Not more than a heartbeat separated him from his target when he was blasted out of the sky by a second dark figure, thrown to the ground and pinned.
“Curse you, Red Baron,” he wheezed, trying to breathe around the knee dug firmly into his stomach. “What kind of welcome is this for a poor immigrant just off the ship, anyway?”
Dimly, Napoleon could see that he was held down by two young men dressed entirely in dark denim. But they didn’t wear the little berets that marked Thrush, and objects about them rattled in musical beats when they moved. The one standing asked him, “Just off the boat, why’d you come on like White Fang? All I need this evening is some joker trying to jump for my throat on the beach.”
“Well-” said Napoleon. But the youngster kneeling on him interrupted and pressed harder on his stomach.
“Not well, man, not well at all. Here we are innocently promenading the strand, when we see you doing Lloyd Bridges in the dark. Charlie stops to watch and I lay down. No provocation whatsoever-were just digging. Yet all of a sudden you try to jump Charlie. What kind of a game, that’s all we want to know.”
“And what are you doing out swimming on 3 night like this? You think he’s some kind of health nut, Andy?”
“No,” answered the kneeler, “the health nuts wear union suits or nothing at all. This one is dressed like a very dippy banker or something, complete with shoes.”
“Yeah, shoes. You should hear yourself tippy-toeing up on somebody in soggy shoes. Wow.”
“But-” said Napoleon.
“And breathing,” said Andy, shaking his head mournfully over Napoleon in the dark. “You may just not work out enough, friend, but your wind stinks. You ought to work out more; run some.”
“Sand you got; wind no.” Both of them looked down at him and waited to hear what he had to say.
Napoleon thought wryly of the chase he’d given three Thrushes just a few hours ago, but he couldn’t get breath enough for boasting. The youth holding him down, Andy, couldn’t weigh over 140, but that sat on him like a dozen anvils after the night’s workout. Until that knee raised up, he was likely to remain a fixture on the coast of Kings County.
“You men,” he gasped, “don’t want me to catch my death of cold.” At that, he felt the salt water in this throat was giving more than a touch of diseased hoarseness to his voice. “Why don’t we talk this over? I assure you there was every reason for me to be wary of anyone I saw.”
With no more than a nod between them, Charlie and Andy had Napoleon on his feet, with both arms whipped up behind him and both hands bent uncomfortably in a good imitation of a police come-along. If he pulled away, one or both wrists would probably snap with some small attendant pain. He decided his body had suffered enough tonight, and he could content himself with dragging in great volumes of air to fill his aching lungs. Let them lead on, since obviously they had no connection with Thrush. Even a pair of rough-and-tumble experts were better company than Porpoise and his crew of funhouse crazy thugs.
He stumbled almost unnoticeably as they prodded him, firmly held, across the beach. His breathing and pulse slowed down, and the stumbling vanished. All his control was coming back to maximum, despite the cold and his weakness.
He almost sacrificed a broken wrist in the heart-stopping moment when their goal seemed to be the Thrush amusement pier. But before he fully tensed to spring free, a
flicker of fire showed beneath the pier’s base, and he realized his beach-bum friends were heading for a camp directly underneath Porpoise’s hideout.
“Lovely place for a beach fire,” he said idly. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll bum down the pier?”
“No use for the pier,” replied Andy, amid clankings from his clothes that continued to arouse Napoleon’s curiosity. “The old matzoh-brain who owns it gets no time of day from us. We bum him down, he’ll just build another one.”
“We just hang around, and sneak into the funhouse sometimes. Summers, the barker can’t keep track who goes in, so we spend more time in than out. If we break something, or if we need to borrow the day’s receipts, he breaks out in green splotches, but he never yells for the fuzz.” Charlie shifted his grip on Napoleon for security as they got under the pier, and continued. “There’s a live-in herd of muscle up there, they come on like a riot squad when we make enough trouble. So don’t talk too loud-you wouldn’t like them either.”
A girl’s voice cut in on them: “Hey, a visitor!” They stopped just before the fire, and Napoleon saw the girl, sitting across the flames from him, red and yellow light picking out fair skin, coal-black hair, and a garland of flowers on her head from ear around to ear. “What have you got there, Andy? Put him down so we can talk.”
His arms free, Napoleon moved as close to the fire as he could. He brushed himself off, making each motion do double duty, cleaning the sand from him and warming his numbed body. The bleeding had stopped during his swim, but both hands were still embedded with splinters and sand, and as he chafed them warm again he realized how much damage had been done.
A covert glance at the young lady’s grin reminded him that he was still wearing his trousers wrapped around one arm. She watched him straighten them out and force his feet down each leg. She watched him button them, and curse when the zipper fouled in soft cloth. She sat grinning through his whole performance, until he finally shook all over once, and stood up.
“Your boxer shorts are flower-patterned,” she said.
“My boxer shorts regret being flower-patterned,” said Napoleon in his best Old World courtly manner. “They were not consulted before being brought here.”
“Hey, I wasn’t complaining. I think you’ve got the grooviest underpants this side of the East River.” She reached up with both hands and pushed her hair back over her shoulders, and he watched. He was pleased with her broad forehead and narrow chin, but he wished he was sure what the happy smile meant. s
“You know, you beat all,” she said. “If that’s the costume for this winter’s surfers, we’ll just have to close the beach to keep me from going into hysterics.” She rested her head on one fist, elbow on knee, and both her eyes sparkled with laughter. Napoleon looked down at himself, and at them. They were all in the same somber levis, the remains of denim jackets, and flowers. But they looked ready for high society compared to him.
The moebius twisting he’d had to use to escape from Porpoise had ripped his pants legs, and salt water had ruined the rest of a new flannel suit. His shoes looked like chewed cardboard, and it was anybody’s guess what his hair was like.
“Well,” he said, “the party got sort of rough on my yacht. People drinking and getting sort of physical, you know. When the whole thing got into one big hot pile of bodies, I must have had too much and just jumped overboard.”
“Sure,” said Charlie calmly. “You swam ashore from a boat we didn’t see, or else it’s running sadly amiss in the legal lights department. You must have come in from outside the three-mile limit for us not to see it.” He picked his teeth with a daisy stem, and moved his eyes up and down Napoleon. “Try again. Only this time let’s start with a jump off the pier. I think we’ll buy a try at suicide, if you throw in the reason your clothes are all slashed.”
Napoleon looked at the girl, who’d stopped laughing at him. “You won’t buy suicide, will you?”
“Nope. Look at him, you two. He’s trying to figure some way away from here right now, and every time we mention the pier, he flinches. Looks to me like he’s got trouble with the boys upstairs.”
Napoleon looked around at two boys in their early twenties, and a girl who might have been eighteen, but no more. “I’m not off a boat, and I didn’t attempt suicide,” he said, “but I did come from the pier. If they grab me again, they probably won’t let me go in nearly this good a condition. I need to get as far from here as possible, preferably back to the city. I need clothes, food and first aid, and they’re all back in Manhattan for me.”