Hail to the Chief

by Ed McBain

  Meyer wiped his brow with his handkerchief, and then asked, 'Are there any questions?'

  Chapter Seven

  The way them Scarlet niggers got hold of Big Anthony and Jo-Jo was pure accident, and it was what started all the later trouble. I wouldn't be up here now, if it wasn't for what happened yesterday.

  I had got a call late Thursday night, it must've been three or four o'clock in the morning, it got me out of bed. My people know that I'm available at all hours of the day and night, that's what being president means. You serve the people. I am always cheerful and courteous on the telephone, no matter what time it is. The phone in my house is in the kitchen, and I went out there in my undershorts, and it was very cold, they cut off the heat in the building at about eleven o'clock each night, that's to discourage the rats from coming out of their nice warm hiding places. I'm making a joke, but it's true there's no heat from eleven at night to maybe seven or eight in the morning, those cheap landlords. Anyway, I'm standing there freezing in my underwear, and Big Anthony tells me he's calling from a phone booth outside a diner on Route 14 in Turman and that he had to take very severe measures with Midge. That's a code thing we have in the clique, the 'severe measures.' It means, you know, that he had to like kill her.

  I remained very calm, I am always calm. I told Big he had probably done the right thing, if in his judgment the thing had to be done, and I asked him if there had been any witnesses, and he said No, he did not think so. I told him in that case he should go back to his aunt's house and just keep cool, stay out of the city, we would keep close watch on the situation and see what developed. That was on Thursday night - well, really it was Friday morning already. On Saturday you guys came around and talked to me in the ice cream parlor, with your phony story about first a hold-up of a gas station and later you changed it to wanting Midge for a mugging, all of which I knew was absolute bullhenge. You guys thought you were being so clever, but there's nothing gets by me. Actually, you were doing me a favor. Because you were letting me know the truck was hot, and that you were looking for Big Anthony in connection with Midge's murder. That's all you accomplished by your little visit. I gave you the name of Big's girl because I couldn't see no harm in your going to see her, especially since I planned to phone her the minute you left. Which I done, of course, and warned her to keep her mouth shut, to tell you she didn't know where Big was, and she never heard of nobody named Midge. The minute I hung up, I called Big at his aunt's house in Turman, and told him to get rid of the truck, as it was hot. I also told him to get out of Turman and get back here to the city, because I knew all the heat would be there, you dig, and nobody would think of looking for him back here. That was smart thinking. I'm always on my feet and looking how to outfox the other guy.

  So it gets to be Sunday, yesterday, and no word from Big. At first I thought he was playing it extremely cool, that he had got back to the city with Jo-Jo, and the two of them were holed up someplace and didn't want to risk even making a phone call, because like who can tell what's bugged and what isn't these days? The way I figure it, if we can put in a bug, why then, anybody in the whole United States can put one in. What's to stop them? And maybe Big was thinking the same way, and was afraid to call. I was watching the football game on television, just me and Toy. My mother was across the street, visiting her sister. My old man was out drinking, as usual. He's on welfare, and he's got tuberculosis, but that don't stop him from putting away the sauce. He can't pass a bar without marching in there and drinking himself into a stupor. He's very proud of me because he knows I'm president of an important clique. I respect him and honor him except for the drinking. I can't abide anything done to excess. He is foolish to drink so much, and to lose control of himself. Control is the important thing. To be in control all the time is my watchword. Anyway, I was glad he was out of the house because it gave me some time to relax with Toy and to watch the football. The game was a very exciting one, and it took my mind off why Big hadn't called yet. I didn't want to think that something had happened to him, that maybe he had been picked up by the Turman fuzz before he'd made it back to the city.

  The telephone rang about three o'clock in the afternoon, just at a very exciting play in the game. I went out in the kitchen to answer it, hoping it would be Big. Instead, it was Mighty Man, the war counselor of the Scarlets.

  Hello, he says, how's every little thing up there on Dooley Avenue?

