He found the stoop where Morrez had been sitting on the night he’d been killed. He checked the address again and then walked past a thin man in his undershirt who was sitting outside on a milk-bottle case. The man was smoking a long black cigar. The undershirt was stained with sweat. Hank paused in the hallway and struck a match, examining the mailboxes. Four of the boxes had been sprung from their locks. None of the boxes carried a name plate. He walked out onto the front stoop again.
“I’m looking for a girl named Louisa Ortega. Do you know where I—”
“No hablo Inglés,” the old man said.
“Por favor,” Hank said hesitantly. “Dónde está la muchacha Louisa Ortega?”
“No entiendo,” the man said, shaking his head.
Hank stared at him. His Spanish had been slow and halting, but certainly intelligible. And then he realized the man did not want to tell him.
“She’s not in any trouble,” Hank said. “It’s about Rafael Morrez.”
“Rafael?” the man said. He looked up at Hank. His brown eyes said nothing. “Rafael está muerto,” he said.
“Si, yo comprendo. I’m investigating. Soy investigator,” he said lamely, wondering if that were the Spanish word. The man looked at him blankly. “Habla Italiano?” Hank said, in a desperate thrust at establishing communication.
“No,” the man said. He shook his head. Then, in English, he added, “Go ’way. Don’ bodder me.”
“Who you looking for, mister?” a voice said, and Hank turned. The boy stood at the foot of the stoop, his hands on his hips. He wore dungarees and a gleaming white tee shirt. His complexion was tan, his eyes brown, his black hair cut close to the scalp except for a high crown at the front of his head. His hands were square, with big knuckles, a signet ring on the third finger of his right hand.
“I’m looking for Louisa Ortega,” Hank said.
“Yeah, and who are you?”
“District attorney,” Hank said.
“What do you want with her?”
“I want to ask her some questions about Rafael Morrez.”
“You got any questions, you can ask me,” the boy said.
“And who are you?”
“My name’s Gargantua,” the boy said.
“I’ve heard of you.”
“Yeah?” A slight smile formed on his mouth. “Yeah, maybe you have. I been in the papers a few times.”
“I didn’t get your name from the papers,” Hank said. “I got it from a member of the Thunderbirds. A boy named Diablo.”
“Don’t talk to me about that stinking creep. I ever see him again, he’s dead. Wham! Dead.”
He clenched his fists when he spoke, and his face became transposed in that instant to a grimace of hatred, as if he were acting out the real murder of Diablo. His expression, the way his big hands tightened when he spoke, left no doubt that he truly wanted Diablo dead.
“Where do I find Louisa Ortega?”
“I told you. You talk to me.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Hank said, “but I really have nothing to say to you. Unless you happened to be sitting on this stoop the night Morrez was murdered.”
“Oh, you admit he was murdered, huh?”
“Cut it out,” Hank said impatiently. “I’m on your side. I’m prosecuting this case, not defending it.”
“A cop on my people’s side?” Gargantua said. “Ha!”
“Don’t waste my time,” Hank said. “Do you know where she is, or do I have to send a detective to pick her up? I can guarantee he’ll find her.”
“Don’t get excited,” Gargantua said. “What’d Diablo say about me?”
“Nothing more than that you were warlord of the Horsemen.”
“Was he straight?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know? Most of them Thunderbirds are on junk. You know what I mean? They’re addicts. They all take dope. One thing you never find on our club is a guy who’s hooked. We kick him off so fast, his head spins.”
“That’s interesting to know,” Hank said. “Where’s the girl?”
“Apartment fourteen on the first floor. She probably ain’t even home.”
“I’ll take a chance,” Hank said.
“Listen, I’ll wait for you. I want to talk to you.”
“I may be a little while.”
“That’s okay. I got nothing to do, anyway.”
“Fine,” Hank said, and he went into the building.
Tenements are tenements. There is no such thing as an Italian tenement or a Puerto Rican tenement or a Negro tenement. They’re all the same, he realized, and they all stink. The stink begins building in the outer lobby with the broken mailboxes and the shattered naked light bulb in the ceiling. It assails you as you climb the narrow stairs in the dark hallway, punctuated by feeble air-shaft light at each landing. The camouflaging Lysol stench is almost as overwhelming as the urine smell it attempts to cover. The smells of cooking reach out from every doorway, half a hundred apartments oozing the smell of fish, the smell of meat, spaghetti, arroz con pollo, cabbage, bacon, until all the smells unite into an unsavory stench which has no origin, and no association with food. It’s like a poison gas seeping through the hallways, invading the nostrils and the throat, a total assault wave designed to make you retch.
As he climbed to the first floor of this tenement in Spanish Harlem, he was aware of the mounting attack of smell, aware of the putrescent aroma of garbage coming from behind the steps on the ground floor where the garbage cans were stacked. He found Apartment 14 and twisted the bell set at shoulder height in the door. The door was painted to simulate natural-grain wood, the painter’s idea of this being to paint the door a deep brown and then smear erratic tan lines over the brown. The wood of the door itself was covered with a tin coating, and it was over this that the painter had exercised his artistic flair. The bell was loose. It did not sound with a clear sharp ring. It rattled noisily in its metal cup and then died. He tried it again. Again the bell issued its deathlike trembling.
“Sí, sí, vengo!” a voice shouted from inside the apartment.
Hank waited. He could hear the steel bar of the police lock inside the door being lowered to the floor. The door opened a crack, stopping sharply when the additional precaution of a chain caught it. Part of a face appeared in the crack.
“Quién es?” the girl asked.
“I’m from the district attorney’s office,” Hank said. “Are you Louisa Ortega?”
“Sí?”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions. May I come in?”
“Oh.” The girl seemed flustered. “Oh, not now,” she said, “I am busy now. There ees someone with me.”
“Well, when—”
“It will be soon,” she said. “You come back fi’, ten minutes, okay? I talk to you then, okay?”
“All right,” Hank said. The door closed, the girl’s face vanished. He could hear the bar of the police lock being wedged back into place. Wearily, he went down to the street again. Gargantua was nowhere in sight. Neither was the old man in the undershirt. Hank looked at his watch, lighted a cigarette and leaned against the wall of the building. A stickball game was in progress in the middle of the street. The game went on excitingly, with the usual number of temper flareups and arguments. But the players might just as well have been in Yankee Stadium performing before thousands of people. In fact, there was possibly more violence in a major-league game than was evident in this street game played by teen-agers who conceivably were capable of slitting another teen-ager’s throat.