you.' Grave Digger took a deep breath. 'God damn it, man, you got to control yourself.' 'Well, Digger, a burnt child fears fire. Anybody who tries to throw anything at me when they're under arrest is apt to get shot.' Grave Digger said nothing. 'What happened to our prisoner?' Coffin Ed asked. 'He got away,' Grave Digger said. They turned in unison and surveyed the scene. Patrol cars were arriving by the minute, erupting cops as though for an invasion. Others had formed blockades across Lenox Avenue at 128th and 126th Streets, and had blocked off 127th Street on both sides. Most of the people had gotten off the street. Those that stayed were being arrested as suspicious persons. Several drivers trying to move their cars were protesting their innocence loudly. The packed bars in the area were being rapidly sealed by the police. The windows of tenements were jammed with black faces and the exits blocked by police. 'They'll have to go through this jungle with a finetoothed comb,' Grave Digger said. 'With all these white cops about, any colored family might hide him.' 'I'll want those gangster punks too,' Coffin Ed said. 'Well, we'll just have to wait now for the men from homicide.' But Lieutenant Anderson arrived first, with the harness sergeant and Detective Haggerty latched on to him. The five of them stood in a circle in the car's headlights between the two corpses. 'All right, just give me the essential points first,' Anderson said. 'I put out the flash so I know the start. The man hadn't been killed when I got the first report.' 'He was dead when we got here,' Grave Digger said in a flat, toneless voice. 'We were the first here. The suspect was standing over the victim with the pistol in his hand — ' 'Hold it,' a new voice said. A plain-clothes lieutenant and a sergeant from downtown homicide bureau came into the circle. 'These are the arresting officers,' Anderson said. 'Where's the prisoner?' the homicide lieutenant asked. 'He got away,' Grave Digger said. 'Okay, start over,' the homicide lieutenant said. Grave Digger gave him the first part then, went on: 'There were two friends with him and a group of teenage gangsters around the corpse. We disarmed the suspect and handcuffed him. When we started to frisk the gangster punks we had a rumble. Coffin Ed shot one. In the rumble the suspect got away.' 'Now let's get this straight,' the homicide lieutenant said. 'Were the teenagers implicated too?' 'No, we just wanted them as witnesses,' Grave Digger said. 'There's no doubt about the suspect.' 'Right.' 'When I got here Jones and Johnson were fighting, rolling all over the corpse,' Haggerty said. 'Jones was trying to disarm Johnson.' Lieutenant Anderson and the men from homicide looked at him, then turned to look at Grave Digger and Coffin Ed in turn. 'It was like this,' Coffin Ed said. 'One of the punks turned up his ass and fatted toward me and-' Anderson said, 'Huh!' and the homicide lieutenant said incredulously, 'You killed a man for farting?' 'No, it was another punk he shot,' Grave Digger said in his toneless voice. 'One who threw perfume on him from a bottle. He thought it was acid the punk was throwing.' They looked at Coffin Ed's acid-burnt face and looked away embarrassedly. 'The fellow who was killed is an Arab,' the sergeant said. 'That's just a disguise,' Grave Digger said. 'They belong to a group of teenage gangsters who call themselves Real Cool Moslems.' 'Hah!' the homicide lieutenant said. 'Mostly they fight a teenage gang of Jews from The Bronx,' Grave Digger elaborated. 'We leave that to the welfare people.' The homicide sergeant stepped over to the Arab corpse and removed the turban and peeled off the artificial beard. The face of a colored youth with slick conked hair and beardless cheeks stared up. He dropped the disguises beside the corpse and sighed. 'Just a baby,' he said. For a moment no one spoke. Then the homicide lieutenant asked, 'You have the homicide gun?' Grave Digger took it from his pocket, holding the barrel by the thumb and first finger, and gave it to him. The lieutenant examined it curiously for some moments. Then he wrapped it in his handkerchief and slipped it into his coat pocket. 'Had you questioned the suspect?' he asked. 'We hadn't gotten to it,' Grave Digger said. 'All we know is the homicide grew out of a rumpus at the Dew Drop Inn.' 