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Cony Island was fit for neither man nor beast in the wintertime. Frigid by any normal standard of the word, the days were also routinely beset by gray, thick clouds and occasional bursts of sleet and needle-sharp shards of freezing rain. The nights were starless and the ocean breeze cut through your bones like a hacksaw. All of the normal kids were hiding in their apartments, planning on Christmas break, hovering around their radiators and sucking down hot cider next to laughing, sweater-garbed friends.
But the kings of Cony Island were roosting in less ostentatious digs. The Warriors weren’t hiding out in a mansion, and they hadn’t kicked the cops out of their station – for the winter they’d claimed an abandoned hot dog stand a few feet in from the edge of the boardwalk. It let in the occasional breeze and provided no real relief from blizzards and ice storms, but one of the boys swiped a space hearer and they got by on scraps and leavings.
Conditions were miserable enough to make Cochise ask aloud if they should just camp out at Mercy’s place for the rest of the winter.
For Mercy meant what she’d told Swan about running away, and she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Swan was going to save her. She was now sharing an apartment in Flushing with some nursing student, working nights at a supermarket, stocking shelves. Fifty percent of the food they’d eaten over Thanksgiving had come from the stores Mercy had squirreled away.
That, declared Ajax loudly, was the problem with letting a dame into the club. They should be out there raising hell, and instead they were eating leftovers and bitching about the weather. Swan’s response was that Ajax’ dick had gotten him into enough trouble, that he was lucky to be sprung on a technicality at all. They settled it with a little brawl and a long, silent dinner over fast food.
He was ineffably smug when Mercy invited them to Christmas dinner.
Swan didn’t want to hear it – they could go or stay at the lair, or even run back home – the ones who had that – for all he cared. Him, he wasn’t going. He took the train down to the cemetery instead.
Mercy found him an hour later, and naturally she was pissed at his dodging her little celebration.
Her words were not conciliatory in the slightest. “Decide eating out with a bunch of stiffs is better than hanging with your old lady?”
“You ain’t my old lady,” he said to the wall, knowing it was a lie. “You shouldn’t be out here.”
“Don’t have anyplace better to be.” She rested a hand upon her hip. “The guys are eating without you. If you don’t get off your ass you’re gonna miss it.”
“I’ll just take yours.”
“Sure,” she replied. “Tough warrior, gonna starve a girl.” She crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “What’s the real buzz?”
His jaw clicked. “I Just didn’t think it was right to come without paying my respects.”
“You’ve got respect?” He said nothing. Silence filled the cemetery, and he could feel the heat of her body behind his. When he looked up, she stood there beside him, eying the stone. “Jamill. So that’s his name?”
“Yeah. Jamill Johnson. One of the best lookouts we ever had.”
She’d never gotten Fox’s name – the sound of it tumbling out of Swan’s mouth muffled her for a moment. “Didn’t mean for him to go out like that,” she said. Mercy had spent most of her time in the club trying to make up for that one faux pas and was forever trying to prove herself ‘worthy’ of her letters.
“Did you throw him at the cop?” asked Swan. Mercy sneered at him, and he said, “it’s nobody’s fault but that pig’s,” he pointed out, tucking his chin against the point of his knee.
“Yeah,” she agreed flatly. Then she noticed the modest spray of roses lying on Fox’s headstone. “Where’d you get the money for those?”
“Toldja,” he said. “I don’t like it when things go to waste.”
At his proclamation, she smiled, and offered him a hand up. Above their heads, a subway car rattled over the tracks . It was easier to be nocturnal in the middle of summer, but that was something these stiffs would never have to worry about.
“Come on,” Swan said, wrapping an arm around Mercy’s neck. “Let’s split.”
She held on to the tips of his fingers all the way back to the stop. It wouldn’t be easy, but they both knew that this was their world, their turf – hell, their ocean. No matter how far away they ran, New York would always be a part of their souls. And no pig was going to steal that away from them.