Hearts in Atlantis(73)

'Hey, Dee,' said the boy who had pulled Bobby's hair. 'We just gonna shake this little guy out a little. Make him pay his way across Diablo turf.'

'Not this one,' Dee said. 'I know him. He's my compadre.'

'He look like a pansy uptown boy to me,' said the one who had called Bobby cabrуn and putino. 'I teach im a little respect.'

'He don't need no lesson from you,' Dee said. 'You want one from me, Moso?'

Moso stepped back, frowning, and took a cigarette out of his pocket. One of the others snapped him a light, and Dee drew Bobby a little farther down the street.

'What you doing down here, amigo?' he asked, gripping Bobby's shoulder with the tattooed hand. 'You stupid to be down here alone and you f**kin loco to be down here at night alone.'

'I can't help it,' Bobby said. 'I have to find the guy I was with yesterday. His name is Ted. He's old and thin and pretty tall. He walks kinda hunched over, like Boris Karloff - you know, the guy in the scary movies?'

'I know Boris Karloff but I don't know no f**kin Ted,' Dee said. 'I don't ever see him. Man, you ought to get outta here.'

'I have to go to The Corner Pocket,' Bobby said.

'I was just there,' Dee said. 'I didn't see no guy like Boris Karloff.'

'It's still too early. I think he'll be there between nine-thirty and ten. I have to be there when he comes, because there's some men after him. They wear yellow coats and white shoes . . . they drive big flashy cars . . . one of them's a purple DeSoto, and - '

Dee grabbed him and spun him against the door of a pawnshop so hard that for a moment Bobby thought he had decided to go along with his corner-boy friends after all. Inside the pawnshop an old man with a pair of glasses pushed up on his bald head looked around, annoyed, then back down at the newspaper he was reading.

'The jefes in the long yellow coats,' Dee breathed. 'I seen those guys. Some of the others seen em, too. You don't want to mess with boys like that, chico. Something wrong with those boys. They don't look right. Make the bad boys hang around Mallory's Saloon look like good boys.'

Something in Dee's expression reminded Bobby of Sully-John, and he remembered S-J saying he'd seen a couple of weird guys outside Commonwealth Park. When Bobby asked what was weird about them, Sully said he didn't exactly know. Bobby knew, though. Sully had seen the low men. Even then they had been sniffing around.

'When did you see them?' Bobby asked. 'Today?'

'Cat, give me a break,' Dee said. 'I ain't been up but two hours, and most of that I been in the bathroom, makin myself pretty for the street. I seen em comin out of The Corner Pocket, a pair of em - day before yesterday, I think. And that place funny lately.' He thought for a moment, then called, 'Yo, Juan, get your ass over here.'

The crewcut-puller came trotting over. Dee spoke to him in Spanish. Juan spoke back and Dee responded more briefly, pointing to Bobby. Juan leaned over Bobby, hands on the knees of his sharp pants.

'You seen 'ese guys, huh?'

Bobby nodded.

'One bunch in a big purple DeSoto? One bunch in a Cri'sler? One bunch in an Olds 98?'

Bobby only knew the DeSoto, but he nodded.

'Those cars ain't real cars,' Juan said. He looked sideways at Dee to see if Dee was laughing. Dee wasn't; he only nodded for Juan to keep going. 'They something else.'

'I think they're alive,' Bobby said.

Juan's eyes lit up. 'Yeah! Like alive! And 'ose men - '

'What did they look like? I've seen one of their cars, but not them.'

Juan tried but couldn't say, at least not in English. He lapsed into Spanish instead. Dee translated some of it, but in an absent fashion; more and more he was conversing with Juan and ignoring Bobby. The other corner boys - and boys were what they really were, Bobby saw - drew close and added their own contributions. Bobby couldn't understand their talk, but he thought they were scared, all of them. They were tough enough guys - down here you had to be tough just to make it through the day - but the low men had frightened them all the same. Bobby caught one final clear image: a tall striding figure in a calf-length mustard-colored coat, the kind of coat men sometimes wore in movies like Gunfight at the OK Corral and The Magnificent Seven.

'I see four of em comin out of that barber shop with the horse-parlor in the back,' the one who seemed to be named Filio said. 'That's what they do, those guys, go into places and ask questions. Always leave one of their big cars runnin at the curb. You'd think it'd be crazy to do that down here, leave a car runnin at the curb, but who'd steal one of those goddam things?'

No one, Bobby knew. If you tried, the steering wheel might turn into a snake and strangle you; the seat might turn into a quicksand pool and drown you.

'They come out all in a bunch,' Filio went on, 'all wearin 'ose long yellow coats even though the day's so hot you could a fried a egg on the f**kin sidewalk. They was all wearin these nice white shoes - sharp, you know how I always notice what people got on their feet, I get hard for that shit - and I don't think . . . I don't think . . . ' He paused, gathered himself, and said something to Dee in Spanish.

Bobby asked what he'd said.

'He sayin their shoes wasn' touchin the ground,' Juan replied. His eyes were big. There was no scorn or disbelief in them. 'He sayin they got this big red Cri'sler, and when they go back to it, their f**kin shoes ain't quite touchin the ground.' Juan forked two fingers in front of his mouth, spat through them, then crossed himself.