Tears of a Whore
Chapter Two:Messy Business
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"Try it, Sullivan," he suggested, not without a hint of contempt, "or are ya scared?"
"I ain't scared," the shorter boy replied indignantly, crossing his arms. It wasn't fair to make such a request of him; if he was ever ratted on or exposed in such a compromising position, he'd be skinned alive, no questions asked. Last night's scare had reminded him just how dearly he valued his own hide.
"I think you're just chicken."
"No. That's not it. It's just my Pa said – "
"Yeah?" A laugh. "Well, your Pa says a lotta things, kid, most of 'em untrue. Or have ya not noticed that he's full of shit?"
- - - - - -
Tibby's was unusually full for a Monday. Newsboys were everywhere, cluttering up booths and chairs, leaving the owner aghast with their mess and their noise. In the back corner, Jack wolfed down a sandwich, scooping up the lettuce that spilled onto the table and eating that as an after thought. He was so focused on his food that he only half-listened to the tale coming from Snoddy. The rest of the nearby boys were hanging onto every word.
"So I'm tellin' this lady about how hungry I am," Snoddy continued, grinning, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table, "an' she looks at me, real sad, an' hands me a fuckin' dollar!"
Snorts of derision greeted this proclamation.
"You're full of shit," Kid Blink suggested, rolling his eyes. As an after thought, he knocked Snoddy's elbows off of the table, muttering something about bad manners.
The challenged newsboy raised his eyebrows, smirking, "You callin' me a liar, Blink?"
"Callin' you somethin' like that," he replied conversationally, making it a point to lick some mayonnaise off of one of his ink-stained fingers. He appeared relatively unconcerned with this progression in their verbal exchange.
"Well," Snoddy asked, standing and pulling something out of his pocket, "whaddya call this, then?"
More than one boy moved out of the way, suspecting that the brandished object was likely to be a knife. Snoddy grinned at this reaction – he was well known for carrying a switchblade wherever he went – and held up the coin between his thumb and his forefinger. The dollar coin gleamed, beautiful as a sunset to their greedy eyes, and for a moment a hushed reverence descended upon their corner of the room.
For once, it appeared that the boy hadn't been lying. A number of newsboys scrambled closer to get a better look. Snoddy held the coin high above their heads, suddenly territorial.
"So, does this mean you'se gonna pay me back those two bits from last night?" Jack asked, giving the boy an overly hearty slap on the back. He didn't want to dampen the mood, but he felt like someone needed to smack some sense into the dumb kid's head. Brandishing a dollar coin in public view? It was an idiotic move at best, but then, Snoddy had always been shortsighted. He would wager that Snoddy wouldn't sleep easily tonight; until the newly wealthy boy found a better hiding spot for his money, his mind would be riveted on the possibility of theft. He would lie awake wondering which one of his friends would get sticky fingers first.
Blink took this opportunity to wash down his mayonnaise with a swish of Jack's beer. As he replaced the mug quietly on the table, he noticed a familiar figure stagger through the door. He stood on the seat of the booth, waving a friendly hand to indicate where there was an available chair.
"Took ya long enough, Racetrack. We thought you was dead, or worse!" Blink called out with a grin.
Racetrack walked over unsteadily, panting. His face was red and his hair clung to his head in a peculiar fashion; sweat and an odd-colored pomade stuck his hair up wildly in the back, and it didn't take spectacular vision to notice that there was something distinctly off about his appearance. He carried his hat in his hands, fanning himself with it, wheezing like an old man.
"What's worse than bein' dead, ya moron?" he managed to ask with an attempt at a smirk.
"Bein' your sorry ass, for starters."
Jack watched his friend's arrival with concern. Summing up the circumstances, he waved Mush off of a nearby stool and gave him a pointed look. Mush frowned, more in concern at his friend's odd condition than annoyance, and let Racetrack take his seat. He stood behind the boy, taking a good look at the back of his head.
It was caked in dried blood.
"Who did a number on ya, Race?" Mush demanded immediately.
Everyone craned to get a good look at the damage, impressed. In fact, the general opinion seemed to be amazement that Racetrack had made it back from his selling spot without collapsing into an alleyway.
The injured boy seemed to want none of this attention. He turned and gave his friend a warning glare that he swiftly regretted as the sudden movement caused the room to swim before his eyes. "None of your damned business."
