'We're just having a little prayer meeting, with the Lord's consent,' the lookout said, but he sounded a little worried.
'Who's the Lord in this case?' Coffin Ed asked harshly.
'Ain't you,' the lookout said.
After that there was silence. Then they heard him moving around inside. Finally they heard another voice ask, 'What is it, Joe?'
'Some nigger cops out there from the precinct.'
'I'll see you sometime, Joe; see who's the niggermost,' Coffin Ed grated.
'You can see me now — ' Joe began to bluster, grown brave in the presence of his boss.
'Shut up, Joe,' the voice said. Then they heard the slight sound of the peephole being opened.
'It's Jones and Johnson, Hijenks,' Grave Digger said. 'We just want some information.'
'There's no one here by that name,' Hijenks said. 'By whatever name,' Grave Digger conceded. 'We're looking for Loboy.'
'For what?'
'He might have seen something on that caper where Deke O'Hara's Back-to-Africa group got hijacked.'
'You don't think he was involved?'
'No, he's not involved,' Grave Digger stated flatly. 'But he was in the vicinity of 137th Street and Seventh Avenue when the trucks were wrecked.'
'How do you know that?'
'His sidekick was run over and killed by the hijackers' truck.'
'Well — ' Hijenks began, but the lookout cut him off.
'Don't tell those coppers nothing, boss.'
'Shut up, Joe; when I want your advice I'll ask it.'
'We're going to find him anyway, even if we have to get the Feds to break in here to look for him. So if he's here, you'd be doing yourself a favor as well as us if you send him out.'
'At this hour of the night you might find him in Sarah's crib on 105th Street in Spanish Harlem. Do you know where it is?'
'Sarah is an old friend of ours.'
'I'll bet,' Hijenks said. 'Anyway, I don't know where he lives.'
That ended the conversation. No one expected any gratitude for the information; it was strictly business.
They drove across town on 110th Street, past the well-kept old apartment houses overlooking the north end of Central Park and the lagoon where the more affluent colored people lived. It was a quiet street, renamed Cathedral Parkway in honor of the Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York's most beautiful church, which fronted on it — a street of change. The west end, in the vicinity of the cathedral, was still inhabited by whites; but the colored people had taken over that section of Morningside which fronts on the park.
At Fifth Avenue they came to the circle where Spanish Harlem begins. Suddenly the street goes squalid, dirty, teeming with the many colors of Puerto Ricans — so many packed into the incredible slums it seems as though the rotten walls are bursting wtih human flesh. The English language gives way to Spanish, colored Americans give way to colored Puerto Ricans. By the time they reached Madison Avenue, they were in a Puerto Rican city with Puerto Rican customs, Puerto Rican food; with all stores, restaurants, professional offices, business establishments and such bearing signs and notices in Spanish, offering Puerto Rican services and Puerto Rican goods.
'People talk about Harlem,' Grave Digger said. 'These slums are many times worse.'
'Yeah, but when a Puerto Rican becomes white enough he's accepted as white, but no matter how white a spook might become he's still a nigger,' Coffin Ed replied.
'Hell, man, leave that for the anthropologists,' Grave Digger said, turning south on Lexington towards 105th Street.
Sarah had the top flat in an old-fashioned brick apartment building that had seen better days. Directly beneath her top-floor crib lived a Puerto Rican clan of so many families the apartments on the floor could not hold them all; therefore eating, sleeping, cooking and making love was done in turns while the others stayed outside in the street until those inside were finished. Radios blared at top volume all day and night. Combined with the natural sounds of Spanish speech, laughter and quarreling, the din drowned all sounds that might come from Sarah's above. How the families below fared was of no concern.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed parked down the street and walked. No one gave them a second look. They were men and that's all that interested Sarah: white men, black men, yellow men, brown men, straight men, crooked men and squares. Sarah said she only barred women; she didn't run a joint for 'freaks'. She paid for protection. Everyone knew she was a stool pigeon; but she pigeoned on the police too.
The first thing that hit the detectives when they entered the dimly lit downstairs hallway was the smell of urine.
'What American slums need is toilets,' Coffin Ed said.
Smelling odors of cooking, loving, hair frying, dogs farting, cats pissing, boys masturbating and the stale fumes of stale wine and black tobacco, Grave Digger said, 'That wouldn't help much.'
Next they noticed the graffiti on the walls.
'Hell, no wonder they make so many babies; that's all they think about,' Coffin Ed concluded.
'If you lived here, what else would you think about?'
They ascended in silence. The stink lessened as they climbed the six flights, the walls became less tatooed. The whorehouse floor was practically clean.
They knocked at a red-painted door at the front. It was opened by a grinning Puerto Rican girl who didn't bother to look through the peephole. 'Welcome, senors,' she said. 'You're at the right place.'
They entered a vestibule and looked at the hooks on the walls.
'We want to talk to Sarah,' Grave Digger said.
The girl waved towards a door. 'Come on in. You don't have to see her.'
'We want to see her. You go in like a good little girl and send her out.'
The girl stopped grinning. 'Who're you?'
Both detectives flashed their shields. 'We're the law.'
The girl sneered and turned quickly into the big front room, leaving the door ajar. They could see into what Sarah called her 'reception room'. The floor was covered with polished red linoleum. Chairs lined the walls: overstuffed chairs for the Johns, straight-backed chairs for the girls; but most of the time the girls were either sitting in the laps of the Johns or bringing them food and drink.
The girls were all dressed alike in one-piece shifts showing their shapes, and high-heeled shoes of different colors. They were all light-complexioned Puerto Rican girls with hair shades ranging from blonde to black; all were young. They looked gay and natural and picturesque flitting about the room, peddling their bodies.
Against the back wall a brilliantly lighted jukebox was playing Spanish music and two couples were dancing. The others were sitting, drinking whisky highballs and eating, saving their energy for the real thing.
Alongside the jukebox was a long dimly lit hallway, flanked by the small bedrooms for business. The bathroom and the kitchen were at the rear. A dark brown motherly-type woman fried the chicken, dished out the potato salad and mixed the drinks, keeping a sharp eye on the money.
Two apartments had been put together to make Sarah's crib and the back apartment was her private residence.
Grave Digger said, 'If our people were ever let loose they'd be a sensation in the business world, with the flair they got for crooked organizing.'
'That's what the white folks is scared of,' Coffin Ed said.
They watched Sarah come from the back and cross the big room. The girls treated her as though she were the queen. She was a buxom black woman with snow-white hair done in curls as tight as springs. She had a round face, broad flat nose, thick, dark, unpainted lips and a dazzling white-toothed smile. She wore a black satin gown with long sleeves and a high decollete; on one wrist was a small platinum watch with a diamond-studded band; on the ring finger a wedding ring set with a diamond the size of an acorn. Several keys dangled on a gold chain about her neck.
