The Cross of Gold Affair - Davies Fredric. Страница 23

Napoleon ran head-on into one of the hoodlums and caught a blackjack across his forearm before he could put his left hand into the man’s solar plexus. Turning, he found Andy sitting piggy-back on the other one, with Charlie doing a land of half-twist to put his bare heel into the Thrush’s groin.

“Hurry!” whispered Mai. “There’s more of them along the walk!” She stopped to hit each of the unconscious Thrushes quickly behind the ear, and then noises from both sides made them hurry off through Coney.

“The bugger tried to bite me,” muttered Andy, while they did four statue imitations in shadow. Mai shushed him.

When two more Thrush agents came together over the unconscious pair, took counsel and split up into the darkness between buildings, Mai took her brood out again. They loped along for four blocks, springing across lighted area, and finally the urgency quieted down. “I think they’re looking for us to be quivering in a comer back there near the bodies,” said Mai. “If we loop over now and head for the coffee-house area, we won’t cover any place they’ll be

looking.” At a quick walk, she led Napoleon while Andy took point and Charlie covered the rear.

“So the P.R.s never bothered me, but the other Greek kids did. They figured they were big men, and kept after me one way and another. I finally learned to stop saying no, because when I just stood and said, Oh, yes, indeed/ they got all hot and bothered, and got close enough for me to half murder ‘em.” She smiled wickedly through her hair at him. “I got to be sort of famous at dirty fighting in my own gang,” she beamed, “and got named for it. Mai is short for ‘Malista’ my nickname. It means Yes, indeed/ in Greek.”

Napoleon smiled in the night. When the two from Thrush jumped out at them, he hadn’t seen Mai raise a finger. The boys had let him do his share, and they’d taken care of the other one with vicious teamwork. Yet he had a feeling both Thrushes wouldn’t have stood a chance against this snip of a girl.

For a while, as they got further from the beach toward brighter street lights, they hurried and Napoleon decided not to say anything when he could use the energy to keep up with his trio of guards. Charlie and Andy kept an alert lookout for more black-clad men or for the more dangerous street-wanderers who might call up a local gang. They waited in a space between buildings near an open nightclub, and while they watched for cabs he wondered how rugged life might be in a Brooklyn tenement. If a clear-eyed pretty girl like Mai chose a gang for a second family, things must have gotten way past ten-to-a-room at home.

“Now you live out?” he asked her. “No place in out of the snow?”

“Not much snow yet this year,” she said, “and when it comes we’ll do just like last year. Sleep on subways, in johns, in that funhouse you bust out of, or more likely in somebody’s pad, when we figure a way to click with vacations. Lot of people live here half a year, trundle off to Florida all winter.”

“Not likely this year,” said Andy, wishing he were back by their fire. “Lot of blowy weather coming up that tore a piece off Florida last week. Any day we’ll get a whole beach full of rain.”

“Charlie and Andy don’t like rain. It was raining the1 night they tried to mug me, last November in Gravesend.”

“Mug schmug,” said Andy. “The subject is sore in need of a change.”

“They braced me near a park, and walked me into it.

I was just going to see how well I could handle the two of | them, when something happened.”

“Something happened,” said Andy.

“She shoulda murdered us,” said Charlie.

“I was just back from a love-in. I went to dig the hippies, and I spent all day trying to figure what made’ them tick. Big bruisers with motorcycle boots and chains, little geeks with glasses, and kids like me. All running around with silly grins, handing each other flowers. Before I got out of there. I was all over flowers from guys and girls who kept talking about agape.”

“Agape,” said Charlie. “She shoulda murdered us.” Both boys kept looking right and left, trying to ignore the talk while they looked for cabs.

“It’s Greek,” said Andy, answering Napoleon’s unasked > question. “It means love. No hot pants, just love, with flowers and kissing each other on the eyes.”

Napoleon held the word in his mouth, and looked at the two boys, who shifted their gaze away. Three syllables, a-gah-pay, and these two rangy, muscled would-be hoods would rather be beaten. Charlie pushed at his sun-bleached straight hair, and said, “We made nice with her, and planned no bruises or cuts, no stealing, just a little sharing the wealth. What could be simpler?”

“And I got ready to break anything they let me get 1 hold of,” she said in a flat voice, with her eyes shining out bright, “when suddenly the light turned on. I knew what 1 the hippies were after, and I had it.”

Andy scuffed his bare foot against cement. “She took me by the shoulders and said, T love you,’ and kissed my eyes.” He spat in the street.

Charlie turned and lit a cigarette, muttering about preferring to be murdered.

Then a taxi came, and Malista had time for just one more thing. “I adopted them,” she said through the car window, “and there’s lots more room on the beach. Get yourself some clothes and a bouquet, and I’ll adopt you, too.” She leaned in, kissed him on both eyes, and then all three kids were lost in the night.

“What was that?” asked the cabbie.

“I was a guest of honor,” said Napoleon. “Ah-at a fraternity party. That was the send-off committee. How soon can we get to Manhattan?” He leaned back in the worn seat, thankful for the cab’s heater, and mumbled short answers to the drivers stream of helpful conversation about college rowdies, race problems and cops, until warmth and exhaustion pulled sleep down around him like a falling cloud.

As Mai and her pair of foster-children moved through the city back to her beach, they kept on the bounce, watching for roving groups of men in black, knowing that it would be as hard to get back through Thrush as it had been to get out. But, moving quickly, they went right past the Thrush named Arnold, who saw them coming and stepped into hiding.

“You’re outa your gourd,” said Andy softly as they passed Arnold, “picking up a guy out of the wet and risking all our necks to get him away.” Arnold’s ears perked up, and he decided he didn’t need to hear any more. Rather than follow, he turned aside and found two of his men patrolling another street.

“Solo has gotten away,” he said, and told them what he’d heard the boy say. “They must have gotten him safely off somehow, or he’d still be with them. You know those three; let’s catch up on them, and find out what we can about their connection with U.N.C.L.E.”

The Thrushes found their quarry at the beach, crouching on the boardwalk and whispering to each other. Across the strip of sand a figure moved toward the fun house, and Charlie spoke.

“It isn’t one of them; you can see he’s wearing a sweater or something light-colored, and they’re always in

black. Besides, the way he came up from our fire and is looking around, you can see he doesn’t belong here. What say he’s a friend of Napoleon’s?”

“If he is,” answered Mai worriedly, “we’ve got to tell him he’s in the middle of a search party from the pier. They might not object to picking up two for the price of one, even if they don’t know Napoleon got away.”

They stood upright and began to clamber over the railing, when suddenly Arnold and his men sprang. There was no warning this time, and all three kids were smothered in strong grips. Mai twisted, pummeling Arnold, using every trick she knew to get free. But with an almost equal balance of dirty in-fighting ability, age and weight told. In a trice, each Thrush was sitting on one flower-child, handkerchiefs smothering their yells, while all six watched the amusement pier and Porpoise’s men chuckled.