feet. 'By God, I'll — ' His voice dried up when he heard the choking sounds issuing from inside the sack. He jumped upward and backward as though one of the ghosts had sure enough groaned. Leveling his pistol, he said in a quaking voice, 'What's in that sack?' Sugartit burst into hysterical laughter. For an instant no one spoke. Then Choo-Choo said hastily, 'Hit's just Joe.' 'What!' 'Hit's just Joe in the sack.' 'Joe!' Gingerly, the cop leaned over, holding his cocked pistol in his right hand, and with his left untied the cord closing the sack. He drew the top of the sack open. Popping eyes in a gray-black face stared up at him. The cop drew back in horror. His face turned white and a shudder passed over his big solid frame. 'It's a body,' he said in a choked voice. 'All trussed up.' 'Hit ain't no body, hit's just Joe,' Choo-Choo said, not intending to play the comic. The second cop hastened over to look. 'It's still alive,' he said. 'He's choking!' Sissie cried and ran over and began loosening the noose about Sonny's neck. Sonny sucked in breath with a gasp. 'My God, what's he doing in there?' the first cop asked in amazement. 'He's just studying magic,' Choo-Choo said. He was beginning to sweat from the strain. 'Magic!' The second cop noticed Sheik inching toward the window and aimed his pistol at him. 'Oh no, you don't,' he said. 'You come over here.' Sheik turned and came closer. 'Studying magic!' the first cop said. 'In a sack?' 'Yas suh, he's trying to learn how to get out, like Houdini.' Color flooded back into the cop's face. 'I ought to take him in for indecent exposure,' he said. 'Hell, he's wearing a sack, ain't he,' the second cop said, amused by his own wit. Both of them grinned at Sonny as though he were a harmless halfwit. Then the second cop said suddenly, 'It ain't possible! There can't be two such halfwits in the whole world.' The first cop looked closely at Sonny and said slowly, 'I believe you're right.' Then to the others at large, 'Get that boy out of that sack.' Sheik didn't move, but Choo-Choo and Inky hastened over and pulled Sonny out while Sissie held the bottom of the sack. The cops stared at Sonny in awe. 'Looks like barbecued coon, don't he?' the first cop said. Sugartit burst into laughter again. Sonny's black skin had a gray pallor as though he'd been dusted over lightly with wood ash. He was shaking like a leaf. The second cop reached out and turned him around. Everyone stared at the handcuff bracelets clamped about each wrist. 'That's our boy,' the first cop said. 'Lawd, suh, I wish I'd gone home and gone to bed,' Sonny said in a moaning voice. 'I'll bet you do,' the cop said. Sugartit couldn't stop laughing.
15
The bodies had been taken to the morgue. All that remained were chalk outlines on the pavement where they had lain.
The street had been cleared of private cars. Police tow trucks had carried away those that had been abandoned in the middle of the street. Most of the patrol cars had returned to duty; those remaining blocked the area.
The chief of police's car occupied the center of the stage. It was parked in the middle of the intersection of 127th Street and Lenox Avenue.
To one side of it, the chief, Lieutenant Anderson, the lieutenant from homicide and the precinct sergeant who'd led one of the search parties were grouped about the boy called Bones.
The lieutenant from homicide had a zip gun in his hand.
'All right then, it isn't yours,' he said to Bones in a voice of tried patience. 'Whose is it then? Who were you hiding it for?'
Bones stole a glance at the lieutenant's face and his gaze dropped quickly to the street. It crawled over the four pairs of big black copper's boots. They looked like the Sixth Fleet at anchor. He didn't answer.
He was a slim black boy of medium height with girlish features and short hair almost straight at the roots and parted on one side. He wore a natty topcoat over his sweat shirt and tight-fitting black pants above shiny tan pointedtoed shoes.
An elderly man, a head taller, with a face grizzled from hard outdoor work, stood beside him. Kinky hair grew like burdock weeds on his shiny black dome, and worried brown eyes looked down at Bones from behind steel- rimmed spectacles.
'Go 'head, tell 'em, so, don't be no fool,' he said; then he looked up and saw Grave Digger approaching with his prisoners. 'Here comes Digger Jones,' he said. 'You can tell him, cain't you?'
Everybody looked about.
Grave Digger held Good Booty by the arm and Big Smiley and Ready Belcher, handcuffed together, were walking in front of him.
He looked at Anderson and said, 'I closed up the Dew Drop Inn. The manager and some juvenile delinquents are being held by the officers on duty. You'd better send a wagon up there.'
Anderson whistled for a patrol car team and gave them the order.
'What did you find out on Galen?' the chief asked.
'I found out he was a pervert,' Grave Digger said.
'It figures,' the homicide lieutenant said.
The chief turned red. 'I don't give a goddamn what he was,' he said. 'Have you found out who killed him?'
'No, right now I'm still guessing at it,' Grave Digger said.
'Well, guess fast then. I'm getting goddamned tired of standing up here watching this comedy of errors.'
'I'll give you a quick fill-in and let you guess too,' Grave Digger said.
'Well, make it short and sweet and I damn sure ain't going to guess,' the chief said.
'Listen, Digger,' the colored civilian interposed. 'You and me is both city workers. Tell 'em my boy ain't done no harm.'
'He's broken the Sullivan law concerning concealed weapons by having this gun in his possession,' the homicide lieutenant said.
'That little thing,' Bones's father said scornfully. 'I don't b'lieve that'll even shoot.'
'Get these people away from here and let Jones report,' the chief said testily.
'Well, do something with them, Sergeant,' Lieutenant Anderson said.
'Come on, both of you,' the sergeant said, taking the man by the arm.
'Digger — ' the man appealed.
'It'll keep,' Grave Digger said harshly. 'Your boy belonged to the Moslem gang.'
'Naw-naw, Digger-'
'Do I have to slug you,' the sergeant said.
The man allowed himself to be taken along with his son across the Street.
The sergeant turned them over to a corporal and hurried back. Before he'd gone three steps the corporal was summoning two cops to take charge of them.
'What kind of city work does he do?' the chief asked.
'He's in the sanitation department,' the sergeant said. 'He's a garbage collector.'
'All right, get on Jones,' the chief ordered.
'Galen picked up colored school girls, teenagers, and took them to a crib on 145th Street,' Grave Digger said in a flat toneless voice.
'Did you close it?' the Chief asked.
'It'll keep; I'm looking for a murderer now,' Grave Digger said. Taking the miniature bull whip from his pocket, he went on, 'He whipped them with this.'
The chief reached out silently and took it from his hand.
'Have you got a list of the girls, Jones?' he asked.
'What for?'
'There might be a connection.'
'I'm coming to that-'
'Well, get to it then.'
'The landprop, a woman named Reba — used to call herself Sheba — the one who testified against Captain Murphy-'
'Ah, that one,' the chief said softly. 'She won't slip out of this.'
