Hail to the Chief

Chapter Three

I don't read nothing.

I don't have to read nothing. The clique has been mentioned a couple of times in the papers, and there's always reporters up here nosing around. But I don't talk to reporters, and I don't read what they write. That way I can keep cool. Whenever we have a meeting, I'm the coolest man in the room. That's because my head ain't cluttered. I hardly ever go to the flicks or watch television, either, except for football. I like football. I like to figure out the plays. It's like figuring out life, you know what I mean? Those guys down there on the field are thinking every minute, and they're alert to danger, and they react automatically. Before I graduated from Whitman, which is the high school over on Crestview, I was on the football team. That's the only decent thing I ever got out of that school, being on the team. I wasn't the quarterback or nothing, I was just in the line. I'm a big guy, you know, and I was even huskier then, when I was a kid. That always stuck with me, my experience on the football team. Watching the games on television relaxes me and helps me make decisions. Reading only gets me confused. A person has got to keep a clear head all the time.

Anyway, it was Mace who brung the newspaper to me on Wednesday and read about the guy the fuzz had picked up, and how he was maybe linked some way to the bearded guy Chingo and the raiders had shot. The newspaper story told who the dead guy was, some cat named Andrew Kingsley, who had just come in from California a little while ago. He should have stood where he was. It didn't say what he'd been doing in that spic pad, and it also didn't say who the spies were. That figured. If I knew anything about the Death's Heads (man, that name really kills me!), it was that they weren't about to run to the fuzz and identify none of their people. Around here, the fuzz are trouble, no matter which end of the stick you're holding. You call them in because somebody busted your legs with a baseball bat, and next thing you know, you're the one being sent to jail for bleeding on the sidewalk. The Heads knew better than to tell the cops it was their president who got shot and dumped in the ditch. The cops would have to find that out for themselves, and according to the story Mace read me from the newspaper, they weren't doing such a hot job of it. And the Scarlets wouldn't tell the cops nothing neither. If they did anything at all, it would be they'd try to settle the score. Which is why we were being very careful those first few days after the hit.

We got a very tight security system around here, anyway. We don't let nobody near us. We got sentries posted on all the rooftops and on all the street corners. There ain't nobody who can come anywhere close to the clubhouse without us knowing it way in advance. Even before Mace knocked on the door and brought me the newspaper, I knew he was on the way. I don't trust nobody, not even Mace. All the members got orders that whoever's approaching the clubhouse, even if it's another member, the president's got to know about it. Four minutes before Mace knocked on the door, a runner came and told me he was on the way up. That's the way I like it.

The clubhouse is on the third floor of this abandoned building on 57th. We got it painted in these nice Day-Glo colors in a sort of abstract design, you know? The Bullet, aside from being an experienced combat trooper, is also quite an artist. He designed the pictures on the walls, and he painted them with the help of some of the younger kids in the clique. We don't have no obscene pictures on our walls, like some of the other cliques have. No pictures of naked women, nothing like that. I don't go for that kind of stuff, and I made it clear to the members that I won't tolerate nothing like that around the clubhouse. Sex is a private thing you do in private with the person you love. I don't go for dirty actions, and I don't go for dirty talk, either. One of our rules is no profanity. You hear me say a dirty word in all the time I've been talking to you? You bet you didn't. I pride myself on that. Oh, sure, I know it's easier to express yourself in language that's not correct. But I've never been a person who took the easy road. I don't go looking to do things the hard way, but I guess it's my nature to make sure things come out right, you know? And that goes for language, too. And that's why I never swear, I never even say 'hell' or 'damn,' I'm just saying them now as an example. And I don't allow none of the people around me to use profanity neither. Sure, I could be permissive about it, let the guys say whatever they want to, let them bring in the chicks and ball them right in the clubhouse, let them smoke pot, all of that. But I don't believe in it. It's not right, none of them things are right.

I know there's been commissions formed and they gave reports on hash, and they say it don't hurt to smoke it, and it ain't habit-forming, and all that. I don't care what the commissions say. As long as I'm president, I'll listen to my own heart and my own head on what's right and what's wrong. And you can't tell me that these movies they're showing, and these magazines that are on the stands, and these dirty books these guys are writing are right. 'Cause they ain't. They're wrong. The way cursing is wrong. When I was on Whitman's football team, anytime the coach heard anybody say a dirty word, it was eight laps around the field. You ever run eight laps around a football field? You learn not to curse pretty quick.

