Roman fell into Grave Digger and clutched him by the leg, and, when Coffin Ed jumped forward to kick him away, he clutched his leg.
He got to his feet, holding each big man by a leg, and banged their heads into the ceiling beams.
“Run, Sassy, run!” he shouted. “This ain’t no time for a fit.”
She stopped screaming as suddenly as she had started. She jumped to her feet and started toward the door.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed began raining pistol blows on Roman’s head.
He sank to his knees but held onto their legs.
“Run, Sassy!” he gasped.
But she stopped at the doorway to run back and snatch up her new fur coat.
Grave Digger grabbed at her but missed.
“Turn loose, tough mouth!” Coffin Ed grated as he kept pounding Roman on the head.
But Roman held on long enough for Sassafras to scamper down the stairs like a frightened alley cat. Then he relaxed his grip; he grinned foolishly and murmured, “Solid bone…” He fell forward and rolled over.
Coffin Ed leaped toward the doorway, but Grave Digger called to him, lisping painfully, “Let her go. Let her go. He earned it.”
Chapter 13
It was eleven o’clock Sunday morning, and the good colored people of Harlem were on their way to church.
It was a gloomy, overcast day, miserable enough to make the most hardened sinner think twice about the hot, sunshiny streets of heaven before turning over and going back to sleep.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed looked them over indifferently as they drove toward Harlem hospital. A typical Sunday morning sight, come sun or come rain.
Old white-haired sisters bundled up like bales of cotton against the bitter cold; their equally white-haired men, stumbling along in oversize galoshes like the last herd of Uncle Toms, toddling the last mile toward salvation on half-frozen feet.
Middle-aged couples and their broods, products of the postwar generation, the prosperous generation, looking sanctimonious in their good warm clothes, going to praise the Lord for the white folks’ blessings.
Young men who hadn’t yet made it, dressed in lightweight suits and topcoats sold by color instead of quality or weight in the credit stores, with enough brown wrapping paper underneath their pastel shirts to keep them warm, laughing at the strange words of God and making like Solomon at the pretty brownskin girls.
Young women who were sure as hell going to make it or drop dead in the attempt, ashy with cold, clad in the unbelievable colors of cheap American dyes, some at that very moment catching the pneumonia which would take them before that God they were on their way to worship.
From all over town they came.
To all over town they went.
The big churches and little churches, stone churches and store-front churches, to their own built churches and to hand-me-down churches.
To Baptist churches and African Methodist Episcopal churches and African Methodist Episcopal Zionist churches; to Holy Roller churches and Father Divine churches and Daddy Grace churches, Burning Bush churches, and churches of God and Christ.
To listen to their preachers preach the word of God: fat black preachers and tall yellow preachers; straightened-haired preachers and bald-headed preachers; family preachers and playboy preachers; men preachers and lady preachers and children preachers.
To listen to any sermon their preacher cared to preach. But on this cold day it had better be hot.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed parked their wreck in front of the Harlem Hospital and went inside to the reception desk.
They asked to speak with Casper Holmes.
The cool, young colored nurse at the desk lifted a telephone and spoke some words. She put it down and gave them a cool, remote smile. “I am sorry, but he is still in a coma,” she said.
“Don’t be sorry for us, be sorry for him,” Coffin Ed said.
Her smile froze as though the insect had talked back.
“Tell him it’s Digger Jones and Ed Johnson,” Grave Digger lisped.
She stared at the movement of his swollen lips with horrified fascination.
“Tell him we’re just ahead of the Confederates,” he went on. “Maybe that will get him out of his coma.”
Her face twisted as though she had swallowed something disagreeable.
“Confederates,” she murmured.
“You know who the Confederates are,” Coffin Ed said. “They’re the people who fought to keep us slaves.”
She smiled tentatively to prove she wasn’t sensitive about slavery jokes.
They stared at her, grave and unsmiling.
She waited and they waited.
Finally she picked up the telephone again and repeated their message to the floor supervisor.
They heard her say: “No, not conferees; they said Con-fed-er-ates
… Yes…”
She put down the telephone and said without expression, “You will have to wait.”
They waited; neither moved.
“Please wait in the waiting room,” she said.
Behind them was a small nook with a table and several chairs, some occupied by others who were waiting.
“We’ll wait here,” Grave Digger lisped.
She pursed her lips. The telephone rang. She listened. “Yes,” she said.
She looked up and said, “His room is on the third floor. Take the elevator to the right, please. The floor supervisor will direct you.”
“You see,” Grave Digger lisped. “You don’t know what those Confederates are good for.”
The room was banked with flowers.
Casper sat up in a white bed wearing a turban of white bandages. His broad black face loomed aggressively above yellow silk pajamas. He looked like an African potentate, but it wasn’t a time for flattery.
French windows opened to a terrace facing the east. Two overstuffed chairs ranged along one side of the bed. On the other side, remains of a breakfast littered a wheel tray. The detectives saw at a glance that it had been a substantial breakfast of fried sausage, poached eggs on toast, hominy grits with butter, fruit and cereal with cream and a silver pot of coffee. A box of Havana cigars sat beside a basket of mixed fruit on the night stand.
The detectives took off their hats.
“Sit down, boys,” Casper said. “What’s this about Confederates?”
Grave Digger looked about for a window sill on which to rest a ham, was thwarted by the French window and compromised on the arm of a chair. Coffin Ed backed into a corner and leaned against the wall, his scarred face in the shadows.
“We were just kidding, boss,” Grave Digger lisped. “We thought you might want to talk to us before the big brass from downtown gets up here.”
Casper frowned. He didn’t like the insinuation that he preferred talking to colored precinct detectives rather than to downtown white inspectors. But since he had tacitly admitted as much by seeing them, he decided to pass it.
“A god-damned embarrassing caper,” he conceded. “Right in my own bailiwick.”
Now he looked like a martyred potentate.
“That’s what we figured,” Coffin Ed said.
