Hail to the Chief

by Ed McBain

  'What do you mean?' Carella said, knowing full well what she meant, and hoping it was what she meant, and at the same time hoping it was not what she meant.

  'Like I could go home with you,' she said simply, and shrugged.

  'Well,' Carella said. His mouth was suddenly dry.

  'I'm a very big girl,' she said, 'but I take up very little space, and I promise I'll stay on my side of the bed.' She came around to the front of the chair, dropped to her knees, looked up at him, and said, 'What do you think?'

  In the meantime, Golden Girl, I want to get this to the Post Office before it closes. I'll try to write again tomorrow afternoon. Give my love to Choo-Choo. Tell him I hope his sickle is still as shiny bright as always.

  Love and peace, Andy.

  'Is it any help?' Lisa asked.

  He looked down at her. She was still kneeling before him, sitting on her own heels. Her eyes were startlingly blue in the suntanned face.

  'Well, actually, we know most of it already. It would have been extremely helpful a few days ago.'

  'I didn't get it till Thursday.'

  'Maybe you should have gone to the Los Angeles cops, after all.'

  'Then I'd never have got to meet you,' she said, and smiled. She put her hand on his knee. 'What do you say? Will you take me home?'

  'I'm married,' he said.

  'So what?'

  'I don't think my wife would appreciate my taking you home. Even if you did stay on your side of the bed.'

  'I see your point,' she said, and smiled again, and he somehow got the idea that she'd been encouraged by what he'd just said. And then he wondered whether he'd been trying to encourage her, whether he actually was toying with the idea of taking blooming, bursting, youthful Lisa Knowles home with him - wherever home might be for the night.

  'You wouldn't want to stay here, would you?' she asked.

  'No,' he said.

  'I didn't think so. There were rats running around all last night. One of them even got on the bed. I almost died. Not to mention what was running around in the halls outside. I'll pack,' she said, and got to her feet. 'It won't take me a minute. We can go someplace else. There are plenty of places in this city, aren't there?'

  'Yes, there are plenty of places,' he said. 'Lisa,' he said, 'I'm married.'

  'That's all right,' she said, 'I don't mind. We don't even have to do anything, if you don't want to. I like your face, that's all. I'd like to get to know you better.'

  'And you'd also like to get out of this fleabag.'

  'Yes, but that's a secondary consideration. Honestly. What's your name? I know you showed me your badge and told me your name, but I've forgotten it.'

  'Carella. Steve Carella.'

  'Steve,' she said. 'That's a good name. Is the "Carella" Italian or Spanish or what?'

  'Italian.'

  'That's nice,' she said. 'That's really nice. Okay? Shall we go someplace?'

  'No, I don't think so, Lisa,' he said, and rose, and handed her the letter, and then reached into his pocket. From his wallet he took three twenty-dollar bills. 'Here,' he said.

  'What's that?'

  'It's enough to buy you a decent room, a good dinner, and a long-distance call to your parents.'

  'I can't take money from you,' she said.

  'It's a loan.'

  'How would I pay you back?'

  'I'll give you my address. Pack your bag, okay? I don't want you walking downstairs alone. You can get killed right in the lobby of this joint.' He suddenly grinned. 'I'm almost afraid of going downstairs myself. Here. Take it.'

  'Thank you,' she said, and accepted the money. Quickly, and with great embarrassment, she stuffed the bills into the pocket of her jeans. Thank you,' she said again. 'But…'

  'Yes?'

  'Don't think I was… I mean…' She shrugged. 'I wasn't angling for the price of a hotel room, I mean it. I really would like to get to know you. And I've known married men before, so… I mean, that wouldn't have mattered. Not to me. But thanks for the money, anyway. I will send it back. Be sure to give me your address.'

  'I will,' Carella said. 'Now let's get out of here before I change my mind.'

  'I wish you would,' she said, and grinned.

  'Not a chance,' he answered.

  Nonetheless, he fidgeted uncomfortably all the while she packed, and he rushed her out of the room, and was not able to relax completely until he had put her into a taxi and given the cabbie the name of a small, inexpensive, but legit hotel on the South Side.

