Ed McBain - Hail to the Chief

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.