I suppose the front office got their money’s worth, because they played up every lousy auto smash the radio car covered as though it were the story of the Second Coming, and maybe it helped circulation. But I had been on it for four months and, wouldn’t you know it, there wasn’t a decent murder, or sewer explosion, or running gun fight between six P.M. and six A.M. any night I was on duty in those whole four months. What made it worse, the kid they gave me as photographer—Sol Detweiler, his name was—couldn’t drive worth a damn, so I was stuck with chauffeuring us around.
We had just been out to LaGuardia to see if it was true that Marilyn Monroe was sneaking into town with Aly Khan on a night plane—it wasn’t—and we were coming across the Triborough Bridge, heading south toward the East River Drive, when the office called. I pulled over and parked and answered the radiophone.
It was Harrison, the night City Editor. “Listen, Sandy, there’s a gang fight in East Harlem. Where are you now?”
It didn’t sound like much to me, I admit. “There’s always a gang fight in East Harlem, Harrison. I’m cold and I’m on my way down to Night Court, where there may or may not be a story; but at least I can get my feet warm.”
“Where are you now?” Harrison wasn’t fooling. I looked at Sol, on the seat next to me; I thought I had heard him snicker. He began to fiddle with his camera without looking at me. I pushed the “talk” button and told Harrison where I was. It pleased him very much; I wasn’t more than six blocks from where this big rumble was going on, he told me, and he made it very clear that I was to get on over there immediately.
I pulled away from the curb, wondering why I had ever wanted to be a newspaperman; I could have made five times as much money for half as much work in an ad agency. To make it worse, I heard Sol chuckle again. The reason he was so amused was that when we first teamed up I made the mistake of telling him what a hot reporter I was, and I had been visibly cooling off before his eyes for a better than four straight months.
Believe me, I was at the very bottom of my career that night. For five cents cash I would have parked the car, thrown the keys in the East River, and taken the first bus out of town. I was absolutely positive that the story would be a bust and all I would get out of it would be a bad cold from walking around in the snow.
And if that doesn’t show you what a hot newspaperman I really am, nothing will.
Sol began to act interested as we reached the corner Harrison had told us to go to. “That’s Chris’s,” he said, pointing at a little candy store. “And that must be the pool hall where the Leopards hang out.”
“You know this place?”
He nodded. “I know a man named Walter Hutner. He and I went to school together, until he dropped out, couple weeks ago. He quit college to go to the Police Academy. He wanted to be a cop.”
I looked at him. “You’re going to college?”
“Sure, Mr. Van Pelt. Wally Hutner was a sociology major—I’m journalism—but we had a couple of classes together. He had a part-time job with a neighborhood council up here, acting as a sort of adult adviser for one of the gangs.”
“They need advice on how to be gangs?”
“No, that’s not it, Mr. Van Pelt. The councils try to get their workers accepted enough to bring the kids in to the social centers, that’s all. They try to get them off the streets. Wally was working with a bunch called the Leopards.”
I shut him up. “Tell me about it later!” I stopped the car and rolled down a window, listening.
Yes, there was something going on all right. Not at the corner Harrison had mentioned—there wasn’t a soul in sight in any direction. But I could hear what sounded like gunfire and yelling, and, my God, even bombs going off! And it wasn’t too far away. There were sirens, too—squad cars, no doubt.
“It’s over that way!” Sol yelled, pointing. He looked as though he was having the time of his life, all keyed up and delighted. He didn’t have to tell me where the noise was coming from, I could hear for myself. It sounded like D-Day at Normandy, and I didn’t like the sound of it.
I made a quick decision and slammed on the brakes, then backed the car back the way we had come. Sol looked at me. “What—”
“Local color,” I explained quickly. “This the place you were talking about? Chris’s? Let’s go in and see if we can find some of these hoodlums.”
“But, Mr. Van Pelt, all the pictures are over where the fight’s going on!”
“Pictures, shmictures! Come on!” I got out in front of the candy store, and the only thing he could do was follow me.
Whatever they were doing, they were making the devil’s own racket about it. Now that I looked a little more closely I could see that they must have come this way; the candy store’s windows were broken; every other street light was smashed; and what had at first looked like a flight of steps in front of a tenement across the street wasn’t anything of the kind—it was a pile of bricks and stone from the false-front cornice on the roof! How in the world they had managed to knock that down I had no idea; but it sort of convinced me that, after all, Harrison had been right about this being a big fight. Over where the noise was coming from there were queer flashing lights in the clouds overhead—reflecting exploding flares, I thought.
No, I didn’t want to go over where the pictures were. I like living. If it had been a normal Harlem rumble with broken bottles and knives, or maybe even home-made zip guns—I might have taken a chance on it, but this was for real.
“Come on,” I yelled to Sol, and we pushed the door open to the candy store.
At first there didn’t seem to be anyone in, but after we called a couple times a kid of about sixteen, coffee-colored and scared-looking, stuck his head up above the counter.
“You. What’s going on here?” I demanded. He looked at me as if I was some kind of a two-headed monster. “Come on, kid. Tell us what happened.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Van Pelt.” Sol cut in ahead of me and began talking to the kid in Spanish. It got a rise out of him; at least Sol got an answer. My Spanish is only a little bit better than my Swahili, so I missed what was going on, except for an occasional word. But Sol was getting it all. He reported: “He knows Walt; that’s what’s bothering him. He says Walt and some of the Leopards are in a basement down the street, and there’s something wrong with them. I can’t exactly figure out what, but—”
“The hell with them. What about that?”
“You mean the fight? Oh, it’s a big one all right, Mr. Van Pelt. It’s a gang called the Boomer Dukes. They’ve got hold of some real guns somewhere—I can’t exactly understand what kind of guns he means, but it sounds like something serious. He says they shot that parapet down across the street. Gosh, Mr. Van Pelt, you’d think it’d take a cannon for something like that. But it has something to do with Walt Hutner and all the Leopards, too.”
I said enthusiastically, “Very good, Sol. That’s fine. Find out where the cellar is, and we’ll go interview Hutner.”
“But Mr. Van Pelt, the pictures—”
“Sorry. I have to call the office.” I turned my back on him and headed for the car.
The noise was louder, and the flashes in the sky brighter—it looked as though they were moving this way. Well, I didn’t have any money tied up in the car, so I wasn’t worried about leaving it in the street. And somebody’s cellar seemed like a very good place to be. I called the office and started to tell Harrison what we’d found out; but he stopped me short. “Sandy, where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to call you for—Listen, we got a call from Fordham. They’ve detected radiation coming from the East Side—it’s got to be what’s going on up there! Radiation, do you hear me? That means atomic weapons! Now, you get th—”