'Right,' the patrolman said, and jerked on the handcuff. 'Let's go-'
The other Yankee Rebels watched as Big Anthony was led silently out of the room. The frosted-glass door to the Interrogation Room closed.
'Fellow named Lucas Hawkins was killed in the blast,' Broughan said to Chingo. 'Called himself "Lamp." Had one eye. Ever recall seeing him around?'
'No,' Chingo said.
'Little girl got killed, too. I guess she was browsing the magazine rack, or maybe just sitting at the counter when somebody threw the bomb in. Thirteen-year-old kid. Her name was Daisy Cooper. That's a nice name, don't you think?'
'Yeah,' Chingo said.
'Daisy Cooper. She was dead on arrival. Lamp died on the way to the hospital. Very heavy stuff, that bombing. Want to tell us about it?'
'Nothing to say,' Chingo whispered.
'What? Speak up, son.'
'I…' Chingo cleared his throat and raised his voice. 'I said I got nothing to say.'
'Well, fine, that's up to you. Any of you other guys?'
The other Yankee Rebels looked at each other searchingly, and then looked at Chingo, and then shook their heads.
'Fine,' Broughan said. 'We'll have to lock all of you up, you understand, till we get to the bottom of this. But we got nice clean detention cells downstairs, with little potties in them and everything. You'll have very nice bowel movements while you're here at the 101st. Steve, you want to ask anything?'
'I just wanted to mention that our eyewitness'll certainly be able to identify whoever was with Anthony on the night of the murder. It might go easier - well, I can't make any promises.'
'No, you can't do that, Steve.'
'I know, I'm merely saying if any of the boys here happened to be with Anthony that night, I'd appreciate him stepping forward now.'
Nobody stepped forward.
'I didn't think so,' Carella said, and sighed. 'Well, I guess you fellows know what you're doing, but you're sure making it difficult for yourselves. Let's get somebody to take them down, huh, Charlie?'
'Yeah, we'd better do that,' Broughan said, and was reaching for the telephone when it rang. He lifted the receiver. 'Broughan,' he said, and listened. 'Where?' He looked up at the wall clock. The time was 10:25. 'Okay,' Broughan said, 'I'm on my way.'
'What is it?' Carella asked.
'World War III,' Broughan answered.
We were coming down Gateside, we were almost to the corner where the Scarlets have their clubhouse. Gateside and Delaney. There were twenty of us. I was in the lead. Mace, at the same time, was leading an attack on the Heads' clubhouse on Concord and Forty-eighth. It was all synchronized. It all should have worked beautiful.
Let me explain that we weren't tiptoeing around, we weren't ducking in hallways, we were marching right down the middle of the street. We planned to surprise the Scarlets, sure, but we weren't dumb enough to think we could sneak up on them. They got sentries and runners the same as us. We knew they had their arsenal far away from the clubhouse, though, just the way we do. That's so if the fuzz come around, there's no gun charge to pin on anybody. Just a bunch of guys sitting around rapping, that's all. You can't arrest nobody for rapping. So we knew they didn't have guns up there, and we figured even if the runners did get to them, they'd maybe have three minutes' notice that we were almost on them, and three minutes wasn't enough time to get out of that building and escape what was coming. Which was us. The Yankee Rebels. Thirty-four strong, and marching down that street with our colors proudly showing - red, white, and blue on the move. With another twenty of us over on Concord Avenue about to end the war with the Heads at the same time.
There was only one trouble.
The Heads weren't on Concord Avenue.
The Heads were on Gateside.
And what the Heads were planning to do was wipe out the Scarlets, and then come after us, and that way become undisputed rulers of the whole neighborhood.
It was The Bullet who spotted those white Swedish Army coats up the block. It was hard to see them at first, because it was snowing hard, and the streets were already covered, and those coats were pretty effective camouflage. But The Bullet has very sharp eyes. He can see in the dark like a cat, and not even white-against-white can faze him. He grabs my arm, and he tells me to take a look up the block, and all I can see at first is this swirling snow, and then through the snow I see what looks like a moving snowbank, you know what I mean? Only it ain't a snowbank, it's maybe a dozen guys all dressed in white coats, and I realize all at once it's a party of Heads coming right for us on a collision course.
The first thing I thought was that Mace hit early, and that his force got wiped out. But that ain't like Mace. We had set our watches before we started out, and Mace knew both strike forces were supposed to hit at ten-thirty sharp. It was now only ten twenty-five, and if I knew Mace, he was looking at his watch right then and timing his strike to the second. The only trouble was that all the Heads were here instead of where Mace expected them to be.
I always think best under pressure.
I have had maybe six important crisises in my life, and I have always met them and solved them. This was just another crisis, no different from the other ones. This was a football team coming down the field, armed to the teeth, but only another ball club. I had the stronger team, and we were going to beat them and end this war. All it involved was a change of plan. Instead of the Scarlets and the Heads simultaneously, it would have to be the Heads first, right there in the street, and then the Scarlets.
I gave the order to charge.
It was very exciting. I had, well, an erection. I don't know why.
We met in the middle of the street. Intelligence had told me the Heads had a very good armory, but I didn't expect the kind of opposition we got from them. Their weaponry was very sophisticated. I'd always suspected they were brothers with a clique in Calm's Point, and the stuff they were using against us now led me to believe they were being supplied by this other clique. Otherwise, where would they have got the stuff they threw at us? In spite of their heavy hardware, though, we had them outnumbered, and in the first three minutes after we joined battle, there must've been six or seven of them laying in the middle of the street, bleeding all over their nice white coats.
But I should've realized something was wrong from the minute The Bullet spotted them. There weren't enough of them. If this was a full-scale raid on the Scarlet clubhouse, why were the Heads throwing only a dozen men at them? We ourselves had come down the street with thirty-four guys. Was it possible the Heads had underestimated the strength of the Scarlets? No, it wasn't possible. Their intelligence was as good as ours, and they must've known the Scarlets were a very strong club. So why the small attack force?
The answer to that one came as a total surprise, though now that I think of it, it was really very good military planning. I always give credit where credit is due, and if the Heads planned a good attack, I'll say so, plain and honest. It was a flanking attack, you see. They were going to hit the building from two sides. The first group, the one we met in the street on Gateside Avenue, was obviously supposed to go in the front door of the building. The second group, the one that came down Delaney Street, was I guess, supposed to go in the side basement door to the building. But what happened was they saw us engaged with the main attack force on Gateside, and the next thing you knew we were caught in a pincers, fighting with the Gateside group in front of us and the Delaney group behind us. It was bad news. There was only one thing we could do, and even that was risky, but we did it, anyway. We ran in the building.
The Bullet and six of our guys covered our rear, holing up in the entryway and firing out into the street, keeping the Heads away while the rest of us charged up the stairs to get the Scarlets. The first Scarlet we met was a little nigger punk named Jeremy Atkins, who was a junior and the brother of Lewis Atkins, who we had done away with the week before. He was coming down the stairs, probably to see what all the noise was in the street outside, and Little Anthony cut him down with three fast shots, and he came falling headfirst down the stairs, and we all got out of the way to let him go by, and Doc gave him a kick in the ribs when he come to a stop about ten steps from the bottom.