The detective and his witness got out in front of the Headquarters Annex, a loft building across the street from the domed headquarters building.
Coffin Ed leaned out of the window and said, “We’ll be waiting for you, lover.”
By the time they got back uptown, the windshield was frosted over with a quarter-inch coating of ice. Approaching headlights resembled hazy spectrums coming out of the sea.
They had a new dent in their right fender and a claim against their insurance company from the irate owner of a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce whom they had attempted to pass on a stretch of slick ice just north of the U.N. Building.
Coffin Ed chuckled. “He was mad, wasn’t he.”
“Can you blame him?” Grave Digger said. “He felt the same as Queen Elizabeth would if we tramped into Buckingham Palace with muddy feet.”
“Why don’t you turn off that heater? You’ve said yourself it don’t make nothing but ice.”
“What, and catch pneumonia!”
They had been tippling a bottle of bourbon, and Grave Digger felt sort of witty.
“Anyway, you might slow down if you can’t see,” Coffin Ed said.
“It’s nights like this that cause wars,” Grave Digger philosophized without slacking speed.
“How so?”
“Increases the population. Then when you get enough prime males they start fighting to kill them off.”
“Look out for that garbage truck!” Coffin Ed cried as they turned on two wheels into 125th Street.
“Is that what that was?” Grave Digger asked.
It was past three o’clock. They worked a special detail from eight until four, and this was the hour they usually contacted stool pigeons.
But tonight even stool pigeons had gone under cover. The 125th Street railroad station was closed and locked, and next door the all-night cafeteria was roped off except for a few tables at the front, occupied by bums clinging to bone-dry coffee cups and keeping one foot moving to prove they weren’t asleep.
“Going back to the case, or rather cases-the trouble with these people is they lie for kicks,” Grave Digger said seriously.
“They want to be treated rough; brings out the female in them,” Coffin Ed agreed.
“But not too rough; they don’t want to lose any teeth.”
“That’s how we’re going to get them,” Coffin Ed summed up.
Lieutenant Anderson was waiting for them. He had taken over the captain’s office, and was mulling over reports.
He greeted them, as they came in bunched up and ashy from cold, with: “We got a line on the private eye who was killed. Paul Zalkin.”
Coffin Ed backed up against the radiator, and Grave Digger perched a ham on the edge of the desk. The rough whisky humor was knocked out of them, and they looked serious and intent.
“Casper talk?” Grave Digger asked.
“No, he’s still in a coma. But Lieutenant Brogan got through to the Pinkerton Agency and got a fill-in on Zalkin’s assignment. The secretary of the national committee of Holmes’ party stopped by his office earlier last night and left him fifty grand in cash, for organizational expenses for the presidential election this fall. Holmes hinted that he might take the money home with him rather than leave it in his office safe over the weekend. You know he lives in one of those old apartment houses on 110th Street, overlooking Central Park.”
“We know where he lives,” Coffin Ed said.
“Well, the secretary got to thinking about it after he had left, so he called the Pinkerton Agency and asked them to send a man up to cover Holmes on his way home. But he didn’t want Holmes to think he was spying on him, so he asked that the man keep out of sight. That’s how come Zalkin was there when the heist was staged.”
“How long was it before the secretary left Casper?” Grave Digger asked, frowning with an idea.
“The agency got the call at ten-twenty o’clock.”
“Then somebody knew about the payoff beforehand,” Grave Digger said. “You can’t organize a heist like that in that length of time.”
“Not even in a day,” Coffin Ed said. “These men were pros; and you can’t get pros like ordering groceries. They might have had their uniforms, but they’d have to lift a car-”
“It hasn’t even been reported as stolen yet,” Anderson cut in.
“I got a notion these guns were from out of town,” Coffin Ed went on. “No local hoods would choose 125th Street for a caper like that. Not that block of 125th Street. They couldn’t depend on the weather to drive the ground-hogs in their holes; and normally on a Saturday night that block, with all its bars and restaurants, would be jumping with pedestrians. They had to be somebody who didn’t know this.”
