by Ed McBain
Charlie Broughan was a big beefy cop with a two days' growth of beard on his face. He explained that he'd been working a homicide ('I'm always working a goddamn homicide up here') and hadn't had time to sleep, much less shave. He went immediately to his files on the precinct's street gangs, dug out a stack of manila folders, dumped them on the desk, and said, 'Here's the stuff. We've got 'em filed by gang names, names of members, and also geographical locations, all cross-indexed. That stuff represents two years' work, I want you to know. Those little bastards out there think we got nothing to do but keep track of their comings and goings. You're welcome to look at them, but don't get 'em out of order, okay, because the lieutenant'll string me up in the backyard if you do. When you're finished, just give 'em to Danny Finch in the Clerical Office, and he'll see they get back where they belong. I'd stay with you, but I got to go downtown and check a hotel register where we think we got a lead on this son of a bitch who's been picking up hookers and checking into hotels with them, and then stabbing them while he's humping them - nice guy, huh? We sent out a sample signature, a phoney name he signed in the register on the job he did next-to-last, up here in a fleabag on Yates. This guy downtown near the tunnel, night clerk at a hotel there, thinks he recognizes the handwriting from a guy who checked in two nights ago. Guy's gone now, and he used a different name, of course, but maybe we can get somebody to tell us what the hell he even looks like, if the handwriting matches, which it probably won't. Only good thing about this, if it turns out he is the guy, is that this time he couldn't get no broad up there in the room with him to cut up. What a fuckin' city, I'm telling you, I'm thinking of moving to Tokyo or some other place quiet. I'll see you,' he said, and waved, and took his name off the duty roster and put on his coat and hat and went shambling off down the corridor like a giant disgruntled bear.
They sat at his desk, and began going through the manila folders.
Even when Carella and Kling were still two blocks away from the clubhouse of the Death's Heads, they began seeing the signature of the gang's president scrawled in paint on the walls of apartment buildings. 'He signs himself Edward the First,' Midge had said, and 'Edward I' was as visible in this six-block section of West Riverhead as were pictures of Mao Tse-tung in China. The area itself was a bewildering mixture of white, black, and Puerto Rican camps, each vaguely defined enclave bordering on the other and spilling over dangerously into disputed no-man's lands. Eduardo Portoles had lived (according to the 101st's dossier) two blocks from the clubhouse, at 1103 Concord Avenue, between a Puerto Rican bodega and a shop selling dream books and herbs and numerology guides, and the like. There were, of course, no names in the broken lobby mailboxes, but the 101st's records had indicated that Portoles lived on the top floor of the building, in Apartment 43.
This time Carella and Kling stood on either side of the door-jamb as Carella leaned over to knock. They had not drawn their guns, but their overcoats were open and their holsters were within easy reach. They need not have worried. The person who opened the door was a little girl who stared up at them out of wide brown eyes.
'Hello,' Carella said.
The little girl did not answer. She was perhaps five years old, certainly no older than six. She was wearing a cotton petticoat, and she was barefoot, and she sucked at her thumb and said nothing, the brown eyes peering up at them unflinchingly.
'What's your name?' Carella asked.
The girl did not answer.
'You thinks she understands?' Kling said.
'I doubt it. Hablas tú espanol?' Carella said.
The girl nodded.
'Está alguien contigo aqui?'
The girl shook her head.
'Estás sola?'
'Si,' she said, and nodded. 'Si, estoy sola.'
'Quién vive aqui contigo?'
'Eduardo y Constantina.'
'What'd she say?' Kling asked.
'She said she lives here with Eduardo and Constantina. But she's alone now, there's no one with her. I wonder if she knows they're dead.'
'Let's check inside,' Kling said.
'Perdóname,' Carella said to the little girl, 'nosotros queremos entrar.'
The girl stepped aside. As they went into the apartment Carella said, 'Cómo te llamas?' and the girl answered, 'Maria Lucia.'
