'What about it?' he heard Anderson muttering as he switched off.
Grave Digger was chuckling as he wheeled the car into the traffic. 'Got your ass torn, eh, buddy?'
'Yeah, the boss man got salty.'
'Let that be a lesson to you. Don't play murder cheap.'
'All right, I'm outnumbered,' Coffin Ed said.
They found Sergeant Wiley in charge of the crew from Homicide. His men were casting footprints, dusting for fingerprints, and taking photographs. A young pink-faced assistant medical examiner was tagging the body DOA and whistling cheerfully.
'My old friends, the lion tamers,' Sergeant Wiley greeted them. 'Have no fear, the dog is dead.'
They looked at the dead dog, then glanced casually about.
'What've you got here?' Grave Digger asked. 'Just another corpse,' Wiley said. 'My fifth for the night.' 'So you covered the caper at the Polo Grounds?' 'Caper! Hell, when I arrived there were only four stiffs. You men got the live one.'
'You can have him.'
'For what? If he wasn't any good for you what the hell I want him for?'
'Who knows? Maybe he'll like you better.'
Wiley smiled. He looked more like a professor of political science at the New School than a homicide detective-sergeant but Grave Digger and Coffin Ed knew him for a cool clever cop. 'Let's look around,' he said, leading the way into the shed where the body was found. 'Here's the score. We got a social security card from his wallet which gives his name as Joshua Peavine and an address on West 121st Street. He was stabbed once in the heart. That's all we know.'
The detectives looked carefully over the junk-filled shed. Three aisles, flanked by junk stacked to the corrugated-iron ceiling, branched off from the main aisle that led in from the door. All available space was filled except an empty spot at the end of the main aisle beside the back wall.
'Somebody got something,' Coffin Ed remarked.
'What the hell would anybody want from here?' Wiley asked, gesturing towards the stacks of flattened cardboard, old books and magazines, rags, radios, sewing-machines, rusty tools, battered mannequins and unidentifiable scraps of metal.
'The man got killed for something, much less the dog,' Coffin Ed maintained.
'Might have been a sex crime,' Grave Digger ventured. 'Suppose he came here with a white man. It's happened before.'
'I thought of that,' Wiley said. 'But the dead dog contradicts it.'
'He'd kill the dog if it was worth it,' Coffin Ed said.
Wiley raised his eyebrows. 'All that secrecy in Harlem?'
'He'd do what was necessary if the pay was right.'
'Maybe,' Wiley conceded. 'But here's the twist. We found a ball of meat that looks as though it might be poisoned in his pocket — we'll have it analysed of course. So the dog was already poisoned by someone else. Unless he had two balls of poisoned meat — which wouldn't seem necessary.'
'This empty space bothers me,' Grave Digger confessed. 'This empty space in all this conglomeration of junk. Was there anything knocked off the hijack truck the other night that might identify it? Something that might wind up in a junkyard. A spare wheel?'
Wiley shook his head. 'Maybe a gun could have been lost, but nothing I can think of that would be sold here. Nothing at least to fill this empty space. I think we're on the wrong track there.'
'There's only one way to find out,' Grave Digger said.
Wiley nodded. The door to the office had been forced by Wiley's men but nothing had been found to draw attention. The three of them went in and Wiley telephoned Mr Goodman at his home in Brooklyn.
Mr Goodman was horrified. 'Everything happens to me,' he cried. 'Such a good boy, so honest. He wouldn't hurt a fly yet.'
'We want you to come over and tell us what is missing.'
'Missing!' Mr Goodman screamed. 'You're not thinking Josh was killed protecting my place? He wasn't a nitwit.'
'We're not thinking anything. We just want you to tell us what's missing.'
'You think thieves have stolen something from my junkyard? Diamonds, maybe. Bricks of gold. Necklaces of rubies. Have you seen my junk? Only another junk man would want anything from my junkyard and he'd need a truck to take away ten dollar's worth.'
'We just want you to come over and take a look, Mr Goodman,' Wiley said patiently.
' Mein Gott, at this hour of the morning! You say Josh is dead. Poor boy. My heart bleeds. But can I bring him back to life, at two o'clock in the morning? Can I raise the dead? If there is junk missing you can see it for yourself. Do you think I can identify my junk? How can anyone identify junk? Junk is junk; that's what makes it junk. If someone has taken some of my junk he is welcome. There will be signs where he has taken truck-loads, unless he is a lunatic. Look you for a lunatic, there is your man. And my Reba is awake and worrying should I go over in that place full of lunatic murderers at this time of night. She is a lunatic too. You just put Josh in the morgue and I will come Monday morning and identify his body.'
'This is important, Mr Goodman — ' The line went dead. Wiley jiggled the hook. 'Mr Goodman, Mr Goodman — ' The voice of the operator came on. Wiley looked about and said, 'He hung up,' and hung up himself.
'Send for him,' Coffin Ed said.
Wiley looked at him. 'On what charge? I'd have to get a court order to get him out of Brooklyn.'
'There's more ways than one to skin a cat,' Grave Digger said.
'Don't tell me,' Wiley said, leading the way back to the yard. 'Let me stay ignorant.'
They stood for a moment looking at the carcass of the dead dog. The ruddy-faced assistant medical examiner passed them, singing cheerfully, ' I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal you; I'll be standing at Broad and High when they bring your dead ass by, I'll be glad when you're dead…'
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed exchanged looks.
Wiley noticed and said, 'It's a living.'
'More bodies, more babies,' Grave Digger agreed.
The morgue wagon came and took away the body of the man and the carcass of the dog. Wiley called his men and prepared to leave. 'I'm going to let you have it,' he said.
'We got it,' Coffin Ed said. 'Sleep tight.'
Left to themselves they went back over the ground in detail. 'Anywhere else it would figure something was stolen,' Coffin Ed said. 'Here it don't make any sense.'
'Let's quit guessing, let's go get Goodman.'
Coffin Ed nodded. 'Right.'
They closed the shed and turned out the lights and went slowly through the yard to the gate. When they started to cross the street to where their car was parked, a dark shape came from beneath the bridge like a juggernaut. They couldn't see what it was but they ran because years of police work had taught them that nothing moves in the dark but danger. When they saw it was a black car moving at incredible speed they dove face downward on the pavement on the other side. A burst of flame lit the night as the silence exploded; machine-gun bullets sprayed over them as the black car passed. It was over. For a brief instant there was the diminishing whine of a high-powered engine, then silence again. The black shape had disappeared as though it had never been.
By now they had their pistols in their hands, but they still lay cautiously flat to the pavement, searching the night for a moving target. Nothing moved. Finally they crawled to the protection of their little car and stood up, still searching the shadows for movement. They eased into the car like wary shadows themselves. Their breathing was audible. They still looked around.
Car lights had slowed in the moving chain on the bridge overhead, but the deserted, off-beat street below remained dark.
'Report it,' Grave Digger said as they sat in the dark.
Coffin Ed called the precinct from the car and got Lieutenant Anderson. He gave it just like it happened.
'Why, for God's sake?' Anderson said.
'I don't figure it,' Coffin Ed confessed. 'We got nothing, no description, no licence number — and no
