Tompkins number. A southern voice answered, 'Back-to-the-Southland office, Colonel Calhoun speaking.' He hung up.
'The Colonel,' he told Grave Digger when he got back in the truck.
'Let's don't think about it here,' Grave Digger said. 'They might be tracing our calls home.'
They drove back past the 125th Street railroad station and found the Chevrolet parked near the Fischer Cafeteria. Ernie gave them the sign that Iris was still put. They were driving on when they saw a blind man tapping his way along. They pulled around the corner of Madison Avenue and waited.
Finally the blind man came tapping along Madison. He was selling Biblical calendars. Coffin Ed leaned from the truck and said, 'Hey, let me see one of those.'
The blind man tapped over towards the edge of the sidewalk, feeling his way cautiously. He pulled a calendar from his bag and said, 'It's got all the names of the Saints and the Holy Days, and numbers straight out of the Apocalypse; and it's got the best days for births and deaths.' Lowering his voice he added, 'It's the photograph I told you about night before last.'
Coffin Ed made as though he were leafing through it. 'How'd you make us?' he whispered.
'Ernie,' the blind man whispered back.
Satisfied, Coffin Ed said loudly, 'Got any dream readings in here?'
Passersby hearing the question stopped to listen.
'There's a whole section on dream interpretations,' the blind man said.
'I'll take this one,' Coffin Ed said and gave the blind man a half dollar.
'I'll take one too,' another man said. 'I dreamed last night I was white.'
Grave Digger drove off, turned east on 127th Street and parked. Coffin Ed passed him the photograph. It showed distinctly the front of a big black limousine. A blond young man sat behind the wheel. Colonel Calhoun sat next to him. Three vague white men sat on the rear seat. Approaching the car was Josh, the murdered junkyard laborer, grinning with relief.
'This cooks him,' Grave Digger said.
'It won't fry him,' Coffin Ed said, 'but it'll scorch the hell out of him.'
'Anyway, he didn't get the cotton.'
'What does that prove? He might already have the money and the cotton might just be evidence. He might have killed the boy just to keep from tipping his hand,' Grave Digger argued.
'And advertise for the cotton today? Hell, let's take him anyway, and find the cotton later.'
'Let's get Deke first,' Grave Digger said. 'The Colonel will keep. He's got more than eighty-seven thousand dollars behind him — the whole mother-raping white South — and he's playing a deeper game than just hijacking.'
'We'll see, said the blind man,' Coffin Ed said and they drove back to the White Rose bar at 125th and Park. Paul was waiting at the bar, drinking a Coke. They pushed in beside him. He spoke in a low voice but openly. 'We've been assigned to another case. Captain Brice doesn't know we've been working for you and we won't tell him, but we have to report to the station now. Ernie's waiting for you to take over. She hasn't moved but that doesn't mean she hasn't phoned.'
'Right,' Grave Digger said. 'We're on the lam, you know.'
'I know.'
The bartender approached with a wise, knowing look. These nuts again, he was thinking. But they left without ordering. He nodded his head wisely, as if he'd known it all the time. They drove over to 115th Street and found Ernie parked near the corner watching the entrance of the apartment house through his rearview mirror while pretending to read a newspaper. Coffin Ed gave him a sign and he drove off.
There was a bar with a public telephone on the corner of Lenox Avenue. So they parked down towards Seventh Avenue, opposite the entrance, so they would be behind Iris if she came out to telephone. Grave Digger got out and began jacking up the right rear wheel, keeping bent over out of sight of Billie's windows. Coffin Ed walked towards the bar, shoulders hunched and red cap pulled low over his black weedhead sunglasses. He looked like one of the real-gone cats with his signifying walk. They figured she had to make her move soon.
But it had turned dark before Iris left the apartment. By now the tenements had emptied of people seeking the cool of evening, and the sidewalks were crowded. But Iris walked fast, looking straight ahead, as though the people on the street didn't exist.
Her skin was a smooth painted tan without a blemish, like the soft velvety leather of an expensive handbag. She wore silk Paisley slacks and a blue silk jersey blouse of Billie's, and one of the red-haired wigs Billie used in her act. Her hips were pitching like a rowboat on a stormy sea, but her cold, aloof face said: Your eyes may shine and your teeth may grit, but none of this fine ass will you git.
This puzzled Grave Digger as he pulled the truck out from the curb a half block behind her. She wanted to be seen. Coffin Ed had the telephone covered but she didn't look towards the bar. Instead she turned north on Lenox, walking fast but not looking back. Grave Digger picked up Coffin Ed and they followed a block behind, careful but not cute.
She turned east on 121st Street and went directly to O'Malley's church, The Star of Ham. The front door was locked, but she had a key.
Grave Digger parked just around the corner on Lenox and they hit the pavement in a flat-footed lope. But she was already out of sight.
'Cover the back,' he said, and ran up the stairs and tried the front door.
There was no time for finesse. Coffin Ed jumped the iron gate at the side and ran down the walk towards the back.
The front door was locked. Grave Digger studied the windows. Coffin Ed studied the back door and found it locked too. He hoisted himself up on to the brick wall separating the back yard of the apartment next door for a better view.
From the hideout underneath the rostrum, all three distinctly heard her key in the lock, heard the lock click, the door opening and closing, the lock clicking shut, and her footsteps on the wooden floor.
'Here she is now,' Deke said with relief.
'It's a goddamn good thing for you,' the oily-haired gunman said. He had a Colt. 45 automatic in his right hand and he kept slapping the barrel in the palm of his left hand as he looked down at Deke.
Deke was tied to one of the two straight-backed tubular chairs and sweat was streaming down his face as though he were crying. He had been tied in that position, with his arms about the chair's back, since Iris had first telephoned, seven hours previous.
The other gunman lay on the couch, his eyes closed, seemingly asleep.
They were silent as they listened over the electronics pickup to Iris's footsteps tripping across the floor above, but their attention was alerted when they heard another sound at the front door.
'She's tailed,' the gunman on the couch said, sitting up.
He was a stout, light-complexioned man with thinning straight brown hair, slitted brown eyes and a nasty- looking mouth as though he dribbled food. He spat on the floor as they listened.
The footsteps rounded the pulpit and stopped on the other side and there was no more sound from the front door.
'She's on to it,' Deke said, licking the sweat trickling into his mouth, 'She's going out through the wall to lose them.'
The gunman on the couch said, 'She better lose them good, baby.'
They heard the secret door through the wall into an apartment in the building next door being opened and closed and then silence.
The gunman standing slapped the Colt against the palm of his hand as though perplexed. 'How come you trust this bitch when she's ratted on you before?'
The sweat stung Deke's eyes and he blinked. 'I don't trust her, but that bitch likes money; and she's always going keep this secret for her own safety,' he said.
The gunman on the couch said, 'It's your life, baby.'
The gunman standing said, 'She'd better come back soon or it's gonna be too late. It's getting hotter all the time.'
