Chapter III

Hallowe'en is a good time for a rumble. There's too many kids around for the cops to keep track of all of them, and if you're picked up carrying a knife or a length of tire chain or something, why, you're on your way to a Hallowe'en party and you're in costume. You're going as a JD.

The problem was this schoolyard. It was a block wide, with entrances on two streets. The street on the north was Challenger territory, and the street on the south was Scarlet Raider territory, and both sides claimed the schoolyard. There had been a few skirmishes, a few guys from both gangs had been jumped and knocked around a little, but that had been all. Finally, the War Lords from the two gangs had met, and determined that the matter could only be settled in a war.

The time was chosen: Hallowe'en. The place was chosen: the schoolyard. The weapons were chosen: pocket knives and tire chains okay, but no pistols or zip-guns. The time was fixed: eleven P.M. And the winner would have undisputed territorial rights to the schoolyard, both entrances.

The night of the rumble, the gangs assembled in their separate clubrooms for last-minute instructions. Debs were sent out to play chicken at the intersections nearest the schoolyard, both to warn of the approach of cops and to keep out any non-combatant kids who might come wandering through.

Judy Canzanetti was a Deb with the Scarlet Raiders. She was fifteen years old, short and black-haired and pretty in a movie-magazine, gum-chewing sort of way. She was proud of being in the Auxiliary of the Scarlet Raiders, and proud also of the job that had been assigned to her. She was to stand chicken on the southwest corner of the street.

Judy took up her position at five minutes to eleven. The streets were dark and quiet. Few people cared to walk this neighborhood after dark, particularly on Hallowe'en. Judy leaned her back against the telephone pole on the corner, stuck her hands in the pockets of her Scarlet Raider jacket and waited.

At eleven o'clock, she heard indistinct noises begin behind her. The rumble had started.

At five after eleven, a bunch of little kids came wandering down the street. They were all about ten or eleven years old, and most of them carried trick-or-treat shopping bags. Some of them had Hallowe'en masks on.

They started to make the turn toward the schoolyard. Judy said, "Hey, you kids. Take off."

One of them, wearing a red mask, turned to look at her. "Who, us?"

"Yes, you! Stay out of that street. Go on down that way."

"The subway's this way," objected the kid in the red mask.

"Who cares? You go around the other way."

* * * * *

"Listen, lady," said the kid in the red mask, aggrieved, "we got a long way to go to get home."

"Yeah," said another kid, in a black mask, "and we're late as it is."

"I couldn't care less," Judy told them callously. "You can't go down that street."

"Why not?" demanded yet another kid. This one was in the most complete and elaborate costume of them all, black leotards and a yellow shirt and a flowing: black cape. He wore a black and gold mask and had a black knit cap jammed down tight onto his head. "Why can't we go down there?" this apparition demanded.

"Because I said so," Judy told him. "Now, you kids get away from here. Take off."

"Hey!" cried the kid in the black-and-yellow costume. "Hey, they're fighting down there!"

"It's a rumble," said Judy proudly. "You twerps don't want to be involved."

"Hey!" cried the kid in the black-and-yellow costume again. And he went running around Judy and dashing off down the street.

"Hey, Eddie!" shouted one of the other kids. "Eddie, come back!"

Judy wasn't sure what to do next. If she abandoned her post to chase the one kid who'd gotten through, then maybe all the rest of them would come running along after her. She didn't know what to do.

A sudden siren and a distant flashing red light solved her problems. "Cheez," said one of the kids. "The cops!"

"Fuzz!" screamed Judy. She turned and raced down the block toward the schoolyard, shouting, "Fuzz! Fuzz! Clear out, it's the fuzz!"

But then she stopped, wide-eyed, when she saw what was going on in the schoolyard.

The guys from both gangs were dancing. They were jumping around, waving their arms, throwing their weapons away. Then they all started pulling off their gang jackets and throwing them away, whooping and hollering. They were making such a racket themselves that they never heard Judy's warning. They didn't even hear the police sirens. And all at once both schoolyard entrances were full of cops, a cop had tight hold of Judy and the rumble was over.

Judy was so baffled and terrified that everything was just one great big blur. But in the middle of it all, she did see the little kid in the yellow-and-black costume go scooting away down the street.