This dismissal was enough to cause most of the boys standing around to lose interest. Lunchtime was nearly over; the evening edition would be out soon enough, and besides, there was still time to sell whatever papers they still had leftover from the morning beat.
Mush begged a glass of water and a napkin from a waiter. Ignoring his friend's protests and curses, he peeled the dark, matted hair back to get a good look at the wound.
"I'll clean it up myself!" Racetrack snarled.
"Oh, cause you can reach behind yer own big head?" Mush asked with a smile, shaking his own curly one, "I doan' think so, Race. Stop bein' a little girl, we gotta clean the cut."
With gentle hands, he continued to disregard his friend's colorful threats. It wasn't the first time he had helped one of his friends clean a wound, and it also wasn't the first time he'd had to do so despite hearty resistance.
Jack offered the other half of his sandwich to his injured friend in a shockingly noble gesture. He watched, puzzled, as Racetrack attempted to eat it, nearly missing his mouth each time he lifted the bread.
"Who did this?" Jack asked casually, trying to catch him off-guard.
Racetrack swore loudly, not in response to the question, but in response to a particularly heartless jab at his wound. He looked as though he was going to vomit.
"None of your business," he repeated stubbornly, his conviction considerably lessened by the pain.
"I think he has a concussion," Mush informed them just as conversationally, moving to get a good look at his friend's roaming eyes.
Racetrack found the energy to scowl. "And I think you need to get outta my face," he threatened. He wasn't quite sure why his gut instinct was to refuse to share what had happened on Franklin Street. He supposed that he simply didn't want to get his friends involved in his business. He had always been able to take care of himself; he'd kept his debtors away from the Lodging House for this long, as well as collectors, and had never picked a fight that he couldn't weasel out of somehow. Sure, he'd gotten plenty of black eyes and even a broken arm as a reward for keeping his affairs to himself, but it made him feel secure to know that he didn't have to trust anyone else.
A newsboy had very few personal belongings. Rather than riches, or even stolen prizes, Racetrack had his pride.
Mostly, he supposed, he didn't want his friends to screw up his chances at a better life. He turned a healthy profit through gambling; he certainly didn't want to share this success, or its downsides, with the others. The less they knew, the less likely it was that they would fuck things up.
Well, he thought after a hard moment, maybe they'd be able to help this time. This wasn't the sort of affair that he was comfortable facing alone - however, true to form, he wasn't going to make it easy. He picked the sandwich back up, not noticing that his own head was tilted to the left. His whole body was leaning to the left, actually, so that he nearly fell off of his stool. Jack stood up and helped him into a spot in the booth. Racetrack's breathing had slowed by now, but it was shallow and irregular.
With the patience of a kindly father, Jack asked once again with surprising gentleness, "Who did this to you, Race?"
"A whore," Racetrack replied with a wild bark of laughter.
His three friends all looked at one another with varying levels of annoyance.
"A whore," Blink repeated flatly.
"Must've been one hell of a lay," Mush suggested half-heartedly.
Jack suspected that the only way to get a real answer would be to exploit Racetrack's considerable ego. It wouldn't be very kind, but it would be the only way to get an answer, and his fists were already itching for revenge. Besides, it was unsafe for the other boys when someone was trying to settle a score alone. Unsuspecting people got in the way and got hurt. It was wisest to keep track of all of the Manhattan boy's disputes, and safest, too.
He asked skeptically, "You let a girl soak ya?"
Blink couldn't suppress a snicker at the thought. This sound made Racetrack attempt to sit upright, glaring. He had to rest his hands on the table to remain in this position. Mush hovered over him, worried, wondering if he would be able to get his friend to take it easy tonight. Racetrack could walk, so he'd need to sell the evening edition, but if he insisted on going to the big card game in Queens tonight, Mush was going to slug him.
"Her pimp," Racetrack clarified, not so defeated as to withhold an insult, his chin hovering dangerously over the remains of the sandwich, "not the girl, you idiot."
Ah, that explained things some. Jack was still puzzled, but he was so pleased by the fact that one of Spot's boys hadn't been involved that he only briefly considered the possibility that Racetrack was lying. He'd never seen his friend at a whorehouse; in fact, most of the boys at the Lodging House joked that Racetrack was a virgin and had never even known a woman intimately. So why had he been trying to mess with a whore - in broad daylight, no less?
