Little Boy Blue (17 page)

Morning found him under the boardwalk of the
beach near the Venice Amusement Pier. He’d trudged for three hours, first
following a westward railway right-of-way, then keeping as much to alleys as
possible. When he was forced onto regular streets he sprang into bushes or
whatever cranny was available the instant headlights appeared. Every police
officer would stop to question a child wandering the city at three a.m.,
especially when there was a call about the stolen car. A couple of times he
detoured around gas stations or passed open cafes, their windows misted from
the warmth within. He was afraid to enter because most adults would be as
curious as a
policeman
. So he walked until he reached
the beach, the sea glimmering in the moonlight a hundred yards away, and then curled
into a niche to wait, shivering, for dawn, wishing that he’d never gotten
into the car with Scabs, sad and angry at having done so. But he would never
give up. He would postpone the consequences of his behavior as long as
possible.

When the sun sparkled on the sea, bright but
morning-cool, he came out and stretched his cramped muscles.

The hour was early, and the few persons on
the boardwalk were elderly and poor. Later it would fill up with
servicemen
, sun- worshippers, and amusement pier patrons, but
now it was those who lived nearby, mostly retirees who had come west to die in
the sun and who lived on in its warmth. For nearly three decades from the turn
of the century, the Venice area had been a fashionable playground at the sea.
The planners had even dug canals nearby to mime the Italian city it was named
after, and on the banks were cottages used as vacation homes. But decay and
disfavor came together as other parts of the coast were developed, and the
canals became weed-clogged ditches breeding mosquitoes, and the hotels were
turned into third-rate apartments. The war brought a temporary resurgence
to the amusement pier and boardwalk, but a block away the children of the poor
played in alleys and on a streetcar right-of-way.

Alex found a group of children near his age
playing in an overgrown vacant lot. Divided into armies, they split the
territory and lined up on the borders, facing each other at thirty feet. They
tore up clods of packed earth with tall clumps of grass. The grass served as a
stabilizer and gave visual grace to the hand-launched missiles. Being hit put
the target out of the game. It was simple, wild fun to the children. Alex
watched for a while, and when a boy quit, Alex offered to take his place to
make the sides even.

For the next hour he forgot that he was an
escapee from a mental institution and an orphan. He even forgot that he’d
shot a man.

When two brothers and a sister had to leave
the vacant lot, the contest ended. Some drifted off, but a handful remained,
and Alex was no longer an outsider. They were curious, and when he mentioned he
was hungry, a tow-headed girl of ten who lived on the block went home to return
with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a Thermos of milk.

The group was down to the girl, Janey, and
the two eleven-year- old boys, Billy Bob and Rusty, who were cousins and lived
in the same apartment building. They went to the amusement pier, where one
boy’s mother worked the fun-house ticket booth. She gave Billy Bob,
called “B.B.,” thirty-five cents for the matinee at one of the
three movie theaters on the boardwalk. All three boys wanted to see a double
feature of war movies; next to Warner
Brothers
gangster
movies Alex liked these best. When they got to the ticket booth he found his
pocket lined with dirt instead of coins; the let down and frustration brought
instant tears of anger. He wanted to go and felt responsible because he’d
promised Rusty. He said he would steal what they needed. He recalled Red Barzo
talking about where people hid things in their homes and decided to commit a
burglary. None of them protested, though the girl seemed to lag a little while
they walked away from the neighborhood of poor apartments into one of
middle-class homes, two- and three-bedroom ranch-styles, just old enough for
the landscaping—bushes and trees—to feel comfortable embracing
the structures.

“Are you really goin’ to do
it?” Janey asked when they began ringing doorbells. When someone opened
the door, Alex solicited work mowing the lawn, but not right now; he would come
back with his tools on a weekday afternoon around twilight. He actually got two
customers and dutifully borrowed a pencil from them to write down the address.
This was despite the two dollars and fifty cents he asked for, five times the
rate for boys then cutting lawns.

