6
LARRY’S FRIEND, buddy, copain, comrade, Rocky King, was the perfect pal for someone like Larry—or for someone like me. He was big and strong, older, a young man more than a boy. He had a past about which we knew little, other than the fact that he had lost his parents at an early age and had had to shift for himself, a necessity that had toughened him. When he first appeared on the scene, in that very first book, The Shapely Brunette, it was to come to Larry’s aid, much as Arthur comes to the aid of Guyon in The Faerie Queene (Book II, Canto VIII). Larry was in an out-of-the way section of Istanbul, on the trail of some smugglers:
He walked quickly along the wet streets, his footsteps echoing against the squalid houses on either side. Now and then he thought that he caught sight of a face in one of the windows, spotted a puff of smoke exhaled behind a shutter, or heard a murmured remark as he passed. Then, from an archway to his right, came a small voice, a small voice straining to sound strong.
“Hey, what’s your hurry?” asked the voice.
Larry snapped his head around and saw, in the shadowy archway, the face of a girl no older than he. Her hair was straight, the color of a fawn’s ears, and it needed combing. Her eyes were bright, even in the darkness, but they looked out from deep recesses darkened with kohl. She looked terribly tired, despite her smile, despite the way she tilted her head so that her pointed chin showed to best advantage. She reached out toward him.
“It’s cold,” she said. “Wet, too. Why don’t you come inside?”
“I’d like to,” said Larry, “but—”
He stopped himself. He had to be careful. He had almost let slip the fact that he was searching for a gang of Turkish gewgaw smugglers. He had to remember that he couldn’t afford to trust anyone.
“It’s warm inside,” she said. “We can have fun together.”
She spread the shawl that she had wrapped around her, opening it as an angel might spread her wings. In the shadows, Larry could just make out the pale whiteness of her skin. As if in a dream, he moved toward her.
“Hold it, sailor,” said a strong voice behind Larry.
A hand as strong as the voice gripped his shoulder and held him back. Something in that grip, something strangely fraternal, told Larry that the hand that held him back was the hand of a friend, an ally.
“Get lost, sister,” said the unknown friend to the girl in the shadows.
The girl closed the shawl around her, twisted her mouth into a sneer and then spat on the paving stones at Larry’s feet, turned and disappeared through a dark doorway. From the same doorway, a stocky, swarthy, unshaven man emerged. Clearly, this man was no friend. In his hand was a cleaver. Larry heard a metallic click behind his ear, and the strong arm of his unknown protector pushed him to one side, against the stone building. From an open window somewhere above him Larry heard the sharp, staccato notes of a zither. Larry’s mysterious ally was silhouetted against the light from a street lamp, and Larry could see that in one strong hand he held a revolver.
“Get lost, Bud,” snarled the strong but oddly friendly voice of the young man who had come to Larry’s aid.
Larry saw the swarthy man bare his teeth, then retreat into the shadows, and Larry heard a door close.
“Come on, kid,” said the friendly stranger. “Let’s get out of here.”
Later, when they sat in the relative safety of a rough waterfront café, warming themselves over steaming mugs of cocoa, Larry struggled to find the words to thank the young man who had come to his aid.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” he began.
“Forget it, kid,” said the smiling young man.
“I don’t even know your name,” said Larry.
“Call me Rocky,” said the young man, smiling broadly and extending his large and callused right hand across the table.
“Call me Larry,” said Larry, smiling as broadly as he could, reaching across the table to shake Rocky’s hand and knocking the young man’s cocoa into his lap.
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🎧 188: Larry’s friend . . .