  He watched the cab as it pulled away from the curb. Lisa wiped condensation from the rear window, and waved through the glass, and the taxi disappeared in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

  Carella would not later say to Teddy, 'Hey, guess what, honey? A beautiful twenty-two-year-old blonde was flirting with me today, what do you think of that, honey?' Because, somehow, telling that to Teddy would amount to the same thing as having taken Lisa Knowles to bed.

  And if he didn't need one stupid form of male ego-gratification, he sure as hell didn't need the other.

  He felt okay.

  Swiftly he walked to his automobile through the biting cold. It was beginning to snow.

  At seven-thirty that Monday night, Detective Charlie Broughan of the 101st made an arrest on his way to work. The arrest was somewhat accidental.

  Broughan had come out of the subway kiosk on Concord Avenue, five blocks from the station house, and was walking briskly through the light-falling snow, the pavement already a bit slippery underfoot. A boy and a girl were having what appeared to be a friendly argument on the sidewalk outside a record shop. The boy was wearing a white Swedish Army coat with the familiar insignia of the Death's Heads on it - the black gargoyle with its flaming red tongue. Broughan observed the coat and the insignia with an attitude of weary impatience. So far as he was concerned, there were only good guys and bad guys in the world. Broughan was a good guy, and anybody belonging to the Death's Heads (or any of the dumb gangs in this neighborhood) were bad guys. The boy and the girl were talking to each other in Spanish, their voices getting somewhat louder as Broughan approached. Broughan was not looking for trouble, nor was he expecting any. A cop on his way to work doesn't step into sidewalk arguments like Galahad on a white horse. He lets the people yell themselves out, and he continues walking to his office, where slightly more important matters are waiting - like the crazy bastard who was still cutting up prostitutes left and right all over the city, and who was still unidentified, and who only last night had changed his m.o. slightly by drowning a hooker in the bathtub of a downtown rathole called the Royal Arms.

  'Entonces que hacías en el techo con ella?' the girl asked.

  'Yo le estaba enseńando las palomas de Tommy,' the boy said.

  'Tú estabas tratando de chingarla, eso es lo que tú estabas hacienda,' the girl said, and opened her purse.

  'No! Solamente le estaba enseńando las palomas,' the boy said, and a razor blade suddenly appeared in the girl's right hand, and the blade moved with startling swiftness toward the boy's face, slicing across the bridge of his nose and his right cheek, a gushing trail of blood following the cutting edge as it slashed over the jaw line and almost severed the carotid artery, which would have proved deadly. Blood spilled onto the white Swedish Army coat. The boy, startled, reached into the coat, pulled out a very big gun that Broughan immediately identified as a Colt .45, and pointed it at the girl.

  Broughan moved.

  He did not say a word. There was no time to pull his own gun. In the next three seconds the cannon in the boy's hand might explode, and Broughan would be dealing with a homicide. The boy had his back to him; Broughan hit him at the base of the skull, with both hands clenched together like a mallet. The boy fell to the sidewalk, barely conscious, and Broughan pulled his gun as the girl began to run. He stuck out his foot, and tripped her, and she went sprawling to the sidewalk, bruising her hands as she tried to cushion the fall. Broughan put them both in handcuffs, told the owner of the record sto
re to call the 101st and tell them Detective Broughan needed a patrol car and a meat wagon, and then turned to the gathering crowd and said, 'All right, go home, it's all over.'

  It was not all over. The night was just beginning.

  The boy's name was Pacho Miravitlles.

  His face bandaged, he sat on a white table in the emergency room of Washington Hospital and refused to talk to Broughan. While Broughan fired his questions, an intern hovered about, fearful that the boy would begin bleeding again, and maybe die right there on the table, and then he'd be somehow blamed for it instead of this big cop who was badgering somebody who'd just been badly injured.

  'Why were you carrying that piece?' Broughan said.

  Pacho did not answer.

  'You're smarter than that, Pacho. You punks never go around heeled unless there's something on. Now what's on, would you like to tell me?'

  'Officer,' the intern started, and Broughan said, 'Shut up,' and turned to Pacho again. 'Who's the girl?'

