Chapter 2
On official maps of the city, the eight short blocks between the fashionable urban re-development apartments on Freeson Parkway and the interstate bridge with the festering city dump below, carried the name of Hamilton Street.
To the city's social agencies; to the newsmen unlucky enough to be assigned the territory; to the police of the local precinct, the thoroughfare was known by another, more fitting name: Hell's Half Mile.
Of the dozen running sores that were the slum areas of the great city, Hell's Half Mile was the very worst, dripping a yellow pus of sexuality and sickness, dope and degeneracy, rape and riot, almost around the clock.
Hell's Half Mile was Brick Fontaine's new home.
He saw it for the first time two nights after the murder in the abandoned Bijou theatre. He'd just alighted from the city bus on Freeson Parkway. The weather had turned warm, prior to the first frost. Stars twinkled high above the tenements. The tang of autumn mingled with odors of spaghetti sauce and corn fritters, molasses and cabbage, plus less appetizing aromas wafting from the riverside dump.
For a long moment, suitcase held in one hand, suit jacket slung over his shoulder with the other, Brick Fontaine wondered whether he'd made the worst damn mistake of his life.
There it sprawled. Eight blocks of closely-packed apartments, stores and seamy life. Life of every color and nationality and language: Puerto Rican, Negro, Croatian, German, Jewish, Irish, many more, the hopeless of all the ethnic groups whose more fortunate members had persevered with guts or talent or luck to less noxious neighborhoods.
In the early evening nearly everyone was on the street; they either sat on stoops, sat on the curbstones or played so animatedly in the street itself that a car couldn't have passed had it tried. Brick Fontaine's goal lay at the street's opposite end, almost at the river.
Well, he'd certainly get a first-hand look. Ripping off his black knit tie, stuffing it in his pocket so as not to be conspicuous, he began to walk.
He walked tall, with the heavy grace of a two-hundred-pound athlete. His sandy hair lent him a placid look, but there was nothing placid about the cleat scars on his cheeks, or his crumpled right ear. Because he walked with powerful precision he was not accosted, only stared at curiously. No one recognized him. Sunday afternoon television cameras seldom dwelled on a pro quarterback except through a long lens. Few knew the players' exact facial features.
In the first block, just past Meyerbaum's Strictly Kosher Meat Market, Brick glanced down an alley. He saw a girl and a boy performing an act Brick could not quite believe. They were laughing. That is, the boy was, puffing on a brown cigarette laughing to beat hell. The girl was too busy to laugh.
Neither one was over twelve.
In the second block Brick saw three youths and a girl baiting an old Chinese with a broken whiskey bottle that still contained a few drops. In that same block too, Esposito's Dry Cleaners was closed for repairs. Esposito or one of his assistants was reglazing a shattered front window. Brick heard the man curse in Italian, shaking his head as though the vandalism had been far from accidental.
When he was into the third block Brick had no more illusions about the simplicity of the task he'd tackled. Even fewer when a Latin-looking kid in a pair of ragged shorts ran up to tug his sleeve.
The kid was so emaciated Brick could count his ribs. Under the greenish shine of a bar neon, he looked positively corpse-like as he pestered Brick.
"Hey, senor, like a nice girl? Wanna have some fun with my cousin Rosa? Very nice piece for a big man like you. She squeal, know all the tricks. Only five bucks."
Brick glowered, controlling his temper. "How old are you?"
"Ten, senor." The kid grinned ingenuously. "Old enough to know what you like-"
"And your cousin Rosa? How old is she?"
Thinking he'd made a sale, the youth grinned ear to ear.
"Why, she's fourteen, senor. With nice little breasts about this big." He doubled his fist.
"Don't worry, Rosa ain't no virgin. Her brother fix that when she was eleven."
Brick's first impulse was to smash the little monster's face. Then he remembered, with considerable pain, that it wasn't always the fault of the kids.
Couldn't he recall that from experience?
With a weary sigh he dug into his pocket and pulled out a half dollar. He flipped it. The kid tried to catch it, missed, and it clanged and rolled along the pavement. From out of nowhere half a dozen other boys appeared. Before the Latin kid emerged with his precious money, a fat little boy in filthy overalls was screaming in the gutter clutching his groin and crying tears into the blood on his cheek where he'd been kicked in the scuffle.
Shaking his head, Brick hurried on.
Three other youths, slightly older than the Latin kid, were filching copies of the evening newspaper from a wire rack in front of a business establishment whose sign read Olivetti's Variety Store. Brick stopped to watch.
The kids spotted him but went right on stuffing papers into a canvas bag. When they'd almost reached the last copy, a white-haired old man wearing an apron and brandishing a broom rushed out of the store.
"Spawn of the sewers, leave the papers alone!"
"Shall we let the old jerk have it where he lives?" one kid asked another.
Brick stepped forward.
"You heard him. Put down the papers."
"Ah, go fry yourself, you big bag of-"
The kid gulped, seeing Brick's height.