  Just fine, I tell him, to what do I owe the honor of this call?

  We got two of your boys, he says.

  What boys? I ask him. What are you talking about?

  Well, he tells me what he's talking about. What he's talking about is that by the craziest freak accident, Big and Jo-Jo stumbled into a party of Scarlets and they took them both prisoner. Now this is the way it happened. The Scarlets will tell you all kinds of bullhenge about how Big and Jo-Jo had defected, but that ain't the truth. It was accident, pure and simple, they are both loyal men.

  The minute they ditched the truck, Big and Jo-Jo figured if the truck was hot, then their clique jackets were hot, too, because of what's painted on the back - our symbol, you know? So they took off the jackets, and rolled them up, and started hitchhiking in just their sweaters. I mean, man, Saturday was a cold mother of a day, am I right? They hiked for maybe two hours before somebody picked them up, and he dropped them off just near the bridge, and they walked over and then took the subway up to Riverhead. It was when they got off the subway on Hitchcock that they ran into trouble.

  The trouble had to do with cops, and it was just a crazy kind of coincidence thing, because what happened was that a pack of dogs was attacking this little kid in the street, and there must've been a thousand cops' cars there trying to get the dogs off her - Big told me later he never seen so many cops in his life. And cops were running from all over the neighborhood, too, to help out with this wild-dog situation; somebody must've called in an assist-patrolman or something, the whole area was swarming with fuzz. So Big figured the next thing was one of the cops would stop him, maybe they had a description of him, and he'd be languishing downtown in Calcutta, that nice little jail you have, and so he done what I would have done under similar circumstances. He got back on the train and rode it to the next stop.

  The next stop happened to be Gateside Avenue, which is where the Scarlets have their clubhouse. Big knows where the clubhouse is, and he had no intention of going any place near it. Him and Jo-Jo was going to circle Scarlet territory and head back downtown, hoping the fuzz would be gone by the time they got there. But they were both very hungry by now, this was maybe like four o'clock in the afternoon, it was already starting to get dark. They hadn't eaten anything since breakfast that morning because the minute I called them they left the house and ditched the truck and started for the city. That must've been about, I don't know, what time did you guys find me in the ice cream parlor? Eleven-thirty, something like that? Anyway, it was now the afternoon, and they were hungry, so they stopped in this pizzeria and ordered a large pie with sausage, and they were eating it when five big black guys came in the place, and they're all wearing those red jackets with the white sleeves, they're all Scarlet Avengers,

  There was no way for Big and Jo-Jo to get out of the place in time. They were eating pizza in one of the booths there, and next thing you know the booth is surrounded, and Big and Jo-Jo aren't carrying because they're afraid they might get picked up and they don't want no weapons on them if that happens, and all the niggers are armed. One of them shows Big this .45 he's got under his coat, and he tells Big to get out of the booth nice and easy and come along with him or he's going to blow his brains out all over the pizza.

  Big and Jo-Jo are brave men, they will never back out of a fight. But the odds here were just too much, so they went along with the Scarlets, and that was what started the whole prisoner issue. What Mighty Man was telling me on the phone was that he had Big and Jo-Jo in his custody, at a place we would never find, and that he would not release them until we ne
gotiated a peace that was satisfactory to his clique. He also mentioned that he was showing the Rebs a great deal of consideration by not executing Big and Jo-Jo on the spot, since they were members of a clique responsible for killing their president and his wife and kid. How do you like that reasoning? I had ordered last week's Sunday night hit because I was trying to speed up peaceful negotiations, so now Mighty Man was telling me he considered members of my clique to be criminals! You see how devious that kind of thinking is? You go along with that kind of thinking, and then anything you do to protect yourself, or your honor, or your sincere efforts to bring some peace to this neighborhood becomes like you're doing something bad instead of something good. Man, I wasn't buying Mighty Man's line for a minute, I can tell you that. I know what's right, and it ain't right to pick up two guys who are eating pizza and minding their own business, and then holding them prisoner, and using them to get terms you wouldn't otherwise get

