had thought to take the license number; all descriptions of the driver were conflicting.
Suddenly Uncle Saint found himself caught in one of the clover-leaf approaches to the Lincoln Tunnel. The three traffic lanes were jammed with vehicles, bumper to bumper. There was no turning back.
As he crawled along in back of a refrigerator truck, his panic cooled to a sardonic, inverted scare. The killing didn’t bother him whatever. “Thought the old darky was tame,” he muttered to himself.
A subtle change came over him. He reverted to the legendary Uncle Tom, the old halfwit darky, the white man’s jester, the obsequious old white-haired coon without a private thought.
During one of the stops as the long lines of traffic were halted at the toll gates, he hid the shotgun underneath the back seat and tossed the gunman’s straw hat on top of the seat.
The toll gates looked like the entrance to a wartime military post housing nuclear weapons. Booted and helmeted cops sat astride high-powered motorcycles beside the toll booths; beyond were the white-and-black police cars that patrolled the tunnel.
The guard took the fifty cents toll and waved Uncle Saint on, but a motorcycle cop strolled over and stopped him.
“What are these holes in the back of this car, boy?”
Uncle Saint grinned, showing stained decayed teeth, and his old bluish-red eyes looked sly.
“Bullet holes, sah,” he said proudly.
“What!” The cop was taken aback; he had expected Uncle Saint to deny it. “Bullet holes?”
“Yas sah, gen-you-wine bullet holes.”
The cop pinned a beetle-brow stare onto Uncle Saint.
“You make ’em?”
“Naw sah, Ah was goin’ the other way.”
The toll guard could not repress a smile, but the cop scowled.
“Who made ’em?”
“My boss, sah. Mistah Jeffers. He made ’em.”
“Who was he shooting at?”
“Shooting at me, sah. He always shoots at me when he’s had a liddle too much. But he ain’t never hit me though — he-hee.”
The toll guard laughed out loud, but the cop didn’t like it.
“Pull over there and wait,” he ordered, indicating the parking space for the patrol cars.
Uncle Saint drove over and stopped. The cops in the cars looked at him curiously.
The motorcycle cop went into the glass-enclosed toll booth and studied the list of wanted cars. The Lincoln was not on the list. He fiddled about for fifteen minutes, looking more and more annoyed. Finally he asked the toll guard, “Think I ought to hold him?”
“Hold him for what?” the guard said. “What’s an old darky like him ever done but steal his boss’s whiskey?”
The cop came out of the booth and waved him on.
It was only a quarter past seven when Uncle Saint came out of the tunnel into Jersey City.
He left the parkway at the first turn-off and went north along the rutted, brick-paved streets that bordered the wharves. He drove slowly and carefully and obeyed all the traffic signs. It took him an hour to reach the first New Jersey approach to the George Washington Bridge. He crossed over into Manhattan and fifteen minutes later crossed the Harlem River back into the Bronx.
Before arriving at Sister Heavenly’s he threw out the dead gunman’s hat, then retrieved the shotgun, reloaded it, and placed it on the floor of the front seat within reach.
“Now let’s see which way the cat’s gonna jump,” he said to himself.
It was about 8:30 o’clock. The clock in the car didn’t work and Uncle Saint didn’t have a watch. But time meant nothing to him one way or another.
7
Grave Digger was sound asleep.
His wife shook him.
“Telephone. It’s Captain Brice.”
Grave Digger knuckled the sleep from his eyes. On duty all of his senses were constantly on the alert. Coffin Ed had once summed it up by saying, “Blink once and you’re dead.” To which Grave Digger had rejoined, “Blink twice and you’re buried.”
But at home, Grave Digger relaxed completely. His wife sometimes called him “Slowpoke”.
He was still sleep-groggy when he took the phone and said grumpily, “Now what gives?”
Captain Brice was a disciplinarian. He never fraternized with the men under him and played no favorites. The Harlem precinct was his command. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed were under his supervision, although their hours at night rarely permitted them to see him.
“Jake Kubansky is dead,” he said in a voice without inflection. “I have orders to present you to the commissioner’s office at nine o’clock.”
Grave Digger became abruptly alert. “Has Ed been notified?”
“Yes. I wish we’d had time for you to drop by here and go over this business, but the order just came in. So you had better go straight down to Centre Street.”
Grave Digger looked at his watch. It read 8:10.
“Right, sir,” he said and hung up.
His wife looked at him anxiously. “Are you in trouble?”
“Not as far as I know.”
That didn’t answer her question, but she had learned not to press him.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed lived only two blocks apart in Astoria, Long Island. Coffin Ed was waiting in his new Plymouth sedan. “It’s going to be another scorcher,” he greeted.
“Let it burn up,” Grave Digger said.
Everyone was in shirtsleeves.
The commissioner, deputy commissioner, inspector in charge of detectives, an assistant D.A., an assistant medical examiner, Captain Brice and Lieutenant Anderson from the Harlem precinct, three firemen and two patrol car cops from the horde who had answered the false fire alarm the previous night.
The hearing was being held in a big barren room in the headquarters annex across the street from the headquarters building. It had begun at 9:55; now it was 11:13.
Hard yellow sunlight slanted in from the three windows looking out on Centre Street and the room was sweltering hot.
The charge of “unwarranted brutality” resulting from the death of Jake had been lodged against Coffin Ed and Grave Digger.
First the assistant M.E. had testified that the autopsy had shown that Jake had died from a ruptured spleen caused by severe external blows in the region of the stomach. In the opinion of the Examiner’s Office he had either been kicked in the stomach or pummeled by a heavy blunt instrument.
“I didn’t hit him that hard,” Grave Digger had contradicted from where he sat with one ham perched on the window ledge.
Coffin Ed, backed against the wall on the shady side of the room, said nothing.
The commissioner had raised a hand for silence.
Lieutenant Anderson gave a verbal account of the detectives’ report and produced photostats of the pages of the precinct blotter where the entry had been made.
Captain Brice explained the special detail to which he had assigned the two detectives, sending them to all trouble spots over Harlem during all hours of the night.
The three firemen and the two patrol car cops testified reluctantly that they had witnessed Grave Digger hit