"One day, one day!" The old man brandished his broom ferociously, menacing the youths. "One day when we get the vigilance committee going in this neighborhood, us decent people, we'll show that soft Captain Wadsewski down at the station house what ought to be done with punks like you. We'll wring every drop of blood from your filthy little bodies, you parasites, you criminals!"
"Stick it up and blow it out again," said a kid.
But with Brick standing there, having put down his suitcase and laid his jacket atop it, the trio was not especially interested in violence. Interlarding their farewell with colorful obscenities, they returned the papers, managing to dump them all over the street before they ran off. An elderly couple, the man wearing a black skullcap, shuffled past. They didn't look around, too frightened to show they'd seen.
Brick went to assist Olivetti with the papers. The first copy he picked up was snatched from his hands. Olivetti frowned suspiciously.
"We don't need no uptown swells to clean up our mess, mister. We'll do it ourselves one of these days, thanks anyway."
Angered, Brick was about to reply when he remembered he had to live among the people of Hamilton Street for many months to some. Little point in angering them now.
He'd certainly started off badly, though. Picking up his bag and coat, he moved along, wondering about the vigilance committee the store owner had mentioned. Then he wondered about Captain Wadsewski-must be the officer in charge of the precinct.
Nearly half way to his goal at the street's end, Brick passed another lighted store. Danilov's Produce Market. His interest was caught by an extremely shapely dark-haired young girl at the counter. A call from an alley mouth made him turn.
To make certain there'd be no mistake, Brick took a step into the fetid alley. Back in the shadows he heard a girl's voice plaintive:
"Hey, you. Yeah, you, mister. I hurt myself. Help me."
Wary of a possible mugging trap, .Brick put down his bag and boat and advanced another couple of steps into the murky, fly-ridden passage. At first he couldn't make out the speaker who'd appealed for help. Then she stepped away from the brick wall, outlined against the distant flare of a mercury lamp on the interstate bridge approach.
An exclamation of surprise rose in Brick's throat. Had that young voice come from the body whose contours were stencilled provocatively black against the faraway gleam?
He saw cheap sequin-winking slippers, ultra-tight jeans clinging to fleshy calves and thighs. The jeans were so tight Brick could clearly see the cleft between her buttocks, the rolled edge of her panties against the fabric, even a gorge where the jean material stretched over her little belly.
Above the jean belt studded with cheap glass jewels, she wore a thin sleeveless white blouse. It was cut so low Brick had a plain view down between her breasts, remarkably firm breasts in spite of their medium size.
There was a flash of copper-colored hair as the girl waggled toward him. She reeked of dime-store perfume.
When her face became visible, Brick got a jolt. It was a fifteen-year-old's face, heavily lipsticked, rather gaunt, with a false smile and prematurely wise brown eyes.
"Mister, I tripped and hurt my leg. Give me a hand-ohhh!"
The act was so transparent Brick Fontaine wanted to laugh. The girl's body collided with his, wiggling as she pretended to support herself and her injured leg. The firm pressure of her breast rubbing and rubbing against his shirt instantly began to work upon his male instincts.
She managed to insinuate one fleshy thigh between his own. Brick made an effort to push her away. He found himself up against the wall.
The girl had the vixenish strength of an animal, a street animal. She pretended to experience another leg ' pain.
"Gimme your hand, mister. It hurts bad. Maybe if you rub it."
"Listen, honey," Brick began. "Don't con me-"
She'd already gripped his hand and moved it.
Only it wasn't her leg that wanted rubbing.
Brick still would have laughed at the comicality of the situation as she twisted back and forth and made it impossible for him to release himself. He was prevented from laughing by a rapacious shine in her eyes as she tugged his belt.
"Come on, mister, why not? I'm awful good. Only two bucks. My name's Mae, Mae Lazar. My old man's out of work and my old lady's in Public Hospital. Can't you give me a break? I'll be real good to you. I can take you back to my place I-hey!"
Mae's lipsticked face lit up. Her hands probed.
"Hey!...."
"Damn it, this is absurd," Brick said. "I'm twenty-nine years old and you're nothing but a child-"
Angrily she jerked away. She pulled the hem of her blouse from her belt and showed him her breasts.
She grabbed his hand and cupped it around her right breast. The big, adult nipple worked elastically up and down his palm. It was tender, nubby-
With alarm Brick realized he had to break this up before-
"Does that feel like a kid, mister? You just let me show you! You just try me for five seconds and you'll find out how much of a kid I am."
Mae worked his hand harder, kneading it back and forth over the firm mound of breast. Brick was disgusted, loathed his own manly power, the innate streak of maleness that operates in the species sometimes against a man's will. He was supposed to help kids like this, not stand in an alley and play with a teenage tart who was out to make a buck.
But Mae Lazar had apparently had long practice.
She knew what to do to a man. She pressed herself against him, her breasts hot through her blouse. Mae dragged Brick's head into a kiss, a lipsticked kiss in which her mouth fell open and the professional probe of her tongue slipped between his teeth.
She arched her body against Brick's, moving furiously this way and that. Brick pulled back. The girl clung like a parasite, tickling his lips with her tongue, whispering:
"I can tell you'd be terrific. So big and strong. I'll bet you could really make me hash. Come on, why don't you try? It won't take me a sec to slip off these jeans and then we can do it right here."
