Kissman turned off the recorder.
“How many do you think?” Hawes asked.
“Four or five,” Ollie said. “Hard to tell.”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Carella said, frowning. “You want to run that back for me, Martin?”
“To where?”
“To where one of them says something about killing her.”
Kissman rewound the tape, and then pushed the PLAY button:
— Oh, please, no.
— Shut up, bitch!
— Hold her, get her legs!
— Please, please.
The girl’s terrified scream sounded into the squadroom again, and again the men sat speechless, like children who did not know about monsters in the night. They listened again to the speechlessly administered beating, and waited for the next voice on the tape:
— Come on, that’s enough.
— Hold her, lay off, you’re gonna kill her!
— Let’s go, let’s go.
“Cut it there,” Carella said, and Kissman turned off the machine. “I don’t get those instructions.”
“What instructions?”
“The guy tells somebody to hold her and to lay off at the same time,” Carella said. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“He keeps yelling that all through the tape,” Kissman said.
“What do you mean?”
“To hold her. He keeps telling one of the other guys to hold her.”
“There’s a lot of noise on that tape,” Ollie said. “Maybe we’re hearing it wrong.”
“No, that comes through loud and clear,” Hawes said. “He yells ‘Hold her,’ there’s no question about it.”
“Do they sound young to you?” Kissman said.
“Some of them.”
“They sound black, that’s for sure,” Ollie said, and Hawes frowned at him, but Ollie didn’t seem to notice.
“Play that part again, will you?” Carella said. “About killing her.”
Kissman located the spot on the tape, and they played the single sentence over and over again, listening to it intently, searching for meaning in the seeming contradiction: Hold her, lay off, you’re gonna kill her! Hold her, lay off, you’re gonna kill her! Hold her, lay off, you’re gonna kill her! Hold her, hold her, hold ‘er, hold ‘er, holder, holder...
“It’s his name!” Hawes said, rising suddenly out of his chair.
“What?” Ollie said.
“Holder! Jamie Holder!”
Three of them went into the clubroom together — Ollie Weeks because officially the Harrod homicide was his; Carella and Hawes because officially the Reardon homicide was theirs. Besides, it does not hurt to have a lot of firepower when you’re going in against an indeterminate number of hoodlums.
The clubroom was in the basement of a tenement on North Twenty-seventh Street. They had no difficulty locating the clubroom because the cops of the 83rd kept an active file on all neighborhood street gangs, and a call from Ollie to his own squadroom immediately pinpointed the headquarters of The Ancient Skulls. Standing in the basement corridor outside the clubroom, they listened at the door and heard music within, and several voices, male and female. They did not knock, they did not bother with any formalities; they were dealing here with people who had maybe committed murder and assault. Fat Ollie kicked in the door, and Carella and Hawes fanned into the room directly behind him, guns drawn. Two young men standing at the record player turned toward the door as it burst open into the room. A boy and a girl, necking on a sofa on the wall opposite the door, jumped to their feet the moment the detectives entered. Two other couples were dancing close in separate dim corners. They turned immediately toward the intruders and stopped dancing, but did not break apart. There was another door at the far end of the room. Ollie moved to it swiftly and kicked it open. A naked boy and girl were on the bed.
“Up!” Ollie said. “Put your clothes on!”
“What is this?” one of the boys near the record player asked.
Hawes recognized him as the bearded pool player named Avery Evans.
“It’s a bust,” Carella said. “Shut up.”
“Where’s Jamie Holder?” Hawes asked.
“In the other room.”
“Hurry it up, Lover Boy,” Ollie said. “Man outside wants to talk to you.”
“What’d I do?” Holder asked from the other room.
“I’m the president here,” Avery said, moving away from the record player. “I’d like to know what’s going on, if you don’t mind.”
“What’s your name?” Carella said.
“Avery Evans.”
“Nice to meet you,” Ollie said. “You! Get over against the wall there! This ain’t a Friday night social. Cut off that record player!”
“I expect you have a warrant,” Avery said.
“Yeah, here’s our warrant,” Ollie said, and gestured with the .38 Special in his fist. “You want to read it?”
“I don’t understand this,” Avery said. “The Ancient Skulls have always cooperated with the police. Would you mind telling me...?”
“We’ll tell you at the squadroom,” Ollie said. “Come on, girls, you too!” He shoved his pistol into the other room, and shouted, “You ain’t dressing for the governor’s ball, Holder! Shake it up in there or I’ll come help you.”
The girl who had been in bed with Holder had dressed rapidly, and now came out of the other room, buttoning her blouse. She could not have been older than sixteen, a doe-eyed girl with a beautiful face and a flawless complexion Avery stepped up close to Carella and said, as if he were confiding to him, “I suppose you realize that The Ancient Skulls are the only neighborhood club that...”
“Tell us later,” Carella said.
“Will you tell us why you’re taking us to the squadroom?” Avery asked. “Has there been some trouble with one of the other clubs?”
“No,” Carella said flatly.
Jamie Holder came into the room. He was as big as Hawes remembered him, with powerful wrists and huge hands. “What’s the static, man?” he asked.
“They’ve made a mistake, Holder,” Avery said.
“Oh, sure,” Holder said.
The Ancient Skulls were not all as old as their title proclaimed, but they nonetheless ranged in age from eighteen to twenty-six, which meant that they were not juvenile offenders and could therefore be questioned in a police station. Nobody had ever told the cops in this city exactly where a juvenile offender should be interrogated. Usually, they took any suspect juvenile to a part of the building that was not contaminated by various and sundry sordid types, thereby giving lip service to the ruling — strange are the ways of the Law. The Ancient Skulls, of course, were entitled to a recitation and explanation of their rights, and they were entitled to maintain silence if they so chose, and they were also entitled to legal counsel whether or not they decided to answer any questions. Miranda-Escobedo, the Supreme Court decision that granted all these rights, was not the hindrance some police officers claimed it to be. In fact, a survey among law-enforcement officers around the country had revealed that as many confessions had been obtained since the Miranda-Escobedo decision as before, without the use of backroom, third-degree techniques.
Avery Evans, the leader of The Ancient Skulls, was the oldest member of the gang, twenty-six going on twenty-seven. He was also the smartest, and presumably the toughest. He maintained that the police were making some kind of mistake, and he said he would freely answer any and all questions they asked him. He had nothing to hide. The Ancient Skulls had always cooperated with the police, and he was certainly willing to cooperate with them now. He advised the other members of the gang — or at least those members present, it being estimated that there were a hundred and twelve Ancient Skulls residing in Isola and another fifty-some-odd in Riverhead — that they, likewise, could answer any questions the cops put to them. Avery Evans was cool, smart, tough, supremely confident, and the leader of a proud and noble band. He did not know, of course, that the police had a tape recording of what he and his proud and noble followers had done to Elizabeth Benjamin.