Hail to the Chief

Chapter Four

There were five sections to the city, and Riverhead was one of them. It was separated from Isola by the Diamondback River, which flowed from the River Harb, snaked southward and then westward, and then emptied into the River Dix on the southern side of the island. There were no rivers in Riverhead itself. There were several reservoirs, and two lakes, and a brook called Five Mile Pond. The brook was not five miles long, nor was it five miles wide, nor was it five miles from any significant landmark. The origin and evolution of the name were obscure. It was probably called Five Mile Pond for much the same reason that Riverhead, which did not have a river in it, was called Riverhead.

Once upon a time, when the world was young and the Dutch were snugly settled in the city, the land adjacent to Isola was owned by a patroon named Pieter Ryerhert. Ryerhert was a farmer who at the age of sixty-eight grew tired of rising with the chickens and going to bed with the cows. As the metropolis grew, and the need for housing beyond Isola's limited boundaries increased, Ryerhert sold or donated most of his land to the expanding city, and then moved down to Isola, where he lived the gay life of a fat, rich burgher. Ryerhert's Farms became simply Ryerhert, but this was not a particularly easy name to pronounce. By the time World War I rolled around, and despite the fact that Ryerhert was Dutch and not German, the name really began to rankle, and petitions were circulated to change it because it sounded too Teutonic, and therefore probably had Huns running around up there cutting off the hands of Belgian babies. It became Riverhead in 1919. It was still Riverhead - but not the Riverhead it had been then.

Except for the easternmost part, where Carella still lived, most of the area had begun deteriorating in the early 1940's, and had continued its downward plunge unabated over the years. It was, in fact, difficult to believe that West Riverhead was actually a part of the biggest city in the richest country in the world - but there it was, folks, just a brisk short walk over the Thomas Avenue Bridge. Half a million people lived on the other side of that bridge in a jagged landscape as barren as the moon's. Forty-two percent of those people were on the city's welfare rolls, and of those who were capable of holding jobs, only twenty-eight percent were actually employed. Six thousand abandoned buildings, heatless and without electricity, lined the garbage-strewn streets. An estimated 17,000 drug addicts found shelter in those buildings when they were not marauding the streets in competition with packs of vicious dogs. The statistics for West River-head were overwhelming; their weight alone would have seemed enough to have reduced that section of the city to rubble - 26, new cases of tuberculosis reported each year; 3,412 cases of malnutrition; 6,502 cases of venereal disease. For every hundred babies born in West Riverhead, three died while still in infancy. For those who survived, there was a life ahead of grinding poverty, helpless anger, and hopeless frustration. It was no wonder that the police there had dossiers on more than 9,000 street-gang members. It was these dossiers that caused Carella and Kling to cross the Thomas Avenue Bridge on Thursday morning, January 10.

They had spoken to a detective named Charles Broughan of Riverhead's 101st, who immediately recognized the names of the gangs Midge had given Carella on the telephone, and told them to come right on up. They were, of course, familiar with West Riverhead because as working cops their investigations almost always took them beyond the boundaries of their own precinct. But neither of the two men had been up there for several months now, and were somewhat shocked by the rapid rate of disintegration. Even the front of the decrepit brick building next door to the 101st had been spray-painted with graffiti, a seeming impossibility for a street where cops constantly came and went, day and night. Sly 46, Terror 17, Ape 11, Louis HI, Angel Marker 24, Absolute I, Shaft 18 - on and on, the pseudonyms trailed their curlicues and loops, and dotted their i's, and crossed their t's, in reds and yellows and blues and purples, overlapping, obliterating the brick and each other to create a design as complex as any Jackson Pollock painting.

Carella could not understand the motivation. Presumably, this was a new form of pop art, in which the signature of the painter became the painting itself, the medium became the message. But assuming the message was a bid for recognition in a city that imposed anonymity, then why didn't the artist sign his own name, rather than the nickname by which he was known only to his immediate friends? (One of the names sprayed in yellow paint was indeed Nick 42, a real 'Nick' name, Carella thought, and winced.) Of course, spraying the sides of buildings with virtually impossible-to-remove paint was not exactly a legal enterprise, so perhaps the sprayers were using aliases rather than pseudonyms, a subtle distinction recognized only by serious poets writing pornography on the side. Carella shrugged and followed Kling into the precinct.

