Hail to the Chief

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.

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 measures. 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.'

'Thank you,' Carella said, smiling, and then the Smile dropped from his face, and he pointed his finger at Big Anthony and said, 'You.'

'Me?'

'You.'

'Don't point, it's impolite.'

'The police in Turman have a warrant out for your arrest. They've authorized us to pick you up and question you regarding the murder of one Margaret McNally last Thursday night. You can consider yourself under arrest as of right this minute.'

'If the police in Turman want me, they better extradite me,' Big Anthony said.

'First things first,' Carella answered. 'You feel like answering some questions? This may all be a big mistake, and maybe we can clear it up in ten minutes. If it is a mistake, I'll call the Turman cops and tell them you're clean. What do you say?'

'I don't feel like answering no questions.'

'Well, just in case you change your mind, and in keeping with the Supreme Court decision in Miranda v. Arizona, I'm informing you now that we are not permitted to ask you any questions until you are warned of your right to counsel and your privilege against self-incrimination.'

'You're goddamn right,' Big Anthony said.

'Since I would like to ask you some questions—'

'Save your breath.'

'—I'm now telling you that, first, you have the right to remain silent if you so desire. Do you understand that?'

'Sure.'

'Second, you don't have to answer any questions if you don't want to.'

'The same goes for the rest of you punks, so you might as well listen,' Broughan said.

'Do you understand that?'

'Yeah, yeah,' Big Anthony said.

'How about the rest of you?'

The other boys mumbled or nodded assent.

'Third,' Carella said, 'if you do decide to answer any questions-'

'I told you—'

'Shut up and listen to the man,' Broughan said.

'That's already a violation of my rights,' Big Anthony said.

'Where'd you get your law degree?' Broughan said.

'I don't need a law degree to—'

'Shut your fuckin' mouth and listen to the man,' Broughan said.

'If you do decide to answer any questions,' Carella said, 'the answers may be used as evidence against you. Do you understand that?'

'This is a waste of time.'

'Do you understand it?'

'Yeah, yeah.'

'And you also have the right to consult with an attorney before or during questioning. If you don't have money to hire a lawyer, we'll appoint one for you.'

'What the hell are you telling me all this crap for?' Big Anthony said.

'Because this is a democracy,' Broughan answered dryly.

'I ain't going to answer no questions, anyway.'

'You may decide to, who knows?' Broughan said. 'Freedom of choice, that's what the whole system's about.'

'Yeah, bullshit,' Big Anthony said.

'And lastly,' Carella said, 'if you do decide to answer any questions, with or without a lawyer present, you can stop any time you want to. Is that also clear?'

'It's all clear. I got nothing to say.'

'Fine. We're holding you for the Turman police either way.'

'I don't even know anybody named Margaret what-ever-the-hell.'

'The Turman cops have a witness who saw you in the woods off Route 14 last Thursday night. The girl's body was at your feet, and the witness overheard you arguing with another boy about whether or not to bury her.'

'Prove it.'

'Oh, I'm sure we will. Or they will. Or somebody will. With so many law-enforcement agencies involved, you're in pretty hot water. Anyway, if you've got nothing to say, that's that. Charlie, can we get somebody to take him down for booking and detention?'

'Oh, sure,' Broughan said, and reached for the phone on the corner of the table.

'There's only two agencies involved,' Big Anthony said.

'Until the FBI gets into it,' Carella said.

'Why would they get into it? You said—'

'Oh, I think the Turman cops have some idea the girl was kidnapped and transported across a state line. That's enough to bring in the FBI automatically. Pretty heavy stuff, Anthony. Killing a kidnap victim.'

'Hello, Mike, we got somebody we need booked and iced,' Broughan said into the phone. 'Send a patrolman up, will you?' He listened a moment, and then said, 'A warrant from the Turman police. Kidnap and homicide. No, we won't need a stenographer 'cause he don't want to make a statement. Right, thank you, Mike.' Broughan replaced the receiver on its cradle, turned to Carella and said, 'Done. You think we should talk to these other young gentlemen now? Regarding the double homicide at the candy store on Gatsby?'

The other young gentlemen had listened in somewhat awed stupefaction to the conversation between Carella and Big Anthony, and were now being made aware that it was their turn again. The attitude of the two cops was so matter-of-fact, so thoroughly bland, so real that it conversely generated an aura of unreality in the small, windowless Interrogation Room. Each of the boys (and especially Big Anthony, who had just been told what serious trouble he was in) was unprepared for this impersonal, antiseptic approach, and felt totally dehumanized by it. There was no saying Hey, listen, you guys, we were acting on orders, you know? Like this has nothing to do with murder. This is just stuff between the cliques. In fact, we're about to settle it, if you'll just let us alone.