He was ringing doorbells to find one that
didn’t answer. On the fourth try his noise brought only silence at a
middle-class version of a hacienda: a recessed doorway of dark wood,
wrought-iron bars on the windows, red tile on the roof, the walls a facsimile
of adobe. It had a riot of shrubs and trees as did the house next door, which
helped to hide the yard and rear windows from neighbors. He led his band boldly
down the driveway to the back yard, a postage- stamp-size place ninety-five percent
occupied by a kidney-shaped swimming pool.

“Boy, this must be super-rich people
here,” B.B. said, dipping a dirty bare foot into the immaculate water.

Alex
grunted,
his
stomach now in knots. He would have walked away if he’d been alone. That
was impossible with the eyes of his peers upon him. He quickly found what Red
had told him to look for, the small bathroom window that most people leave
unlatched and a little open to invite the fresh air inside. Using a borrowed
pocket knife, he cut a hand-size hole in the screen, unhooked it and lifted the
window enough to climb in. Once within, now really hidden, much of his tension
deflated. He made one circuit of the house on cat’s feet, opening every
door before going to the back porch and letting his gang inside. They, too,
were nervous until safely inside; then bravado came, along with destructive
urges and rebellion against the adult-prescribed neatness. Alex, however, left
them to their own devices and went to the bedroom, the place where most
valuables were hidden. He was looking for cash and gasoline- ration stamps;
even an “A” stamp was worth a dollar. He could sell those, but
jewelry wasn’t worth anything to him. Even at his age he understood that
he couldn’t even be seen with expensive jewelry without being grabbed.
Yet the plain, stainless-steel watch he immediately found in a top dresser
drawer wouldn’t cause trouble. He’d never heard of
“Rolex.” He looked through the pockets of hanging clothes and found
a small cluster of one-dollar bills and coins, the change from a purchase, in a
pants pocket. He found a flower vase on the nightstand half-full of coins,
about ten dollars’ worth. He already felt good; the score was already
successful; they could go to movies for a week…

The bedroom had no more money, not under the
mattress or in boxes on back shelves in the closet, or under the paper lining
the drawers.

In another bedroom he found an envelope ready
to be mailed to a finance company; it had a thirty-three-dollar car payment. He
also found two books of gas-ration stamps, one an “A” book and the
other a “C,” which meant several times as much gas and would bring
three times the price.

While searching these back rooms he was
vaguely conscious of the noise the others were making, mostly laughing and
talking, the words indecipherable. It irritated him; one of them should be
watching out the front window for the owners to drive in. He hadn’t
thought of it before, but after this he’d never forget.

Having taken what he wanted, he now
half-humorously planned to filch a snack from the refrigerator. Then he saw the
raw egg splattered on the buffet cabinet mirror, running down it in
obscene yellow and white. Sudden anger pumped blood into his cheeks and head.
He’d already felt misgivings about stealing from a home, as compared to a
store or business, where he had no qualms. With the flush still rising and
first thoughts forming, he heard the crash of breaking glass from the kitchen,
followed by laughter.

B.B. and Rusty had demolished the kitchen,
coating the walls with all the soft food and vegetables they could find. Now
they were breaking dishes.

“Stop that!” Alex yelled, his
young voice falsetto, making him blush in embarrassment. The boys froze
instantly but didn’t understand his attitude. He looked around the mangled
room and felt sorry for the people who lived here. For a moment he thought of
cleaning it up, but that was ridiculous. But the frustration of the situation
made his eyes sting.

“Where’s the girl…
Janey?”

“She got scared and went home.”

Alex’s hunger had gone, and he was
suddenly verging on panic as he imagined hearing a car motor in the driveway.
That was a false alarm, but it put the others on edge, too. They got out
quickly and broke into a wild run when they reached the alley behind the
property. Alex had remembered the man on the beach coming home to his store.