Monster Alley, Page 2

drunks still hoping for a meaningful one night stand.”

  Lyman grinned at the kid’s kooky logic; but what more should he expect from a dip who pops out of alleys to hook marks in the middle of the night?

  “Mummy, up the block,” the string bean piped, flipping clawed thumb over caped shoulder, “sells encyclopedias. If you think rubbers are hard to sell at two in the morning, try selling ten pound books!”

  Rubbers, golf balls, encyclopedias, Lyman couldn’t push that crap if he dressed like King Kong and hawked it from the top of the Empire State Building. He needed a product suckers would die for the way cripples lunged for their chairs back. No, no way there was money to be made here, unless, unless....

  Lyman peeked into the tray suspended from the string bean’s neck—a tray designed to selling sunglasses, if he was any judge of mirrored trays. “And what’re youse pushin’ pally?”—one finger rummaging through myriad objects.

  “Heavens, sir,”—monster mitt to pencil-thin neck—“I thought you’d never ask. For you, this!” The string bean scooped out an old–fashioned, standup alarm clock with a red button on top where its bell would ordinarily be.

  “A clock? A clock?” Lyman chuffed a laugh and brushed the kid aside to be on his way.

  “Please, sir”—lanky arm shooting out to stop him—“don’t be too quick to understand me. This is no ordinary clock, this clock’s on steroids.” The string bean Dracula hovered over him, clock cradled in clawed mitts beneath chalk–white nose.

  Lyman thought the dip looked like a praying mantis. “Yeah,” he said, “well youse can take your steroid clock an’ shove it where the sun don’t shine.”

  “But, sir, if you dial this clock backwards you’ll go back in time. If you dial it forward you’ll go forward in time.”

  Backward and forward in…. Lyman rolled his eyes to the moonlit sky—not just a Bible thumper but a Loony Tune to boot. Either this dip’s got me pegged for a hick who just fell of a turnip truck, or worse, I’ve let myself be stopped by a dip who couldn’t find his ass with both hands—which makes me an even a bigger dip. From his silly mask to the red lining sagging out of his cape, the kid’s pathetic. Lyman squinted up at the eyes glinting out of the mask’s peep holes and growled, “Do people actually buy this bullshit?”

  “Why...yes sir.”—mitt to heart, string bean taking an offended step backward—“my hand to God, it’s the quickest way to a new life, sir.”

  A new life—ha, if he only knew. Lyman couldn’t help but feel amused by the kid’s pitch in a con–man to con–man sort of way. But the onions on this punk, expecting me to buy his time–travel crap. Insulting, that’s what it was. After the blow to his livelihood this morning Lyman didn’t need another to his intellect. He had half a mind to slap the kid’s tray up in the air, send his crap flying all over the street; teach him the vender’s version of fifty–two pickup. In fact what better did he have to do at two in the morning? “Oh, yeah,” he said, warming to the idea, “quanto, Tonto?”

  “Pardon—?

  “How much…for your phony clock?”

  “Phony, sir? Oh, ye of little faith, pray try it before you buy it.”

  “Oh, really!” Lyman eyed the kid, his mind squirreling around for the hook in this hustle.

  “Absolutely, sir. Satisfy yourself.”

  This’ll be good, Lyman thought snatching the clock out of the string bean’s hairy claws to heft it. Hmm, solid...and weighty—two qualities marks linked with value. Aand try before you buy—hell, what better hook than that? Ridiculous as this string bean looks, maybe I shouldn’t be too quick to understand him, maybe there is something to learn here, something I could make a quick buck with, even tonight..

  Lyman leaned around the caped clown for a gander up the block at Broadway. Hmm…traffic still flowing, people still crossing at the green and not in between. Yeah, maybe tonight even, and if this scam’s already old down here maybe I can pull it off up in the Bronx, Bronxites are forever behind the curve when it comes to the cons dreamt up in Manhattan.

  Lyman turned the clock over in his hands. “How does it work?” he said, focusing on its round dials—five of them, one inside the other—labeled Year, Month, Day, Hour and Minute.

  “Simple, sir, you turn the dials back in time to correct your mistakes or forward in time to see your future. Then press the red button when you’re ready.”

  “Yeah, yeah, just tell me how to make a buck with it.”

  “Money, money.”—pointy claw stroking chalky chin—“let me see....”

