“Yeah.”
“We’ll take the Independent. Got their own special heat, don’t carry guns only saps. I recall, me and the Fag fell once in Queen’s Plaza. Stay away from Queen’s
Plaza, son . . . evil spot . . . fuzz haunted. Too many levels. Heat flares out from the broom closet high on ammonia like burning lions . . . fall on poor old lush
worker, scare her veins right down to the bone. Her skin pop a week or do that five-twentv-nine kick handed out free and gratis by NYC to jostling junkies. . . . So
Fag, Beagle, Irish, Sailor beware! Look down, look down along that line before you travel there. . . .”
The subway sweeps by with a black blast of iron.

THE EXTERMINATOR DOES A GOOD JOB

The Sailor touched the door gently, following patterns of painted oak in a slow twist, leaving faint, iridescent whorls of slime. His arm went through to the elbow. He pulled back an inside bolt and stood aside for the boy to enter.
Heavy, colorless smell of death filled the empty room.
“The trap hasn’t been aired since the Exterminator fumigated for coke bugs,” said the Sailor apologetically.
The boy’s peeled senses darted about in frenzied exploration. Tenement flat, railroad flat vibrating with silent motion. Along one wall of the kitchen a metal trough—or was it metal, exactly?—ran into a sort of aquarium or tank half-filled with translucent green fluid.
Moldy objects, worn out in unknown service, littered