An effluvium of hot stinks arose from the frying pan and hung in the hot motionless air, no higher than the rooftops — the smell of sizzling barbecue, fried hair, exhaust fumes, rotting garbage, cheap perfumes, unwashed bodies, decayed buildings, dog-rat-and-cat offal, whiskey and vomit, and all the old dried-up odors of poverty.
Half-nude people sat in open windows, crowded on the fire escapes, shuffled up and down the sidewalks, prowled up and down the streets in dilapidated cars.
It was too hot to sleep. Everyone was too evil to love. And it was too noisy to relax and dream of cool swimming holes and the shade of chinaberry trees. The night was filled with the blare of countless radios, the frenetic blasting of spasm cats playing in the streets, hysterical laughter, automobile horns, strident curses, loudmouthed arguments, the screams of knife fights.
The bars were closed so they were drinking out of bottles. That was all there was left to do, drink strong bad whiskey and get hotter; and after that steal and fight.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed had been held up by an outburst of petty crime.
Thieves had broken into a supermarket and had stolen 50 pounds of stew beef, 20 pounds of smoked sausage, 20 pounds of chicken livers, 29 pounds of oleomargarine, 32 pounds of cooking lard, and one TV set.
A drunk had staggered into a funeral parlor and had refused to leave until he got “first-class service.”
A man had stabbed a woman because she “wouldn’t give him none.”
A woman had stabbed a man whom she claimed had stepped on the corn on her left little toe.
Then on their way in they got held up again by a free-for-all on Eighth Avenue and 126th Street. It had been started by a man attacking another man with a knife in a dice game in a room back of a greasy spoon restaurant. The attacked man had run out into the street and grabbed a piece of iron pipe from a garbage can where he had cached it for just such an emergency before joining the dice game. When the man with the knife saw his erstwhile victim coming back with the iron pipe, he did an about-face and took off in the opposite direction. Then a friend of the man with the knife charged from a dark doorway wielding a baseball bat and began to duel the man with the pipe. The man with the knife turned back to help his friend with the baseball bat. Upon seeing what was happening, the cook came from the greasy spoon, wielding a meat cleaver, and demanded fair play. Whereupon the man with the knife engaged the cook with the cleaver in a separate duel.
When Grave Digger and Coffin Ed arrived at the scene, the hot dusty air was being churned up by the slinging and slashing of weapons.
Without engaging in preliminaries, Coffin Ed began pistol-whipping the man with the knife. The man was staggering about on the sidewalk, holding on to his knife which he was too scared to use; his legs were wobbling and his knees were buckling and he was saying, “You can’t hurt me hitting me on the head.”
With his left hand, Grave Digger began slapping the face of the man with the baseball bat, and with his right hand fanning the air with his pistol to keep back the crowd; at the same time shouting, “Straighten up!”
Coffin Ed was echoing, “Count off, red-eye! Fly right!”
Both of them looked just as red-eyed, greasy-faced, sweaty and evil as all the other colored people gathered about, combatants and spectators alike. They were of a similar size and build to other “working stiffs” — big, broad-shouldered, loose-jointed and flat-footed. Their faces bore marks and scars similar to any colored street fighter. Grave Digger’s was full of lumps where felons had hit him from time to time with various weapons; while Coffin Ed’s was a patchwork of scars where skin had been grafted over the burns left by acid thrown into his face.
The difference was they had the pistols, and everyone in Harlem knew them as the “Mens”.
The cook took advantage of this situation to slip back into his kitchen and hide his meat cleaver behind the stove. While the man with the pipe quickly cached his weapon inside his pants leg and went limping rapidly away like a wooden-legged man in a race of one-legged men.
After a little, peace was restored. Without a word or backward glance, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed walked to their car, climbed in and drove off.
They checked into the precinct station and wrote their report.
When Lieutenant Anderson finished reading the statement of the janitor’s wife as to the reason Pinky put in the false fire alarm, he asked incredulously, “Do you believe that?”
“Yeah,” Grave Digger replied. “I’ll believe it until some better reason comes along.”
Lieutenant Anderson shook his head. “The motives these people have for crimes.”
“When you think about them, they make sense,” Coffin Ed said argumentatively.
Lieutenant Anderson wiped the sweat from his face with a limp dirty handkerchief.
“That’s all right for the psychiatrists, but we’re cops,” he said.
Grave Digger winked at Coffin Ed.
Coffin Ed took it up.
Grave Digger capped it,
Lieutenant Anderson reddened. He was accustomed to his two ace detectives needling him, but it always made him feel a little uneasy.
“That might all be true,” he said. “But these crimes cost the taxpayers money.”
“You ain’t kidding,” Grave Digger confirmed.
Coffin Ed changed the subject. “Have you heard whether they caught him?”
Lieutenant Anderson shook his head. “They caught everyone but him — bums, perverts, whores, tricks, and one hermit.”
“He won’t be too hard to find,” Grave Digger said. “There ain’t too many places for a giant albino Negro turning black-and-blue to hide.”
“All right, let’s stop the clowning,” Anderson said. “What about this charge against a drug pusher?”
“He’s one of the big sources of supply for colored addicts up here, but he’s smart enough to keep out of Harlem,” Grave Digger said.
“When we saw him choking, we knew he’d been eating the decks he had on him, so before he could digest them we got enough out of him to convict him of possession anyway.”
“It’s in that envelope,” Grave Digger said, nodding toward the desk. “When it’s analyzed, they’ll find five or six half-chewed decks of heroin.”
Anderson opened the end of the brown manila envelope lying atop the desk which the detectives had turned in as evidence. He shook out the folded handkerchief and opened it.
“Phew!” he exclaimed, drawing back. “It stinks.”
“It doesn’t stink anymore than a dirty pusher,” Grave Digger said. “I hate this type of criminal worse than God hates sin.”
“What’s the other stuff with it?” Anderson asked, pushing the mess about with the tip of his pencil.
Coffin Ed chuckled. “Whatever he last ate before he started eating evidence.”
Anderson looked sober. “I know your intentions are good, but you can’t go around slugging people in the belly to collect evidence, even if they are felons. You know that this man has been taken to the hospital.”
“Don’t worry, he won’t protest,” Grave Digger said.
“Not if he knows what’s good for him,” Coffin Ed echoed.
“Every precinct’s not like Harlem,” Anderson cautioned. “You get away with tricks here that’ll kick back in any other precinct.”
“If this kicks back, I’ll eat the foot that did it,” Grave Digger said.
“Talking about eating reminds me that we ain’t ate yet,” Coffin Ed said.
Mamie Louise was sick and the other all-night greasy spoons and barbecue joints had no appeal. They decided to eat in the Great Man nightclub on 125th Street.
“I like a joint where you can smell the girls’ sweat,” Coffin Ed said.
It had a bar fronting on the street with a cabaret in back where a two-dollar membership fee was charged to get in.
When the detectives flashed their buzzers they were made members for free.
Noise, heat and orgiastic odors hit them as they entered through the curtained doorway. The room was so small and packed that the celebrants rubbed buttocks with others at adjoining tables. Faces bubbled in the dim light like a huge pot of cannibal stew, showing mostly eyes and teeth. Smoke-blackened nudes frolicked in the murals