And she had the craziest idea that it was all his fault.

* * * * *

Captain Hanks was still in his realistic cycle this morning, and he was impatient as well. "All right, Stevenson," he said. "Make it fast, I've got a lot to do this morning. And I hope it isn't this comic-book thing of yours again."

"I'm afraid it is, Captain," said Stevenson. "Did you see the morning paper?"

"So what?"

"Did you see that thing about the gang fight up in Manhattan?"

Captain Hanks sighed. "Stevenson," he said wearily, "are you going to try to connect every single time the word 'scorpion' comes up? What's the problem with this one? These kid gangs have names, so what?"

"Neither one of them was called 'The Scorpions,'" Stevenson told him. "One of them was the Scarlet Raiders and the other gang was the Challengers."

"So they changed their name," said Hanks.

"Both gangs? Simultaneously? To the same name?"

"Why not? Maybe that's what they were fighting over."

"It was a territorial war," Stevenson reminded him. "They've admitted that much. It says so in the paper. And it also says they all deny ever seeing that word on their jackets until after the fight."

"A bunch of juvenile delinquents," said Hanks in disgust. "You take their word?"

"Captain, did you read the article in the paper?"

"I glanced through it."

"All right. Here's what they say happened: They say they started fighting at eleven o'clock. And they just got going when all at once all the metal they were carrying--knives and tire chains and coins and belt buckles and everything else--got freezing cold, too cold to touch. And then their leather jackets got freezing cold, so cold they had to pull them off and throw them away. And when the jackets were later collected, across the name of the gang on the back of each one had been branded 'The Scorpion.'"

"Now, let _me_ tell _you_ something," said Hanks severely. "They heard the police sirens, and they threw all their weapons away. Then they threw their jackets away, to try to make believe they hadn't been part of the gang that had been fighting. But they were caught before they could get out of the schoolyard. If the squad cars had showed up a minute later, the schoolyard wouldn't have had anything in it but weapons and jackets, and the kids would have been all over the neighborhood, nice as you please, minding their own business and not bothering anybody. _That's_ what happened. And all this talk about freezing cold and branding names into jackets is just some smart-alec punk's idea of a way to razz the police. Now, you just go back to worrying about what's happening in this precinct and forget about kid gangs up in Manhattan and comic book things like the Scorpion, or you're going to wind up like Wilcox, with that refrigerator business. Now, I don't want to hear any more about this nonsense, Stevenson."

"Yes, sir," said Stevenson.

* * * * *

The reporter showed up two days later. He was ushered into the squad room, where he showed his press card to Stevenson, smiled amiably and said, "My editor sent me out on a wild-goose chase. Would you mind chatting with me a couple minutes?"

"Not at all," said Stevenson.

The reporter, whose press card gave his name as Tom Roberts, settled himself comfortably in the chair beside Stevenson's desk. "You were the one handled that bank job down the street back in June, weren't you?"

Stevenson nodded.

Roberts gave an embarrassed chuckle and said, "Okay, I've got just one question. You answer no, and then we can talk about football or something. I mean, this is just a silly wild-goose chase, frankly. I'm a little embarrassed about it."

"Go ahead and ask," Stevenson told him.

"Okay, I will. Was there the word 'scorpion' connected with that bank job at all? In any way at all."

Stevenson looked at the reporter and smiled. He said, "As a matter of fact, Mr. Roberts, there was."

Roberts blinked. "There was?"

"Yes, indeedy. There certainly was." And Stevenson told him the full story of the bank job.

"I see," said Roberts dazedly when Stevenson was finished. "I see. Or, I don't see. I don't see it at all."

"Your turn," Stevenson told him. "Now you tell me what made you ask that."

"This," said Roberts. He reached into the inside pocket of his sport jacket and withdrew a business-size envelope, which he handed over to Stevenson.

It was another crank letter, in the same newspaper clipping form as the first two. It read:

Dear Mr. Editor,

The bad boys were captured. They could not escape the Scorpion. I
left the mark of the Scorpion on their jackets. Criminals fear the
mark of the Scorpion. They cannot escape. This is my third letter
to you. You should warn all criminals to leave the city. They
cannot escape the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS.

