Hearts In Atlantis (31 page)

“Mumma said stay out,” Dina told him.

“Then she's stupid and so is your father. Go on!”

They exchanged a glance and Bobby understood that he had scared them even more. He didn't care. He watched them grab their jump-ropes and go running up the hill. Five minutes later the cab he'd called pulled into the parking area beside the store, its headlights fanning the gravel.

“Huh,” the cabbie said. “I dunno about taking any little kid to Bridgeport after dark, even if you do got the fare.”

“It's okay,” Bobby said, getting in back. If the cabbie
meant to throw him out now, he'd better have a crowbar in the trunk to do it with. “My grandfather will meet me.” But not at The Corner Pocket, Bobby had already decided; he wasn't going to pull up to the place in a Checker. Someone might be watching for him. “At the Wo Fat Noodle Company. That's on Narragansett Avenue.” The Corner Pocket was also on Narragansett. He hadn't remembered the street-name but had found it easily enough in the Yellow Pages after calling the cab.

The driver had started to back out into the street. Now he paused again. “Nasty Gansett Street? Christ, that's no part of town for a kid. Not even in broad daylight.”

“My grandfather's meeting me,” Bobby repeated. “He said to tip you half a rock. You know, fifty cents.”

For a moment the cabbie teetered. Bobby tried to think of some other way to persuade him and couldn't think of a thing. Then the cabbie sighed, dropped his flag, and got rolling. As they passed his building, Bobby looked to see if there were any lights on in their apartment. There weren't, not yet. He sat back and waited for Harwich to drop behind them.

•   •   •

The cabbie's name was Roy DeLois, it was on his taxi-meter. He didn't say a word on the ride to Bridgeport. He was sad because he'd had to take Pete to the vet and have him put down. Pete had been fourteen. That was old for a Collie. He had been Roy DeLois's only real friend.
Go on, big boy, eat up, it's on me
, Roy DeLois would say when he fed Pete. He said the same thing every night. Roy DeLois was divorced. Sometimes he went to a stripper club in Hartford. Bobby could see ghost-images of the dancers, most of whom wore feathers
and long white gloves. The image of Pete was sharper. Roy DeLois had been okay coming back from the vet's, but when he saw Pete's empty dish in the pantry at home, he had broken down crying.

They passed The William Penn Grille. Bright light streamed from every window and the street was lined with cars on both sides for three blocks, but Bobby saw no crazy DeSotos or other cars that felt like thinly disguised living creatures. The backs of his eyes didn't itch; there were no black threads.

The cab crossed the canal bridge and then they were down there. Loud Spanish-sounding music played from apartment houses with fire escapes zigzagging up the sides like iron lightning. Clusters of young men with gleaming combed-back hair stood on some streetcorners; clusters of laughing girls stood on others. When the Checker stopped at a red light, a brown-skinned man sauntered over, hips seeming to roll like oil in gabardine slacks that hung below the waistband of his bright white underwear shorts, and offered to wash the cabbie's windshield with a filthy rag he held. Roy DeLois shook his head curtly and squirted away the instant the light changed.

“Goddam spics,” he said. “They should be barred from the country. Ain't we got enough niggers of our own?”

Narragansett Street looked different at night—slightly scarier, slightly more fabulous as well. Locksmiths . . . check-cashing services . . . a couple of bars spilling out laughter and jukebox music and guys with beer bottles in their hands . . . 
ROD'S GUNS
 . . . and yes, just beyond Rod's and next to the shop selling
SPECIAL SOUVENIRS
, the
WO FAT NOODLE CO.
From here it
couldn't be more than four blocks to The Corner Pocket. It was only eight o'clock. Bobby was in plenty of time.

When Roy DeLois pulled up to the curb, there was eighty cents on his meter. Add in a fifty-cent tip and you were talking about a big hole in the old Bike Fund, but Bobby didn't care. He was never going to make a big deal out of money the way
she
did. If he could warn Ted before the low men could grab him, Bobby would be content to walk forever.

“I don't like leaving you off here,” Roy DeLois said. “Where's your grandpa?”

“Oh, he'll be right along,” Bobby said, striving for a cheerful tone and almost making it. It was really amazing what you could do when your back was against the wall.

