Hail to the Chief

by Ed McBain

  You found me with blood all over my hands tonight. Okay, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I can tell you with absolute honesty that I never killed nobody. I can also tell you that although I ordered the raids that ended the war once and for all - and don't forget I did end the war, the war is over, there's never going to be no more trouble in this neighborhood - it was not me personally who did any of the killing. No matter what it looked like (and I admit my hands were covered with blood), evidence can be misleading lots of times, as I'm sure you guys know. And if you look at just the blood, then you can forget the very real things I accomplished. That's the reason I'm telling you all this. You think I don't know you can't force me to say anything I don't want to? I'm telling you all this because I want to set the record straight. I don't want you to forget what I done. I don't want you to lose sight of the forest for the trees.

  The place they were holding Big and Jo-Jo was in the cellar of this candy store on Gatsby and 51st. The candy store is owned by this guy called Lamp Hawkins. He's a nigger who lost his eye in a street fight back in the fifties, some guy stabbed him in the eye. He used to live in Diamondback, and the gangs down there were rumbling all the time back in those days, but very unsophisticated, low-level combat, you understand? Like they used zip guns and ripped-off car aerials and switchblades, and they used to throw bricks down from the rooftops. Kid stuff. When you compare that to the weaponry we got today, but which we always use with restraint, it's almost laughable. Because the point is, you see, you can go to jail for carrying a homemade piece in your pocket, so you might as well carry the real thing, am I right? I want to point out, by the way, that I wasn't carrying nothing when you picked me up. You did not find no firearm on my person, and don't forget it.

  Anyway, this Lamp character moved up from Diamondback after he got out of jail for pushing dope, and he opened this candy store on Gatsby, which is really a front for a numbers drop. I guess you guys already know that. He probably pays you off, don't he? And the reason he let the Scarlets bring two prisoners there was that he needed their clique for protection. Against us, you dig? Because he knew the one thing the Yankee Rebels cannot abide is anything that has to do with dope. Now, you may say that Lamp got picked up for pushing 'way back in the sixties, and he done his time and paid the penalty, but that's not good enough for me. I got a memory like an elephant. Once a guy has pushed dope on innocent little children, you can bet he will one day or another go right back to pushing again. Which is why this clique shows no mercy whatsoever to anybody who is involved with dope on any level - using, dealing, we don't care what. One of our club rules is no junk and no junkies. That is an ironclad rule. No junk and no junkies. So Lamp lived in fear of his life all the time because he knew if we ever caught him out in the open, we would do to him what he done to countless little children back in the sixties. We would ruin him. And that's why he let Mighty Man bring the two prisoners to the candy store and lock them in the cellar. He was taking a chance, sure, but it was a worse chance for him to walk the streets without Scarlet protection.

  I spent all afternoon today doping out a plan of attack.

  Toy gave me a lot of support, I have to say that. She is a tireless person. She sets a fine example for the other girls in the clique. She is such a lady. And this afternoon, when I was figuring out the raids, talking out loud to myself most of the time, Toy was there to ask if I needed a cup of coffee, or if I would like her to do the back of my neck (she massages my neck whenever I get these tension headaches), and just generally lending me support. By about four o'clock I had figured out what I thought was a good plan, and whereas I would not normally have called the council for their opinion, this was a matter of great importance to the clique and to the entire neighborhood. So I put it to them.

  The most important thing, I told them, was to get the prisoners back, and nothing should be done to jeopardize their safe return. I figured that a frontal attack on the candy store was the best approach here, since Big and Jo-Jo were in the cellar and could not possibly be harmed by any shooting that was done upstairs. We were not concerned for our own safety, as we intended to go in there heavily armed, and we also had the element of surprise on our side. We had been in that candy store once or twice before, risking capture or bodily harm from the Scarlets, but eager to tell Mr. Lamp Hawkins that if we so much as saw him walking on the street alone at any time of the day or night, we would string him up from a lamppost. On those occasions we didn't risk actually doing anything to Lamp while we were in Scarlet territory because that would have caused an escalation of the war we were trying so hard to end.