“That doesn’t help us much,” Anderson said. “If they’re from out of town, they’re long gone by now.”
“Maybe,” Grave Digger said. “Maybe not. If it wasn’t for this hit-and-run business, I might buy it.”
Anderson gave him a startled look.
“What the hell, Jones; you can’t think there’s a tie-in.”
Coffin Ed grunted.
“Who knows,” Grave Digger said. “There is something specially vicious about both those capers, and there ain’t that many vicious people running loose in Harlem on a night as cold as this.”
“My God, man, you can’t think that hit-and-run was done deliberately.”
“And then in both instances pansies were croaked,” Grave Digger went on. “Accidents just don’t happen to those people like that.”
“The hit-and-run driver couldn’t have possibly known his victim was a man,” Anderson argued.
“Not unless he knew who he was and what racket he was pulling,” Grave Digger said.
“What racket was he pulling?”
“Don’t ask me. It’s just a feeling I got.”
“Hell, man, you’re going mystical on me,” Anderson said. “How about you, Johnson. Do you go along with that?”
“Yep,” Coffin Ed said. “Me and Digger have been drinking out the same bottle.”
“Well, before you get too drunk with that mysticism, let me fill you in with the latest facts. The two patrolmen, Stick and Price, who thought it was a joke to report they’d been knocked down by a homemade flying saucer, have admitted they were hit by a run-away automobile wheel coming down Convent Avenue. Does that give you any ideas?”
Grave Digger looked at his watch. It said five minutes to four.
“Not any that won’t keep until tomorrow,” he said. “If I start talking to my old lady about automobile tires, as fat as she’s getting, I’m subject to losing my happy home.”
Chapter 8
When Roman came to the castle standing in the fork, where St. Nicholas Place branches off from St. Nicholas Avenue, he stood on the brake.
Sassafras sailed headfirst into the windshield, and Mister Baron’s unconscious figure rolled off the back seat and plumped onto the floor.
“Which way did they go?” Roman asked, reaching for the. 45 revolver that lay on the seat between them.
Sassafras straightened up, rubbing her forehead, and turned on him angrily. “You asking me? I ain’t seen which way they went. They might have went downtown for all I know.”
“I seen them turn uptown,” he argued, his cocked gray eyes seeming to peer down both streets at once.
“Well, make up your mind,” she said in her high, keening voice. “They didn’t go into the castle, that’s for sure. And you can’t set here in the middle of the street all night.”
“I wish I had the mother-raper who built that castle there in the middle of Harlem,” Roman said as though it were responsible for his losing sight of the Cadillac.
“Well, you ain’t got him, and you better get out the middle of the street before someone comes along and claims you has stolen this Buick.”
“We has, ain’t we?” Roman said.
The bump had revived Mister Baron, and they could hear him groaning down on the floor behind them. “
Oh God… Oh Jesus Christ… Those dirty bastards…”
Roman slipped the car in gear and drove slowly down between the rows of brick-fronted apartment buildings on St. Nicholas Place.
The castle, somebody’s brainstorm at the turn of the century, stood at 149th Street; above were the better-class residences for the colored people of Harlem. Roman was unfamiliar with this part of town, and he didn’t know which way to turn.
Mister Baron gripped the back of the front seat and pulled himself to his knees. His long, wavy hair hung down over his forehead; his eyes rolled loosely in their sockets.
“Let me out,” he said, moaning. “I’m going to be sick.”
Roman stopped the car in front of a red brick building with a fluted facade. Big new cars lined the curbs.
“Shut up!” he said, “if it hadn’t been for you, I never would have run off after hitting that old lady.”
Mister Baron’s mouth ballooned, but he held it back, “I’m going to be sick in the car,” he blubbered.
“Let him out,” Sassafras said. “If you’d listened to me, none of this would have happened.”
“Get out, man,” Roman shouted. “You want me to lift you?”
Mister Baron opened the curbside door and polled to his feet. He staggered groggily toward a lamppost. Roman jumped from the other side and followed him.
