“I dyed myself. The cops is looking for me.”
“Git out of here, then,” Daddy Haddy said in alarm. “You want to get me knocked off?”
“Ain’t nobody seen me come in here, and you seen for yourself that don’t nobody know me,” Pinky argued.
“Well, say what you want and then beat it,” Daddy Haddy conceded grudgingly. “The way that dye is running you ain’t going to be blue for long.”
“All I want you to do is send Wop up to the corner of 145th Street to look out for a African and warn him not to go back home ’cause the police is looking for him.”
“Umph!” Daddy Haddy grunted. “How he going to know a African from anybody else?”
“This African don’t look like nobody else. He wear a white head rag and a Mother Hubbard dress in four different colors over his pants.”
“What’s he done?”
“He ain’t done nothing. That’s how he dress all the time.”
“I mean done for the police to be looking for him.”
“How I know what he’s done,” Pinky whined irritably. “I just don’t want him to get caught yet.”
“Besides which, Wop is high,” Daddy Haddy said. “He’s so high everything looks like four colors to him and he’s liable to stop some old woman, thinking she’s the African.”
“I thought you was my friend,” Pinky whined.
The old man looked at his purple-dyed face knotting up and gave the matter a second thought.
“Wop!” he shouted.
A coal-black boy, wafer thin, with a long egg-shaped head and slanting eyes, came in from the back room. He wore the white T-shirt, blue jeans and canvas sneakers of any other black boy his age in Harlem. The difference was he had long, straight black hair and there were no whites to his obsidian eyes.
“What you want?” he asked in a gruff, unpleasant voice.
“You tell him,” Daddy Haddy said.
Pinky gave him the picture.
“What if the ’licemens already got him?” Wop asked.
“Then you hightail it away from there.”
“All right,” Wop said. “Press the skin.”
“I’ll see you tonight at Sister Heavenly’s,” Pinky promised. “If I ain’t there I’ll leave a sawbuck with Uncle Saint.”
“All right, daddy-o,” Wop said. “Don’t make me have to look for you.”
He took a pair of smoked glasses from his blue jeans, fitted them to his head, put both hands into his hip pockets and opened the door with his foot and stepped out into the light.
“Don’t bet too much on him,” Daddy Haddy warned.
“I ain’t,” Pinky said and followed Wop outside.
They went off in opposite directions.
12
“I know she got it,” Uncle Saint muttered to himself as he dug up the half-pint bottle of nitroglycerin he had buried in the garage. “Trying to look so innocent that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Think she can con old Uncle Saint. Long as I has knowed that double-crossing bitch.”
He muttered to himself as he worked. He was in a driving hurry, but he had to be careful with the stuff. Only five minutes had elapsed since Pinky left the house, but there was no telling when Sister Heavenly would return and he had to have it and gone by then.
“Don’t believe any more she’s going down to see Gus off than I believe in Santa Claus,” he muttered. “The truth ain’t in that lying bitch. She’s just as soon gone down to sell me to the police for some more protection as she is to have gone to fence the stuff, whatever it is.”
The nitroglycerin was in a green glass bottle filled to the tip and closed securely with a rubber stopper to make it airtight. He had buried it there fifteen years before when she had started thinking about getting rid of him because one of her lovers had objected to having him around.
“She going to get rid of me all right,” he muttered. “But she going to pay for twenty-five years of service.”
He had wrapped the bottle in a section of rubber inner tube, binding it with a roll of adhesive tape. The ground had hardened during fifteen years and the bottle seemed to have gone in deeper. He dug at first with a spade, measuring the excavation with a wooden folding ruler. He had buried it two feet deep. When he got down to twenty inches he discarded the spade and began digging with a kitchen spatula. But he had to go another ten inches before he scraped the top of the package and it had been slow work with the spatula. Time was passing. Sweat poured from him like showers of rain. He still wore the ancient chauffeur’s uniform and cap and he felt like he was inside a coke oven.
