“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 Django in the hall. Goin’ up to Louise.”
“Oh.” Ferdy was quiet for a while. “Django see him?”
“Yeah.”
“He shoulda been more careful.”
“A guy like Django, he got lots of things on his mind. You think he’s gonna worry about a snotnose 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 sonofabitch done it!”
“Tipped the cops to Django, you mean?”
“Sure! Who else? Why, that little...”
“Now, hold it, Danny. Now don’t jump to...”
“Who else knew it?”
“Anybody coulda spotted Django.”
“Sure, except nobody did.” I waited a minute, thinking, and then I said, “Come on.”
We began combing the neighborhood.
We went down 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 pee 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 wanna come in. Open up.”
“I’m in bed.”
“Then get out of bed.”
“I’m not feeling so hot, Danny.”
“Come on, we brung 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. “Hello, A,” I said. “Getting a little shut-eye?”
“Yeah,” he said, trying to smile back. “I got a cold. I think maybe it’s one of them viruses.”
“Well now, that’s too bad,” I said. We all went inside. “Your people home?”
“They went...” Aiello stopped.
“What’s the matter, A?”
“Nothing.”
“Where’d your people go?”
“Ac... across the street. They... they got friends there.”
“Oh, visiting, huh? Very nice. It’s nice to visit.”
“Yeah.”
“Like you was doing with Louise this afternoon, huh?”
“Yeah, I suppose,” Aiello said.
“When you spotted Django.”
“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 come here to share some weed with you, that’s all.”
“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’s place?”
“I went to look for you.”
“And before you found me?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you blow the whistle on Django?”
“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 Django...”
“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 bastard! You called the cops on Django, 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 Mister Aiello, all right.
Just the way Django would have liked it.
The Jungle Kids
It was the beginning of the third period.
He had to get through the third period, and then there would be five other periods, and then Dave could leave Bernard Vocational High School and go home. Until the next morning. There was always the next morning, but he had learned to face the gray dawn with resignation.
He had been teaching for three years now. He was a mild-mannered man, not too tall, given to wearing rumpled tweeds and neckties that were sometimes stained. His last name was Kemp, and he knew the kids called him Unkempt Kemp behind his back, but that didn’t bother him any more. Nothing seemed to bother him any more, and he often wondered if many men of thirty felt the way he did. He knew he should feel differently about teaching, knew he should expect a special reward from his chosen profession, but he had long ago ceased to expect anything but what he got. The teaching was just a job, nothing more or less.
He had kept it from being a difficult job because he had studiously avoided trouble from the day he had entered the vocational-school system. That was the best way, and the only way. He was not the kind of rugged athlete who could smack a kid around, and he had no desire to be slapped around in return. He went through the motions. He stood at the front of the room, and he told himself he was teaching, and maybe he believed it.
“Let’s have a little quiet,” he said softly, knowing he would have to repeat the sentence at least three times before the boys shut up. He felt no disturbance over this knowledge. That was just the way it was, and you had to accept life on its own terms, especially in a trade school. “Let’s have a little quiet,” he said over the boys’ raised voices, and then he said it again, and then he said it once more, and finally the boys turned their reluctant attention to the front of the room.
“Today we’re going to write business letters,” Dave said.
He looked out over the students, knowing the protest would come, but resigned to it.
“What for, teach?” Carlton asked.
“Because I say so,” Dave said wearily.
“Because he says so,” Carlton mimicked. He was a big boy with a pug nose and flaming red hair, and Dave had felt a twinge of uneasiness the first time he’d stood alongside him. There was a bluff, hearty exterior to Carlton, and it clashed resoundingly against the mildness of Dave’s make-up.
“Come on, Carlton,” he said, “don’t start anything.”