Author's Note: In response to a friendly note from a friendly commenter…I'm not sure I can promise you dozens of chapters…but at least I'll try to keep this up until all of your questions are answered. Until that time comes…let me keep you guessing with this latest chapter. ;) Lots of lurve, Weasley.

And now, for my next trick…

Four

I woke up in absolute agony, and lo and behold, there were the trademark red and blue lights going flash-flash-flash to tell me that the rozzes were there. One of 'em shined a little white light into my glazzies, and the moment I flinched was the same moment he got a smeck out of my flinching. Horrorshow.

"Looks like someone did a number on you, didn't they?" he snickered.

"Nearly," I answered him back, but not without like thinking to myself, Come down here and I'll do a number on you, skitebird.

"Well, guess that will teach you to go around hurting sweet, innocent young ladies, won't it?"

My rasoodock snapped back to Lydia, and I felt like screaming bloody murder right then and there. Of course she'd go shrieking to the rozzes after I very nearly pulled off some twenty-to-one against her, only to be so rudely distracted by them. Suddenly, it all made sense to me on just how we wound up to be not as alone as we wished. She could have read up on my nightly exploits long before she ever saw me, and so helped to make a case against me and mine. For all I knew, she had also ratted me out to that great white wannabe wanderer as well, thus letting her platties get ripped off just so he had an excuse to attack me later. Hell and damnation of a note. That would teach me, all right, but only to start making sure I threatened my victims with slow and painful death from now on so that they wouldn't ever tell on me again.

"Going to a costume party for the second world war, too, are you? Well, you got the end part right, at least. Your kind got horribly beaten and defeated, our ladies were protected, and our boys returned home safe and sound."

Your boys, I thought, rolling my glazzies and concentrating on the high ceiling above me. Of course this one would take their side. It had been burned into everyone's mind for about a century that anyone who wore a German uniform or who govoreeted with a German accent would always have to be the baddiwad. What other side would anyone on this island take, especially when the alternatives were the 'harmless' little Charlie Chaplin copycats?

Moreover, how stupid was it that he thought Lydia needed like protecting in the first place? She'd already made herself infamous when she messed around with those two malchicks, and so got on the wrong side of the papers. What, then, could have possibly stopped her from fillying about with some new veck behind the scenes? She could have known that little bastard long before she ever laid her glazzies on my grinning, smecking litso. For all I knew, she could have also pitted her two boyfriends against each other on purpose so she'd be free to go do the old in-out with him. Even more hell and damnation, all right, but I couldn't have let it get to me. Oh, no no no. I wouldn't let it get to me just yet. I might be beaten, Mr. Rozz, I thought, but I'm by no means defeated. His so-called 'lady' wouldn't be so safe, either, not once I got up off this floor and back onto my nogas. And if I ever viddied his 'boys' again, it was gonna be their funeral.

His light blinded me in the meantime; yet I went on staring back at him anyway, even if only to get a good look at his face. If I ever got back on my feet again, his would be the first litso I pound into the cold, hard pavement.

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"One," I told him, flipping two of my own fingers back at him in a mean gesture. "How many have I got up, eh?"

"Hardy-har-har," the rozz said sarcastically, motioning to someone out of my line of sight. "All right, boys, bring that stretcher over."

Stretcher?

"Coming right up!"

Ooh, look, a few vecks from the ambulance, I thought to myself, feeling a snarl coming on. Was I supposed to feel relieved or worried that they were about to cart me away? I was a little too much in pain to feel anything else, unfortunately, and so just remained silent as they arrived.

"Ugly-looking little bastard, ain't he, Jack?"

Be glad you're only half right, Mister Ambulance Veck, I thought to myself. Otherwise, I might decide to make sure you looked as bad as I do.

"You'd look bad, too, if you got beaten unconscious."

Bravo, bravo, encore, encore. Could these vecks act as well as they sympathized, or were they just bored with their jobs?

"Now…stop joking around and give me a hand, will you?"

I'd give you two hands and fisties besides, if I wasn't lying in my own pain, that is. Be thankful.

"All right…"

The rozz's light had been taken away a while ago, but no sooner did I get used to the darkness again that a second light shined into my glazzies. Would this obsession with flashlights never stop?

"…Name?"

William 'Billyboy' Antonelli, Kaiser of the East End, Master and Commander of the London Blitz, son of a whore, brother of bastards, nephew to the wolves, cousin to the hyenas, and the big big curse of devotchkas everywhere.

That was what I wanted to say, if only to scare both of those ambulance vecks out of their rasoodocks. Instead, I just mumbled "Antonelli", and left it at that.

"All right, Mr. Antonelli, I'm gonna ask you a few questions."

"Ask away, sir."

"What were you up to before we found you?"

I would have been up to teaching a few lessons, if one of 'em hadn't ratted me out and the other hadn't tolchocked me out.

"Defending my honor, sir."

"Oh? And what's so honorable about breaking into this old casino just so's you can rape a harmless little girl?"

"That weren't no harmless ptitsa, sir," I growled, feeling my rookers ball up into fisties.

"She ratted me out, she did! It's her and that Alex Burgess, sir, they're in it together!"

"Alex Burgess?"

"Yes, sir, I swear to Bog it's all them, sir!"

If I was going to give them answers, at least I would do it in a way that made me look like Lazarus and him like the greedy rich man. As for little Miss Lydia, I would speak of her as though she were no less kind than Jezebel herself.

"Along she came, acting all big and self-important, looking down her nose at me and my gang, and of course she knew it would make me all bezoomny and like ready to tear her platties, sir! All I wanted was to make her respect me and mine a bit, sir, but then he showed up, and bang bang bang, him and his droogs almost broke our skulls, sir! She lured me into it hook, line, and sinker, she did!"

"He almost broke your skulls?"

"Oh yes, sir, and a frightful pain it is too, sir! I swear I've got a terrible headache right now just talking to you, sir, unfortunate as it sounds. All that wood and glass and other stuff lying around, sir, it's bad to do a poor malchick like me a serious injury!"

"Wood and glass…indeed. It's a miracle none of you had any broken bones when we found you, boyo. Your friends should make a full recovery in the hospital, thank God."

"Hospital? You mean they're already there, sir? All five of 'em?"

"I should say so, and with minor injuries as well, although we'll check them out for concussions just the same. A person can't be too careful on the streets these days, can they?"

He went on to ask me if I felt sick to my stomach, had trouble seeing straight, and if I could try walking a bit; to which I said no, no, and then tried a few steps only to almost fall off balance. That filthy skitebird Alex had hit me harder than I thought, and for that, I would have to get wheeled into the back of the last ambulance. I was on my way to the hospital to join my other droogs, and no thanks to them, we'd be staying there much longer than we'd ever hoped.