working lanes, preparing to close off the block.
Shayne crossed to the west side of Sixth as the Sanitation truck came into view, a lumbering monster painted bright yellow, with the Department of Sanitation insignia on the door and over the high cab. Traffic was moving smoothly. The sidewalks were jammed with garment workers on lunch hour. Billy worked his rack through the knots of gossipers on the sunny corner. He reached the utility post while the garbage truck was between Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth.
The lights were synchronized so that a theoretical single car, moving at a steady thirty-three miles an hour, could drive from one end of the island to the other, meeting nothing but green lights all the way. In real life, of course, nothing is so simple. Cars move in packs. Midday traffic jams in this district were common. Billy reached up to the one-way arrow on the lamp post and waited. The truck passed Szigetti. Billy pressed the button.
Surprised, for he expected a few more blocks on the green, the driver came down on his brakes and stopped with his front wheels over the pedestrian line.
The big trailer near the Broadway end of the short block slanted across the street. It continued to maneuver forward and back, not leaving enough space for anything to get by. The cars on the Sixth Avenue side of the blockade began to move on the green.
Shayne stepped off the curb as Irene ran screaming along the opposite sidewalk, with Brownie right behind her. In rehearsals they had timed this entire segment of the action at under thirty seconds. The Sanitation truck had two sets of handgrips on the tailgate, one on each side of the conveyor belt which carried trash and garbage to the powerful chopper which chewed it up before letting it drop into the main bin. Two cops were clinging to the handgrips, their heads turned toward the sidewalk.
The moment Shayne stepped off the curb, Billy rolled the dress rack along the sidewalk to Szigetti. Turning on his heel, he started back up Twenty-seventh.
Irene screamed, “No! Don’t! Let me alone, damn you!”
These were not the lines she had rehearsed; she believed in the spontaneous school of acting. There was no doubt, Shayne thought, that to an onlooker her terror and revulsion were real. Brownie overtook her and yanked her around. He gave her a slap that sent her staggering back against a parked car. She caromed off and came back with her fingers raised and curled.
“Don’t do that again, Sambo!” she warned. “Your white-pussy days are over. Get back uptown where you belong, black boy!”
Brownie seized her long black hair. “Where you been these last two nights? You cheated on me for the last time, you ofay bitch!”
He worked up a mouthful of spit and released it in her face. A sound came from the crowd. She slowly wiped the spit out of her eyes while Brownie collected another mouthful.
One of the cops jumped down and shouted to the driver, “Wait here!” After an instant’s hesitation the second cop joined him, feeling for his nightstick.
Still holding Irene’s hair in his fist, Brownie backed her across the sidewalk, his face only a few inches from hers. The sudden violence had emptied a patch of sidewalk around them.
“Who’s going to make me go?” he yelled. “Not you, Whitey! Not by yourself! Better bring a few friends!”
Whirling her by the hair, he slammed her against the window of a shoe-repair shop. She tried to knee him in the groin. Both cops started across the sidewalk, their nightsticks half-raised.
Shayne reached the cab. He wrenched the door open and snapped, “Move over. Street’s blocked up ahead.”
The driver took in Shayne’s uniform and badge in a glance and began to move. His companion was craning out the other window.
“Big colored fellow beating up on a white girl!” he cried excitedly.
Szigetti slid the dress rack into the open space between the cops and the quarreling lovers. He pushed hard. They batted foolishly at the swinging dresses, as Shayne had done two nights before in the house on Staten Island. While they were tied up, Szigetti reached through the dresses and squirted tear gas into their eyes from a pocket dispenser.
Irene and Brownie had already separated and disappeared.
Szigetti screamed, “Where’d that black bo go? He threw acid at them! Come on!”
He raced into a nearby vestibule, but no one else in the crowd wanted to join him in the pursuit of a large, dangerous Negro who had already managed to disable two cops. The cops were clawing at their eyes.
Above in the truck’s high cab, Shayne jammed the stick into low and was off with a roar, swinging the wrong way into Twenty-seventh. Both lanes ahead were empty. So far Michele’s scheme was working well.
“One-way street!” the regular driver cried.
“Don’t I know it,” Shayne said grimly, chewing on his cigar. “Some jokers are trying to hijack us. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
The driver Shayne had displaced was a small, swarthy man, and like Shayne he had a cigar between his teeth. He hadn’t been told what cargo he was carrying. All he knew was that the cartons and canvas bags had been loaded with care, being checked off one by one on a master list as it was put in the truck. Instead of using the rear hatchway and the conveyor belt, they had been loaded through the side hatch, so they could be rechecked at the incinerator. And then he had been given a two-cop escort, another indication that something unusual was happening.
After one look at Shayne, he peered worriedly ahead at the trailer truck. It inched forward, leaving just enough room for a scooter or a Volkswagen to squeeze past.
Shayne slowed. Billy burst from between two parked cars and leaped onto the foothold on the right of the cab. Clinging to the door handle he yelled, “In there! Take a right! A right! For Christ’s sake give her some gas!”
Shayne swung the wheel hard. The big truck rocked up over the curb. At the sight of the wooden police barrier Shayne hit the brakes. Billy screamed and he bulled ahead. The barrier went over and was crushed beneath the front wheels.
He plunged into the alleyway he and Michele had reconnoitered the day before. Behind the building he veered sharply into the unloading space. Billy threw the door open on his side, waving a gun.
“Out!” he shouted. “You guys out!”
The Sanitation worker nearest him was slow to move. Billy jabbed him in the ribs.
“I said move!”
The regular driver looked at Shayne, his black eyes liquid with terror.
Shayne said warily, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve got kids. Let’s let somebody else be a hero.”
“All of you!” Billy said, his voice high.
The two Sanitation workers slid past Billy onto the loading platform. Shayne followed, his hands raised.
“Lie down,” Billy snapped.
The two men fell obediently to their knees. Billy whipped out handcuffs. He had four pairs, two of which he tossed to Shayne.
“Hands behind you,” he told the Sanitation men.
So far Shayne had been following Michele’s schedule. Now for the first time he introduced one of the variations he had worked out with Power. A burly plainclothes detective, garbed as a janitor, came out of the loft building, carrying a mop and a ten-quart pail filled with dirty water. Billy was stooping over the driver, putting the handcuffs on his ankles. He looked around as the janitor swung the pail, knocking him sprawling. The detective then hit him with the mop and dived for his gun hand. Billy managed to free the gun, but the detective, working with speed and precision, brought Billy’s arm down sharply across the edge of the loading platform. The gun dropped to the blacktop below.
Shayne hit the detective a token blow, and the detective staggered backward, sitting down hard. Billy wrenched himself up and fell on him.
“Go on!” Billy cried over his shoulder at Shayne. “Go!”
The detective was flopping around, pretending to be trying to free himself. Shayne hesitated.
Billy shouted again and Shayne leaped into the cab. He let the truck’s acceleration slam the door for him. He headed for the dividing wall on the property line, and hit it squarely. Sure enough, it went down with a clang.
Through another delivery alley, almost a continuation of the one he had just left, he saw Twenty-eighth
