King 3
“I didn't want him causing trouble in our place,” the man told the interviewer at the time. “But I knew I couldn't just ask him to leave. The boss wasn't around, and I didn't know whether I should call you guys. What if Puck wasn't doing anything? He could get me later for blabbing on him.”
The soda jerk decided to ease drop on the conversation, just to make sure it didn't have anything to do with his place.
Fetterland sat in one of the booths with a man the soda jerk identified as Zarra, pressing him to do something Zarra apparently did not want to do.
“They didn't talk loud. But you could hear Puck's voice rise up every once in a while, only to calm down again,” the soda jerk said.
When he eased close enough to hear, the soda jerk realized his fears were not exaggerated.
“They were plotting something all right,” he said.
Fetterland was peeved about Zarra’s coming late.
"It sure took you long enough to get here," Fetterland said.
"My uncle had be doing chores around the yard."
"Your uncle? I thought you said he was out of town."
"Ed, not Charlie. I have more than one uncle."
"Which one has the car?"
"Charlie. It's Charlie's car."
"Did you bring it?"
"Yes, I brought it. But I don't understand why you wanted me to. Charlie told me I could drive it while he's gone. I just don't feel comfortable doing it."
"You're a pussy," Fetterland said.
"Why am I pussy? Because I do what I'm told?"
"Because you act like a robot, doing whatever anybody tells you to do, even me. I told you to bring the car and you brought it. If it was me, I would have asked what for right up front."
"So why do you want it?"
"You'll see. Did you park it out of sight?"
"I put it on Knickerbocker Avenue. Is that out of the way?"
"As out of the way as it needs to be," Fetterland said. "I just don't want anyone around here seeing us getting into it so as to connect it to us later -- especially the police."
"Why are you so worried about the police? I have all the proper papers. I even have my license now."
"I'm sure it's all nice and legal. But if they see us now, and talk to us, they'll know who we are later, and know just where to go and get us."
"What exactly did you have in mind?"
"I told you, you'll see."
"That's not good enough. Uncle Charlie's car isn't going anywhere now or after dark unless I know why."
"You'll do what I say or I'll break you in two."
"I won't," Zarra said.
Fetterland leaped over the table and tried to grab Zarra by the arm, but Zarra moved more quickly, shifting his arm so as to catch Fetterland’s hand before it could catch his, twisting the heal of the hand against the wrist until something snapped, drawling a howl out of Fetterland.”
"You broke it! You fucking broke it!" Fetterland yelled. "You broke my fucking arm!"
"I -- I didn't mean to," Zarra said. "I guess I yanked too hard. Uncle Charlie always scolded me about that. He said: `You have to have the touch of a feather, boy.' But I guess I got careless I..."
"I don't give a flying fuck what your Uncle Charlie says, or how gentle you've got to be. I'm hurt. I need a doctor. For Christ's fucking sake, stop fucking talking and go get the fucking car."
A moment later, they were out the door and out of the soda jerk's life, although the soda jerk recalled reading the news accounts the next day, about robbery and the subsequent events.
"I knew it was them when I read it in the newspaper," he said. "The cops kept talking about how one guy with a limp arm jumped off the falls."
***********
Twenty years after being shot and left for dead, the clerk could still recall the details.
Matthew Anderson III had not led a happy life. Twenty-three at the time of the shooting, he worked the liquor store part time as he attended the community college.
I interviewed him at the YMCA where he had a room. He apparently still worked part time, although tried to keep this information from me since the job was a technical violation of his disability -- something he collected since the shooting.
We sat in the lobby sipping coffee, a beverage he clearly did not need since his hands shook even without the stimulant. He was thin, with dark black greasy hair. He had no lips or eye lids, which made him look oriental.
"I thought something was up when the car stopped in front of the store and kept its engine running," Anderson said. "Cars stopped all the time, but this one seemed louder than most."
From behind the sales counter Anderson could barely see out the front window, stickers and signs for a dozen varieties of alcohol all but blotting out his view.
"I could see two people in the car," he said. "That's all I told you guys later. I couldn't quite see the driver except to say that he had long blonde hair."
The second figure, a smaller boy, got out of the car and made his way into the store.
"What struck me first was the fact that his arm was in a sling," Anderson said. "It was as dirty as he was. I was still staring at it when he pulled out a gun with his other hand and told me to give him the money from the cash register."
Anderson either made a wrong move or moved too slowly. He felt the pain before he heard the sound of the gun going off, then he looked down at his chest to see blood bubbling out.