Sincerely yours,
THE SCORPION

Stevenson read the letter. "Well, well," he said.

"He says that's the third letter," Roberts pointed out. "We asked around in the office, and we found out who got the first two. They were both back a ways. The first one was early in the summer, and the guy who read it remembered it said something about a bank robbery. So I was sent out this morning to check up on bank robberies in June and July. You're the third one I've talked to this morning. The first two figured me for some kind of nut."

* * * * *

"My Captain figures me the same way," Stevenson told him. "What about the second letter? Or, wait, don't tell me, I'll tell you. It's that guy in August, the one who ran amok over in Canarsie."

"Right you are," said Roberts. "How did you know?"

"I was there. He left his mark on the rifle stock."

"Okay," said Roberts. "So there's something in it, after all."

"There's _something_ in it," said Stevenson. "The question is, what?"

"Well," said Roberts, "what have we got so far? Somebody--call it person or persons unknown, for the fun of it--is stepping in every once in a while when there's a crime being committed. He stops it. He calls himself the Scorpion, and he uses some pretty dizzy methods. He melts automobile tires, makes a rifle too hot to hold, makes knives and leather jackets ice cold--how in heck does he do things like that?"

"Yeah," said Stevenson. "And just incidentally, who is he?"

"Well," said Roberts, "he's a kid, that much is obvious. That whole letter _sounds_ like a kid. Talking about 'the bad boys' and stuff like that."

"What do you figure, some scientist's kid maybe?"

"Maybe," said Roberts. "His old man is working on something in his little old laboratory in the cellar, and every once in a while the kid sneaks in and makes off with the ray gun or whatever it is." Roberts laughed. "I feel silly even talking about it," he said.

"I'd feel silly, too," Stevenson told him, "if I hadn't seen what this kid can do."

"Can we work anything out from the timing?" Roberts asked him. "He seems to show up once every couple of months."

"Let me check."

Stevenson went over to the filing cabinet and looked up the dates. "The bank job," he said, "was on Wednesday, June 29th. At eleven o'clock in the morning. That Higgins guy was on--here it is--Friday, August 5th, around noon. And this last one was on Hallowe'en, Monday, October 31st, at eleven o'clock at night."

"If you can see a pattern in there," Roberts told him, "you're a better man than I am."

"Well, the first two," Stevenson said, "were in the daytime, during the summer, when school was out. That's all I can figure."

"Why just those three?" Roberts asked. "If he's out to fight crime, he's pretty inefficient about it. He's only gone to work three times in four months."

"Well, he's a kid," said Stevenson. "I suppose he has to wait until he stumbles across something."

"And then rush home for Daddy's ray gun?"

Stevenson shook his head. "It beats me. The only one that makes sense is the second one. That one was televised. He probably saw it that way. The other two times, he just happened to be around."

"I don't know," said Roberts. "Does a kid happen to be around twice in four months when there's crimes being committed? Now, the Hallowe'en thing, I can see that. A kid is liable to be out wandering around, maybe go off to a strange neighborhood after he's done with his trick-or-treat stuff. Hallowe'en is a good time for a kid to see some other kids breaking a law. And the thing in Canarsie, like you say, he probably saw that on television. But what about the bank job?"

"That was the first," said Stevenson thoughtfully. "That was what set him off. He was there at the time. Just by accident. And he saw they were getting away, so he zapped them. And right away he put the drama into it, right on the spur of the moment he decided to be the Scorpion. Then he sent the letter to your paper. But nothing else happened, and the paper didn't print anything about his letter or what he'd done, and he kind of forgot about it. Until he was watching television and saw the Higgins thing. Pow, the Scorpion rides again. And then it died down again until a couple of nights ago he saw the rumble, and pow all over again."

"What you're saying," Roberts told him, "is that this kid wanders around with Daddy's zap gun all the time. That doesn't seem very likely."

"Face it," said Stevenson. "Daddy's zap gun isn't the likeliest thing I ever heard of, either. I don't know how the kid does this. For that matter, it's only an educated guess that it's a kid we're after."

"Okay," said Roberts. "So what do we do now?"

"Now," said Stevenson, "I think we talk to the captain. And then I have a feeling we'll be talking to the FBI."