Read Juvenile Delinquent for Free Online Page B

pockets and the stub of his cigarette still drooping from his mouth. I dropped my hand to my side.
    One of his feet shot out, kicked my good leg from under me, and before I could recover my balance and grab him again, he had ducked under my arm and was moving like a streak of purple light for the corner.
    Just before he disappeared around it, he looked back over his shoulder and emitted a loud raspberry.

6
    I WAS tempted to give up and go back to the tenement house where the Carlsons lived and wait until someone showed up, but I decided to give it five minutes. I hardly expected either of the two youngsters to return, let alone Stub Carlson, but they surprised me. Just before the end of the five minutes, all three of them strolled around the corner.
    Stub Carlson was a stocky youth of about eighteen, wide-shouldered and well-muscled. He had a square, not unpleasant face, a firm mouth and steady eyes which were completely assured without containing the arrogance his two companions affected. Like his fellow club members he wore his hair long, this apparently being one of the organization’s trademarks. He also wore the inevitable purple jacket and a snap-brim hat with a dark purple band.
    Stopping directly in front of me, he announced in a voice which was neither belligerent nor friendly, but simply a statement of fact, “I’m Stub Carlson, mister. You got a message for me?”
    Pulling my notebook from my pocket, I tore out the sheet Joe had written his note on and handed it to the boy. He held it so that neither of the other two boys could see it as he read it.
    When he looked up, there was faint interest in his eyes. “Manny Moon, huh? Joe’s told me about you. Private dick, aren’t you?”
    I admitted I was.
    His eyes strayed to my feet with a touch of curiosity. I’ve seen the same look in too many other eyes not to recognize what caused it. Joe had told him one of my legs is false from the knee down.
    “It’s the right one,” I said dryly.
    Guiltily his eyes jumped back to my face. He impressed me as possessing a sort of natural and direct assurance, but for the moment he didn’t know what to say.
    Finally he took a stab at, “Aren’t you an uncle or something to Joe?”
    “A kind of foster uncle,” I said. “We’re not actually related. His dad’s one of my best friends.”
    Stub Carlson turned to his two silent companions. “Scram,” he ordered laconically.
    Silently both of them raised their hands in a gesture of good-by and drifted up the street.
    “They’re pretty young,” Stub remarked in what seemed to be vague apology for their initial reception of me. “They think they have to prove they’re tough all the time.”
    Then he looked at me directly and said, “Okay, Mr. Moon. What’s the deal?”
    I indicated my Plymouth at the curb. “Let’s sit down and talk.”
    When we were seated in the car and I had lighted a cigar and Stub a cigarette, I said, “Joe Brighton a pretty good friend of yours, Stub?”
    “The most.”
    “Want to help him out?”
    “Naturally. I just said he’s my number one pal.”
    “Think he killed Bart Meyers?”
    Stub looked at me from narrowed eyes. “Do you?”
    “I hope not. I don’t know. That’s why I ask you.”
    “Knuckles don’t use a knife on his friends,” Stub stated flatly. He gave me a quick side-glance. “Joe, I mean. Or even in a rumble, for that matter. With his reach he don’t need a knife.”
    “Think he was framed?”
    The boy took a drag from his cigarette, blew out smoke and spat through the open window. “Maybe he was just unlucky enough to be the right place at the wrong time.”
    “Joe thinks the Gravediggers framed him.”
    Stub considered this thoughtfully, finally shook his head. “Possibly, but tricky stuff ain’t their speed. More likely they’d roll down this way in a bunch and try to take any Pelicans they saw by surprise. Sort of on the spur of the moment. I don’t think any of their officers got brains enough to