Most of the older precincts in the city resembled each other the way distant cousins do. The detectives identified themselves at the familiar high wooden muster desk, with its polished brass railing bolted to the floor and its sign advising all visitors to inquire at the desk, and then followed a hand-lettered sign that read DETECTIVE DIVISION, up the iron-runged steps, past chipped and peeling walls painted apple-green back during the Spanish-American War when the nation was young and crime was on the decrease, and then down a narrow corridor in which there were frosted-glass doors lettered in black - INTERROGATION ROOM, CLERICAL, LOCKER ROOM, MEN'S ROOM, LADIES' ROOM - and came up against a slatted wooden railing that divided the corridor from the Detective Squadroom of the One-Oh-One. It was like coming home.

Charlie Broughan was a big beefy cop with a two days' growth of beard on his face. He explained that he'd been working a homicide ('I'm always working a goddamn homicide up here') and hadn't had time to sleep, much less shave. He went immediately to his files on the precinct's street gangs, dug out a stack of manila folders, dumped them on the desk, and said, 'Here's the stuff. We've got 'em filed by gang names, names of members, and also geographical locations, all cross-indexed. That stuff represents two years' work, I want you to know. Those little bastards out there think we got nothing to do but keep track of their comings and goings. You're welcome to look at them, but don't get 'em out of order, okay, because the lieutenant'll string me up in the backyard if you do. When you're finished, just give 'em to Danny Finch in the Clerical Office, and he'll see they get back where they belong. I'd stay with you, but I got to go downtown and check a hotel register where we think we got a lead on this son of a bitch who's been picking up hookers and checking into hotels with them, and then stabbing them while he's humping them - nice guy, huh? We sent out a sample signature, a phoney name he signed in the register on the job he did next-to-last, up here in a fleabag on Yates. This guy downtown near the tunnel, night clerk at a hotel there, thinks he recognizes the handwriting from a guy who checked in two nights ago. Guy's gone now, and he used a different name, of course, but maybe we can get somebody to tell us what the hell he even looks like, if the handwriting matches, which it probably won't. Only good thing about this, if it turns out he is the guy, is that this time he couldn't get no broad up there in the room with him to cut up. What a fuckin' city, I'm telling you, I'm thinking of moving to Tokyo or some other place quiet. I'll see you,' he said, and waved, and took his name off the duty roster and put on his coat and hat and went shambling off down the corridor like a giant disgruntled bear.

They sat at his desk, and began going through the manila folders.

Even when Carella and Kling were still two blocks away from the clubhouse of the Death's Heads, they began seeing the signature of the gang's president scrawled in paint on the walls of apartment buildings. 'He signs himself Edward the First,' Midge had said, and 'Edward I' was as visible in this six-block section of West Riverhead as were pictures of Mao Tse-tung in China. The area itself was a bewildering mixture of white, black, and Puerto Rican camps, each vaguely defined enclave bordering on the other and spilling over dangerously into disputed no-man's lands. Eduardo Portoles had lived (according to the 101st's dossier) two blocks from the clubhouse, at 1103 Concord Avenue, between a Puerto Rican bodega and a shop selling dream books and herbs and numerology guides, and the like. There were, of course, no names in the broken lobby mailboxes, but the 101st's records had indicated that Portoles lived on the top floor of the building, in Apartment 43.

This time Carella and Kling stood on either side of the door-jamb as Carella leaned over to knock. They had not drawn their guns, but their overcoats were open and their holsters were within easy reach. They need not have worried. The person who opened the door was a little girl who stared up at them out of wide brown eyes.

'Hello,' Carella said.

The little girl did not answer. She was perhaps five years old, certainly no older than six. She was wearing a cotton petticoat, and she was barefoot, and she sucked at her thumb and said nothing, the brown eyes peering up at them unflinchingly.

