You think so?
I know so
, the badge said.
He frowned for a moment, and almost gave it some serious thought. But serious thought was like a classroom, and he much preferred the playground. The frown became a grin and he shrugged and said to the badge,
maybe you're right, but what does it matter?
Yet even so, the grin was somewhat forced and the shrug was more or less faked. Under it, he squirmed and twisted as though trying to pull free from hard gripping shackles.
It amounted almost to a favor when they finally caught him and marched him into city hall and took the badge away.
Headed toward the Hangout, he kept fingering the three sixty-five in his pocket. He was walking east on Addison Avenue. It was the neighborhood's main drag.
The neighborhood was known as the Swamp. It was on the outskirts of the big city and on three sides it was bordered by swamplands. The rows of ancient wooden dwellings abruptly gave way to a soggy terrain of gray-colored mud and green-gray weeds and pools of gray water filmed with slime. On the fourth side there was the river and Addison merged with the bridge that crossed it. On any map that showed the city, the Swamp was a tiny triangle that seemed to have no connection with the other areas. It was more or less an island.
Addison was the only two-way street. The other streets were very narrow, some of them paved with cobblestones and others with scarcely any paving at all. For the most part, the thoroughfares were alleys. The Swamp was a labyrinth of alleys, and with an excessive number of oversized cats. The cats were very rugged, but every now and then a loner would be jumped by a pack of rats, and that would be the end of him. The rats in the Swamp were extremely vicious and some of them were almost as large as the cats. On certain nights the noises of cat-rat combat in the alleys would resemble that of a sawmill going full blast.
They were at it tonight. As he passed an alley intersection, Corey heard the yowling, screeching, screaming, the almost human shrieks of agony that mixed with slithering sounds of lightning-fast four-footed action. He winced slightly and quickened his steps a little. He'd been born and raised in the Swamp, but somehow he could never get accustomed to these sounds.
Of course there'd been worse sounds overseas. He'd heard some gruesome sounds in Sicily and Italy, especially at Anzio where the enemy was up in the hills and pouring down the heavy artillery. And yet the Swamp alley sounds slashed into him deeper, stabbing through every nerve in his body and finally making explosive contact with a certain circular jagged scar very high on his thigh near his groin.
It had happened when Corey was seventeen months old. He'd been left alone in the first floor back, while his widowed mother and her latest boyfriend were out drinking wine in some joint on Addison. The baby was asleep when the rat came in. It was a huge rat, hunger-crazed, and it came creeping in from the alley, entering the room through a gap in the loose wallboards. Some moments later the tenants in the first floor front heard the screaming. They came rushing in. The rat got away, leaping off the bed and onto a chair and leaping again, went through the open window.
They tended Corey, knowing what to do about rat bite. It was a common occurrence in the Swamp. Some newly-distilled rotgut, over a hundred proof, went splashing onto the blood-gushing thigh. Then they tore the sheet and made a bandage. Inside of a week, the baby was out of bed and toddling around.
And then, when the child was six years old, another rat came in. On that occasion the boy was awake and ready and knew what to do. His mother kept certain weapons within reaching distance, in case some alley prowler happened to venture in. He snatched the six-inch switchblade resting on the chair near the bed. As the rat leaped, there was a clicking sound and the blade opened. It was timed perfectly; his aim was exact. He tossed the dead rat onto the floor, not even bothering to wipe off the blade. He went back to sleep. An hour later, when his mother staggered in, her wine-glazed eyes saw the corpse of the rat and the red-stained blade. She called the boy and he woke up. She said, “What I oughta do is bust your goddam head open. Or maybe it's my mistake. I never shoulda told ya about him—”
She was referring to Corey's father, who had died four months before he was born. A good man, she'd told the boy. The only really good man she'd ever known, and more than just a husband. So decent, so clean, so pure in his heart; it was a privilege just to be near him. Her man. Her Matthew.
Matthew had been a policeman. “Not an ordinary policeman,” she had told her son, “even though he'd never been promoted, even though he was listed as just another cop who walked the beat. But I swear to you, Corey, your father was one of the specials. Sure as hell he was one in a thousand. You see, boy, he was an honest policeman.”
“And I mean honest all the way. Too goddam honest for this crummy world, I guess. Something almost saintly about him, and just like they gave it to the saints they gave it to him. They played him for a sucker; they kicked him around and laughed at him. They mauled his body, slashed at his nerves, and hammered spikes into his spirit. They worked on him plenty, believe me.”
“At the precinct station they had him on the receiving end of all them scummy underhanded deals that you never read about in the papers. Time after time he'd risk his neck to make the pinch, to put the cuffs on some hood caught red-handed, guilty in spades. But it's one thing to bring them in and it's another thing to see them walking out free as the breeze. So you know what he did?”
“He went right on bringing them in. And what did it get him? Lemme tell you, boy, lemme tell you how it is down here in the Swamp. A policeman who works in the Swamp has one of two choices. He either goes along with the game and gets paid off to look the other way, or he gets the lumps and the bumps, the bleeding and the busted bones.”
“I tell you there were so many mornings when he came home with a bandage around his head, other mornings it would be his arm in a sling, or both eyes swollen almost shut and just as purple as plums. Mornings when he staggered in, holding his belly, coughing up blood. 'Hit with a crowbar,' he'd say with a shrug. And then he smiled so I shouldn't get gloomy. But I tell you, boy, it was hard to take, them certain mornings when he came home all smashed up.”
“And then one morning he didn't come home.”
“It happened in an alley. He was trailing some thugs and others moved in with iron pipes and baseball bats. Before he had a chance to blow his whistle, they had him down and were doing him in. How it was explained to me, they left him there when they thought he was done. But the bloodspots showed he came out of it and tried to crawl. He didn't get far, and he was too weak to blow the whistle. He was spilling a lot of blood and finally he sat back against a fence post. The blood kept spilling and after a while the smell of it reached the rats.”
