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.The blonde in black came searching for him.Smiling, Joey said to Bughead, “Show you how I feel — you can dance with my girl, Bug.”Mike the barkeep said, “Yeh, we’re all friends here.”Sarge Killigan, the new speakeasy prop, said, “What’s a piece among friends?”Georgie leered drunkenly at both girls and gave them each a hand on their rear-ends.Agnes slapped at him, the blonde laughed and the miscellaneous barflies snorted and smirked their lust.“How about a dance,” the blonde asked Bughead.“Nah,” the Bug said, but she danced up to him, pressed against him, and with a helping shove from the barflies, the Bug was launched.Joey danced off with the Bug’s girl.“How’s tricks?” he asked her.“No complaints from Buffalo.”He’d seen her around; she’d never interested him.But tonight, keyed-up with thoughts of killing the Bug, she seemed different, this woman of his enemy.She was tall, her face level with his own, smooth-cheeked, white of brow, her eyebrows jet black, a face suddenly as exciting to him as a woman’s exposed breast; a third breast with the bright red mouth its nipple.“How do you stand a mug like him, Agnes?” he asked and his hand on her back moved, stroking.“Joey, you looking for trouble now?” she said quietly.“You mean this?” he said, his hand stroking.“He’s blind drunk, baby.”If Bughead was blind drunk, Joey, with the Bug’s woman in his arms, felt as if he had a hundred eyes, like the hawks over the Jersey Palisades, all hawk eyes himself, seeing how things were for the first time in his life.Seeing that the smart guy was the guy who made things work out his way.His way….the sax sang out loud as a fiend in hell, so loud he could hardly hear jewboy any more.Seeing also what could be seen at Killigan’s party.The heavy loaders at the bar, the dumb drunks, all the dumb bennies who never used their heads like Georgie.But not like Lefty who was trying to get the little wop girl he’d brought to the party to take another drink.A cherry, that wop girl, like Sadie.That Lefty knew how, all right, all right.For a flash, Joey forgot Agnes, his eyes on Lefty’s girl, wondering if he could ever push a slug of whiskey into Sadie? Hell, she wouldn’t go to a speak, he couldn’t get her up to a party like this in a million years, for even if she came, one look’d be enough for her to run.Let her run, he vowed fiercely, she’ll be mine anyway.Seeing, feeling, knowing the truth of the ages, that for the smart guy the dumb were always bait.Wop girl and jewgirl, dumb guy and tough guy.Yeah! Even the Bug was bait!His way….And smiling at what he knew, he tightened his dancer’s hold on Agnes.She tried to edge away from him and he laughed “How about it, baby? How about it one of these days?” And with shining gray eyes he saw himself doing what he wanted with her, this woman of the Bug’s and he saw the Bug dead….• • •But in the light of morning his will to murder drained away like dream blood in a nightmare.Yet leaving a bloody spot in his mind, a red root that grew wild in a second to be slashed down in the next, but never completely dug out or destroyed.Murder walked with him in the daytime, casting no shadow on the summer sidewalks, whispering in his ear.What you waiting for, Joey, murder whispered.For the Bug to make the next move? Is that smart? You make the first move.The guy who wins the fight’s the guy who gets in the first punch, you know.Every day he awoke, shaved, dressed, joked with Georgie as they ate their late breakfasts while the clock-punching city sat down to lunch.He reported to the Spotter at the Young Democrats, and if there wasn’t a job for him, chewed the fat with the guys, played cards, took in an afternoon movie to kill a little time, or visited rooms smelling of powder, perfume and disinfectant, with the dame stretched out on the bed for him like a Coming Attraction in a darkened movie house.And always the whispers: Here you’re having yourself a good time but what about the Bug? He’ll knock you off one of these days.He’ll get stinko, come for you and there’ll be no crowd to take his gat away like at Killigan’s party.When he was on a job for the Spotter, calling on the speaks falling behind on their whiskey quotas, or kicking around some slob trying to pull a fast one, murder whispered even more persistently almost with the outcry of nightmare: The Bug’s got a hate on you that’ll never stop, Joey.Bigger you get in the gang, bigger his hate.He hates you, always has, hates you for a jewboy and you are a jewboy, too yellow to show some guts.Knock the Bug off for Christ sake, what the hell you waiting for.He would stare superstitiously at that gun of his, given to him by the Spotter, and still unused.The Spotter still had no gun jobs for him.That God damn gun of his was going to rust to pieces, he was thinking.He would lay in bed thinking, always thinking, listening to Georgie snoring like a judge; but what there was to think about, God only knew.All the God damn thinking’d been done long ago.Up in the sticks after the hijacking.Up at Killigan’s party.Done, done in spades, and here he was still waiting for the Bug to make the next move.Don’t wait, murder whispered.Work it your way! Take the Bug, take his girl, murder whispered slyly in the hot summer nights.Murder will out — the saying goes.True.The wish to murder, suppressed, will out, also.The murder Joey Kasow couldn’t quite make up his mind to consummate drove him hard and rough with the whores he visited.And when he was with Sadie, Wednesday nights, murder’s twin — rape — whispered constantly in his ear.“I can borrow a car,” he said.“How about a lil joy-ride, Sweetie?”“No, no, Joey.”So he called on a druggist the Spotter was supplying with whiskey and told him what he wished [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]