There were pots and pans piled in the sink, and dirty dishes on the kitchen table. In the living room, the television set was on, but the volume control was apparently broken, and animated cartoon figures pranced across the screen in a chase without words or music. On the bedroom floor, strewn about in confusion and haste, the detectives found clothing belonging to a man and a woman. A large quantity of blood had soaked into the raw, uncovered wood of the floorboards, and the white sheets on the bed were stained a dull brownish red. On one of the walls they found a bloody palm print.
Maria Lucia stood in the doorway to the bedroom, and watched them.
Alex Delgado, the one Puerto Rican detective on the squad, was home sick with the flu, so they called Patrolman Gomez upstairs from where he was watching television in the swing room on the ground floor, and asked him to interrogate the little girl. Gomez wanted to know what he should ask her. Just find out what happened, they told him. This is what happened:
GOMEZ What were you doing alone in the house, querida-nińa?
MARIA I was waiting.
GOMEZ For whom were you waiting?
MARIA For Eduardo and Constantina. They went away.
GOMEZ When did they go away?
MARIA I don't know,
GOMEZ Today?
MARIA No.
GOMEZ Then when? Last night? Yesterday?
MARIA Many nights ago.
GOMEZ How many nights ago?
MARIA I don't know.
GOMEZ She probably doesn't know how to count yet. Do you know how to count, Maria?
MARIA Maria Lucia.
GOMEZ Maria Lucia, sí, sí. Do you know to count? MARIA Yes. One, four, eight, two, seven.
GOMEZ She doesn't know how to count.
KLING Ask her was it Sunday night?
GOMEZ Was it Sunday night?
MARIA Yes, Sunday.
GOMEZ Very good, Maria.
MARIA Maria Lucia.
GOMEZ Maria Lucia, yes.
CARELLA Ask her if anybody else lives there.
GOMEZ Nińa, who lives there in the house with you?
MARIA Eduardo and Constantina.
GOMEZ And who else?
MARIA No one.
GOMEZ Just those? Your mother and father?
MARIA My mother and father are with the angels.
GOMEZ Then who are Eduardo and Constantina? In what manner are you related?
MARIA Eduardo is my brother. And Constantina is my sister.
OOMEZ And they left on Sunday night?
MARIA Yes.
GOMEZ They left you all alone?
MARIA Yes.
GOMEZ Why did they do that, chiquilla?
MARIA The men.
GOMEZ What do you mean? What men?
MARIA The men who came.
GOMEZ There were men there Sunday night?
MARIA Yes.
GOMEZ What men?
MARIA I do not know.
GOMEZ How many in number?
MARIA I do not know.
GOMEZ Can you tell me their names? Did they call one to the other by name?
MARIA No.
GOMEZ What did they look like then?
MARIA I do not know.
GOMEZ You do not remember what they looked like?
MARIA I did not see them.
GOMEZ But they were there, is this not true?
MARIA Yes. They came to take Eduardo and Constantina.
GOMEZ But then, where were you? If you did not see them?
MARIA In the toilet.
GOMEZ They did not know you were in the toilet?
MARIA No. I was frightened. I kept very still.
GOMEZ Frightened of what, querida-nińa?
&
nbsp; MARIA The noise.
GOMEZ What noise did you hear?
MARIA Constantina was crying.
GOMEZ And what other noise?
MARIA Like in Loíza Aldea. The Fiesta de Santiago Apóstol.
CARELLA What's that? What'd she just say?
GOMEZ That's a festival they hold once a year, in July. They shoot off rockets to start the procession. Maria Lucia? Do you mean the rockets? Was the noise like that of the rockets?
MARIA Yes. Very like the rockets in Loíza Aldea.
KLING Christ! She heard those bastards gunning down her own brother and sister!
CARELLA Jesus!
KLING Ask her what Kingsley was doing there,
GOMEZ Kingsley?
CARELLA The man with the beard. Ask her what he was doing there.