Mister Baron clung to the post and heaved. Steam rose as though he were spouting boiling water. Roman backed away.
“Jesus Christ in heaven,” Mister Baron moaned.
Roman let him finish and clutched him by the arm. Mister Baron tried weakly to free himself.
“Let me go-I got to make a phone call,” he said.
“You ain’t going nowhere until I find my car,” Roman muttered, pushing him toward the Buick.
Mister Baron pulled back, but he could scarcely stand. His head was filled with shooting pains, and his vision wouldn’t focus. “Fool, how can I help you find your car if you won’t let me telephone? I want to call the police and report that it’s been stolen.” His voice sounded desperate.
“Naw, you don’t; you ain’t telling the police nothing,” Roman said, pushing him into the back of the car and slamming the door. He went around the car and climbed back beneath the wheel. “You think I want to get arrested?”
“Those weren’t real police, you idiot,” Mister Baron said.
“I know they weren’t police. You think I’m a fool? But what am I going to tell the sure enough police about hitting that old lady?”
“You didn’t hurt that old lady. I looked back once when you were driving off and saw her getting up.”
Roman stared at Mister Baron while that sunk in. Sassafras turned about to look at Mister Baron, too. The two of them, suddenly staring and immobile-he with his Davy Crockett coonskin cap and she with the tasseled red knitted cap topping her long, black face-looked like people from another world.
“You knew I didn’t hurt her, and you kept egging me to run away.” Roman’s thick Southern voice sounded dangerous.
Mister Baron fidgeted nervously. “I was going to stop you, but before I could say anything those bandits drove up and took advantage of the situation.”
“How do I know you ain’t in with ’em?”
“What for?”
“They stole my car. How do I know you ain’t had ’em do it?”
“You’re a fool,” Mister Baron cried.
“He ain’t such a fool,” Sassafras said.
“Fool or not, I’m going to hold on to you until I find my car,” Roman told Mister Baron. “And, if I don’t find it, I’m going to take my money ’way from you.”
Mister Baron started laughing hysterically. “Go ahead and take it. Search me. Beat me up. You’re big and strong.”
“I worked a whole year for that money.”
“You worked a whole year. And you saved up sixty-five hundred dollars-”
“That’s nearmost every penny I made. I went without eating to save that money.”
“So you could buy a Cadillac. You weren’t satisfied with an ordinary Cadillac. You had to buy a solid gold Cadillac. And I’m the-the-I’m the one who sold it to you. For a thousand dollars less than list price. Ha ha ha! You had it twenty minutes and let somebody steal it-”
“What’s the matter with you, man? You going crazy?”
“Now you want your money back from me. Ha ha ha! Go ahead and start hitting me. Take it out of my skin. If that don’t satisfy you, throw me down and rape me.”
“Look out now, I don’t go for that stuff.”
“You don’t go for that stuff. You goddam chicken-crap square.”
“You’re going to make me hit you.”
“Hit me! Come on and hit me.” Mister Baron thrust his womanish face toward Roman’s lowering scowl. “See if you can knock sixty-five hundred dollars out of me.”
“I don’t have to. I can just throw you down and take it.”
“Throw me down and take it! Wouldn’t I love that!”
Sassafras put in her bit. “You ain’t going to love what he’s going to take ’cause it’s just going to be money.”
“Goddammit, where were you two squares when those bandits knocked me out and robbed me?” Mister Baron asked.
“Knocked you out?” Roman said stupidly.
“Is that what was the matter with you?” Sassafras echoed.
“And they robbed you? Of my money?”
“It was my money,” Mister Baron corrected. “The car was yours, and the money was mine.”
“Jesus Christ,” Roman said. “They took the car and the money.”
“That’s right, square. Are you going to let me go and make that phone call now?”
“Naw, I ain’t. I going to take you out and search you. I might be a square, but I ain’t trusted you from the start.”
“That’s fine,” Mister Baron said, and started to get out onto the sidewalk.
