said and got out. Deke got out on the other side. Barry walked around the front of the truck and kept on ahead. His black coat and dark gray trousers were swallowed by the darkness. Deke stopped beside one of his gunmen.
'How does it look?' he asked.
In the telescopic sight Barry looked like the silhouette of half a man neatly quartered, the sight lines crossing in the center of his back as the gunman tracked him through the dark.
'All right,' the gunman said. 'Black on black, but it'll do.'
'Don't let him get hurt,' Deke said.
'He ain't gonna get hurt,' the gunman said.
When Barry stopped walking, two other silhouettes came into the sights, close together like three wise monkeys.
The gunmen widened their sights to take in the limousine and its occupants. Their eyes had become accustomed to the dark. In the faint glow of reflected light, the scene was clearly visible. The Colonel sat in the front seat beside the blond young man in the driver's seat. A white man stood on each side of Barry and a third, standing in front of him, shook him down and took the envelope from his inside pocket and passed it to the Colonel. The Colonel put it into his pocket without looking at it. Suddenly the two men flanking Barry seized his arms and twisted them behind him.
The third man moved up close in front of him.
Grave Digger cut off his lights when they approached the dark sinister area underneath the bridge. In the faint light reflected from the lights of the trucks and filtering down from above, the area looked like a jungle of iron stanchions, standing like giant sentinels in the eerie dark. The skin on Coffin Ed's face was jumping with a life of its own and Grave Digger felt his collar choking as his neck swelled.
He pulled the car over into the darkness and let the engine idle soundlessly. 'Let's load some light,' he said.
'I got light,' Coffin Ed said.
Grave Digger nodded in the dark and took out his long-barreled, nickel-plated. 38-caliber revolver and replaced the first three shells with tracer bullets. Coffin Ed drew his revolver, identical to the special made job of Grave Digger's, and spun the cylinder once. Then he held it in his lap. Grave Digger slipped his into his side coat pocket. Then they sat in the dark, listening for the sound that might never come.
'Where's the cotton?' the Colonel asked Barry so abruptly it hit him like a slap.
'Cotton!' he echoed with astonishment.
Then something clicked in his brain. He remembered the small sign advertising for a bale of cotton in the window of the Back-to-the-Southland office. His eyes stretched. Good God! he thought. Then he felt the danger of the instant squeeze him like an iron vise. His body turned ice cold as though the blood had been squeezed out; his head exploded with terror. His mind sought an answer that would save his life, but he could only think of one that might satisfy the Colonel. 'Deke's got it!' he blurted out.
Everything happened at once. The Colonel made a gesture. The white men tightened their grips on Barry's arms. The third man in front of Barry drew a hunting knife from his belt. Barry lunged to one side, throwing the man holding his right arm around behind him. And the big hard unmistakable sound of a high-powered rifle shot exploded in the night, followed so quickly by another it sounded like an echo.
The gunman beside Deke had shot the white man behind Barry dead through the heart. But the high-powered big-game bullet had gone through the white man's body and penetrated Barry just above the heart and lodged in his breastbone. The gunman at the other end of the truck had taken the white man holding Barry's left arm, the bullet going through one lung, ricocheting off a rib and ending up in his hip. All three fell together.
The third man with the knife wheeled and ran blindly. The big limousine sprang forward like a big cat, knocked him down, and ran over his body as though it were a bump in the road.
'Take the car!' Deke yelled, meaning, 'Take out the car.'
His gunmen thought he meant take their car and they wheeled and ran towards the Lincoln.
'Mother-rapers,' Deke mouthed and followed them.
Grave Digger was coming from three hundred yards' distance, his bright lights stabbing the darkness from where he'd heard the shots. Coffin Ed was shouting into the radio-telephone: 'All cars! The Polo Grounds. Seal it!'
The Lincoln was turning past the head of the trailer truck on two wheels when Grave Digger caught it in his lights. Coffin Ed leaned out the window and snapped a tracer bullet. It made a long incandescent streak, missing the rear of the disappearing Lincoln and sloping off towards the innocent earth. Then the truck was between them.
'Stop for Barry!' Deke yelled to his driver.
The driver tamped the brakes and the car skidded straight to a stop. Deke leaped out and rushed towards the grotesque pile of bodies. The white man who'd been run over was writhing in agony and Deke hit him with the. 45 in passing and crushed his brain. Then he tried to pull Barry from beneath the other bodies.
'No!' Barry screamed in pain.
'For God's sake, the key!' Deke cried.
'Cotton…' Barry whispered, blood coming from his mouth and nose as his big body relaxed in death.
Grave Digger came around the truck so fast the little car slewed sideways and Coffin Ed's tracer bullet intended for the gasoline tank shattered the rear window of the Lincoln Mark IV and set fire to the lining of the roof. The Lincoln went off in a hard straight line like a missile being fired and began zigzagging perilously in the dark. He threw another tracer and punctured the back door. Then he was shooting at the dark and the Lincoln kept going faster.
Grave Digger dragged the little car down and was out and running towards Deke, gun leveled, before it stopped moving. Coffin Ed hit the ground flat-footed on the other side, prepared to add his one remaining bullet. But it wasn't necessary. Deke saw them coming towards him. He had seen the Lincoln drive away. He dropped the pistol and raised his hands. He wanted to live.
'Well, well, look who's here,' Grave Digger said as he went forward to snap on the handcuffs.
'Ain't this a pleasant surprise?' Coffin Ed echoed.
'I want to phone my lawyer,' Deke said.
'All in good time, lover boy, all in good time,' Grave Digger said.
14
Now it was 1 a.m. Homicide had been there and gone. The medical examiner had pronounced all four bodies 'Dead On Arrival'. The bodies were on their way to the morgue. Both the Colonel's limousine and the Lincoln had gotten away. A search was being made. The seventeen police cruisers that had bottled up the area to keep them from escaping had been returned to regular duty. The workmen cleaning the Polo Grounds had returned to their work. The city lived and breathed and slept as usual. People were lying, stealing, cheating, murdering; people were praying, singing, laughing, loving and being loved; and people were being born and people were dying. Its pulse remained the same. New York City. The Big Town.
But the heads, the mothers and fathers, of those eighty-seven families who had sunk their savings on a dream of going back to Africa lay awake, worrying, wondering if they'd ever get their money back.
Deke was in the 'Pigeons' Nest' in the precinct station, sitting on the wooden stool bolted to the floor, facing the barrage of spotlights. He looked fragile and translucent in the bright light; his smooth black face was more the purplish-orange color of an overpowdered whore than the normal gray of a black man terrified.
'I want to see my lawyer,' he was saying for the hundredth time.
'Your lawyer is asleep at this time of night,' Coffin Ed said with a straight face.
'He'd be mad if we woke him,' Grave Digger added.
Lieutenant Anderson had let them have him first. They were in a jovial mood. They had Deke where they
