Street of No Return (2 page)

The memory hit him and went in very deeply every time he heard the violence down there three blocks away. It was like a voice telling him that Skid Row wasn't really the hiding place it was supposed to be. It was a locale that constantly got played for a sucker. The Tenderloin tried its best to keep away from contact with the world but somehow or other the world always managed to make contact. The world tossed the bait and tossed it again and again, kept tossing it to get a nibble, and sooner or later the hook was taken and the line reeled in.

Phillips closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the sounds of the fighting in the street three blocks south of Skid Row. With his eyes shut very tightly he wished that Skid Row were soundproof.

He wanted to run down there and beg them to stop it. It was a silly notion and he smiled bitterly, knowing how silly it was. They called that area the Hellhole, and for more than one good reason. Along Skid Row the uninformed were firmly advised, "Don't walk too far south on River Street. Stay away from the Hellhole." In the past month it was more than just a matter of avoiding getting mugged or slugged or dragged into an alley. It was the idea of keeping away from the cobblestone battlefield where the combat was on an all-out basis. They were fighting with the whitehot fury that men display when they forget that they are men. In the Hellhole, these nights, they were having race riots.

Phillips had no idea how it had started. He knew that no one was sure about that. He remembered that around a year ago some Puerto Ricans had moved into the tenements down there and then more had come. And some more. And then they were saying there were too many Puerto Ricans moving in. The talk went on for a while but it was just talk and gradually it died down. Then all at once, five weeks ago, there was a riot. A few nights later there was another riot. Some people were hurt but there was no serious damage and for a week things were quiet and it looked as though the trouble had ended. But then they rioted again and it was mean ugly fighting and three men died. In the fourth riot there were two dead and one blinded with lye and several taken to the hospital, badly cut up. Tonight was the seventh riot and Phillips wasn't sure how many had died altogether but he knew the number was considerable. He told himself it was very bad and getting worse and he wondered how it would end. Or whether it would ever end.

He told himself to stop thinking about it. After all, it was a matter of geography and this was Skid Row and the Hellhole was three blocks away. He was here on Skid Row and the Hellhole was a million miles away. And so was yesterday, and so were all the memories of the little mining town.

The thing to do was play it Whitey's way and not let it touch him, let nothing touch him. He turned his head and looked at Whitey, knowing that Whitey's eyes would be aimed at the empty bottle and the only thought in Whitey's brain would be the need for another drink.

But Whitey wasn't looking at the bottle. Whitey sat there sort of stiffly, his mouth halfway open. He was staring at something on the other side of the street.

2

Phillips frowned slightly. He studied the look of rapt attention on Whitey's face. Then he looked across the street to see what Whitey was staring at. He didn't see anything unusual over there. It was just some Tenderloin scufflers coming out of a hash house and a man walking south on River street and a woman walking north. The woman was nothing to look at. She was fat and shapeless and walked with the exaggerated wiggle of a very lonely female hoping for company.

Bones was saying, "We gotta find a way to get a drink. That's all it amounts to. We just gotta get a drink."

"That's right," Whitey said. But he didn't seem to realize he was saying it. The words came out mechanically. He sat there stiffly and went on staring at something on the other side of the street.

"What is it?" Phillips asked. "What're you looking at?"

Whitey didn't answer.

"The woman?" Phillips asked. "You looking at the woman?"

Whitey shook his head very slowly. Then, more slowly, he started to get up from the pavement. He was almost on his feet when he changed his mind and sat down again. He shrugged and turned his head and looked at the empty bottle. He grinned at the bottle as though it were telling him something funny. He spoke to the bottle, saying "All right, I'll try it."

"Try what?" Phillips said.

"I'll try it and see what happens," Whitey said to the bottle. The grin on his face was vague and it went along with the dragging whisper coming from his lips.

"What is this?" Phillips said. He touched Whitey's shoulder. "What's wrong with you?"

Whitey didn't seem to hear. He went on grinning at the bottle and he said, "Sure, I might as well try it."

Then it was quiet and Phfflips and Bones looked at each other. Bones shrugged as though to say there was no way to figure Whitey, and no use asking him what was on his mind.

Whitey stood up again. He put his hands in the pockets of his ragged overcoat and hunched his shoulders against the wind coming from the river. He approached the curb and then stopped to pick up a cigarette stub. The cigarette was less than half smoked and he started to put it in his pocket, then tossed the stub to Bones.

Bones reached inside his coat and found a safety match and lit the cigarette. He took a long drag and handed the cigarette to Phillips. They sat there on the pavement sharing the cigarette and watching Whitey as he crossed the street. They were waiting to see what he would do when he was on the other side. He looked very small and shabby as he crossed River Street and it didn't seem to matter who he was or where he was going or what he intended to do. But they watched him as though it were very important that they pay careful attention. They had the unaccountable feeling that he was something special to watch.

They saw him arriving on the other side of the street. On the sidewalk he stopped for a moment to pull up the collar of his overcoat. Then again his hands were in his pockets and he was walking. He was walking slowly, his white hair wind-blown, his legs moving off stride as he went along River Street in a sort of lazy shuffle.

"South," Phillips murmured. "He's headed south."

"That's going toward the Hellhole."

"No," Phillips said. "He wouldn't go there."

"Well, where's he going?"

Phillips didn't reply. He squinted through the glare of the Skid Row lights, watching the small white-haired figure going south on River and coming to the end of the block and stifi going south.

