“I’ve got a good arm on me,” Stan whined. “And I’m loyal, really I am. You know you’ve always been my role model.”
Snotty turned again and gave Stan a look.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.” Snotty thought that Stan might come in useful someday. You never knew.
“Aw, thanks, Snot, you’re a real pal,” Stan said. But his eyes were hard, and he might have decided to give his role model a thump just for old time’s sake, if it wasn’t for a shout now that went up from the other boys on the playground.
A dog had appeared, all gray and black with a huge maw, and the boys chased it around the schoolyard. Stan’s eyes gleamed at this. He would have been off to join them if Snotty hadn’t grabbed him by the sleeve.
“Let go, Snot,” Stan said. “Look, it’s a dog.”
“Listen,” Snotty said, hanging onto Stan’s jacket. “I just remembered. Doesn’t your aunt live in the middle of Hamercy Street?”
Stan nodded, annoyed at being kept back. The rest of the boys chased the howling dog. “Yeah, sure. The house with the Garden Gnome. She loves that Garden Gnome.”
“Listen,” Snotty insisted again. Stan was straining to be off, but Snotty held him there. “Listen,” he repeated. “Six houses there, right?” Stan nodded again. “Then how come there’s seven gardens behind?”
But Stan wasn’t listening. He yanked his arm away from Snotty and ran off to where the boys had the dog cornered. It cowered against what was left of a rusting chain link fence.
Snotty, expressionless, let him go. He continued, with his usual sense of purpose, along his way. The howls of the dog followed him, but he never allowed anything like that to distract him from business, and it was to a business meeting that he headed now.
Chapter II
AT THE CROWN AND MITRE
“Wh-wh-why c-c-can’t he b-b-be like other b-b-b-boys?” Mick complained the way he always did after he finished his third pint of watery beer. He was sitting, as he always did on a Wednesday, with Keef and Dodger in the back room of the Crown and Mitre pub on Hamercy Street. They were waiting, as they always were, for Snotty.
“He needs a good thumping,” said Keef, his tiny pig eyes shining malevolently, the way they always did behind his thick wire-rimmed glasses. “One of us should give it to him.” At this he looked at Mick.
“Then he WOULD be like all the other boys,” chortled Dodger, the way he always did. In his amusement, he, too, snorted his lager the wrong way and spewed a little bit out his nose. (This happened a lot on Hamercy Street. In fact, it was practically a sport.)11 “That’s what boys are for. I know I got thumped all the time, and look how I turned out.”
Mick and Keef turned and looked at Dodger. It didn’t seem to either of them that having been thumped when he was young had done Dodger much good. But they kept this thought to themselves.
“That’s beside the point,” Keef said impatiently.
“Wh-wh-what is the p-p-p-p...”
Dodger laughed again. More beer spurted out of his nose.
“P-p-p-p-POINT?”
“The point,” Keef said patiently, “is that he has money. And that money by rights belongs to us.”
“How do you figure?” said Dodger curiously.
“It’s obvious. We’re bigger than he is. And we’re stronger.”
“Th-th-that’s tr-tr-true.”
Keef leaned confidentially across the grubby table. “So here,” he said, “is what we are going to do.”
The Crown and Mitre pub was a villainous and lonely place at the end of Hamercy Street. It had once been held up on both sides by other, even older buildings—a Mission Hall and a Library—but these had long since been torn down. Now it tilted by itself over a scruffy dirt square that was covered with broken glass.12
Snotty turned into its splintered doorway and contemplated a sign hanging there. This said: NO DOGS. NO CHILDREN. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Snotty stared at this for a moment. Then he went inside. He shifted his backpack onto one shoulder, and a couple of packages wrapped in Christmas paper poked out.
“He’s a cool one,” a policeman snorted from the parked car across the street. His name was Terry, and his partner’s name was Alan.13 “And what’s with those packages?” Terry had the wild look of a man who has been sent to the wrong place by mistake, and who keeps trying to get someone in authority to fix it. Alan was more resigned: he was older and burlier and sadder, too.
Alan sighed. He watched two toddlers play a game on the sidewalk with a broken beer bottle. He was feeling more depressed by the minute.
“I’ll tell you what’s in the packages,” he said, tilting his head backward so he could stare at the ceiling of the car, which was, he thought, a nice change from the world outside. “What he has to sell. And what, you ask”—though Terry hadn’t—“does a little boy in a place like this have to sell? It’s drugs, of course. No need to say what. A little of this, a little of that. He gets it down at the docks and then hides the stuff in dolls, Easter eggs, Christmas presents—depends on the time of year. When we catch him, which we do from time to time, he says some strange man gave the packages to him. What’s the court going to say? He’s not more than twelve years old, and he looks about eight.” Alan gave a grudging laugh. “None of us thought it was true for years. Didn’t think it was possible for the kid to have the kind of brains to think something like that up.”14
Terry snorted again and grabbed the car’s wheel as if he’d forgotten it wasn’t going anywhere. “I don’t think much of the kind of brains that lead to criminal behavior,” he spat.
Alan sank further into his seat, still staring at the ceiling. He knew Terry’s type well. Always in a hurry. Always trying to start things or stop things. Always thinking he COULD start or stop things.
Alan himself had long ago given up trying to start things or stop things. In fact, he had few illusions about his impact on anything around him at all.
He sighed again. He didn’t want to have an impact. What he really wanted was a drink.
The owner of the Crown and Mitre had, like Alan, long ago given up thinking he could have any kind of influence on anything around him, and so felt helpless whenever he looked at his horrible pub. The lounge’s moldy orange-brown carpet, the stained and torn fake leather banquettes, the cheap veneer peeling off the walls, the tilting pool table with its broken leg propped up by a stack of beer mats: this was the Crown and Mitre. It had always been like this. It would always be like this. What could he do about it?
Instead of worrying, he watched the television that blared from one corner of the room. It was a way to pass the time. He was used to it. So when Snotty walked in, he was annoyed at being interrupted. Without turning, he barked,