23
'Is Slick back?' Grave Digger asked Sam, the doorman.
'Yassuh, boss, he come back about fifteen minutes ago, and I phoned the precinct station like you said,' Sam replied.
'Alone?'
'Nawsuh, he got the same boy with him.'
'All right, just don't try to play both sides of the street,' Grave Digger warned him, and he and Coffin Ed brushed past.
They took the elevator along with two ladies of the night. A rigid silence was maintained. Coffin Ed's grim, acid-burned face was enough to scare the devil out of hell.
The sepia-colored woman with the dyed yellow hair, dressed in the same tight-fitting purple silk Chinese gown, answered their ring again. She opened the door onto the safety chain.
'Yes?'
'We're the police-we're back again,' Grave Digger said.
'Slick hasn't come back,' she said, beginning to close the door.
'We have a search warrant,' Grave Digger said, causing her to hesitate.
'And we don't want to have to shoot open the door,' Coffin Ed added.
'May I see it?' she asked resignedly.
Grave Digger took a legal size envelope from his inside coat pocket. It bore the return address of an insurance company. From it he extracted a typewritten letter suggesting that he examine their new life premiums. He unfolded the letter and held it out toward her.
Both detectives had their gazes pinned on her slanting brown eyes. Her eyes looked down in the direction of the letter, but when she reached for it her hand went aside. Grave Digger moved the paper within her grasp. She took it and then instantly returned it.
'I see,' she said in a low voice. 'Then I will have to let you in.'
She had to close the door to unlatch the chain. Both detectives drew their pistols. The chain made a slight rattling sound, followed immediately by the distant sound of a door being opened. A muted voice asked sharply, 'Who is it?' They heard her say, 'It's two policemen; they have a search warrant,' and then the muted voice, lowered to a whisper, saying, 'Hold them a minute.' There was an almost imperceptible sound of a door closing and a lock clicking shut.
Keys turned inside the entrance door, and bolts moved. She drew the door inward.
'Come in, please.'
Holding their pistols in their right hands and their flashlights in their left, they entered a pitch-dark hall.
She closed and locked the door, and turned toward the front of the building.
'Follow me, please.'
They tried the doors as they passed. Three opened into darkness, and the fourth was locked. From behind it came the sound of tense whispering, and then a sound like painful retching. Coffin Ed flattened himself against the wall beside the door, while Grave Digger followed the woman through the doorway at the end of the hall into the front sitting room. It was lit by a floor lamp and a table lamp, and through the three front windows the terraced lights of the Bronx were visible.
From behind the other door to the locked room Grave Digger heard a sharp gasp and the muffled sound of scuffling. Then a key was being turned.
The thick, enraged voice of an imbecile shouted, ' He's gittin' away! '
Grave Digger was already moving toward the closed door, but the woman blocked the way. He reached out to push her aside, but the motion was arrested by the sight of Dummy coming through the opened door. Blood was coming from his mouth, and he was mewling like a cat.
'He's hurt my cat!' the woman cried hysterically.
Grave Digger felt the hair rise on his head.
The heavy thunder of two shots from an automatic gun crashed, one after another. They were followed almost simultaneously by the hard, deafening impact of Coffin Ed's. 38 as he shot through the lock in the hall door.
A big broad-shouldered man wearing cowboy boots and a beaver hat staggered after Dummy through the open door. Dummy took four steps into the room and fell face downward on the carpet. The big man fell like a log right behind him. His hat flew off, and his face smashed into the sole of Dummy's canvas sneaker.
Then from the room came the low grating sound of Coffin Ed's voice, saying, 'Drop it,' sounding as dangerous as a rattlesnake's rattle.
Grave Digger leaped over the big man's body, knocking the woman to her knees, and went into the room with his pistol ready.
The room was a bedroom, with twin beds covered with green chenille spreads. Beyond the second bed Slick stood motionless, looking straight ahead. He wore a pink flannel smoking jacket with a blue velvet collar, and in the soft light from the single bed table lamp his thin, ascetic face was expressionless. The blued steel. 38 caliber automatic lay on the bedspread in front of him.
Coffin Ed stood just inside the hall door with its shattered lock. His. 38 caliber revolver hung motionless at his side. From the muzzle of its long nickel-plated barrel came a lingering wisp of smoke, adding to the tingling smell of cordite in the room.
Grave Digger lowered his pistol and let out his breath.
'All right, bring him in here,' he said, turning to re-enter the sitting room.
The woman was on her hands and knees, rocking from side to side.
Dummy lay on his belly with his arms spread out and his face turned to one side. The handle of the knife Susie had been sharpening on his boot earlier in the day protruded from the center of his back, between the shoulder blades. He was breathing in soft shallow gasps, and shaking his head almost imperceptibly. His brown eyes peered from beneath the lumps of scar tissue with the pleading look of a sick dog.
'Don't worry, I won't pull out the knife,' Grave Digger assured him, and gave his attention to the other man.
Susie had two bullet holes in the back of his heavy tweed coat, from one of which the heavy pumping of blood was beginning to ebb. He had the absolutely motionless, relaxed, gone-for-good look of the brand-new dead.
'Straight through the ticker,' Grave Digger muttered.
He stood aside as Coffin Ed ushered Slick into the room.
Without looking at the body, Slick stepped over it. He stepped past the woman without looking at her either, and stood with his hands raised shoulder high. He didn't move while Coffin Ed frisked him.
'He killed my cat,' the woman said suddenly, and began to cry hysterically.
'Jesus Christ!' Grave Digger said.
Holstering his gun, he put his hands beneath the woman's arms and lifted her gently to her feet.
'You cat is all right,' he said. 'The man called Dummy was stabbed, and your husband shot his partner in the back.'
She seemed reassured. He helped her to the chaise longue and laid her down. Then he turned and looked at Slick.
'Now I know why they call you Slick,' he said.
Slick didn't answer.
Grave Digger found a telephone on a table near the door. He telephoned Harlem Hospital for an ambulance and then contacted Lieutenant Anderson at the Precinct Station.
'Hold everything,' Anderson ordered. 'Sergeant Frick from the Homicide Bureau is on his way up there now.'
'Right,' Grave Digger said.
'I don't know anything about these people,' Slick said. 'They've been trying to proposition me into helping them rob some woman, but I nixed them off. They came here tonight to try again. When you people came, each one accused the other of stooling. I had to shoot the big guy, Susie, to keep him from killing the little dummy.'
