The Wanderers

Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedications

Epigraph

1. The Warlord

2. The Party

3. The Game

4. The Roof

5. The Love Song of Buddy Borsalino

6. Super Stud

7. The Death of Hang On Sloopy

8. Perry—Days of Rage

9. The Funeral

10. The Hustlers

11. Buddy Borsalino's Wedding Day

12. Coda: The Rape

First Mariner Books edition 1999

Copyright © 1974 by Richard Price

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South,
New York, New York 10003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Price, Richard, date.
The wanderers : a novel / by Richard Price.—1st Mariner Books ed.
p. cm
"A Mariner Book."
ISBN: 978-0-395-97774-3
I. Title.
PS3566.R544W3 1999
813'.54—dc21 99-15175 CIP

Printed in the United States of America

09 10 - D O H - 10 09

Dedications

Roachman, Santos, Stieny, Lance,
and the others

Dion, The Four Seasons
Alice
Margo
Garry
Judi

I would like to thank the Mary Roberts
Rinehart Foundation for the grant
and the validation.

"I shall search my very soul ... for the Lion"

— Van Morrison

"Good Times
O children think about the good times"

— Lucille Clifton

1. The Warlord

THERE HE WAS in Big Playground. Richie Gennaro. Seventeen. High Warlord of the Wanderers. Surrounded by the Warlords of the Rays, Pharaohs, and the Executioners. Touchy allies. Tense convention. Issue at hand —

"We gotta stop them niggers."

"Do you think the Fordham Baldies would fight wit' us?"

"Man, if we get them Baldies it's all over."

"Yeah, but don't forget them Wongs. Them Chinks know judo."

"No Chink judo chop can stop this!"

"Hey, put that back! Jeez, you wanna get us busted!"

"Hey—how about them Lester Avenue guys?"

"Nah, they're fuckin' killers."

"They jus' as soon kill one a us as a nigger."

"I heard the Del-Bombers is comin' in wit' the Pips 'cause Clinton Stitch got a cousin in the Bombers."

"Ever notice how spades got two million cousins all over the country?"

"Del-Bombers ... shit ... that's bad."

"Now we gotta get the Baldies."

"Antone—you know Joey DiMassi, doncha?"

"Yeah."

"Whyncha go over to Fordham tonight with Gennaro an' see if you can get to talk wit' the Baldies."

"Awright."

Richie felt uneasy with Antone. The Wanderers and the Pharaohs often rumbled, and this emergency peace was only temporary. What if Antone, tonight, while they were waiting for the train pushed Richie on the el tracks? The Pharaohs knew that Richie was the vital spark, the cold logical mind behind the Wanderer war machine. Richie knew that if he was a Pharaoh and he had the chance he would surely push the Wanderer Warlord into the path of an oncoming train.