The president's name was Randall M. Nesbitt.
He was known to his followers as Randy.
Chapter Six
What happened was she tried to get away.
They had her word of honor that she wouldn't try to pull anything like that, but if you can't trust somebody once, then you certainly can't trust them twice. I always believed, by the way (and I still believe), that there's no such thing as trusting somebody only halfway, or three-quarters of the way, or even ninety-nine and one-hundredths percent of the way. You either trust them completely, or you're not trusting them at all. Which is why in all these peace negotiations, I was the one who insisted that everything be spelled out to the letter. Otherwise, we'd have had to depend on trust, you see, and I don't trust neither the Heads nor the Scarlets as far as I can throw them.
The house Big Anthony's aunt has is really more like a cottage. There's only one bedroom, so Big Anthony and Jo-Jo, who's the guy he picked to go with him, gave the bedroom to Midge, and they slept in the living room, Big Anthony on the couch and Jo-Jo on the floor in a sleeping bag. They never made no sexual advances to Midge because they knew she was Johnny's girl, and they know this clique prides itself on its honor. They stripped her to the waist every morning and every night to give her the prescribed twenty lashes, but that had nothing to do with sex. That was only a sentence being carried out. It really must have bothered Big Anthony to carry out such a sentence against a girl, because this clique truly honors the women who belong to it. In our eyes, they are equal members and they are entitled to equal rights. Just because I didn't appoint any of them as my advisers don't mean nothing. Before this thing with Midge happened, I was planning to appoint one of the girls as secretary. I was ready to bring it before the council, in fact. Then Midge had to get smart. Or stupid, if you want to be exact about it.
It was right after they gave her that night's twenty. She was bleeding a little, but not much. She put on her blouse and went in the bedroom. Big Anthony told me she never made a peep while they were administering justice. He thought she'd learned her lesson. He thought she'd got the message, just the way I thought she had. Neither of us had made a mistake; it was just that Midge was a very devious person. Along about nine-thirty Big and Jo-Jo were watching television in the living room, and they had the sound very low so as not to disturb Midge if she was trying to sleep, when they heard something outside that sounded like somebody trying to get in the house. Jo-Jo ran around one side, and Big ran around the other, and it wasn't nobody trying to get in the house, it was somebody trying to get out of the house. It was Midge, in fact, and not only was she trying to get out, she was already out by the time they ran around back and caught her. She had jumped out the window (which was the noise they heard) and had started for the woods by the time they got to her, and she was carrying a knife she had managed to steal from the kitchen earlier in the day.
Neither Jo-Jo nor Big had any intention of hurting her. All they wanted to do was get her back in the house. But she came at them with the knife in her hand, and she stabbed Jo-Jo in the arm (he's still got a bandage where she cut him) and then she went after Big, who ain't called Big for nothing, and who's been in enough fights to know how to take a weapon away from somebody. But she kept slashing at him, too, and by the time he got the knife away, he was beginning to lose his temper. He grabbed her from behind, with one arm holding her, you know, and he put the blade against her throat, and he told her one more move and he'd kill her. She turned hallway around, and she kicked him in the balls, and that was what did it. Big killed her on the spot. He had good reason.
I told him he done the right thing.
They did not find Randall Nesbitt until Saturday morning, January 12, in an ice cream parlor on the corner of Hitchcock and Dooley in Riverhead. He was eating a banana split. A skinny, light-eyed blond girl was sitting in the booth opposite him, drinking a chocolate ice cream soda. She looked shy, somewhat anemic, and somewhat anachronistic, as though she had stepped out of a Betty Co-ed movie of the forties. Nesbitt himself had dark hair and dark brooding eyes and a sloping, bulbous nose, and heavy jowls, and apparently a heavy beard as well; he looked as though he had recently shaved, but a bluish cast tinted his jaw and both sides of his face below the cheeks. He did not look up when the detectives approached the booth. He had undoubtedly known they were coming because they had seen a runner, wearing a blue denim jacket with the Confederate insignia on its back, entering the ice cream parlor as they came up the street. The runner was now sitting at the counter. He watched the detectives as they stopped before the booth.
'Randall Nesbitt?' Carella asked.
'Um?' Nesbitt said, and looked up. There was a smile on his face - the expansive, calculated smile of a television celebrity on a late-night show.
Carella distrusted the smile at once. 'Police officers,' he said, and flashed the tin.
Nesbitt studied the gold-and-blue shield with great interest, and then looked up and smiled again. 'Yes, Officer,' he said, 'how can I help you?'
'What's your name, young lady?' Kling asked.
'Toy,' the girl said.
'Toy?'
'Toy Wilke.'
'We'd like to ask you a few questions,' Carella said to Nesbitt. 'Mind if we sit down?'
'Please join us,' Nesbitt said. 'Would you like some ice cream? Or a cup of coffee or something?'
'Thank you, no,' Carella said, and sat in the booth alongside Toy. Kling sat next to Nesbitt. 'Are you the president of a gang called the Yankee Rebels?' Carella asked across the table.
'That's the name of our clique, that's correct,' Nesbitt said.
'We're trying to locate somebody named Midge,' Carella said. 'Would the name happen to register?'
Toy seemed about to say something, but a sidelong glance from Nesbitt silenced her.
'Midge,' Nesbitt said thoughtfully, and tented his hands, and considered the name as though he'd just been invited to christen a battleship. 'Midge, Midge,' he said. 'No, can't say that it rings a bell, Officer.'
'We have information that leads us to believe Midge belongs to your gang.'
'Really?' Nesbitt said. 'Toy, you know any member named Midge?'
'No,' Toy said, and bent over her glass, and put the straws between her lips, and busied herself with the soda.
'Sorry we can't help you,' Nesbitt said. Then, as though to emphasize his dismissal of the two men, he picked up his spoon, cut into the banana with it, scooped a combination of chocolate sauce and cherry syrup into the bowl of the spoon, and shoveled the entire dripping mixture into his mouth.
'We're not quite finished yet,' Carella said.
'Oh, sorry,' Nesbitt said, swallowing. He put the spoon down again, smiled his eager, pleasant, cooperative smile, and said, 'Yes?'