Of course there were the broads, but the Jets liked to lead up to that kind of action and if they picked up the girls now, they’d be stuck with them for the rest of the night; and the way Graziella hung onto him, she was going to make him into an old man before his time.

For a real bright, gone chick, she was getting some awful stupid ideas about getting married, and doing more and more yakking about how more kids their age were getting married every year. For crying out loud! She had even shown him the section of the newspaper that listed the names and ages of all the people who had taken out marriage licenses, and plenty of the jerks were just eighteen.

No sir, Riff told himself, and he knew the other Jets would agree, he was satisfied to do their jazzing without getting married and the rest of that jazz.

“This is Action asking what’s the action?” Riff felt his lieutenant nudge him. “What are we going to do tonight to blacken the name of our fair city?”

Riff picked at his teeth with an I.D. card that listed his age as twenty-two. Of medium height with a square face and chin and hair cut very short so that nobody could get a grip on it in a fight, Riff’s eyes were large, intelligent and well spaced above his nose which had been broken twice.

Like the other boys in the Jets, he wore the standard warm weather uniform: chino pants or jeans, tight T shirts to show his muscular development, and short black boots. Waiting on his decision, the Jets gathered around him as he leaned against the lamppost; eyes bright with anticipation, lips pressed into hard lines of cruelty, fingers tensing into talons, they shuffled nervously, as if anxious to break from the wire.

Riff looked over their heads, as he had done so many nights before, in the hope that he might see Tony coming down the block. Why Tony had kissed them off the way he did was something Riff couldn’t understand, and he was beginning to suspect the gas about his mother Tony had given him. His own old lady, Action’s, A-Rab’s, Diesel’s, Gee-Tar’s, all of them had been threatened every day, but so far there hadn’t been any funerals.

“Stop looking for the Polack,” he heard Action say. “Tony doesn’t want any part of us.”

“You know what’s your trouble?” Riff asked him.

Action took a backward step and knotted his hands together to make the knuckles crack. “Go ahead, tell me off.”

“In your case, two heads aren’t better than one.”

Baby-John hooted. “Hey, that’s all right, Riff. Somebody new must be writing your material.” He ducked to avoid Action’s hand, then skipped toward the curb. “All right, Action. I’m sorry I laughed.”

“Do it again and you won’t have time to be sorry,” Action warned Baby-John and included the other members of the Jets.

In his own mind Action had never been convinced that Baby-John was the kind of recruit they needed. Tony, in sponsoring the kid, had pointed out that most of them had started hanging around the Jets when they were thirteen or fourteen, because a kid who wasn’t in was definitely out and might as well make up his mind to stay off the street. But there were kids and kids, Action thought, and Baby-John—well that was a hell of a nickname for someone who had to be depended on to stay in there swinging with a tire iron when the combat got heavy and the going rough.