“Why you both’ me, Matt?” he asked. “I know notheeng. I swear.”
“Farvo was killed,” I said.
“So? So thees is Farvo. Me, I am not killed. Matt, I do not wann another beatin’. Leave me out, Matt.”
“Diego,” I said, “I’m trying to piece together...”
“I don’t care what you tryn’ to do. I don’ wann more trouble, Matt.”
“Look, you stupid bastard, what makes you think this is the end?”
“Huh?” Diego asked.
“You going to stay inside all day and all night? You never going to come up for air? What makes you think you’re safe? What makes you think you won’t get another beating some night when you’re lushed up and roaming the streets. You might be Farvo next time.”
“No,” Diego said, shaking his head. “Matt, I don’ know notheeng anyway. E’en I want to help you, I can’t.”
“You didn’t see who hit you?”
“No.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I don’ remember.”
“Diego, if you know something, you’d better tell me. You’d damn well better tell me, or you’ll get another beating, right this minute, and this time you won’t be so lucky.”
Diego tried to smile. “Oh, come on, Matt. Don’ talk like that, man.”
“What do you say, Diego?”
He must have seen something in my eyes. He looked at me quickly, and then ducked his head.
“I dinn see nobody, Matt,” he said.
“Were you struck from behind?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“Somethin’ hard. I don’ know what. Hard like a rock.”
“A gun?”
“I don’ know.”
“What happened then?”
“I fell down.”
“Unconscious?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“He grab me under the arms an’ pull me off the sidewalk. Then he kick me.”
“He put you down and kicked you?”
“I don’ know. It’s hard to remember, Matt. He drag me, an’ then I get a kick. An’ then I get another kick. An’ then he starrs hittin’ me on the face, an’ kickin’ me all the time.”
“He kept kicking you and hitting you?”
“Like he have ten arms, Matt. All over me. Hard.” Diego shook his head, remembering.
“Did he say anything to you?”
“No. Yes, wait a minute. Yes, he say somethin’.”
“What did he say?”
“He say, ‘Come on, bum,’ and then he laugh.”
“What did his voice sound like?”
“Well, it wass high first, an’ then it get low later.”
“He spoke twice?” I asked.
“Yes. Yes, I thin’ so. Twice, or maybe more. It’s hard to remember. He wass hit me all thees time.”
“What did he say the second time?”
“He say, ‘I got him.’”
“And his voice was lower you say?”
“Yes, lower. Lower than the first time.”
“‘I got him.’ Is that what he said? When was this?”
“When he starr hittin’ me in the face.”
“Did he steal anything from you?”
“I got notheeng to steal, Matt,” Diego said.
“I figured,” I said. “Were you lushed when he got you?”
Diego smiled. “Sure,” he said.
There were no further beatings for three weeks. This wasn’t hard to work out. Whoever had killed Farvo apparently realized the heat was on. In three weeks, the cops would have lost their interest. In three weeks, Farvo would be just another grave with wilted flowers, Farvo would be just another name in the Open File. So for three weeks, the community that was the Bowery lived its normal life. For three weeks, my friends and neighbors went unmolested. But we waited. We waited because we knew the beater would strike again, as soon as things cooled down. Once a pattern is established, it’s difficult to break.
I waited along with the rest, but I waited harder. I waited by walking the streets at night. I walked down all the dark streets, staying away from the brightly lighted areas. I walked with a simulated roll in my step. Sometimes I sang loudly, the way a drunk will sing when he’s on a happy toot. I lurched along crazily, and I grabbed at brick walls for support, and I hoped someone would hit me on the back of the head, but no one did. It’s not fun being bait. It’s not fun when you know a fractured skull can be in the cards. And suspecting what I now suspected, it was even less fun. But I set myself up as a target, and I did my heavy drinking during the day so that I could be cold sober while play-acting the drunk at night.
For three weeks, nothing happened.
The hottest day of the year came at the tail end of August, as if summer were making a last bid for recognition before autumn piled in. It was a bitch of a day, and even liquor couldn’t kill the pain of the heat. The night wasn’t any better. The night closed in like a damp blanket, smothering the city with darkness. There wasn’t a breeze blowing. The heat lay on the roof tops, baked in the bricks, shimmered on the asphalt. The heat was a plague that hovered over the city, a life-choking thing that stuck in the nostrils and suffocated the throat.
I started at ten.
I put on my drunken walk, and I staggered up the streets, stopping to panhandle every now and then, making it look legit in case I was being tailed. I didn’t think whoever’d killed Farvo was the tailing kind of killer, but I played it safe anyway. The heat made me want to scream. It crawled up my back and under my armpits and into my crotch. It left me dry and tired, and it made me wish I was really drunk instead of just playing at it.
I didn’t hit pay dirt until twelve-thirty.
The street was very dark. It lay like a black night stick between the buildings, dark and straight and silent. There was no one on the street. I looked down it, and then I huddled against the wall for a second, like a drunk trying to clear his head, and then I started down it, walking crazily, stumbling once or twice. I passed an alleyway between the buildings, and I stopped against the wall just past the alleyway, hoping to draw something out of the black opening. I drew nothing.
I started walking again, and I stumbled again, and then I got to my feet and burped, and I said, “Son’fabitch,” like a drunk cursing at the world in general. I didn’t have to act very hard. I knew the role exceptionally well.
I passed a second alleyway, and I saw the shadow snake out over the brick wall an instant before the pipe hit the back of my head. I’d been waiting for the blow for three weeks, and I rolled with it now, my thick matted hair cushioning the strike a little, the roll taking away some of the power behind it, but not all of it, the pain still rocking my head and erupting in a sort of yellow flash. But the pain passed before I dropped to the sidewalk, and my head was clear because Farvo’s killer was about to try to act again, the act that was always good for an encore.
I lay there like a dead man, and then there were footsteps coming from the alleyway, and I felt hands under my armpits, and then a high voice said, “Come on, bum,” and the voice trailed away into a delighted kind of laughter, an almost hysterically ecstatic laughter.
My heels dragged along the sidewalk, and I tensed myself, waiting for what was coming, ready for it. The hands under my armpits released their grip, and my back hit the concrete, and then a shoe lashed out, catching me on the shoulder, hurting me, but I didn’t make my play, not even then. Another kick came, and I tried to roll with it, waiting, listening in the darkness.
“I got him,” the voice said, and it was a lower voice, just the way Diego had said, but it sure as hell wasn’t the same voice that had spoken first. And then, out of the darkness, a third voice said, “Come on, come on,” and I figured the full cast was there then, so I went into action.