“What?”
“Yeah,” Hawes said.
“That sounds like some picture.”
“Yeah, it was. They didn’t show him being eaten, of course. But the locusts were all over him, chewing.”
“Yeah,” Carella said.
“Yeah. They had some nice close-ups.”
“Who was the girl?”
“Some new girl, I forget her name.”
“And the hero?”
“Oh, he’s been around on television. I forget his name, too.” Hawes hesitated. “Actually, the locusts were the stars of the picture.”
“Yeah,” Carella said.
“Yeah. They had one scene where there must have been eight million locusts hopping all over everybody. I wonder how they got that scene.”
“There probably was a locust trainer,” Carella said.
“Oh, sure.”
“I saw a picture called The Ants once,” Carella said.
“How was it?”
“Pretty good. It sounds a little like The Locusts, though there wasn’t the girl bringing any crickets in a cage.”
“No, huh?”
“No. There was a girl, but she was a newspaper reporter investigating this nuclear reactor that blows up out in the country someplace. That’s what makes the ants get so big.”
“Oh, they were bigger than normal ants, you mean?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, well these locusts were their normal size. I mean, there wasn’t any funny stuff with nuclear reactors or anything like that.”
“No, these were big ants,” Carella said.
“The Ants, huh? That was the name of the picture?”
“Yeah, The Ants.”
“This one was called The Locusts,” Hawes said.
“The Locusts.”
“Yeah.”
They drove in silence into the heart of town. They had been told the day before that The Happy Kids met in a vacant store on East Bond—Lasser could not remember the address. They searched the street now for the store, which they had also been told was unmarked. They found what seemed to be an empty store in the middle of the 300 block, curtained across its door and its wide plateglass windows. Carella parked the car across the street, pulled down the sun visor to which was affixed a handlettered sign advising the New Essex police that this antiquated heap was driven by a city detective on a duty call, and then joined Hawes who came around the car and fell into step beside him.
They tried to see over the curtains on the front windows but found that they were hung on rods above their line of vision. Hawes went to the front door and tried it. It was locked.
“What do we do?” he asked. “I don’t see a bell, do you?”
“No. Why don’t you rap on the glass?”
“I’m afraid I’ll wake up all the Gypsies,” Hawes said.
“Try it.”
Hawes rapped on the glass. He looked at Carella, waiting. He rapped again. He took the door handle and shook the door. “Anybody in there?” he shouted.
“Don’t take it off the hinges,” a voice said.
“Ah-ha,” Carella said.
“Who is it?” the voice behind the door asked.
“Police,” Hawes said.
“What do you want?” the voice asked.
“We want to talk to The Happy Kids,” Hawes said.
“Just a minute,” the voice answered.
They waited. In a few moments, the door opened. The man standing in the door frame was perhaps ninety years old, give or take a few centuries. He leaned on his cane and peered out at the detectives malevolently, wheezing air into his sunken chest, his mouth twitching, his eyes blinking.
“Let’s see it,” he snapped.
“See what, sir?” Carella said.
“Your identification.”
Carella opened his wallet to his shield. The old man studied it and then said, “You’re not New Essex police?”
“No, sir.”
“Didn’t think so,” the old man said. “What is it you want?”
“George Lasser was murdered yesterday,” Carella said. “We understand he belonged to—”
“What? What did you say?”
“I said George Lasser—”
“Mister, don’t joke with an old man.”
“We’re not joking, sir,” Carella said. “Mr. Lasser was murdered yesterday afternoon.”
The old man in the door digested this silently for several moments, then nodded his head, and then sighed, and then said, “My name is Peter Maily. Come in.”
The store was furnished much as Carella had imagined it would be. There was a huge black potbellied stove against one wall, and over it some regimental flags and a group picture of some battle-weary soldiers taken just outside El Canay. A dilapidated couch was against the wall opposite the stove, and several stuffed and decaying easy chairs were scattered around the room. A television set was going in one corner, watched by two gloomy old men who barely glanced up as Hawes and Carella came into the room. If Peter Maily and these other two were The Happy Kids, they seemed to dispense a particular brand of somnolent gloom that was uniquely and exclusively their own. If ever there was a club that seemed singularly unclubby, this was it. Carella was certain that a smile on these premises would mean immediate expulsion from the group.
“You are The Happy Kids?” he asked Maily.
“Oh, yes, we’re The Happy Kids, all right,” Maily said. “What’s left of us.”
“And you did know George Lasser?”
“With us when we took Siboney and, later on, El Canay,” Maily said. “Picture’s up there on the wall, with the rest of us.” He turned to the men watching the television set and said, “Georgie’s dead, fellers. Got it yesterday.”
A bald-headed old man wearing a checked weskit turned away from the set and said, “How, Peter?”
Maily turned to Carella. “How?” he asked.
“Someone hit him with an ax.”
“Who?” the man in the checked weskit asked.
“We don’t know.”
The other man at the television set, straining to hear the conversation, cupped his hand behind his ear and said, “What is it, Frank?”
The man in the checked weskit said, “Georgie’s dead. Got killed with an ax. They don’t know who done it, Fred.”
“Georgie’s dead, did you say?”
“Yep, got killed with an ax.”
The other man nodded.
“We were wondering if you could tell us what you know about Mr. Lasser?” Carella said. “Anything that might help us to find his murderer.”
“Be happy to,” the man named Frank said, and the interrogation began.
The man who had opened the door, Peter Maily, seemed to be president of the group, which now consisted of three members, himself and the two who’d been watching the television set. The two television watchers were called Frank Ostereich and Fred Wye. Ostereich was secretary of the group, and Wye was treasurer—all chiefs and no Indians, it seemed. There had, however, been twenty-three Indians back in April 1898. Or, to be more exact, there had been twenty-three youngsters who were all in their late teens or early twenties, and they were members of a New Essex social and athletic club called The Happy Kids. It being 1898, there was no juvenile delinquency and therefore the term “social and athletic club” was not a euphemism for “bopping gang.” These happy kids actually had a baseball team and a volleyball team and a rented store—this same store they now rented on East Bond Street—in which they held dances every Friday night and sometimes necked with girls on weekday nights in the back room.