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The old man shook his head.
You re sure?
The old man began to tremble. Honest to God. It ain t mine. Why djoo always
pick on me?
Cause you were the guy owned that big monkey we caught climbin up the
Empire State, that s why!
They never proved it!
I don t give a damn if they didn t. I knew you were the guy. I
knew that big ape belonged to you!
Oh yeah, fuzz?
How d you know?
You were the only guy on the street with a seventy-five foot tambourine.
The lean, corsetted, hatted, rouge-on-bones young woman standing au dessus the
soot-flecked plate-glass display window of the truss and artificial limb shop
on the southwest corner of the blocked intersection compared the watch
strapped to her narrow wrist with the oversized timepiece dangling over the
sidewalk across the street. Her lips compressed into a hard line like a
surgery scar; for the tenth time in thirty seconds she scanned the pavement to
left and right, strode a few impatient steps to peer past the upjutting elbow
of the pteranodon blocking her view. Still no Melville. Melville wasn t
coming. Stood up. Her. Lilya. Stood up. By a creep like Melville, which she
was doing him the biggest favor of his life just to go out with him, the slob,
and he s got the undiluted crust to not show, and after she skipped lunch just
to have room for a lousy dinner which he probably would ve suggested Nedick s
anyway-
-
A large, slow-moving middle-aged man with moist eyes and a mouth like a prune
pit was hesitating, looking at her; Lilya had seen a Museum of Modern Art Film
Retrospective of
Films of Depravity in 1966; the persistent image of Peter Lorre as M kept
oozing into her mind; this was probably an out-of-town rapist. She d been
staring right at him:
probably in another second he ll make the pass; I can always spot them, yechh;
why me? Why always me? If I ride in a car with someone down the Major Deegan
Expressway, they always yell, hey looka that, and I always look and ifs always
a legless cripple or some drunk lady whose thing is collecting Cardboard flats
what it is she s puking into a litter basket, or a cat run over across the
head by a sanitation truck. Why always me? A flasher, this one is. I can tell.
Runs around in the park with nothing on but a long overcoat and pants cut off
below the knees and tied with twine. A freako-
devo-pervo, I can always yechhh spot! Stands on the BMT platform, just before
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the doors close, zing! he flashes!
Lilya stiffened her face, let her gaze slide past him, turned her back, but
not so rapidly as to appear really, like rude. She gasped as the old man
tottered, wheezed, lunged past her, hand outstretched for the door of the
hole-
in-corner public house next to the prosthetics display. A gush of beer-laden
air, the door closed behind him. Lilya jerked as though struck by a wet mop.
Her eyes fell on the clock. Twelve minutes late. She d give him exactly two
more minutes, or possibly five, that would make it four-thirty on the nose,
and besides you couldn t expect her to climb over that flying crocodile, which
somebody ought to call the zoo and tell them a few things about letting the
inmates go falling all over the street.
Will Kiley decided he d had quite enough morphology of flying reptiles for one
day. The parcel beneath his arm grew warm even as he thought of it. Within the
parcel:
Rolling Sin House, a novel dealing with six young prostitutes who buy a house
trailer and flout the laws of interstate commerce;
Lust Whip Madam, a stinging tale of cruelty and unbridled passions among the
silken-limbed houris of the bondage set, locale Scarsdale;
Teeny Slut, an adventure into the sexual psychology of the amoral young. These
three, and a seventeen-picture set of maybe a Rosita or Consuelo or Guadalupe
(he would settle for a Dolores), were the spurs to his rapidly returning
uptown to a student-dingy room.
He started past the head of the beast, when he saw the edge of the artifact
hanging from its neck. It seemed to be a large golden disc, hanging from a
thick link chain. Will Kiley s instant thoughts were not of rich rewards from
the archeological society. They were of ready cash for old gold in any one of
the Second Avenue antique shops. Ready cash that could buy important things
like regular meals, more books, possibly even a young woman s affections.
(Will
Kiley, having emerged from a cocoon of poverty spun about him by his parents
in Three Bridges, New Jersey, was inclined to accept the philosophy that money
may not be the only thing in life, but the other thing won t go out with you
if you don t have it.)
He jammed the package of stiffeners into his jacket pocket, and began hauling
at the golden chain, in an attempt--hearty but hardly surreptitious--to get
the disc off the dead pteranodon.
From a doorway across Sixth Avenue, a group of youths belonging to a
Bronx-based organization titled The
Pelham Privateers--what in days of pre-protest picketing would have been
called a juvenile delinquent gang, now referred to as a minority youth group
--observed Will Kiley s struggles, and continued their own observations.
But it don t look like it got hubcaps, Angie said. Hey, shtoomie, if it is
lyin inna street, it is gotta have hubcaps. The question s where? The gang s
leader, George ( The Pot ) Lukovich dealt with matters in a realistic fashion.
Maybe they re unnerneat,
suggested Vimmy.
Could be, George mused, could very well be. He pondered a moment longer,
then made his mind and the gang s collective mind, up. We gotta jack up its
ass. Get unnemeat . Get the hubcaps off. Vimmy, I want you should take t ree
boys and go over to the building they re building onna corner Madison an
48th. Steal a pneumatic hoist or somethin .
Vimmy gave a quick one-finger salute, and dodged out of the doorway, tapping
three of the gang members on their chests as he passed them. They followed, at
a dead run.
A hook and ladder approaching from the direction of Fifth Avenue swerved to
avoid the quartet and skidded to a halt in the lee of the dead ornithosaurian.
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