"Get the hell away from me! Put on your clothes and take off."
Without warning Mae's anger blazed:
"What are you, a mother-frying fairy? You figure I'm not good enough for you, huh? You get all you want uptown, is that it? Well, mister, just what would happen if I ripped this blouse to pieces, and my panties too, and told the cops you came along and tried to feel me up, and then when I wouldn't let you, you said you'd rape hell out of me?...."
Brick's temper snapped. He backhanded her, jolting her against the wall.
"I said clear out!"
Contrary to his expectations, Mae didn't scream, only touched her cheek where he'd struck. A queer, perverted excitement flickered on her face.
"I could go for you big if you'd hit me again like that, mister. I'd let you have it for nothing if-"
A stab of white light cut down the alley. Behind it was a beefy figure with a round head. Heavy shoes slapped.
Mae Lazar darted away, lips peeling over her teeth as she crouched, legs spread wide, the skin-tight jeans concealing nothing.
"Oh, hell!" said the voice wearily. "You hookin' again, Mae?"
"Sergeant Kreeg, you're a bag of dog manure!" Mae hissed, dancing just out of range.
Kreeg flashed his light in Brick's face.
"Who are you, fella?"
"Just the latest customer," Brick responded with cynicism. "Mae's latest customer for the sake of mom, pop and six helpless puppies."
The beefy man switched the beam to Mae again.
"Still peddlin' that line, Mae? Mister, this little broad doesn't have any parents. She's nothing but a miserable little tart who should have been locked up long-hey! Stop!"
In the cone of light, Mae Lazar whirled and ran up the alley.
Kreeg dragged a police .38 from a stained shoulder holster. Brick reacted instantly, snatching the gun away.
Mae's footfalls died in the distance. Kregg grabbed the weapon back, his tiny eyes thoroughly unpleasant.
"Who the hell do you think you are, interfering with the law? I got a good notion to haul you to the precinct. Come out to the street. I want to see some identification."
"Now hang on!" Brick began, bristling. "I don't see why-"
"Because I'm the only plainclothesman on this whole infernal Goddam eight blocks, that's why!"
Kreeg dragged Brick toward the sidewalk. "Crap, if it wasn't for me there'd be riots day and night. Captain Wadsewski thinks all these chicken punks need help." He reached into Brick's back pocket, dragged out his wallet and flipped it open, saying in a saccharine voice. "Treat 'em sweet. Pat their syph-ridden behinds. Sugar-tit 'em along. Well, I'm the one who has to pound up and down Hamilton keeping 'em in-line. I say crap! One day, when we organize our citizen's committee and go right over that stupid captain's head-"
The plainclothesman stopped, reading Brick's military discharge card.
"Fontaine! The pro ball player? Quarterback for the Stags?"
Brick snatched back the wallet. "That's right."
"The guy who's going to run the Peabody Settlement? The new guy?"
"Right again." Brick, fully annoyed, hefted his bag. "Anything else?"
Suddenly Kreeg thrust his .38 out of sight and began to laugh.
"Oh, you poor simple son of a bitch! I read about you in the paper. Giving up the ball team, that insurance job. You're going to try to run that joint? Do you know what happened to the last two bleeding hearts who came down here?"
"I know," Brick replied tightly. "One died in a mysterious accident and one's up in Wheelerville in the mental hospital. I-"
Brick stopped, angered. There was a painful memory of Chip. Chip who had driven him like fate to Hamilton Street.
"I'll be damned if I know why I have to explain to you."
"Yeah?" Kreeg no longer laughed. "You're another hand-patter, like Captain Wadsewski. Well, you'll find out. Just don't cross me, buddy. I've had six years in this stretch of hell. When I say jump, these kids do it or else. Bounce your basketball and see how far it gets you with 'em, but stay out of my way, that's all I'm telling you."
"Ah, go-"
It wasn't worth it. Brick picked up his bag. As he walked off Kreeg began laughing anew.
Brick didn't respond, didn't dignify him with even so much as a backward glance. He walked rapidly toward the street's end, past Danilov's Produce Market, noticing again the attractive girl inside.
Kreeg couldn't bear the insult of being ignored. He hurried to catch up. Brick paid little attention as the detective talked rapidly:
"Listen, Fontaine, you don't believe me. This street's a sewer. See that theatre over there? The Bijou? A kid was found knifed to death in the orchestra pit yesterday. Part of a gang called the Cobras. You'll meet 'em soon enough. They're all over. That Lazar broad hangs around with 'em sometimes. Their leader just escaped from the county farm. We haven't caught him yet, but we will. Listen, take my advice. Go back uptown and get a new contract from the Stags. This isn't tea and cakes down here, this is the end of the earth, the toilet of the universe, the worst frying-"
Walking rapidly, Brick outdistanced him. Then he wondered whether the receding voice indeed told the truth.
Whether he was the world's prime fool. He thought of his brother Chip. Chip who was dead.
He left Kreeg raging impotently and kept walking.