“Sure thing, boss.”
“No, Smith, don’t do it.” He was nearly crying.
“Take him in tow, Willie,” the boss said. “And if he gets away, I’ll have your hide.”
I grabbed Newell by the shoulder. He was scared silly. He let me turn him around. I got his left arm in a hammer hold. I got my gun in my other hand and planted it in the middle of Newell’s back. He was in a bad way.
The boss turned off the light. “Let’s go.”
We went out the front again. I almost had to hold Newell up while the boss locked the door. We were out on the porch of the little house. The moon was playing around behind clouds.
“Listen, Smith,” Newell begged, “I’ve seen a couple of guys you have worked over and I don’t want it. I’ll tell you all about Droyster, if you’ll make this elephant turn me loose. You’re right, it wasn’t suicide. It was the most fantastic—”
And that’s as far as he got. Somebody in a patch of bushes not ten feet away had a gun. He used it. It sounded like an earthquake, the gun going off. Newell slammed into me when the slug hit him. Then the somebody made a quick take off out of the bushes. Before me or the boss could get our roscoes going, the somebody was already around the corner of Droyster’s big house and gone.
Smith snapped, “We’ve got to get out of here.” Lights went on in the big house. “Hurt bad, Newell?”
“In the side.”
“Let’s get the guy, boss,” I said.
“We’d never catch him now. Better let Newell go, Willie, he should get to a doctor.”
A door slammed up at the big house. Somebody yelled. More lights went on.
I turned Newell loose. He wobbled off, nearly on his last legs.
“You and me, boss?” I said. We were already legging it across the lawn.
“We’re going on a little errand. Too bad we couldn’t have hung onto Newell. But if we had tried, he might have died on us.”
“What kind of errand, boss?”
“We’re going to dig a grave, Willie.”
CHAPTER IV
Me and the boss shinnied over the iron fence that was supposed to keep people out of the graveyard. I didn’t much want to move when we got inside the fence. There wasn’t nothing but tombstones and graves all around. The way the moon was shining didn’t make them look any better.
“Do we just have to do this, boss?”
“Of course. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing—I guess. I sort of would like to get out of here, though.”
He laughed and gave me a push with his hand. I wished I could laugh. I wonder what it is like to have a regular job so you can sleep at night instead of messing around in graveyards with a killer loose someplace and the cops just praying for a chance to get you in the little room at headquarters.
I followed the boss. He looked at tombstones every little bit. Finally he pointed to a big chunk of some kind of fancy stone, marble, I guess.
“This is it, Willie. Start digging.”
We had gone by Smith’s apartment on the way down here. The boss had found a short-handled spade way back in a closet. He had once used the spade for flower beds, but we wasn’t planting petunias now.
He handed me the spade. I took off my coat, wiped the sweat off my face, and went to work.
I was about three feet down when I heard the voice. “What are you doing there?”
Then a light smacked me. I turned around gentle-like. I couldn’t see the guy holding the light.
He said, “Are you the same one that was here last night?”
I shook my head. Where in hell was Smith? I took a step toward the light.
“Hold it!” the guy said. “I’m the caretaker here and I’ve got a gun on you. One more move and I’ll give it to you.”
He wasn’t kidding.
He went on after a minute, “What’s so interesting in that grave, anyway?”
What the devil could I say? I didn’t know what he was talking about even if my throat and tongue hadn’t been so numb.
“Didn’t you hear me?” he growled. “Last night somebody came here and now you. Why?”
I shook my head again. Damn that Smith!
Then I saw the shadow behind the caretaker. Smith hit him hard with his automatic. The sound of the gun on the caretaker’s skull sort of made me sick. He dropped his light and fell on the loose dirt I had dug.
“Cripes, boss, I was wondering…”
“Where I was? Merely taking care of you, Willie. That headstone over there made a nice hiding place.” He looked down at the caretaker. “Someone here last night, eh? How interesting!” Then he told me, “Keep working, Willie. This is no holiday.”
I went back at it. It was hot work. The closer I got to the coffin, the hotter it seemed to get.
I got the lid off the pine box with a screwdriver the boss had brought along. I handed the lid up to him. He was getting all in a huff.
“Hurry, Willie! Get busy—open the casket!”
That took longer. My hands had too much sweat on them to do what Smith wanted them to do.
This had been one more night, I thought. Nothing could floor me now. But when I opened that casket, I damn near passed out.
The moonlight that came into the grave made things plain enough to see. I wish it hadn’t. There was a Great Dane dog stuffed in the casket. Blood was all over the inside, on the shiny white cloth. Somebody had cut the dog’s throat wide open…
Smith got down in the grave so fast I thought he had fallen. He pushed me back, which was fine, and started messing around in the casket with his hands. I shut my eyes on that.
In a minute he stood up. He was holding a white pillow that had been dyed in spots with blood. He crammed the