Mush looked infuriated. "Y'know better than to fuck with a pimp," he reminded his injured friend with a sigh, shaking his head in disgust, "that's messy business."
"I'd say it's messier with the whore," Blink snickered.
The four were nearly alone by now. Jack nodded in acknowledgement as several more boys shouted out their goodbyes and left the restaurant. It was odd to linger in Tibby's after lunch, and the sudden quietness made them all uneasy.
Racetrack didn't appear to want to discuss matters further, so they let it be. After the conversation meandered to more neutral topics – namely Snoddy's idiotic declaration– they noticed that their injured friend was nearly facedown on the table.
Mush elbowed him every so often to make sure he was awake. Every kid with half a brain knew that falling asleep after a blow to the head was unwise.
"Wouldya sell with Race for the rest of the day, Mush?" Jack requested tentatively. It would mean little profit for the both of them, but it'd be enough to keep a roof over their heads for the night. If worst came to worst, he would spot them money – he always did.
With a sigh, Mush agreed. "Ungrateful shit," he told Racetrack, who didn't appear to notice the comment. In fact, the boy hadn't been following the conversation very well at all. He was staring blankly at the empty beer mugs.
"Well, we'd better get goin' before Sleepin' Beauty passes out," Blink grinned, standing and helping his injured friend to his feet. He noticed with a sudden frown of concern that his jibe didn't provoke a reply.
They were halfway to the door before Racetrack spoke.
"Any of you bums know a Francis Sullivan?" he asked with a pathetic attempt at levity, his words slow.
Mush and Kid Blink shook their heads, nudging him along to the door. They looked heartened by their friend's attempt at an insult – his silence had been more concerning than his inability to walk straight.
They were close enough to the door that they didn't notice their leader's reaction to this off-hand question. His jaw slackened slightly, color draining from his tanned cheeks. Jack paused for a moment, shocked, regaining his composure when the door was opened and the entrance bells tinkled a goodbye.
Francis Sullivan? Had he heard Racetrack correctly?
There was no way that his friend – one of his best, his most trusted – knew anything about his past. Jack had ensured this, had covered all of his tracks.
It was simply impossible.
Was Race threatening him by telling him that he knew? Was he dangling Jack's old life before his eyes in a sick attempt at a joke? Or was there a more sinister connection, an unexpected one, the one that Jack had feared would catch up with him eventually?
Racetrack could hardly stand, much less purposefully deliver such a bombshell. In all the years that Jack had known him, the boy had always played his cards close to his chest, suspicious of everyone, even his closest friends. He would never toss out information so carelessly.
No, it had to have been an accident.
Still, he needed to make sure. There could be no slip ups, no liabilities. Spot always said that he wasn't tough enough on the Manhattan newsies; the Brooklyn newsboy had always taunted and mocked him, despised him, to be honest, for this weakness.
A true leader makes others fear him, Spot had said the last time they'd seen each other. Time to grow up, Jacky-boy.
It was time to be tough, time to protect his own. He needed to ensure above all else that no one would get hurt by this turn of events. Jack put his boys first; he always had, always would, no matter the consequences or circumstances. He believed in delivering the greatest good for the greatest number. That, to Jack, was justice.
He followed his friends out of the restaurant with a sunny smile. Jack put his hat back on his head, tilting it slightly, and slapped Mush on the shoulder.
"Tell ya what, Mush. I had a good mornin'. Want me to sell with Race?" he offered, pleased to see that Mush brightened at the prospect. Last night had been hard on the pockets for all of them.
Racetrack didn't appear to appreciate this treatment. "You'se ain't my mothers,' he reminded them darkly.
Jack closed a firm hand on the boy's arm, provoking a wince. The muscles there were bruised thanks to the pimp's unforgiving clasp. "C'mon, Race," he said softly, leading him away from the others, "I gotta talk to ya, anyway."
It had to have been an accident, a coincidence. But Jack would take no chances.
He knew that there was far more at stake here than his own life.
It was time to grow up - Spot had said so, and he had been right.
No matter the consequences.
- - - - - -
(Author's Note: Ah, and the plot thickens. I really like this plotline for some reason – things should get interesting, very quickly. Let me know what you think!
The next chapter will take a little longer for me to post, but I assure you that I'm working on it now.
Also, thanks to PF for the encouragement!)