He held out the money. For a moment Roy DeLois hesitated instead of taking the dough; thought about driving him back to Spicer's, but
if the kid's not telling the truth about his grandpa what's he doing down here?
Roy DeLois thought.
He's too young to want to get laid
.

I'm fine
, Bobby sent back . . . and yes, he thought he could do that, too—a little, anyway.
Go on, stop worrying, I'm fine
.

Roy DeLois finally took the crumpled dollar and the trio of dimes. “This is really too much,” he said.

“My grandpa told me to never be stingy like some people are,” Bobby said, getting out of the cab. “Maybe you ought to get a new dog. You know, a puppy.”

Roy DeLois was maybe fifty, but surprise made him look much younger. “How  . . .”

Then Bobby heard him decide he didn't care how.
Roy DeLois put his cab in gear and drove away, leaving Bobby in front of the Wo Fat Noodle Company.

He stood there until the cab's taillights disappeared, then began walking slowly in the direction of The Corner Pocket, pausing long enough to look through the dusty window of
SPECIAL SOUVENIRS.
The bamboo blind was up but the only special souvenir on display was a ceramic ashtray in the shape of a toilet. There was a groove for a cigarette in the seat.
PARK YOUR BUTT
was written on the tank. Bobby considered this quite witty but not much of a window display; he had sort of been hoping for items of a sexual nature. Especially now that the sun had gone down.

He walked on, past
B'PORT PRINTING
and
SHOES REPAIRED WHILE U WAIT
and
SNAPPY KARDS FOR ALL OKASIONS.
Up ahead was another bar, more young men on the corner, and the sound of The Cadillacs:
Brrrrr, black slacks, make ya cool, Daddy-O, when ya put em on you're a-rarin to go
. Bobby crossed the street, trotting with his shoulders hunched, his head down, and his hands in his pockets.

Across from the bar was an out-of-business restaurant with a tattered awning still overhanging its soaped windows. Bobby slipped into its shadow and kept going, shrinking back once when someone shouted and a bottle shattered. When he reached the next corner he re-crossed Nasty Gansett Street on the diagonal, getting back to the side The Corner Pocket was on.

As he went, he tried to tune his mind outward and pick up some sense of Ted, but there was nothing. Bobby wasn't all that surprised. If
he
had been Ted, he would have gone someplace like the Bridgeport Public
Library where he could hang around without being noticed. Maybe after the library closed he'd get a bite to eat, kill a little more time that way. Eventually he'd call another cab and come to collect his money. Bobby didn't think he was anywhere close yet, but he kept listening for him. He was listening so hard that he walked into a guy without even seeing him.

“Hey,
cabrón!
” the guy said—laughing, but not in a nice way. Hands grabbed Bobby's shoulders and held him. “Where was you think you goin,
putino?
”

Bobby looked up and saw four young guys, what his mom would have called corner boys, standing in front of a place called
BODEGA.
They were Puerto Ricans, he thought, and all wearing sharp-creased slacks. Black boots with pointed toes poked out from beneath their pants cuffs. They were also wearing blue silk jackets with the word
DIABLOS
written on the back. The
I
was a devil's pitchfork. Something seemed familiar about the pitchfork, but Bobby had no time to think about that. He realized with a sinking heart that he had wandered into four members of some gang.

“I'm sorry,” he said in a dry voice. “Really, I . . . 'scuse me.”

He pulled back from the hands holding his shoulders and started around the guy. He made just a single step before one of the others grabbed him. “Where you goin,
tío?
” this one asked. “Where you goin,
tío mío?
”

Bobby pulled free, but the fourth guy pushed him back at the second. The second guy grabbed him again, not so gently this time. It was like being surrounded by Harry and his friends, only worse.

“You got any money,
tío?
” asked the third guy. “Cause this a toll-road, you know.”

They all laughed and moved in closer. Bobby could smell their spicy aftershaves, their hair tonics, his own fear. He couldn't hear their mind-voices, but did he need to? They were probably going to beat him up and steal his money. If he was lucky that was all they'd do . . . but he might not be lucky.

