The Wanderers Read Online

Maybe they should take a cab.

The meeting was adjourned.

"So you wanna go wit' me to see DiMassi tonight?"

"Awright."

"I'll meet you here about ten, O.K.?"

"Sure, you wanna hop a cab?"

Antone shrugged, he eyed Richie suspiciously. "Ah look ... I dunno if I got the dough for a cab."

"Awright, we'll see."

"Later."

"Later."

After everyone had gone back to their candy stores, deserted lots, or playgrounds, Richie sat down on a bench and scribbled out a score sheet.

Except for the Lester Avenue boys it was pretty even. Richie had to figure out how to get them involved without having them turn on the allies. They hated the niggers but they also hated everybody else. The Lester Avenue gang was older. Maybe twenty-one on the average. Comparing the other North Bronx gangs to the Lester Avenue boys was like comparing the Coast Guard to the marines. The other gangs had a few rumbles; every once in a while some guy would have his jaw busted or need a couple of stitches, but the guys on Lester Avenue were all ex-cons or Mob punks. Last year the heads of their gang, Louie and Jackie Palaya, were up on murder raps but had Mob lawyers fix a deal.

The only other gang worth being scared of was the Fordham Baldies, who were so fucking insane that they shaved their heads so their hair wouldn't get in their eyes in a fight. They were older too. About eighteen on the average. The toughest guy in the Baldies was Terror, a huge cross-eyed monster who even beat up on his own gang when they weren't fighting anyone else. But even he knew better than to fuck with the puniest guy on Lester Avenue. They'd come down like vigilantes and tear up the whole Fordham area, and they'd go down like that night after night until Terror gave himself up. Then a kangaroo court in some basement and even money Terror would be found in the trunk of a deserted car out in Hunt's Point the next week.

Richie thought about the opposition. Most of the time he couldn't figure niggers out. He once took a prejudice quiz in a comic book, and he had all the right answers except for the question, "Do Negroes smell different?" He checked yes, and the upside-down answer key said the answer was no. But that was bullshit because he knew they did. As long as he could remember his mother had warned him about coons and razors and knives and going into empty elevators with niggers because niggers would just as soon cut your balls off and pawn them for dope or booze as look at you. One fact that he knew was true was that if you go into a building where most of the tenants are niggers, either the hallway or the elevator is going to smell of piss. One time he went uptown to the Gun Hill Projects to get the homework from a kid in his class and the piss-stink in the elevator made him throw up before he got to the kid's floor.

He could understand them getting all the gangs together because essentially niggers were cowards unless there was a big gang of them. What he couldn't figure out was why the Wongs would team up with them. They were people from two different worlds. They never fought in school, but they never were chummy either. The Wongs were the insanest people of all Not only were they all Chinese but they were all related. Twenty-seven guys with the last name Wong. Each guy had a dragon tattoo and rumor had it they all knew jujitsu and could kill someone with a judo chop.

Except for the Reds, Richie thought most Chinks were pretty harmless, and he liked Chinese food, but these characters were something else. He'd heard that their great-grandfather was a real Warlord—of the Tongs down in Chinatown around World War I—and who'd brought up his family to keep the Tong terror alive.