corners of Lady Gypsy’s mouth. But his big, flaccid body didn’t move, and his flat, stoical expression went unruffled.
“I’m not scared of you, Digger,” he said. “But I’m going to tell you what I know because I don’t want to get beat up.” He wiped the blood from his bruised and swelling lips with the vinegary sheet end. “You’re forgetting it was me who tipped you.”
“Yeah, and you let him sap you and get away while you was making a pass at him,” Grave Digger accused.
“That’s not so. He followed me in here and heard me phoning.” He nodded toward the telephone on the night table. “Not that I wouldn’t have if I had known what was coming,” he added.
“Forty seconds,” Coffin Ed said.
“He worked for a year as an able-bodied seaman for the South American Shipping Line.” He spoke steadily but unhurriedly. “On the SS Costa Brava. Saved all his money. Bought a new Cadillac from a man called Mister Baron-”
“Baron again,” Grave Digger said, exchanging looks with Coffin Ed.
“Paid six thousand, five hundred for it,” Lady Gypsy went on unemotionally. “Got it for a thousand dollars under the list price. A Cadillac with a golden finish-”
The white cops’ mouths had come open.
“He had just paid the money and got his bill of sale, and he was taking it for a tryout when he hit an old woman-”
“Alongside the convent?”
Lady Gypsy flicked him an upward look, then dropped his gaze and. stared at nothing again.
“Then you know about it?”
“You tell us.”
“I’m just telling you what he told me-”
The man on the floor stirred slightly and moaned.
“Won’t you put Mister Gypsy on the bed,” Lady Gypsy said.
“Let him lay where he is,” Grave Digger said.
“So they hit this old lady and ran,” he went on tonelessly. “They didn’t get far before they were stopped by three men in cops’ uniforms driving a Buick-”
“It begins to click,” Grave Digger said.
“Check,” Coffin Ed replied.
Lady Gypsy told the rest of the story in the same toneless voice. “Then, when Mister Baron got away, they came to me,” he concluded. “They wanted me to tell them where to find the Cadillac.”
“Did you tell them?” a white cop asked, eyes popping.
“If I could do that I wouldn’t be living in this dump,” Lady Gypsy said. “I’d be riding in a yacht on the Riviera.”
The man on the floor groaned again, and two white cops lifted him and laid him across the foot of the bed.
“How did he know about you?” Grave Digger asked.
“He didn’t. His girl friend told him. Brought him, rather.”
“Who is she?”
“Sassafras Jenkins. A girl on the town.”
“Did she steer him into Baron?”
“He doesn’t think so. He said he met Mister Baron at the docks in Brooklyn-where the Line has their warehouse. On his last trip in, two months ago. Mister Baron gave him a lift into Harlem; he was driving his own Cadillac convertible. Roman told him he was saving up his money to buy a car, and Mister Brown asked him how much he had saved, and he said he’d have six thousand, five hundred dollars when he came back from his next trip and Mister Baron said he’d get him a Cadillac convertible like the one he was driving for that amount-”
“He was driving a gold-finished Cadillac himself?”
“No, his was gray. But he asked Roman what color he wanted, and Roman said he wanted one that looked like solid gold.”
“What was Baron’s business in Brooklyn?” Grave Digger asked.
“Sailors, Digger,” Coffin Ed said. “Where’s your thinking cap?”
Grave Digger half agreed. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he was fishing frogs for snakes.”
“It’s the same thing,” Coffin Ed contended. “Sailors are everything to everybody.”
“You know Baron?” Grave Digger said to Lady Gypsy.
“It happens that I don’t.”
“You know Black Beauty.”
“Yes.”
“What was his racket?”
“Pimping.”
“Pimping! That pansy!”
“You said his racket, not his pleasure. And you employed the past tense. Is he dead?”
“He was the old woman who got killed.”
“Killed? They said she wasn’t hurt.”
“That’s another story. But you must know Baron. He’s in the clique.”
“That’s what I told myself,” Lady Gypsy admitted. “But truthfully, I don’t.”
“You know the Jenkins girl, however.”
Lady Gypsy shrugged. “I’ve seen her. I don’t know her. She comes in here from time to time with various tricks. She’s always got some little racket going.”
“With Baron?”
“You can’t trick me, Digger. I’ve told you the truth about Mister Baron. I don’t know him, and I don’t think she knew him, either.”
“Okay! Okay! Where do we find her?”
“Find her? How would I know where to find a chippie whore?”
“You got Findings written on your board downstairs,” Coffin Ed put in.
“Yeah, and you’d better live up to it or you are going to find yourself where you don’t want to be found,” Grave Digger added.
“You know that old courtyard between One-eleventh and One-twelfth Streets?”
“The Alley.”
“Yes. She’s got a man in one of those holes in there somewhere.”
“Who’s the man?”
“Just a man, Digger. I don’t know who he is or what he does. You know I wouldn’t be interested in a man who was interested in a chippie like that.”
“Okay, Ed, let’s get going,” Grave Digger said.
“We’d better call the desk first and let Anderson know the horse got out.”
“You call him.”
Coffin Ed reached for the telephone on the night table.
Grave Digger turned to the cops and said, “You men had better get back to your cars; you’ve been off the street too long as it is.”
Lady Gypsy said, “I want to put in a charge against that man for assault and battery and theft.”
“You’ll have to go to the station,” Grave Digger said. “And you had better wear a suit.”
Chapter 10
When Roman and Sassafras came running down the stairs from Lady Gypsy’s and made for the Buick parked at the curb, it was a good thing that nobody saw them. They were enough to catch the eyes of the blind. Roman