But Roman reached back, grabbed him and forced him out into the street. Then he got out and started shaking him down.
“Be careful, Roman,” Sassafras said. “Somebody might come by here and think you is robbing him.”
“Let ’em think what they want,” Roman said, turning Mister Baron’s pockets inside out.
“Do you want me to undress?” Mister Baron asked.
Roman finished with his pockets and felt through his clothes; then ran his hands over Mister Baron’s body, up and down his legs and underneath his arms.
“He ain’t got it on him,” he conceded.
But he wasn’t satisfied. He searched the back of the Buick.
“It ain’t there, either.” He took off his coonskin cap and rubbed his short, curly hair back and forth. “If I catch those mother-rapers I going to kill ’em,” he said.
“Let him telephone,” Sassafras said. “He said you ain’t hurt the old lady, and I is ready to swear you ain’t even hit her.”
Roman stood in the street, thinking it over. Mister Baron stood beside him, watching his expression.
“All right, get in the car,” Roman said.
Mister Baron got back into the car.
Roman began talking through the window. “You know this neighborhood-”
“Get in the car yourself,” Sassafras said.
He got back into the front seat and continued addressing Mister Baron. “Where would they likely go with my car? It ain’t like as if they could hide it.”
“God only knows,” Mister Baron said. “Let the police find it; that’s what they get paid for.”
“Let me give it some thought,” Roman said.
“How much thought you going to give it?” Sassafras said.
“I tell you what,” Roman said. “You go and phone the police and tell ’em it’s your car. Then, if they find it, I’ll show ’em my bill of sale.”
“That’s fine,” Mister Baron said. “Can I get out now?”
“Naw, you can’t get out now. I’m going to take you to a telephone, and when you get t
hrough talking to the police we’re going to keep on looking ourselves. And I ain’t going to let you go until somebody finds it.”
“All right,” Mister Baron said. “Just as you say.”
“Where is there a telephone?”
“Drive down the street to Bowman’s Bar.”
He drove down to the end of St. Nicholas Place. Edgecombe Drive circles in along the ridge of the embankment overlooking Broadhurst Avenue and the Harlem River valley, and cuts off St. Nicholas Place at the 155th Street Bridge. Below, to one side of the bridge, is the old abandoned Heaven of Father Divine with the faded white letters of the word PEACE on both sides of the gabled roof. Beyond, on the river bank, is the shack where the hood threw acid into Coffin Ed’s face that night three years ago, when he and Grave Digger closed in on their gold-mine pitch.
One side of Bowman’s was a bar, the other a restaurant. Next to the restaurant was a barbershop; up over the bar was a dance hall. All of them were open; a crap game was going in back of the barbershop, a club dance in the hail upstairs. But not a soul was in sight. There was nothing in the street but the cold, dark air.
Roman double-parked before the plate-glass front of the bar. Venetian blinds closed off the interior.
“You go with him, Sassy,” he said. “Don’t let him try to get away with nothing.”
“Get away with what?” Mister Baron said.
“Anything,” Roman said.
Sassafras accompanied Mister Baron into the bar. Roman couldn’t tell which one of them swished the more. He was looking through the right side window, watching them, when suddenly he noticed two bullet holes in the window. He had been in the Korean war and learned the meaning of the sudden appearance of bullet holes. He thought some one was shooting at him, and he ducked down on the seat and grabbed his pistol. He lay there for a moment, listening. He didn’t hear anything, so he peered cautiously over the ledge of the door. No one was in sight. He straightened up slowly, holding the pistol ready to shoot if an enemy appeared. None appeared. He looked at the bullet holes more closely and decided they had been there all along. He felt sheepish.
It occurred to him that some one in the car had been in a gunfight. No doubt those phony cops. He turned about to examine the other side to see where the bullets had gone. There were two holes about a foot apart in the ceiling fabric above his head. He got out and looked at the top. The bullets had dented it but hadn’t penetrated. They must be in the lining of the ceiling, he thought.
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