Ed McBain - Hail to the Chief

'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.