mer Duke implies Foraminifera 9" ... if I had not forgotten
this, I say, I should not have been "deceived." For in practice they
were as little favorable to me as the Leopards. A certain member of
their party reached a position behind me.

I quickly perceived that his intention was not favorable, and attempted
to turn around in order to discharge at him with the Stollgratz 16, but
he was very rapid. He had a metallic cylinder, and with it struck my
head, knocking "me" unconscious.

II

Shield 8805

This candy store is called Chris's. There must be ten thousand like it
in the city. A marble counter with perhaps five stools, a display case
of cigars and a bigger one of candy, a few dozen girlie magazines
hanging by clothespin-sort-of things from wire ropes along the wall. It
has a couple of very small glass-topped tables under the magazines. And
a juke--I can't imagine a place like Chris's without a juke.

I had been sitting around Chris's for a couple of hours, and I was
beginning to get edgy. The reason I was sitting around Chris's was not
that I liked Cokes particularly, but that it was one of the hanging-out
places of a juvenile gang called The Leopards, with whom I had been
trying to work for nearly a year; and the reason I was becoming edgy was
that I didn't see any of them there.

The boy behind the counter--he had the same first name as I, Walter in
both cases, though my last name is Hutner and his is, I believe,
something Puerto Rican--the boy behind the counter was dummying up, too.
I tried to talk to him, on and off, when he wasn't busy. He wasn't busy
most of the time; it was too cold for sodas. But he just didn't want to
talk. Now, these kids love to talk. A lot of what they say doesn't make
sense--either bullying, or bragging, or purposeless swearing--but talk
is their normal state; when they quiet down it means trouble. For
instance, if you ever find yourself walking down Thirty-Fifth Street and
a couple of kids pass you, talking, you don't have to bother looking
around; but if they stop talking, turn quickly. You're about to be
mugged. Not that Walt was a mugger--as far as I know; but that's the
pattern of the enclave.

* * * * *

So his being quiet was a bad sign. It might mean that a rumble was
brewing--and that meant that my work so far had been pretty nearly a
failure. Even worse, it might mean that somehow the Leopards had
discovered that I had at last