The Cross of Gold Affair - Davies Fredric - Страница 22

With no more than a nod between them, Charlie and Andy had Napoleon on his feet, with both arms whipped up behind him and both hands bent uncomfortably in a good imitation of a police come-along. If he pulled away, one or both wrists would probably snap with some small attendant pain. He decided his body had suffered enough tonight, and he could content himself with dragging in great volumes of air to fill his aching lungs. Let them lead on, since obviously they had no connection with Thrush. Even a pair of rough-and-tumble experts were better company than Porpoise and his crew of funhouse crazy thugs.

He stumbled almost unnoticeably as they prodded him, firmly held, across the beach. His breathing and pulse slowed down, and the stumbling vanished. All his control was coming back to maximum, despite the cold and his weakness.

He almost sacrificed a broken wrist in the heart-stopping moment when their goal seemed to be the Thrush amusement pier. But before he fully tensed to spring free, a

flicker of fire showed beneath the pier’s base, and he realized his beach-bum friends were heading for a camp directly underneath Porpoise’s hideout.

“Lovely place for a beach fire,” he said idly. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll bum down the pier?”

“No use for the pier,” replied Andy, amid clankings from his clothes that continued to arouse Napoleon’s curiosity. “The old matzoh-brain who owns it gets no time of day from us. We bum him down, he’ll just build another one.”

“We just hang around, and sneak into the funhouse sometimes. Summers, the barker can’t keep track who goes in, so we spend more time in than out. If we break something, or if we need to borrow the day’s receipts, he breaks out in green splotches, but he never yells for the fuzz.” Charlie shifted his grip on Napoleon for security as they got under the pier, and continued. “There’s a live-in herd of muscle up there, they come on like a riot squad when we make enough trouble. So don’t talk too loud-you wouldn’t like them either.”

A girl’s voice cut in on them: “Hey, a visitor!” They stopped just before the fire, and Napoleon saw the girl, sitting across the flames from him, red and yellow light picking out fair skin, coal-black hair, and a garland of flowers on her head from ear around to ear. “What have you got there, Andy? Put him down so we can talk.”

His arms free, Napoleon moved as close to the fire as he could. He brushed himself off, making each motion do double duty, cleaning the sand from him and warming his numbed body. The bleeding had stopped during his swim, but both hands were still embedded with splinters and sand, and as he chafed them warm again he realized how much damage had been done.

A covert glance at the young lady’s grin reminded him that he was still wearing his trousers wrapped around one arm. She watched him straighten them out and force his feet down each leg. She watched him button them, and curse when the zipper fouled in soft cloth. She sat grinning through his whole performance, until he finally shook all over once, and stood up.

“Your boxer shorts are flower-patterned,” she said.

“My boxer shorts regret being flower-patterned,” said Napoleon in his best Old World courtly manner. “They were not consulted before being brought here.”

“Hey, I wasn’t complaining. I think you’ve got the grooviest underpants this side of the East River.” She reached up with both hands and pushed her hair back over her shoulders, and he watched. He was pleased with her broad forehead and narrow chin, but he wished he was sure what the happy smile meant. s

“You know, you beat all,” she said. “If that’s the costume for this winter’s surfers, we’ll just have to close the beach to keep me from going into hysterics.” She rested her head on one fist, elbow on knee, and both her eyes sparkled with laughter. Napoleon looked down at himself, and at them. They were all in the same somber levis, the remains of denim jackets, and flowers. But they looked ready for high society compared to him.

The moebius twisting he’d had to use to escape from Porpoise had ripped his pants legs, and salt water had ruined the rest of a new flannel suit. His shoes looked like chewed cardboard, and it was anybody’s guess what his hair was like.

“Well,” he said, “the party got sort of rough on my yacht. People drinking and getting sort of physical, you know. When the whole thing got into one big hot pile of bodies, I must have had too much and just jumped overboard.”

“Sure,” said Charlie calmly. “You swam ashore from a boat we didn’t see, or else it’s running sadly amiss in the legal lights department. You must have come in from outside the three-mile limit for us not to see it.” He picked his teeth with a daisy stem, and moved his eyes up and down Napoleon. “Try again. Only this time let’s start with a jump off the pier. I think we’ll buy a try at suicide, if you throw in the reason your clothes are all slashed.”

Napoleon looked at the girl, who’d stopped laughing at him. “You won’t buy suicide, will you?”

“Nope. Look at him, you two. He’s trying to figure some way away from here right now, and every time we mention the pier, he flinches. Looks to me like he’s got trouble with the boys upstairs.”

Napoleon looked around at two boys in their early twenties, and a girl who might have been eighteen, but no more. “I’m not off a boat, and I didn’t attempt suicide,” he said, “but I did come from the pier. If they grab me again, they probably won’t let me go in nearly this good a condition. I need to get as far from here as possible, preferably back to the city. I need clothes, food and first aid, and they’re all back in Manhattan for me.”

She stood up and walked around the fire, which allowed him to turn and warm his backside. With his teeth no longer chattering, he could concentrate on the strange pretty girl, with her dark hair hanging free, decked with flowers, tiny bells and clay jewelry, before an open fire on the sand. Night winds moved under the pier to push hair from her face and make tinglings among her bells, building a picture of witchery that made him shiver.

“We’ll take you,” she said.

“You off your nut?” said Andy. “If the hired apes upstairs catch us with him, well all take a real bad trip!

“Besides,” said Charlie, “who wants to leave the fire? We’ve been out on the beach since sundown, and it’s anything but summer. Come off it, Mai-let him go, but don’t mix us in.”

She laughed, and looked right at Napoleon. Her foot kicked twice, and the fire was nearly smothered with heavy sand. “There’s no action out there yet, or you ought to have seen it. When they decide to go looking for him, they’ll charge out yelling and flashing lights, like when we steal something. You know there isn’t one brain to share around for all of them, except Arnold, and he usually has to stay back to hold Fatty’s hand. Anytime I can’t take a herd of camels through one of their search parties, I’ll throw away my retrievable subway token.” She stopped in the night to chuckle right in Napoleon’s face.

“Besides, he’s got flowers on his shorts, so he’s cool. He doesn’t look like much all cut up and half-drowned, but he comes on right; he doesn’t give an inch. Anybody who swings can’t be all bad.”

And like that, the four of them were heading across the sand, with Napoleon dose to the girl, flanked by her mascots.

Keeping his voice down, he asked her, “What’s Mai short for?”

“It’s kind of Greek,” she said. “My full name is Phroso Popia Boulis, but that was good for when I lived at home. Not now.” With one hand she indicated the direction of Brooklyn and brushed her hair back over one shoulder in a single wide sweep, continuing to drive a long, fast pace over the sand. “I was raised near 50th Street, good Greek Orthodox family. When things started seeming a little silly, I split. And if you don’t get married or hit college at that age, you end up a part of some gang. For a couple months I worked in a store, and ran with a bunch of ragged-ass kids, mostly Greek and Puerto Rican.” As they hurdled the boardwalk at a low point it occurred to Napoleon that this was a long explanation for such a short name. He hadn’t time to say anything to her, though, because as all four of them came up onto the boardwalk two Thrushes appeared from shadows and the furtive beach ramble turned into a free-for-all.