“Yes, sir. Then people came from everywhere. A man came in here from Blumstein’s and telephoned the police. And that’s all I know.”
“It’s been like pulling teeth,” Grave Digger said.
“All right, get on your coat and hat-you’re going to the station,” Coffin Ed said.
The bartender looked shocked. “But I thought-”
“And you can put down that glass before you wear it out.”
“But I thought if I told you everything I saw-I mean-you’re not arresting me, are you?”
“No, son, you’re not being arrested, but you got to repeat your story for the Homicide officers and for the record,” Grave Digger said.
Outside, the experts had itemized the material clues. The Assistant Medical Examiner had been and gone. He hadn’t disclosed anything that wasn’t obvious.
An examination of the white stiff’s clothes had revealed that he was an operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
“It won’t take long to check with the New York office and find out his assignment. That will tell us something,” the Homicide lieutenant said. “What did you boys find out?”
“Just what could be seen without knowing what it meant,” Grave Digger said. “This is the bartender; he saw it all.”
“Fine. We’ll get it down. Too bad you didn’t have a stenographer with you.”
“We might not have got what we did,” Coffin Ed said. “No one talks freely when it’s being taken down.”
“Anyway, you got it in your heads, if I know you two,” the Homicide lieutenant said. “As soon as they move these stiffs, we’ll all get together in the precinct station and correlate what we got.” He turned to the precinct lieutenant, Anderson. “What about those bar jockeys? You want any more of them?”
“I’m having a man take their names and addresses,” Anderson said. “I’ll go along with Jones and Johnson on the witness they picked.”
“Right,” the lieutenant said, beating the cold from his gloved hands and looking up and down the street. “What’s happening to those dead wagons?”
Chapter 6
On his radio, Anderson got a call to come in. The bored voice of the switchboard sergeant informed him that the prowl car sent up to the convent reported a corpse, and asked what he wanted done.
Anderson told him to order the car to stay put and he’d send the Homicide crew up there.
The Homicide lieutenant ordered one of his detectives to call the Assistant Medical Examiner again.
Haggerty said, “Old Doc Fullhouse ain’t going to like spending his nights in Harlem with bodies as cold as these.”
Anderson said, “You go along with Jones and Johnson; I’ll take the witness back to the station in my car.”
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed, with Haggerty in back, led the Homicide car down 125th Street to Convent Avenue and up the hill to the south side of the convent grounds.
The prowl car was parked by the convent wall in the middle of the block. There was not a pedestrian in sight.
The three cops were sitting inside their car to keep warm, but they jumped out and looked alert when the Homicide car drew up.
“There is it,” one of them said, pointing toward the convent wall. “We haven’t touched anything.”
The corpse was flattened against the wall in an upright position, with its arms hanging straight down and its feet raised several inches from the pavement. It was entirely covered, except for the head, by a long, black, shapeless coat, threadbare and slightly greenish, with a moth-eaten, rabbit-fur collar. The hands were encased in black, knitted mittens; the feet in old-fashioned, high-buttoned shoes that had recently been cleaned with liquid polish. The face seemed to be buried in the solid concrete, so that only the back of the head was visible. Glossy waves of black, oily hair gleamed in the dim light.
“Holy Mary! What happened here?” the Homicide lieutenant exclaimed as the group of detectives pressed close.
Flashlights came into play, lighting the grotesque figure.
“What is it?” a hardened Homicide detective asked.
“How does it stick there?” another wondered.
“It’s a bad joke,” Haggerty said, “it’s just a dummy, frozen to the wall.”
Grave Digger groped at a leg through folds of garments. “It ain’t no dummy,” he said.
“Don’t touch it until the M. E. gets here,” the Homicide lieutenant cautioned. “It might fall.”
“It looks like it might be garroted,” one of the cops from the prowl car offered.
The Homicide lieutenant turned on him with a face suddenly gone beet-red. “Garroted! From within the convent? By who, the nuns?”
The cop backtracked hastily. “I didn’t mean by the nuns. A gang of niggers might have done it.”
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed turned to look at him.
“It’s just a way of speaking,” the cop said defensively.
“I’ll take a look,” Grave Digger said.
He stood on tiptoe and peered down the back of the fur collar.
“Nothing around its neck,” he said.
While still on tiptoe, he sniffed the wavy hair. Then he blew into it softly. Strands of silky hair floated outward. He dropped to his feet.
The lieutenant looked at him questioningly.
“Anyway, she’s no grandma,” Grave Digger said. “Her hair looks like a job from the Rose Meta beauty parlors.”
“Well, let’s see what’s keeping her up,” the lieutenant said.
They discovered an iron bar protruding from the wall at a point about six feet high. Below and above it there were deep cracks in the cement; and, at one point above, the crack had been dug out to form a long, oblong hole. The face of the corpse had been thrust into this hole with sufficient force to clamp it, and the end of the bar was caught between the legs, holding it aloft.
“Jesus Christ, it looks like it’s been hammered in there,” the lieutenant said.
“They’re no signs of bruises on the back of the head,” Grave Digger pointed out.
“One thing is for sure,” Haggerty cracked. “She didn’t get there by herself.”
“You’re going to be a senator someday,” the lieutenant said.
“Maybe she was hit by a car,” a harness cop suggested.
“I’ll buy that,” Coffin Ed said.
“Hit by a car!” the lieutenant exclaimed. “Goddammit, she’d have to be hit by a car traveling like a jet plane to get rammed into that wall like that.”
“Not necessarily,” Grave Digger said.
The flip cop said, “Oh, I forgot-there’s a wig in the gutter across the street.”
The lieutenant gave him a reproving look, but didn’t say the words.
In a group, they trudged across the street. The cold east wind whipped at them, and their mouths gave off steam like little locomotives.
It was a cheap wig of gray hair, fashioned in a bun at the back, and it was weighted down by a car jack.
“Was the jack with it?” the lieutenant asked.
“No sir-I put the jack on it to keep the wind from blowing it away,” the cop replied.
The lieutenant moved the jack with his foot and picked up the wig. A detective held a light.
“All I can say about it is it looks like hair,” the lieutenant said.
“Looks like real nigger hair,” the flip cop said.
“If you use that word again I’ll kick your teeth down your throat,” Coffin Ed said.