  The layout of the candy store was very simple. On a wooden stand outside, Lamp kept his newspapers. Just inside the door, on the left there was a rack with magazines and paperback books, most of them dirty porn stuff, which was another good reason for giving Lamp the full treatment if the opportunity ever presented itself. Opposite that was the counter, with stools in front of it, and ice cream bins and soda spigots and everything behind it. There was a door at the far end of the store, and we figured it led to the back room where Lamp lived and where the numbers drop was. We also figured there must be another door back there that led to the cellar. So the plan was to go right in blasting, get rid of Lamp on the spot and be careful not to harm any innocent bystanders in the store. The raiders would go in the back room, find the door to the basement, kick it in because it would probably be locked, and get rid of any Scarlets who were there guarding Big and Jo-Jo. I figured we needed a force of no more than four good men to take the candy store.

  Mace, my war counselor, suggested that we go in with hand grenades, taking out the front of the store without any risk. The council voted, and it was decided that two men would throw in the grenades (we have sixty-four grenades in our arsenal, but they are getting more and more difficult to come by) and they would be backed by two more men, if in case something went wrong - like maybe Lamp or somebody in the store tossing the grenades out again, you know what I mean? In which case, the four would just go in and shoot up the place. In other words, Plan A would be blowing up the front of the store and then running back and down to the cellar. Plan B, in case the grenades failed, was to go in shooting.

  But that wasn't all of it. It seemed to me that there was only one way to end this war once and for all, and that was to completely annihilate the enemy. I told the council that by the enemy I didn't mean only the Scarlets, who were holding our men prisoner. I meant the Heads as well, that the thing to do since they had not learned their lesson of a week ago when we staged the double-hit was to move in fast and wipe them out to the last man. I knew this was a drastic measure, but I reasoned with the council that if there is nobody left to fight a war, then the war automatically stops.

  One of the kids on the council, a dope named Hardy, said he didn't understand why we were fighting this war to begin with, and I told him the war wasn't our doing, but that as the most powerful clique in the neighborhood, if not the entire city, it was our duty and our responsibility to bring peace, even though we hadn't started the shooting. I also reminded him of what had happened to a former Yankee Rebel named Jonathan Quince, who had started questioning the way things were run, and Hardy right away apologized and said he wasn't questioning nothing, he was simply wondering out loud, since the war seemed to have been going on for as long as he could remember, practically from when he was a kid in diapers. I told Hardy that the reason the war hadn't ended till now was because I hadn't been president.

  So Hardy, the dope, tells me in front of everybody that this is my second term as president, and if I had all these ideas about ending the war, why didn't I do it in my first term, end the war right then and there, without more bloodshed and killing? He was beginning to sound like Johnny all over again, but I kept my cool, I did not blow up. There were important things we were about to do, and I couldn't waste time dealing with a jerk. I just reminded him that the enemy was intransigent, which was why I had finally decided to take drastic m
easures. Then I told him to shut up and listen for a change, and maybe he might learn something. He started to say something else, and Chingo rapped him right in the mouth, and that was the end of Hardy's little private protest.

  Following the raid on the candy store, I told the council that I wished to hit the clubhouse of the Scarlets and the clubhouse of the Heads. I told them that I wished these to be full-scale attacks, with a large part of our membership involved, and that as commander in chief I personally would lead the raid on the Scarlet clubhouse, as I was anxious to confront Mighty Man, who had told me the obscenity on the telephone. I told the council that I wished there to be nothing left of the Scarlets or the Heads by the time we got finished with them tonight. I told them we had given both those clubs ample opportunity to negotiate, but they had refused to accept our kindnesses and our compromises, and so now it was time to quit kidding around, it was time to destroy their capability for waging war, and therefore to end the war itself in that way. I also mentioned, and I sincerely meant this, that I hoped tonight would mark the last of the killing and the bloodshed, that perhaps from now on we could walk the streets of this neighborhood without fear, and that we could do so with pride, knowing that we had not compromised our honor. I think the council was moved. They voted eleven-to-one to carry out my plan as I had conceived it, and then The Bullet suggested that the man who had voted against it (Hardy, of course) change his vote to make it unanimous, and he did so without no further urgings.

