“There ain’t no law,” Coffin Ed cut her off as he put on his jacket. “Folks cut one another’s throats and go on about their business.”
“It’s better than getting kilt by the law,” she argued. “You can’t pay for one death by another one. Salvation ain’t the swapping market.”
Coffin Ed jammed his hat on his head, turned up the brim and slipped into his overcoat.
“Tell it to the voters, Mammy,” he said absently as he took down Grave Digger’s overcoat and straightened out a sleeve. “I didn’t make these laws.”
“I’ll tell it to everybody,” she said.
Grave Digger came back in a hurry. His face was set.
“Hell’s broke loose on the street,” he said, poking his arm into the coat Coffin Ed held for him.
“We’d better hop it then,” Coffin Ed said.
Unnoticed by anyone but Mister Louise, the bulldog had moved over to block the curtained doorway. When Grave Digger moved toward it, the dog planted its feet and growled.
Grave Digger’s long, gleaming, nickel-plated revolver came out in his hand like a feat of legerdemain, but Mammy Louise swooped down on the dog and dragged it off before he did it injury.
“Not dem, Lawd Jim, mah God, dawg,” she cried. “You can’t stop dem from goin’ nowhere. Them is de mens. ”
Chapter 4
The small, battered black sedan parked at the curb in front of Mammy Louise’s Hog Store: open day amp; night was still talking when they came out on the street. Grave Digger slid beneath the wheel, and Coffin Ed went around and climbed in from the other side.
The store was on 124th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, and the car was pointing toward Seventh.
The Paris Bar was due north as the bird flies on 125th Street, midway between the Apollo Bar and the Palm Cafe and across the street from Blumstein’s Department Store.
It was ten minutes by foot, if you were on your way to church, about two and a half minutes if your old lady was chasing you with a razor.
Coffin Ed checked his watch when Grave Digger mashed the starter. The little car might have looked like a bow-legged turtle, but it ran like an antelope.
It passed the Theresa Hotel, going up the wrong side of the street, bright lights on and siren screaming. Jokers in the lobby staring out the windows scattered like a hurricane had passed. They made it in thirty-three seconds.
Two prowl cars and Lieutenant Anderson’s black sedan were parked in front of the Paris Bar, taking up all the available space. Save for the cops standing about in clusters, the street was deserted.
“One’s a white man,” Grave Digger said.
“What else?” Coffin Ed replied.
What he meant was what else could keep the black citizens away from the circus provided by a killing.
“Butts going to jump,” Grave Digger added as he made a sharp-angled turn and squeezed between the front car and a fireplug, jumping the curb.
Before he had dragged to a stop, crosswise the sidewalk, just short of banging into the grilled front of a drugstore adjacent to the Paris Bar, they saw the three prone figures on the sidewalk.
The one nearest wore a belted trench coat and a dark snapbrim hat that was still clinging to his head. He lay that on his belly, his legs spread and his feet resting on his toes. His left arm was folded down beside him with the palm turned up; his right arm was flung out at an angle, still gripping a short-barreled revolver. Street light shone on the soles of his shoes, showing runover rubber heels and recent toecaps. The top part of his face was shaded by his hat brim, but orange light from the neon bar sign lit the lower part, showing the tip of a hooked nose and a long, pointed chin and leaving the thin, compressed lips invisible, so that the face seemed to lack a mouth.
One glance was enough to tell that he was dead.
The Paris Bar had a stainless-steel front framing the two big plate-glass windows that tanked the doorway. The left-side steel baseboard directly behind the stiff was punctured with bullet holes.
With the second stiff, it was different. He lay piled up like a wet towel directly in front of the door. His smooth, handsome black face peered from folds of gay-colored clothes with a look of infinite surprise. He didn’t look so much dead from gunshot as from shock; but the small, round, purple-lipped hole above his right temple told the story.
The third figure was encircled by cops.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed alighted and converged on the first stiff.
“Two hits through the top of the hat,” Grave Digger observed, his gaze roving. “He was lying on his belly and they nailed the hat on tighter.”
“Two in the right shoulder and one in the left neck,” said Coffin Ed. “Somebody sure wanted this son dead.”
“No one man scored five hits on this guy and him with a gun in his hand,” Grave Digger stated.
“The way I see it, two or more guns were shooting from down there where Casper is lying, and a third gun cross-fired from a car parked at the curb.”
“Yeah,” Grave Digger agreed, counting the bullet holes in the stainless-steel baseboard. “Somebody was using an automatic in the car and missed all ten times.”
“This guy was lying flat, and the gun in the car was shooting over him, but it gave the ones in front a chance to ice him.”
Grave Digger nodded. “This guy knew his business, but he was outgunned.”
“Over here!” Lieutenant Anderson called.
He and a white precinct detective named Haggerty and two prowl-car cops were standing about an unconscious colored man stretched out on the sidewalk.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed glanced briefly at the second stiff as they ambled past.
“Know him?” Grave Digger asked.
“One of the girl-boys,” Coffin Ed said.
Detective Haggerty skinned back his teeth when they approached. “Every time I see you big fellows I think of two hog farmers lost in the city,” he greeted.
Grave Digger flipped him a look. “The office wit.”
Coffin Ed ignored him.
Both of them stared down at the unconscious figure. He had been turned over onto his back, and his bowler placed beneath his head for a pillow. His hands were folded across his chest, and his eyes were closed. But for the labored breathing, he might have been dead.
He was wearing a navy-blue cashmere coat with hand-stitched lapels and patch pockets. His shirt was hidden by a black silk scarf looped at the throat. The trousers were of a dark-blue flannel with a soft chalk stripe. Black calfskin shoes, practically new, finished the ensemble.
He had a broad, smooth-shaven face with a square, aggressive-looking chin. The black skin had a creamy, massaged look, and the short, carefully clipped kinky hair was snow-white. His appearance was impressive.
“Casper looks natural,” Coffin Ed said with a straight face.
“He was sapped behind the left ear,” Lieutenant Anderson stated.
“How do you figure it?” Grave Digger asked.
“It seems as though Holmes was robbed, but the rest doesn’t figure,” Anderson confessed.
“Laughing-boy yonder must have stepped out the bar to watch the bullets passing,” Haggerty cracked, amused by his own humor.
“One he didn’t see,” a white cop added, grinning.
Anderson wiped off the grin with a look.
“Who’s the gunman?” Coffin Ed asked.
