A Matter of Conviction

The automobile turns the corner and shrieks into the street. It careens onto the sidewalk, narrowly missing Bud, who leaps off the stoop. Another car follows it, chasing Concho, who has leaped off the front stoop after Bud and who is trying to cross the street to get to a cellar where he knows a gun is hidden. The doors of the cars open. Twelve boys spring to the pavement and then break into a trot. The drivers of the cars gun the engines and race off up the street. Many of the Horsemen are armed. Big Dom is the first to see this.)

BIG DOM: They got pieces! Scatter!

(The guns begin to erupt. The Thunderbirds, close to the edge of drunkenness, reel off the stoop and into the street, trying to escape the guns. The guns, fortunately, are zip guns — one shot to a customer, and that’s all. These particular zip guns were made with rubber bands, the filed hammers of cap pistols, wooden frames and the cylinders of automobile radio aerials. The rubber band activates the cap pistol firing pin, discharging a .22-caliber cartridge through the car aerial barrel. It is easy to come by real guns in Harlem and the Horsemen boast of three .38-caliber pistols in their armory. Tonight, however, for reasons of their own — largely centered upon the fact that they realize the basis for this quarrel is very thinly founded — they are using weapons which, in Harlem, are considered passé. It is unlikely that they even intend to do any real damage tonight. In fact, they have probably staged this sneak raid to avoid the impending rumble which — for a girl whom they know to be a pig — would be both senseless and costly.

But a zip gun, while lacking the accuracy or fire power of a professionally manufactured weapon, is not a toy. The .22 slugs which carom about the gutter are the same cartridges used in a real pistol. And they are equally capable of killing.

One of these slugs catches Big Dom in the leg, and he hurtles to the sidewalk and then begins crawling up the street, anxious to find the safety of a cellar. Tower Reardon and Danny Di Pace run to where Dom has fallen, each catching an arm and half dragging, half pulling him to the chain-barricaded steps leading to the basement of a tenement near the corner. The shots are becoming sporadic now. Only eight of the boys were armed, and seven have already fired the single-cartridge guns. The last boy shoots wildly into the street, and then the twelve rush for the corner, passing the hiding place of Big Dom, Tower and Danny.)

BIG DOM: The sons of bitches! The dirty jap bastards!