  So I told Mighty Man there would be no further negotiations till Big and Jo-Jo were released, and Mighty Man says there will be no release until we negotiate further. He also says What about killing Lewis and his wife and his kid, and I tell him I don't know anything about who killed any of those people, but I certainly will join him in finding the criminals once he releases the prisoners he is holding and we can negotiate a just peace. I also tell him that if he harms either Big or Jo-Jo, he had better watch his ass. I never curse, as I told you, but I was dealing here with a disgusting animal, and I had to talk to him in his own language. I made it even more perfectly clear to him. I told him that if anything happened to Big or Jo-Jo, he had better plan on spending the rest of his life in Fort Knox, because that would be the only place we couldn't get to him. And I told him he better have both of them back to us by midnight that night, which was Sunday, or on Monday he would begin to think that what had happened to his president was only playing jacks with little girls.

  Mighty Man told me to go fuck myself.

  Those were his exact words.

  I'm using them now only to prove to you what kind of animals the Scarlets are, and what we were dealing with.

  Midnight came and went, and still no Big or Jo-Jo. I called a meeting of the council and told them what I planned to do. Johnny refused to go along with it. He did not know yet that Midge was dead, but he refused to go along with the plan because he said he was tired of all the bloodshed and killing. He said he would rather quit the clique than get involved in any more killing. I explained to him and to the council that this wasn't killing human beings, this was killing disgusting animals, this was killing the enemy. And don't forget, I told him, that Big and Jo-Jo were right this minute going through God only knew what kind of ordeal - and Johnny interrupted and said What are they doing back here in the city? Where's Midge?

  I told him there'd been a change of plans, that Midge was all right, and not to get me off the subject. The point was that Big and Jo-Jo were prisoners, and we were not going to sacrifice them to the enemy, and we were also not going to let up on the enemy as long as they were holding people of ours. I also told Johnny that there was no such thing as quitting the clique, that if he refused to go up against the Scarlets tomorrow night, why then, I would consider him a deserter and he might just as well move out of the country because he could never so much as set foot on Rebel turf again without having to pay the full penalty. There were too many guys in the clique who were willing to sacrifice even their lives for the good of us all, too many guys like Big and Jo-Jo who were right that minute in the hands of the enemy undergoing a tremendous ordeal so we could have a just and lasting peace, for me to look upon any deserter with kindness. If he expected to walk away from a fight, and then get amnesty from me, he had another think coming.

  So Johnny said if he had to move to China, he would do it, but he wasn't going to kill nobody tomorrow night. So I told him to get out.

  Where's Midge? he asked me again.

  I told him that was none of his business, since he was a traitor to this clique and no longer a member of it with any rights.

  He said he would find her, and then he left.

  And that was when I told the council that severe measures seemed necessary and I ordered The Bullet and Chingo to go after Johnny and make sure he did not cause any further trouble for us.

  Charlie Broughan's squad at the 101st caught the squeal Broughan himself was on duty, and he went out at four in the morning, and talked to the r.m.p. men, and then walked into the empty lot where the body of the boy lay huddled against the fence. It was a bitter-cold night. Clothes stiff with frost hung on clotheslines stretched from a pole at one corner of the lot to various windows on the rear wall of the tenement behind the fence. The boy was wearing only trousers, socks, and a shirt. Two bullet holes were in the back of his head. He had either been shoeless when someone murdered him, or else his shoes had been stolen after he'd been killed. Broughan had been a cop for a long time, and he knew that killing someone for his shoes was not an impossibility in this part of the city. On the ground near the body he found two brass buttons with thread still clinging to them, and he assumed they had been torn loose from an article of clothing, probably some sort of jacket worn over the shirt. He bagged and tagged the buttons for transmittal to the lab.

