jumped astride the hood and onto the front bumpers and others were running along beside it. They were shouting, 'Make way for O'Malley! Make way for O'Malley!' and they rode the wagon out into the street. The rioters went wild and the officers could only use their saps and billies. They couldn't shoot into those thousand people. The wagon got through. We found it parked a block away around the corner. There must have been a car waiting. They got away. We captured the other prisoners in a matter of minutes.'
'What about the one he was handcuffed to?' Coffin Ed asked.
'Him too. He was wandering in the street. He had been sapped and the cuffs were still on him.'
'It was organized all right, but it needed luck,' Grave Digger said.
'The mob seemed organized too,' the captain said.
'Probably, but I doubt if there was a connection.'
'More likely some planted agitators. They wouldn't have to know an escape was planned. They might have thought of freeing O'Malley by numbers,' Coffin Ed said.
'A holy crusade,' Grave Digger amended.
The captain looked sour. 'We got three hundred of them in the bullpen. You want to talk to them?'
Grave Digger shook his head. 'What are you holding them for?'
Captain Brice reddened with anger. 'Complicity, goddammit. Assisting criminals to escape. Rioting. Accessories to murder. Two officers were killed. And I'll arrest every black son of a bitch in Harlem.'
'Including me and Digger?' Coffin Ed grated, his face jumping like a live snake in a hot fire.
The captain cooled. 'Hell, goddammit, don't be offended,' he threw out the left-handed apology. 'These goddamned lunatics help in a planned escape without knowing what they're doing and cause two officers to get killed. You ought to be mad too.'
'How mad are you? ' Grave Digger asked. He felt Coffin Ed look at him. He nodded slightly. He knew Coffin Ed read his thoughts and agreed.
'Mad enough for anything,' Captain Brice said. 'Shoot a few of these hoodlums. I'll cover you.'
Grave Digger shook his head. 'The commissioner wants them alive.'
'I'm not talking about them,' the captain raved. 'Shoot any of these goddamn hoodlums.'
'Take it easy, Captain,' Coffin Ed said.
Grave Digger shook his head warningly. The room had become silent. Everyone was listening. Grave Digger leaned forward and said in a voice only for the captain's ears, 'Are you mad enough to let us have Iris, Deke's woman — if she hasn't gone to county?'
The captain sobered instantly. He looked cornered and annoyed. He wouldn't meet Grave Digger's eyes. 'You're asking for too much,' he growled. 'And you know it,' he accused. Finally he said, 'I couldn't if I wanted to. Her case is on the docket. I'm responsible to deliver her. If she doesn't appear it's officially an escape.'
'Is she still here?' Grave Digger persisted.
'Nobody's gone out,' the captain said. 'All the hearings have been postponed, but that makes no difference.'
Still leaning forward, Grave Digger whispered, 'Let her escape.'
The captain banged his fist on the desk. 'No, goddammit! And that's final.'
'The commissioner wants Deke and the two cop killers,' Grave Digger whispered urgently. 'You had two nights and a day to find those boys — you and the whole Force. And they weren't found. We're only two men. What do you expect us to do that the whole Force couldn't do?'
'Well,' the captain said, expelling his breath. 'Do the best you can.'
'We can find them,' Grave Digger kept on. 'But you got to pay for it.'
'I'll speak to the commissioner,' the captain said, starting to rise.
'No,' Grave Digger said. 'He'll only say no and that will be the end of it. You've got to make the decision on your own.'
The captain sat down. He thought for a moment, then looked up into Grave Digger's eyes. 'How bad do you want Deke yourself?' he asked.
'Bad,' Grave Digger said.
'If you can get her out of here without my knowledge, take her,' the captain said. 'I won't know anything about it. If you get caught, take the consequences. I won't cover for you.'
Grave Digger straightened up. Veins stood out on his temples and his neck had swelled like a cobra's. His eyes had turned blood-red. He was so mad the captain's image was blurred in his vision.
'I wouldn't do this for nobody but my own black people,' he said in a voice that was cotton dry.
He wheeled from the desk and Coffin Ed fell in beside him and they walked fast out of the room and softly closed the door behind them.
They got their official car from the garage and drove up to Blumstein's Department Store on 125th Street and went into the women's department. Grave Digger bought a bright red dress, size 14, a pair of dark tan lisle stockings and a white plastic handbag. Coffin Ed bought a pair of gilt sandals, size 7, and a hand mirror. They put their packages into a shopping bag and drove up to Rose Murphy's House of Beauty on 145th Street, near Amsterdam Avenue, and bought some quick-action black skin dye and some make-up for a black woman and a dark-haired wig. They put these into their shopping bag and returned to the precinct station.
All the brass had left but the chief inspector in charge of homicide. They had nothing to say to him. Many of the police cruisers had been assigned to special detail and had gone about their business. But the street was still closed and heavily guarded and no one was permitted to enter the block or leave any of the buildings without police scrutiny.
Grave Digger parked in front of the station house and he and Coffin Ed went inside, carrying their shopping bag. They kept on through the booking room and past the captain's office and the detectives' room until they came to the head jailer's cubicle at the rear.
'Send Iris O'Malley down to the interrogation room and give us the key,' Grave Digger said.
The jailer reached out languidly for the order.
'We haven't got any order,' Grave Digger said. 'The captain's too busy to write orders at this time.'
'Can't have her 'less you got an order,' the jailer insisted.
'She'll keep,' Grave Digger said. 'It just holds up the investigation, that's all.'
'Can't do it,' the jailer said stubbornly.
'Then give us the key to the bullpen,' Coffin Ed said. 'We'll start in the Back-to-Africa group.'
'You know I can't do that either 'less you got an order,' the jailer protested. 'What's the matter with you fellows today?'
'Hell, where have you been, man?' Grave Digger said. 'The captain's busy, can't you understand that?'
The jailer shook his head. He didn't want to be the cause of any escapes.
'Call the captain for goddamn's sake,' Coffin Ed grated. 'We can't just stand here and argue with you.'
The jailer got the captain's office on the intercom, and asked if he should let Jones and Johnson interview the Back-to-Africa group in the bullpen.
'Let them see who they goddamn want,' the captain shouted. 'And don't bother me again.'
The jailer looked crestfallen. Now he was anxious to co-operate to keep in their good graces. 'You want to see Iris O'Malley first or afterwards?' he asked.
'Well, we'll just see her first,' Grave Digger said.
The jailor gave them a key and called his underling on the tier where Iris was celled and instructed him to take her down to the 'Pigeons' Nest'.
They were there waiting when the jailer brought her in and left, and they locked the door behind him. They put her on the stool and turned on the battery of lights. Her scratches were healing and the swelling was almost gone from her face but her skin was still the colors of the rainbow. Without make-up her eyes were sexless and ordinary. She wore a dark blue denim uniform but without a number, since she hadn't been bound over to the grand jury.
'You look good,' Coffin Ed said levelly.
'Tell it to your mother,' she said.
'Deke got away,' Grave Digger said.
'The lucky mother-raper,' she said, squinting into the light.
Grave Digger turned down all the lights except one. It left her starkly visible but didn't blind her.