  'My chick,' Pacho answered, apparently figuring this was a safe area for discussion.

  'What's her name?'

  'Anita Zamora.'

  'Why'd she cut you?'

  'She thought I was fooling around with somebody.'

  'Who?'

  'A girl named Isabel Garrido.'

  'Were you fooling around with her?'

  'No. I took her up on the roof to show her my brother's pigeons.'

  'In this weather?'

  'That's what I wanted to show her. The way the pigeons all crowd together in the coop. To keep warm, you know.'

  'Did she keep you warm while you were up there, Pacho?'

  'She's only thirteen years old. I wouldn't fool around with nobody that young. I really took her up there to show her the pigeons.' He turned to the intern. 'Hey, it still feels like blood is under these bandages.'

  'Officer, I really would like to…'

  'I really would like to find out why this young man was carrying a .45 automatic in the pocket of his coat, Doctor. You've done your job, you stopped the blood, you've got him nicely bandaged there. Now why don't you go outside and have a cigarette, okay?'

  'Cigarettes cause cancer,' the intern said automatically.

  'Then go down to the cafeteria and have a cup of coffee. Or go outside there where you've got a lot of other patients to take care of, okay?'

  'This boy is my patient, too.'

  'I'll take care of this boy, don't you worry about that,' Broughan said. 'Would you please leave us the hell alone for five minutes?'

  'I'm not responsible,' the intern said.

  'Fine.'

  'I'm telling you, if anything happens to him, I'm not responsible.'

  'What do you think is going to happen?'

  'He could fall off the table,' the intern said.

  'He could also slip on the banana peels that are all over the floor.'

  'What banana peels?'

  'There aren't any,' Broughan said. 'Go take a walk, will you?'

  'Okay, but I'm not responsible,' the intern said, and walked out.

  'What do you say, Pacho?'

  'I told you all I got to tell you.'

  'Tell me about the piece.'

  'No comment.'

  'You got a license to carry that weapon?'

  'You know I ain't got no license.'

  'Okay, so to begin with, we got you on a gun charge. You know what else we got you on?'

  'You got me on nothing.'

  'You're mistaken, Pacho. We got you on a couple of things that are very interesting. You were holding a loaded weapon in your hand, and you were pointing it at your nice little girl friend who already cut you up, and who's going to be charged with First-Degree Assault. We can charge you with the same thing, at the very least, since—'

  'The gun in my hand don't mean nothing.'

  'Uh-uh, it means a lot, Pacho. It means you violated Section 240 of the Penal Law. You assaulted another person with a loaded firearm.'

  'I never touched her. I never fired a shot.'

  'You stuck the gun in her face. We can presume you intended firing it. But Assault is the least of your worries, Pacho. We might decide to charge you with Attempted Homicide instead. That's an even heavier rap.'

  'I didn't try to kill nobody. I only wanted to scare her. Anyway, it was self-defense.'

  'Yeah, well, let's not try the case right here and now, okay, Pacho? I'm just trying to tell you how much time you're going to absolutely spend in jail, and how much time you might spend in jail if a jury sees it the same way the D.A. sees it. On the gun charge, you'll absolutely and without question get a year for carrying a loaded firearm without a license. On the assault, you can get ten years, and on the attempted murder, you can get twenty-five. How old are you, Pacho?'

  'Nineteen.'

  'Either way, by the time you get out of prison, you won't be a teen-ager any more. How does that appeal to you?'

  'It don't.'

  'So tell me why you were carrying that piece.'

  'Go fuck yourself,' Pacho said.

  Bert Kling was about to propose to Augusta Blair.

  It was almost nine-thirty, and they had finished their meal and their coffee, and Kling had ordered cognac for both of them, and they were waiting for it to arrive. There was a candle in a red translucent holder on the tabletop, and it cast a gentle glow on Augusta's face, softening her features, not that she needed any help. There was a time when Kling had been thoroughly flustered by Augusta's beauty. In her presence he had been speechless, breathless, awkward, stupid, and incapable of doing anything but stare at her in wonder and gratitude. Over the past nine months, however, he had not only grown accustomed to her beauty, and comfortable in its presence, but had also begun to feel somehow responsible for it - like the curator of a museum beginning to think that the rare paintings on the walls had not only been discovered by him, but had in fact been painted by him.