  A pack of wild dogs came into the lot while Broughan was working there. He did not fool around with them. He drew his pistol and killed first a German shepherd and then a huge brown-and-white-spotted mongrel. The four other dogs in the pack ran out of the lot, and Broughan got back to work looking for footprints, weapons, dropped personal articles, anything that would provide a start. When the medical examiner got through with the body, he went through the boy's pockets. He was not carrying any identification - another one, Broughan thought. He had a hunch at that point, and he asked the photographer to take a Polaroid of the boy's face, and he carried that back with him to the squadroom.

  There were 2,117 photographs in Broughan's files on the street gangs of Riverhead. He had looked through 428 of them when he came across the one that matched the Polaroid shot of the murder victim. The back of the picture gave the boy's name as Jonathan Quince, and his address as 782 Waverly. The boy had been an affiliate of a gang known as the Yankee Rebels.

  Broughan looked at the wall clock.

  It was 5:20 A.M.

  He called the squadroom of the 87th, and Detective Bob O'Brien answered the phone. Broughan identified himself, and then said, 'I got something that might interest Carella. Is he on?'

  'Be in at about eight,' O'Brien said.

  'Would you ask him to call me the minute he gets in?'

  'Right.'

  'Thanks.'

  Broughan hung up, debated calling Carella at home, and decided he'd let him sleep. This would wait a few hours.

  He hoped.

  Jonathan Quince's mother was a woman in her forties - squat, amply bosomed, blue-eyed, graying. At eight-thirty that Monday morning, January 14, when Carella and Kling arrived, she was dressed and ready to leave for work downtown in the garment center. They identified themselves and were let into the apartment Mrs. Quince told them she hoped they'd make this fast, because it took twenty minutes to get to work by subway and she still hadn't had breakfast. She also hoped they wouldn't mind if she drank her coffee while they told her what the trouble was. She did not ask them if they'd care for a cup. Her son had been a member of a street gang, and they knew she'd had policemen up here before; her cordiality was somewhat forced, to say the least.

  'Mrs. Quince,' Carella said, 'I'm sorry to have to be the one to bring you bad news, but…'

  'Johnny,' she said immediately and flatly, the name catching somewhere at the back of her throat.

  'Yes.'

  'How bad is he hurt?'

  'He's dead,' Carella said.

  'No.'

  Neither of the cops said anything,

  'No,' Mrs. Quince said again.

  'I'm sorry,' Carella said.

  'How?'

  'Someone s
hot him.'

  'Who?'

  'We don't know.'

  'Those gangs,' she said, and shook her head. A glazed look had come over her eyes, her entire face looked suddenly numbed. 'I told him.'

  'Mrs. Quince, do you know a girl named Margaret McNally?'

  'Midge? Yes. Why? Did she have something to do with this? Was it a fight over her?'

  'No, ma'am. She was killed on Thursday night, and we under—'

  'Oh my God,' Mrs. Quince said. 'Oh my God, what's happening?'

  'We understand she was your son's girl friend.'

  Mrs. Quince did not answer. She was staring into her coffee cup as though hoping to find denial there.

  'Mrs. Quince?'

  'Yes,' she said blankly. 'She was his girl friend. Yes.'

  'The possibility exists, Mrs. Quince, that their deaths are related. We're not quite sure what's going on yet, but…'

  'Where is he?' she asked suddenly.

  'Your son? At the morgue. Washington Hospital.'

  'Are you sure it's him?'

  'Yes, we're relatively certain. Detective Broughan whose case this is—'

  'What do you mean? Isn't this your case?'

  'Not officially. The detective who answers the complaint is normally assigned to the case.'

  'Then how do you know it's Johnny?'

  'Because Detective Broughan had a picture taken, and it matches a—'

  'Pictures can lie.'

  '—a picture in his files,' Carella concluded. 'We don't think there's been a mistake, Mrs. Quince. I'm sorry.'

  'I want to go to the morgue,' she said. 'I want to make sure. I want to see for myself.'

  'Of course.'

  'I knew this would happen,' she said. 'Sooner or later, I knew it would happen.'

  'What makes you say that?'