Gangway!

Gangway! by Brian Garfield Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online

Book: Gangway! by Brian Garfield Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online
Authors: Brian Garfield Donald E. Westlake
stand the smell-but he was ready if one came. He said, just to keep the conversation friendly, "What's he world-famous for?"
        "Just watch him. You'll see."
        Gabe moved out of the encircling grasp and looked up the street. Ittzy Herz was leaving the curb to cross the street. A dilapidated junk cart was coming down the street above him, but Ittzy Herz had plenty of room to get across the street ahead of it. But two things happened. First Ittzy's little round hat fell off, and Ittzy bent down to pick it up. Second a piece of white paper blew across the street under the cart-horse's nose, causing it to shy, rear and bolt.
        Suddenly the junk cart was a runaway, and Ittzy was square in its path. Gabe stiffened involuntarily, but behind him he heard the gamy guy's unruffled chuckle.
        Ittzy Herz didn't even seem to see the cart thundering down at him. He merely stepped aside to avoid dirtying his boot in a horse pie on the cobblestones. It took him to the left a pace. At the same time the cart horse, for no discernible reason, jerked to Ittzy's right and bolted past him up onto the curb, scattering panic-stricken pedestrians like a fox chasing chickens in a barnyard.
        Eventually the cartman brought the runaway under control. A lot of people picked themselves up and dusted themselves off and shook their fists and hollered at the cartman.
        Not Ittzy Herz. He didn't seem to realize what a close call he'd had. He was still walking across the street, without hurry. And as he reached the sidewalk a woman leaned out a second story window and knocked a flowerpot off the sill with her elbow. Gabe opened his mouth to yell a warning because the flowerpot was on a collision course with Ittzy Herz's head.
        But somebody had left a bucket on the sidewalk, so that Ittzy Herz had to walk around it. As he did the flowerpot clanged into the bucket, and he strolled on unscathed. Not merely unscathed; he also seemed totally unaware that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
        "You just can't beat that little son of a bitch," the gamy guy said with unconcealed admiration.
        "I don't get it," Gabe said as the partner eased in closer and hugged his shoulders.
        "Old Ittzy," the gamy guy said, "he's the luckiest son of a bitch ever born. You know one time he fell out of a third story window up at the Odeon, and there just happened to be a hay wagon going by, and he just happened to land in that nice soft hay?"
        "Hell that's nothing," the partner said, "I heard a guy tried to roll Ittzy in Dead Man's Alley, but a boa constrictor grabbed the guy just before he was about to sap Ittzy on the head."
        Gabe said, "A boa constrictor?"
        "Yeah, some clown had it in a circus wagon, and it escaped that night. They found it next morning wedged into a hole in the back fence. Seems it couldn't fit through because it had this huge lump in its middle, where it swallowed the guy that'd tried to roll Ittzy."
        "Nobody's tried to lay a finger on Ittzy since then," the gamy guy said. He was around on Gabe's other side and getting closer. Gabe's nostrils wrinkled.
        The partner said, "I'll tell you, friend, Ittzy's so lucky his mother keeps him locked up in a room in the back of the store here. She charges people twenty-five cents just to look at him through a hole in the door."
        "And people pay it," the gamy guy said. "They figure maybe a little luck'll rub off on them too."
        Gabe was trying very hard not to breathe at all. "Kind of stuffy right here, wouldn't you say?" And he shook off the partner's arm, took two quick paces out to the edge of the curb, and dragged in a deep breath while he was upwind of them.
        The two guys looked at each other. The gamy guy shrugged, the partner nodded. Then the gamy guy pulled a sack out from under his coat. "You know what I got in this sack?"
        "It looks empty to me," Gabe said.
        "Well

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