But now he worked very carefully, scraping the dirt from around the rotten package with a kitchen spoon.
Both the tape and the rubber had disintegrated and came away from the bottle like rotten cork. He went to extreme pains not to touch the bottle with the spoon.
“Wouldn’t that bitch be happy?” he muttered. “Come home and find me gone. Wouldn’t even have to bury me. Just have to fan away the dust.”
Finally the green bottle was uncovered. When he lifted it carefully, inch by inch from its resting place, the top of the rubber stopper fell away, but a thin layer remained covering the nitroglycerin. He held his breath until he straightened it right side up, then he gave a deep sigh.
The loaded shotgun lay on the ground beside him. Holding the bottle of nitroglycerin in his right hand, he reached out with his left hand and picked up the shotgun, then got to his feet like a weight lifter arising with two tons of steel.
He didn’t want the nitroglycerin to get in the sunshine so he held it over his heart beneath his coat. Sweat trickled from the band of his chauffeur’s cap and stung his eyes as he picked his way across the uneven surface of the dried-up garden like a tightrope walker crossing Niagara Falls.
When he came to the kitchen door, he propped the shotgun against the wall and opened the door with his right hand, making a complete turn to step into the kitchen to be certain of not bumping the edge of the door with the bottle. Inside he eased the door shut and looked about for a place to set the bottle. The kitchen table looked as safe as anywhere. He placed it on the center of the top of the oilcloth cover.
Now he had to go back to the garage for another package containing an electric drill with a? — inch diamond-pointed bit, a 12-inch length of fuse, and two feet of? — inch rubber tube.
The package was wrapped in a plastic doily and hidden inside of an old tire hanging from the rafters. He had gotten hold of these things eleven years after he had buried the nitroglycerin, during his second serious crisis with Sister Heavenly. That one had resulted from Sister Heavenly’s conclusion that his hanging around was the chief reason she was so unsuccessful in getting a reliable new lover.
He had only left the kitchen for a few minutes, but during his absence the nanny goat had opened the screen door and entered and was in the act of eating the oilcloth table cover. She had eaten a hole several inches deep, pulling the cover toward the edge as she ate. The bottle of nitroglycerin had been moved more than six inches and was perilously nearing the edge, but it still remained upright.
She was just about to take another bite when he cried, “Hah!” She paused and looked at him through her cold yellow eyes, then turned back to continue eating.
He jerked up the muzzle of the shotgun and aimed it at her head. “Git away from there or I’ll blow your mother-raping head off,” he said in a dry, dangerous voice.
Sweat broke out in the palms of his hands, but he didn’t dare shoot.
Slowly the goat turned her head about and looked at him. The goat didn’t know he was scared to shoot. He looked to her like he was going to shoot and she believed him.
Maintaining her dignity, she turned and walked daintily from the kitchen, pushing the door open with her head. And he didn’t dare kick her in the rear.
He moved the bottle of nitroglycerin back to the center of the table and placed the other package beside it. Then he sat on his bunk and pulled out his lockbox, unlock
ed the big padlock, took out his lamp and spoon, and cooked a shot of straight heroin to calm his nerves. His hands were trembling violently and his mouth was working but no sound was issuing forth.
“Ahhhh!” he moaned as he banged himself straight into the vein at the wrist.
He put away his paraphernalia, locked the box and pushed it beneath the bunk, and sat waiting for the drug to take effect.
“How she got it? What I care?” he started muttering again to himself. “That tricky bitch could steal the cross from under Christ without him ever missing it.” He let out a dry cackling laugh. “But old Uncle Saint going to out-trick her.”
By then his hands had steadied and his head was filled with a sense of omniscience. He felt as though he could make a four by two deuces with the first roll of the dice.
He stood up and opened the package, fitted the bit into the electric drill. Holding it in his right hand, he stepped over to the bunk and retrieved his shotgun with his left hand, and went into Sister Heavenly’s bedroom.
