Ed McBain - Hail to the Chief

Carella would not later say to Teddy, 'Hey, guess what, honey? A beautiful twenty-two-year-old blonde was flirting with me today, what do you think of that, honey?' Because, somehow, telling that to Teddy would amount to the same thing as having taken Lisa Knowles to bed.

And if he didn't need one stupid form of male ego-gratification, he sure as hell didn't need the other .

He felt okay.

Swiftly he walked to his automobile through the biting cold. It was beginning to snow.

At seven-thirty that Monday night, Detective Charlie Broughan of the 101st made an arrest on his way to work. The arrest was somewhat accidental.

Broughan had come out of the subway kiosk on Concord Avenue, five blocks from the station house, and was walking briskly through the light-falling snow, the pavement already a bit slippery underfoot. A boy and a girl were having what appeared to be a friendly argument on the sidewalk outside a record shop. The boy was wearing a white Swedish Army coat with the familiar insignia of the Death's Heads on it - the black gargoyle with its flaming red tongue. Broughan observed the coat and the insignia with an attitude of weary impatience. So far as he was concerned, there were only good guys and bad guys in the world. Broughan was a good guy, and anybody belonging to the Death's Heads (or any of the dumb gangs in this neighborhood) were bad guys. The boy and the girl were talking to each other in Spanish, their voices getting somewhat louder as Broughan approached. Broughan was not looking for trouble, nor was he expecting any. A cop on his way to work doesn't step into sidewalk arguments like Galahad on a white horse. He lets the people yell themselves out, and he continues walking to his office, where slightly more important matters are waiting - like the crazy bastard who was still cutting up prostitutes left and right all over the city, and who was still unidentified, and who only last night had changed his m.o. slightly by drowning a hooker in the bathtub of a downtown rathole called the Royal Arms.

' Entonces que hacías en el techo con ella ?' the girl asked.

' Yo le estaba enseńando las palomas de Tommy ,' the boy said.

' Tú estabas tratando de chingarla, eso es lo que tú estabas hacienda ,' the girl said, and opened her purse.

' No! Solamente le estaba enseńando las palomas ,' the boy said, and a razor blade suddenly appeared in the girl's right hand, and the blade moved with startling swiftness toward the boy's face, slicing across the bridge of his nose and his right cheek, a gushing trail of blood following the cutting edge as it slashed over the jaw line and almost severed the carotid artery, which would have proved deadly. Blood spilled onto the white Swedish Army coat. The boy, startled, reached into the coat, pulled out a very big gun that Broughan immediately identified as a Colt .45, and pointed it at the girl.

Broughan moved.

He did not say a word. There was no time to pull his own gun. In the next three seconds the cannon in the boy's hand might explode, and Broughan would be dealing with a homicide. The boy had his back to him; Broughan hit him at the base of the skull, with both hands clenched together like a mallet. The boy fell to the sidewalk, barely conscious, and Broughan pulled his gun as the girl began to run. He stuck out his foot, and tripped her, and she went sprawling to the sidewalk, bruising her hands as she tried to cushion the fall. Broughan put them both in handcuffs, told the owner of the record store to call the 101st and tell them Detective Broughan needed a patrol car and a meat wagon, and then turned to the gathering crowd and said, 'All right, go home, it's all over.'

It was not all over. The night was just beginning.

The boy's name was Pacho Miravitlles.

His face bandaged, he sat on a white table in the emergency room of Washington Hospital and refused to talk to Broughan. While Broughan fired his questions, an intern hovered about, fearful that the boy would begin bleeding again, and maybe die right there on the table, and then he'd be somehow blamed for it instead of this big cop who was badgering somebody who'd just been badly injured.

'Why were you carrying that piece?' Broughan said.

Pacho did not answer.

'You're smarter than that, Pacho. You punks never go around heeled unless there's something on. Now what's on, would you like to tell me?'

'Officer,' the intern started, and Broughan said, 'Shut up,' and turned to Pacho again. 'Who's the girl?'

'My chick,' Pacho answered, apparently figuring this was a safe area for discussion.

'What's her name?'

'Anita Zamora.'

'Why'd she cut you?'

'She thought I was fooling around with somebody.'

'Who?'

'A girl named Isabel Garrido.'

' Were you fooling around with her?'

'No. I took her up on the roof to show her my brother's pigeons.'

'In this weather?'

'That's what I wanted to show her. The way the pigeons all crowd together in the coop. To keep warm, you know.'

'Did she keep you warm while you were up there, Pacho?'

'She's only thirteen years old. I wouldn't fool around with nobody that young. I really took her up there to show her the pigeons.' He turned to the intern. 'Hey, it still feels like blood is under these bandages.'

'Officer, I really would like to…'

' I really would like to find out why this young man was carrying a .45 automatic in the pocket of his coat, Doctor. You've done your job, you stopped the blood, you've got him nicely bandaged there. Now why don't you go outside and have a cigarette, okay?'

'Cigarettes cause cancer,' the intern said automatically.

'Then go down to the cafeteria and have a cup of coffee. Or go outside there where you've got a lot of other patients to take care of, okay?'

'This boy is my patient, too.'

'I'll take care of this boy, don't you worry about that,' Broughan said. 'Would you please leave us the hell alone for five minutes?'

'I'm not responsible,' the intern said.

'Fine.'

'I'm telling you, if anything happens to him, I'm not responsible.'

'What do you think is going to happen?'

'He could fall off the table,' the intern said.

'He could also slip on the banana peels that are all over the floor.'

'What banana peels?'

'There aren't any,' Broughan said. 'Go take a walk, will you?'

'Okay, but I'm not responsible,' the intern said, and walked out.

'What do you say, Pacho?'

'I told you all I got to tell you.'

'Tell me about the piece.'

'No comment.'

'You got a license to carry that weapon?'

'You know I ain't got no license.'

'Okay, so to begin with, we got you on a gun charge. You know what else we got you on?'

'You got me on nothing.'

'You're mistaken, Pacho. We got you on a couple of things that are very interesting. You were holding a loaded weapon in your hand, and you were pointing it at your nice little girl friend who already cut you up, and who's going to be charged with First-Degree Assault. We can charge you with the same thing, at the very least, since—'

'The gun in my hand don't mean nothing.'

'Uh-uh, it means a lot , Pacho. It means you violated Section 240 of the Penal Law. You assaulted another person with a loaded firearm.'

'I never touched her. I never fired a shot.'

'You stuck the gun in her face. We can presume you intended firing it. But Assault is the least of your worries, Pacho. We might decide to charge you with Attempted Homicide instead. That's an even heavier rap.'

'I didn't try to kill nobody. I only wanted to scare her. Anyway, it was self-defense.'

'Yeah, well, let's not try the case right here and now, okay, Pacho? I'm just trying to tell you how much time you're going to absolutely spend in jail, and how much time you might spend in jail if a jury sees it the same way the D.A. sees it. On the gun charge, you'll absolutely and without question get a year for carrying a loaded firearm without a license. On the assault, you can get ten years, and on the attempted murder, you can get twenty-five. How old are you, Pacho?'