Her mind exploded with vulgarity, as it always did when she felt cornered.
“For chrissakes, call back after eight o’clock,” she said exasperatedly. “I don’t know what the hell-”
She didn’t get a chance to finish it. A soft click sounded from the other end, and the line went dead. She sat staring at the receiver. She began trembling again. Scare went through her like acid.
“Now what the hell did I say?” she wondered.
It was twenty minutes past six when the telephone rang.
A proper male voice answered. “H. Exodus Clay’s Funeral Parlor. Good evening. May we be of service to you?”
“This is the Pinkerton Detective Agency,” the voice said at the other end. “Leave me speak to the boss.”
It was a Southern voice with a Mississippi accent. It was a white man’s voice.
The attendant said, “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
A moment later Clay’s querulous voice came on the line, “What is it now?”
“This is the Pinkerton Detective Agency,” the voice repeated.
“You said that before,” Clay snapped. “This is my funeral parlor. Now let’s get on.”
“We are sending three men up to your place to guard the ambulance you’re sending for Mister Holmes,” the voice informed him.
During the past hour, the voice had repeated the same words to sixteen other ambulance services and funeral homes in Harlem without the desired result. But this time the voice struck pay dirt.
“It’s not an ambulance I’m sending,” Clay said tartly. “It’s a hearse.”
A chuckle came over the wire. “That’s just the right thing,” the voice said. “What time are you sending it?”
“Casper has arranged for his own guards,” Clay replied with a note of racial pride in his thin, peevish voice. “We’re all local people up here. We don’t need any big-time race-track detectives with machine guns just to go a few blocks down the street. Inform your employers that it’s already covered.”
“That’s mighty fine,” the voice said. “But we’ve been employed by the national party. We’ll cover the coverers.”
“Well, you’d better hurry then. It’ll leave here in half an hour.”
“That’ll work out fine,” the voice said. “We won’t interfere with any of the arrangements; we’ll keep in the background. You don’t even have to mention us.”
“You needn’t worry about that,” Clay said sarcastically. “I don’t get paid to advertise the Pinkertons.”
With that rejoinder he clapped down the receiver.
There was a traffic jam on the Brooklyn Bridge.
A trailer truck had skidded on a spot of slick ice caused by the overheated radiator of a passenger car that had passed a short time previously, and sideswiped a passenger bus.
There were no casualties, but the truck bumper had gored a hole in the side of the bus and it took time to get them apart.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed sat in the stalled line of cars and fumed. They had the feeling that time was rushing past like a maniac with a knife and they were caught barefooted with their hands tied. They couldn’t back out, couldn’t squeeze through; they couldn’t abandon the car on the bridge and walk.
Roman sat in the back in his sailor’s suit, white cap stuck on the back of his head and his manacled hands in his lap.
Grave Digger looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes past six. The snow was coming down.
“I’d rather be bit in the rear by a boa constrictor than sitting here waiting for something to happen, and I can’t even guess what,” he complained bitterly.
“All I’m waiting to happen is for them to get those wrecks apart,” Coffin Ed grated.
It was three minutes past seven when they turned into East 19th Street from Third Avenue and began looking for the house.
They had no trouble finding it. It had a four-story yellow brick-veneer front, with candy-striped awnings at all the upper windows sagging with snow. The first-floor lounge had a wide picture window overlooking a three-foot strip of lawn. The window curtains were a translucent pale-blue silk, behind which the silhouettes of people moved in a frantic saraband. Black steps led up to a door covered with a plate of blackened bronze set in a white frame. In the upper panel was a knocker that looked vaguely obscene; overhead was a carriage lamp.
Coffin Ed drove past and parked three houses beyond. In unison they turned about and looked at Roman.
“We want you to go in that, house back there and ask for Junior Ball,” Grave Digger lisped.
“I didn’t understand you,” Roman said.
“Let me talk,” Coffin Ed said to Grave Digger.
Grave Digger waved him ahead.
Coffin Ed repeated the order.
“Yes, sir,” Roman said, then asked, “What do I say to him if he’s there?”
“He ain’t there,” Coffin Ed said. “He’s dead. They know he’s dead, but you’re not supposed to know. You just got off shipboard and you came looking for him at this address that he gave you last time your ship was in.”
“I’m supposed to be one of those?”
“That’s right.”
“What do I do when they tell me he’s dead?”
“They’re not going to tell you. They’re going to invite you in and ask you to wait; they’ll tell you they expect Junior to arrive any minute.”
“What do I do while I’m waiting?”
“Hell, boy, where have you been all your life? It’s a pansy crib. They’ll find things for you to do.”
“I don’t go for that stuff,” Roman. muttered.
“What kind of square are you? This ain’t the docks. These are high-brows. Who do you think you’re going to find in a hundred-thousand-dollar house a block away from Gramercy Square? They’re going to try to make you, but they’re going to test you first. You just sit there and drink your cocktails and look embarrassed-”
“That ain’t going to be hard.”
“Act like you’re waiting for Junior. Then, after about five minutes, start looking impatient. Let your eyes rove around. Then ask whoever you’re talking to what time will Baron be in.”