  The hit on the candy store was scheduled for nine-thirty.

  We figured that after we got Big and Jo-Jo back, the Scarlets would call a meeting in their clubhouse to discuss how they were going to deal with this new development. We knew from past experience that they could move very fast when they wanted to, and we figured they would be assembled by ten, and that a safe time to hit the Gateside building would be ten-thirty. So that was the zero hour for the second hit.

  As for the Heads, we planned to hit them with a separate force at exactly the same time, ten-thirty, on the assumption that news of the increased hostilities between the Scarlets and us would cause them also to call a meeting, and we would catch them all together in their rathole clubhouse with four-eyed Henry presiding, and that would be the end of the whole conflagration.

  We did not know at the time that the Heads had plans of their own.

  It was the Heads who messed everything up.

  Patrolman Franciscus of the 101st was riding shot-gun in the r.m.p. car when he and the driver, Patrolman Jenkins, heard the blast. It had begun snowing more heavily, and they had pulled to the curb not twenty minutes before to put skid chains on the car. But Jenkins instinctively hit the brake when he heard the explosion, and despite the chains, the car's tail whipped sharply to the left, and he swore, and turned into the skid, and then said to Franciscus, 'What the hell was that?'

  'I don't know,' Franciscus said. He had been listening to the incessant squawk of the car radio, and had been half asleep. He looked at his watch. It was only nine-thirty; his tour would not end till eleven forty-five. Two hours and fifteen minutes to go, and now maybe a busted gas main or something, which meant they would have to get out of the car in this damn freezing weather and start handling crowds and traffic.

  'Sounds like it came from around the corner,' Jenkins said.

  'Yeah,' Franciscus said.

  'You know what it sounded like?'

  'Yeah, a gas main.'

  'No. It sounded like when I was with the Third Precinct downtown, this boiler went up in the basement of a diner on the corner. It knocked the whole front wall out of the building. That's what this sounded like.'

  'I think it sounded like a gas main,' Franciscus said, and shrugged.

  'Well, let's take a look,' Jenkins said, and turned on the siren.

  The candy store was a smoldering wreck when they pulled up to the curb. Franciscus sighed; this was going to be worse than a gas main. Jenkins was already on the car radio, telling the dispatcher who answered his call that this was a 10-66. When he was asked to specify, he said there'd been an explosion in a candy store at 1155 Gatsby, cause undetermined. As Franciscus got out of the car, a black man with a patch over his right eye staggered from the candy store. His clothes were smoking, punctuated with a dozen bleeding wounds that gave his shirt a red-polka-dot effect. The flesh on his face hung from his cheeks and jaw in tattered trailing ribbons. As he stumbled toward the curb he brought up his left hand, presumably to wipe blood out of his one good eye, and then suddenly collapsed to the sidewalk. Franciscus said 'Jesus,' and yelled to Jenkins that they'd need a meat wagon, and then went into the candy store.

  The floor was covered with paperback books and magazines, broken glasses and dishes, utensils twisted out of shape. The supporting pedestals of the counter stools had been bent almost double by the explosion, so that they resembled giant blackened toadstools ravaged by a storm. The mirror behind the counter had been shattered, and shards lay over the blistered counter top and on the floor behind the counter, where they lay submerged in a soupy mixture of ice cream and syrup. A partially naked teen-aged girl was standing leaning against the wall at the far end of the room, where a jagged, splintered door stood open and hanging on one hinge. Most of her clothing had been ripped off in the blast, and she stood with bleeding breasts and arms, panties torn to shreds, one shoe on her left foot, leaning against the wall, staring sightlessly at Franciscus as he came into the shop.

