Street of No Return Read Free Page A

squinted through the glare of the Skid Row lights, watching the small white-haired figure going south on River and coming to the end of the block and stifi going south.
"He's damn sure going toward the Hellhole," Bones said.
Phillips took the cigarette from Bones's mouth and put it in his own. He sipped the smoke through his teeth and it came out slowly through his nose. He didn't taste it going in or feel it coming out. He listened for the sounds of street fighting from the Hellhole but now there was no sound down there. Only the darkness.
Something was shining far down there in the darkness and it was the white hair of the small man walking south on River Street.
"We oughta go after him," Bones said.
Phillips nodded slowly.
"Let's go," Bones said.
But neither of them moved. They sat there on the cold pavement with their backs against the wall of the flophouse. They watched the thatch of white hair getting smaller and smaller and finally it vanished altogether. They looked at each other and for some moments they didn't say anything.
Then Bones stared glumly at the empty bottle and said, "We need a drink. How we gonna get a drink?"
Whitey was on the east side of River Street three blocks away from Skid Row. He was walking very slowly and every now and then he stepped into a doorway and stayed there a few moments. Once he crossed to the west side of River and stood beside an empty ash can, bent over it as though he were rummaging for something in the trash. But he wasn't looking inside the can. His head was turned slightly from the can and his eyes were focused on the man moving south on River.
It was the man he had seen walking past the hash house. The man was very short, around five-four, and extremely wide. The man's arms were unusually long, and came down past his knees. He moved somewhat like a chimpanzee, his head jutting forward and down, his arms swinging in unison as he went along in a bowlegged stride. He wore a bright-green cap and a black-and-purple plaid lumber jacket. He was walking without haste but with a certain deliberateness, his hard-heeled shoes making emphatic sounds on the sidewalk.
There was no other sound. There were no other people on the street. In the tenements the windows were dark. There were countless mongrels and alley cats and sewer rats in this area but none were visible now. It seemed that all living things were hiding from each other. The silence in the Hellhole was colder than the wind slicing in from the river.
On the pavement and in the gutter there were certain souvenirs of what had happened here tonight. There were broken bottles and the splintered handles of baseball bats and a lot of red stains, still wet. There was the cracked pane of a store window and the smashed front door of a tenement, the door leaning far out on its hinges. There were strips of torn clothing and someone's hat ripped across the crown and wet red smears on it.
Whitey saw all of that but it had no effect on him, it had no place in his thoughts. He wasn't conscious of the fact that he was down here in the Hellhole. His full attention was centered on the man in front of him.
He saw the man turning off River to go east on a narrow side street. He quickened his pace just a little, came onto the side street, and saw the man stopped near a dimly lit lamppost, looking toward an alleyway. The man made a move toward the alleyway, then stopped again. The man stood there as though trying to make up his mind whether to enter the alley. Some moments passed and then the man shrugged and continued on.
Whitey had ducked into a doorway and now he came out and resumed following the man. His pace was slackened again and he stayed close to the tenement walls, ready to use another doorway in case the man turned for a look. As he approached the lamppost he heard something that made him glance toward the alleyway. It was a quick glance and he couldn't see it distinctly and he kept on walking. He told himself to forget about the alleyway