  If Kling had been a painter, he would have put Augusta on canvas exactly the way she looked, no improvements, no embellishments; none were necessary. Augusta's hair was red, or auburn, or russet, depending on the light, but certainly in the red spectrum, and worn long most of the time, usually falling to just below her shoulder blades, but sometimes worn back in a pony tail, or braided into pigtails on either side of her face, or even piled on top of her head like a crown of sparkling rubies. Her eyes were a jade-green, slanting upward from high cheekbones, her exquisite nose gently drawing the upper lip away from partially exposed, even white teeth. She was tall and slender, with good breasts and a narrow waist and wide hips and splendid wheels. She was surely the most beautiful woman he had ever met in his life - which is why she was a photographer's model. She was also the most beautiful person he had ever met in his life - which is why he wanted to marry her.

  'Augusta,' he said, 'there's something serious I'd like to ask you.'

  'Yes, Bert?' she said, and looked directly into his face, and he felt again what he had first felt nine months ago when he'd walked into her burglarized apartment and seen her sitting on the couch, her eyes glistening with tears about to spill. He had clumsily shaken hands with her, and his heart had stopped.

  'I've been doing a lot of thinking,' he said.

  'Yes, Bert?' she said.

  The waiter brought the cognac. Augusta lifted her snifter and rolled it between her palms. Kling picked up his snifter and almost dropped it, spilling some of the cognac onto the table cloth. He dabbed at it with his napkin, smiled weakly at Augusta, put the napkin back on his lap and the snifter back on the table before he spilled it all over his shirt and his pants and the rug and maybe the silk-brocaded walls of this very fancy French joint he had chosen because he thought it would be a suitably romantic setting for a proposal, even though it was costing him half-a-week's pay. 'Augusta,' he said, and cleared his throat.

  'Yes, Bert?'

  'Augusta, I have something very serious to ask you.'

  'Yes, Bert, you've said that already.' There seem
ed to be a slight smile on her mouth. Her eyes looked exceedingly merry.

  'Augusta?'

  'Yes, Bert?'

  'Excuse me, Mr. Kling,' the waiter said. 'There's a telephone call for you.'

  'Oh, sh—' Kling started, and then nodded, and said, 'Thank you, thank you.' He shoved his chair back, dropping his napkin to the floor as he rose. He picked up the napkin, said, 'Excuse me, Augusta,' and was heading away from the table when she very softly said, 'Bert?'

  He stopped and turned.

  'I will, Bert,' she said.

  'You will?' he asked.

  'I'll marry you,' she said.

  'Okay,' he said, and smiled. 'I'll marry you, too.'

  'Okay,' she said.

  'Okay,' he said.

  He walked swiftly across the room. The waiter regarded him curiously, because he had never seen a man looking so completely ecstatic over the mere prospect of answering a telephone. Kling closed the door of the booth, waggled his fingers at Augusta across the room, waited for her to waggle her fingers back at him, and then said, 'Hello?'

  'Bert, this is Steve. I tried to get you at home, your service gave me this number.'

  'Yeah, Steve, what's up?'

  'You'd better get up here right away,' Carella said. 'All hell is breaking loose.'

  Chapter Nine

  As the president, I make it my business to know everything that's going on every place. From the wire we had in the Scarlets' clubhouse on Gateside, we found out exactly where they were keeping Big and Jo-Jo prisoner. The idea, of course, was to free them. But that wasn't enough. It was also necessary to punish the Scarlets for what they done.

  I want to make everything clear. You guys are writing this down, and you're also taping it, and so I want to make it clear. It's not always easy to understand why a person does such and such a thing. You look at the externals, and you think Oh he done that for selfish reasons, or Oh, he done it out of spite, or because he lost his temper, or whatever. You can come up with a thousand speculations as to why a person done something, when actually it's only the person himself who knows why. So I want to tell you exactly why I done it, and I also want to make sure you know what I done and what I didn't do.