“Baron!” Roman sat up straight. “Mister Baron? The man who sold me my car? Is he going to be in there?”
“We don’t know. He might; he might not. If you see him when you go in, you just grab him and yell for help.”
“I won’t need no help,” Roman declared.
“Yes, you will,” Coffin Ed said. “Because we don’t want him hurt. You just grab him and hold on to him and start yelling.”
“What if he tries to draw a pistol on me?” Roman wanted to know.
“If you hold him tight enough he’ll forget it.”
“I’s ready if you is,” Roman said.
“Okay,” Coffin Ed said. “We’re going to back up and park next door. When you hear me blowing on the horn one time long and twice short, you come on out.”
”Yes, sir, but I sure hope to see Mister Baron before that.”
“So do we, so do we,” Coffin Ed said.
Grave Digger leaned over the back of the seat, unlocked the handcuffs about Roman’s wrists and removed them.
“Okay, go ahead,” he said. “Just remember one thing. You might run, but you can’t hide.”
“I ain’t going to run,” Roman said.
They watched him walking in his rolling sailor’s gait back to the bronze door and stand looking at the knocker as though he didn’t know what to do with it. They saw him knock on the door with his knuckles.
“He must have never left his ship,” Coffin Ed observed.
Grave Digger grunted.
They saw the door open; a moment later they saw him go inside; they saw the door close. Coffin Ed started the motor and backed up the car.
Chapter 17
A black Cadillac limousine with scarcely any metal trimmings was parked on 134th Street, a few doors down from Clay’s Funeral Parlor, on the opposite side of the street. I
t might have been a funeral car judging from its somber appearance.
The motor was idling, but it couldn’t be heard. The defroster was on, the lights were off. The windshield wipers clicked back and forth.
George Drake sat behind the wheel, cleaning his fingernails with a tiny, gold-handled penknife. He was an ordinary-looking colored man of indeterminate age. Even the expensive dark clothes he wore looked ordinary on him. His only distinguishing features were his slightly popping eyes. He didn’t look bored; he didn’t look impatient; he didn’t look patient. He looked as though waiting for someone was his job.
Big Six sat beside him, picking his teeth with a worn whalebone toothpick. He looked enormous in a bright-tan belted polo coat and wide-brimmed black velour hat pulled low over his eyes. His pock-marked face looked oversized; he had big gaps between big stained teeth.
A white drunk staggered past in the ankle-deep snow. A dark felt hat, mashed out of shape as though he had stepped on it in the snow, was stuck precariously on the back of his head. Thick, coarse, straight black hair was plastered back from a forehead as low as that of the Missing Link. The blue-white face with its beetle-brows, high cheekbones, coarse features and wide, thin-lipped mouth looked part Indian. A dark blue overcoat smeared with snow on one side flagged open, showing a wrinkled, double-breasted, unstylish blue serge suit.
The drunk stopped suddenly, opened his trousers and began urinating on the right front fender of the Cadillac, teetering back and forth.
Big Six opened the window and said, “Push off, mother-raper. Quit pissing on this car.”
The drunk turned and peered at him through bloodshot black eyes. “I’ll piss on you, black boy,” he muttered in a Southern voice.
“I’m gonna see you do it,” Big Six said, stuck the toothpick in his change pocket and opened the door.
“Let him go on,” George Drake said. “Here comes Jackson down the stairs.”
“I’m gonna flatten him is all,” Big Six said. “Ain’t gonna take a second.”
In the right side mirror, George noticed two colored men coming from beside the house in front of which he was parked. They were carrying battered Gladstone bags like pullman porters on their way to work. They started across the street. The back window of the Cadillac was coated with snow, and he lost them in the rear-view mirror.
“Hurry up, man!” he called just as Big Six reached out a hand to clutch the drunk by the shoulder.
The drunk swung a long arc with his right hand, which he had held out of sight, and plunged the blade of a hunting knife through Big Six’s head. It went in above the left temple, and two inches of the point came out on a direct line above the right temple. Big Six went deaf, dumb and blind, but not unconscious. He teetered slightly and groped about aimlessly like an old blind man.
“Gooooodammmmm!” George Drake said, pushing open the door with his left hand, while reaching inside of his coat for his pistol with his right.
He had his left foot down on the street, buried in the snow, and his left hand gripping the edge of the door for leverage, when a noose was dropped over his head and he was jerked backward. A knee caught him in the back, and he felt as though his spine was broken. His hat fell off. The sap landed right above his left ear, and lights exploded in his head as he lost consciousness.
“Put him in the back,” the white man said from the other side, of the car. “And put the kiesters in the trunk.”
He turned his head, gave a last look at Big Six and forgot him.
Big Six was walking slowly down the sidewalk, dragging his feet in the snow. The wound bled scarcely any; a thin trickle ran down his cheek from where the point of the knife protruded. His eyes were open; his hat was on his head. But for the bone knife-handle sticking from one temple and two inches of blade from the other, he looked like the usual drunk. He was calling silently for George to help him.
The white man got into the back of the car and took hold of the end of the noose. One of the colored men got behind the wheel; the other was at the back, putting away the Gladstone bags.