Uh-uh. These cops were businessmen talking calmly and coolly about crimes committed, and about the penalties for those crimes, and about the various law-enforcement agencies who were going to make sure somebody paid those penalties. One of the boys, Charles 'Chingo' Ingersol, the powerful and highly respected enforcement officer of the Yankee Rebels, suddenly discovered that he had an irresistible urge to urinate, and he only hoped he would not wet his pants in front of the other guys. He debated asking the cops whether he could go down the hall to the bathroom. But he was sure they would refuse. They were hard-headed businessmen, and they weren't about to waste company time on somebody running down the hall to pee. Chingo was scared. All of them were scared. And both Carella and Broughan knew it.

'Chingo,' Broughan said, and the boy visibly started when his name was announced that way.

'Yeah,' he said, trying to affect his normal cool, even though an uncontrollable twitch had started in his lower left eyelid.

'You want to tell us what happened at the candy store?'

'Nothing happened.'

'Looked like a hell of a mess to me.'

'Yeah, somebody must've done something there,' Chingo said. 'But it wasn't us.'

'Then how come you were running out of the alleyway?'

'We were shooting crap back there when we heard the police siren. So we split, that's all.'

'Oh, you were shooting crap, I see,' Broughan said.

'That's it.'

'In the dark?'

'Well… we had a flashlight.'

'Where is it?'

'Where's what?'

'The flashlight.'

'We must've dropped it when we split.'

'You were shooting crap in an alley behind a candy store in Scarlet Avenger territory, is that what you're asking us to believe?'

'Yeah.'

'Yankee Rebels casually shooting crap in—'

'They didn't know we were there,' Chingo said.

The door to the Interrogation Room opened. A patrolman looked into the room, took a pair of handcuffs from his belt, and cheerfully said, 'Who's the customer?'

'The big one there,' Broughan said.

'Let's go, fella,' the patrolman said, and walked to Big Anthony, and closed the jagged, saw-toothed jaws of one handcuff over his right wrist. 'Your mother must feed you pretty good,' the patrolman said. 'How tall are you, anyway?'

'Six-four.'

'You're a healthy kid,' the patrolman said. 'Let's go, the sergeant wants to see you.'

'I didn't do nothing,' Big Anthony said to the patrolman.

'I know, I know,' the patrolman said understandingly. 'Nobody ever done nothing.'

'I don't even know the girl,' Big Anthony said.

'That makes us even,' the patrolman said. 'I don't know her either.'

'Look, whyn't you tell these guys…?'

'Me? I just work here,' the patrolman said. 'You tell them yourself.'

'They think I killed somebody.'

'Well, if you didn't kill anybody, it'll all be cleared up. Meantime, you come on downstairs 'cause the sergeant's got a few questions he wants to ask you, and he also wants to write your name in the big book. Okay?' He turned to Broughan. 'Has he been advised?'

'He has, but tell Mike to go through it again.'

'Who we holding him for?'

'The Turman police. And most likely the Feebs.'

'Right,' the patrolman said, and jerked on the handcuff. 'Let's go-'

The other Yankee Rebels watched as Big Anthony was led silently out of the room. The frosted-glass door to the Interrogation Room closed.

'Fellow named Lucas Hawkins was killed in the blast,' Broughan said to Chingo. 'Called himself "Lamp." Had one eye. Ever recall seeing him around?'

'No,' Chingo said.

'Little girl got killed, too. I guess she was browsing the magazine rack, or maybe just sitting at the counter when somebody threw the bomb in. Thirteen-year-old kid. Her name was Daisy Cooper. That's a nice name, don't you think?'

'Yeah,' Chingo said.

'Daisy Cooper. She was dead on arrival. Lamp died on the way to the hospital. Very heavy stuff, that bombing. Want to tell us about it?'

'Nothing to say,' Chingo whispered.

'What? Speak up, son.'

'I…' Chingo cleared his throat and raised his voice. 'I said I got nothing to say.'

'Well, fine, that's up to you. Any of you other guys?'

The other Yankee Rebels looked at each other searchingly, and then looked at Chingo, and then shook their heads.

'Fine,' Broughan said. 'We'll have to lock all of you up, you understand, till we get to the bottom of this. But we got nice clean detention cells downstairs, with little potties in them and everything. You'll have very nice bowel movements while you're here at the 101st. Steve, you want to ask anything?'

