Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

“Dreamboat, light it for me with your torch,” I say. Smoke sucked deep in my lungs. “Yeah, now let’s dance a little, baby.”

Others began to dance; some were digging the record and kissing.

“Damn, fifty characters’ll be laying around dead in the morning,” I told the girl.

“I’m high already, Pretty Boy.”

“How you know my name? You don’t know me.”

“Everybody knows you.”

“Witch, you is high. If the Law comes, you better go through the window or you’ll be in jail. What’s in the kitchen? I heard a noise.”

“There ain’t no blue light in the kitchen.”

I broke away, went in the kitchen. A game of dice, much money on the floor. I went back to the room with dim blue light. Big Jim walked in.

“Dig that trenchcoat!” somebody said from a dark corner. “That boy’d kill his uncle for a slice of ham.”

And there was Zelma.

I grabbed her wrist. “Where you been?”

“In the little girl’s room. I been waiting for you. I’m high, let’s sit. Ain’t that music crazy?”

“Yeah. A cool party too,” I said, reaching for another stick.

We sat down away from the blue light. “Darling, I’m so high I could marry you right now,” Zelma said. “These reefers are so good.”

“Baby, you’re goofed. You’re talking a hole in my head.”

“I don’t care, I’m loving you. Anything you say goes. Anything you want t you can have.”

“Yeah,” I said, and my mind was in a different world. Kissing Zelma, I remembered my first reefer. Like I’m on another planet. Nobody alive but myself. My mouth dry. A crazy idea like I could tear a man apart with my bare hands. That was the night I ran into the Pelicans and got a pistol butt on the head. I think of that and get mad again. Got to fix that up.

“Kiss me, I love you,” I hear Zelma say and before I know it, it’s two o’clock. Others are cruising in and out. Across the room I see another cat spread a handkerchief and break a capsule. Cocaine. Somebody going to be real goofed. I finished my sixth stick and Zelma’s on me again, drowning me with her lips.

A new cat comes in. She sees him and says, “That boy looks like Ace of the Pelicans.”

Damned if he didn’t. And I remember then. That Ace split my head with the gun butt.

I get up goofed, and walk out by myself. It’s all crazy now. I’m Pretty Boy and I’m the strongest stud in the world. That boy Ace split my head. I’m going to split his heart.

I walk downtown. Buildings look like they’re dancing. The lights are all goofed up. Three guys standing on a corner. One looks like Ace. They all look like him. I walk up and start shooting.

When I wake up a cop is next to my bed and got my arm. “Come on, you punk!”

“What did I do, man?” I say to him.

“We know you shot someone. We’re going to put you down for a long time.”

“Shot who? You got to have some proof.”

“We got it. Now dress and make it damned fast,” the cop said, and they took me downtown in a squad car.

“Just give us the gun and we’ll break it and tell nobody,” they said in the office.

“I don’t know nothing about it,” I told them, and somebody almost knocked my head off. But I wouldn’t talk till Zelma came.

“Pretty Boy, tell them and they’ll stop torturing you,” she begged.

That’s when I broke. I told them I was fooling around and the gun went off accidentally.

“You’re a damned liar. We’ve got enough to hang you,” they told me. Yeah, they took me to the station house and let me sleep it off in the cellar.

At seven somebody kicked me. The wagon was waiting outside. They took me away, put me in a chair, pinned a number on me. Yeah, I got mugged.

Upstairs I had to stand on a platform. “Look up into the lights,” somebody said. They’re blinding. I can barely see. I hear a voice say: “This is Joseph Nagel, alias Pretty Boy.”

I was scared, but I thought, I’m a big-timer now.

After that, they took me in a car back to the alley where I told them I threw the pistol. They didn’t find it. Handcuffs on, they brought me back to my house and people stared. I felt ashamed cause of my mother. No pistol in the house, so they took me back. Next, I met the judge. Everything was crazy. I didn’t hear nothing at all till he says, “Bee Street Jail.”

I was still handcuffed when they put me in the wagon. I hear the others talking. A wife-beater, a pickpocket, a bum. Listening to them men, I felt like a bigshot. Yeah, I shot a man, I told myself.

In the jail a guard stopped by my cell. “I don’t want no hollering and no throwing water out,” he warned, “or I’ll give you the hose.”

I wanted to spit in his face. I didn’t. I turned away. Solid walls on both sides. Bars in back. I got a sick kind of feeling. Then I hear a voice: “Hey, number eight, what are you here for?”

Number eight is me, my cell. I turned to the little opening in the door. “None of your business,” I yelled. Then I hit the mattress but I can’t sleep. The damned stoolies are talking up above.

Next morning at five a guard rapped the bars with his keys. “Get up, you punk! If you don’t, you ain’t going to eat.”

Later he comes back. “So you’re Pretty Boy,” he says.

“Yeah.”