  Hah, actor, Lyman thought. This kid’d break his leash for a slab of ham. Lets see youse wiggles out of this one, dip.

  “Okay, sir,” the string bean finally piped, “say you’re concerned for your retirement,” Boy, did he have that one right. “just turn the clock ahead to see which of today’s stocks has gone up the most by the time you’re ready to pack it in, then go out and buy it.”

  “No kidding, that simple?” Lyman smiled; the best cons were the simple ones. He turned the clock’s dials twenty–five years ahead to his sixty–fifth birthday. “Now press the button, you say?” He looked up, got a chalky–faced nod, and feeling a bit silly, pressed the red button.

  Instantly a hot rush surged through his body, he felt a singing in his bones, his knees buckled and his hand shot out to the lamppost for support, the sidewalk beneath him fading in–and–out, in–and–out.

  Gradually, two blobs in the cone of light on the cement below him morphed into his slippers. Odd, there were two other blobs there too. Then, awareness dawning, he realized he was standing beside a lamppost, about to give this dip of a string bean a lesson for insulting his intelligence.

  Whew, talk about a rush; better’n Acapulco gold, Franken–weed even.

  Lyman pushed off the lamppost to wobble on rubbery legs and ran a hand over his head. What the hell…,smooth as a bowling ball. What happened to my hair? Have my fingers gone numb? He shook them out like a pianist about to hit the keys. Then, not knowing what else to do with them, tugged his Yankees jacket up around his neck and hunched his shoulders against the night’s chill air.

  Had it gotten colder, darker? He craned up at the strip of sky between the rooftops. No moon. Had it gone behind...? But there were no clouds, and around him the brownstones, stores and theaters all looked a little more...seedy. Then he turned to the bistro across the street and his heart clutched.

  Gone was the jack–o–lantern of minutes ago, in its place now was a big red FOR RENT sign plastered across the restaurant’s boarded up window. When did that—? Lyman heard a fluttering sound and snapped around to his right to see the torn playbill of an actress under the shabby marquee flapping in the wind, a spray–painted moustache on her face giving her a mocking sneer that seemed to say, “Oh, you’re in the thrasher, fella.”

  Jesus, Lyman thought, either this kid’s got one hell of a Houdini going for him here or I just had a heart attack.

  Then Lyman caught a whiff of garbage and remembered—theater district, actors. He slumped, his hopes of having stumbled on one good a scam dashed still further by the reality of a dust devil swirling up the block.

  Damn, for a minute....

  He lifted his arm to shield his eyes from the flying debris when a sheet of newspaper caught around his leg. He reached down to free it.

  “No! Read it!”

  Huh? Lyman’s eyes shot up to the glinting peep holes, momentarily stunned by the authority in the voice. Had he misread a brown spot on this piece of fruit? The string bean stood posed at a ninety degree angle to him, caped arms folded over starched shirtfront, staring back down at him from over his high–collared shoulder.

  Who’s the dip think he is now, Batman? Some kinda tyrant with his chin hiked up like Mussolini? Humph, actors.

  Slowly Lyman raised the sheet of paper up to the lamp’s light, one eye fastened on this odd figure posing in front o him, and began to read. Well, bless my soul, front page of the Wall Street Journal
and dated right to my sixty–fifth birthday! How...?

  Featured was an article on Archer–Cardin, an advisory firm that took four percent from every one of the Fortune Five Hundred companies in America. “Top stock over last quarter century,” the caption read. An accompanying chart showed that every dollar invested in it twenty–five years ago would have returned ten thousand dollars today.

  Unbelievable! Lyman twisted around, half expecting to see grips popping up out of garbage cans with battery–powered fans, prop–men stepping out of doorways with arms full of newspapers. But no; even if so, how could they have known the exact date of his birth, make the paper blow straight to him, wrap around his leg like it did? Oh, he’d learn this trick if he had to kick it out of the kid.

  But first do the math; gage the power of the scam from the mark’s point of view. Ten of the two hundred bucks he could raise by hocking his jewelry would return him a hundred grand. A hundred returns a million. And his whole two hundred—two million. Zowee, would that appeal to the larceny in men’s hearts.

  A sucker could be made to feel happy washing dishes for twenty–five years believing he had that much money coming to him. Lyman could already think of even better ways to play the scam. No need to wait that long to collect; tell the mark to play the horses, fights, ball games. That way their profits would be immediate. And bookies didn’t stiff you for taxes. In twenty–five