You Play the Black & the Red Comes Up Up Read Online Free PDF Page A

street light. The girls were kidding and giving the Johns a stall. It was perfect. They were just close enough to see the holdup, but not close enough to worry us.
     
    I watched him coming up the hill toward me, swinging the bag and looking innocent. I stood back in the doorway and then I couldn't see him, but I could hear his feet, clear in the night. Then, right when he was by the doorway, I stepped out. I said, "Stick 'em up!" but I was laughing. I poked my finger out like a gun, and stuck it in his side. I was laughing, but he looked so scared you'd thought it was a real holdup.
     
    "Okay, you zombie," I said. "Let's have it."
     
    But he didn't offer to give me the bag. He seemed like he was struck slap-happy by what was happening. So I said, "Come on, you're standing on your foot," and then I grabbed the bag and lit down the street. I hadn't gone quite as far as I figured he ought to have let me get before he yelled:
     
    "Holdup! Holdup! Police! Police!" He yelled it plenty loud once he got started.
     
    I could just hear my own footsteps tearing down the street, and my breath coming. I wanted to get rid of the bag.
     
    And then I heard the police car come roaring round the comer.
     
    It was just my luck, anyhow. No police had showed up all night, and now they'd come just at the wrong time. They started the siren, and I could hear the whistles going.
     
    Then someone cut loose with a gun and the bullets went skipping past. I looked back, and there, not twenty feet behind me was the guy who'd faked the holdup. He had his gun out, and he was firing at me. That was the kind he was. Now the police were wise, he was trying to bump me off.
     
    And that's the thing I hadn't figured out: that he'd know if I were caught I might spil l the whole story. But he'd fig ured it. I hadn't, but he had. He'd figured that if anything did go wrong, he'd still have the gun and he could croak me, so I couldn't tell the police he'd faked the holdup with me. He'd figured that out, but I hadn't. And there he was tr ying to knock me off.
     
    All I could think was: You d irty bastard! Oh, you dirty bas tard! But I didn't say it; I was just thinking it, and keeping on running like my lungs would catch on fire. And then I heard a noise, spilling, behind me; someone falling, and a gun clattering. I looked round, and there was the guy I'd held up, rolling on the pavement.
     
    I ran on, right past the yard. I didn't throw the bag in. I kept thinking, All right you dirty bastard. You city-slicked me. So I'll city-slick you.
     
    So I didn't throw the bag in the yard. I turned up a side street. I could hear the police car siren. I kept on running and slung the bag up into an acacia tree. A few doors up I saw a beer joint open. I went right in. I couldn't have run any farther or I'd have keeled over. I was out on my feet, but I managed somehow to walk over to a woman sitting in a booth. She was alone but there were two glasses and a pitcher of beer on the table. I walked right over and sat down opposite her.
     
    "Hello, big boy," she said.
     
    She was boiled. You could tell that right away. She kept blowing upward past her nose onto her forehead to keep her hair back. I sat there, hurting inside my lungs and my belly. I couldn't speak.
     
    "It's just a little bit hot in here," she said.
     
    She was plenty drunk.
     
    I sat there trying not to pant. I took a big breath and drank what beer there was left. I drank it but it only made me shorter-winded.
     
    "Oh, you drank Pat's beer," she said.
     
    I knew I'd have to do something. I was listening for the cops outside.
     
    "Who's Pat?" I said.
     
    "She's my girl friend," she said. She giggled like a kid. "Her kidneys is no good. But 'at's all right, big boy. You're my boy friend, ain't you?"
     
    "Sure," I said.
     
    I was listening for the police. I could hear the car siren and then the cops shouting on the street, and somebody yelling, "He went in there!"
     
    I poured another glass of beer