'What's your name?' Carella asked.

The girl did not answer.

'You thinks she understands?' Kling said.

'I doubt it. Hablas tú espanol?' Carella said.

The girl nodded.

'Está alguien contigo aqui?'

The girl shook her head.

'Estás sola?'

'Si,' she said, and nodded. 'Si, estoy sola.'

'Quién vive aqui contigo?'

'Eduardo y Constantina.'

'What'd she say?' Kling asked.

'She said she lives here with Eduardo and Constantina. But she's alone now, there's no one with her. I wonder if she knows they're dead.'

'Let's check inside,' Kling said.

'Perdóname,' Carella said to the little girl, 'nosotros queremos entrar.'

The girl stepped aside. As they went into the apartment Carella said, 'Cómo te llamas?' and the girl answered, 'Maria Lucia.'

There were pots and pans piled in the sink, and dirty dishes on the kitchen table. In the living room, the television set was on, but the volume control was apparently broken, and animated cartoon figures pranced across the screen in a chase without words or music. On the bedroom floor, strewn about in confusion and haste, the detectives found clothing belonging to a man and a woman. A large quantity of blood had soaked into the raw, uncovered wood of the floorboards, and the white sheets on the bed were stained a dull brownish red. On one of the walls they found a bloody palm print.

Maria Lucia stood in the doorway to the bedroom, and watched them.

Alex Delgado, the one Puerto Rican detective on the squad, was home sick with the flu, so they called Patrolman Gomez upstairs from where he was watching television in the swing room on the ground floor, and asked him to interrogate the little girl. Gomez wanted to know what he should ask her. Just find out what happened, they told him. This is what happened:

GOMEZ What were you doing alone in the house, querida-nińa?

MARIA I was waiting.

GOMEZ For whom were you waiting?

MARIA For Eduardo and Constantina. They went away.

GOMEZ When did they go away?

MARIA I don't know,

GOMEZ Today?

MARIA No.

GOMEZ Then when? Last night? Yesterday?

MARIA Many nights ago.

GOMEZ How many nights ago?

MARIA I don't know.

GOMEZ She probably doesn't know how to count yet. Do you know how to count, Maria?

MARIA Maria Lucia.

GOMEZ Maria Lucia, sí, sí. Do you know to count? MARIA Yes. One, four, eight, two, seven.

GOMEZ She doesn't know how to count.

KLING Ask her was it Sunday night?

GOMEZ Was it Sunday night?

MARIA Yes, Sunday.

GOMEZ Very good, Maria.

MARIA Maria Lucia.

GOMEZ Maria Lucia, yes.

CARELLA Ask her if anybody else lives there.

GOMEZ Nińa, who lives there in the house with you?

MARIA Eduardo and Constantina.

GOMEZ And who else?

MARIA No one.

GOMEZ Just those? Your mother and father?

MARIA My mother and father are with the angels.

GOMEZ Then who are Eduardo and Constantina? In what manner are you related?

MARIA Eduardo is my brother. And Constantina is my sister.

OOMEZ And they left on Sunday night?

MARIA Yes.

GOMEZ They left you all alone?

MARIA Yes.

GOMEZ Why did they do that, chiquilla?

MARIA The men.

GOMEZ What do you mean? What men?

MARIA The men who came.

GOMEZ There were men there Sunday night?

MARIA Yes.

GOMEZ What men?

MARIA I do not know.

GOMEZ How many in number?

MARIA I do not know.

GOMEZ Can you tell me their names? Did they call one to the other by name?

MARIA No.

GOMEZ What did they look like then?

MARIA I do not know.

GOMEZ You do not remember what they looked like?

MARIA I did not see them.

GOMEZ But they were there, is this not true?

MARIA Yes. They came to take Eduardo and Constantina.

GOMEZ But then, where were you? If you did not see them?

MARIA In the toilet.

GOMEZ They did not know you were in the toilet?

MARIA No. I was frightened. I kept very still.

