See Them Die

10

Everyone seemed ready for whatever might lie ahead.

The police in the streets and on the rooftops and in the back yard were ready. The people watching the show were ready. Zip and Sixto had obtained a large packing crate from the lot on the corner and had set it up just beyond the barricade; they were ready. And even Lieutenant Byrnes seemed ready now. He apparently had learned that his forces were deployed exactly the way he wanted them. He held a large, battery-powered megaphone, and he stepped out from behind the squad car, put the cumbersome apparatus to his mouth, blew into it several times to test the volume, and then said, "Miranda? Pepe Miranda? Can you hear me?"

His voice echoed on the silent street. The people waited for Miranda's reply, but none came.

"Can you hear me?" Byrnes said again, his voice booming out of the speaker. Again, there was silence. In the silence, the crowd seemed to catch its breath together, so that something like a sigh escaped their collective lips. "All right, I know you can hear me, so listen to what I'm saying. We've got this street and the next street blocked. There are policemen with guns in every window and on every rooftop facing that apartment, front and rear. You're trapped, Miranda. You hear that?"

Zip and Sixto clambered up onto the crate and peered over the heads of the crowd. "This is our box, you dig me?" Zip said. "Only for the Latin Purples. I don't want nobody else climbing on it."

"How about it, Miranda?" Byrnes said. "You coming out, or do we have to come in after you?"

"Why don't he answer?" Zip said impatiently. He turned to the first-floor windows, cupped his hands to his mouth, and shouted, "Answer him, Pepe!"

"If there's shooting around here," Byrnes said into the megaphone, "some of these people in the street might get hurt. Now how about it, are you coming out?"

There was another long silence. Byrnes waited.

"Okay," he started, "if you…" and the voice came suddenly from one of the first-floor windows. There was.no body attached to the voice, no one visible in any of the windows. The voice seemed to materialize from nowhere, a shouted voice which rang into the street, cutting off the lieutenant's words.

"Who did I shoot?"

"It's Pepe!" Zip shouted, and the cry spread through the crowd like lava rushing down a mountainside, "It's Pepe, Pepe, it's Pepe, it's Pepe, Pepe, Pepe."

"You shot one of our patrolmen," Byrnes said.

"Did I kill him?" Miranda shouted from the apartment, still invisible, his voice floating down into the street.

'Wo."

"You're lying to me. I killed him."

"You hit him in the shoulder. Are you coming out?"

"Did I kill him? Is he dead?"

"Let them come after you, Pepe!" Zip shouted.

"Miranda, we don't want to play games here. If you 're coming out…"

A new sound erupted, drowning out the words that came from the megaphone, filling the air with its familiar wail.

"What's that?" Miranda shouted.

"It's an ambulance. What do you say, Miranda?"

"He shouldn't have tried nothing with me," Miranda said. "He could have got killed. I could have killed him."

"Butyou didn't. So what do you say? Yes or no? You coming out?"

"No!" Miranda shouted, suddenly and viciously. "You think you got some cheap punk up here? This is Pepe Miranda!" His voice rose. "You hear me? You want me, you come in here and get me!"

"That's telling them, Pepe!" Zip yelled, and he poked Sixto in the ribs, and suddenly the street was alive with cheers of encouragement.

"Yea, Pepe!"

"Bravo, Pepe!"

"Tell 'em, tell 'em!"

"Quiet!" Byrnes roared. "Everybody quiet!" Patrolmen moved quickly into the crowd, and the people in the street fell suddenly silent. But the rooftops still rang with cheers for the trapped killer in the apartment. Byrnes waited for the sound to die out. He put the megaphone to his mouth and said, "All right, Miranda. No more talk. We're coming in."

"Then stop talking and come get me, you yellow bastards!" Miranda shouted, and suddenly the shade on one of the windows snapped up, and there he was, Pepe Miranda the killer, a short, wiry man standing in his undershirt, his lips pulled back into a snarl, a three days' growth of beard on his face, a gun in each hand. He pulled back his head, and then snapped it forward with a short jerking motion, spitting into the street. And then he began firing blindly, both guns blazing as if he were trying to prove he was the marshal of a tough Western town.

