Ed McBain - Hail to the Chief

So it gets to be Sunday, yesterday, and no word from Big. At first I thought he was playing it extremely cool, that he had got back to the city with Jo-Jo, and the two of them were holed up someplace and didn't want to risk even making a phone call, because like who can tell what's bugged and what isn't these days? The way I figure it, if we can put in a bug, why then, anybody in the whole United States can put one in. What's to stop them? And maybe Big was thinking the same way, and was afraid to call. I was watching the football game on television, just me and Toy. My mother was across the street, visiting her sister. My old man was out drinking, as usual. He's on welfare, and he's got tuberculosis, but that don't stop him from putting away the sauce. He can't pass a bar without marching in there and drinking himself into a stupor. He's very proud of me because he knows I'm president of an important clique. I respect him and honor him except for the drinking. I can't abide anything done to excess. He is foolish to drink so much, and to lose control of himself. Control is the important thing. To be in control all the time is my watchword. Anyway, I was glad he was out of the house because it gave me some time to relax with Toy and to watch the football. The game was a very exciting one, and it took my mind off why Big hadn't called yet. I didn't want to think that something had happened to him, that maybe he had been picked up by the Turman fuzz before he'd made it back to the city.

The telephone rang about three o'clock in the afternoon, just at a very exciting play in the game. I went out in the kitchen to answer it, hoping it would be Big. Instead, it was Mighty Man, the war counselor of the Scarlets.

Hello, he says, how's every little thing up there on Dooley Avenue?

Just fine, I tell him, to what do I owe the honor of this call?

We got two of your boys, he says.

What boys? I ask him. What are you talking about?

Well, he tells me what he's talking about. What he's talking about is that by the craziest freak accident, Big and Jo-Jo stumbled into a party of Scarlets and they took them both prisoner. Now this is the way it happened. The Scarlets will tell you all kinds of bullhenge about how Big and Jo-Jo had defected, but that ain't the truth. It was accident, pure and simple, they are both loyal men.

The minute they ditched the truck, Big and Jo-Jo figured if the truck was hot, then their clique jackets were hot, too, because of what's painted on the back - our symbol, you know? So they took off the jackets, and rolled them up, and started hitchhiking in just their sweaters. I mean, man, Saturday was a cold mother of a day, am I right? They hiked for maybe two hours before somebody picked them up, and he dropped them off just near the bridge, and they walked over and then took the subway up to Riverhead. It was when they got off the subway on Hitchcock that they ran into trouble.

The trouble had to do with cops, and it was just a crazy kind of coincidence thing, because what happened was that a pack of dogs was attacking this little kid in the street, and there must've been a thousand cops' cars there trying to get the dogs off her - Big told me later he never seen so many cops in his life. And cops were running from all over the neighborhood, too, to help out with this wild-dog situation; somebody must've called in an assist-patrolman or something, the whole area was swarming with fuzz. So Big figured the next thing was one of the cops would stop him, maybe they had a description of him, and he'd be languishing downtown in Calcutta, that nice little jail you have, and so he done what I would have done under similar circumstances. He got back on the train and rode it to the next stop.

The next stop happened to be Gateside Avenue, which is where the Scarlets have their clubhouse. Big knows where the clubhouse is, and he had no intention of going any place near it. Him and Jo-Jo was going to circle Scarlet territory and head back downtown, hoping the fuzz would be gone by the time they got there. But they were both very hungry by now, this was maybe like four o'clock in the afternoon, it was already starting to get dark. They hadn't eaten anything since breakfast that morning because the minute I called them they left the house and ditched the truck and started for the city. That must've been about, I don't know, what time did you guys find me in the ice cream parlor? Eleven-thirty, something like that? Anyway, it was now the afternoon, and they were hungry, so they stopped in this pizzeria and ordered a large pie with sausage, and they were eating it when five big black guys came in the place, and they're all wearing those red jackets with the white sleeves, they're all Scarlet Avengers,

There was no way for Big and Jo-Jo to get out of the place in time. They were eating pizza in one of the booths there, and next thing you know the booth is surrounded, and Big and Jo-Jo aren't carrying because they're afraid they might get picked up and they don't want no weapons on them if that happens, and all the niggers are armed. One of them shows Big this .45 he's got under his coat, and he tells Big to get out of the booth nice and easy and come along with him or he's going to blow his brains out all over the pizza.

Big and Jo-Jo are brave men, they will never back out of a fight. But the odds here were just too much, so they went along with the Scarlets, and that was what started the whole prisoner issue. What Mighty Man was telling me on the phone was that he had Big and Jo-Jo in his custody, at a place we would never find, and that he would not release them until we negotiated a peace that was satisfactory to his clique. He also mentioned that he was showing the Rebs a great deal of consideration by not executing Big and Jo-Jo on the spot, since they were members of a clique responsible for killing their president and his wife and kid. How do you like that reasoning? I had ordered last week's Sunday night hit because I was trying to speed up peaceful negotiations, so now Mighty Man was telling me he considered members of my clique to be criminals! You see how devious that kind of thinking is? You go along with that kind of thinking, and then anything you do to protect yourself, or your honor, or your sincere efforts to bring some peace to this neighborhood becomes like you're doing something bad instead of something good . Man, I wasn't buying Mighty Man's line for a minute, I can tell you that. I know what's right, and it ain't right to pick up two guys who are eating pizza and minding their own business, and then holding them prisoner, and using them to get terms you wouldn't otherwise get

So I told Mighty Man there would be no further negotiations till Big and Jo-Jo were released, and Mighty Man says there will be no release until we negotiate further. He also says What about killing Lewis and his wife and his kid, and I tell him I don't know anything about who killed any of those people, but I certainly will join him in finding the criminals once he releases the prisoners he is holding and we can negotiate a just peace. I also tell him that if he harms either Big or Jo-Jo, he had better watch his ass. I never curse, as I told you, but I was dealing here with a disgusting animal, and I had to talk to him in his own language. I made it even more perfectly clear to him. I told him that if anything happened to Big or Jo-Jo, he had better plan on spending the rest of his life in Fort Knox, because that would be the only place we couldn't get to him. And I told him he better have both of them back to us by midnight that night, which was Sunday, or on Monday he would begin to think that what had happened to his president was only playing jacks with little girls.

Mighty Man told me to go fuck myself.

Those were his exact words.

I'm using them now only to prove to you what kind of animals the Scarlets are, and what we were dealing with.