  He went to her swiftly, and said, 'It's all right, miss, we're getting an ambulance,' and he took her arm to guide her out of the store, just gently closing his fingers around the elbow, and the girl fell away from the wall, face forward onto the floor, and Franciscus realized she was dead, and that he was still holding her arm, even though the girl was lying at his feet. His eyes opened wide in recognition, he dropped the severed arm, and turned away from the girl, turned his face into the corner where the door hung on its single hinge, and puked into his cupped hands.

  Outside, Jenkins was on the radio ordering the ambulance when he saw six boys in blue denim jackets running out of the alley that led to the back of the store. As they came out of the alley and started up the avenue, he saw that the backs of their jackets were decorated with Confederate flags. He got out of the car, revolver in hand, and yelled, 'Police officer, halt!' but the six boys were moving swiftly toward the corner, and did not stop. 'Hey!' he yelled again. 'You hear me?' and fired a warning shot in the air. The boys did not stop. They rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Jenkins got back into the car and told the dispatcher, 'We got six suspects, fleeing north on Toland, all of them wearing Yankee Rebel jackets.'

  Then he went into the candy store, and found Franciscus standing in the corner of the room, the dead girl at his feet, his hands stinking of vomit and covering his face. Franciscus was crying. Jenkins had never seen a cop crying in all his years on the force.

  'Hey,' he said, 'come on, Ralphie.'

  But Franciscus could not stop crying.

  Carella did not reach the 101st in Riverhead until a few minutes past ten. By that time Patrolman Jenkins's radio call had resulted in the street capture, four blocks away, of the Yankee Rebels he had seen running from the scene of the candy-store explosion. The six youths were gathered in the Interrogation Room of the 101st now, slouching in straight-backed chairs around the long wooden table. Charlie Broughan needed a shave; Carella suddenly wondered if he ever shaved.

  'You I know, and you I know,' Broughan said, pointing to two of the boys. 'This is Big Anthony Sutherland,' he said to Carella, 'and this is Jo-Jo Cottrell.'

  I've been looking for you,' Carella said.

  'Yeah?' Big Anthony replied, and shrugged. He was an enormous young man, with huge shoulders and a weight lifter's pectorals bulging against the blue shirt he wore under the denim jacket. Casually bored, he brushed a hank of long blond hair off his forehead.

  'You've been out of town, I guess.'

  Big Anthony shrugged again.


  'Who're you four?' Broughan asked the other boys. None of them answered. 'Your names,' he said.

  'Go ahead, tell them,' Big Anthony said.

  'I'm Priest,' one of the boys said.

  'Your names, never mind the gang shit,' Broughan said.

  'Mark Priestley.'

  'And you?'

  'Charles Ingersol.'

  'Well, well, we got us a big fish, huh?' Broughan said. 'We got ourselves Chingo in person, the enforcement officer of the Yankee Rebels.'

  'That's me,' Chingo said.

  'And you?'

  'Peter Hastings.'

  'How about you?' he asked the last of the six,

  'Frank Hughes.'

  'Okay, boys, what were you doing running from the back of that candy store?'

  None of the boys answered.

  'I'll direct this all to you, Chingo, okay?' Broughan said. 'Since you're such a big man in the organization.'

  'Better tell me my rights first,' Chingo said.

  'What for? Did you do something?'

  'Nothing at all.'

  'Then why do you need to know your rights? Which you probably know already anyway.'

  'I got a bad memory,' Chingo said. 'Tell me again.'

  'We're not charging you with anything, we're only soliciting information regarding a crime,' Broughan said.

  'Ah, excuse me, Charlie,' Carella said politely, 'but shouldn't we handle that matter for the Turman police first?'

  'Why, certainly, Steve,' Broughan said, 'go right ahead.'