“Not yet,” he said. “But they had all the marks of professionals, and they ain’t going to be hard to identify.”
“All right,” she conceded finally. “I got the message. What’s it worth?”
He took a small black cheroot from a black leather case which he carried in his breast pocket and slowly applied a flame from a solid gold Flaminaire lighter imported from France. It looked as though he were doing a takeoff on a private eye.
Finally he said, “Well, Sister H, seeing as how your nephew Pinky is wanted too for putting in that false fire alarm last night, I figure for the two of them together, fifteen C’s ain’t too much. And while you’re at it, you better give me next month’s sugar at the same time. With all this shooting going on, who knows where we’ll be by then.”
“Two G’s!” she exploded. “Hell, you can have ’em both right now. They ain’t worth that much to me.”
He blew out a cloud of smoke and grinned at her. “You didn’t get the message. Homicide is going to wonder what it’s all about. They ain’t going to bite on the idea that one old darky chauffeur dreamed it up — and nobody else, if you get what I mean.”
She didn’t argue. There was no use.
“Let’s see if I’ve got that much,” she said and turned back toward the house.
“Look good and look fast,” he called after her.
She halted and her body stiffened.
“You know this is a lamster’s hangout up here in these sticks,” he said. “And I’m the authority on it. People are going to be asking me questions pretty damn soon, and I got to know how to answer.”
She resumed walking, her long skirts catching in the weeds again as she went around the side of the house. The tethered nanny goat was bleating for water and she stopped for a moment to untie it. Then she kept on through the blistered garden, trampling over the withered vegetables indiscriminately, and looked into the garage. One glance at the Lincoln was enough.
“Who did he think he was fooling,” she murmured to herself, then added half aloud, “Anyway, I was damn right.”
She returned to the house and entered her bedroom.
Uncle Saint and Pinky had disappeared.
She knelt before the chest of drawers, took out her bunch of keys and selected one and unlocked the bottom drawer. The front of the drawer swung down on hinges, revealing a built-in safe. She spun the dial and opened a small, rectangular door. Then she selected another key and opened an inner compartment which was stuffed with packets of banknotes. She took two packets from the top, closed and locked all three doors and left the room.
A tall, emaciated colored man flashily dressed in a Palm Beach suit and a hard straw hat with a red band stood beside the door. She quickly slipped the money inside of her dress.
“I ain’t got no Heavenly Dust now, Slim,” she said. “Come back later.”
“I need it,” he insisted.
“Well, I ain’t got it,” she snapped impatiently, brushing past him toward the side walk.
He followed reluctantly. “When you gonna have it?”
“At one o’clock,” she said over her shoulder.
He looked at his watch. “It ain’t but nine-thirty now. That’s three hours and a half,” he whined, following her into the street.
“Beat it,” she snarled.
He looked from her to the detective sitting in the car. Angelo turned his head slightly and made a motion with his thumb. Slim hastened down the street. Angelo watched him in the rearview mirror until he turned into a path across a vacant lot.
“It’s clear now,” he said.
Sister Heavenly took the packets of banknotes from inside her dress and placed them in his hand. He counted them carefully without looking up or taking any precaution at concealment. Each packet contained ten one- hundred-dollar notes. Negligently he slipped them into his inside coat pocket.
“Pretty soon you’ll be turning in this heap for a Jaguar,” Sister Heavenly said sarcastically.
“You ain’t just kidding,” he replied.
The high-powered motor roared into life. She watched him back the car at high speed into the first cross street, turn and speed away.
Pinky had the key, she thought. But the question was how to get it out of him.
Instead of returning to the kitchen she went on to the rabbit hutch to see if Pinky had taken another speedball in her absence. The buck rabbit was huddled in a corner of his cage, watching her with terrified eyes. She dragged him out by the ears and removed the stopper from his rectum. The three capsules of C amp; H that should have been there were gone.
No wonder he was talking so strange, she thought. He must be leaping and flying.
She put the buck back into his cage and walked slowly toward the kitchen, carrying the stopper in her hand.
I’ll just play it dumb, she decided, and see what those speedballs tell him to do next.
9
The house didn’t have a basement. It had been built by Italian immigrants unused to the cold winters of the Bronx and who didn’t have sufficient money for such a luxury.
Sister Heavenly’s bedroom and the kitchen composed one half of the house. The other half was composed of a large front parlor that was kept shuttered and closed and a small back bedroom which Sister Heavenly had converted into a bathroom.
The stairway to the attic led up from the kitchen and took up part of the short front hall, which, like the parlor, was never used. The bottom of the stairway which extended into the kitchen was detachable.
When Sister Heavenly returned to the kitchen she spoke apparently to no one: “You can come out now, he’s gone.”
The bottom of the stairs moved slowly out into the kitchen, revealing an access to a dugout beneath the house.
Pinky’s head appeared first. His kinky white hair was covered with cobwebs. On his battered face, ranging in colors from violent purple to bilious yellow, was a look of indescribable stupidity. His shoulders were too large for the opening and he had to put one arm through first and perform a series of contortions. He looked like some unknown monster coming out of hibernation.
The next thing that appeared was Uncle Saint’s shotgun, which seemed to drag Uncle Saint behind it.
Pinky shoved the staircase back into place and then stood close to Uncle Saint as though for spiritual comfort.
Neither of them met Sister Heavenly’s scornful gaze.
She couldn’t restrain from taunting: “You two innocents are acting mighty strange for people with clear consciences.”
“Ain’t no need of going looking for trouble,” Uncle Saint said sheepishly.
Sister Heavenly consulted her old-fashioned locket-watch. “It’s quarter to ten. How about all us going down to the dock and seeing Gus and Ginny off?”
If she had exploded a bomb filled with ghosts, she couldn’t have gotten stranger reactions.
Uncle Saint had a sudden heart attack. His eyes rolled back in his head and three inches of tongue fell suddenly from the corner of his dirty-looking mouth. He clutched his heart with his left hand and reeled toward his bunk, taking good care to hold on to the shotgun with his right hand.
Simultaneously Pinky had an epileptic fit. He fell to the floor and had convulsions, contortions and convolutions. His muscles jumped and jerked and quivered as he thrashed about on the floor. Foam sprayed from his mouth.
Sister Heavenly backed quickly from the danger zone of flying legs and arms and took up a position behind the
