The apartment house they sought was a nine-story brick building with plate-glass doors opening into a dimly lit foyer. The night latch was on. There was a bell to one side above a shiny chrome plate announcing: SUPERINTENDENT. Coffin Ed reached toward it, but Grave Digger shook his head.
Even though the street was packed with fire engines, prowl cars, uniformed cops and firemen, the residents peering from the upper windows watched the two black men suspiciously.
Coffin Ed noticed them and remarked, “They think we’re burglars.”
“Hell, what else they going to think about two spooks like us prowling about in a white neighborhood in the middle of the night?” Grave Digger said cynically. “If I was to see two white men in Harlem at this time of night I’d figure they were looking for whores.”
“You would be right.”
“No more than them.”
At the side of the building was a narrow cement walk closed off by a barred iron gate. The gate was locked.
Grave Digger grabbed the top bar with one hand, put a foot on the middle crossbar, and went up and over. Coffin Ed followed.
From somewhere above came the sound of an outraged gasp. They ignored it.
Halfway down the side of the building was a barred window on a level with the sidewalk. Purple light poured out onto the opposite wall in a rectangular bar. They approached it quietly and knelt, one on each side.
The window opened into a room that appeared to have been furnished by the castoffs of decades of tenants. Nothing had escaped. Lowboys and highboys were stacked against the walls, interspersed with marble statuettes, grandfather clocks, iron jockey hitching posts, empty birdcages, a broken glass aquarium, two moth-eaten stuffed squirrels and a molted stuffed owl. On one side was a round-topped dining table, surrounded by a variety of dilapidated chairs, and covered by a faded red silk curtain. Between two doors opening to the kitchen and bedroom respectively stood an old-fashioned organ, atop which was a menagerie of china animals. Opposite were two out- of-date television sets, one atop the other, crowned by a radio from the pre-television age. An overstuffed davenport, flanked by two overstuffed armchairs, were drawn up before the television sets close enough to reach through the screens and manhandle the performers. The linoleum floor was piled with threadbare scatter rugs.
A lamp with a blue bulb burned on a lowboy, vying with a red-bulbed lamp on the dining table. A small fan atop an oak-stained highboy was stirring up the hot air.
The television screen was dark but the radio was playing. It was tuned to a late record program. The voice of Jimmy Rushing issued from the metallic sounding speaker, singing:
A young black man wearing a soiled white turban and a flowing robe of bright-colored rags sat in the center of the davenport, eating a pork chop sandwich and looking over his shoulder with an animated leer.
Behind him a high-yellow woman was doing a chickentail shuffle around the dining table with a dark Jamaica rum highball in one hand. She was wearing a garment that looked like a bleached flour sack with holes cut out for the arms and head. She was a tall, skinny woman with the high sharp hips of a cotton chopper and the big loaded breasts of a wet nurse. As she shuffled barefooted on the pile of rugs, her bony knees poked out the sack in front while her sharp shaking buttocks poked it out in the back like the tail feathers of a laying hen. Up above, her breasts poked out the top of the sack like the snouts of two hungry shoats.
She had a long bony face with a flat nose and jutting chin. Masses of crinkly black hair, dripping with oil, hung down to the middle of her back. Her slanting yellow eyes were doing tricks in the African’s direction.
Grave Digger rapped on the window.
The woman gave a start. Liquid sloshed from the glass over the table cover.
The African saw them first. His eyes got white-rimmed.
Then the woman turned and saw them. Her big, wide, cushion-lipped mouth swelled with fury.
“You niggers better get away from that window or I’ll call the police,” she shouted in a flat unmusical voice.
Grave Digger fished a felt-lined leather folder from his side coat pocket and showed his buzzer.
The woman went sullen. “Nigger cops,” she said scornfully. “What you whore-chasers want?”
“In,” Grave Digger said.
She looked at the drink in her hand as though she didn’t know what to do with it. Then she said, “You cain’t come in here. My husband ain’t at home.”
“That’s all right, you’ll do.”
She looked around at the African. He was getting to his feet as though preparing to leave.
“You stay, we want to talk to you too,” Grave Digger said.
The woman jerked her gaze back toward the window. Her eyes were slits of suspicion. “What you want to talk to him for?”
“Where’s the door, woman?” Coffin Ed said sharply. “Let us ask the questions.”
“It’s in the back; where you think it’s at?” she said.
They stood up and went around to the back of the building.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a real cat-eyed woman,” Coffin Ed remarked.
“I wouldn’t have one for my own for all the tea in China,” Grave Digger declared.
“You just ain’t saying it.”
Steps led down to the green-painted basement door. The woman had it open and was waiting for them, arms akimbo.
“Gus ain’t in no trouble, is he?” she asked. She didn’t look worried; she looked downright evil.
“Who is Gus?” Grave Digger asked, stopping on the bottom.
“He’s my husband, the super.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“How would I know? Trouble is your sugar. What would you be doing messing around here at this time of night unless-” She broke off; her slitted yellow eyes became malevolent. “I just hope ain’t none of these grudging- assed white folks has accused us of stealing something, just ’cause we is going to Ghana,” she said in her flat outraged voice. “It’d be just like ’em.”
“Ghana!” Grave Digger exclaimed. “Ghana in Africa? You’re going to Ghana?”
Her expression became suddenly triumphant. “You heard me.”
“Who’s
“Me and Gus, that’s who.”
“Let’s go inside and get this straightened out,” Grave Digger said.
“If you think we has stole something, you’re beating up the wrong bush,” she said. “We ain’t took nothing from nobody.”
“We’ll see.”
She wheeled and went down the brightly lighted, white-washed corridor, her square bony shoulders held high and stiff while her hard sharp buttocks wiggled like a tadpole.
A dark green steamer trunk stood against the wall beside the elevator doors. It bore luggage stickers reading: SS QUEEN MARY-CUNARD LINE-
The detectives’ interest went up another notch.
The door to the janitor’s suite opened directly into the overstuffed parlor. When they entered, the African was sitting on the edge of a straight-backed chair with the rum highball shaking in his hand.
The radio was silent.
As she turned to close the door, an animal appeared silently in the kitchen doorway.
The detectives felt their scalps twitch.
At first sight it appeared to be a female lion. It was tawny-colored with a massive head, upright ears and lambent eyes. Then a low growl issued from its throat and they knew it was a dog.
Coffin Ed slipped his revolver from its holster.
“She won’t hurt you,” the woman said scornfully. “She’s chained to the stove.”
“Are you taking this animal with you?” Grave Digger asked in amazement.
“It don’t belong to us; it belongs to an albino nigger called Pinky who Gus had around here to help him,” she said.