“That's how it ended, boy. That's what finally happened to your father, the good one, the clean one, the honest policeman. The rats got to him and he was meat for their bellies. You understand now why I gotta have the wine?”
“But I never shoulda told ya,” she said to the boy whose face was expressionless, who sat there in the bed in the semi-dark room where the wet blade gleamed red and the dead rat stained the floor. “Honest policeman,” the woman mumbled, the wine in her head causing her to stumble as she headed for a chair. “They say it pays, honesty pays,” she said louder. And then, still louder, “I'll tell you how it pays—I'm a goddam expert on that subject—” but she couldn't go on with it and fell into the chair. She tried to talk again, but then the wine hit her and she passed out.
The boy leaned his head on the pillow and tried to go back to sleep. He couldn't sleep. He sat up and looked at the dead rat. He got off the bed and went to the sink and cleaned the blade. Then he tossed the rat out the window. In bed again, he heard the sounds in the alley and knew that other rats were swarming in to feed on the dead one. The sounds grew louder, they were fighting over the meat. And then the sounds were very loud and the six-year-old boy shut his eyes tightly in a painful grimace and let out a moan.
Now, years later, walking east on Addison and passing the alley intersection and quickening his steps to get away from the sounds, he felt a slight twinge very high on his thigh near his groin. He told himself he was remembering something but he wasn't at all sure what it was.
He passed Third Street, went toward Second. At Second and Addison the lighted windows of the Hangout showed hectic activity inside. The Friday night drinkers were three-deep at the bar, and there was considerable jostling and scuffling. At the splintered loose-legged tables, most of the chairs were taken. Several women were skirmishing for possession of one of the tables. A hairy-chested, bulky-shouldered construction worker, wearing a sweat-stained undershirt and a yellow pith helmet, moved toward the women to break it up. One of the women knocked him down.
As Corey walked in, a little man came sailing out, catapulted by the heavy foot of the female bouncer. The little man hit the pavement with expert agility, evidently well experienced at making belly landings. He came nimbly to his feet, his face solemn as he thumbed his nose at the female bouncer.
She doubled her fist and took a step forward. The little man retreated lightly, daintily. As he stepped off the curb, he said quietly, solemnly, “There's other places for me to go.”
“I believe it,” the female bouncer said. She pointed to the sewer opening across the street. “Try that one.”
“I'd be intruding,” the little man said. “Your parents live there.”
“Do me a favor,” she said it almost sweetly. “Come here and let me hit you once. Just once.”
The little man's face remained solemn. He glanced at Corey, who was standing just inside the doorway. “She's a mixture,” he said, pointing technically at the female bouncer as though she was something on exhibit. “She's one-third Irish, one-third Cherokee, and one-third hippopotamus.”
Inhaling slowly, she made a hissing noise. She said to the little man, “You'll get it from me some day.”
“Mechanically impossible,” he twisted the meaning around. And then, to Corey, “You ever see a rear end jutting out like that? We could use it for a two-handed game of pinochle—”
She lunged toward the little man, whose name was Carp. He moved with reflex action far exceeding that of any sluggish fish. His one-twenty pounds made rapid transit across the street and around the corner. It was no use trying to pursue him; and she walked back to where Corey stood at the side of the doorway. She was muttering aloud to herself, referring to Carp's unique character traits, his family background, and certain plans she had for his future.
Then she looked up and saw Corey standing there. She glared at him, as though he was an accomplice in some Carp-inspired conspiracy against her. He gave her a soft smile, merely to let her know he was friendly. Her mouth tightened and she continued glaring at him.
“And you,” she said. “You're another one.”
“I'm just a bystander, Nellie. An innocent bystander.”
“'Innocent,' he says.” She folded huge arms across forty-four-inch breasts. The breasts were in proportion. She weighed a good two-forty, compressed into five feet six inches. There was no loose fat; it was all solid beef. It amounted to a living missile, braced and aimed, ready for any man who figured he could tamper with her and get away with it.
Corey wasn't tampering. He let the soft smile fade, so it wouldn't be misinterpreted. He gestured casually in the direction Carp had taken. “What's with Carp? What'd he do this time?”
“What he's always doin',” Nellie muttered. “Stealin' drinks off the bar.”
Corey sighed. “Some people never learn.”
Then he knew he shouldn't have said that. It left him wide open for what was coming. Nellie looked him up and down. Her eyes narrowed with disdain. Her tightened lips twisted with contempt. “You got a right to talk,” she said. “As if you think it don't show all over you.”
He shrugged, turned away and started through the entrance of the taproom.
But Nellie wasn't quite finished with him. Her thick fingers gripped his arm. She turned him, forcing him to face her.
She said, “Lemme tell you somethin', Bradford—”
“Drop it,” he cut in mildly. “You've told me before.”
“And I feel like tellin' you again.” She held onto his arm. He moved to get away, and she moved with him. It brought them into the taproom. Again he tried to pull free, but she held on. Her grip was very tight; it was hurting him.
“For Christ's sake,” he said. Again he tried to get away from her.
She held on. “You're gonna listen,” she said loudly, and some drinkers at the tables turned and looked. “You can all listen,” she said to them. “I wantcha to hear this—”
And then, facing her audience, “I want it to sink in, I want you to list it and check it and remember. This bastard used the badge to steal bread from people's mouths. They hadda hand it over; they had no choice. Pay him off or get busted; that was the way it went. And who does he do it to? His neighbors, his friends, the very folks he knows from way back, all the way back to when he was a kid. Can you top that for underhanded dealing? I got more respect for a second-story man. Even for a purse snatcher—”