![]() Should he chance it? He must Get movingīond flattened himself against the rock and warily inched his head round the corner. It was black, impenetrable, as deep as the rest. He gazed vaguely at the softly heaving sheen of water. Slowly he let himself down to the bottom rung of wire. A voice called out, startlingly close, "Okay to go?" There was a distant answer: "Okay." The crane engine accelerated. Bond crept softly forward, watching his footholds for loose stones. Round the bead, the track filtered through a maze of giant, tumbled boulders. But softly, gently, slowly The prize was almost intolerably sweet.īelow, on the jetty, to the left and to leeward of the drifting smoke of the guano dust, stood the tall, watchful figure of Doctor No.īond, leaving drops of blood behind him, picked his way carefully down the track and along the bottom of the shadowed cliff. Slowly, a thin, hard smile broke across the haggard, sunburned face. The wounded squid had emptied its ink sac at him.īond sat and thought, measuring distances, guessing at angles, remembering exactly where the crane driver's hands and feet were on the levers and the pedals. It was covered with black slime, and blackness stained the sea for twenty yards around. He got a hold and reached up his other hand and slowly, agonizingly, pulled himself up so that he was sitting in the fence. So he must be alive Dazedly Bond let go the spear from his trailing hand and reached up and felt for the nearest strand of wire. But he could feel the wire cutting into the tendons behind his knees. His eyes were stinging and there was a horrible fish taste in his mouth. What had happened? Had he gone blind? He could see nothing. 'He don't need no lesson from you,' Dee said.He caught a glimpse of the tip of his spear lancing into the centre of a black eyeball and then the whole sea erupted up at him in a fountain of blackness and he fell and hung upside down by the knees, his head an inch from the surface of the water. It was like being surrounded by Harry and his friends, only worse. The second guy grabbed him again, not so gently this time. 'You want one from me, Moso?'īobby pulled free, but the fourth guy pushed him back at the second. 'He don't need no lesson from you,' Dee said. Hands grabbed Bobby's shoulders and held him. 'Hey, cabr��n' the guy said-laughing, but not in a nice way. He was listening so hard that he walked into a guy without even seeing him. Bobby didn't think he was anywhere close yet, but he kept listening for him. Eventually he'd call another cab and come to collect his money. Maybe after the library closed he'd get a bite to eat, kill a little more time that way. If he had been Ted, he would have gone someplace like the Bridgeport Public Library where he could hang around without being noticed. He realized with a sinking heart that he had wandered into four members of some gang.Īs he went, he tried to tune his mind outward and pick up some sense of Ted, but there was nothing. Something seemed familiar about the pitchfork, but Bobby had no time to think about that. They were also wearing blue silk jackets with the word DIABLOS written on the back. ![]() Black boots with pointed toes poked out from beneath their pants cuffs. They were Puerto Ricans, he thought, and all wearing sharp-creased slacks. 'I teach im a little respect.'īobby looked up and saw four young guys, what his mom would have called corner boys, standing in front of a place called BODEGA. 'He look like a pansy uptown boy to me,' said the one who had called Bobby cabr��n and putino. Inside the pawnshop an old man with a pair of glasses pushed up on his bald head looked around, annoyed, then back down at the newspaper he was reading. One of the others snapped him a light, and Dee drew Bobby a little farther down the street.ĭee grabbed him and spun him against the door of a pawnshop so hard that for a moment Bobby thought he had decided to go along with his corner-boy friends after all. Moso stepped back, frowning, and took a cigarette out of his pocket. He couldn't hear their mind-voices, but did he need to? They were probably going to beat him up and steal his money. Bobby could smell their spicy aftershaves, their hair tonics, his own fear. ![]() He made just a single step before one of the others grabbed him. He pulled back from the hands holding his shoulders and started around the guy. 'I didn't see no guy like Boris Karloff.' 'I have to go to The Corner Pocket,' Bobby said. He walks kinda hunched over, like Boris Karloff - you know, the guy in the scary movies?' 'I have to find the guy I was with yesterday. Make him pay his way across Diablo turf.' 'We just gonna shake this little guy out a little. 'Hey, Dee,' said the boy who had pulled Bobby's hair.
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