Everybody's Watching Me

it run.

When everything quieted down just right, Carboy leaned on the back of a chair and said, “In case you’re wondering why you’re here, kid, I’m going to tell you.”

“I got my own ideas,” I said.

“Fine. That’s just fine. Let’s check your ideas with mine, okay? Now we hear a lot of things around here. Things like that note you delivered to Renzo and who gave it to you and what Renzo did to you.” He finished his drink and smiled. “Like what you did to Johnny, too. That’s all straight now, isn’t it?”

“So far.”

“Swell. Tell you what I want now. I want to give you a job. How’d you like to make a cool hundred a week, kid?”

“Peanuts.”

Somebody grunted. Carboy smiled again, a little thinner. “The kid’s in the know,” he said. “That’s what I like. Okay, kid. We’ll make it five hundred per for a month. If it don’t run a month you get it anyway. That’s better than having Renzo slap you around, right?”

“Anything’s better than that.” My voice started getting chalky. Carboy held out his hand and said, “Rocco…” Another hand slid a sheaf of bills into his. He counted it out, reached two thousand and tossed it into my lap. “Yours, kid.”

“For what?”

His lips were a narrow gash between his cheekbones. “For a guy named Vetter. The guy who gave you a note. Describe him.”

“Tall,” I said. “Big shoulders. I didn’t see his face. Deep voice that sounded tough. He had on a trench coat and a hat.”

“That’s not enough.”

“A funny way of standing,” I told him. “I saw Sling Herman when I was a kid before the cops got him. He stood like that. Always ready to go for something in his pocket the cops said.”

“You saw more than that, kid.”

The room was too quiet now. They were all hanging on, waiting for the word. They were sitting there without smoking, beady little eyes waiting for the finger to swing until it stopped and I was the one who could stop it.

My throat squeezed out the words. I went back into the night to remember a guy and drag up the little things that would bring him into the light. I said, “I’d know him again. He was a guy to be scared of. When he talks you get a cold feeling and you know what he’s like.” My tongue ran over my lips and I lifted my eyes up to Carboy. “I wouldn’t want to mess with a guy like that. Nobody’s ever going to be tougher.”

“You’ll know him again. You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” I looked around the room at the faces. Any one of them a guy who could say a word and have me dead the next day. “He’s tougher than any of you.”

Carboy grinned and let his tiny white teeth show through. “Nobody’s that tough, kid.”

“He’ll kill me,” I said. “Maybe you too. I don’t like this.”

“You don’t have to like it. You just do it. In a way you’re lucky. I’m paying you cash. If I wanted I could just tell you and you’d do it. You know that?”

I nodded.

“Tonight starts it. From now on you’ll have somebody close by, see? In one pocket you’ll carry a white handkerchief. If you gotta blow, use it. In the other one there’ll be a red wiper. When you see him blow into that.”

“That’s all?”

“Just duck about then, kid,” Phil Carboy said softly, “and maybe you’ll get to spend that two grand. Try to use it for run-out money and you won’t get past the bus station.” He stared into his glass, looked up at Rocco expectantly and held it out for a refill. “Kid, let me tell you something. I’m an old hand in this racket. I can tell what a guy or a dame is like from a block away. You’ve been around. I can tell that. I’m giving you a break because you’re the type who knows the score and will play on the right side. I don’t have to warn you about anything, do I?”

“No. I got the pitch.”

“Any questions?”

“Just one,” I said. “Renzo wants me to finger Vetter too. He isn’t putting out any two grand for it. He just wants it, see? Suppose he catches up with me? What then?”

Carboy shouldn’t’ve hesitated. He shouldn’t have let that momentary look come into his eyes because it told me everything I wanted to know. Renzo was bigger than the whole pack of them and they got the jumps just thinking about it. All by himself he held a fifty-one percent interest and they were moving slowly when they bucked him. The little guy threw down the fresh drink with a quick motion of his hand and brought the smile back again. In that second he had done a lot of thinking and spilled the answer straight out. “We’ll take care of Mark Renzo,” he said. “Rocco, you and Lou take the kid home.”

So I went out to the car and we drove back to the slums again. In the rear the reflections from the headlights of another car showed and the killers in it would be waiting for me to show the red handkerchief Carboy had handed me. I didn’t know them and unless I was on the ball every minute I’d never get to know them. But they’d always be there, shadows that had no substance until the red showed, then the ground would get sticky with an even brighter red and maybe some of it would be mine,

They let me out two blocks away. The other car didn’t show at all and I didn’t look for it. My feet made hollow sounds on the sidewalk, going faster and faster until I was running up the steps of the house and when I was inside I slammed the door and leaned against it, trying hard to stop the pain in my chest.

Three-fifteen, the clock said. It ticked monotonously in the stillness, trailing me upstairs to my room. I eased inside, shut the door and locked-it, standing there in the darkness until my eyes could see things. Outside a truck clashed its gears as it pulled up the hill and off in the distance a horn sounded.

I listened to them; familiar sounds, my face tightening as a not-so-familiar sound echoed behind them. It was a soft thing, a whisper that came at regular intervals in a choked-up way. Then I knew it was a sob coming from the other room and I went back to the hall and knocked on Nick’s door.

His feet hit the floor, stayed there and I could hear his breathing coming hard. “It’s Joe—open up.”

I heard the wheeze his breath made as he let it out. The bed springs creaked, he fell once getting to the door and the bolt snapped back. I looked at the purple blotches on his face and the open cuts over his eyes and grabbed him before he fell again, “Nick! What happened to you?”

“I’m…okay.” He steadied himself on me and I led him back to the bed. “You got…some friends, pal.”

“Cut it out. What happened? Who ran you through? Damn it, who did it?”

Nick managed to show a smile. It wasn’t much and it hurt, but he made it. “You…in pretty big trouble, Joe.”

“Pretty big.”

“I didn’t say nothing. They were here…asking questions. They didn’t…believe what I told them, I guess. They sure laced me.”

“The miserable slobs! You recognize them?”

His smile got sort of twisted and he nodded his head. “Sure, Joe…I know ‘em. The fat one sat in…the car while they did it.” His mouth clamped together hard. “It hurt…brother, it hurt!”

“Look,” I said. “We’re…”

“Nothing doing. I got enough. I don’t want no more. Maybe they figured it’s enough. That Renzo feller…he got hard boys around. See what they did, Joe? One…used a gun on me. You shoulda stood with Gordon, Joe. What the hell got into you to mess with them guys?”

“It wasn’t me, Nick. Something came up. We can square it. I’ll nail that fat slob if it’s the last thing I do.”

“It’ll be the last thing. They gimme a message for you, pal. You’re to stick around, see? You get seen with any other big boys in this town…and that’s all. You know?”

“I know. Renzo told me that himself. He didn’t have to go through you,”

“Joe…”

“Yeah?”