GOMEZ Frightened of what, querida-nińa?

MARIA The noise.

GOMEZ What noise did you hear?

MARIA Constantina was crying.

GOMEZ And what other noise?

MARIA Like in Loíza Aldea. The Fiesta de Santiago Apóstol.

CARELLA What's that? What'd she just say?

GOMEZ That's a festival they hold once a year, in July. They shoot off rockets to start the procession. Maria Lucia? Do you mean the rockets? Was the noise like that of the rockets?

MARIA Yes. Very like the rockets in Loíza Aldea.

KLING Christ! She heard those bastards gunning down her own brother and sister!

CARELLA Jesus!

KLING Ask her what Kingsley was doing there,

GOMEZ Kingsley?

CARELLA The man with the beard. Ask her what he was doing there.

GOMEZ Why was the bearded one in your house?

MARIA To talk. With Eduardo and Constantina.

GOMEZ Of what did they talk?

MARIA Of many things. I know not of what. I did not understand. They talked softly. There was no noise when the bearded one was there. The noise came later. I went into the toilet, and then came the noise.

KLING This is Thursday. Do you think she's been alone in that apartment since Sunday?

GOMEZ Have you left the house since that night?

MARIA No.

GOMEZ Did you call for help?

MARIA No.

GOMEZ Did you try to open the door?

MARIA No.

GOMEZ But why not, chiquilla?

MARIA I knew Eduardo and Constantina would come back.

They went back to the building that afternoon and questioned each of the tenants on each of the floors. None of them had heard or seen a thing. The child Maria Lucia had described a noise 'very like the rockets in Loíza Aldea,' but no one in the building had heard anything. And this on a Sunday night, when it might have been expected that most people retired early after the weekend in preparation for Monday's work ahead.

The clubhouse of the Death's Heads was located in an abandoned building on the corner of Concord and 48th. Carella and Kling saw a runner entering the building minutes before they reached it. They knew their presence was being announced, but they weren't expecting trouble; the neighborhood street gangs, except for certain of them listed by Broughan as 'sworn cop killers,' rarely looked for hassles with the Law, and indeed made a great show of being honest, cooperative citizens. But Carella and Kling were stopped at the entrance to the building, anyway. The youth who stood in their path was wearing a Zapata mustache and a Swedish Army coat that had once been white but which was now so discolored by layers of dirt and grime that it looked as mottled as a poncho camouflaged for jungle warfare. He stood at the top of the stoop with his hands in his pockets, and looked down at the cops and said nothing, as though waiting for them to make the move that would declare them intruders on his turf. Carella lifted his foot onto the first step, and the boy at the top of the steps said, 'That's it, man.'

'Yeah? What's it, man?' Carella said.

'That's as far as you go.'

'I'm a police officer,' Carella said, and wearily flashed the tin.

'You got a warrant to enter these premises?' the boy asked.

'What's your name?' Kling said.

'My name is Pacho. You got a warrant to enter these premises?'

'We're looking for anyone who might have known Eduardo Portoles,' Carella said. 'Or his sister Constantina.'

'You got a warrant to enter these premises?' Pacho said again.

'Looks like we got a broken record here, Steve,' Kling said.

'You got a lease to live in these premises?' Carella said.

'What?' Pacho said.

'I said do you pay rent here?'

'No, we don't pay rent here. That still don't give you the right to…'

'Pacho, don't get me sore, okay?' Carella said. 'It's a cold day, and I don't like being up here in Riverhead, and I don't need trouble from some punk who thinks he's Horatio at the bridge. Now just get the hell out of the way, and let us in there, before we start finding all kinds of things to charge you with. Okay, Pacho?'

'You understand, Pacho?' Kling said.

'Who at the bridge?' Pacho said.

The two detectives were already halfway up the steps. Both of them had opened the third buttons of their overcoats, providing easy access for right-handed draws just in case Pacho was carrying anything but his hands in the big pockets of that dirty Swedish Army coat, and just in case he was dumb enough to try pulling it. Pacho turned his back, his hands still in his pockets.

