The Boys on the Mountain by John Inman

Author:John Inman [Inman, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: DSP Publications
Published: 2015-05-12T04:00:00+00:00

BACK ON the street, the night air and the noisy throngs of people helped calm him enough to think rationally about what had just happened. He figured Bobby got what he deserved. Nobody likes a piker. But Charlie also figured he was lucky to have gotten away with what he did. And lucky he hadn’t gone any farther. He could have killed the bastard. He would have killed the bastard if that little voice inside him hadn’t told him to stop when it did. If he hadn’t reined in his anger, he knew he would be worrying about more than just back rent right now. He would be worrying about how to insulate his sorry ass when the cops strapped him into that electric chair up in Vacaville. Murder one, they called it.

As he strolled the street, he thought about that.

Where had the anger come from? You read about some Joe who commits murder over a measly twenty bucks and you think, what kind of moron would do that? The guy must be nuts. But for that tiny inner voice, Charlie knew, he would have been that moron tonight. Something about the whining little rat had stirred up a violence inside him he hadn’t even known he possessed. One more good stomp with his boot would probably have finished the guy off, and it had taken all his willpower not to deliver it. He supposed the sight of the bloody tooth shooting across the floor had startled him enough to make him stop, and thank God it had.

Music and laughter coming through the door of a bar on Broadway made him hunger for a beer, but he wasn’t twenty-one. He had to settle for a Coke from a sandwich shop a couple of doors farther along. He sipped at it as he resumed his stroll along the crowded street, soaking up the sounds and smells, letting the cacophony of a Saturday night lull him back to a place where he could once again concentrate on the job at hand. The thought of those three lousy bucks in his pocket still angered him, but they had taught him something as well. He would get the money up front next time. He was doing business here. He needed to run it like a business. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if someone else tried to cheat him. The next time he might not be able to hold the violence in, the violence that, until twenty minutes ago, he hadn’t even known was a part of him.

Gradually, Charlie again began to notice eyes following him down the street. Lighting up a Camel, he leaned against the window of a clothing store on the corner of Third and studied the faces going past. Charlie’s heart gave a little lurch when a man came up to him and asked the time, but the man moved on after Charlie told him. False alarm. A moment later, one of the crazies that populated the

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