“He took two of them with him,” I said.
“A guy like Harry, it pains you to see him go,” Ferdy said.
“Yeah,” I answered.
We were an quiet for a little while.
“Where’s A?” Beef asked.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “The hell with that little jerk anyway.”
“He got an inside wire, all right,” Ferdy said. “He was the first cat to tumble to this.”
“Yeah,” I said. I was thinking about the look on Donlevy’s face when those slugs ripped him up.
“How’d he tip to it, anyway?”
“He spotted Harry in the hall. Going up to Louise.”
“Oh.” Ferdy was quiet for a while. “Harry see him?”
“Yeah.”
“He should have been more careful.”
“A guy like Harry, he got lots of things on his mind. You think he’s gonna worry about a snot nose like A?”
“No, but what I mean... somebody blew the whistle on him.”
“Sure, but that don’t...” I cut myself dead. “Hey!” I said.
“What?”
“Aiello.”
“Aiello what?”
“I’ll bet he done it! Why, I’ll bet that little crumb done it!”
“Tipped the cops to Harry, you mean?”
“Sure! Who else? Why, that little...”
“Now, hold it, Danny. Now don’t jump to...”
“Who else knew it?”
“Anybody could have spotted Harry.”
“Sure, except nobody did.” I waited a minute, thinking, and then I said, “Come on.”
We began combing the neighborhood.
We went down to the poolroom, and we combed the bowling alley, and then we hit the rooftops, but Aiello was no place around. We checked the dance in the church basement, and we checked the Y, but there was still no sign of him.
“Maybe he’s home,” Ferdy said.
“Don’t be a jerk.”
“It’s worth a try.”
“Okay,” I said.
We went to the building where Aiello lived. In the hallway, Beef said, “Somebody here.”
“Shut up,” Ferdy said. We went up to Aiello’s apartment and knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” he answered.
“Me,” I said. “Danny.”
“What do you want, Danny?”
“I want in. Open up.”
“I’m in bed.”
“Then get out of bed.”
“I’m not feeling so hot, Danny.”
“Come on, we got some pot.”
“I don’t feel like none.”
“This is good stuff.”
“I ain’t interested, Danny.”
“Open up, you jerk,” I told him. “You want the Law to know we’re holding?”
“Danny, I...”
“Open up!” I began pounding on the door and I knew that’d get him out of bed, if that’s where he was, because his folks are a quiet type who don’t like trouble with the neighbors.
In a few seconds, Aiello opened the door.
I smiled at him and said, “Hello, A.”
We all went inside. “Your people home?”
“They went visiting.”
“Oh, visiting, huh? Very nice.”
“Yeah.”
“Like you was doing with Louise this afternoon, huh?”
“Yeah, I suppose,” Aiello said.
“When you spotted Harry.”
“Yeah.”
“And then what’d you do?”
“I told you.”
“You went into Louise’s apartment, that right?”
“Yes, I...” Aiello paused, as if he was trying to remember what he’d told me before. “No, I didn’t go in. I went down in the street to look for you.”
“You like this gang, A?”
“Yeah, it’s good,” Aiello said.
“Then why you lying to me?”
“I ain’t lying.”
“You know you wasn’t looking for me.”
“I was.”
“Look, tell me the truth. I’m a fair guy. What do I care if you done something you shouldn’t have.”
“I didn’t do nothing I shouldn’t have,” Aiello said.
“Well, you did do something then, huh?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, A, what’d you do?”
“Nothing.”
“I mean, after you left Louise?”
“I went to look for you.”
“And before you found me?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you blow the whistle on Harry?”
“Hell no!”
“You did, didn’t you? Look, he’s dead, what do I care what you done or didn’t do? I ain’t the Law.”
“I didn’t turn him in.”
“Come on, A.”
“He deserved what he got. But I didn’t turn him in.”
“He deserved it, huh?”
“Yeah. He was rotten. Anybody rotten like Harry...”
“Shut up!”
“...should have the whistle...”
“Shut up, I said!” I slapped him across the mouth. “Did you?”
He dummied up.
“Answer me!”
“No.”
I slapped him again. “Answer me!”
“No.”
“You did, you punk! You called the cops on Harry, and now he’s dead, and you ain’t fit to lick his boots!”
“He was a killer!” Aiello yelled. “That’s why I called them. He was no good. No damn good. He was a stink in the neigh...”
But I wasn’t listening no more.
We fixed Mr. Aiello, all right.
Just the way Harry would have liked it.
Women in Jeopardy
The Molested
When I was twelve, and the family moved to the Bronx, my commute to school was a short one because we lived on 217th Street between Barnes and Bronxwood avenues, right across the street from Olinville Junior High School. Later, I would walk the ten blocks every weekday morning to Evander Childs High School on Gun Hill Road. But when I won a scholarship to the Art Students League and was later accepted as an art student at Cooper Union, subways and elevated trains from the Bronx to Manhattan became a routine part of my life. It was inevitable, I suppose, that a native New Yorker would one day write a story set in a subway car. This one was published in Manhunt in September of 1953. It carried the Hunt Collins byline.
She was shoved into the subway car at Grand Central. It was July, and the passengers reeked of sweat and after-office beers. She wore a loose silk dress, buttoned high on the throat, and she wished for a moment that she had worn something lower cut. The overhead fans in the cars were going but the air hung over the packed passengers like a damp clinging blanket.
She was packed in tightly, with a stout woman standing next to her on her right, a tall thin man on her left, and a pair of broad shoulders in front of her. The fat woman was wearing cheap perfume, and the aroma assailed her nostrils, caused her senses to revolt. The thin man on her left held a thinly folded copy of the New York Times. He sported a black mustache under his curving nose. The nose was buried in the newspaper, and she glanced at the paper and then took her eyes away from the headlines.
There was a slight movement behind her. She leaned forward. The broad shoulders in front of her shoved back indignantly. Whoever was behind her moved again, and she felt a knee pressing into the backs of her own knees.
She moved again, away from the pressure of the knee, and then she tried to look over her shoulder, turning slightly to her left. Her elbow brushed the Times, and the thin man lifted the paper gingerly, shook it as if it were crawling with ants, and then went back to his reading.
The knee was suddenly removed.
She thought, No, I didn’t mean you should...
She was suddenly aware of something warm touching the back of her leg. She almost leaped forward because the touch had surprised her with its abruptness. Her silk dress was thin, and she wore no girdle. She felt the warmth spread until it formed the firm outline of fingers touching her flesh.