'I'll take you up,' he said. 'Otherwise you might get hurt.'

He had rescued his pride, first by turning his back to show the huge gargoyle painted on the white coat in luminous black, red tongue lashing out like flame, the legend THE DEATH'S HEADS circling over it; had rescued it further by letting the detectives know that he was a powerful man without whose presence their safety could not be guaranteed. As far as Carella and Kling were concerned, it was all bullshit. Even the gargoyle on the back of the coat - and one of the garments found in Portoles' apartment had been an identical Swedish Army coat, with the identical gargoyle painted on its back - even that, though a pleasant departure from the expected skull-and-crossbones cliché, was total theatrical bullshit. With grimaces provoked partially by the paramilitary ritual Pacho was forcing them to observe (they themselves belonged to a paramilitary organization, but this fact did not occur to them at the moment), and partially by the stench of garbage and human excrement on the steps, they followed Pacho up to the second floor. Another young man in a Swedish Army coat stood at the top of the steps.

'Say it,' he said to Pacho, asking for the password even though he undoubtedly recognized Pacho as one of the gang.

'The nutter is our dame,' Pacho said, or at least something that sounded like that. It made no sense whatever to Carella.

'Who're these two?' the second Death's Head asked.

'Detectives Carella and Kling of the 87th Squad,' Carella said. 'Who are you?'

'True Blue.'

'Nice to meet you,' Carella said. 'Where's True Green?'

'I didn't get the name from no damn cigarette,' True Blue said.

'Where did you get it?' Kling asked, looking somewhat less than fascinated.

'Eduardo gave it to me. Because I was loyal.'

'Eduardo in charge around here?' Kling asked.

'Yeah, but he ain't here right now,' Pacho said.

'Are you expecting him back?'

The two boys exchanged a glance as transparent as a diamond. 'Sure,' Pacho said, 'but we don't know when.'

'We'll wait,' Carella said.

'Anybody else we can talk to meanwhile?' Kling asked,

'Henry is here, he's the secretary.'

'Well, let's talk to Henry then, okay?'

'Where is Henry?'

'In there,' True Blue said, and gestured with his head toward a doorless jamb down the corridor.

'Would you like to announce us, or shall we go right in?' Kling said.

'I better tell him you're here,' Pacho said. 'Otherwise you might get hurt.'

Carella yawned. Pacho went up the corridor and disappeared into the room. True Blue kept looking at them.

'Any heat in this building?' Carella asked.

'No.'

'Any water?'

'No. We don't need no heat or water. We're Death's Heads.'

'Mmm,' Carella said.

'We improvise.'

'I'll bet you do,' Carella said. 'What's going on in there? Big conference about the fuzz from downtown?'

'I didn't think I recognized you from this precinct,' True Blue said.

'You know all the detectives in this precinct?'

'Most of them. They know me, too.'

'Mmm,' Carella said, and Pacho came out into the hallway,

'Okay,' Pacho said, 'he'll see you.'

'Nice of him,' Kling said to Carella.

'Very nice,' Carella answered.

The room they entered had been decorated with photographs of nude women clipped from various girlie magazines, and then varnished over to protect them. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with these glossy cutouts, and various and several parts of the ladies' anatomies had been territorially claimed by different members of the gang, their names scrawled across breasts, buttocks, thighs, groins, and grinning mouths. In the midst of this pulchritudinous photographic display, sitting like a wizened priest on a fat red-velvet cushion, was a bespectacled young man wearing a Fu Manchu mustache and toying with a twelve-inch-long bread knife. Carella assumed the boy was Henry, and he further assumed that Henry was a fearless type; possession of such a utensil in circumstances such as these could presumably have led to a bust. Henry had known the cops were outside and coming in to pay a little visit; he could easily have tucked the blade under the fat pillow that cradled him.

'You're cops, huh?' he asked. He was delicately pressing one forefinger against the curved top of the knife's handle, the blade against the naked floorboards, trying to balance it on its tip. The knife refused to stay balanced. Each time it toppled over, he picked it up and tried again. He did not look up at the detectives as they came into the room.