GOMEZ Why was the bearded one in your house?
MARIA To talk. With Eduardo and Constantina.
GOMEZ Of what did they talk?
MARIA Of many things. I know not of what. I did not understand. They talked softly. There was no noise when the bearded one was there. The noise came later. I went into the toilet, and then came the noise.
KLING This is Thursday. Do you think she's been alone in that apartment since Sunday?
GOMEZ Have you left the house since that night?
MARIA No.
GOMEZ Did you call for help?
MARIA No.
GOMEZ Did you try to open the door?
MARIA No.
GOMEZ But why not, chiquilla?
MARIA I knew Eduardo and Constantina would come back.
They went back to the building that afternoon and questioned each of the tenants on each of the floors. None of them had heard or seen a thing. The child Maria Lucia had described a noise 'very like the rockets in Loíza Aldea,' but no one in the building had heard anything. And this on a Sunday night, when it might have been expected that most people retired early after the weekend in preparation for Monday's work ahead.
The clubhouse of the Death's Heads was located in an abandoned building on the corner of Concord and 48th. Carella and Kling saw a runner entering the building minutes before they reached it. They knew their presence was being announced, but they weren't expecting trouble; the neighborhood street gangs, except for certain of them listed by Broughan as 'sworn cop killers,' rarely looked for hassles with the Law, and indeed made a great show of being honest, cooperative citizens. But Carella and Kling were stopped at the entrance to the building, anyway. The youth who stood in their path was wearing a Zapata mustache and a Swedish Army coat that had once been white but which was now so discolored by layers of dirt and grime that it looked as mottled as a poncho camouflaged for jungle warfare. He stood at the top of the stoop with his hands in his pockets, and looked down at the cops and said nothing, as though waiting for them to make the move that would declare them intruders on his turf. Carella lifted his foot onto the first step, and the boy at the top of the steps said, 'That's it, man.'
'Yeah? What's it, man?' Carella said.
'That's as far as you go.'
'I'm a police officer,' Carella said, and wearily flashed the tin.
'You got a warrant to enter these premises?' the boy asked.
'What's your name?' Kling said.
'My name is Pacho. You got a warrant to enter these premises?'
'We're looking for anyone who might have known Eduardo Portoles,' Carella said. 'Or his sister Constantina.'
'You got a warrant to enter these premises?' Pacho said again.
'Looks like we got a broken record here, Steve,' Kling said.
'You got a lease to live in these premises?' Carella said.
'What?' Pacho said.
'I said do you pay rent here?'
'No, we don't pay rent here. That still don't give you the right to…'
'Pacho, don't get me sore, okay?' Carella said. 'It's a cold day, and I don't like being up here in Riverhead, and I don't need trouble from some punk who thinks he's Horatio at the bridge. Now just get the hell out of the way, and let us in there, before we start finding all kinds of things to charge you with. Okay, Pacho?'
'You understand, Pacho?' Kling said.
'Who at the bridge?' Pacho said.
The two detectives were already halfway up the steps. Both of them had opened the third buttons of their overcoats, providing easy access for right-handed draws just in case Pacho was carrying anything but his hands in the big pockets of that dirty Swedish Army coat, and just in case he was dumb enough to try pulling it. Pacho turned his back, his hands still in his pockets.
'I'll take you up,' he said. 'Otherwise you might get hurt.'
He had rescued his pride, first by turning his back to show the huge gargoyle painted on the white coat in luminous black, red tongue lashing out like flame, the legend THE DEATH'S HEADS circling over it; had rescued it further by letting the detectives know that he was a powerful man without whose presence their safety could not be guaranteed. As far as Carella and Kling were concerned, it was all bullshit. Even the gargoyle on the back of the coat - and one of the garments found in Portoles' apartment had been an identical Swedish Army coat, with the identical gargoyle painted on its back - even that, though a pleasant departure from the expected skull-and-crossbones cliché, was total theatrical bullshit. With grimaces provoked partially by the paramilitary ritual Pacho was forcing them to observe (they themselves belonged to a paramilitary organization, but this fact did not occur to them at the moment), and partially by the stench of garbage and human excrement on the steps, they followed Pacho up to the second floor. Another young man in a Swedish Army coat stood at the top of the steps.