Mace said the cops - was it you guys? - had picked up a hood named David Harris, who opened fire on them the minute they knocked on the door. He was described as an unemployed laborer with a police record for assault and burglary. What he admitted, after the cops questioned him, was that he had held up a liquor store in Calm's Point the night before, and when they knocked on the door and said it was the police, he figured they were coming to bust him for the armed robbery. Which led them to questioning him about his relationship with this Andrew Kingsley cat, who Chingo and the boys had knocked off together with the Head spic and his girl. Harris said he hardly knew Kingsley from a hole in the wall. He had met him in a bar a week or so ago, and they had got to talking about life on the Coast, where Harris had spent some time - probably in jail - and then Kingsley had asked him up to meet his sister, and that was that. Harris said he didn't get along too hot with Kingsley's sister, who he described as a 'very up-tight lady.' He also said it came as news to him that Kingsley had been found dead in a ditch on the North Side, since Harris (like me) don't read newspapers. It looked good. The cops still didn't know who any of the other people in the ditch were, and they weren't about to find out, either.

But then Midge opened her mouth.

The telephone on Carella's desk rang at two-fifteen on Wednesday afternoon, January 9, the day after they had busted David Harris and charged him with Armed Robbery. The story of his arrest had run in both morning newspapers, and had made headlines in the afternoon tabloid. The pictures of the six unknown victims were still running in all three papers, and Carella was still hoping, but not expecting, that someone would come forward to identify them. Identification of Andrew Kingsley, rather than simplifying matters, had complicated them for Carella and Kling—who until then had suspected the ditch murders were related to organized crime. (You have to start someplace, and organized crime is as good a place as any to leap off from when you find six bodies piled up in an open trench.) Their assumption hadn't been altogether unreasonable; the police all over the city had recently been plagued by an outbreak of shootings, the result of a struggle between old-line white racketeers and upstart blacks and Puerto Ricans.

The cause of this struggle was quite simple. The white hoods had held absolute control over the lucrative narcotics trade for a very long time now, and whereas they did not mind selling dope to blacks and Puerto Ricans, they did not appreciate blacks and Puerto Ricans muscling into their brisk little industry and trying to corner some of the profits for themselves. There is one sure way to discourage free enterprise, and that is to put a bullet in your competitor's nostril. Unidentified bodies kept turning up in deserted alleys or outdoor parking lots or in the trunks of abandoned Plymouths of unknown vintage. And since the underworld (white or black) stringently observed the code of omerta, roughly translated from the Italian as 'Mum's the word, sweetheart,' there was rarely anyone brave or stupid enough to step forward and identify an unknown corpse. The possibility had therefore existed that the six bodies in the ditch were related to the racial narcotics war. But that didn't explain the presence of the bearded white man, Andrew Kingsley, who had no record at all, and who—according to his sister—had been engaged in only noble pursuits on the West Coast. As it turned out, the cops had been thinking correctly in terms of gang warfare, but they were thinking a little big. The call from the girl named Midge caused them to lower their sights a bit.

'Steve, this is Dave Murchison on the desk downstairs.'

'Yeah, Dave?' Carella said.

'I got a girl on the line, says she wants to talk to whoever's handling the ditch murders. I guess that's you.'

'Put her on,' Carella said, and moved a pad into place near the telephone.

'Hello?' a girl's voice said. She was either whispering or she had a bad cold, Carella couldn't tell which.

'This is Detective Carella,' he said. 'Can I help you, miss?'

'Detective who?' she whispered.

'Carella. Who's speaking, please?'

'Midge.'

'What's your last name, Midge?"

'Never mind,' the girl said. 'I have to make this fast. I'm alone right now, but they'll be back. If they catch me calling you…'

'Who are you talking about, Midge?'

'The ones who killed those people in the ditch. I didn't know there was a baby involved. The minute Johnny told me there was a baby involved…'

'Johnny who?'

'Never mind. He told me about it even before I seen the pictures in the paper. I told him I was gonna call up and say who done it. He said they would break my arms and legs.'

'Who, Midge?'

'The black man in the ditch was Lewis Atkins, he was president of a club called the Scarlet Avengers. The girl was his wife… Are you listening?'

'I'm listening, Midge,' Carella said.

'It was their baby got killed. That wasn't right. I told Johnny it wasn't right, and he said he'd take it up with the council.'

'What's Johnny's last name?'

'I don't want him to get in trouble,' the girl said. 'He got in trouble once before when he stood up for me. I don't want that to happen again.'

'Who were the other people in the ditch? Can you tell me that?'

'The Spanish guy was president of the Death's Heads. His real name is Eduardo Portoles, but he signs himself Edward the First. The girl, I'm not sure. I think her name was Constantina, but I'm not sure.'