"He's damn sure going toward the Hellhole," Bones said.

Phillips took the cigarette from Bones's mouth and put it in his own. He sipped the smoke through his teeth and it came out slowly through his nose. He didn't taste it going in or feel it coming out. He listened for the sounds of street fighting from the Hellhole but now there was no sound down there. Only the darkness.

Something was shining far down there in the darkness and it was the white hair of the small man walking south on River Street.

"We oughta go after him," Bones said.

Phillips nodded slowly.

"Let's go," Bones said.

But neither of them moved. They sat there on the cold pavement with their backs against the wall of the flophouse. They watched the thatch of white hair getting smaller and smaller and finally it vanished altogether. They looked at each other and for some moments they didn't say anything.

Then Bones stared glumly at the empty bottle and said, "We need a drink. How we gonna get a drink?"

Whitey was on the east side of River Street three blocks away from Skid Row. He was walking very slowly and every now and then he stepped into a doorway and stayed there a few moments. Once he crossed to the west side of River and stood beside an empty ash can, bent over it as though he were rummaging for something in the trash. But he wasn't looking inside the can. His head was turned slightly from the can and his eyes were focused on the man moving south on River.

It was the man he had seen walking past the hash house. The man was very short, around five-four, and extremely wide. The man's arms were unusually long, and came down past his knees. He moved somewhat like a chimpanzee, his head jutting forward and down, his arms swinging in unison as he went along in a bowlegged stride. He wore a bright-green cap and a black-and-purple plaid lumber jacket. He was walking without haste but with a certain deliberateness, his hard-heeled shoes making emphatic sounds on the sidewalk.

There was no other sound. There were no other people on the street. In the tenements the windows were dark. There were countless mongrels and alley cats and sewer rats in this area but none were visible now. It seemed that all living things were hiding from each other. The silence in the Hellhole was colder than the wind slicing in from the river.

On the pavement and in the gutter there were certain souvenirs of what had happened here tonight. There were broken bottles and the splintered handles of baseball bats and a lot of red stains, still wet. There was the cracked pane of a store window and the smashed front door of a tenement, the door leaning far out on its hinges. There were strips of torn clothing and someone's hat ripped across the crown and wet red smears on it.

Whitey saw all of that but it had no effect on him, it had no place in his thoughts. He wasn't conscious of the fact that he was down here in the Hellhole. His full attention was centered on the man in front of him.

He saw the man turning off River to go east on a narrow side street. He quickened his pace just a little, came onto the side street, and saw the man stopped near a dimly lit lamppost, looking toward an alleyway. The man made a move toward the alleyway, then stopped again. The man stood there as though trying to make up his mind whether to enter the alley. Some moments passed and then the man shrugged and continued on.

Whitey had ducked into a doorway and now he came out and resumed following the man. His pace was slackened again and he stayed close to the tenement walls, ready to use another doorway in case the man turned for a look. As he approached the lamppost he heard something that made him glance toward the alleyway. It was a quick glance and he couldn't see it distinctly and he kept on walking. He told himself to forget about the alleyway and what was happening there. Whatever it was, it had no connection with the man he was following. But then he heard it again and it seemed to reach inside him and beg him to stop.

He stopped. He listened to the sound coming from the alleyway. It was a gurgling, rattling noise. And then the faint voice saying, "Please. Please. Help me."

Whitey turned and walked quickly to the alleyway. He entered the alley and the glow from the lamppost showed him the brass buttons and the blue uniform. The policeman was sitting in the alley, his head down very low. His cap was off and his hair was mussed and the top of his head was all bloody.

The policeman looked up and saw Whitey and said, "Get an ambulance."

"I'll hafta phone."

"Use a call box. Call the station house. Ask for the Thirtyseventh District."

"Where's the nearest call box?"

The policeman opened his mouth to reply. The sound that came out was more gurgling and rattling. His head went down again and then he was falling over on his side. Whitey caught hold of him.

"The call box," Whitey said. "Tell me where it is."

The policeman gurgled very low in his throat.

"Tell me," Whitey said. "Try to tell me."

"It's on--" But the policeman couldn't take it further than that. His head was leaning against Whitey's chest and his hands clutched at Whitey's arms. Now he made no sound at all and his full weight was on Whitey. As Whitey knelt there holding him to keep him from falling, there was the sound of an auto and then the beam of a searchlight. Whitey turned his head and blinked in the glare of the light shooting into his face. He blinked again and saw the blackand-orange police car parked out there. The door opened and he saw the policemen getting out and running toward him.

They were young policemen and their faces were expressionless. One of them was grabbing for a revolver and having trouble pulling it from the holster. The other policeman grabbed Whitey's shoulder, couldn't get a good grip on the shoulder, and decided to hook his fingers around the back of Whitey's neck.

"Let go," Whitey said. "I'm not running."

"You telling me?" the policeman said. He tightened his hold on Whitey's neck.

"That hurts," Whitey said.

"Shut up." The po.liceman pulled Whitey to his feet. The other policeman had managed to get the revolver from the holster and was now trying to put it back in. Finally he got it in and then he knelt beside the injured policeman, who was now face down in the alley. He rolled the man over on his side and looked at the face. The eyes were half open and the mouth sagged at the corners. The color of the face was gray with streams of red running down the cheeks and dripping from the lips.

"It's Gannon."

"Bad?"

"Dead."

The policeman stood up. He looked down at the body and then he looked at Whitey.