It was past two o’clock Sunday morning. Sand-fine sleet was peppering the windshield of the small black sedan as it hustled down the East Side Drive. There was just enough heat from the defroster to make the windshield sticky, and a coating of ice was forming across Grave Digger’s vision.
“This heater only works in the blazing hot summer,” he complained. “In this kind of weather it just makes ice.”
“Turn it off,” Coffin Ed said.
The car skidded on a glazed spot on the asphalt, and from the back seat Detective Tombs from Homicide Bureau yelled, “Watch it, man! Can’t you drive without skidding?”
Grave Digger chuckled. “You work with murder every day, and here you are-scared of getting scratched.”
“I just don’t want to wind up in East River with a car on my back,” Tombs said.
The witness giggled.
That settled it. Conversation ceased. They didn’t want outsiders horning in on their own private horseplay.
When they drew up before the morgue downtown on 29th Street, they all looked grim and half-frozen.
An attendant sitting at a desk in the entrance foyer checked them in, recording their names and badge numbers.
The barman from the Paris Bar gave his name as Alfonso Marcus and his address as 217 Formosa Street, Yonkers, N.Y.
They walked through corridors and downstairs to the “cold room.” Another attendant opened a door and turned on a switch.
He grinned. “A little chilly, eh?” he said, getting off his standard joke.
“You ain’t been outside, son,” Coffin Ed said.
“We want to see the victim of a hit-and-run driver from Harlem,” Grave Digger said.
“Oh yes, the colored man,” the attendant said.
He led them down the long, bare room, lit by cold, white light, and glanced at a card on what looked like the drawer of a huge filing cabinet.
“Unidentified,” he said, pulling out the drawer.
It rolled out smoothly and soundlessly. He removed a coarse white sheet covering the body.
“It hasn’t been autopsied yet,” he said, adding with a grin, “got to take its turn like everybody else. It’s been a busy night-two asphyxiations from Brooklyn; one ice pick stabbing, also from Brooklyn; three poisonings, one by lye-”
Grave Digger cut him off. “You’re holding us spellbound.”
Coffin Ed took the bartender by the arm and shoved him close.
“My God,” the bartender whimpered, covering his face with his hands.
“Look at it, goddammit!” Coffin Ed flared. “What the hell you think we brought you down here for-to start gagging at sight of a stiff?”
Despite his horror, the bartender giggled.
Grave Digger reached over and pulled his hands from his face.
“Who is he?” he asked in a flat, emotionless voice.
“Oh, I couldn’t say.” The bartender looked as though he might burst out crying. “Jesus Christ in heaven, look at his face.”
“Who is he?” Grave Digger repeated flatly.
“How can I tell? I can’t see his face. It’s all covered with blood.”
“If you come back in an hour or two they’ll have it all cleaned up,” the morgue attendant said.
Grave Digger gripped the bartender by the back of his neck and pushed his head toward the nude body.
“Goddammit, you don’t need to see his face to recognize him,” he said. “Who is he? And I ain’t going to ask you no more.”
“He’s Black Beauty,” the bartender whispered. “What’s left of him.”
Grave Digger released him and let him straighten up.
The bartender shuddered.
“Get yourself together,” Grave Digger said.
The bartender looked at him from big, pleading eyes.
“What’s his square moniker?” Grave Digger asked.
The bartender shook his head.
“I’m giving you a chance,” Grave Digger told him.
“I really don’t know,” the bartender said.
“The hell you don’t!”
“No, sir, I swear. If I knew I’d tell you.”
The morgue attendant looked at the bartender with compassion. He turned toward Grave Digger and said indignantly, “You can’t third-degree a prisoner in here.”
“You can’t help him,” Grave Digger replied. “Even if you are a member of the club.”
“What club?”
“Let’s take him out of here,” Coffin Ed said.
Detective Tombs listened to the byplay with fascination.
They took the witness outside to their car and put him in the back seat beside Detective Tombs.
“Who’s Mister Baron?” Grave Digger asked.
The bartender turned pleadingly to the white detective. “If I knew, sir, I’d tell them.”
“Don’t appeal to me,” Tombs said. “Half of this is Greek to me.”
“Listen, son,” Coffin Ed said to the bartender. “Don’t make it hard on yourself.”
“But I just know these people from the bar, sir,” the bartender contended. “I don’t know what they do.”
“It’s going to be just too bad,” Grave Digger said. “What you don’t know is going to hang you.”
Again the bartender appealed to the white detective. “Please, sir, I don't want to get mixed up in all this bad business. I’ve got a wife and family.”
The windows of the small, crowded car had steamed over. The face of the detective couldn’t be seen, but his embarrassment was tangible. “Don’t cry to me,” he said harshly. “I didn’t tell you to get married.”
Suddenly the bartender giggled. Emotions exploded. The white detective cursed. Grave Digger banged the metal edge of his hand against the steering wheel. The muscles in Coffin Ed’s face jumped like salt on a fresh wound as he reached across the back of the seat and double-slapped the bartender with his left hand.
Grave Digger rolled down a window.
“We need some air in here,” he said.
The bartender began to cry.
“Give me a fill-in,” the white detective said.
“The one who got killed in the heist and the one we just saw are newlyweds,” Grave Digger said. “This one-” He nodded toward the bartender-“is Snake Hips’ used-to-be.”
“How did you dig that?”
“Just guessing. They’re all just one big club. But you got to know it. It’s like when I was in Paris at the end of the war. All of us colored soldiers, no matter what rank or from what army or division, belonged to the same set. We all hung out at the same joints, ate the same food, told the same jokes, laid the same poules. There wasn’t anything that one of us could do that the whole God-damned shooting party didn’t know about.”
“I see what you mean. But what’s the angle here?”
“We haven’t guessed that far,” Grave Digger admitted. “Probably none. We’re just trying to get all these people in position. And this one is going to help us. Or he’s going to get something even he can’t handle.”
“Not before I get done with him,” the detective said. “My boss man wants him to look at some pictures in the gallery. Maybe he can identify the heistmen-one of them at least.”
“How long do you think that will take?” Coffin Ed asked.
“A few hours, maybe, or a few days. We can’t employ your techniques; all we can do is keep him looking until he goes blind.”
