Ed McBain - Hail to the Chief

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.