"I must have passed out for a second, and when I woke again, the cash register was open and empty and the front door was swinging closed," Anderson said. "I heard the boy screaming at the driver to `get the hell out of here.'"
"Then what?"
"I passed out again, and woke up later in the hospital."
"You testified against both boys later?"
"Yes."
"But you never saw the other boy."
"I didn't have to. Your guys caught him gunning down the highway."
"But that was hours later, and the gun man wasn't with him."
Anderson shrugged. "To my mind, it was the same kid. They both should have gone to jail for what they did to me."
"One did. The driver."
"But only for a few days. The judge gave him probation."
"Have you seen either one since?"
"No, and that's a lucky thing."
"Why's that?"
"I'd kill them both if I saw them again, for how they screwed up my life."
************
Man jumps off Falls Bridge
A fugitive from a downtown mugging jumped off the Great Falls Bridge last night after being pursued there by the police.
The unidentified man was about 16 years old, police sources said, and had just stabbed a 64-year-old man in a robbery attempt, when police discovered him. The Victim, Henry Watson, of Paterson, died of his wounds at St. Joseph's Hospital. The mugger is believed to have fallen to his death at the foot of the falls, although no body has been found.
"No one could survive that fall," said Mayor Frank X. Graves, Jr., who is leading the task force which will drag the river today. "That son of a bitch is dead. So be it. He saved the state the trouble of having to kill him."
Although neither the mayor nor the police would officially comment on the mugger's identity, inside sources told the Paterson Evening News that a tentative identification listed the fallen figure as Puck Fetterland of Paterson.
Fetterland was also wanted in connection with an armed robbery earlier in the day, when he allegedly shot a clerk of a Broadway liquor store.
"We're not taking for granted that he is dead," this source said. "Fetterland is a clever bastard, and one who has slipped away from us before."
************
"So where did you see him last?" Martin's voice asked, his voice nearly lost to echoes on the interrogation tape. The camera was situated in the corner and had a difficult time with the contrast between dark and light. The boy's face under the strong lights was washed of detail. Martin's shape loomed in the shadows, equally indistinguishable.
"Who?" the boy in the chair asked, his blonde hair like a halo around his head.
"Don't tell us you did this alone," Martin snapped, his voice as sharp as a lash. "We've got a witness that saw you two robbing the store."
"Robbing what?"
"Don't try and deny it. We caught you in the get-away car."
"I'm not denying anything. I just don't remember a robbery."
"Or the clerk shot?"
"No!" the boy shouted and leaped to his feet.
"Sit down. Nobody told you to stand."
"But...."
"Sit!"
Zarra sat.
"So where is he?" Martin asked.
Zarra shook his head. "I didn't know it was a crime to give somebody a lift.”
"So you admit there was someone else?"
"Sure."
"Who was in the car with you?"
"Puck Fetterland."
A prolonged silence filled the tape, followed by sharp cough.
"Are you sure?" Martin asked.
"Of course, I'm sure. He's my friend."
"Puck Fetterland has no friends," one of the other cops said. "Even the low life down on River Street avoids him, except when they're particularly desperate."
"Puck is the desperate one," Zarra said.
"What?"
"He said he needed me."
"What for?"
"A ride. He called me at home and said he needed a ride to the east side."
"He said no more than that?"
"That's what I told you."
"You mean you didn't know about the liquor store?"
"Not until Puck told me to stop there."
"You're saying you weren't in on the plan to rob the place?"
"I had no idea that's why we were there. He said he was going to pick something up. He said he had to deliver it some place else."
"Pick what up?" one of the cops said.
"He didn't say, but from the way he acted I assumed it was something illegal."
"And you drove him anyway?"
"I figured I had to."
"Why? Did he force you? Did he hold a gun up to your head?"
"If he had I would have taken the gun from him."
"You?"
"I broke his arm. It taught him not to threaten me again."
The low buzz of voices hinted of the great stir this caused among the invisible police officers.
"So the report from the emergency room was right," one of the other officers said in an exchange not aimed at Zarra. "The nurse at the hospital said there were two of them."
The buzzing stopped and the Martin spoke to Maxwell again.
"All right," Martin said. "So you gave him a lift. What happened when you got to the store?"
"Puck told me to wait outside with the engine running. So I did."
"You didn't find this at all suspicious?"
"I told you. I had my doubts."
"You must have known something was wrong when he came running out of the store? Didn't you hear the shooting?"