Byrnes waved at the rooftops, and an ear-splitting volley shattered Sunday like a piece of crystal. He scooted for cover behind the squad car while the guns roared down from the rooftops. In the crowd, women were screaming and men were ducking behind each other for cover. Byrnes waved his hand again. The volley stopped, Miranda was no longer at the window.

He gathered Carella, Parker and Hernandez around him. "Okay," he said, "we're moving in. This time Miranda bit off too big a piece." He paused and looked at the faces of the men around him. "Has Captain Frick arrived yet, Steve?"

"Yes. I saw him a little while ago."

"Let's find him. I want this to be right."

Frederick Block was on his way home when he suddenly found himself in the middle of a traffic jam. Block hated traffic jams, and he especially hated them on weekends. He had gone to his office downtown to pick up a carton of eyelets which a factory in Riverhead needed instantly. He had made the delivery himself - "When you deal with Block Industries, you get service," he had told his client - and had then taken the shortest route he knew from Riverhead to the Calm's Point Bridge, and that route happened to take him through the heart of Isola and the 87th Precinct. And now he was in the middle of a traffic jam, on a Sunday, sweating inside his automobile when he should have been at the beach. Block was a fat man. Not one of those fat men who try to kid themselves by applying euphemistic terms like "stout" or "chubby" to their obesity. He was fat. F-A-T. And being fat, he sweated a great deal. And being a person who sweated - fat men, Block knew, never perspired - he did not appreciate being locked in a parked car in the middle of Isola on a day like today.

He bore the heat with tolerant malice for as long as he could. Then he got out of the car and tried to find out just what the hell was causing the tie-up. As far as he could see, there had been no accident. It always annoyed the hell out of Block when there was an accident. In the first place, careful drivers didn't get into accidents. And in the second and more important place, even if the wrecked car itself didn't block the road, traffic always slowed down to a snail's pace because every passing motorist wanted to study the extent of the damage.

Today, there had been no accident. And yet traffic was tied up on the avenue in both directions. Now why? Block wondered. With the instincts of an old bloodhound, he followed the crowd. They all seemed to be heading in the same direction, and he assumed the prime attraction was in that direction. Waddling along, mopping his brow with a big white handkerchief, cursing mildly under his breath, Block made his way up the avenue, and stopped at the luncheonette on the corner. A sailor was sitting at the counter. Block sidled up to him and said, "What's going on, mate?" He had never been in the navy, but he was a born salesman who adapted his speech to fit any and all occasions. "Why can't I get my car through here? What's going on?"

The sailor did not answer. The sailor kept dabbing at his face with a wadded handkerchief. Block didn't see the blood on the handkerchief, so he assumed the sailor was hot and wiping away sweat. He sympathized with the sailor and turned to the man behind the counter.

"Can you tell me what's going on?" he asked.

"The traffic's tied up," Luis said.

"You're telling me it's tied up?" Block said, and he began chuckling, his layers of fat jiggling. "Say, what kind of answer is that? It's tied up downtown and uptown and probably crosstown, too. What's going on? A parade?"

"There's a gunman in the apartment up there," the sailor said suddenly.

"A what?" Block wiped his brow. "A gunman, did you say?"

"Pepe Miranda," Luis put in, nodding.

"I never heard of him. What'd he do, rob a bank?" Block said, and he began chuckling, the fat jiggling all over him again. He didn't look at all like Santa Claus.

"You live in this city?" Luis asked.

"Sure, I live in this city. Not around here, though. I live in Calm's Point. What is this Miranda, a celebrity?"

"He's a killer," the sailor said quietly.

"Yeah?" Block opened his eyes wide in appreciation. "Yeah? A killer?"

"That's what he is," Jeff said.

"They going up there to get him?" Block said.

"That's what it looks like. You better go back to your car, mister. There might be shooting around here."

"No, no," Block said, very interested now. "I want to watch this. I want to see him die."

He shoved his way through the crowd, using his huge stomach like a battering ram.

"Louise," Jeff said, "what time is it?"