'I just wanted to mention that our eyewitness'll certainly be able to identify whoever was with Anthony on the night of the murder. It might go easier - well, I can't make any promises.'

'No, you can't do that, Steve.'

'I know, I'm merely saying if any of the boys here happened to be with Anthony that night, I'd appreciate him stepping forward now.'

Nobody stepped forward.

'I didn't think so,' Carella said, and sighed. 'Well, I guess you fellows know what you're doing, but you're sure making it difficult for yourselves. Let's get somebody to take them down, huh, Charlie?'

'Yeah, we'd better do that,' Broughan said, and was reaching for the telephone when it rang. He lifted the receiver. 'Broughan,' he said, and listened. 'Where?' He looked up at the wall clock. The time was 10:25. 'Okay,' Broughan said, 'I'm on my way.'

'What is it?' Carella asked.

'World War III,' Broughan answered.

We were coming down Gateside, we were almost to the corner where the Scarlets have their clubhouse. Gateside and Delaney. There were twenty of us. I was in the lead. Mace, at the same time, was leading an attack on the Heads' clubhouse on Concord and Forty-eighth. It was all synchronized. It all should have worked beautiful.

Let me explain that we weren't tiptoeing around, we weren't ducking in hallways, we were marching right down the middle of the street. We planned to surprise the Scarlets, sure, but we weren't dumb enough to think we could sneak up on them. They got sentries and runners the same as us. We knew they had their arsenal far away from the clubhouse, though, just the way we do. That's so if the fuzz come around, there's no gun charge to pin on anybody. Just a bunch of guys sitting around rapping, that's all. You can't arrest nobody for rapping. So we knew they didn't have guns up there, and we figured even if the runners did get to them, they'd maybe have three minutes' notice that we were almost on them, and three minutes wasn't enough time to get out of that building and escape what was coming. Which was us. The Yankee Rebels. Thirty-four strong, and marching down that street with our colors proudly showing - red, white, and blue on the move. With another twenty of us over on Concord Avenue about to end the war with the Heads at the same time.

There was only one trouble.

The Heads weren't on Concord Avenue.

The Heads were on Gateside.

And what the Heads were planning to do was wipe out the Scarlets, and then come after us, and that way become undisputed rulers of the whole neighborhood.

It was The Bullet who spotted those white Swedish Army coats up the block. It was hard to see them at first, because it was snowing hard, and the streets were already covered, and those coats were pretty effective camouflage. But The Bullet has very sharp eyes. He can see in the dark like a cat, and not even white-against-white can faze him. He grabs my arm, and he tells me to take a look up the block, and all I can see at first is this swirling snow, and then through the snow I see what looks like a moving snowbank, you know what I mean? Only it ain't a snowbank, it's maybe a dozen guys all dressed in white coats, and I realize all at once it's a party of Heads coming right for us on a collision course.

The first thing I thought was that Mace hit early, and that his force got wiped out. But that ain't like Mace. We had set our watches before we started out, and Mace knew both strike forces were supposed to hit at ten-thirty sharp. It was now only ten twenty-five, and if I knew Mace, he was looking at his watch right then and timing his strike to the second. The only trouble was that all the Heads were here instead of where Mace expected them to be.

I always think best under pressure.

I have had maybe six important crisises in my life, and I have always met them and solved them. This was just another crisis, no different from the other ones. This was a football team coming down the field, armed to the teeth, but only another ball club. I had the stronger team, and we were going to beat them and end this war. All it involved was a change of plan. Instead of the Scarlets and the Heads simultaneously, it would have to be the Heads first, right there in the street, and then the Scarlets.

I gave the order to charge.

It was very exciting. I had, well, an erection. I don't know why.

We met in the middle of the street. Intelligence had told me the Heads had a very good armory, but I didn't expect the kind of opposition we got from them. Their weaponry was very sophisticated. I'd always suspected they were brothers with a clique in Calm's Point, and the stuff they were using against us now led me to believe they were being supplied by this other clique. Otherwise, where would they have got the stuff they threw at us? In spite of their heavy hardware, though, we had them outnumbered, and in the first three minutes after we joined battle, there must've been six or seven of them laying in the middle of the street, bleeding all over their nice white coats.

But I should've realized something was wrong from the minute The Bullet spotted them. There weren't enough of them. If this was a full-scale raid on the Scarlet clubhouse, why were the Heads throwing only a dozen men at them? We ourselves had come down the street with thirty-four guys. Was it possible the Heads had underestimated the strength of the Scarlets? No, it wasn't possible. Their intelligence was as good as ours, and they must've known the Scarlets were a very strong club. So why the small attack force?