'Say it,' he said to Pacho, asking for the password even though he undoubtedly recognized Pacho as one of the gang.
'The nutter is our dame,' Pacho said, or at least something that sounded like that. It made no sense whatever to Carella.
'Who're these two?' the second Death's Head asked.
'Detectives Carella and Kling of the 87th Squad,' Carella said. 'Who are you?'
'True Blue.'
'Nice to meet you,' Carella said. 'Where's True Green?'
'I didn't get the name from no damn cigarette,' True Blue said.
'Where did you get it?' Kling asked, looking somewhat less than fascinated.
'Eduardo gave it to me. Because I was loyal.'
'Eduardo in charge around here?' Kling asked.
'Yeah, but he ain't here right now,' Pacho said.
'Are you expecting him back?'
The two boys exchanged a glance as transparent as a diamond. 'Sure,' Pacho said, 'but we don't know when.'
'We'll wait,' Carella said.
'Anybody else we can talk to meanwhile?' Kling asked,
'Henry is here, he's the secretary.'
'Well, let's talk to Henry then, okay?'
'Where is Henry?'
'In there,' True Blue said, and gestured with his head toward a doorless jamb down the corridor.
'Would you like to announce us, or shall we go right in?' Kling said.
'I better tell him you're here,' Pacho said. 'Otherwise you might get hurt.'
Carella yawned. Pacho went up the corridor and disappeared into the room. True Blue kept looking at them.
'Any heat in this building?' Carella asked.
'No.'
'Any water?'
'No. We don't need no heat or water. We're Death's Heads.'
'Mmm,' Carella said.
'We improvise.'
'I'll bet you do,' Carella said. 'What's going on in there? Big conference about the fuzz from downtown?'
'I didn't think I recognized you from this precinct,' True Blue said.
'You know all the detectives in this precinct?'
'Most of them. They know me, too.'
'Mmm,' Carella said, and Pacho came out into the hallway,
'Okay,' Pacho said, 'he'll see you.'
'Nice of him,' Kling said to Carella.
'Very nice,' Carella
answered.
The room they entered had been decorated with photographs of nude women clipped from various girlie magazines, and then varnished over to protect them. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with these glossy cutouts, and various and several parts of the ladies' anatomies had been territorially claimed by different members of the gang, their names scrawled across breasts, buttocks, thighs, groins, and grinning mouths. In the midst of this pulchritudinous photographic display, sitting like a wizened priest on a fat red-velvet cushion, was a bespectacled young man wearing a Fu Manchu mustache and toying with a twelve-inch-long bread knife. Carella assumed the boy was Henry, and he further assumed that Henry was a fearless type; possession of such a utensil in circumstances such as these could presumably have led to a bust. Henry had known the cops were outside and coming in to pay a little visit; he could easily have tucked the blade under the fat pillow that cradled him.
'You're cops, huh?' he asked. He was delicately pressing one forefinger against the curved top of the knife's handle, the blade against the naked floorboards, trying to balance it on its tip. The knife refused to stay balanced. Each time it toppled over, he picked it up and tried again. He did not look up at the detectives as they came into the room.
'We're cops,' Carella said.
'What do you want? We ain't done nothing.'
'We want to know about Eduardo Portoles.'
'He's the president'
'Where is he?'
'Out.'
'Out where?'
'Big city, man,' Henry said, and picked up the knife, and tried to balance it again, and again it fell over on its side. He had still not looked up at the detectives.
'How about Constantina Portoles?'
'Yeah, his sister.'
'Know where she is?'
'Nope,' Henry said, and the knife fell over again. He picked it up.