'Who killed them, Midge?'

There was no answer.

'Midge, where are you calling from?'

There was still no answer. Carella realized all at once that the line was dead. He had not heard the click of a receiver being replaced on its cradle. Someone had either cut the wire or yanked the phone from the wall.

We had trouble with Johnny and his chick before, so this was nothing new. Only this time it was a little more serious.

The first trouble with them was when Midge got pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. I know abortions are legal in this state, but to me that's murder. Midge belonged to our women's auxiliary, and that made her a member of the clique, and that meant she abided by the rules, and the rules say no killing except in self-defense. I want to make that clear. All the stuff that happened with the Scarlets and the Heads, and all the stuff that happened later, was in self-defense. It was done for the general good of the members. To protect the clique. What we done to Midge was also done to protect the clique. We went easy on her because she's a girl.

The first static was about the abortion, back in April of last year, long before I was re-elected. I got nothing to say about what goes on personally between the members and their chicks, so long as there's no public display in the clubhouse. Okay, Johnny should've been more careful, but he wasn't. So Midge got pregnant and she come to me and said she was thinking of going down the clinic and having an abortion. I got to explain this girl Midge. First of all, she's got a big mouth. Not only big, but loud. And she's always on the telephone. I thought I was the world's telephone champ, but Midge has me beat solid when it comes to talking. Anyway, I don't use the phone for common gossip. I'll call somebody to congratulate them, like one of the guys in the clique who done a good job, I'll call to tell him how I appreciate it. Or, like, I used to call the radio stations. This was a couple of months ago, before one of the stations sent a reporter up here to talk to guys on all the clubs, and he talked to every one of the clubs but us. So naturally they bad-mouthed us, when they didn't know a thing about how we operate or what we're trying to do. I don't call the radio stations no more, but I used to call disc jockeys, you know, and tell them I was president of a club up in Riverhead, and we were listening to his show right that minute and thought he was doing a great job, and would he play this or that song for us? It was friendly, you know? Now I got nothing to do with those radio guys, not since they started saying bad things about us. And, I'll tell you, they better watch out what they say in the future. I mean, if this thing gets in the papers - you think it'll get in the papers? - they better watch what they say. We got plenty of members. Plenty.

But Midge used to get on that phone just for gossip. Like something would happen, we'd do something, and right away she was on the hot line spreading it to the other girls in the clique. She was a big mouth, plain and simple. And she was always hugging everybody, throwing her arms around them the minute they came through the door, and calling everybody 'Sweetheart,' or 'Honey,' or 'Darling.' It was disgusting. I never liked that chick. I put up with her only because I thought Johnny was a valuable man. We should have been stricter with her, and maybe we should've taken care of him at the same time. Saved ourselves a lot of headaches later on. But nobody's perfect. I try to handle things as they come up, and they don't always come up according to the game plan. That's the time to weave and dodge and figure things out on your feet. That's the time it pays to be the coolest man around, no panic.

I told her, last April, no abortion. She wanted to know what she was supposed to do. She was only fifteen years old, she didn't want no kid, and Johnny's mother wouldn't let them get married. I told her put the kid up for adoption. I also told her she better go buy some pills or a diaphragm or a coil or whatever (which wasn't talking dirty, I was talking to her like a doctor or a priest) and avoid that kind of accident in the future. She had the baby in November, and the adoption people took it away without her ever seeing it. She didn't even know whether it was a boy or a girl. Big mouth, of course, went all over the neighborhood saying I had stolen her baby from her. I almost rapped her in the mouth when word got back to me. Johnny told me to forgive her because she was a very excitable type and them taking the baby away from her like that was very emotionally upsetting. I told Johnny it was her who wanted to kill the baby in the first place, so what was she yelling about now? Johnny said he would talk to her and calm her down. But, man, when you got a big mouth like Midge, there's nothing you can do with her except take care of her.

Which is what we done when we found her on the telephone.

It was Johnny, you know, who raised all the fuss in the council when he found out Chingo had accidentally killed the baby. It later turned out that Johnny was only saying what Midge told him to say. Like, you know, there was a whole psychological thing going on there, and it traced right back to her having put up her own baby for adoption. Don't ask me about it because I don't understand none of this psychological stuff too good. There was one time when I got in trouble, I was forced to go see a shrink because I was on probation, you know? Man, I didn't learn nothing from that guy. Later on, when I was first nominated for president of the clique, somebody raised the idea - like a smear tactic, right? - that I had been seeing this shrink, and maybe I wasn't qualified to be president, and all that. Like a president is supposed to make quick, cool decisions and not be unbalanced, and this guy who raised the idea (I forget his name, he moved to Chicago with his mother) said like maybe I was crazy because I had been seeing this shrink to satisfy my probation officer. I won the election anyway. And I got re-elected, too.

