Mike looked around at his apartment. At first glance it appeared to be a total loss, but closer inspection showed that most of the damage had been restricted to glass and ceramics. The furniture had been tumbled around but not badly damaged. The war head of the rocket had evidently been of the concussion-and-gas type, without much fragmentation.
“I think I know why, yes,” Mike said, turning back to the sergeant. “I had a funny feeling all the way home from Harry’s. Nothing I could lay my finger on, really. I tried to see if I was being followed, but I didn’t spot anyone. There were plenty of kids on the subway.
“It’s my guess that the kids knew who I was. If they cased Harry’s as thoroughly as it seems they did, they must have seen me go in and out several times. They knew that it was my fault that two of their members got picked up, so they decided to teach me a lesson. One of them must have come up here, even before I left Harry’s. The other followed me, just to make sure I was really coming home. Since he knew where I was going, he didn’t have to stick too close, so I didn’t spot him in the crowd. He might even have gone on up to 116th Street so that I wouldn’t see him get off at 110th.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Cowder agreed. “We know who the kids are. The uniformed squads are rounding up the whole bunch for questioning. They call themselves—you’ll get a laugh out of this!—they call themselves the Rocketeers.”
“I’m fracturing my funny bone,” said Mike the Angel. “The thing that gets me is this revenge business, though. Kids don’t usually go that far out for fellow gang members.”
“Not usually,” the sergeant said, “but this is a little different. The girl you caught and the boy who got killed over at the cathedral are brother and sister.”
“That explains it,” Mike said. “Rough family, eh?”
Sergeant Cowder shook his head. “Not really. The parents are respectable and fairly well off. Larchmont’s the name. The kids are Susan and Herbert—Sue and Bert to you. Bert’s sixteen, Sue’s seventeen. They were pretty thick, I gather: real brother and sister team.”
“Good family, bad kids,” Mike muttered. He had wandered over to the wall to look at his Dali. It had fallen to the floor, but it wasn’t hurt. The Valois was bent, but it could be fixed up easily enough.
“I wonder,” Mike said, picking up the head of a smashed figurine and looking at it. “I wonder if the so-called sociologists have any explanation for it?”