"I don't know. Eleven-thirty, something like that. Why?"

"I'm… I'm supposed to meet a girl here. At noon."

"Sailor, why don't you take your own advice? Get out of here before you run into more trouble. Take a walk over to the park, eh? When the girl comes, I'll tell her you're waiting there for her. What's her name?"

"China. That's a funny name, ain't it?"

"Not for a Spanish girl. Only in Spanish, it's pronounced Chee-na." Luis shrugged. "A lot of the girls today, they give it the English sound. Or maybe people do it for them, and then they decide it's easier that way." He paused. "Go. Go to the park. I'll tell her where you are."

"I thought she was a whore when I first met her, Louise. That's a damn rotten way to start off, isn't it?"

"Well, I know many men who have married prostitutes," Luis said. "They make good wives."

"Oh, she ain't!" Jeff said, almost shouting the words in his haste. "I didn't mean to give you that impression. I mean, you can see that, once you know her. She's got this… this real sweet face, you know?"

Luis smiled. "Si."

"Yeah, like a little girl, you know?" He grinned at Luis and then quickly said, "Not that she doesn't look womanly. I mean, she certainly has all the… the… things a… woman has."

"I have never seen an ironing board among Puerto Rican women," Luis said.

"Huh?"

Luis curved his hand through the air, pantomiming a woman with uncommonly pronounced curves.

"Oh, yes," Jeff said. "Sure. But she doesn't look sloppy, you understand that, don't you? I mean, she's not one of these…" He used his hands to indicate a woman whose upper portions were mountainous… Both men nodded in solemn agreement on the proper size of a bosom. "She talks nice, too," Jeff said. "I like a girl with a good voice and… and eyes that look at you. When she talks, I mean. She looks at you. That's good. It makes you feel like… like you're important."

"Si, a man must feel that he is important."

"That's what I didn't like about Fletcher, Louise. I just felt like anybody else there. It's funny but, well, meeting her I feel like -1 don't know -1 feel like me! That's pretty stupid, ain't it? I mean, like who the hell else would I feel like? And I hardly even know her. I mean, she's just another girl, isn't she?"

"Sure," Luis agreed, "she's just another girl. You can find girls anywhere."

"Well, now she's not exactly just another girl," Jeff said hastily. "She's prettier than most, you know."

"Pretty girls are easy to find, sailor. The world is full of pretty girls. And for every man in the world, there is one girl who is pretty."

"Sure, sure. But she's, well, I guess you could call her beautiful. I guess you really could, Louise." He paused. "Do you… do you think she'll come?"

"I don't know," Luis said. "Perhaps."

"I hope so. Gee, Louise, I hope so."

From Zip's vantage place on the packing crate, he saw her at once, working her way through the crowd. He waved to her instantly, and then shouted, "Elena! Hey, Elena, over here!" He poked Sixto and said, "Hey, Sixto, it's Elena."

Softly, Sixto said, "I thought China wass your girl."

"Variety, huh?" Zip said, grinning. "Hey, Elena!"

The girl waved back. She was sixteen years old, an attractive girl with dark hair and dark eyes, wearing a skirt and blouse. The girl with her, slightly shorter than she, was wearing black tapered slacks and a boy's white shirt. "Hello, Zip," Elena called, and then said to her friend, "Juana, it's Zip and the boys."

Flatly, Juana said, "He's a terrifying creep."

"He's not so bad," Elena said. "Come on."

They walked over to the crate. Zip offered his hand to Elena and pulled her up beside him. Papa studied the chivalrous gesture, and then repeated it, offering his hand to Juana who took it with the disdain of a countess accepting aid from a doorman.

"You ever see anything like this, Elena?" Zip asked excitedly. "He shot one of them."

"Who shot one of them?" Elena asked.

"Pepe Miranda!" Papa said.

"Who?"

"Pepe Miranda," Zip said. "He's got a whole arsenal in that apartment with him. The cops can't figure how to get him out. Man you shoulda seen him. He come right up to the window and spit at the bastards!"

"Who's this?" Juana asked, turning her attention to Zip.

