The lights went up, the driver kicked his foot down, and they arched away like a plane taking off. “It musta been great,” he lamented mournfully, “in the old days before they had traffic lights!”
“They had no organization in them days,” said his companion scornfully. “They went to jail like flies — even for cracking safes, mind ya! Take it slower, we’re getting downtown.”
Johnny came to between two red-hot branding irons just as they swerved out onto the express highway at Seventy-fourth. The outside of his mouth was free, but a strip of tape fastened to his upper gums clamped his tongue to the roof of his mouth. The only sounds he could make sounded like the mumblings of a drunk. He saw the black outline of the Jersey shore skimming by across the river.
They took Canal Street across, then followed the Bowery, which still showed signs of life; he knew it by the El pillars shuffling past. Then the wire lacework of one of the bridges, Brooklyn probably. A tug bleated dismally way under them. There hadn’t been, strictly speaking, any traffic lights all the way down; they’d all gone out hours ago. It was the street lights flickering in and out of the car they were on guard against. They had to slow up once, in downtown Brooklyn, for a street accident, and there must have been a cop near. They both got very talkative and solicitous all at once. “Head still going round and round, Johnny?” the one in front asked. “Never mind, you’ll be home in bed in no time now.”
“What he needs,” said the one in back, gun out under cover of the blanket, but not pointing at Johnny this time, “is a good strong cup o’ black coffee.”
“Looks like your friend can’t hold his liquor,” said a third voice, outside the car, and a face peered jocularly in at him, under a visor.
“Ing, ing, ing,” Johnny panted, sweat coursing down his face. He reared desperately toward the silhouette.
The face pulled back again. “Ouch, what a breath! I could get lit meself on that alone.”
“I told him not to mix his drinks.” They swerved out, then in again, sloshed through some water, sped on. The one next to him caught him by both cheeks with one hand, dragged them together, heaved his head back into the corner of the seat. His lower lip opened and blood came out. “That cop,” he observed calmly, “don’t know how lucky he is he didn’t get what you were trying to tell him!”
“Did he lamp the plates?” he asked the driver.
“I turned ’em over just as we came up.” He did something to the dashboard and there was a slapping sound from the rear fender.
The lights got fewer, then after awhile there weren’t any more; they were out in the wilds of Jamaica now, Beefy’s happy hunting ground. A big concrete building that looked like a warehouse or refrigerating plant showed up. “Well, anyway,” one of them said to Johnny, “we gave you your money’s worth; it wasn’t one of those short hauls!” When he looked closer he saw that Johnny was out again; he’d been lying on his mangled wrists at an acute angle ever since they’d left the place where they met the cop.
They drove into the building, car and all, and got him out between them, and a new guy took the wheel of the car and an elevator took it down below some place out of sight. Yet this wasn’t a garage. When Johnny Donovan regained consciousness for the second time that night, it was with the help of a fistful of shaved ice being held between his eyes. He was up in the loft of this building, a big barn of a place, half of it lost in shadows that the row of coned lights overhead couldn’t reach; it was cold as a tomb, sawdust on the floor, and a row of porcelain refrigerator doors facing him gleamed clinically white, dazzled the eyes.
Beefy Borden was there, with a white turtle-neck sweater under his coat jacket, perched on a tall three-legged stool, gargoyle-like. The two that had brought Johnny had turned their coat collars up against the cold, but him they promptly stripped to the waist as soon as he had opened his eyes. The skin on his stomach and back crawled involuntarily, half dead as he was, and contracted into goose pimples. They had left him upright for a moment, and his knees immediately caved under him, hit the sawdust. He held his spine straight by sheer will power and stayed that way; wouldn’t go down any further.
Beefy lit a cigarette, handed his two henchmen one, studied Johnny interestedly, seemingly without hatred. “So that’s how they look when they go straight,” he murmured. “Why, I thought I’d see something — pair of wings at least, or one of these here now hellos shining on top of his conk. I don’t notice anything, do you, boys? I wouldn’t gotten up at this hour and come all the way out here if I’da known.” All very playful and coy, with a wink for each one.
One of them jerked his head back by the hair, pried his mouth open, and tore out the tape. A little blood followed, from the lining of the checks. They took away the copper wire from his wrists next.
Beefy flicked ashes from his cigarette, drawled: “Well, I’ll tell you, I think he’s had enough, don’t you? We just set out to frighten him a little, didn’t we, boys? I think he’s learned his lesson. Whaddya say we let him have his clothes back and send him home?” He gave them each a long, meaning look so they got the idea. “Only first, of course, he’s gotta show the right spirit, ask for it in the proper way, say he’s sorry and all like that. Now suppose you crawl over here, right in front of me, and just ask, beg real hard — that’s all y’gotta do, and then we’ll call it quits.”
Johnny saw his foot twitch; knew it was loaded with a kick for his face when and if he did. It wasn’t the obvious phoniness of the offer that held him back, even if it had been genuine, even if it had been as easy as all that to get out of it — he still wouldn’t have done it. Life wasn’t that precious. Man has a soul — even a kid from nowhere whom nobody would miss, trapped in a refrigerating plant.
He writhed to his shackled feet and hobbled a little way toward Beefy. One of them was holding his coat and shirt up for bait, but Johnny didn’t even glance that way. He stared into the pig-eyes of the Big Shot. Then suddenly, without a word, he spat blood and saliva full into his face, “That’s the cleanest thing ever touched you,” he said hoarsely. “Gimme death, so I won’t have to keep on seeing and smelling you! Those are my last words. Now try to get another sound out of me!”
They knocked him down flat on his back, and he just lay there looking at the ceiling. Beefy got down from t he stool very slowly, face twitching all over and luminous with rage. He wiped the back of his hand across one cheek, motioned with the other. “Hand me that belt of his.” They put it in his hand. He paid it around, caught it at the opposite end from the thin, flat silver buckle. “Go down below and bring up a sack of salt on the elevator with you.” His eyes never left Johnny’s face. He addressed the remaining one: “Put your foot on his neck and hold him down. When I tell you to, you can turn him over on the other side.” Then he spoke directly to Johnny: “Now listen while you’re still able to, listen what’s coming to you. You’re gonna be beaten raw with your own belt. The salt — that’s so you’ll know it. That’ll keep the blood in too, so you’ll last awhile, an hour or two anyway. Stinging and smarting to death.”
Johnny didn’t answer. Beefy stripped off his coat, swung the buckled strap back in a long hissing arc, brought it over and down again with the velocity of a bullet. His assistant steadied his foot against the spasm that coursed through what he was holding down. There wasn’t a human sound in the place from then on.