Grave Digger and Coffin Ed leaned against the bar at the front and waited for one of the two husky bartenders to serve them.
Coffin Ed nodded to a sign over the bar. 'Do you believe that?'
Grave Digger looked up and read: NO JUNKIES SERVED HERE! He said, 'Why not? Poor and raggedy as these junkies are, they ain't got no money for whisky.'
The fat bald-headed bartender with shoulders like a woodchopper came up. 'What's yours, gentlemen?'
Coffin Ed said sourly, 'Hell, man, you expecting any gentlemen in here?'
The bartender didn't have a sense of humor. 'All my customers is gentlemen,' he said.
'Two bourbons on the rocks,' Grave Digger said.
'Doubles,' Coffin Ed added.
The bartender served them with the elaborate courtesy he reserved for all well-paying customers. He rang up the bill and slapped down the change. His eyes flickered at the fifty-cent tip. 'Thank you, gentlemen,' he said, and strolled casually down the bar, winking at a buxom yellow whore at the other end clad in a tight red dress.
Casually she detached herself from the asbestos joker she was trying to kindle and strolled to the head of the bar. Without preamble she squeezed in between Grave Digger and Coffin Ed and draped a big bare yellow arm about the shoulders of each. She smelled like unwashed armpits bathed in dime-store perfume and overpowering bed odor. 'You wanna see a girl?' she asked, sharing her stale whisky breath between them.
'Where's any girl?' Coffin Ed said.
She snatched her arm from about his shoulder and gave her full attention to Grave Digger. Everyone in the joint had seen the obvious play and were waiting eagerly for the result.
'Later,' Grave Digger said. 'I got a word first for Early Riser's gunsel.'
Her eyes flashed. 'Loboy! He ain't no gunsel, he the boss.'
'Gunsel or boss, I got word for him.'
'See me first, honey. I'll pass him the word.'
'No, business first.'
'Don't be like that, honey,' she said, touching his leg. 'There's no time like bedtime.' She fingered his ribs, promising pleasure. Her fingers touched something hard; they stiffened, paused, and then she plainly felt the big. 38 revolver in the shoulder sling. Her hand came off as though it had touched something red hot; her whole body stiffened; her eyes widened and her flaccid face looked twenty years older. 'You from the syndicate?' she asked in a strained whisper.
Grave Digger fished out a leather folder from his right coat pocket, opened it. His shield flashed in the light. 'No, I'm the man.'
Coffin Ed stared at the two bartenders.
Every eye in the room watched tensely. She backed further away; her mouth came open like a scar. 'Git away from me,' she almost screamed. 'I'm a respectable lady.'
All eyes looked down into shot glasses as though reading the answers to all the problems in the world; ears closed up like safe doors, hands froze.
'I'll believe it if you tell me where he's at,' Grave Digger said.
A bartender moved and Coffin Ed's pistol came into his hand. The bartender didn't move again.
'Where who at?' the whore screamed. 'I don't know where nobody at. I'm in here, tending to my own business, ain't bothering nobody, and here you come in here and start messing with me. I ain't no criminal, I'm a church lady — ' she was becoming hysterical from her load of junk.
'Let's go,' Coffin Ed said. One of the sleeping drunks staggered out a few minutes later. He found the detectives parked in the black dark in the middle of the slum block on 113th Street. He got quickly into the back and sat in the dark as had the other pigeon.
'I thought you were drunk, Cousin,' Coffin Ed said.
Cousin was an old man with unkempt, dirty, gray-streaked, kinky hair, washed-out brown eyes slowly fading to blue, and skin the color and texture of a dried prune. His wrinkled old thrown-away summer suit smelled of urine, vomit and offal. He was strictly a wino. He looked harmless. But he was one of their ace stool pigeons because no one thought he had the sense for it.
'Nawsah, boss, jes' waitin',' he said in a whining, cowardly-sounding voice.
'Just waiting to get drunk.'
'Thass it, boss, thass jes' what.'
'You know Loboy?' Grave Digger said.
'Yassah, boss, knows him when I sees him.'
'Know who he works with?'
'Early Riser mostly, boss. Leasewise they's together likes as if they's working.'
'Stealing,' Grave Digger said harshly. 'Snatching purses. Robbing women.'
'Yassah, boss, that's what they calls working.'
'What's their pitch? Snatching and running or just mugging?'
'All I knows is what I hears, boss. Folks say they works the holy dream.'
' Holy dream! What's that?'
'Folks say they worked it out themselves. They gits a church sister what carries her money twixt her legs. Loboy charms her lak a snake do a bird telling her this holy dream whilst Early Riser kneel behind her and cut out the back of her skirt and nip off de money sack. Must work, they's always flush.'
'Live and learn,' Coffin Ed said and Grave Digger asked: 'You seen either one of them tonight?'
'Jes' Loboy. I seen him 'bout an hour ago looking wild and scairt going into Hijenks to get a shot and when he come out he stop in the bar for a glass of sweet wine and then he cut out in a hurry. Looked worried and movin' fast.'
'Where does Loboy live?'
'I dunno, boss, 'round here sommers. Hijenks oughta know.'
'How 'bout that whore who makes like he's hers?'
'She just big-gatin', boss, tryna run up de price. Loboy got a fay chick sommers.'
'All right, where can we find Hijenks?'
'Back there on the corner, boss. Go through the bar an' you come to a door say 'Toilet'. Keep on an' you see a door say 'Closet'. Go in an' you see a nail with a cloth hangin' on it. Push the nail twice, then once, then three times an' a invisible door open in the back of the closet. Then you go up some stairs an' you come to 'nother door. Knock three times, then once, then twice.'
'All that? He must be a connection.'
'Got a shooting gallery's all I knows.'
'All right, Cousin, take this five dollars and get drunk and forget what we asked you,' Coffin Ed said, passing him a bill.
'Bless you, boss, bless you.' Cousin shuffled about in the darkness, hiding the bill in his clothes, then he said in his whining cowardly voice, 'Be careful, boss, be careful.'
'Either that or dead,' Grave Digger said.
Cousin chuckled and got out and melted in the dark.
'This is going to be a lot of trouble,' Grave Digger said. 'I hope it ain't for nothing.'
6
Reverend Deke O'Malley didn't know it was Grave Digger's voice over the telephone, but he knew it was the voice of a cop. He got out of the booth as though it had caught on fire. It was still raining but he was already wet and it just obscured his vision. Just the same he saw the light of the taxi coming down the hill on St Nicholas Avenue and hailed it. He climbed in and leaned forward and said, 'Penn Station and goose it.'
He straightened up to wipe the rain out of his eyes and his back hit the seat with a thud. The broad- shouldered young black driver had taken off as though he were powering a rocket ship to heaven.
Deke didn't mind. Speed was what he needed. He had got so far behind everyone the speed gave him a