Papa, as if repeating a lesson he had learned, a lesson he had indeed learned earlier from Cooch, said, "He the grays thin' ever happen this neighborhood."

"Yeah?" Juana said aloofly. "I never heard of him."

"So that's what this is all about," Elena said. "We were walking over on the next block and everybody was heading here like somebody hit the numbers for a million dollars."

"There ain't no numbers on Sunday," Juana said distantly. She was not a very pretty girl, but she had learned somewhere that her eyes were very attractive and had further learned how to use make-up on them. Her eyes were the focal point of her face, as green as jade and, combined with her jet-black hair, they created an instant impression of desirability which overshadowed the true facts of her plainness.

"You came through the next block?" Zip asked Elena.

"Sure. Why not?"

"No reason." He paused. "That's Royal Guardian territory."

"So what?"

"Nothing. Nothing."

"Royal Guardians or not," Elena said, "this is a free country."

"We walk where we want to," Juana added.

"That's because you're a chick. It ain't so easy when you're a guy," Zip said.

"Why not?" Juana asked.

"Because it ain't, that's all. You can't go messing in another club's territory."

"That's nuts. Haven't you got anything better to do than play war? That's kid stuff."

"There's nothing kid stuff about it," Zip said. "You just don't know."

"I know plenty," Juana said. "You haven't got anything better to do, that's all. That's why you've got these territories and these street bops and…"

"I got plenty to do," Zip said. "We always got plenty to do, ain't we, Sixto?"

"Sure, he's got plenty to do," Elena said. "He's got China to chase after."

"Hey, listen," Zip said, grinning. "How about a hug, Elena?"

"If you had things to do," Juana persisted, "you wouldn't get involved in this childish nonsense. What you are is an acting-out neurotic."

"A what?" Zip said.

"An acting-out neurotic," Juana said professorially.

"How come you're so smart, huh? Where'd you get your medical degree, huh?"

"I read an article in the newspapers," Juana said smugly.

"Dig the big reader!" Zip said, and he burst out laughing. Dismissing her, he turned to Elena, "Hey, come on, no hug for me?"

"Go hug China," Elena said coldly.

"Come on, come on," Zip said, still grinning. But his grin seemed to have no effect on Elena. Deliberately she turned to Sixto.

"Who's your cute friend?" she asked archly.

"Huh?" Zip said.

"What're you?" she asked Sixto. "The strong silent type?"

"Me?" Sixto asked, bewildered by her sudden attention.

"What's your name?" she asked, moving closer to him, smiling the way she had once seen Jane Russell smile in a movie.

"Sixto," he answered.

"The article said you're insecure," Juana said to Zip.

"Don't give me any bull you read in the newspapers," he said, turning on her angrily, miffed by Elena's behavior. "I don't believe nothing I read."

"You probably don't even know how to read," Juana said.

The thing that was happening on the packing crate was rather odd. Because despite Juana's protests that Zip was a terrifying creep, an acting-out neurotic, and insecure to boot, her conversational efforts had all been directed at him. And even though her approach took the form of an attack, it was clear that she was bidding for Zip's attention and no one else's. Elena, meanwhile, was doing exactly the same thing, even though she seemed to be addressing Sixto. A none-too-subtle tug of war was taking place on that crate. Whatever Zip's flaws, he was obviously recognized by the girls as the most desirable of the three boys. And, thanks to either his indifference or his stupidity, he hadn't the faintest idea of what was happening.

"So how come you're so quiet?" Elena said to Sixto. "Aren't you excited about your friend Pepe Miranda?"

"He's no' my frien'," Sixto said. "Pepe's no damn good!"

The girl caught the accent. She looked at Sixto for a moment and then said, "Hey, what are you? A tiger or something?"

"I no tiger."

"You sound like one. Can't you speak English?"

Papa had been thinking over Sixto's comment, and had finally fathomed the meaning of it. "What you minn, he's no good?" he asked now. "Hey, Zeep! Sixto, he say Pepe's no good."

Zip turned from Juana. "What? Did you say that?"

"I dinn say nothin'," Sixto said.

