The Real Cool Killers Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Watch where you’re going.”
    “Aw, man, ain’t nobody thinking about us back here,” Choo-Choo said.
    “Don’t call me man,” the leader said.
    “Sheik, then.”
    “What you jokers gonna do with me?” Sonny asked.
    His weed jag was gone; he felt weak-kneed and hungry; his mouth tasted brackish and his stomach was knotted with fear.
    “We’re going to sell you to the Jews,” Choo-Choo said.
    “You ain’t fooling me, I know you ain’t no Arabs,” Sonny said.
    “We’re going to hide you from the police,” Sheik said.
    “I ain’t done nothing,” Sonny said.
    Sheik halted and they all turned and looked at Sonny. His eyes were white half moons in the dark.
    “All right then, if you ain’t done nothing we’ll turn you back to the cops,” Sheik said.
    “Naw, wait a minute, I just want to know where you’re taking me.”
    “We’re taking you home with us.”
    “Well, that’s all right then.”
    There was no back door to the hall as in the other tenement. Decayed concrete stairs led down to a basement door. Sheik produced a key on his ring for that one also. They entered a dark passage. Foul water stood on the broken pavement. The air smelled like molded rags and stale sewer pipes. They had to remove their smoked glasses in order to see.
    Halfway along, feeble yellow light slanted from an open door. They entered a small, filthy room.
    A sick man clad in long cotton drawers lay beneath a ragged horse blanket on a filthy pallet of burlap sacks.
    “You got anything for old Bad-eye,” he said in a whining voice.
    “We got you a fine black gal,” Choo-Choo said.
    The old man raised up on his elbows. “Whar she at?”
    “Don’t tease him,” Inky said.
    “Lie down and shut,” Sheik said. “I told you before we wouldn’t have nothing for you tonight.” Then to his henchmen, “Come on, you jokers, hurry up.”
    They began stripping off their disguises. Beneath their white robes they wore sweat shirts and black slacks. The beards were put on with make-up gum.
    Without their disguises they looked like three high-school students.
    Sheik was a tall yellow boy with strange yellow eyes and reddish kinky hair. He had the broad-shouldered, trim-waisted figure of an athlete. His face was broad, his nose flat with wide, flaring nostrils, and his skin freckled. He looked disagreeable.
    Choo-Choo was shorter, thicker and darker, with the egg-shaped head and flat, mobile face of the born joker. He was bowlegged and pigeon-toed but fast on his feet.
    Inky was an inconspicuous boy of medium size, with a mild, submissive manner, and black as the ace of spades.
    “Where’s the gun?” Choo-Choo asked when he didn’t see it stuck in Sheik’s belt.
    “I slipped it to Bones.”
    “What’s he going to do with it?”
    “Shut up and quit questioning what I do.”
    “Where you reckon they all went to, Sheik?” Inky asked, trying to be peacemaker.
    “They went home if they got sense,” Sheik said.
    The old man on the pallet watched them fold their disguises into small packages.
    “Not even a little taste of King Kong,” he whined.
    “Naw, nothing!” Sheik said.
    The old man raised up on his elbows. “What do you mean, naw? I’ll throw you out of here. I’se the janitor. I’ll take my keys away from you. I’ll–”
    “Shut your mouth before I shut it and if any cops come messing around down here you’d better keep it shut too. I’ll have something for you tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow? A bottle?”
    The old man lay back mollified.
    “Come on,” Sheik said to the others.
    As they were leaving he snatched a ragged army overcoat from a nail on the door without the janitor noticing. He stopped Sonny in the passage and took the noose from about his neck, then looped the overcoat over the handcuffs. It looked as though Sonny were merely carrying an overcoat with both hands.
    “Now nobody’ll see those cuffs,” Sheik said. Turning to Inky, he said, “You go up first and see how it looks. If you think