“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, frightening little children,” she accused.
Big Six kept on slowly, lost to the world. “George!” he was calling silently in the rational part of his mind. “George. The mother-raper stuck me.”
He started across Seventh Avenue. Snow was banked against the curb, and his feet plowed into the snow bank. He slipped but somehow managed not to fall. He got into the traffic lane. He stepped in front of a fast-moving car. Brakes shrieked.
“Drunken idiot!” the driver cried. Then he saw the knife sticking from Big Six’s head.
He jumped from his car, ran forward and took Big Six gently by the arm.
“My God in heaven,” he said.
He was a young colored doctor doing his internship in Brooklyn hospital. They had had a case similar to that a year ago; the other victim had been a colored man, also. The only way to save him was to leave the knife in the wound.
A woman started to get out of the car.
“Dick, can I help?” She had only seen the handle of the knife. She hadn’t seen the blade coming out the other side.
“No-no, don’t come near,” he cautioned. “Drive to the first bar and telephone for an ambulance-better cross over to Small’s; make a U-turn.”
As she drove off, another car with two men stopped. “Need any help?” the driver called.
“Yeah, help me lay this man on the sidewalk. He’s got a knife stuck through his head.”
“Jumping Jesus!” the second occupant exclaimed, opening the far door to get out. “They think of new ways every day.”
Cars were double-parked on Lexington Avenue in front of the hospital, and a large crowd of people milled about on the slushy sidewalks. Photographers and newsmen guarded the front door and the ambulance driveway looking sharply at everyone who left. Somehow word had got out that Casper Holmes was leaving the hospital, and they were determined he wouldn’t get past.
Two prowl cars were parked across the street; uniformed cops stood about, beating their gloved hands together.
The heavy snow drifted down, leaving a mantle of white on hats and overcoats and umbrellas.
When the hearse drew up the cops cleared the entrance to the driveway.
A reporter opened the door of the driver’s compartment and flashed a light into Jackson’s face.
“It’s just the chauffeur,” he called over his shoulder to his colleagues; then he asked, “Who are you taking, Jack?”
“The late Mister Clefus Harper, a pneumonia victim,” Jackson replied with a straight face.
“Anybody know a Clefus Harper?” the reporter asked.
No one knew him.
“Don’t let me hold you up, Jack,” he said.
The hearse purred slowly down the driveway toward the back exit.
“Keep on going,” the white man in the rear of the Cadillac limousine said. “They’re going to take a little time to get him out, and we got to get rid of this stiff.”
The driver stepped it up, went past the double-parked cars and crossed 121st Street.
“Is he dead?” his companion asked.
“He ain’t alive,” the white man said as he bent over and began removing the noose from George Drake’s neck.
When he had finished he began emptying all of Drake’s pockets.
“Where we going to dump him?” the driver asked, as they approached 119th Street.
The white man looked about. He was not very familiar with Harlem.
“Turn down this street,” he said. “It looks all right.” The big car floundered in inches of snow.
“Can you get through to Third Avenue?” the white man asked.
“Sure,” the driver said confidently. “A little snow like this won’t stop a Cadillac.”
The white man looked, up and down the street. There was no one in sight. He opened the curb-side door.
“Pull in a little,” he said.
The driver brushed the curb.
The white man rolled the body of George Drake out into the deep snow on the sidewalk. He closed the door and looked back once. The body looked like that of a fallen drunk, only there were no footsteps.
“Step it up,” he said.
Jackson pulled up before the back door of the hospital from which the dead were removed. He was no stranger there.
He got out, went around, opened the back of the hearse and began dragging out a long wicker basket. Two grinning colored attendants came from within the hospital and took the wicker basket inside with them.
Jackson got back into the driver’s seat and waited. He listened to an argument going on inside.
“You can’t come back here and poke your nose into these dead baskets,” an indignant voice was saying.
“Why not,” a laconic voice replied. “It’s a city hospital, ain’t it?”
“I’ll get the supervisor,” the first voice threatened.
“All right, I’ll go,” the laconic voice acceded. “I wasn’t looking for anyone; I was just curious as to how many people die in this joint during an average day.”
“More than you think,” the first voice said.
Eight minutes passed before the attendants reappeared, staggering beneath the weight of the loaded wicker basket. The lid was sealed with a metal clamp, to which was attached a name-card in a metal frame:
CLEFUS HARPER-male Negro
FOR: H. Exodus Clay Funeral Parlor
134th Street
They slid the basket into the coffin compartment and started to shut the doors.
“Let me do it,” Jackson said.
The attendants grinned and re-entered the hospital.
“Where you want to go, Mister Holmes?” Jackson asked in a stage whisper.
“We’re alone?” Casper asked in a low voice from within the basket.
“Yes, sir.”
“Joe Green’s boys are following in the Cadillac?”
“Yes, sir, they’s waiting outside in the street.”
“No one knows they’re tailing us?”
“No, sir, not as far as I know of. They’s keeping about a half a block behind.”
“Okay. Then drive me to my office on 125th Street. You know where that is?”
“Yes, sir, up over the Paris Bar.”
“Double-park somewhere close,” Casper instructed. “Then get out and come back and open the basket. Then stand there as if you’re doing something and watch the street. When it’s safe for me to get out without being seen, give me the word. You got that?”
“Yessir.”
“All right, let’s go.”
Jackson closed the back door and climbed back into the driver’s seat. The hearse purred slowly up the driveway.
Before reaching the street it was stopped again by newspaper reporters. They looked at the name tag on the basket. One of them made a note of it. The others didn’t bother.
The hearse turned toward 125th Street. Half a block distant it passed Joe Green’s black Cadillac limousine. Jackson glanced at the Cadillac. It looked unoccupied He began to worry. He drove slowly, watching it in his right- side fender mirror. When he had gone another half block, the Cadillac’s bright lights blinked once and went off. He was relieved. He blinked his own lights in reply and kept driving slowly until he had made the turn into 125th Street and saw the black Cadillac make the turn half a block behind him.
He crossed Park, Madison, Lenox, keeping to the right, letting the fast traffic pass him.