He placed the shotgun on the floor in front of the chest of drawers, then unplugged the cord to the bed lamp to plug in the cord to his drill.
The outside lock didn’t give him any trouble. He bored a series of holes around it until the flap fell forward. Then he began drilling a hole into the safe about an inch to the right of the dial. The hard safe-steel didn’t give like butter; it had almost worn the diamond point from the bit before it broke through.
Now came the ticklish part. He inserted the? — inch tube into the? — inch hole until it struck bottom inside of the door. More than a foot hung out. He cut it off so that only an inch protruded. Then he made a funnel out of a sheet of white writing paper and fitted the small end into the rubber tube.
He went back to the kitchen and picked up the bottle of nitroglycerin and took it into the bedroom. With the end of a safety pin he fished out the thin layer of rubber in the neck of the bottle. With infinite precaution, holding his breath all the while, he emptied the bottle into the funnel, pouring in a thin steady stream. When it was finished he stood the empty bottle on the floor and let out his breath in a long heartfelt sigh.
Now he began feeling elated. He had it made now. He removed the funnel and fitted the fuse into the end of the rubber tube. He started to gather up the drill and bit and the empty bottle, but then he thought, “What the hell for?”
He picked up his loaded shotgun and started to strike a match. He heard someone at the kitchen door. He swung the shotgun around and cocked both barrels and stepped into the kitchen. But it was only the nanny goat trying to get back inside. In a sudden squall of rage, he reversed the gun and started to club her across the head. But he was struck by a sudden idea.
“You want to come in, come on in,” he muttered and opened the door wide for her to enter.
She stared at him appraisingly, then came inside slowly and looked around as though she had never been there before.
He chuckled evilly as he returned to the bedroom and struck the match. The goat followed him out of curiosity and was bending her neck to peer around his leg when he lit the fuse. He hadn’t seen the goat follow him into the bedroom. The instant the fuse began to burn he wheeled about and started to run. The goat thought he was after her and wheeled about to run also. But she wheeled the wrong way, and he didn’t see her until it was too late. He tripped over her and fell face forward toward the floor.
“Goat, beware!” he cried as he was falling.
He had forgotten to uncock the shotgun, which he still held with the butt forward as when he had intended clubbing her in the head.
The butt struck the floor and both barrels went off. The heavy charge of buckshot struck the front of the safe, behind which was one-half pint of nitroglycerin.
Strangely enough, the house disintegrated in only three directions — forward, backward and upward. The front went out across the street, and such items as the bed, tables, chest of drawers and a handpainted enamel chamber pot crashed into the front of the neighbor’s house. Sister Heavenly’s clothes, some of which dated back to the 1920s, were strewn over the street like a weird coverlet of many colors. The back of the house, along with the kitchen stove, refrigerator, table and chairs, Uncle Saint’s bunk and lockbox, crockery and kitchen utensils, went over the back fence into the vacant lot. Afterwards the hoboes who camped out in that section prepared their Mulligan stews in unheard-of luxury for months to come. The corrugated iron garage was moved in one piece a hundred feet away, leaving the Lincoln Continental standing naked in the sunshine. While the top of the house, attic included, along with the old upright piano, Sister Heavenly’s throne and souvenir trunk, sailed straight up into the air, and long after the sound of the blast had died away the piano could be heard playing up there all alone.
The outer door of the safe was blown off and went out the back way along with the kitchen stove. The steel inner door was punctured like a blown-up paper sack hit by a hard fist, and the safe proper went out the front. Scraps of hundred-dollar bills floated in the air like green leaves in a hurricane. Later in the day, people were picking them up as far as ten blocks away and some of the neighbors spent all winter trying to fit the pieces together.
But the floor of the house remained intact. It had been swept clean of every loose scrap, every pin and needle, every particle of dust, but the smooth surface of the wood and linoleum went undamaged.
