Hail to the Chief

Chapter Eight

He did not get downtown until a little after five o'clock.

Night had descended on the city, the street lamps were on, the homeward rush of office workers had already begun. He drove for two blocks, looking for a parking space, and finally had to put the car in a garage. He did not particularly enjoy this because he knew he wouldn't be reimbursed for the cost of the parking, no matter how many chits he put in. The streets were bleakly cold. Pedestrians went past him swiftly, heading for subway kiosks and bus stops, their heads ducked against the fierce wind, hands clutched into coat collars or stuffed into pockets. He looked up at the sky and hoped it would not snow. He did not like snow. Teddy had once talked him into trying skiing, and he had almost broken his leg the first time down, and had given up on skiing and on snow and also on cold weather that got into a man's bones and made him miserable all over. He thought of Midge McNally lying in mud and leaves in the woods, her blouse stiff with blood. He thought of Johnny Quince, two bullets in the back of his head, shoeless, wearing only trousers and a shirt. And he thought of the six naked corpses lying in the telephone-company ditch. He hurried toward the hotel.

The Farragut was a fleabag catering to hookers, junkies, pushers, and pimps. If Carella had cared to make a few dozen arrests while he was on the premises, just so the trip downtown shouldn't be a total loss, he could have done so with ease. But this was not his precinct, and presumably there were cops here to protect the citizenry, uphold the morality, and continue the unceasing war against narcotics abuse; he would let their mothers worry. In the meantime, the preconceived opinion he formed of Lisa Knowles was not a very good one. What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? he asked himself, even before he met her.

As it turned out, Lisa Knowles was a nice girl. She just didn't have very much money, and she had taken a room at the Farragut only because it was the least expensive thing she could find. Lisa was the very picture of blooming, bursting, youthful California health. She looked nineteen, a barefooted, very tall girl - at least five-nine - with bright blue eyes sparkling against a suntanned face, blond hair cascading to the small of her back, long legs encased in blue jeans, firm breasts braless under a tight white cotton T-shirt. Greeting him at the door to her room, she immediately apologized for the dump she was living in, and then explained how short she was of cash. Carella followed her into the room, and she closed the door behind him. There was a bed in the room, and a single easy chair, and a standing floor lamp, and a cigarette-scarred dresser. Lisa sat cross-legged on the bed. Carella took the easy chair.

'I understand you want to talk to us,' he said.

'Yes.' She emphasized the single word with a curt nod of her blond hair. She had big hands and big feet; she was a big girl all over. He could visualize her on a Malibu beach, wearing a bikini, riding a surfboard. He could also, and he was surprised by the unbidden image, visualize her in bed. He immediately got back to business.

'What about?' he said.

'Andrew Kingsley. I got a letter from him four days after he was killed. He'd written it last Saturday. I would have taken it to the California fuzz…' She smiled radiantly. 'Cops, excuse me,' she said. 'Only I figured they'd just brush it off because it wasn't their case. Was I right?'

'Well, I don't know. The Los Angeles police are a pretty efficient bunch,' Carella said, and returned the smile. 'I'm sure they would have contacted us.'

'How'd you know it was Los Angeles? And not San Francisco or San Diego or whatever?'

'Because Kingsley's sister told us he'd been doing work in Watts. That's Los Angeles,' Carella said, and shrugged.

'Smart, smart,' Lisa said, and tapped her temple with her forefinger. 'Anyway, I raised the bread and came here personally. I didn't want to take a chance on the letter going astray, because I think it may help you find whoever killed him. Also, my folks are down in Miami, and a visit is long overdue, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone. Provided they send me the air fare. I'm afraid to give them the address of this dump, they might recognize it and call out the Marines. But I have to wire them because all I've got is about thirty cents to my name - that's an exaggeration, but really, I'm almost flat. If I don't get some financial help real soon, I'll have to join the hookers in this place,' She smiled again. The image of Lisa Knowles as prostitute suddenly filled the small, shoddy, cheerless room. Lisa in garter belt and open-crotch panties, long blond hair spread on the pillow, Lisa being used and abused by drunken sailors and…

'How old are you?' Carella asked abruptly.

'Twenty-two. Why?' she said.

'Just wondered.'

'Old enough,' she said, 'don't worry,' and again she smiled her radiant smile, and Carella suddenly felt terribly uncomfortable and wanted to get out of there, and go home, and say to his wife, 'Hey, guess what, honey? A beautiful twenty-two-year-old blonde was flirting with me today, what do you think of that, honey?' Except that Lisa Knowles wasn't flirting. Or was she? It was she, after all, who'd made the reference to prostitution. Why are you showing me all these dirty pictures, Doctor? Carella thought, and smiled.

