Casper flicked a quick, sly look from one to the other. “You must feel the same way,” he observed. “Where were you at the time?”
“Eating chicken feetsy at Mammy Louise’s,” Grave Digger confessed.
Casper stared at him to see whether he was joking, decided he wasn’t. He opened the box of cigars and selected one, picked up a gadget from the table and carefully snipped off the end, then reached for an imported gold lighter behind the box and snapped a flame. He applied the flame like a jeweler using a miniature torch on filigree of gold, snapped shut the lighter, slowly rolled the end of the cigar about between his thick lips and blew out a thin stream of smoke. The good smell of fine tobacco dissipated the hospital odors.
As an afterthought, he extended the box toward the detectives. Both declined.
“I will tell you what I know, which isn’t much,” he said. “Then we will see what we can make out of it. You boys must have been working on it all night yourselves.”
“Still at it,” Grave Digger lisped.
“First we’ll tell you what we got,” Coffin Ed said. “A colored sailor, a country boy from Alabama, left his ship at about six o’clock last evening. He had been working for one entire year to save money to buy a car; when he got his final pay, he had six thousand, five hundred dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills in a money belt. The ship docks in Brooklyn. It was eight o’clock before he got uptown. He met his girl friend, Sassafras Jenkins. They had some drinks and then took a taxi over to an office on lower Convent Avenue, where he had an appointment to meet one Mister Baron, who was selling him the car.”
Casper smoked his cigar softly, his black face impassive.
“The appointment was for ten o’clock,” Coffin Ed went on. “Baron was a half hour late. He rode up in the car with a white man. Roman and his girl were waiting on the sidewalk in front of the dermatological clinic near One- twenty-sixth Street. The white man got out and went upstairs to an office in the rear. Roman and his girl stayed downstairs for another half hour with Baron, inspecting the car. A small crowd of people coming from the supermarket up the street collected.
“It was a brand new Cadillac convertible with some kind of gold-like finish. Baron was selling it to Roman for six thousand, five hundred dollars.”
Casper blinked but said nothing.
“You got a Cadillac convertible. What did yours cost?” Grave Digger asked.
“With accessories over eight thousand,” Casper said.
“Roman paid six thousand, five hundred for his,” Coffin Ed said. “The three of them went upstairs to the office where the white man was waiting, and executed the bill of sale. Sassafras witnessed it, and the white man signed as a notary public, using the name Bernard Kaufman. The white man left.
“Then the three of them took the car for a tryout at Baron’s suggestion. He had Roman turn into the street south of the Convent, where there would be little if any traffic, so he could test its pickup. Roman had no sooner started accelerating than he hit an old woman crossing the street. He wanted to stop, but Baron urged him to drive on. He didn’t have any insurance; the car still had dealer’s plates; he couldn’t apply for registration until Monday morning; and he didn’t have a driver’s license. His girl friend didn’t think the old woman was seriously hurt, but he ran anyway. He hadn’t got clear of the block when a Buick drove up and forced him to a stop. Three men in police uniforms got out and accused him of hit-and run manslaughter and forced the three of them out of the car.”
Casper sat up straight. His face turned slightly gray.
Coffin Ed waited for him to comment, but he still said nothing.
“The phony cops forced him and his girl into the Buick, sapped Baron, took the six thousand, five hundred dollars and went away in the Cadillac.
“We’ve been all night running down the Buick. We got it and Roman. We got a statement from Roman. He claims that Baron confessed that the old woman got up after he had hit her. So it must have been the bandits in the Buick who hit her the second time and killed her.”
Casper looked sick. “That’s horrible,” he said.
“More than you think,” Grave Digger lisped.
“But I don’t see what that has got to do with the robbery.”
“I’m coming to that,” Coffin Ed said.
Casper couldn’t see Coffin Ed’s face distinctly in the shadows, and it worried him. “Come over here and sit down where I can hear you,” he said.
“I’ll talk louder,” Coffin Ed said.
A flicker of anger passed over Casper’s face, but he said nothing. He picked up the gold lighter, and relit his cigar and hid behind a cloud of smoke.
“So far we haven’t got a line on Baron,” Coffin Ed went on. “We checked the building superintendent where the office is located and found that it is unoccupied and for rent. The super was out last night from nine o’clock until after two.
“The Cadillac hasn’t been found; there’s none reported stolen. The dealers are closed on Sundays, but there’s been no report that any have been broken into.
“We found the owner of the Buick-the manager of a hardware store in Yonkers. He parked his car in front of his house when he went home at seven o’clock last night and didn’t miss it until this morning. But that doesn’t help us any.
“We checked the listing of notary publics in Manhattan County. There was none named Bernard Kaufman; the address was bogus and the seal was counterfeit.”
“That’s well and good,” Casper rasped impatiently. “But where’s the tie-in?”
“The bandits who robbed you deliberately ran down the old lady a few minutes later and killed her.”
“Just proves they’re brutal mother-rapers,” Casper said, lapsing back to the Harlem vernacular of his youth. “But that’s all.”
“Not quite all,” Grave Digger lisped.
“The old lady was not an old lady,” Coffin Ed said. “He was a sort of a pansy pimp who went by the name Black Beauty.”
Casper strangled on cigar smoke. Grave Digger stepped beside the bed and beat him on the back. The nurse entered at that moment and looked horrified.
“It’s all right,” Casper gasped. “I just strangled.”
“I’ll get you a. glass of water and a sedative,” she said, looking at Grave Digger disapprovingly. “You shouldn’t talk so much, and you’re not allowed to smoke either. And beating a patient on the back,” she said to Grave Digger, “is no cure for strangulation.”
“It works,” Grave Digger lisped.
“For chrissake, don’t bother me now,” Casper said roughly, wiping the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand. “I’m busy as all hell.”
The nurse left in a huff.
“All right, goddammit, he was a mother-raping pansy called Black Beauty,” Casper said to Coffin Ed. “So what?”
“His straight moniker is Junior Ball,” Coffin Ed replied. “This morning at nine-thirty o’clock your wife, Missus Holmes, appeared at the morgue and identified the body and has requested it be released to her for burial.”
Casper gave no sign of outrage or surprise or any of the other emotions they might have expected. He began looking gutter-mean. He spat out shreds of wet tobacco and said in a hard, street-fighter’s voice, “So what! If his name was Junior Ball, he was her cousin.”
“What we want to know is, why would a trio of bandits who had just robbed you of fifty grand run down your wife’s cousin and kill him?” Coffin Ed said.
“How in the mother-raping hell would I know?” Casper said. “And if you think she knows then ask her.”
“We’re going to ask her all right,” Grave Digger lisped.
“Then go, goddammit, and do it!” he shouted, his face turning a vivid apoplectic shade of bright purple-black. “And don’t get so mother-raping cute. I’ll have you out dredging the Gowanus Canal.”
“Don’t lose your temper, boss-at your age you might have a stroke,” Grave Digger lisped.
Casper harnessed his rage with an effort. His breath came out in a long, hard sigh. He threw the partly smoked cigar on the floor and picked up another one without looking. His hands trembled as he lit it.
“All right, boys, let’s cut out the crap,” he said in a conciliatory voice. “You know what I mean. I don’t want