A shining black hearse backed carefully from the garage beside the funeral parlor. It straightened up and pulled to the curb. A fat black man in a dark chauffeur’s uniform got out and closed the garage door. He looked across the street toward the Cadillac.
“Blink your lights once,” the white man said from the rear.
The driver hit the bright lights for an instant.
Jackson waved his right hand and got into the hearse.
The snowplows hadn’t got into the small side streets, and the hearse made slow progress until it came to Seventh Avenue. The Cadillac followed half a block behind with the lights dimmed.
The white man turned George Drake over on the floor, placed one foot on his back between the shoulder blades, the other on the back of his head, and drew the noose as tight as it would go. He kept it like that while the Cadillac followed down the cleaned traffic lane of Seventh Avenue and turned into 125th Street.
Scores of colored laborers, willing to pick up a few extra bucks on their off day, were shoveling the piles of snow into city dump trucks.
Cars were out again in the cleaned streets, and gay, laughing drunks were bar-hopping. Jokers were chunking tight, loose snowballs at their girl friends, who ran screaming in delight. A mail truck passed, emptying the boxes.
Big Six kept shuffling slowly toward Seventh Avenue with the knife stuck through his head. He passed a young couple. The woman gasped and turned ashy.
“It’s a joke,” the man said knowingly. “You can buy those things in the toy stores. Magical stuff. You stick ’em on each side of your head.”
The woman shuddered. “It ain’t funny,” she said. “A big grown man like him playing with kid stuff.”
He passed a woman with two children, on their way to the movies to see a horror film. The children shrieked. The woman was indignant.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, frightening little children,” she accused.
Big Six kept on slowly, lost to the world. “George!” he was calling silently in the rational part of his mind. “George. The mother-raper stuck me.”
He started across Seventh Avenue. Snow was banked against the curb, and his feet plowed into the snow bank. He slipped but somehow managed not to fall. He got into the traffic lane. He stepped in front of a fast-moving car. Brakes shrieked.
“Drunken idiot!” the driver cried. Then he saw the knife sticking from Big Six’s head.
He jumped from his car, ran forward and took Big Six gently by the arm.
“My God in heaven,” he said.
He was a young colored doctor doing his internship in Brooklyn hospital. They had had a case similar to that a year ago; the other victim had been a colored man, also. The only way to save him was to leave the knife in the wound.
A woman started to get out of the car.
“Dick, can I help?” She had only seen the handle of the knife. She hadn’t seen the blade coming out the other side.
“No-no, don’t come near,” he cautioned. “Drive to the first bar and telephone for an ambulance-better cross over to Small’s; make a U-turn.”
As she drove off, another car with two men stopped. “Need any help?” the driver called.
“Yeah, help me lay this man on the sidewalk. He’s got a knife stuck through his head.”
“Jumping Jesus!” the second occupant exclaimed, opening the far door to get out. “They think of new ways every day.”
Cars were double-parked on Lexington Avenue in front of the hospital, and a large crowd of people milled about on the slushy sidewalks. Photographers and newsmen guarded the front door and the ambulance driveway looking sharply at everyone who left. Somehow word had got out that Casper Holmes was leaving the hospital, and they were determined he wouldn’t get past.
Two prowl cars were parked across the street; uniformed cops stood about, beating their gloved hands together.
The heavy snow drifted down, leaving a mantle o
f white on hats and overcoats and umbrellas.
When the hearse drew up the cops cleared the entrance to the driveway.
A reporter opened the door of the driver’s compartment and flashed a light into Jackson’s face.
“It’s just the chauffeur,” he called over his shoulder to his colleagues; then he asked, “Who are you taking, Jack?”
“The late Mister Clefus Harper, a pneumonia victim,” Jackson replied with a straight face.
“Anybody know a Clefus Harper?” the reporter asked.
No one knew him.
“Don’t let me hold you up, Jack,” he said.
The hearse purred slowly down the driveway toward the back exit.
“Keep on going,” the white man in the rear of the Cadillac limousine said. “They’re going to take a little time to get him out, and we got to get rid of this stiff.”
The driver stepped it up, went past the double-parked cars and crossed 121st Street.
“Is he dead?” his companion asked.
“He ain’t alive,” the white man said as he bent over and began removing the noose from George Drake’s neck.
When he had finished he began emptying all of Drake’s pockets.
“Where we going to dump him?” the driver asked, as they approached 119th Street.
The white man looked about. He was not very familiar with Harlem.
“Turn down this street,” he said. “It looks all right.” The big car floundered in inches of snow.
“Can you get through to Third Avenue?” the white man asked.
“Sure,” the driver said confidently. “A little snow like this won’t stop a Cadillac.”
The white man looked, up and down the street. There was no one in sight. He opened the curb-side door.
“Pull in a little,” he said.
The driver brushed the curb.
The white man rolled the body of George Drake out into the deep snow on the sidewalk. He closed the door and looked back once. The body looked like that of a fallen drunk, only there were no footsteps.
“Step it up,” he said.
Jackson pulled up before the back door of the hospital from which the dead were removed. He was no stranger there.
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