Which was something to consider because Larry was one bright cookie and someday he was really going to be somebody....
It was early morning and nobody had started to work yet—the streets were deserted. There was a chill in the air and he stopped by an open alley to light a weed and take the clamminess out of his lungs.
And then he got it.
A handful of knuckles right in the mouth, splintering his teeth and splitting his lip so he sprayed blood like somebody had squeezed a sponge. It was hard to get a good look because the shock had filled his eyes with tears. But there were three of them and they were grown men and the biggest he had seen outside of a television wrestling match.
He screamed "Help!" just once before a hand as big as a typewriter buried itself wrist deep in his stomach. He doubled up and went limp, gasping for breath. One of the men caught him by the jacket collar and pulled him further into the alley, to the back of a restaurant where there was a small mountain of empty boxes and garbage cans full of orange peels and eggshells and stale doughnuts.
Nobody said a word.
He was still fighting for his breath and feeling sick when they stood him up against the refuse pile and started going over him scientifically, cutting his face and hitting him in the kidneys. He tried to blink away the blood that kept streaming into his eyes, to get a good look at them. But they kept working on his face until all the world was a bloody haze and it was hard to even make out light and shadow....
He lashed out once and heard a satisfying grunt and then somebody hit his wrists with a slat of wood, deadening the nerves so he couldn't close his hands. He tried to scream but he had no wind left and he realized dimly it wouldn't have done much good. The streets were deserted and it was the type of neighborhood where nobody went to anybody else's rescue—least of all, early in the morning.
A fist caught him flush on the side of the jaw and he staggered over against the garbage cans and fell to the bricks, his face half buried in the stinking garbage. He played dead dog for a moment, catching his breath, then scrambled to his knees, clawing handfuls of rotting orange peels and decayed bones to throw at the three silent men in front of him.
"You'll never get away with this! The cops...."