"I heard something. I thought it was a truck backfiring or someone setting off fireworks."
"What about when he climbed in the car and told you to speed away?"
"I did what he told me."
"Where did you take him?"
"Towards downtown."
"Anywhere in particular?"
"He got out in an alley."
"That's all? He didn't say anything?"
"Of course, he said something."
"What?"
"He told me not to talk to you. The next thing I know, you're pulling me over and pointing guns at my head."
"Then you don't know what happened at the falls?"
"Only what I read later in the newspaper. How he fell or jumped."
"But you saw him again?"
Zarra nodded.
"Where?"
"When he came knocking on my door asking for help."
**********
During another interview recorded on audio tape, Zarra said he found Fetterland standing on his front porch.
"He was dripping on the welcome mat," Zarra recalled. "When I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing showing up there, he said he needed my help."
"Did he tell you what happened?" one of the interviewers asked, not Martin, but a man with a much deeper voice.
"No, he just said he fell into the river and needed a place to dry off," Zarra said.
"`The cops are after me,' Puck said.
"`Maybe you should have laid low like you told me to do,' I told him.
"`I did,' he said, `or I was trying to when they saw me.'
Even without yet reading the next day's newspaper accounts, Zarra said he knew Fetterland was lying.
"I can't let you in, my uncles would kill me," Zarra said.
"Just for a minute? To dry off?"
"Not for a second," Zarra said.
"Screw you, then," Fetterland growled. "I'll find someone else to help me."
"I didn't say I wouldn't help, I just said you can't come in. If you want, I'll get you some dry clothing."
"Don't do me any favors," Fetterland said. "If you don't want to let me in I'll go find someone who will."
"Like that? You'll get sick."
"I'm already sick."
"I'll get you a coat."
"No, just come with me," Fetterland said. "The cops'll be looking for someone walking alone. Not two of us."
"I'm not going to get wrapped up in your games, Puck," Zarra said. "I don't want to end up in jail."
"I'm not going to wrap you up in anything. But I got to go see an old acquaintance and I'd rather not go there alone -- if you get my meaning."
"No, I don't."
Fetterland pulled a pistol out of his sling. It still dripped with water from his dip in the river.
"My gun's all wet and where I'm going I'll need someone to watch my back."
Zarra said he didn't want to go anywhere with Fetterland, but thought Fetterland would never leave unless he did. He flatly refused to borrow his uncle's car, a fact that seemed to annoy Fetterland. But he waited patiently, dripping on the porch while Zarra went and got his jacket.
***********
Where they went after that, Wilson filled in later, since he alone had trailed young Fetterland from the foot of Crooks Avenue where he had crawled from the river to Zarra's house on the hill, following each wet footstep nearly to the porch.
Wilson, for his own reasons, had failed to report his finding to the department so Fetterland was later listed as missing and presumed dead. He wouldn't say what he expected to gain by withholding the information, although his later strong association with the Fetterland empire explained a lot. After the shooting at the falls and Fetterland's unmistakable death twenty years later, Wilson confessed many of his misdeeds, including the night he followed the teen duo down to what he called "Niggertown."
Niggertown -- as it was called by many blacks and whites -- was an area of about five blocks long on River Street. More liberal souls referred to it as "Little Harlem," though by either name most upstanding citizens went no where near it by day, let alone by night. Even the most respectable blacks didn't feel safe there. Blissfully ignorant citizens also mistakenly believed it the worst neighborhood in Paterson, partly because it never bothered to hide its taverns and whore houses, basking in their flashing lights and sweet perfume as a matter of pride so that those few blocks glowed along the river like a string of pearls.
"Zarra was nervous," Wilson said. "Even he probably hadn't ever wandered so deep into the black neighborhood before. “He kept looking around and over his shoulder as if he expected something to jump out of him, and he kept asking Fetterland why they had to go down there."
In the dark, under its changing lights, the dilapidated turn-of-century buildings with crumbling porches -- that had ceased to exist in other parts of the city -- seemed grander than they did by day, the plywood over their condemned windows invisible in the dark, as was the pealing paint and other major deformities. In the dark, all the signs of abject poverty gave way to the lights, and the sense of carnival that came alive here after dark, partly inspired by the illusion of drugs, partly by the desperation of the people who lived and played here, each needing this magical mystery tour, this illusion, so as to not despair their lives.
"Fetterland paraded straight down those blocks into those lights, as if he wasn't afraid of anybody," Wilson said.