'That's a bistro a couple of blocks up the street,' Anderson said. 'They had a cutting there a short time earlier.' 'It's been a hot time in the old town tonight,' Haggerty said. The homicide lieutenant raised his brows enquiringly at Lieutenant Anderson. 'Suppose you go to work on that angle, Haggerty,' Anderson said. 'Look into that cutting. Find out how it ties in.' 'We figure on doing that ourselves,' Grave Digger said. 'Let him go on and get started,' Anderson said. 'Right-o,' Haggerty said. 'I'm the man for the cutting.' Everybody looked at him. He left. The homicide lieutenant said, 'Well, let's take a look at the stiffs.' He gave each a cursory examination. The teenager had been shot once, in the heart. 'Nothing to do but wait for the coroner,' he said. They looked at the unconscious woman. 'Shot in the thigh, high up,' the homicide sergeant said. 'Loss of blood but not fatal — I don't think.' 'The ambulance will be here any minute,' Anderson said. 'Ed shot at the gangster twice,' Grave Digger said. 'It must have been then.' 'Right.' No one looked at Coffin Ed. Instead, they made a pretense of examining the area. Anderson shook his head. 'It's going to be a hell of a job finding your prisoner in this dense slum,' he said. 'There isn't any need,' the homicide lieutenant said. 'If this was the pistol he had, he's as innocent as you and me. This pistol won't kill anyone.' He took the pistol from his 0ocket and unwrapped it. 'This is a thirty-seven caliber blank pistol. The only bullets made to fit it are blanks and they can't be tampered with enough to kill a man. And it hasn't been made over into a zip gun.' 'Well,' Lieutenant Anderson said at last. 'That tears it.'
4
There was a rusty sheet-iron gate in the concrete wall between the small back courts. The gang leader unlocked it with his own key. The gate opened silently on oiled hinges.
He went ahead.
'March!' the henchman with the knife ordered, prodding Sonny.
Sonny marched.
The other henchman kept the noose around his neck like a dog chain.
When they'd passed through, the leader closed and locked the gate.
One of the henchman said, 'You reckon Caleb is bad hurt?'
'Shut up talking in front of the captive,' the leader said. 'Ain't you got no better sense than that.'
The broken concrete paving was strewn with broken glass bottles, rags and diverse objects thrown from the back windows: a rusty bed spring, a cotton mattress with a big hole burnt in the middle, several worn-out automobile tires, the half-dried carcass of a black cat with its left foot missing and its eyes eaten out by rats.
They picked their way through the debris carefully.
Sonny bumped into a loose stack of garbage cans. One fell with a loud clatter. A sudden putrid stink arose.
'God damn it, look out!' the leader said. 'Watch where you're going.'
'Aw, man, ain't nobody thinking about us back here,' Choo-Choo said.
'Don't call me man,' the leader said.
'Sheik, then.'
'What you jokers gonna do with me?' Sonny asked.
His weed jag was gone; he felt weak-kneed and hungry; his mouth tasted brackish and his stomach was knotted with fear.
'We're going to sell you to the Jews,' Choo-Choo said.
'You ain't fooling me, I know you ain't no Arabs,' Sonny said.
'We're going to hide you from the police,' Sheik said.
'I ain't done nothing,' Sonny said.
Sheik halted and they all turned and looked at Sonny. His eyes were white half moons in the dark.
'All right then, if you ain't done nothing we'll turn you back to the cops,' Sheik said.
'Naw, wait a minute, I just want to know where you're taking me.'
'We're taking you home with us.'
'Well, that's all right then.'
There was no back door to the hall as in the other tenement. Decayed concrete stairs led down to a basement door. Sheik produced a key on his ring for that one also. They entered a dark passage. Foul water stood on the broken pavement. The air smelled like molded rags and stale sewer pipes. They had to remove their smoked glasses in order to see.
Halfway along, feeble yellow light slanted from an open door. They entered a small, filthy room.
A sick man clad in long cotton drawers lay beneath a ragged horse blanket on a filthy pallet of burlap sacks.
'You got anything for old Bad-eye,' he said in a whining voice. -
'We got you a fine black gal,' Choo-Choo said.
