For a moment she gave the impression of speechlessness, as if lost somewhere in left field, he thought, and he was on the point of sitting down without waiting for a reply when she finally managed utterance.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I mean…you probably would anyway, wouldn’t you?” He pulled back the chair and sat down, longing to glance at Shank triumphantly. Instead, he smiled at the girl.
“If you’re name isn’t Bernice, what is it?” Joe Milani inquired.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s Anita.”
“Hello, Anita.”
“Hello.”
“Do you live here in the Village, Anita?” He knew that she didn’t but it was as good a question as any.
“No, I’m just visiting.”
“Where do you live?”
“Uptown.”
“Uptown,” he said, “takes in a lot of ground.”
“116th Street between Second and Third.”
“Yeah? Way up in wop Harlem?”
She stiffened.
“What’s the matter?” He put the question with some concern.
“Do you have to use that word?”
“What word?” It was hard to avoid laughing but he made it.
“Wop,” she said softly. “I don’t like that word.”
This time he let himself smile. “I am called Joseph Milani,” he said in perfect Italian. In English he added, “So it is all right if I use the word?”
Anita, by now off-balance, was attempting to say something but she obviously had not the slightest idea of what it should be, so her mouth moved soundlessly. Confidently, he reached out a hand and let the fingertips touch hers.
She neither drew away nor flinched.
He examined her again. He decided her body was exceptionally good, decidedly not a trial to behold, a little on the slender side but starring breasts firm and well-shaped.
Joe considered he had her practically hypnotized. He said a silent prayer of thanks to the pot, flashed her a smile showing his white teeth, and pressed her fingers gently.
“Anita,” he said, “The Palermo is a pleasant place, but it’s too hot and too stuffy and too limited. Let’s make it.”
“Make it?”
“Split,” he said. “Cut out. Leave.”
“Oh.”
“Come on,” he said. He stood up; mesmerized, she stood up, too. He waited while she paid her check. Then she rejoined him, and he took her hand in his. Her hand felt very soft, but he resisted the temptation to give it a gentle squeeze. Leading her out of the coffee-house, he glanced at Shank.
But Shank was in another world, his head lolling back, his eyes veiled, and one hand lying limp on the table before him like a discarded napkin.
Chapter 2
Leon Marsten, whom nobody had called anything but Shank for the last four years, sat up abruptly at four- seventeen P.M. and blinked rapidly. He fumbled for a cigarette and lit it. Laboriously, he dragged smoke into his lungs and held it there. He blew it out slowly in a long, thin column that floated languidly toward the ceiling. When he finished the cigarette, he dropped it and elaborately ground it into the linoleum with the heel of his tennis shoe until it was completely shredded. The ritual completed, he turned and methodically surveyed the coffee shop. Satisfied that nobody was watching him, he stood up and strode out the door onto Bleecker Street.
To hell with The Palermo, he thought—the coffee was on the house for a change.
He walked west on Bleecker, moving quickly but not really in a hurry. At Macdougal Street he turned uptown and walked past coffee-houses and restaurants and gift shops toward Washington Square Park. Once in the park, he paused to drink at the water fountain. A little later, he stopped again to buy an ice cream sucker from one of the Good Humor Men haunting the Square, and resumed his stride as he ate his ice cream.
He halted at an empty park bench near the circle at the foot of Fifth Avenue, and sat down. From the back pocket of his dungarees he pulled a paperback novel. He relaxed on the bench and turned the pages of the book.
Shank was twenty years old. He had been born a little more than twenty years before to Jeff and Lucy Marsten who, not long after the boy’s birth, had mutually agreed to a divorce. Jeff Marsten had then married a girl named Susan Lockridge, the two remaining in El Cajon, California, while Lucy and her son had moved to Berkeley where, in no time at all, Lucy had once again become a bride, this time to a Mr. Bradley Galton. Shortly thereafter, Mr. and Mrs. Galton, son Leon in tow, had pulled up stakes to settle in Los Angeles.
But Leon—Shank—had developed an instant and abiding dislike for the fat and ruddy Bradley Galton. Shank had tried to compensate for his deepening hatred toward his stepfather by intensifying what he had at first felt to be love for his mother; but Shank’s love evidently could not have run too deep, because the fact that his mother had married Bradley had been enough to mock the boy’s desire to feel more affectionate toward her, and the more he had thought about that, the less delight had he felt in her presence. And after she had given birth to a baby girl, Cindy, Shank could feel no affection for his mother at all.
For that matter, Shank had not liked anybody, not until much, much later.
He grew up alone, a quiet, moody boy who went his own way and thought his own thoughts. He was more clever than intelligent, but his grades in school concealed the fact neatly. School was a challenge for him, not to work, but to avoid work and cause trouble. In the beginning he displayed no particular imagination at causing trouble. When he played with other children, in the days when there were still other children who would play with him, he broke their toys or fought with them or beat them up. He was always short and always thin, but his wiry frame and superb coordination won him every fight. On the other hand, it should also be mentioned that he never took on a fight unless he could count on victory.
Growing older, he grew more inventive. All through grammar school, Halloween was a special treat for him, but he never played the game the way it was supposed to be played. The other children in the neighborhood gave homeowners the option of trick-or-treat; Shank dispensed with the treats and soaped windows. That was the first year. The second year he observed Halloween he realized that playing the trick did not have to rule out the treat. He collected a huge bagful of candy that year. He also broke fifteen windows and slashed two tires with a paring knife he stole from the kitchen.
After that he habitually carried the paring knife in an improvised sheath. When he was fourteen he threw the paring knife into a sewer—he had purchased a switchblade, a well-made stiletto whose six-inch blade of keenly honed steel sprang instantly into position at the touch of the proper button.
Shank could not seem to stay out of trouble, and his stepfather, Bradley Galton, was constantly fishing him out. Shank committed shoplifting, vandalism, smoking in school—anything minor or major. After the boy’s second arrest for stealing, from which he was released once again into Bradley Galton’s custody, the judge recommended psychiatric treatment.
Bradley Galton thought that an excellent idea. So did Lucy. A psychiatrist was consulted and an appointment set up for Shank.
Shank ridiculed the whole idea. He never kept the appointment.
A month before his sixteenth birthday Shank met the first people he found he could like. There were about twenty of them, slum kids, members of a gang called the Royal Ramblers. And they liked Shank. They provided him with his name, a name he could get a lot more high on than Leon. They named him Shank because of the knife he always carried and the way he dug it. After the Royal Ramblers gave him the name, he refused to answer to Leon.