Fetterland’s still wet sneakers still squished out river water with each step. Black men in large hats paused amid their conversations to glare at his thin, pale shape as if viewing a madman. Black women -- dressed in satiny clothing – giggled, their eyes aglow with the lights and the potential for violence.
"Zarra hung back somewhat," Wilson said. "He seemed more cautious. You knew he would explode if someone tried to attack him, but wouldn't do anything to make it happen. He seemed annoyed that Fetterland invited trouble."
Wilson, who had abandoned his car to follow on foot, clung to darker doorways just far enough away to keep an eye on the two boys, but not be seen. Ahead of him, the two boys bathed in the changing colors as they passed under the neon sign taverns, and rib joints. Fetterland seemed unphased by the rage his arrival engendered, as if he invited some excuse to vent his rage on someone.
The smell of bar rooms wafted out with the sound, rolling out from two dozen nearly identical places, the smell of hops and whiskey, cigarettes and cigars, perfume and body odor, and a glimpse inside showed bodies rubbing against each other in some aspect of dance, like boy scouts rubbing sticks together in hopes of generating sparks.
"What are we coming here for?" Zarra asked again in a whisper nearly lost to the drone of music emitted from the open tavern doors.
"I told you, I've got to meet somebody," Fetterland said, shoes still making that sucking noise as he put his weigh on them.
"What for?"
"I don't have any dope and I need some and I don't have any dry clothes and I need those, too."
"And you expect to get those here?"
"You can get almost anything you want in Nigger Town, if you know who to ask."
"And you do?"
"I know the best."
The fact was, Wilson reported, people down there did know Fetterland, some even nodding at him as they moved out of his path, their whispers carrying ahead news of his coming.
"I could hear them mumbling the name Red Ball," Wilson said, a man Wilson knew was one of the more prominent thugs. "A kingpin the vice squad said was involved in everything from prostitution and gambling to wholesale drug sales."
Fetterland appeared to head for some building at the far end of this strip, yet did not move as quickly as he could have, glancing back at Maxwell with a look of annoyance.
"Will you keep up, damn it," he hissed. "You get too far behind someone's likely to grab you up and leave you in pieces in some alley somewhere."
Zarra closed the gap again, matching Fetterland's stride step for step, and the two of them, looked a little like young soldiers showing off their close order drills. Each seemed to fall into it naturally, as if they had spent their entire lives so connected. Then, Fetterland slowed his pace, his head turning to make out a particular door way among the shadowy mass of black and gray darkness beyond the flashing lights. He turned into one of the doorways as trouble stirred on the street. Upstairs music blared, and the sound of giggling filtered down the stairs just inside.
"Ring number three," Fetterland told Zarra, as he drew his still wet police pistol from his belt.
"What?"
"Ring the bell for apartment three," Fetterland said, then turned to face the street, pistol poised at his side.
Zarra stepped into the dark doorway, entering a small vestibule with brass colored mail boxes installed into the left wall, each with a pearl button above each box. Of all, only number three displayed a number, and even that was of the stickup variety with the top of the number pealing off. Zarra pressed the button. No ring sounded yet deep inside the building the music and the laughter ceased.
"Who is it?" a harsh voice called from somewhere up the stairs, though no light showed and no sound had reached them of an opening or closing door.
"Who do you think?" Fetterland barked. "Get your nigger ass down here. Now!"
"Puck?"
"You're not listening to me, Red Ball. Get down here."
"I'm not dressed."
"So?"
"So it's awful public down there and I'm not alone neither."
"Do you think I care? And no one else does either. There ain't a woman in his whole neighborhood that hadn't see you naked or a man who'd say anything bad about you if they did. Now you get black ass down here."
The sound of slapping bare feet came down the stairs as a naked black man emerged from the darkness.
He was tall. He was lean. He had shaved his head. So he seemed like a chunk of shadow stepping out of itself, his arms so taunt with muscular development, he might have easily passed himself off as one of the local boxer. Even naked, he seemed dangerous, and Zarra stepped back a half step to adopt a defensive posture.
But if the black man noticed the move, he showed no sign, his dark eyes glinting with the reflection of the street lights, but stared in the direction of the man he clearly saw at the most dangerous of the two: Fetterland.
"You son of a bitch," Fetterland said, lifting his pistol to aim at the black man's bare chest. "The cops nearly got me tonight, cops you said you would keep from rousting me. I ought to kill you like they almost did me."