The answer to that one came as a total surprise, though now that I think of it, it was really very good military planning. I always give credit where credit is due, and if the Heads planned a good attack, I'll say so, plain and honest. It was a flanking attack, you see. They were going to hit the building from two sides. The first group, the one we met in the street on Gateside Avenue, was obviously supposed to go in the front door of the building. The second group, the one that came down Delaney Street, was I guess, supposed to go in the side basement door to the building. But what happened was they saw us engaged with the main attack force on Gateside, and the next thing you knew we were caught in a pincers, fighting with the Gateside group in front of us and the Delaney group behind us. It was bad news. There was only one thing we could do, and even that was risky, but we did it, anyway. We ran in the building.

The Bullet and six of our guys covered our rear, holing up in the entryway and firing out into the street, keeping the Heads away while the rest of us charged up the stairs to get the Scarlets. The first Scarlet we met was a little nigger punk named Jeremy Atkins, who was a junior and the brother of Lewis Atkins, who we had done away with the week before. He was coming down the stairs, probably to see what all the noise was in the street outside, and Little Anthony cut him down with three fast shots, and he came falling headfirst down the stairs, and we all got out of the way to let him go by, and Doc gave him a kick in the ribs when he come to a stop about ten steps from the bottom.

Mighty Man himself was standing at the top of the steps.

I was not armed, you know, I have already told you that. I know you don't believe me, but that's the absolute truth. I was not armed. It was not me who killed Mighty Man. I don't know who did it. Whoever did it was a very good shot. Two bullets took Mighty Man right between the eyes, one bullet right over the other, bang, bang, two neat little holes drilled right between his eyes, it was beautiful. He fell dead on the spot, and we climbed over him and ran into this big room they got up there, smelling of nigger sweat and piss, and all the guys were scrambling and realizing this was a raid and they were about to get wiped out. Doc took a bullet just when I heard the sirens. He took a bullet in the gut. Everybody was shooting and yelling, and beginning to run out of the place because they knew sirens meant fuzz, and this was designed to end the war, not to get busted and rot in jail. People were climbing all over me. Doc tried to get up. He was holding his guts together. Somebody had shot him with a very big caliber gun, probably a .45, those niggers like big guns. He fell against me, and I tried to hold him up, but he was slippery and wet, and my hands got all covered with blood, and that's when I heard somebody downstairs yelling, 'Police officer, hold it right there!' and that's when you guys came up, and put handcuffs on me, and brought me here.

So when you ask me why I did it, I got some questions to ask you right back. The first question is why I did what? Why I tried to bring peace to the neighborhood? Why I tried to end this war that's been going on between the cliques for God knows how long? Why I tried to solve it with honor and with pride? Why I tried to rid the streets of two cliques who were a danger to maybe the whole city? If that is the question you're asking, then the answer is like I said before.

I did it because I'm the president, that's why. I'm the elected leader, and it is my duty and my responsibility to take care of the people I am serving.

That's all there is to it. That's all I got to say.

They led Randall Nesbitt out of the squadroom in handcuffs. He walked with his head high, that peculiar television-personality smile on his mouth. At the end of the corridor he turned and gave a short chopping wave of his hand to the detectives who were watching him.

'He still doesn't know what he did,' Kling said.

'He never knew,' Carella answered.

'The jury'll remind him.'

'Yes. Thank God there are still juries.'

Meyer Meyer, who had passed Nesbitt and his police escort on the steps outside, came into the squadroom now, took off his hat and coat, and said, 'Who was that?'

'That was the president,' Carella said. 'We've got a whole cageful of his people downstairs. And Broughan up at the 101st has two other gangs locked up. Too many of them to fit in one station house.'

'Yeah?' Meyer said. 'What'd he do?'

'He ended the war,' Carella said.

'Where're you coming from?' Kling asked.

'Me? I just got taken to dinner by a writer.'

'Dinner?' Kling said, looking up at the clock. It was twenty minutes past eleven.

'Dinner, yes. In a very fancy restaurant. And then we took a walk up Hall Avenue while I told him my views on the relationship of television to acts of violence.'

'What'd you tell him?' Carella asked.

'I told him there are worse influences in this country than television. I told him if anybody needed violent heroes to imitate, he could find plenty of them around without ever turning on a television set.'

'Who did you have in mind?' Carella asked.