And now Elena, anxious to recapture Zip's attention, quickly leaped in. "That's what he said, Zip. That's what the Marine Tiger said, all right."

"I no tiger. I speak English good!"

"He speaks a well English," Zip said, chuckling.

"He said Pepe's no good," Elena repeated.

"Is that what you said?" Zip asked, and he shoved out at Sixto. "Is that what you said, huh?" and he shoved again. "Huh?" and again he shoved, pushing Sixto closer to the edge of the crate. "Is that what you said, Sixto?" and he pushed hard this time, sending Sixto over the edge of the crate, reeling backward into the gutter. Zip burst out laughing. Papa and Elena joined him. Juana seemed undecided for a moment, as if her natural instinct was to climb down and help Sixto to his feet. The indecision passed. She tittered nervously, and then burst into laughter with the rest of them. Zip put his arm around Elena.

"What's wrong with you, anyway?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"So how come the big freeze?"

"What's with you and China?"

"That?"

"That."

"Nothing." He shrugged.

"The word says you're after Alfie."

"Well, like he's got it coming, you know?"

"Why? Because of something with China?"

"What're you worried about China for, huh?"

"Is there going to be trouble?"

"With Alfie?"

"Yes," Elena said.

"Naw, no trouble," Zip answered. "Don't worry, huh?"

"Have you got a thing on with China?"

"Me?" Zip began laughing again. "Hey, you're jealous, ain't you? I'll be damned."

"She's old enough to be your mother," Elena said sullenly. "She must be nineteen, maybe even twenty."

"That don't make her old, only experienced. What's the matter, honey, huh?" he said sweetly. "You jealous, baby, huh?"

"No."

"You worried about poor little Alfie?"

"I don't care what you do to Alfie. Just answer me one question."

"Sure, what's that?"

"You got eyes for China or not?"

"Like, you know, doll, your interest gasses me, but don't start strong-arming me. I'll bust you right in the mouth, you know?"

Juana turned to him suddenly. "It takes a big man, don't it, to hit a girl?"

"Oh, get lost, zombie," he said to her. He wrapped his arms around Elena. "Come on, where's my hug?"

"Zip, cut it out," she said. "There's people watching."

"So let them, who cares?" He took one arm from Elena and pointed into the crowd. "Hey! Hey you! Fat boy!"

Frederick Block, who had shoved his way up to the barricade, looked up at Zip.

"You watching us, Fat Boy?"

Block turned away with a look of extreme disgust on his face. Zip burst out laughing.

"See, honey?" he said. "Nobody watching us." He pulled her closer to him. "Mmmm, you are the softest girl."

"I shouldn't let you," Elena said. "Not after this China thing."

"Somebody's got to protect little China, no?" His hands roamed her body. He touched her breast, and she pulled away from him quickly, embarrassed, but he drew her close again, and she stood unprotesting in the circle of his arms. Zip stroked her back gently.

"You going to hurt Alfie Gomez?" Juana asked.

"Drop dead," Zip told her.

"Big man," Juana said. "Everybody in this neighborhood's a big man. It's just you're insecure, that's all."

"Man, she sprouts that crap like as if she grows it in her mouth," Zip said. "I got news for you, zombie. I am a big man, now how about that? The Latin Purples ain't afraid of nothing or nobody!"

"Whoever heard of the Latin Purples outside of you and your mother?" Juana asked. "If one of those Royal Guardians came down the street right now, you'd pass out cold."

"I ain't afraid of no Royal Guardians," Zip said angrily. "I ain't afraid of nobody!" He searched in his mind for a clincher to his argument, and then blurted, "Why, one of my boys is out right now, rounding up a couple of pieces!"

"If one of them goes off accidentally, you'll run a mile."

"You better tell your pal to shut up, Elena," Zip warned.

"Juana, stop picking on…"

"A gun is a psychological symbol," Juana said. "You only want one because you're afraid."

"I ain't afraid to rap you right in the mouth," Zip said.

"Big man," Juana repeated, but she shut up.

Zip looked out over the crowd. "They're coming back," he said. "The bulls are coming back."