"How long have you been in this city?" Hernandez asked.
The boy shrugged and turned to his mother. "Mama?"
"He's a year now," she said. "We took the girl over first. His sister. Alfredo we left with his grandmother in San Juan. A year ago, we could afford to bring him here, too."
"Where's the girl now? Your daughter?"
"She .belongs to the Girl Scouts. Today, they went on a picnic. Honeyside Beach, you know that?"
"Yes," Hernandez said. "You like this city, Alfredo?"
"Sure. I come from La Perla, thass where my gran'mudder lives. La Perla, thass a big fanguito in San Juan. A slom, you know? Shacks."
"I know La Perla."
"It means The Pearl, but thass jus' a joke, you know? It's not sush a pearl. Here iss better. Not so poor, you know? There, it iss all dirty an' mud, an' iss poor all the time. Here iss better." He paused. "But what can you do here?"
"You can do a lot here, Alfredo."
"Yeah? You go outside the neighborhood, they call you 'spic.' It's my fault I cann speak English so good? How I'm spose to learn? There's only one teacher in all my high school who speaks Spanish!"
"Others have learned English, Alfredo."
"Sure, I know. I'm tryin', ain' I? I do pretty good, don't I?"
"You do fine."
"Still..."
"Still what?"
"Am I ... am I spose to join a gang or somethin'?"
"Do you belong to a gang now, Alfredo?"
"No, I don' belong no gang. In Puerto Rico, we don' have this bullshit, these gangs like here. In Puerto Rico, you can say hello to girls, you can hang aroun' like whoever you want, you know? An' there's none of these dope. The kids here take dope. So I don' wann take dope, an' I don' wann belong to no gang. I ony wann to go my own way, nobody should bodder me."
"So how'd you get into this mess?" Hernandez asked.
"I say hello! I swear to God, all I say is hello! So Zip, he..." Alfredo cut himself short.
"Who?" Hernandez said quickly.
Alfredo was silent for several seconds. Then, as if finally committing himself, he said, "Okay. Zip. He sees me an' he says I bodderin' his girl. He says I don' go to church or they wash me."
"You ever been in trouble with this Zip before?"
"Once or twice. Like he try to shake me down at school, you know? We go the same school."
"What school is that?"
"A trade school. I'm learn a job."
"What kind of job?"
"Automotive. But thass not what I wann to be."
"What do you want to be?"
"I wann study radio. So when I wass in junior high school, I go the adviser, you know? I say, 'I wann study radio.' She tell me I should be an automotive. She says iss better for a Spanish kid. She says iss better opportunity. But I still wann study radio."
"Why don't you tell this to someone at your school?"
"Oh, I don' know. Who's to listen? Sometimes I feel ... I don' know... like as if bein' here I'm jus'... not a real human bein', you know? Like I feel ... secondhand."
Hemandez nodded. "What happened with this Zip? When he tried to shake you down?"
"Oh, I give him my lunch money," Alfredo said. "It wass ony a quarter. I dinn want bad blood with him."
"And that was the extent of it? And you haven't had any trouble with him since that time?"
"Never. Like he's ony new aroun' here, you know? Maybe he lives here fi', six months. He come from somewhere downtown, you know? So I don' bodder with him, I ony want to go my own way, thass all. I don' like this ... I mean ... look, they go aroun' stomping people ... they have these street bops ... what I got to fight for? For what? I'm here this city now, so here should be better, not worse than Puerto Rico. So why I got to bodder with kids like Zip? He thinks to be big is to kill." Alfredo paused and then stared solemnly at Hernandez. "To be big is to live, no?" he asked.
"Yes, Alfredo."
"Sure. But he's leader of the Latin Purples. So I don' belong no gang, no Royal Guardians, no Spanish Dukes, nothin'. So who's to protec' me?"
"I'm to protect you, Alfredo."
"You? What can you do? You tink they afraid of cops? If I don' show in the street, they call me turkey, they say I afraid of them. So den everybody laugh at me. So den how can I walk the street? If I be turkey, how can I walk the street?"
"It's not turkey to want to live, Alfredo. Every man wants to live."
"I tell you the truth, I'm tired," Alfredo said. "I'm tired of walkin' alone. You walk alone, they all pick on you. But I'm spose to join a gang? I'm spose to go aroun' shootin' people?
What for I want to shoot people?"
"Don't leave the apartment today, Alfredo," Hernandez said.
"You'll be safe here. I'll see to that." "And tomorrow?" Alfredo asked. "What about tomorrow?" "We'll see. Maybe this'll all be cleared up by tomorrow." "Will tomorrow be any better?" Alfredo asked. "Tomorrow I'm still here. I'm always here in this neighborhood." He began to weep suddenly and gently. "Always," he said. "Always here. Always."
There were four squad cars in the street outside when Hernandez got downstairs. They formed a loose cordon about the bar called La Gallina, and Hernandez immediately wondered if a Vice Squad raid was in progress. The street was filled with people who seemed to gather immediately at the sign of any excitement, who stood speculating in small knots outside the barrier formed by the squad cars on either end of the bar. Hernandez pushed his way through the crowd, saw that Parker was standing and talking to Lieutenant Byrnes and Steve Carella, who stood leaning against a fender of one of the squad cars. His first thought was Who's minding the store? and he realized instantly that this was no vice raid, that something big must have happened. Quickly, he walked to where the other detectives were standing.
"When do we start, Lieutenant?" Parker asked. There was a glow in Parker's eyes. He reminded Hernandez of a Marine who had been in his outfit. The guy's name had been Ray Walters, and he had joined the company on the day before the Iwo Jima landings. He hated the Japanese, and he couldn't wait for the landings to begin. He was the first man out of the landing barge, his eyes glowing, a tight grim smile on his mouth. The smile was still there when the Jap bullet took him between the eyes.
"We're getting cars on the next block," Byrnes said, "so we'll have radio contact with the men there. We'll start as soon as they're ready. This isn't going to be a picnic. He said we wouldn't take him alive."
"Are we sure it's him?" Parker asked.
"Who knows? We got a telephone tip. If it is him, we can't take any chances."
A woman came out of the tenement doorway to the left of La Gallina. She was carrying a baby in one arm and a bird cage in the other. A blue parakeet fluttered wildly about the cage. The woman came off the stoop, glancing over her shoulder to the windows above La Gallina. She seemed to sense that she was a star performer stepping into the spotlight and that an impatient audience was waiting for the one line she had to deliver, a line which would suddenly solve and resolve doubts and uncertainties which would have been mounting ever since the curtain rose. She stopped in the middle of the street, faced the crowd that milled restlessly beyond the squad cars and, in her loudest voice, shouted, "Ees Pepe! Ees Pepe Miranda up there!" and then she extended the bird cage, pointing with it to the first-floor windows while the bird fluttered and screamed against the brass bars.
"Come on, lady," a patrolman said, "before you stop a bullet."
The woman rushed into the crowd where the whisper had already gone up, a confirming whisper passed from mouth to mouth, accompanied by a knowledgeable shaking and nodding of heads, "Pepe Miranda, Pepe Miranda, Pepe Miranda."
"Is that what this is?" Hernandez asked Byrnes.
"It looks that way, Frankie," Byrnes said.
"Who called in the tip?"
"Don't know," Carella said. "He gave the info and then hung up."