To hell with The Palermo, he thought—the coffee was on the house for a change.
He walked west on Bleecker, moving quickly but not really in a hurry. At Macdougal Street he turned uptown and walked past coffee-houses and restaurants and gift shops toward Washington Square Park. Once in the park, he paused to drink at the water fountain. A little later, he stopped again to buy an ice cream sucker from one of the Good Humor Men haunting the Square, and resumed his stride as he ate his ice cream.
He halted at an empty park bench near the circle at the foot of Fifth Avenue, and sat down. From the back pocket of his dungarees he pulled a paperback novel. He relaxed on the bench and turned the pages of the book.
Shank was twenty years old. He had been born a little more than twenty years before to Jeff and Lucy Marsten who, not long after the boy’s birth, had mutually agreed to a divorce. Jeff Marsten had then married a girl named Susan Lockridge, the two remaining in El Cajon, California, while Lucy and her son had moved to Berkeley where, in no time at all, Lucy had once again become a bride, this time to a Mr. Bradley Galton. Shortly thereafter, Mr. and Mrs. Galton, son Leon in tow, had pulled up stakes to settle in Los Angeles.
But Leon—Shank—had developed an instant and abiding dislike for the fat and ruddy Bradley Galton. Shank had tried to compensate for his deepening hatred toward his stepfather by intensifying what he had at first felt to be love for his mother; but Shank’s love evidently could not have run too deep, because the fact that his mother had married Bradley had been enough to mock the boy’s desire to feel more affectionate toward her, and the more he had thought about that, the less delight had he felt in her presence. And after she had given birth to a baby girl, Cindy, Shank could feel no affection for his mother at all.
For that matter, Shank had not liked anybody, not until much, much later.
He grew up alone, a quiet, moody boy who went his own way and thought his own thoughts. He was more clever than intelligent, but his grades in school concealed the fact neatly. School was a challenge for him, not to work, but to avoid work and cause trouble. In the beginning he displayed no particular imagination at causing trouble. When he played with other children, in the days when there were still other children who would play with him, he broke their toys or fought with them or beat them up. He was always short and always thin, but his wiry frame and superb coordination won him every fight. On the other hand, it should also be mentioned that he never took on a fight unless he could count on victory.
Growing older, he grew more inventive. All through grammar school, Halloween was a special treat for him, but he never played the game the way it was supposed to be played. The other children in the neighborhood gave homeowners the option of trick-or-treat; Shank dispensed with the treats and soaped windows. That was the first year. The second year he observed Halloween he realized that playing the trick did not have to rule out the treat. He collected a huge bagful of candy that year. He also broke fifteen windows and slashed two tires with a paring knife he stole from the kitchen.
After that he habitually carried the paring knife in an improvised sheath. When he was fourteen he threw the paring knife into a sewer—he had purchased a switchblade, a well-made stiletto whose six-inch blade of keenly honed steel sprang instantly into position at the touch of the proper button.
Shank could not seem to stay out of trouble, and his stepfather, Bradley Galton, was constantly fishing him out. Shank committed shoplifting, vandalism, smoking in school—anything minor or major. After the boy’s second arrest for stealing, from which he was released once again into Bradley Galton’s custody, the judge recommended psychiatric treatment.
Bradley Galton thought that an excellent idea. So did Lucy. A psychiatrist was consulted and an appointment set up for Shank.
Shank ridiculed the whole idea. He never kept the appointment.
A month before his sixteenth birthday Shank met the first people he found he could like. There were about twenty of them, slum kids, members of a gang called the Royal Ramblers. And they liked Shank. They provided him with his name, a name he could get a lot more high on than Leon. They named him Shank because of the knife he always carried and the way he dug it. After the Royal Ramblers gave him the name, he refused to answer to Leon.
They also provided him with his first woman. A broken-down, feeble-minded thing the Royal Ramblers kept around for utility, but she had a passable face, a willing body and she knew how to knock off the one thing she was good for. Shank took her on a mattress on the Ramblers’ clubhouse floor, a vacant basement room on San Pedro Street, while four other boys waited their turns.
Shank enjoyed the girl. Sex had been a mystery and one to which he had not paid too much attention. There had been no friends to talk with or tell dirty jokes to. He had waited, and now he knew what sex was all about.
Naturally, other girls followed. What Shank lacked in handsomeness was made up for by his startling black hair and eyes in brilliant contrast to skin white as death, and his catlike walk enhanced the general hypnotic quality. He was usually successful with the girls who hung out with the Ramblers, and if a girl had any reservations all he had to do was show her the knife. He would take it from his pocket, snap the button and the girl’s eyes would fasten on the long blade of cold steel.
He never actually had to use the knife on a girl. He never had to play things the least bit rough, for that matter, because the combination of his cold, black eyes in a cold, white face coupled with his showing of six inches of cold steel was enough to warm any of the girls he met. And he liked the way they responded after he showed them the knife. Sometimes he would display the knife to a girl already willing to yield to him.
Friendship, a name, sex and marijuana—these were the gifts of the Ramblers. They were the gifts Shank wanted, too, and he indulged himself for the next two-and-a-half years. He dropped out of high school as soon as he passed the compulsory education age limit and he lived on the streets with his friends. His home was a place to eat breakfast at mid-morning and to sleep at night. He ate the rest of his meals at lunch counters on Fifth Street and spent the rest of his time doing next to nothing.
Shank was nineteen when his girl announced she was pregnant.
She wasn’t simply a nice roll in the hay, this girl. She was two years younger than Shank, a virgin when he’d met her, a pretty half-Mexican of almond-shaped eyes and a full-blown figure. She slept with him when he wanted her and spent time with him when he tolerated her presence.
At no time did she expect Shank to marry her; she knew better. Neither did she want to have a baby, so she asked him to give her money for an abortion. There was this doctor a friend of hers knew, she explained, and he would perform an abortion for two hundred dollars.
Shank considered the matter quite carefully. An abortion cost two hundred dollars, but a plane ticket to New York City cost less than half that sum. Simple economics, and a long-present desire to live in New York, influenced Shank to board a plane three days later as he wondered how long it would be before his mother missed the hundred and fifty dollars he had stolen from her.
He never left New York thereafter. A day after his arrival he settled in a single room on Rivington Street on the Lower East Side, a roach-infested cell without a sink and featuring one sagging bed for furniture. The condition of the room could not repel Shank as long as it rented at four dollars a week.