Prophet, 'I don't think much of your Christianity, buddy.'
It was forty-four city blocks to the house on Edgecombe Drive, and the streets were filled with traffic. They went up Seventh Avenue with the siren open, scattering cars like ninepins, and turned over to the Drive on the 155th Street Bridge.
The elevator was occupied. They took the stairs two at a time.
The woman in the Chinese gown answered their ring. They stood flanking the door. Coffin Ed had eased his pistol loose in its holster and stood with his hand resting on the butt.
'Yes?' the woman said, opening the door onto a heavy burglarproof chain. She looked through the crack, but not directly at either of them.
Grave Digger flashed his shield. She didn't look at it.
'Yes?' she asked again, impatiently.
'We want to talk to Jenkins,' Grave Digger said.
'Who are you?' she asked.
Both of them looked at her sharply.
'Are you trying to be cute?' Coffin Ed challenged.
'Leave off,' Grave Digger said, and told the woman, 'We're detectives. Do you want to see our identifications?'
'That's not necessary,' she said. 'Slick isn't in.'
'May we come in and look around?' Grave Digger asked.
'No,' she said. 'I said he wasn't in.'
'You're making life hard for yourself,' Coffin Ed said.
'Slick left at a quarter to eight,' she said. 'He hasn't been back.'
She closed the door. They heard keys turning and bolts locking.
Coffin Ed looked at the locks as though he might enjoy shooting them off.
'I don't quite dig her,' Grave Digger said.
They went down to the lobby and found the doorman, a tall, slender man with a winged mustache and a thin rusty-brown face beneath a yachting cap. His gold-braided purple uniform had been pressed so often it shone like waxed paper.
'We're the men,' Grave Digger said, flashing his shield.
'You don't have to tell me, boss,' the doorman said.
'When did Slick Jenkins leave?'
'Before eight, boss.'
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed exchanged glances.
'Alone?' Grave Digger asked.
'No, boss, he had a mugger with him what's been hanging on to him for the past few days.'
'Mugger!' Grave Digger echoed. 'Give us a rundown.'
The doorman gave a pinpoint description of Susie, then for good measure threw in a description of Slick, of Slick's car, and the license number. He conducted a little business on the side peddling marijuana cigarettes, and he figured every little bit he did for the police would help him if he got into a jam.
Grave Digger described Alberta and asked if she'd been there.
'I ain't seen nobody like her, boss, and if I'd seen her I sure wouldn't have forgot her.'
'Okay, boy, when Jenkins turns up I want you to telephone the 126th Street Precinct Station and leave word,' Grave Digger ordered.
'Right, boss. My name is Sam. Don't forget old Sam, boss.'
'What's your racket?' Coffin Ed asked.
'I ain't got no racket, boss; I'm just a peace-loving boy.'
'Damn right,' Coffin Ed said. 'Peace at what price?'
They went back to their car.
'We're either too late or too early,' Grave Digger said.
He got the precinct station on the radio telephone and asked Lieutenant Anderson to put out a pickup for Slick Jenkins, giving a description of his car and the license number.
Lieutenant Anderson said that Sweet Prophet had telephoned in to say that Alberta Wright's man, Sugar Stonewall, was there at the Temple.
'Off again, on again,' Grave Digger muttered.
They did the forty-four blocks back to 116th Street with the siren blaring.
Sweet Prophet was sitting as though he hadn't moved.
He greeted them with, 'He left. I couldn't hold him.'
'We've got to get a new car,' Grave Digger said, then asked, 'What did he want, did he say?'
'He wanted me to go his woman's bail because I had baptized her, but I told him that someone had beat me to it.'
'Yeah, somebody wants her out bad,' Grave Digger said. Slowly, his voice was getting thick. 'Did he say where he was going?'
'I sent him up to see Slick Jenkins,' Sweet Prophet said. 'I told him that I had sent his woman up there, and that was where he was most likely to find her. Alter that I couldn't hold him.'
'You're sitting there trying to play God with these little people,' Grave Digger said in a voice that sounded as though his mouth were stuffed with cotton. 'And all you're doing is shilling for Clay, the undertaker.'
'I'm a busy man,' Sweet Prophet said defensivdy.
'Yeah, but not so busy as you would be breaking up rocks,' Grave Digger said, then asked, 'What does Stonewall look like, if you weren't too busy to have looked.'
Sweet Prophet kept an offended silence, but the two women and Elder Jones gave a composite description.
'Gone again, John again,' Grave Digger muttered as he climbed behind the wheel.
They went back up the way they had come; but traffic had thinned considerably on Seventh Avenue, and everyone with a guilty conscience had got in off the street.
In answer to their questions, Sam the doorman said, 'Ain't nobody looked like him been through this door, boss, or I would have seen him, and I ain't blind.'
'All right, stand out on the sidewalk where we can watch you,' Coffin Ed ordered.
'I ain't going to try to tip nobody off,' Sam said aggrievedly.
'I don't want to have to worry about it,' Coffin Ed said. 'I got other things to worry about.'
The doorman came out, stood in the center of the sidewalk and didn't move to open the door when the tenants came in and out.
Grave Digger got into their car and eased it to the curb between the racketeers' big shiny cars. It looked out of place. He sat behind the wheel, watching the people pass. He looked out of place. Coffin Ed took up his station on the other side of the entrance, leaning with one hand propped against the top of another big shiny car. He didn't look as though he went with the car, but the people who passed acted as though they didn't notice.
Grave Digger talked to Lieutenant Anderson again, but nothing new had come in.
There was nothing to do but wait. Half of a detective's working time was spent in waiting and watching. They waited and watched.
Twenty minutes later they saw Sugar Stonewall alight from a Fifth Avenue bus and cross the street. Coffin Ed intercepted him and took him by the arm.
'I'm the man,' he said.
'First time I was ever glad to see the man,' Sugar confessed.
Coffin Ed took him to the car and frisked him. Sugar was as docile as a lamb. They put him on the back seat and Coffin Ed sat with him while they drove down to the precinct.
Sugar spoke only once, to ask, 'You got a cigarette, chief?'
'Afterwards,' Coffin Ed grunted.
They took him in to the Pigeon's Nest and installed him on the wooden stool, beneath the glaring light
'Talk fast and straight,' Grave Digger ordered.