It was hard to determine afterwards which way Uncle Saint and the nanny goat went, but whichever way they went, they went together, because the two assistants from the Medical Examiner’s Office of Bronx County couldn’t distinguish the bits of goat meat from the bits of Uncle Saint’s meat, which was all there was left for them to work on.
The trouble was, Uncle Saint had never blown a safe before. One-fifth of the nitro would have blown the safe without taking him and the house along with it.
13
Sister Heavenly figured there was more than one way to skin a cat. If Pinky didn’t show up soon, she was going to trick Uncle Saint into making like he had found the stuff, and force Pinky to show his hand.
Then she heard the shots. Nothing sounds like pistol shots but pistol shots. She had heard too many of them to be mistaken.
She sat up on the park bench across from Riverside Church and screwed her head around.
Next she heard the screaming.
In the back of her old jaded mind she thought cynically that the sequence was logical — when men shot off pistols, women screamed.
But the front of her mind was alive with conjectures. If anyone else got killed the stuff was going to get so hot it couldn’t be touched, she thought.
Then she saw two men come quickly from the apartment house. It was quite a distance to see faces distinctly and both wore their hats pulled low over their eyes, but she knew she’d never forget them.
One was a fat man, definitely fat, with a round greasy face but fair-skinned. His shoulders were broad and he looked as though he might be strong. He wore a dark blue Dacron single-breasted suit. He had the other man by the arm and seemed to be pushing him along.
The other man was thin with a too-white, haggard face and dark circles about his eyes. Even from that distance she made him as a junkie. He wore a light gray summer suit and was shaking as though he had a chill.
They turned and walked quickly in the opposite direction. She saw them get into a Buick Special sedan of ordinary battleship-gray. There was nothing about the car to distinguish it from any car of the same make. From that distance she couldn’t read the license number, but the plates were Empire State issue.
She figured she might have something valuable; something she could sell. She didn’t know how valuable, but she would wait and see.
She didn’t have to wait long. The first of the prowl cars showed up in a little over two minutes. Within five minutes the street was filled with police cars and two ambulances.
By then people were hanging out the windows and the customary crowd had collec
ted. The police had formed lines, keeping the front of the house clear.
She figured it was safe to get closer. She saw a figure on a stretcher brought out and shoved quickly into an ambulance. A third attendant had walked alongside it, holding a bottle of plasma. The siren sounded and the ambulance roared off.
She had recognized the face.
“Grave Digger,” she whispered to herself.
A cold tremor ran down her spine.
Coffin Ed came out walking, assisted by two ambulance attendants whom he was trying to shake off. They managed to get him into the second ambulance and it drove off.
Sister Heavenly was backing off to leave when she heard someone say, “There’s another one, an African with his throat cut.”
She backed away fast. As she was leaving she saw two heavy black sedans filled with plainclothesmen from homicide pull up. She figured what she had was too damn valuable to sell. It was valuable enough to get her own throat cut.
She walked quickly up the hill to Broadway, looking for a taxicab. She was so disconcerted she forgot to raise her parasol to protect her complexion from the sunshine.
After she had hailed a taxi, got inside and felt it moving, she began to feel secure again. But she knew she had to get rid of Uncle Saint and the red-hot Lincoln, or she was going to find herself up a creek.
When she arrived on the street where she had left her house, she found it filled with fire trucks, police cars, ambulances, and thinly dressed people, for the most part Italians with a sprinkling of Negroes, cooking in the noonday heat, risking sunstroke to satisfy their morbid curiosity.
The whole city was running amok, she thought, from the sugar side to the shabby side.
As the taxi drew nearer, she craned her neck, looking for her house. She didn’t see it. From the window of the taxi, looking over the heads of the crowd, she couldn’t see the floor that remained. It looked to her as though the entire house had disappeared. The only thing she could see was the Lincoln, standing out like a red thumb in the bright sunshine.
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