At Seventh Avenue he waited for a snowplow to pass, pulled around a dump truck, parked in front of the clock, that was being loaded by a gang of well-liquored men. They stopped and watched the hearse cross the avenue.
“Somebody going by way of H. Clay,” one of them remarked.
“Don’t ask who it is,” another replied. “It might be your mammy.”
“Don’t I know it,” the first one replied.
A Cadillac limousine pulled around the truck in the wake of the hearse and carefully crossed the avenue.
“That’s Joe Green’s big Cat,” a third laborer stated.
“Warn’t his men in it,” another replied.
“How you know? You running Joe’s business?”
“Most generally he got George Drake driving and Big Six sitting in the front.”
“Warn’t Joe in the back, neither.”
“Come on, you sports, and bend your backs,” the truck driver said. “You ain’t getting paid to second-guess Joe Green.”
The hearse double-parked beside a Ford station wagon in front of the drugstore adjacent to the Paris Bar. The drugstore was open for business, and a few customers were moving about inside. The Paris Bar seemed crowded as usual. Its plate-glass windows were steamed over, and from within came the muted sound of a jump tune issuing from the juke box.
The Cadillac double-parked at the corner in front of the United Cigar Store.
Jackson got out on the driver’s side, came around the front of the hearse and looked up and down the street. A couple of men issued from the Paris Bar, glanced at the hearse and went the other way.
Jackson went to the back, opened the doors and cut the metal seal on the wicker basket with his pocket- knife.
Casper lay in the basket, fully dressed except for a hat. He wore the same dark clothes he had worn into the hospital. A soft black hat with the crown crushed in lay atop his stomach.
“Want me to help you up?” Jackson asked in a whisper.
“I can get up,” Casper said roughly. “Close the doors and watch the street.”
Jackson left the doors slightly ajar and looked one way and the other and then across the street. Cars passed in the street, a bus went by; people came and went along the sidewalks, trampling the deep snow into slush.
“Where’s Joe’s car parked?” Casper asked from the crack between the doors.
Jackson jumped. He wasn’t used to people talking to him from the back of the hearse. He looked down the street and said, “In front of the Cigar Store.”
“When you leave, give ’em a blink,” Casper instructed. “How is it now?”
For a moment there was no one nearby; no one seemed to be looking in that direction.
“All right, if you come fast,” Jackson said.
Casper came fast. He was down on the street in one jump, the black hat pulled low over his silver white hair. He cleared the back end of the station wagon in two strides, leaped over the snow banked along the curb, slipped in the slush but caught himself, and the next instant was close to the doorway of the stairs leading to his offices above. His back was to the street as he inserted the key in the lock; no one had noticed him jump from the hearse; no one had recognized him; no one was paying him the least bit of attention. He got the door open and went inside, turned once and glanced at Jackson through the upper glass panel, signaled him to go on.
Jackson got back into the driver’s seat, blinked his bright lights and looked into the rear-view mirror.
The Cadillac’s bright lights blinked in reply.
The hearse drove slowly away.
The Cadillac pulled up and double-parked in the same position beside the station wagon.
“What you going to do with this heap?” the driver asked.
“Leave it right here, with the motor running,” the white man said. “If Joe Green’s a big shot, which he’s gotta be, ain’t nobody going to bother with it.”
He took his short-barreled police special from his right overcoat pocket, held it in his lap and spun the chamber, then put it back into his pocket.
“I’ll go first,” he said.
He got out and crossed the sidewalk, side-stepped two men and a woman and tried the handle to the door.
The two colored men closed in behind him.
The handle turned; the door opened.
“He made it easy for us,” the white man said, and started up the stairs, keeping close to the edges and walking on the balls of his feet.
The colored men followed.
“Lock the door behind you,” the white man whispered over his shoulder.
Chapter 18
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed sat in the car with the lights off on 19th Street, and waited. The motor was idling and the windshield wipers working.
Snow drifted down. The superintendents of the swank high-rent apartment houses flanking the private residences had their helpers out cleaning the sidewalks. Snowplows had already passed. The streets in this neighborhood were kept clean.
“I got a feeling we’re missing something,” Grave Digger lisped.
“Me, too,” Coffin Ed agreed. “But we got to have somewhere to start.”
“Maybe the sailor boy will hit it.”
Coffin Ed looked at his watch.
“It’s a quarter past seven. He’s had ten minutes. If he hasn’t hit it by now, he ain’t never going to hit it.”
“Blow for him then.”
Coffin Ed touched the horn, giving the prearranged signal. They watched in the rear-view mirrors.
Roman came out. Someone stood out of sight in the open door, watching him. He put his hat on the back of his head and started along the street.
When he came level, Grave Digger reached back, opened the door and said, “Get in.”
A head came out of the open door, peered briefly and then withdrew. The door closed.
“What did you make out of it?” Coffin Ed asked.
“Whew!” Roman blew. A film of sweat shone on his smooth tan skin. “Nobody knew Mister Baron,” he said. “Leastwise they all said they didn’t.” He blew again. “Jesus Godamighty!” he exclaimed. “Them people! And they’s rich. And educated, too!”
“They knocked you out, eh?” Coffin Ed said absently.
He and Grave Digger stared at one another.
“We’d better stop by the hospital again,” Coffin Ed suggested. He sounded dispirited and perplexed.
“We’re losing time,” Grave Digger said. “We had better phone.”
Coffin Ed drove around Gramercy Square and stopped in front of a quiet, discreet-looking bar on Lexington. He got out and went inside.
Well-dressed white people were drinking aperitifs in a dim-lighted atmosphere of gold-lined wickedness. Coffin Ed fitted like Father Divine in the Vatican. He didn’t let it bother him.
The bartender informed him with a blank face that they didn’t have a phone. Bar customers on high stools looked at him covertly.
Coffin Ed flashed his shield. “Do that once more and you’re out of business,” he said.
Without a change of expression the bartender said, “In the rear to the right.”
Coffin Ed restrained the impulse to yank him over the bar and hurried back to the telephone booth. A man was coming out; one was waiting to enter. Coffin Ed flashed his shield again and claimed priority.
He got the reception desk at the hospital.
