“I’m hip! Wail, baby!”
At which comment Cozenage’s eyebrows, like a pair of startled caterpillars, squirmed upwards. “Oh, pansies, eh? Queers, huh! We got enough a them preverts walking the streets down here without you fags from outta town coming in to start trouble, pinchin’ sailors on shore leave, and like that.”
Suddenly beset by a tidal wave in a YMCA swimming pool, Red Fred felt a frantic leap in his bosom. “Oh, no, no indeed no, Captain, these gentlemen aren’t—”
“Enough! Enough!” cried the good Captain. “I’ve heard sufficient out of the lot of you. Ottolenghi, let’s take ‘em down for questioning.”
He mumbled vaguely about
Bit Patsy (his life flashing by at 16 mm…and not worth living a second time) leaped over the small retaining wall between the lead car and the engine, shoved Red Fred aside and floored the accelerator of the still-running machine. The snailery careened forward, throwing Cozenage to the sidewalk.
Ottolenghi ranted. Second Corinthians.
Red Fred shrieked.
Cozenage cursed, in meter.
Wallace “Gefilte” Fish fainted.
The Kerry Pig began to cry.
And like thieves in the night, the Fearful Four burst out into the open, streaking for uptown, and the anonymity of TWA flight 614 to Orly Airport.
Now if this were some vehicle of fiction, rather than a sober chronicling of real-life people in real-life situations, Captain Cozenage would have leaped to his feet, streaked down MacDougal to the police callbox on the corner of Minetta Lane—and thrown home an alarm that would have instantly set patrol car radios crackling with APBs for Big Patsy, his accomplices, and semi-innocent Red Fred. But, since no such melodramatic incidents are involved in day-to-day routine police investigatory work, Patrolman Ottolenghi stooped and helped his superior to his feet, assisted him in brushing off his suit, aided in the rather awkward re-adjustment of Captain Cozenage’s holster harness, and nodded understandingly, as the good Captain pouted:
“That’s a helluva way to treat an officer of the law.”
So while Red Fred and his group were hysterically splitting the scene, Captain Cozenage and his staff turned their attentions to rumors of a high-dice game going on among a pre-puberty peer-group in the tool shed of a private quay off the foot of Christopher Street.
Let’s face it…that is the way the old cop flops.
Big Patsy, sweating copiously, and not from the sun (that Stone that Puts the Stars to Flight), either: Big Patsy, we say, observing that there appeared to be not only no pursuit but no indication of public interest in the caterpillar’s rapid transit from
At which juncture he found his intention of losing the caravan in the first cul-de-sac and bespeaking a mechanical clarence, or taxi-cab, for Kennedy International, frustrated by the unforeseen presence of a teeming mob of citizens; all of whom greeted his arrival with loud huzzahs of joy.
“Oh, goody, the answering service
Red Fred groggily clung to the controls. Big Patsy considered swift flight, but the
“Where to?” Fred demanded groggilyer.
The question was answered by hundreds of determined holders of the elective franchise as if by one: “To City Hall!”
“
“Any minute now, any goddam minute now,” Big Patsy cried, “Groucho, Harpo and Chico will come through chasing a turkey with croquet mallets. An prob’ly Zeppo and Gummo, too,” he added, esoterically.
“WHERE TO, GANG!” shouted one of the Seekers of Justice and Retribution, harkening for the expected answer.
“CITY HALL! CITY HALL!” it came thundering back from hundreds of sweaty faces.
“City
“City Hall,” Red Fred replied resignedly, shrugging his shoulders.
“And not to meet Grover Whalen, either,” he added, mixed emotions melding mucously in his voice. He headed crosstown with the expression of one who not only has his hand on the throttle, but expects momentarily to be a-scalded to death by steam. As if in a reverie, or waking dream, he automatically drove his train of cars along its familiar route. The perfervid shouts and groans of the passengers fell but faintly on his inner ears. It he failed to aid Big Patsy, Wallace “Gefilte” Fish, and The Kerry Pig in making good their escape from the Constabulary, the three would beyond doubt find an occasion to tread and trample him into the consistency of a creole gumbo, even if they had to break stir to do it. And, on the other hand, if he should be taken up by the gendarmerie in this affair, not only did he stand excellent chance of being stood in the stocks with his ears cropped for violating the Idlers’ and Gamesters’ Accomplices Act III of William and Mary 12 c; but the police—excitable as children, but much stronger —might easily do him a mischief.
The best thing might well be to ditch the whole crowd at the first possibility, make for the Barclay Street Ferry, and head West. He could, after all, just as easily take tourists on guided tours of North Beach, Telegraph Hill, and Fishermen’s Wharf.
The more he thought of this, the more it appealed to him. He hummed a few bars of “Which Side Are You On?” and gave the throttle several more knots.
At which point the Earth opened (or so it seemed) and swallowed him up.
Or down. Amidst the groans and shrieks of the affrighted passengers none was louder than that of The Kerry Pig, who found himself spread all over the progressive matron in harlequins, whose too-tight bermudas under stress and strain had popped seams, gores, and gussets all to Hell and gone. A close second, however, in the Terrified Scream Department was the matron herself, who was not only badly hung-up by the sudden come-down, but did not realize that The Pig was as pure in mind, word, and contemplated deed as the Snowe before the Soote hath Smutch’t it; and feared grievously that he would do
And whilst the lot of them writhed and roared like Fiends in the Pit, a work crew from the office of the Borough President, which had dug clear across Wooster Street a trench worthy of Flanders’ Field, mud and all, but had neglected to barricade it properly, gathered round the rim and shook their fists, threatening the abruptly disembogued with dark deeds if they did not instantly quit the excavation and cease interfering with the work. “Dig we must!” one of the drudge roustabouts chittered, half in frenzy, half by rote. At first the language of the navvies was sulphurous in the extreme, but on observing that the fosse contained numerous women, none of whom were old, and all of whom were distressed, they became gallantly solicitous and reached down large hairy hands to help the ladies out.
The men were allowed to emerge as best they might.
Red Fred surveyed, aghast, the splintered wreckage of his equipage.
And, having seen it all from her place across the street, Aunt Annie De Kalb, a wee wisp of a woman, but with the tensile strength of beryllium steel, hurried across with band-aids, germicides, words of comfort, and buckets of hot nourishing lentil soup. In this mission of mercy she was ably assisted by her barmaids, Ruby and