'We're cops,' Carella said.

'What do you want? We ain't done nothing.'

'We want to know about Eduardo Portoles.'

'He's the president'

'Where is he?'

'Out.'

'Out where?'

'Big city, man,' Henry said, and picked up the knife, and tried to balance it again, and again it fell over on its side. He had still not looked up at the detectives.

'How about Constantina Portoles?'

'Yeah, his sister.'

'Know where she is?'

'Nope,' Henry said, and the knife fell over again. He picked it up.

'She a member of the gang?'

'Yep.'

'But you don't know where she is, either, right?'

'Right man,' Henry said, and tried his balancing act again. This time he came almost close. But the knife toppled over again. 'Shit,' he said, and still did not look up at the detectives.

'And the other sister?'

'What other one is that?' Henry asked,

'Maria Lucia. The little sister.'

'What about her?'

'Got any idea where she is?'

'Nope,' Henry said.

'We know where she is,' Kling said.

'Yeah, where is she?'

'Right now she's at Washington Hospital, being treated for near-starvation.'

'What?' Henry said, and looked up for the first time.

There was no disguising the genuine surprise in his eyes. If Carella was reading Henry's face correctly, then Henry did not know the little girl had escaped the Sunday-night massacre. That had to be it. No matter what Henry had read in the newspapers, he had automatically assumed that the killers had wiped out the entire Portoles family, including little Maria Lucia.

'That's right,' Carella said, 'she's in the hospital. And before that, she was up in the squadroom telling us all about what happened last Sunday night, when Eduardo and Constantina Portoles got killed.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Henry said. He was wearing thick glasses, and his eyes looked inordinately large behind them. Now that he was looking directly up at the detectives, he refused to take his eyes from them, as though this were as great a challenge as trying to balance the knife on its tip.

'What's the cover-up for?' Kling asked. 'We're trying to find who killed them.'

Henry did not answer.

'You know they're dead, for Christ's sake, you had to have seen those pictures in the paper.'

'I didn't see nothing,' Henry said.

'What're you going to do, Henry? Go after them yourself?'

'I ain't going to do nothing,' Henry said.

'Are you the leader of this gang now?'

'I'm the secretary. I thought Pacho told you that.'

'Pacho's full of shit, and so are you. You're the president now, or the acting president, or whatever the hell they choose to call you till they can elect a new one. Eduardo's dead, and if you don't know who did it, you've got some pretty strong suspicions. You're going to try to handle this yourself, aren't you?'

'I don't know anything,' Henry said. 'I got no suspicions about nothing.'

'Murder's murder, Henry. Whether somebody else does it, or you do it, it's still murder.'

'So?'

'He's saying keep your nose clean,' Kling said. 'Leave this to us. We're working on it, and we'll take care of it.'

'Sure you will,' Henry said.

'Be smart, Henry,' Carella said. 'Instead of causing a lot of trouble for yourself, why don't you help us?'

'I got no help to give you,' Henry said.

'Okay, fine,' Carella said. 'We're heading over to Gateside Avenue, to talk to the Scarlet Avengers. Maybe they'll feel differently about it. Maybe they're not as dumb as you are.' He turned his back on Henry and started for the door.

'They're even dumber,' Henry said behind him.

We got the bug from one of these mail-order catalogs. You can get all kinds of surveillance equipment just by sending away for it. We paid for the bug with funds from the clique's treasury. We put the bug in the Gateside clubhouse long before I ordered the double-hit, and we put it in because it was essential to know what the other side was doing. We tried to get a bug in the Heads' clubhouse, too, but their security was tighter. It was a good thing we had that bug on Gateside, though, because that was how we kept track of the Scarlets' movements. Also, we heard the whole conversation you guys had with their war counselor.

