Nightmare in New York

believe that we're trying to help the guy.'

'Well you've got her all scared, that's why,' Gambella purred. 'Can't blame her, poor little thing, you guys playing with her titties and all that. What's your name, honey? Where do you live?'

A lengthy silence fell, then Tommy sighed and said, 'It's been this way for two hours, Mr. Gambella. We talk to her but she doesn't talk to us. I think she's a dummy.'

'And you a doctor with psychology?' the Caposaid. 'I thought you knew how to handle people, Tommy.'

The doctor smiled and spread his hands. 'Psychology doesn't work too well on idiot mentalities,' he explained.

'Aw, don't call her no idiot,' Gambella said quietly. Somehow, in Tommy Doctor's presence he always felt compelled to talk just as streety as possible. He couldn't figure it — maybe he had to prove something to that snotty shit.

He hauled off suddenly and landed a flat-handed haymaker against the side of the cute kid's face. It sounded like a shot and the blow propelled her over against him where she started crying with jerky, gasping little sounds. He roughly hauled her upright and held her face close to speak quietly into it.

'She's not no idiot, she's just a mixed up kid. Isn't that right, honey?'

The girl blubbered, 'Please… Leave me alone… I can't tell you anything. I don't knowanything. I was just sounding off to sound big. You know.'

'That's the most she's said in two hours,' Tommy Doctor commented.

'Shut up, Tommy. Let me do the talking. Listen, honey, you're making me feel real unfriendly.'

The girl's lips quivered and she flared. 'You're not fooling me. And stop talking to me like I'm a child.'

'Oh, she ain't no child,' Gambella said in mock surprise. 'Those little bitty titties and she ain't no child. Maybe she's just a stunted slut.'

Evie's lips compressed and she closed her eyes as though to shut everything out. 'Better that than what you are,' she muttered.

'And what am I?' Gambella shouted. 'What am I, huh?'

She flinched away from the sudden ferocity of tone, but kept her eyes and mouth closed.

Gambella sighed loudly and turned his gaze toward the young man in the front seat. 'Where'd you pick up on this little dolly?' he asked quietly.

'She came running into Mike's about eleven o'clock. Mike's rooming with this kid from Columbia, you know that. Since about a month ago. Anyway, she comes running in to see this roommate. The kid isn't there. So she wants Mike to tell her if this kid has been spilling anything about her knowing Bolan. So Mike got in touch with me. All he knows about her is that he's seen her around with those CIG punks and that her name is Evie. And she has given us nothing, but nothing.'

Gambella sighed again, then rolled down his window and called out, 'Angel! Come around to the other side and get in.'

A huge bulk crowded into the rear seat from the far side of the car, muttering profanities and brushing at clusters of snow on his clothing. The girl's eyes flashed open; she took one horrified look at the new arrival and recoiled toward Gambella.

The Capochuckled and commanded his bodyguard, 'Take the little girl on your lap, Angel.'

Angel did so, hauling her onto him with two huge hands which totally spanned her waist. She resisted briefly, gurgling some horrified plea, then she gave up and sat stiffly sobbing, the blonde head wedged against the ceiling of the car.

Gambella said, 'She's going to break her neck, Angel. Cuddle the poor little thing.'

The giant bodyguard did so, dragging her head down by the hair to nestle at his throat.

Gambella squeezed her thigh and said to Tommy Doctor, 'Tell your wheelman we want to go to the weenie house. And don't hurry. Tell the other boys to stay close behind, we don't want to get separated in this weather.'

A moment later the three-car caravan was out of the drive and heading slowly toward a meat-packing plant near the waterfront. Gambella was obviously pleased with the frozen terror of his 'pigeon.' He asked Angel Paleoletti, 'Enjoying yourself, Angel?'

'Sure, boss,' the huge bodyguard replied, showing his Capoa hideous smile.

'Well I don't think the dolly is enjoying herself very much. You should make her feel comfortable, Angel. I think she likes to have her titties felt up. Other places too, I bet.'

Paleoletti guffawed and became busy. The girl went rigid, her eyes became sheer ice and held an unblinking focus on the domelight. The big man began squirming and a moment later announced, 'Hell, boss, this is getting me hot.'

'You'll just have to be patient, Angel,' the Capotold him. 'But I promise you this. You get first jump. The other boys will have to line up for sloppy seconds.' The girl began screaming then, and they let her scream. Her frail lungs were no match for the wind-and-snow wall of silence surrounding that vehicle, and the ride to the waterfront was a slow, deliberate advance into a night of terror which could not have been remotely conceived by unsophisticated young girls such as Evie Clifford.

All three vehicles drove into the refrigerated plant at shortly before 2:00 A.M., and the hysterical girl was dragged kicking and screaming into a large room where sausages were made, begging them to listen to her and assuring one and all that she would tell them anything and everything they wished to know.

But the Kingdom of Evil observed a ritualistic attitude toward enemies of the empire, toward those who befriended such enemies, and especially toward those who could conceivably become future enemies of the empire. In the dogmas of this kingdom, Evie Clifford was all of these.

An image needed to be maintained, a reign of terror needed to be reinforced, an example needed to be made. So they would not listen to their pigeon — fast becoming a turkey — until she had been spread-eagled naked upon a wooden meat table in a refrigerated room, and then they listened, and a pleased Capomade his departure at approximately twenty minutes past two o'clock, when Evie Clifford's living nightmare began in earnest. The animal shrieks of a human being in unimaginable torment persisted through the frozen time of the night and into the unseen dawn, but not one of those sounds penetrated into the ordinary world beyond those walls of the kingdom.

Long before the nightmare had ended for Evie Clifford, His Royal Majesty, Freddie the First, was telling his lady, 'Naw, go on back to sleep, everything's all right. I just went out to see the storm.'

Indeed, everything wasall right with King Freddie. It had been a profitable night, and it would be an even more profitable morrow. It could wait 'til then, everything was falling into place beautifully, and Mack the Bastard would be screaming hislousy turkey-head off before the new day was ended.

The king's lady murmured sleepily and told him, 'At first I thought you were that awful Angel, stealing in here like a ghost.' She turned her back and nuzzled into her pillow and added, 'The very thought fills me with horror.'

Gambella smiled and returned to his bed. Maria, he was thinking, was a bigger dope than any of them. She did not have the merest idea of what real terror was. But a lot of dopes were going to find out what it was. Damn soon, too. Just wait until things got going good into the big thing. Today, New York. Tomorrow, the world. The Caposmiled again, closed his eyes, and went peacefully to sleep.

Across town, a mindless lump of whimpering flesh was periodically screeching out everything it knew, and everything it could never possibly know, and the ears that heard did not even care anymore what was known or not known. Man, it is said, is the only beast that laughs at the misery of others of its own kind. There was laughter amidst those shrieks, and vile jokes, and insane inspirations for new ways to produce new shrieks. And the night of terror that surpasses all nightmares wore on and on. For Evie Clifford, the kingdom had come.