didn’t notice, a pickpocket had reached through the railing my back was against, going for the wallet in my front pants pocket. His hand out with it prize, I managed to snag his wrist a split second before it could snake back behind the railing.
“Oh, no you don’t!” I growled.
The pickpocket pulled hard, pushing with his feet against the rail, tearing my fingers at the knuckles as he scraped them against the steel rails. I pulled back, determined to keep my wallet, fighting for balance on the foot and a half of slick rock which made up my side of the fence.
“Let go, damnit! Let go o’me!”
Sticking his free arm through the rails, the pickpocket slammed me in the side, knocking me over the sea wall. I held his wrist in a death grip, feeling his shoulder slam agasint the rails as my weight pulled him tight. He cursed non-stop, his free hand tearing at my fingers around his wrist. I punched him away as best I could, hitting him sometimes, sometimes myself, sometimes the rails. My mind raced over my options, not finding much.
I could release my grip and hope to be able to catch a rail or the sea wall’s edge, but the rain made my chances slim at best. It was possible I might survive the fall to the water, but it was only a fifty/fifty possibility. The rocks hidden beneath the violently pounding waves slamming against my legs and the sea wall were jagged and slimy with sea growth. Walking along the wall back to shore was impossible. So was swimming. The tide was too low for that, but quite ample to mash a man to death. I had no choice—I hung on.
“Com’on, man—let go o’me! I mean it—I mean it!!”
He shook at me, pulling back and forth, jerking my armpit painfully across the edge of the rock wall. I bit at the rain, growling in agony, but didn’t let go.
“Le’go,le’go,le’go—you bastard—le’go,le’go!!”
“Just pull me up—fer Christ’s sake!” I told him. “let me grab the rail so I don’t have to die over five goddamned bucks!”
“No—shut up!! Let go o’me—le’go,le’go! Shit. I makes you le’go. I makes you!”
The pickpocket reached inside his coat. Bracing myself, I thought, okay, you want it—you got it, and then dug my heels into the wall. The pickpocket’s hand emerged with a straightrazor. My left foot slipped back into the water. The pickpocket’s free hand came through the rails at me. My foot almost caught, but slipped again. The razor took my distance, cutting open my sleeve and flaying a fine layer of hair and skin away. My foot caught. I hovered into balance, finding my center of gravity. The razor waved above my line of sight.
“Now. You let go.”
“Not yet.”
I threw my weight back, my legs pushing me out from the wall. The extra leverage vroke the pickpocket’s hold, bringing him slamming into the rails face first. The razor flipped out of his hand, arcing past my right ear. Blood splashed from his face, catching me in the eyes and mouth. Not slowing up, I leaned forward and punched, nailing the part of his face the steel to either side of my fist had missed. Blood arced again, running over his shoulder, down his arm to mine. The blow caused me to slip but, I managed to get half my body back up on the ledge. Releasing the pickpocket, I caught rails in both hands, dragging myself into a secure position as fast as I could.
Once on the ledge I turned to face the pickpocket in case he was going to be anymore trouble. He wasn’t. He was unconscious or dead. I didn’t care which. Then I spotted it—my wallet was still in his hand. Catching my breath, I reached over and pried it free. He didn’t stir. I slid back over to the landward side of the railing. I sat down in relief a few feet from the pickpocket, exhausted from my ninety seconds of past-event re-runs, glad for life and breath and safety. After a few minutes or being overjoyed with having remained alive, though, I noticed it was starting to rain harder. Tired of abuse for one night, I pushed myself to my feet and walked over to the pickpocket. Patting him on the back, I told him “Nice try.”
Then I walked back to my car and drove home. When I got there, I had no trouble sleeping.
INTRODUCTION TO “NINE DRAGONS”
Jack Hagee has had fans for over 30 years now. But, my favorite editor to work with, Jack Dolphin, loves this one the best. It was one of the first of my stories to draw attention to my use of food in stories (something I never noticed until the critics starting analyzing it). It’s also one I love as well for more than one reason, so—here we go…
NINE DRAGONS
A JACK HAGEE STORY
The Outliner had struck again. New York City’s police were still baffled over their newest serial murderer, a seemingly actual random killer who drew chalk outlines around the bodies of his victims. Why he did it was apparently as big a mystery to everyone on the force as it was to Chet Green, the New York Post reporter who’d made the city’s latest freak his pet follow-up story.
So far, the red-ink rag informed us, the Outliner’s score was holding at eight. The first had been an unceremoniously white-chalk-surrounded knifing on 116th up in Harlem. The next two had gone down in Brooklyn, one in Flatbush, the other in the Heights. With the fourth he switched from white to blue chalk, and came off the back streets to leave his prey in the dairy aisle of a Queens Key Food Mart. Pulling that one off during business hours stunned a lot of people. The fifth he left on the observation deck of the Staten Island Ferry, sketched around in pink chalk, budding out at all the appendages in crude but recognizable roses. The sixth became his first female victim. No rape, just the familiar slash across the throat and a five-color rainbow made up of four lines of chalk and one of blood.
The latest was his masterpiece, though. In an Empire State Building men’s room, he left two known homosexuals locked in anal intercourse nailed to the wall with railroad spikes. Again, no one had a clue as to how he’d pulled it off. Police estimates insisted he would’ve needed a minimum of forty-five minutes, even with the dearly departed’s cooperation. The suspicions of cooperation came from the fact the purple chalk surrounding the couple was underneath the blood which had flowed from their individual stigmata, along with the suggestion of the jockey’s penetrating genitalia, a detail impossible for the Outliner to have arranged if his subjects had already been dead.
The Post had run the photos available to it, the chalk outline, the scab-like pool of crusting blood, the smear-covered body bags being wheeled out of the room, et cetera…all part of the people’s sacred right to information.
Weary of the people and their sacred rights, I folded my newspaper, shoved it behind the counter I was leaning against, and turned to look out the window. Reading newspapers was how I’d wasted the better part of the previous seven days, and it was wearing a little thin. I’d spent the time in a small-aisled, packed-to-the-rafters grocery store on Mott Street, one of the busiest in Chinatown. It was a guard duty job, and I was not, what you might call, enjoying myself. Not by a long shot. I’d been foxed neatly by an old dog who must’ve seen me coming six miles off. He was a Chinese who called himself Lo Chun. When he’d padded into my office I’d figured some easy coin was ahead. Of course, in my time I’ve figured the government was my friend and that my wife would love me forever. Sometimes it’s depressing to see how little my intuitive boundaries have stretched over the years.
It was February outside the window—the worst part of the year in New York City. By that time of winter, everything is cold; everything hurts. Every inch of stone in the buildings and sidewalks and streets is frozen through, solidly bitter to the touch, or even to be near. Manhattan snowscapes may look pretty in the movie theater or on TV, but walking just a few