We sent three guys to put in the bug, all of them minors. The reason for that is we figured if they got caught, if the Scarlets decided to blow the whistle and bring charges or whatever, then you guys would be dealing with three little kids, you dig? Like the courts go easy on little kids. And we figured if just these little kids were involved, it would be considered nothing more than a caper, and also you wouldn't be able to hang nothing on the rest of us. Because we're of age, you see. We would have to pay if we got caught doing something like that. It's illegal, ain't it? Putting in a wire? Ain't that illegal? Anyway, that's what we figured, and that's why we sent Little Anthony and two other juniors. It wasn't easy, putting in that bug on Gateside, I can tell you. They took a tremendous risk. They did it because they knew our clique was trying to make peace, and that it was essential to get all the information we needed. Here's how we brought it off.

We stoned the building.

That was our diversion, to get the Scarlets out so we could get in. We already had the wire strung up over the roof. All we had to do was get in the clubhouse some way, and plant the bug. We done this just before Christmas. Man, we busted every window on the face of that building! Them Scarlets came running out of there, man, you'd think the place was on fire! They chased us up the blocks while meanwhile Little Anthony and the other two juniors rigged the wire. You know that big piece of cardboard they got nailed to the wall? With their club rules on it? They stuck the bug right behind their rules. I got such a laugh when they told me where they put it! That was adding insult to injury, am I right?

The bug was very valuable to us. It was through the bug that we found out the president of the Scarlets was staying home with his wife on the night we planned the hit. We didn't know they had a baby. Them Scarlets like to keep themselves secret and private, as if they got a lot to hide. The baby was just an accident. If we'd picked up anything about a baby on the bug, we probably would've tried to hit Atkins in the street. The hit wasn't designed to get no innocent bystanders. But you make a protective hit like that, you can't expect absolute accuracy all the time. Besides, like I told you, Chingo thinks maybe a wild shot from Atkins' own piece was what killed the kid. You should hear some of the stuff we picked up on that bug. I always knew those niggers were bums, but some of the things they done in their clubhouse were unbelievable. Dirty, you know what I mean? Just plain dirty.

The day you went to Gateside, I was listening personally. I heard the whole conversation you had with the Scarlets' war counselor, this guy who calls himself Mighty Man. He never wanted peace from the beginning. He kept saying he wanted peace, sure. But it was his kind of peace. And what kind of peace would that have been? Our clique wanted the kind of peace that would last forever. That's what we were trying to achieve. Right from the beginning. We didn't create what's in this neighborhood, you know. We inherited it. And it stunk, and we were trying to find a decent, honorable way out of it. If the Scarlets and the Heads had been trying to find the same kind of peace, we wouldn't be having all the trouble we've got now. I got nothing to be ashamed of. What I done was right. It was the other cliques who couldn't understand and who wouldn't cooperate. It's honor that was at stake. The clique's honor and my own honor as the president. But just try to explain that to some of these dopes.

Anyway, the day you went up there, I was listening. And it went just the way I figured it would. The Scarlets wouldn't have nothing to do with you, they wouldn't give you the right time of day. They knew who was responsible for what happened to their president, and they were going to take care of it by themselves, without no help from the fuzz. And I heard you when you told them you'd got the same reaction from this four-eyed kid Henry who's running the Heads, and I heard you when you said they were all being stupid and just asking for trouble. I don't like the Scarlets, and I don't trust none of them as far as I can throw them. But I got to admit they done the right thing that day when they told you to keep out of it, it was none of your business.

I didn't know at the time exactly how they planned to handle it, but I figured it would be some kind of retaliation strike. I wasn't worried. I knew we could take whatever the Scarlets and the Heads together had to dish out. We're a strong clique, man. We got the biggest arsenal in all Riverhead, second to none. There's a clique in Calm's Point just about as strong as us, but that's it in the whole city. We got the power, and we also got the restraint to know when to use it and when not. That's a big responsibility. When you left Gateside that day, I figured we wouldn't have no trouble from you, we wouldn't be linked in no way by anything either the Heads or the Scarlets had told you. We were clean and away, and we were capable of standing up to anything either of the two cliques could throw at us.

But that was before Midge made her second dumb move, and changed the picture entirely.