Anyway, it was Mace who brung the newspaper to me on Wednesday and read about the guy the fuzz had picked up, and how he was maybe linked some way to the bearded guy Chingo and the raiders had shot. The newspaper story told who the dead guy was, some cat named Andrew Kingsley, who had just come in from California a little while ago. He should have stood where he was. It didn't say what he'd been doing in that spic pad, and it also didn't say who the spies were. That figured. If I knew anything about the Death's Heads (man, that name really kills me!), it was that they weren't about to run to the fuzz and identify none of their people. Around here, the fuzz are trouble, no matter which end of the stick you're holding. You call them in because somebody busted your legs with a baseball bat, and next thing you know, you're the one being sent to jail for bleeding on the sidewalk. The Heads knew better than to tell the cops it was their president who got shot and dumped in the ditch. The cops would have to find that out for themselves, and according to the story Mace read me from the newspaper, they weren't doing such a hot job of it. And the Scarlets wouldn't tell the cops nothing neither. If they did anything at all, it would be they'd try to settle the score. Which is why we were being very careful those first few days after the hit.
We got a very tight security system around here, anyway. We don't let nobody near us. We got sentries posted on all the rooftops and on all the street corners. There ain't nobody who can come anywhere close to the clubhouse without us knowing it way in advance. Even before Mace knocked on the door and brought me the newspaper, I knew he was on the way. I don't trust nobody, not even Mace. All the members got orders that whoever's approaching the clubhouse, even if it's another member, the president's got to know about it. Four minutes before Mace knocked on the door, a runner came and told me he was on the way up. That's the way I like it.
The clubhouse is on the third floor of this abandoned building on 57th. We got it painted in these nice Day-Glo colors in a sort of abstract design, you know? The Bullet, aside from being an experienced combat trooper, is also quite an artist. He designed the pictures on the walls, and he painted them with the help of some of the younger kids in the clique. We don't have no obscene pictures on our walls, like some of the other cliques have. No pictures of naked women, nothing like that. I don't go for that kind of stuff, and I made it clear to the members that I won't tolerate nothing like that around the clubhouse. Sex is a private thing you do in private with the person you love. I don't go for dirty actions, and I don't go for dirty talk, either. One of our rules is no profanity. You hear me say a dirty word in all the time I've been talking to you? You bet you didn't. I pride myself on that. Oh, sure, I know it's easier to express yourself in language that's not correct. But I've never been a person who took the easy road. I don't go looking to do things the hard way, but I guess it's my nature to make sure things come out right, you know? And that goes for language, too. And that's why I never swear, I never even say 'hell' or 'damn,' I'm just saying them now as an example. And I don't allow none of the people around me to use profanity neither. Sure, I could be permissive about it, let the guys say whatever they want to, let them bring in the chicks and ball them right in the clubhouse, let them smoke pot, all of that. But I don't believe in it. It's not right, none of them things are right.
I know there's been commissions formed and they gave reports on hash, and they say it don't hurt to smoke it, and it ain't habit-forming, and all that. I don't care what the commissions say. As long as I'm president, I'll listen to my own heart and my own head on what's right and what's wrong. And you can't tell me that these movies they're showing, and these magazines that are on the stands, and these dirty books these guys are writing are right. 'Cause they ain't. They're wrong. The way cursing is wrong. When I was on Whitman's football team, anytime the coach heard anybody say a dirty word, it was eight laps around the field. You ever run eight laps around a football field? You learn not to curse pretty quick.
Mace said the cops - was it you guys? - had picked up a hood named David Harris, who opened fire on them the minute they knocked on the door. He was described as an unemployed laborer with a police record for assault and burglary. What he admitted, after the cops questioned him, was that he had held up a liquor store in Calm's Point the night before, and when they knocked on the door and said it was the police, he figured they were coming to bust him for the armed robbery. Which led them to questioning him about his relationship with this Andrew Kingsley cat, who Chingo and the boys had knocked off together with the Head spic and his girl. Harris said he hardly knew Kingsley from a hole in the wall. He had met him in a bar a week or so ago, and they had got to talking about life on the Coast, where Harris had spent some time - probably in jail - and then Kingsley had asked him up to meet his sister, and that was that. Harris said he didn't get along too hot with Kingsley's sister, who he described as a 'very up-tight lady.' He also said it came as news to him that Kingsley had been found dead in a ditch on the North Side, since Harris (like me) don't read newspapers. It looked good. The cops still didn't know who any of the other people in the ditch were, and they weren't about to find out, either.
But then Midge opened her mouth.
The telephone on Carella's desk rang at two-fifteen on Wednesday afternoon, January 9, the day after they had busted David Harris and charged him with Armed Robbery. The story of his arrest had run in both morning newspapers, and had made headlines in the afternoon tabloid. The pictures of the six unknown victims were still running in all three papers, and Carella was still hoping, but not expecting, that someone would come forward to identify them. Identification of Andrew Kingsley, rather than simplifying matters, had complicated them for Carella and Kling—who until then had suspected the ditch murders were related to organized crime. (You have to start someplace, and organized crime is as good a place as any to leap off from when you find six bodies piled up in an open trench.) Their assumption hadn't been altogether unreasonable; the police all over the city had recently been plagued by an outbreak of shootings, the result of a struggle between old-line white racketeers and upstart blacks and Puerto Ricans.
The cause of this struggle was quite simple. The white hoods had held absolute control over the lucrative narcotics trade for a very long time now, and whereas they did not mind selling dope to blacks and Puerto Ricans, they did not appreciate blacks and Puerto Ricans muscling into their brisk little industry and trying to corner some of the profits for themselves. There is one sure way to discourage free enterprise, and that is to put a bullet in your competitor's nostril. Unidentified bodies kept turning up in deserted alleys or outdoor parking lots or in the trunks of abandoned Plymouths of unknown vintage. And since the underworld (white or black) stringently observed the code of omerta, roughly translated from the Italian as 'Mum's the word, sweetheart,' there was rarely anyone brave or stupid enough to step forward and identify an unknown corpse. The possibility had therefore existed that the six bodies in the ditch were related to the racial narcotics war. But that didn't explain the presence of the bearded white man, Andrew Kingsley, who had no record at all, and who—according to his sister—had been engaged in only noble pursuits on the West Coast. As it turned out, the cops had been thinking correctly in terms of gang warfare, but they were thinking a little big. The call from the girl named Midge caused them to lower their sights a bit.