Ed McBain - Hail to the Chief

'Nineteen.'

'Either way, by the time you get out of prison, you won't be a teen-ager any more. How does that appeal to you?'

'It don't.'

'So tell me why you were carrying that piece.'

'Go fuck yourself,' Pacho said.

Bert Kling was about to propose to Augusta Blair.

It was almost nine-thirty, and they had finished their meal and their coffee, and Kling had ordered cognac for both of them, and they were waiting for it to arrive. There was a candle in a red translucent holder on the tabletop, and it cast a gentle glow on Augusta's face, softening her features, not that she needed any help. There was a time when Kling had been thoroughly flustered by Augusta's beauty. In her presence he had been speechless, breathless, awkward, stupid, and incapable of doing anything but stare at her in wonder and gratitude. Over the past nine months, however, he had not only grown accustomed to her beauty, and comfortable in its presence, but had also begun to feel somehow responsible for it - like the curator of a museum beginning to think that the rare paintings on the walls had not only been discovered by him, but had in fact been painted by him.

If Kling had been a painter, he would have put Augusta on canvas exactly the way she looked, no improvements, no embellishments; none were necessary. Augusta's hair was red, or auburn, or russet, depending on the light, but certainly in the red spectrum, and worn long most of the time, usually falling to just below her shoulder blades, but sometimes worn back in a pony tail, or braided into pigtails on either side of her face, or even piled on top of her head like a crown of sparkling rubies. Her eyes were a jade-green, slanting upward from high cheekbones, her exquisite nose gently drawing the upper lip away from partially exposed, even white teeth. She was tall and slender, with good breasts and a narrow waist and wide hips and splendid wheels. She was surely the most beautiful woman he had ever met in his life - which is why she was a photographer's model. She was also the most beautiful person he had ever met in his life - which is why he wanted to marry her.

'Augusta,' he said, 'there's something serious I'd like to ask you.'

'Yes, Bert?' she said, and looked directly into his face, and he felt again what he had first felt nine months ago when he'd walked into her burglarized apartment and seen her sitting on the couch, her eyes glistening with tears about to spill. He had clumsily shaken hands with her, and his heart had stopped.

'I've been doing a lot of thinking,' he said.

'Yes, Bert?' she said.

The waiter brought the cognac. Augusta lifted her snifter and rolled it between her palms. Kling picked up his snifter and almost dropped it, spilling some of the cognac onto the table cloth. He dabbed at it with his napkin, smiled weakly at Augusta, put the napkin back on his lap and the snifter back on the table before he spilled it all over his shirt and his pants and the rug and maybe the silk-brocaded walls of this very fancy French joint he had chosen because he thought it would be a suitably romantic setting for a proposal, even though it was costing him half-a-week's pay. 'Augusta,' he said, and cleared his throat.

'Yes, Bert?'

'Augusta, I have something very serious to ask you.'

'Yes, Bert, you've said that already.' There seemed to be a slight smile on her mouth. Her eyes looked exceedingly merry.

'Augusta?'

'Yes, Bert?'

'Excuse me, Mr. Kling,' the waiter said. 'There's a telephone call for you.'

'Oh, sh—' Kling started, and then nodded, and said, 'Thank you, thank you.' He shoved his chair back, dropping his napkin to the floor as he rose. He picked up the napkin, said, 'Excuse me, Augusta,' and was heading away from the table when she very softly said, 'Bert?'

He stopped and turned.

'I will, Bert,' she said.

'You will?' he asked.

'I'll marry you,' she said.

'Okay,' he said, and smiled. 'I'll marry you, too.'

'Okay,' she said.

'Okay,' he said.

He walked swiftly across the room. The waiter regarded him curiously, because he had never seen a man looking so completely ecstatic over the mere prospect of answering a telephone. Kling closed the door of the booth, waggled his fingers at Augusta across the room, waited for her to waggle her fingers back at him, and then said, 'Hello?'

'Bert, this is Steve. I tried to get you at home, your service gave me this number.'

'Yeah, Steve, what's up?'

'You'd better get up here right away,' Carella said. 'All hell is breaking loose.'

Chapter Nine

As the president, I make it my business to know everything that's going on every place. From the wire we had in the Scarlets' clubhouse on Gateside, we found out exactly where they were keeping Big and Jo-Jo prisoner. The idea, of course, was to free them. But that wasn't enough. It was also necessary to punish the Scarlets for what they done.

I want to make everything clear. You guys are writing this down, and you're also taping it, and so I want to make it clear. It's not always easy to understand why a person does such and such a thing. You look at the externals, and you think Oh he done that for selfish reasons, or Oh, he done it out of spite, or because he lost his temper, or whatever. You can come up with a thousand speculations as to why a person done something, when actually it's only the person himself who knows why. So I want to tell you exactly why I done it, and I also want to make sure you know what I done and what I didn't do.

You found me with blood all over my hands tonight. Okay, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I can tell you with absolute honesty that I never killed nobody. I can also tell you that although I ordered the raids that ended the war once and for all - and don't forget I did end the war, the war is over, there's never going to be no more trouble in this neighborhood - it was not me personally who did any of the killing. No matter what it looked like (and I admit my hands were covered with blood), evidence can be misleading lots of times, as I'm sure you guys know. And if you look at just the blood, then you can forget the very real things I accomplished. That's the reason I'm telling you all this. You think I don't know you can't force me to say anything I don't want to? I'm telling you all this because I want to set the record straight. I don't want you to forget what I done. I don't want you to lose sight of the forest for the trees.

The place they were holding Big and Jo-Jo was in the cellar of this candy store on Gatsby and 51st. The candy store is owned by this guy called Lamp Hawkins. He's a nigger who lost his eye in a street fight back in the fifties, some guy stabbed him in the eye. He used to live in Diamondback, and the gangs down there were rumbling all the time back in those days, but very unsophisticated, low-level combat, you understand? Like they used zip guns and ripped-off car aerials and switchblades, and they used to throw bricks down from the rooftops. Kid stuff. When you compare that to the weaponry we got today, but which we always use with restraint, it's almost laughable. Because the point is, you see, you can go to jail for carrying a homemade piece in your pocket, so you might as well carry the real thing, am I right? I want to point out, by the way, that I wasn't carrying nothing when you picked me up. You did not find no firearm on my person, and don't forget it.

Anyway, this Lamp character moved up from Diamondback after he got out of jail for pushing dope, and he opened this candy store on Gatsby, which is really a front for a numbers drop. I guess you guys already know that. He probably pays you off, don't he? And the reason he let the Scarlets bring two prisoners there was that he needed their clique for protection. Against us , you dig? Because he knew the one thing the Yankee Rebels cannot abide is anything that has to do with dope. Now, you may say that Lamp got picked up for pushing 'way back in the sixties, and he done his time and paid the penalty, but that's not good enough for me. I got a memory like an elephant. Once a guy has pushed dope on innocent little children, you can bet he will one day or another go right back to pushing again. Which is why this clique shows no mercy whatsoever to anybody who is involved with dope on any level - using, dealing, we don't care what. One of our club rules is no junk and no junkies. That is an ironclad rule. No junk and no junkies. So Lamp lived in fear of his life all the time because he knew if we ever caught him out in the open, we would do to him what he done to countless little children back in the sixties. We would ruin him. And that's why he let Mighty Man bring the two prisoners to the candy store and lock them in the cellar. He was taking a chance, sure, but it was a worse chance for him to walk the streets without Scarlet protection.