“Little boy,” the fourth guy almost sang. He reached out a hand, gripped the bristles of Bobby's crewcut, and pulled hard enough to make tears well up in Bobby's eyes. “Little
muchacho
, what you got for money, huh? How much of the good old
dinero?
You have something and we going to let you go. You have nothing and we going to bust your balls.”

“Leave him alone, Juan.”

They looked around—Bobby too—and here came a fifth guy, also wearing a Diablos jacket, also wearing slacks with a sharp crease; he had on loafers instead of pointy-toed boots, and Bobby recognized him at once. It was the young man who had been playing the Frontier Patrol game in The Corner Pocket when Ted was making his bet. No wonder that pitchfork shape had looked familiar—it was tattooed on the guy's hand. His jacket had been tied inside-out around his waist (
no club jacket in here
, he had told Bobby), but he wore the sign of the Diablos just the same.

Bobby tried to look into the newcomer's mind and saw only dim shapes. His ability was fading again, as it had on the day Mrs. Gerber took them to Savin Rock; shortly after they left McQuown's stand at the end of the midway, it had been gone. This time the winkle had lasted longer, but it was going now, all right.

“Hey Dee,” said the boy who had pulled Bobby's hair. “We just gonna shake this little guy out a little. Make him pay his way across Diablo turf.”

“Not this one,” Dee said. “I know him. He's my
compadre
.”

“He look like a pansy uptown boy to me,” said the one who had called Bobby
cabrón
and
putino
. “I teach im a little respect.”

“He don't need no lesson from you,” Dee said. “You want one from me, Moso?”

Moso stepped back, frowning, and took a cigarette out of his pocket. One of the others snapped him a light, and Dee drew Bobby a little farther down the street.

“What you doing down here,
amigo?
” he asked, gripping Bobby's shoulder with the tattooed hand. “You stupid to be down here alone and you fuckin
loco
to be down here at
night
alone.”

“I can't help it,” Bobby said. “I have to find the guy I was with yesterday. His name is Ted. He's old and thin and pretty tall. He walks kinda hunched over, like Boris Karloff—you know, the guy in the scary movies?”

“I know Boris Karloff but I don't know no fuckin Ted,” Dee said. “I don't ever see him. Man, you ought to get outta here.”

“I have to go to The Corner Pocket,” Bobby said.

“I was just there,” Dee said. “I didn't see no guy like Boris Karloff.”

“It's still too early. I think he'll be there between nine-thirty and ten. I have to be there when he comes, because there's some men after him. They wear yellow coats and white shoes . . . they drive big
flashy cars . . . one of them's a purple DeSoto, and—”

Dee grabbed him and spun him against the door of a pawnshop so hard that for a moment Bobby thought he had decided to go along with his corner-boy friends after all. Inside the pawnshop an old man with a pair of glasses pushed up on his bald head looked around, annoyed, then back down at the newspaper he was reading.

“The
jefes
in the long yellow coats,” Dee breathed. “I seen those guys. Some of the others seen em, too. You don't want to mess with boys like that,
chico
. Something wrong with those boys. They don't look right. Make the bad boys hang around Mallory's Saloon look like good boys.”

Something in Dee's expression reminded Bobby of Sully-John, and he remembered S-J saying he'd seen a couple of weird guys outside Commonwealth Park. When Bobby asked what was weird about them, Sully said he didn't exactly know. Bobby knew, though. Sully had seen the low men. Even then they had been sniffing around.

“When did you see them?” Bobby asked. “Today?”

“Cat, give me a break,” Dee said. “I ain't been up but two hours, and most of that I been in the bathroom, makin myself pretty for the street. I seen em comin out of The Corner Pocket, a pair of em—day before yesterday, I think. And that place funny lately.” He thought for a moment, then called, “Yo, Juan, get your ass over here.”

The crewcut-puller came trotting over. Dee spoke to him in Spanish. Juan spoke back and Dee responded more briefly, pointing to Bobby. Juan leaned over Bobby, hands on the knees of his sharp pants.

“You seen 'ese guys, huh?”

Bobby nodded.

“One bunch in a big purple DeSoto? One bunch in a Cri'sler? One bunch in an Olds 98?”