'Yes?' she said.

'What?'

'Why are you smiling?'

'I just thought of something very funny,' he said, and then became all business again. 'Mind if I see the letter?'

'Oh, sure,' she said, and got off the bed, and went across the room, long legs devouring the worn linoleum, backside round and firm in the tight blue jeans - Now listen, Carella told himself, and watched despite the self-admonition as she dug into the leather shoulder bag on the dresser top and came up with a red-and-blue-bordered air-mail envelope. She walked back to where he was sitting, and stopped just before the chair, her knees almost touching his. He took the envelope from her, adjusted the shade on the lamp for better illumination, and then removed the letter from the envelope and unfolded it. Lisa moved behind the chair so that she could read over his shoulder.

'See the date?' she said. 'He was killed last Sunday, am I right? The letter was written on Saturday.'

'Yes, that's right,' Carella said, and began reading the letter:

Darling Golden Girl, how are you?

I'm still here crashing with my sister, which is something of a drag, but I've finally made some contacts and I think I'll be able to get started on the work I came east for.

'He used to call me Golden Girl,' Lisa said.

'Mmm,' Carella said.

'Because I'm a blonde.'

'I see that.'

He was about to say something more. He changed his mind, and started reading the rest of the letter:

Tomorrow night, I'll be going uptown to talk to the president of a gang that calls itself The Death's Heads. This is a Puerto Rican gang, and the leader is a fellow named Edwards Portoles, who I'd met through Julio Cabrera. You remember him, he's the one who used to play piano at the Sunset Shrine, on the Strip. He's here now, playing Tuesdays and Fridays at a place downtown in the Quarter, barely eking out a living, but doing he likes best—which is all that matters, am I right, Goldilocks?

'He also called me Goldilocks,' Lisa said.

'Because you're a blonde, I'll bet.'

'How'd you guess?'

'Smart, smart,' Carella said, and tapped his temple as she had done earlier.

Anyway, Julio introduced me to this Portoles fellow who lives in the same neighbourhood Julio grew up in, and that's I got to know what the situation is up there. The situation, to put it mildly, stinks. In fact, my dear, it is partially ripe for the likes of yours truly, Andrew Kingsley, to step in and try to make some progress before everybody kills everybody else. Lisa, the gangs up there are currently engaged in what amounts to full-scale warfare, and unless somebody can show them a peaceful way to settle their differences, a lot of innocent people are going to suffer. I say this with the knowledge that only two weeks ago, a mother wheeling her baby in the park was accidentally gunned down when a member of a gang called the Scarlet Avengers opened fire on a member of Portoles's gang.

The situation seems to be particularly aggravated between three gangs up there—Portoles's gang, which is called The Death's Heads, a black gang called The Scarlet Avengers, and a white gang called The Yankee Rebels. It's my idea that if I can get them working together on a constructive project, then maybe they'll stop trying to kill each other. I've already made some tentative suggestions along these lines to Portoles, whose seems interested in the idea—probably because his closest friend was murdered just six months back, in June. He seems tired of this senseless war. I think he'd like to end it. He also told me that the president of the Scarlet Avengers is a married man with a newborn baby, and really much too old for all this street bopping. It's Portoles's opinion that he might be willing to listen too. The real problem may prove to be the president of the Yankee Rebels, who—from all Portoles has told me—is an egotistical, brutal, unforgiving, humourless, puritanical, and basically rather stupid person who has deluded himself into believing he's the only one in the neighbourhood who knows the true and righteous path, and that anyone who disagrees with him is either crazy or intent on thwarting his grandiose and thoroughly self-serving schemes. His name if Randall Nesbitt, and I will try to talk to him after I see Portoles tomorrow night, and Atkins, the leader of the Avengers, later in the week.

'Listen, you don't happen to live here in the city, do you?' Lisa asked suddenly.

'Yes. Well, no, not downtown here. I live up in Riverhead. Why?'

'Just wondered,' she said.

'Because I thought if I have to stay in this hotel one more night, I'll go out of my mind,' Lisa said. 'I was coming up the stairs today, and I saw a guy shooting up right on the second-floor landing. I mean, can you imagine that? He's got the rubber tied around his arm, you know, and his vein is popping out, and he's got the needle poised and ready to go. Right on the staircase! And there were girls running around the halls in their underwear all last night, and strange guys prowling around and knocking on my door, I'm telling you this is some hotel. Which is why I asked if you live here in the city.'

'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 store 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 seemed 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.'