'Steve, this is Dave Murchison on the desk downstairs.'
'Yeah, Dave?' Carella said.
'I got a girl on the line, says she wants to talk to whoever's handling the ditch murders. I guess that's you.'
'Put her on,' Carella said, and moved a pad into place near the telephone.
'Hello?' a girl's voice said. She was either whispering or she had a bad cold, Carella couldn't tell which.
'This is Detective Carella,' he said. 'Can I help you, miss?'
'Detective who?' she whispered.
'Carella. Who's speaking, please?'
'Midge.'
'What's your last name, Midge?"
'Never mind,' the girl said. 'I have to make this fast. I'm alone right now, but they'll be back. If they catch me calling you…'
'Who are you talking about, Midge?'
'The ones who killed those people in the ditch. I didn't know there was a baby involved. The minute Johnny told me there was a baby involved…'
'Johnny who?'
'Never mind. He told me about it even before I seen the pictures in the paper. I told him I was gonna call up and say who done it. He said they would break my arms and legs.'
'Who, Midge?'
'The black man in the ditch was Lewis Atkins, he was president of a club called the Scarlet Avengers. The girl was his wife… Are you listening?'
'I'm listening, Midge,' Carella said.
'It was their baby got killed. That wasn't right. I told Johnny it wasn't right, and he said he'd take it up with the council.'
'What's Johnny's last name?'
'I don't want him to get in trouble,' the girl said. 'He got in trouble once before when he stood up for me. I don't want that to happen again.'
'Who were the other people in the ditch? Can you tell me that?'
'The Spanish guy was president of the Death's Heads. His real name is Eduardo Portoles, but he signs himself Edward the First. The girl, I'm not sure. I think her name was Constantina, but I'm not sure.'
'Who killed them, Midge?'
There was no answer.
'Midge, where are you calling from?'
There was still no answer. Carella realized all at once that the line was dead. He had not heard the click of a receiver being replaced on its cradle. Someone had either cut the wire or yanked the phone from the wall.
We had trouble with Johnny and his chick before, so this was nothing new. Only this time it was a little more serious.
The first trouble with them was when Midge got pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. I know abortions are legal in this state, but to me that's murder. Midge belonged to our women's auxiliary, and that made her a member of the clique, and that meant she abided by the rules, and the rules say no killing except in self-defense. I want to make that clear. All the stuff that happened with the Scarlets and the Heads, and all the stuff that happened later, was in self-defense. It was done for the general good of the members. To protect the clique. What we done to Midge was also done to protect the clique. We went easy on her because she's a girl.
The first static was about the abortion, back in April of last year, long before I was re-elected. I got nothing to say about what goes on personally between the members and their chicks, so long as there's no public display in the clubhouse. Okay, Johnny should've been more careful, but he wasn't. So Midge got pregnant and she come to me and said she was thinking of going down the clinic and having an abortion. I got to explain this girl Midge. First of all, she's got a big mouth. Not only big, but loud. And she's always on the telephone. I thought I was the world's telephone champ, but Midge has me beat solid when it comes to talking. Anyway, I don't use the phone for common gossip. I'll call somebody to congratulate them, like one of the guys in the clique who done a good job, I'll call to tell him how I appreciate it. Or, like, I used to call the radio stations. This was a couple of months ago, before one of the stations sent a reporter up here to talk to guys on all the clubs, and he talked to every one of the clubs but us. So naturally they bad-mouthed us, when they didn't know a thing about how we operate or what we're trying to do. I don't call the radio stations no more, but I used to call disc jockeys, you know, and tell them I was president of a club up in Riverhead, and we were listening to his show right that minute and thought he was doing a great job, and would he play this or that song for us? It was friendly, you know? Now I got nothing to do with those radio guys, not since they started saying bad things about us. And, I'll tell you, they better watch out what they say in the future. I mean, if this thing gets in the papers - you think it'll get in the papers? - they better watch what they say. We got plenty of members. Plenty.
But Midge used to get on that phone just for gossip. Like something would happen, we'd do something, and right away she was on the hot line spreading it to the other girls in the clique. She was a big mouth, plain and simple. And she was always hugging everybody, throwing her arms around them the minute they came through the door, and calling everybody 'Sweetheart,' or 'Honey,' or 'Darling.' It was disgusting. I never liked that chick. I put up with her only because I thought Johnny was a valuable man. We should have been stricter with her, and maybe we should've taken care of him at the same time. Saved ourselves a lot of headaches later on. But nobody's perfect. I try to handle things as they come up, and they don't always come up according to the game plan. That's the time to weave and dodge and figure things out on your feet. That's the time it pays to be the coolest man around, no panic.
I told her, last April, no abortion. She wanted to know what she was supposed to do. She was only fifteen years old, she didn't want no kid, and Johnny's mother wouldn't let them get married. I told her put the kid up for adoption. I also told her she better go buy some pills or a diaphragm or a coil or whatever (which wasn't talking dirty, I was talking to her like a doctor or a priest) and avoid that kind of accident in the future. She had the baby in November, and the adoption people took it away without her ever seeing it. She didn't even know whether it was a boy or a girl. Big mouth, of course, went all over the neighborhood saying I had stolen her baby from her. I almost rapped her in the mouth when word got back to me. Johnny told me to forgive her because she was a very excitable type and them taking the baby away from her like that was very emotionally upsetting. I told Johnny it was her who wanted to kill the baby in the first place, so what was she yelling about now? Johnny said he would talk to her and calm her down. But, man, when you got a big mouth like Midge, there's nothing you can do with her except take care of her.
Which is what we done when we found her on the telephone.
It was Johnny, you know, who raised all the fuss in the council when he found out Chingo had accidentally killed the baby. It later turned out that Johnny was only saying what Midge told him to say. Like, you know, there was a whole psychological thing going on there, and it traced right back to her having put up her own baby for adoption. Don't ask me about it because I don't understand none of this psychological stuff too good. There was one time when I got in trouble, I was forced to go see a shrink because I was on probation, you know? Man, I didn't learn nothing from that guy. Later on, when I was first nominated for president of the clique, somebody raised the idea - like a smear tactic, right? - that I had been seeing this shrink, and maybe I wasn't qualified to be president, and all that. Like a president is supposed to make quick, cool decisions and not be unbalanced, and this guy who raised the idea (I forget his name, he moved to Chicago with his mother) said like maybe I was crazy because I had been seeing this shrink to satisfy my probation officer. I won the election anyway. And I got re-elected, too.