“Get paid? You crazy?” Johnny kicked in the front of the juke box. “Be glad that’s not you.”
The square watched him, but there was no fear in his eyes. Baffled by the man’s calm, assured look, Johnny gave the juke box a final kick, grabbed a piece of cake from under a plastic cover and left
“Guy was pretty cool for a square,” Netta said.
“Enh. It’s these Judas guys. They ain’t got the guts to do things right No wonder they think they need a bomb.”
“They won’t have it much longer.”
“Boy, from what I’ve seen, without that bomb this place’ll be wide open.”
“Ready for the Hypos to take over.” Netta paused. “Or somebody.”
Johnny shifted uneasily. Then his eyes brightened. “That’d be a rumble for sure. Wait’ll Franko hears what chickens these guys have turned out to be.”
It was nearing dark so they headed into Washington. Before long they spotted the monument and zeroed in to land on the Mall. The stone needle loomed, tall and pockmarked, in the soft half-darkness.
Johnny sank on the grass. “We better wait till it’s dark.”
Netta settled beside him. “Yeah.”
“Well leave the ‘cicles here, so we can get to ‘em in a hurry and get the bomb back to Franko. If anything happens to me, you take it and get back.”
“Not as long as I can help you.” She looked fierce in the twilight.
“You heard me. Get that thing to Franko. He wants it.”
“He must want it real bad.”
Musing, Johnny looked up at the monument. “Wonder what’s inside.”
“Few guys, probably. It oughta be some fight.”
“You stay out of it unless I call you, huh?” He made his voice stern. “No use you cashing in — you got three good years left.”
‘The hell you say.” Netta drove her fist into her hand several times. “Does it bug you bein’ nineteen?”
“I’ll cash in when it’s time. Maybe tonight, if I have to, to get the bomb. Only one thing does bug me. Before I go, I’d like to have a girl. Maybe leave a kid.”
“You don’t have one now?” In the dark, Netta’s heavy face glowed.
“Nope.” Johnny sprawled, resting on his elbows. “But I know her, and I’ve watched her, and someday I’ll get her.” He threw his head back. “Franko’s girl, all golden, like a tiger…”
“Oh,” Her voice was small.
“Couple of guys comin’ out over there. C’mon, Netta. It’s time.”
The two heavy forms, almost identical in the darkness, moved toward the opening to the monument. A bored Judas stood outside, idly flipping his knife into a plank. Johnny got him before he could pull the knife out for another throw.
Inside, there were two more. Moving as if the stolen Judas jackets belonged to them, Johnny and Netta flipped the two a casual greeting and started up the stairs. One of the Judas’s called up.
“You say Moe said it was okay for you to come in?”
“Yeah. Said we could take a look at this crazy bomb.”
“Well,” the Judas said, “I dunno…”
“C’mon,” his partner whined. “C’mon, let’s go over to the locker and get a beer.” They headed for a freezer in the long-disabled elevator and Netta and Johnny disappeared around a bend in the towering stone stairs.
They toiled up in total darkness, listening to the hollow sound of their feet rattle up and down the empty shaft. Once Netta tripped and fell against the wire netting that covered the elevator track, and Johnny took her arm. They went on and on until they rounded the last bend and dim light shone on the steps from the doorway at the top. They stood in the half-darkness until their eyes were acclimated and then burst into the small stone room.
In a transparent casing on a square pedestal glowed the bomb. Johnny headed for it without even stopping to see who guarded it. Suddenly he felt something hard in his ribs.
“And who do you think you are?”
“Bug you,” Johnny said, and he turned. “Wha-ah—”
The man with the gun had a hard face and a cool, gray eye. His hand was steady and he was ready to kill. He was old — almost forty. He was a square.
Johnny turned cold eyes on him. “Daddy-o?”
“Not just me. All of us.”
Sternly, the man dug at his ribs. “I thought Daddy-o told you to stay away from this room. Daddy-o told you he’d watch the bomb for the Judas Gang.”
“You think we’re Judas, man?” Ignoring the gun, Johnny whipped off the jacket. “We’re Hypos.”
The square smiled thinly. “And I suppose you came up here to steal the bomb.”
“Somethin’ like that, man.” Johnny backed away to stand beside Netta on the far side of the room. The man with the gun moved closer to them.
“You’ll get your own bomb, Hypos. The sooner the better.”
“From squares? Bug you.”
“You’ll get your bomb, because every other mob will have a bomb, just like the Judas gang.” The square laughed. “You’ll get your little present from us old guys. Us Daddy-os.”
“We’ll blast you, Daddy-o.” Johnny ached to jump for the gun.
“Oh, no. You’ll be just like the Judas gang. They think they control us, but they don’t. They think they have the bomb, but they don’t” He smiled. “They have us, and we have the bomb.”
Johnny growled.
The square went on. “They sense that now, but they don’t want to admit it They sense it and it’s put them off their feed. They don’t even enjoy a good girl, or a good fight, because somehow the word’s begun to spread that if they fight, or if they fool around too much, the bomb just might go off, and that would be too bad. They’re lucky boys to get bombs from their Daddy-o.” The man patted the casing of the bomb. “When we’ve given one to every other gang in this country we’ll tell them whose bomb it really is.”
He stepped closer to Johnny. “And they’ll throw down their knives and their guns and their bats because they’ll be afraid the bomb will go off.”
He waved the gun at Johnny’s nose. “And they’ll stop terrorizing their elders for fear the bomb will go off.”
He leveled the gun at Johnny’s chest. “And they’ll give the world back to their elders”—his finger began to tighten —”for fear the bomb will go off.”
“The hell!” With a look Johnny couldn’t interpret, Netta pushed him aside and threw herself on the gun. There was an explosion and she collapsed, carrying the man to the floor as she fell.
Johnny beat Daddy-o and he beat him and he beat him, and when there was nothing left to beat he started to pick up the bomb. Then he cursed and split the case that protected it and dismantled the bomb and destroyed the important parts of it, and began to carry Netta down the hundreds of shallow stone stairs. The Judas at the bottom took one look at his face and let him pass.
He buried Netta near the reflecting pond at the end of the Mall and stuck a piece of twisted wire at the top of the grave. It was all that was left of the trigger device of the bomb.
“I gotta tell Frank’o,” he mumbled, flinging himself on his ‘cicle and taking to the air. “We gotta stop the squares.”
He heard the first rumblings of the news when he set down in New York, near battered Rockefeller center. “Got one…” “Daddy-o gave us one…” “Got…” “We got..
Trembling, he raced through the deserted lobby into the room that was Franko’s pad. “Hey, Franko, Franko, it’s a trick… we gotta watch out for…”
Franko looked up at him and grinned. “We don’t gotta watch out for nothing, Johnny boy. We got a bomb.”