Mister Baron got back into the car.
Roman began talking through the window. “You know this neighborhood-”
“Get in the car yourself,” Sassafras said.
He got back into the front seat and continued addressing Mister Baron. “Where would they likely go with my car? It ain’t like as if they could hide it.”
“God only knows,” Mister Baron said. “Let the police find it; that’s what they get paid for.”
“Let me give it some thought,” Roman said.
“How much thought you going to give it?” Sassafras said.
“I tell you what,” Roman said. “You go and phone the police and tell ’em it’s your car. Then, if they find it, I’ll show ’em my bill of sale.”
“That’s fine,” Mister Baron said. “Can I get out now?”
“Naw, you can’t get out now. I’m going to take you to a telephone, and when you get through talking to the police we’re going to keep on looking ourselves. And I ain’t going to let you go until somebody finds it.”
“All right,” Mister Baron said. “Just as you say.”
“Where is there a telephone?”
“Drive down the street to Bowman’s Bar.”
He drove down to the end of St. Nicholas Place. Edgecombe Drive circles in along the ridge of the embankment overlooking Broadhurst Avenue and the Harlem River valley, and cuts off St. Nicholas Place at the 155th Street Bridge. Below, to one side of the bridge, is the old abandoned Heaven of Father Divine with the faded white letters of the word PEACE on both sides of the gabled roof. Beyond, on the river bank, is the shack where the hood threw acid into Coffin Ed’s face that night three years ago, when he and Grave Digger closed in on their gold-mine pitch.
One side of Bowman’s was a bar, the other a restaurant. Next to the restaurant was a barbershop; up over the bar was a dance hall. All of them were open; a crap game was going in back of the barbershop, a club dance in the hail upstairs. But not a soul was in sight. There was nothing in the street but the cold, dark air.
Roman double-parked before the plate-glass front of the bar. Venetian blinds closed off the interior.
“You go with him, Sassy,” he said. “Don’t let him try to get away with nothing.”
“Get away with what?” Mister Baron said.
“Anything,” Roman said.
Sassafras accompanied Mister Baron into the bar. Roman couldn’t tell which one of them swished the more. He was looking through the right side window, watching them, when suddenly he noticed two bullet holes in the window. He had been in the Korean war and learned the meaning of the sudden appearance of bullet holes. He thought some one was shooting at him, and he ducked down on the seat and grabbed his pistol. He lay there for a moment, listening. He didn’t hear anything, so he peered cautiously over the ledge of the door. No one was in sight. He straightened up slowly, holding the pistol ready to shoot if an enemy appeared. None appeared. He looked at the bullet holes more closely and decided they had been there all along. He felt sheepish.
It occurred to him that some one in the car had been in a gunfight. No doubt those phony cops. He turned about to examine the other side to see where the bullets had gone. There were two holes about a foot apart in the ceiling fabric above his head. He got out and looked at the top. The bullets had dented it but hadn’t penetrated. They must be in the lining of the ceiling, he thought.
He turned on the inside light and looked about the floor. He found seven shiny brass jackets of. 38 caliber cartridges sprinkled over the matting.
It had been some fight, he thought. But the full meaning didn’t strike him right away. All he could think of at the moment was how those bastards had taken his car.
He put his pistol back on the seat beside him and sat there picking his nose.
Two cops in a prowl car with the lights out slipped quietly up beside him. They were on the lookout for that particular car. But when they saw him, sitting there in his coonskin cap, looking as unconcerned as though he were fishing for eels underneath the bridge, they didn’t give the car a second glance.
“One of the Crocketts,” the driver said.
“Don’t wake him,” the other replied.
The car slipped noiselessly past. He didn’t see it until it had pulled ahead.
Trying to catch some whore hustling, he thought. Mother-rapers come along and steal my car and all these cops can do is chase whores.
The bar ran lengthwise, facing a row of booths. It was crowded. People were standing two and three deep.
Sassafras went ahead of Mister Baron, elbowing through the jam. She stopped and turned around.
“Where is the phones?”
“In the restaurant,” Mister Baron said. “We have to go all the way to the back.”
“You go ahead,” she said, pulling aside so he could pass.
A joker on a bar stool reached out and tugged the tassels of her cap.
“Little Red Riding Hood,” he cooed. “How about you.”
She snatched her cap from his hand and said, “How about your baby sister?”
The man drew back in mock affront. “I don’t play that.”
“Then pat your feet,” she said.
The man grinned. “What you drinking, baby.”
Her glance had caught the smoky oil paintings of two brownskin amazon nudes reclining on Elysian fields above the mirror behind the bar. She tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t help it.
The man followed her glance. “Hell, baby, you don’t need much as what they got.”
She gave herself a shake. “At least what I got moves,” she said.
Suddenly she remembered Mister Baron. She started off. The man grabbed her by the arm.
“What’s the rush, baby?”
She tore herself loose and squeezed hurriedly to the rear. Glass doors opened into the restaurant, and she bumped into a waitress going through. The phone booth was to the rear on the left. The door was closed. She snatched it open. A man was phoning, but it wasn’t Mister Baron.
“’Scuse me,” she said.
“Come on in,” the man said, grabbing at her.
She jerked away and looked about wildly. Mister Baron was nowhere in sight.
She stopped the waitress coming back.
“Did you see a little prissy man with wavy hair come through here?” she asked.
The waitress looked her over from head to feet.
“You that hard up, baby?”
“Oh shoo you!” she cried and dashed through the swinging doors into the kitchen.
“Did a man come through here?” she asked.
The big, sweating, bald-headed cook was up a tree.
“Git out of here, whore!” he shouted in a rage.
The dishwasher grinned. “Come ’round to the back door,” he said.
The cook grabbed a skillet and advanced on her, and she backed through the doorway. She looked through the dining room and bar again, but Mister Baron had disappeared.
She went outside and told Roman, “He’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know. He got away.”
“Where in the hell was you?”
“I was watching him all the time, but he just disappeared.”
She looked like she was about to cry.
“Get in the car,” he said. “I’ll look for him.”
She took her turn sitting in the hottest car in all of New York State while he searched the bar and restaurant for Mister Baron. He didn’t have any better luck with the cook.
“He must have got out through the kitchen,” he said when he returned to the car.
“The cook would have seen him.”
