You don't want to mess with boys like that, chico. 'The jefes in the long yellow coats,' Dee breathed. 'You got any money, t��o?' asked the third guy. He walks kinda hunched over, like Boris Karloff - you know, the guy in the scary movies?' 'I have to find the guy I was with yesterday. 'You stupid to be down here alone and you fuckin loco to be down here at night alone.' 'What you doing down here, amigo?' he asked, gripping Bobby's shoulder with the tattooed hand. You have nothing and we going to bust your balls.' 'Little muchacho, what you got for money, huh? How much of the good old dinero? You have something and we going to let you go. He reached out a hand, gripped the bristles of Bobby's crewcut, and pulled hard enough to make tears well up in Bobby's eyes. 'Little boy,' the fourth guy almost sang.
He was listening so hard that he walked into a guy without even seeing him. Bobby didn't think he was anywhere close yet, but he kept listening for him.
Eventually he'd call another cab and come to collect his money. Maybe after the library closed he'd get a bite to eat, kill a little more time that way. If he had been Ted, he would have gone someplace like the Bridgeport Public Library where he could hang around without being noticed. When he reached the next corner he re-crossed Nasty Gansett Street on the diagonal, getting back to the side The Corner Pocket was on.Īs he went, he tried to tune his mind outward and pick up some sense of Ted, but there was nothing. Bobby slipped into its shadow and kept going, shrinking back once when someone shouted and a bottle shattered. It was like being surrounded by Harry and his friends, only worse.Īcross from the bar was an out-of-business restaurant with a tattered awning still overhanging its soaped windows. The second guy grabbed him again, not so gently this time. His jacket had been tied inside-out around his waist (no club jacket in here, he had told Bobby), but he wore the sign of the Diablos just the same.īobby pulled free, but the fourth guy pushed him back at the second. No wonder that pitchfork shape had looked familiar - it was tattooed on the guy's hand. It was the young man who had been playing the Frontier Patrol game in The Corner Pocket when Ted was making his bet. They looked around - Bobby too - and here came a fifth guy, also wearing a Diablos jacket, also wearing slacks with a sharp crease he had on loafers instead of pointy-toed boots, and Bobby recognized him at once. I have to be there when he comes, because there's some men after him. I think he'll be there between nine-thirty and ten.
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