... And
he hangs three fags before the fuzz nail him. I mean
the Vigilante earned his moniker....
"Ever notice how many expressions carry over from
queers to con men? Like 'raise,' letting someone know
you are in the same line?
" 'Get her!'
" 'Get the Paregoric Kid giving that mark the build
up!'
" 'Eager Beaver wooing him much too fast.'
"The Shoe Store Kid (he got that moniker shaking
down fetishists in shoe stores) say: 'Give it to a mark
with K.Y. and he will come back moaning for more.'
And when the Kid spots a mark he begin to breathe
heavy. His face swells and his lips turn purple like an
Eskimo in heat. Then slow, slow he comes on the mark,
feeling for him, palpating him with fingers of rotten
ectoplasm.
"The Rube has a sincere little boy look, burns through
him like blue neon. That one stepped right off a Sator-
day Evening Post cover with a string of bullheads, and
preserved himself in junk. His marks never beef and the
Bunko people are really carrying a needle for the Rube.
One day Little Boy Blue starts to slip, and what crawls
out would make an ambulance attendant puke. The
Rube 8flips in the end, running through empty automats
and subway stations, screaming: 'Come back, kid!!
Come back!l' and follows his boy right into the East
River, down through condoms and orange peels, mosaic
of floating newspapers, down into the silent black ooze
with gangsters in concrete, and pistols pounded Hat to
avoid the probing finger of prurient ballistic experts."
And the fruit is thinking: "What a character!! Wait
till I tell the boys in Clark's about this one." He's a char-
acter collector, would stand still for Joe Gould's seagull
act. So I put it on him for a sawski and make a meet to
sell him some "pod" as he calls it, thinking, "I'll catnip
the jerk...
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