Hail to the Chief

'You got a warrant to enter these premises?' the boy asked.

'What's your name?' Kling said.

'My name is Pacho. You got a warrant to enter these premises?'

'We're looking for anyone who might have known Eduardo Portoles,' Carella said. 'Or his sister Constantina.'

'You got a warrant to enter these premises?' Pacho said again.

'Looks like we got a broken record here, Steve,' Kling said.

'You got a lease to live in these premises?' Carella said.

'What?' Pacho said.

'I said do you pay rent here?'

'No, we don't pay rent here. That still don't give you the right to…'

'Pacho, don't get me sore, okay?' Carella said. 'It's a cold day, and I don't like being up here in Riverhead, and I don't need trouble from some punk who thinks he's Horatio at the bridge. Now just get the hell out of the way, and let us in there, before we start finding all kinds of things to charge you with. Okay, Pacho?'

'You understand, Pacho?' Kling said.

'Who at the bridge?' Pacho said.

The two detectives were already halfway up the steps. Both of them had opened the third buttons of their overcoats, providing easy access for right-handed draws just in case Pacho was carrying anything but his hands in the big pockets of that dirty Swedish Army coat, and just in case he was dumb enough to try pulling it. Pacho turned his back, his hands still in his pockets.

'I'll take you up,' he said. 'Otherwise you might get hurt.'

He had rescued his pride, first by turning his back to show the huge gargoyle painted on the white coat in luminous black, red tongue lashing out like flame, the legend THE DEATH'S HEADS circling over it; had rescued it further by letting the detectives know that he was a powerful man without whose presence their safety could not be guaranteed. As far as Carella and Kling were concerned, it was all bullshit. Even the gargoyle on the back of the coat - and one of the garments found in Portoles' apartment had been an identical Swedish Army coat, with the identical gargoyle painted on its back - even that, though a pleasant departure from the expected skull-and-crossbones cliché, was total theatrical bullshit. With grimaces provoked partially by the paramilitary ritual Pacho was forcing them to observe (they themselves belonged to a paramilitary organization, but this fact did not occur to them at the moment), and partially by the stench of garbage and human excrement on the steps, they followed Pacho up to the second floor. Another young man in a Swedish Army coat stood at the top of the steps.

'Say it,' he said to Pacho, asking for the password even though he undoubtedly recognized Pacho as one of the gang.

'The nutter is our dame,' Pacho said, or at least something that sounded like that. It made no sense whatever to Carella.

'Who're these two?' the second Death's Head asked.

'Detectives Carella and Kling of the 87th Squad,' Carella said. 'Who are you?'

'True Blue.'

'Nice to meet you,' Carella said. 'Where's True Green?'

'I didn't get the name from no damn cigarette,' True Blue said.

'Where did you get it?' Kling asked, looking somewhat less than fascinated.

'Eduardo gave it to me. Because I was loyal.'

'Eduardo in charge around here?' Kling asked.

'Yeah, but he ain't here right now,' Pacho said.

'Are you expecting him back?'

The two boys exchanged a glance as transparent as a diamond. 'Sure,' Pacho said, 'but we don't know when.'

'We'll wait,' Carella said.

'Anybody else we can talk to meanwhile?' Kling asked,

'Henry is here, he's the secretary.'

'Well, let's talk to Henry then, okay?'

'Where is Henry?'

'In there,' True Blue said, and gestured with his head toward a doorless jamb down the corridor.

'Would you like to announce us, or shall we go right in?' Kling said.

'I better tell him you're here,' Pacho said. 'Otherwise you might get hurt.'

Carella yawned. Pacho went up the corridor and disappeared into the room. True Blue kept looking at them.

'Any heat in this building?' Carella asked.

'No.'

'Any water?'

'No. We don't need no heat or water. We're Death's Heads.'

'Mmm,' Carella said.

'We improvise.'

'I'll bet you do,' Carella said. 'What's going on in there? Big conference about the fuzz from downtown?'

'I didn't think I recognized you from this precinct,' True Blue said.

'You know all the detectives in this precinct?'

'Most of them. They know me, too.'

'Mmm,' Carella said, and Pacho came out into the hallway,

'Okay,' Pacho said, 'he'll see you.'

'Nice of him,' Kling said to Carella.

'Very nice,' Carella answered.

The room they entered had been decorated with photographs of nude women clipped from various girlie magazines, and then varnished over to protect them. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with these glossy cutouts, and various and several parts of the ladies' anatomies had been territorially claimed by different members of the gang, their names scrawled across breasts, buttocks, thighs, groins, and grinning mouths. In the midst of this pulchritudinous photographic display, sitting like a wizened priest on a fat red-velvet cushion, was a bespectacled young man wearing a Fu Manchu mustache and toying with a twelve-inch-long bread knife. Carella assumed the boy was Henry, and he further assumed that Henry was a fearless type; possession of such a utensil in circumstances such as these could presumably have led to a bust. Henry had known the cops were outside and coming in to pay a little visit; he could easily have tucked the blade under the fat pillow that cradled him.

'You're cops, huh?' he asked. He was delicately pressing one forefinger against the curved top of the knife's handle, the blade against the naked floorboards, trying to balance it on its tip. The knife refused to stay balanced. Each time it toppled over, he picked it up and tried again. He did not look up at the detectives as they came into the room.

'We're cops,' Carella said.

'What do you want? We ain't done nothing.'

'We want to know about Eduardo Portoles.'

'He's the president'

'Where is he?'

'Out.'

'Out where?'

'Big city, man,' Henry said, and picked up the knife, and tried to balance it again, and again it fell over on its side. He had still not looked up at the detectives.

'How about Constantina Portoles?'

'Yeah, his sister.'

'Know where she is?'

'Nope,' Henry said, and the knife fell over again. He picked it up.

'She a member of the gang?'

'Yep.'

'But you don't know where she is, either, right?'

'Right man,' Henry said, and tried his balancing act again. This time he came almost close. But the knife toppled over again. 'Shit,' he said, and still did not look up at the detectives.

'And the other sister?'

'What other one is that?' Henry asked,

'Maria Lucia. The little sister.'

'What about her?'

'Got any idea where she is?'

'Nope,' Henry said.

'We know where she is,' Kling said.

'Yeah, where is she?'

'Right now she's at Washington Hospital, being treated for near-starvation.'

'What?' Henry said, and looked up for the first time.

There was no disguising the genuine surprise in his eyes. If Carella was reading Henry's face correctly, then Henry did not know the little girl had escaped the Sunday-night massacre. That had to be it. No matter what Henry had read in the newspapers, he had automatically assumed that the killers had wiped out the entire Portoles family, including little Maria Lucia.