"The Cobras are all over the street," J. B. said uncertainly.
"Do you want to die, J. B.?"
"I'm just scared, Rita. Scared of what's happening tonight."
"Then go to Peabody!" she repeated tonelessly. "Bring Fontaine before it's too late."
"If Whitey sees me-" J. B. swallowed hard. "Okay. Wait here."
His feet hammered the molding sod of the dump as he raced away. Rita sank down with her hands knotted between her thighs.
Ah, J. B. was right, so right. She was sick. She needed assistance before madness, or death, or both, claimed her.
Had J. B. said he'd bring help only to escape her? Rita couldn't think about that. She had to believe in J. B.'s decency, a decency she'd almost destroyed.
Grinding her fists into her groin to put out the fires still blazing there, Rita cried steadily and rhythmically and prayed for J. B. Would he have the courage to dodge through the terrible streets to find the only man who could help her now?"
As she knew at last that she must be helped-or die.