Chapter 11
Three minutes after the Buick had squeezed into the Alley, a small black sedan skidded about the corner into 112th Street from Lexington Avenue.
Grave Digger was driving with the lights dimmed, and Coffin Ed was keeping a sharp lookout among the parked cars for the Buick.
The heater had suddenly begun to work, and the ice was melting on the windshield. The wind had shifted to the east, and the sleet had stopped. The tires sang softly in the shifting sleet on the asphalt street as the car straightened out; but the next moment it began going off to the right, so Grave Digger had to steer slightly left to keep it on a straight course.
“I got a feeling this is a wild-goose chase,” Coffin Ed said. “It’s hard to figure anybody being that stupid these days.”
“Who knows?” Grave Digger said. “This boy ain’t won no prizes so far.”
They were halfway down the block of dilapidated old houses and jerry-built tenements when they spied a motorcycle with a sidecar turn into the other end from Third Avenue.
They became suddenly alert. They didn’t recognize the vehicle; they knew nothing of its history, its use or its owner. But they knew that anyone out on a night like that in an open vehicle bore investigation.
The rider of the motorcycle saw them at the instant they saw him. He saw a small black sedan coming crab-wise down the otherwise deserted street. As much trouble as he had gone to over the years to keep out of its way, he knew it like the plague.
He wore dark-brown coveralls, a woolen-lined army fatigue jacket, and a fur-lined, dark-plaid hunter’s cap.
The seat had been removed from the sidecar, and in its place were two fully-tired automobile wheels covered with black tarpaulin.
When Coffin Ed spied the tarpaulin-covered objects, he said, “Do you see what I see?”
“I dig you,” Grave Digger said, and stepped on the gas.
If the tires had been smaller, the rider would have swallowed them the way peddlers swallowed marijuana cigarettes when the cops closed in. Instead he gunned his motorcycle straight ahead, switching on the bright light to blind the two detectives, and leaning far over to the right side out of line of fire. Motor roar filed the night like jet planes taking off.
Simultaneously Grave Digger switched on his bright lights. Coffin Ed had his pistol out and was fumbling with the handle to the window, trying to get it down. But he didn’t have time.
The two vehicles roared straight toward one another on the half-slippery street.
Grave Digger tried to outguess him. He saw the joker leaning to his right, overtop the sidecar. He knew the joker had them figured to figure he’d be leaning to the left, balancing the sidecar for any quick maneuver. He cased the joker to make a sharp last-minute turn to the right, braking slightly to make a triangle skid, and try to pass the car on the left, on the driver’s side, opposite the free-swinging gun of Coffin Ed.
So he jerked the little sedan sharply to the left, tamped the brakes and went into an oblique skid, blocking off the left side of the street.
But the joker outguessed Grave Digger. He made a rollover in his seat like a Hollywood Indian on a pinto pony, and broke a ninety degree turn to his own left and gunned it to the limit for a flying skid.
His intention was to get past the sedan on the right side, and to hell with getting shot at.
Both drivers miscalculated the traction of the street. The hard, sleety coating was tricky; the tires bit in and gripped. The motorcycle sidecar hit the right-rear fender of the sedan at a tangent, and went into a full-gunned spin. The sedan wobbled on its rear wheels and threw Grave Digger off balance. The motorcycle went over the curb behind a parked car, bouncing like a rubber ball, bruised the rider’s leg against a rusty iron stairpost and headed back in the direction it had come from.
Coffin Ed was stuck in the half-opened window, his gun arm pinioned and useless, shouting at the top of his voice: “Halt or I’ll shoot!”
The rider heard him over the roar of the motor as he was fighting to keep the vehicle on the sidewalk and avoid sidescraping the row of stairposts on one side and the parked cars on the other.
The sedan was across the street, pointed at an angle toward the opposite curb, but headed in the general right direction.
“I’ll get him,” Grave Digger said, shifting back to first and tramping on the throttle.
But he hadn’t straightened out the wheels from his sharp left turn, and, instead of the car curving back into the street, it bounded to the left and went broadside into a parked Chevy. The Chevy door caved in, and the left- front fender of the little sedan crumpled like tin foil. Glass flew from the smashed headlamp, and the rending sound of metal on metal woke up the neighborhood.
The thing to have done was to back up, straighten out and start over.
Grave Digger was so blind mad by this turn of events he kept tramping on the throttle and scraped past the Chevy by sheer horsepower. His own crumpled left-front fender caught in the Chevy’s left-rear fender, and both broke loose from their respective cars.
He left them bouncing in the street and took off after the motorcycle that had bounced back into the street and was making a two-wheeled turn north up Third Avenue.
It was pushing four-thirty in the morning, and the big transport trucks were on the streets, coming from the west, through the tunnels underneath the Hudson River, and heading north through Manhattan Island toward upstate New York-Troy, Albany, Schenectady or the Boston road.
A trailer track was going north on Third Avenue when Grave Digger made the turn, and for a moment it looked as though he might go underneath it. Coffin Ed was leaning out the window with his pistol in his hand. He ducked back, but his gun was still in sight when they passed the driver’s cabin.
The truck driver’s eyes popped.
“Did you see that cannon?” he asked his helper.
“This is Harlem,” his helper said. “It’s crazy, man.”
The white driver and the colored helper grinned at one another.
The motorcycle was taming west into 114th Street when Grave Digger got the sedan steadied from its shimmy. The melting ice on the windscreen was blurring his vision, and he turned on the wipers. For a moment he couldn’t see at all. But he turned anyway, hoping he was right.
He bent too sharp and bumped over the near-side corner curb. Coffin Ed’s head hit the ceiling.
“Goddam, Digger, you’re beating me to death,” he complained.
“All I can say is I’ve had better nights,” Grave Digger muttered through clenched teeth.
They kept the motorcycle in sight until it turned north on Seventh Avenue, but didn’t gain on it. For a time it was out of sight. When they came into Seventh Avenue, they didn’t see it.
Three tracks were lined up on the outside lane, and a fourth was passing the one ahead.
“We don’t want to lose that son,” Grave Digger said.
“He’s passing on the sidewalk,” Coffin Ed said, leaning out his right-side window.
“Cut one over his head.”
Coffin Ed crossed his left arm to overtop the window ledge, rested the long nickel-plated barrel atop his left wrist and blasted at the night. Flame lanced into the dark, and three blocks ahead a streetlamp went out.
The motorcycle curved from the sidewalk back into the street in front of the line of trucks. Grave Digger came up behind the truck on the inside lane and opened his siren.
At 116th Street Coffin Ed said, “He’s keeping straight ahead. Trying to make the county line.”
Grave Digger swerved to the left of the park that ran down between the traffic lanes and went up the left- hand side. The windshield wipers had cleared half-moons in the dirty glass, and he could see an open road. He pushed the throttle to the floor, gaining on the motorcycle across the dividing park.
“Slow him down, Ed,” he said.
The park, circled by a small wire fence, was higher than the level of the street, and it shielded the motorcycle’s tires. It was going too fast to risk shooting at the lamp. He threw three shots in back of it, but the rider didn’t slow.
They passed two more northbound trucks, and for a time both lanes were clear. The sedan came up level
