And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks Read Online Free Page B

serving those bastards a Mickey.
    About fifteen minutes later the guy in the gray suit came back with a cop. The three dicks were still sitting there, but he couldn’t identify them. He just insisted to the cop that he had been beat up in this bar.
    I saw one of the plainclothes men give the cop the high sign, and the cop said, “Well, what do you want me to do about it, mister? You say yourself the guy ain’t here. Are you sure you’ve got the right place?”
    “Yes, I’m perfectly sure. And if you won’t do anything, I’ll find someone that will.”
    He was calm and dignified in spite of the beating he’d taken. He was smoking a cigarette and did not touch his swollen jaw and lips, nor call attention to his injuries.
    The cop said, “Well what do you want me to do? You’ve had too much to drink, mister. Why don’t you go home and forget about it?”
    The guy turned around and walked out.
    The owner had come down from his apartment upstairs and the cops were telling him what had happened. He said, “You guys better not be here. That prick looks like he will cause some trouble.”
    So the three of them left, looking a little worried.
    It wasn’t long before the guy was back, with five plainclothes men. They took the license number of thejoint, talked to the owner awhile, and left. After that there wasn’t much business.
    Just before closing time a bunch of sailors walked by the place and I heard one of them say, “Let’s go in here and start a fight.”
    The boss jumped up and said, “Oh no you don’t,” and closed the door in their faces.
    After Jimmy and I got the bar cleaned off and left for the night, we saw the sailors slugging each other outside. One of them was laid out on the sidewalk. Jimmy said, “Look at that,” and then we walked toward Seventh Avenue.
    Jimmy began talking about how the cops beat that guy up. “I been around a lot,” he said, “and I done a lot of things, but I never got so callous I could stand around and enjoy seeing something like that. Those morons in the bar laugh and think it’s funny until it happens to them.
    “Now if it was
my
joint I’d tell those cops, ‘Now listen, fellows, you made a mistake. There’s plenty alleys around here, you don’t have to beat somebody up in the joint.’ And then, on top of everything else, they walk out of there and don’t even leave a dime on the bar. If they were any sort of characters at all, they’d say ‘Jimmy here’s a dollar for you.’”

4
MIKE RYKO
    M ONDAY AFTERNOON I SPENT LOUNGING AROUND the apartment. I was more or less waiting for Phillip to get back from downtown, where he was getting his papers in order. I took showers, raided the icebox, sat on the fire escape with the cat on my lap, or just sat in the easy chair thinking that if Phillip made out all right we could go first thing in the morning to the National Maritime Union Hall and register to ship.
    Barbara Bennington was spending the afternoon with Janie. She used to come to Janie’s apartment between classes at the New School for Social Research, and sometimes she would sleep there instead of going home all the way to Manhasset in Long Island, when she had early classes the following day.
    Apartment 32 was by way of being a meeting place for her and Phillip, as well as a general hangout for ourfriends. Janie did her best to keep the place neat, but too many people came in all hours of the day and night to lounge around and talk and sleep, so the place was always a mess. The floors were always cluttered with books, old shoes, clothing, pillows, empty bottles, and glasses, and the cat used to prowl through all this as in a jungle.
    Barbara was a sort of society girl with long black hair, very pale complexion, and surly dark eyes. She looked a little like Hedy Lamarr. She was quite aware of it, and sometimes she would turn on a demure, faraway look when you talked directly to her.
    There really wasn’t much in common between Barbara and Janie, except