"I said I'd keep them off your trail if you laid low," Red Ball said. "But you didn't. You robbed three stores and shot five people. You robbed the mayor's wife's car when she stopped at a red light, then crashed the car into the police chief's garage nearly killing his wife. Then if that wasn't enough, you mugged someone with a knife on the street, leaving him to howl about it until he died. How am I supposed to protect you if you insist on riling up the cops like that?"
Fetterland lowered his pistol a little, then grinned – an expression only slightly less evil than a sneer, his eyes full of delight over his own growing legend.
"You heard about all that, eh?" he said.
"Everybody's heard about it, boy," Red Ball said. "If you'd finished fourth grade you could have read about it for yourself. It'll be the headline in five fucking newspapers this morning."
"Is that a fact?" Fetterland said, pistol lowering another thirty degrees.
"Don't be so damned proud about it, asshole. You'll go and get yourself killed. Just like what nearly happened last night."
"I wouldn't have gotten so close to getting killed if you had provided me with protection like you said you would."
"I'm telling you no one can protect you like that. You don't see me sweating no local heat, do you?"
"No, but you keep going off to county jail," Puck said. "Is that how you work the system?"
"Absolutely," Red Ball said. "I get out. If I was as stupid as you are, they'd still have my black ass in that place, and setting me up for a trip to the state or federal lock up."
"Who you calling stupid?" Fetterland shouted and lifted the pistol again, aiming it unwaveringly at Red Ball's face.
"You," Red Ball said. "Now why don't you..."
A siren whooped from down the block, and single on and off wail designed to startle and break up the crowd.
"Someone had called the station to say a riot had started down in that part of town," Wilson said.
"Quick," Red Ball hissed. "Get up the stairs."
"Fetterland didn't want to leave," Wilson recalled. "I saw him turn around in the doorway, and lift his pistol again, like he could actually fight it out with wet pistol. People on the street outside scattered to get out of the way of the gun and the approaching night patrol."
Red Ball stepped out from the shadow, perfectly naked, and knocked down gun out of Fetterland's hand. Wilson heard it clatter in the dark against the pavement.
"Don't be a bigger fool than you already are," Red Ball said. "I can handle the cops. But not if you're going to go and kill one on me. Get upstairs. Let me handle this."
"Fetterland's face had crinkled up, like a dog's gets just before it's about the attack," Wilson said. "I could his eyes alive with the light, the red and green of the bar lights, the red of the approaching patrol cars -- lights clashing in his dark stare like swords."
"All right," Fetterland said finally. "You handle it. But give me my gun. If you can't get these son of a bitches to go away, I'll put them away for you."
"Get!" Red Ball said, bending to retrieve the weapon as he pushed both Fetterland and Zarra towards the door, wedging the pistol the wrong way down into Fetterland's grasping hands.
*********
"So what happened then?" Martin asked, his dark shape blocking out the whole view of Zarra in the camera.
"I looked back and saw Red Ball standing there, waiting for the police," Zarra said.
"That's all."
"Puck hissed at me to get up the stairs. He was about half way up. I could see him framed against a red glow that I mistook for a fire at first. It was crimson so deep it really didn't light the hallway at all.
"I remember smelling sandalwood incense."
"You knew it was sandalwood?"
"I remembered liking it from the head shop where I sometimes went downtown. But this was thicker and more intense. As if Red Ball was burning whole packages the way the hippies burned single sticks.
"It was very warm, too, that clinging wet warmth that made me start to sweat right away, and the closer me and Puck got to the glow the more I sweat."
Zarra remembered something else stirring in that odd environment, a smell perhaps that the incense tried to cover, a sharper odor, breaking out of that moist world to touch something inside of him.
The blonde haired woman who appeared would have been white under ordinary light, but here, glowed intensely crimson like a spike of flame, her liquid lips and shimmering nails adding to the effect. She was as naked a Red Ball.
"Here," she said, holding something out at them, a smoldering pipe, the smoke of which reeked of that other, sharp smell Maxwell had detected. "Take a toke of some good hash."
Behind her, other women appeared, women of varying races, nationalities, colors of hair and eyes and skin, though in the crimson light all took on a similar hue, and all were beautiful, and all were naked.
"Puck grinned and grabbed the pipe with his free hand, sucking on it as he started at Red Ball's harem," Zarra told Martin, who had stepped out from in front of the camera.
"What happened then?" Martin asked.
"Puck handed me the pipe. I shook my head, but he insisted," Zarra said.