But what I'm saying is that Midge got all mixed up in her head about the baby Chingo had accidentally killed, and the baby the adoption agency had taken away from her in November, and she started nagging Johnny to raise it in the council - not that I know what he expected to accomplish. The baby was already dead, no? And then, when he went back to her and told her I'd put him down, told him to take a walk and cool off, well, the thing kept stewing inside her until finally she decided to call the cops. Two of the guys were up this other chick's house - Ellie, her name is. They felt like having some pizza, so Ellie and the two of them went downstairs to get it, and they left Midge alone with the telephone. She can't resist a telephone. She sees one sitting there, man, she gets the itch to pick it up and dial it, and start shooting off her big mouth. So the minute she was alone she called the cops and was reeling off the names of the people in the ditch when The Bullet come back in because he forgot his cigarettes, and he heard what she was doing, and he pulled the phone out of the wall.

We made her stand before the inner council. It was tough on Johnny, because this was his chick, and she done something real wrong, and he was one of the guys who had to decide what the punishment would be. We could've done whatever we wanted with her. Her mother is dead, you know, and her father's a wino who raped her when she was eleven, and who she was scared to even be in the same building with. Most of the time she slept in the clubhouse, even though the only heat there is from these kerosene burners we put around. It's an abandoned building, did I tell you that? I guess I told you that. So we could've done whatever we wanted, there was nobody to know, and nobody to care - except maybe Johnny. We could've had her killed. She was threatening the security.

The council voted to cut out her tongue.

Johnny asked for clemency, and I granted it. The council didn't like my veto, but if the council's wrong, I don't care how they vote. Around Christmas time they voted that the money in our treasury should be turned over to this neighborhood group that was trying to fix up one of the empty lots as a park. Paint the walls of the buildings around it, you know, and put in benches and maybe even plant some grass. There was two hundred and sixty dollars in the treasury, and I couldn't see wasting it on an empty lot when we still needed more guns and ammunition for the clique's defense. So I said no. I'm the president, and I got the power of veto. But the council overroded my veto, and voted the money again, so you know what I did? I told Big Anthony, who's the treasurer and who's in charge of the clique's bankbook, to go to the bank and take out the money, just leaving a couple of bucks in it to keep the account active. And he brung me two hundred and fifty-five dollars, and I impounded the funds. I still got the money. It's in a safe place and I won't touch a dime of it, because it belongs to the clique. But I ain't turning it over to those neighborhood do-gooders, neither, no matter what the council voted.

Why I vetoed their wanting to cut out Midge's tongue had nothing to do with Johnny's pitch for clemency. What I figured was that she already done the damage, she already talked to the cops. Which meant that they'd be coming around looking for her, trying to get the rest of the story from her. So either we had to kill her to shut her up completely, or we had to get her out of sight. In matters of security, I usually show no mercy, I mean it. And this was a matter of security, no question about it. But I guess I was feeling generous that day. I could've said 'Get rid of her,' and Chingo or The Bullet would've dumped her in the river without batting an eyelash. But instead, there's this place that Big Anthony's aunt has in the next state, just over the Hamilton Bridge, and she goes there in the summertime, she grows corn there, it's a nice little place. In the winter, though, it's closed up, but Big Anthony has a key and we sometimes go out there with the chicks and make a fire and sit around. I told Big Anthony to pick another member, anyone he wanted, and take Midge out there and keep her there for a week or so, till things cooled down. I also told him twenty lashes on her back every morning and every night, and she better not scream. If she screamed - and Midge was standing there through all this - I wanted to know about it, and then I'd forget how decent I was being and I'd tell the council to go ahead and do to her what they wanted.

She got the message. Or at least it looked that way. But even in spite of what we were forced to do later, I think I done the correct thing at the time. I could just as easy have lost my cool and told the council to go ahead, do what they wanted. But I didn't. Which is why I'm the leader, and they're the council. When you're the leader, you got to know when to use the power you got, and when not to. You got to be absolutely hard sometimes, and sometimes you got to be moderate. It's a balance you achieve, you know what I mean? When I got re-elected I made a little speech up the clubhouse. I told the members I wanted them to pray that I'd have God's help in making decisions that were right for them.

I myself pray to God every night that I'll always do the right thing. And I think my people must pray for me, too, like I asked them to. Because I did do the right thing about Midge, even though I never could stand her, and even though later on, it might have looked like the wrong decision.