"`Don't give me that shit,' Puck told me. `This is our night to get high. You take some, too, or I'll shove this pipe down your throat.'"
"Did you take some?" Martin asked.
"Not at first," Zarra said. "I stared at the pipe for a moment, then at the women. Everybody was staring at me. I remember how dilated their eyes were and how full of mockery. They looked at me as if I was some kind of pathetic puppy and they were waiting for me to perform some kind of a trick -- all of them annoyed about me refusing to."
Zarra said he grew embarrassed but that no one could notice his blushing in the crimson light.
"I grabbed the pipe and sucked on it, but the thing was about out by then so I didn't get any smoke into my lungs," he said. "I shoved the thing back at the women and they giggled."
Fetterland explained to the women that Red Ball had sent them up, not bothering to hide his open lust for the naked women.
"Then come on inside," the blonde woman said, motioning both boys into the apartment, then towards the floor covered with pillows, low lamps, carpets and nearly legless end tables. If the apartment had one piece of normal sized furniture, Zarra didn't see it. Life here seemed centered around the floor, where carpets and soft silk quilts made nakedness possible. Red Ball had managed to blunt all the sharp edges with the crimson light, and flowing, billowing wall hangings -- these last had pornographic images imprinted in Greek and Roman styles, of men fucking women, men fucking men, men fucking sheep and goats, sheep and goats fucking women, and on and on into endless combinations of perversion.
Zarra took it all in from near the door when the slap of naked feet sounded from the hallway behind him, and Red Ball's naked black body appeared again, bathed now in the same crimson light as the harem women.
"That fucking son of a bitch," Red Ball grumbled as he came in. "Never trust a fucking pig, Puck. Wilson showed up. That fucker wanted to arrest me for indecent exposure, telling me I had no right to stand out on the street the way I was. Him, the man whose had more of my girls free of charge than I have, and whose prickly butt has been exposed more often and in more public places than any nudist..."
"Did he see me?" Fetterland asked, fingers tight around the pistol butt.
"Don't be an ass. Of course, he didn't see you. If he had, a swat team would be crawling through the windows of this joint right now. Wilson's an ass, but he's no fool. You hurt some important people this time, and riled the mayor. He'll want your blood, and I don't blame him. The city council is starting to talk, making noise about maybe bringing in the State or the Feds."
"Let them," Fetterland said, lifting his pistol.
"Even you can't be that stupid," Red Ball said, "or that angry. People like us don't beat the Feds, not even the big dealers do, at least not forever. You got to be smart about this. You've got to build something, take over little things, until enough little things add up to something big. Organization is the key word for the 1970s -- and the next few decades if you're wise. No amount of protection will keep the heat off you if you act the way you did over the last couple of days."
"Fuck you," Fetterland said, though it was more a grumble than a threat. He glanced at the door. "Did the pig go away?"
"Yes," Red Ball said. "But that doesn't mean he won't be back. He'll want a little piece of something for doing me the favor. Which, of course, begs me to ask what the hell you're doing here?"
"I need some clothes and some dope and a place where I can hold up for a while," Fetterland said.
"All at once?" Red Ball asked. "That's asking a lot on the spur of the moment. I can find you clothing and drugs, but a safe place from the cops will take some time."
"Then we'll stay here," Fetterland said, eyeing the women with a lecherous eye.
"You don't listen. I just said Wilson will come back. I need a few hours to find you a place. I'll have to stash you some place else in the meantime."
"Forget that!" Fetterland snapped. "I don't want you stashing me in any of your nigger dives. I want some place decent."
"Decent? You don't know what the word means."
"Decent like this," Fetterland said, waving his pistol around the room.
"You're not civilized enough for this kind of place," Red Ball said. "You still got the beast in you, Puck. You have to learn grace and class before you're ready to come inside. People need to know you won't piss all over the furniture."
"All right, forget the safe place, motherfucker," Fetterland said. "Just get me the other stuff and me and Max will find something for ourselves, stash ourselves someplace while you come up with something more or less permanent, where nobody will worry about where I piss or when or how much."
Red Ball let out a low sigh. He looked concerned yet sagged a little, as if he had been through similar arguments as this in the past and knew he couldn't win any with Fetterland in this mood. He waved a hand at one of the women.
"Get this animal here some clothes," he said, then addressing Fetterland again. "I'll get you a safe place. But it won't be for a while. Call me from somewhere, don't come back here, and for God's sake, stay the hell out of trouble in the meantime."
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