anyone wear a hat like that but Go-Go Gooseman.
“My God!” she exclaimed aloud as she suddenly recognized the man. “That’s Pinky and he’s been in my souvenir trunk!”
Her mind started working lightning fast.… Pinky in disguise. She had expected him to make a move but she hadn’t expected to get such a lucky break. Naturally he was headed for the cache.
She jumped up so quickly she overturned the rocking chair. The old Italian woman tried to stop her in the kitchen to share a bottle of wine but she hurried past and went around the house. She stood behind a green lattice gate and watched Pinky loping past. He didn’t look in her direction.
She folded up her parasol to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, and kept well in back of him.
He went directly to the subway stop on White Plains Road and climbed the stairs to the waiting platform. Sister Heavenly was blowing and puffing by the time she reached the turnstile. She acted as though she hadn’t recognized Pinky and went down to the other end of the platform.
Looking around he saw her and gave a start. There was no place for him to hide. His only chance was to brazen it out. Everyone was staring at him. Once her gaze wandered in his direction. He stared back at her from behind his blue sunglasses. She looked at him for a moment curiously, then turned as though she had not recognized him and watched the train approach.
Two cars separated them. Both of them remained standing so they could peek around the doors when the train stopped and see if the other was getting off. But neither saw the other peeping.
They rode like this down to Times Square. Pinky jumped off just as the doors were closing. Before Sister Heavenly saw him, the doors were closed. She saw him stop and turn and look directly at her as her coach passed.
She got off at 34th Street and taxied back to Times Square, but he had disappeared. Suddenly she realized that he was trying to outsmart her. He had ridden down to Times Square and had given her the slip on the chance that she might have recognized him. He figured he was throwing her off his tracks. But there was only one place he could have anything cached, and that was the apartment on Riverside Drive.
She hailed a taxi and told the driver to step on it.
The driver leaned over a little to peer at her through the rearview mirror. My God, she’s still trying, he thought. But all the time she’s already had, if she ain’t made it yet she’ll never make it now.
Sister Heavenly had him stop in front of Riverside Church. She got out and paid him. He paused for a moment to watch her, making as though he was writing in his record sheet. He was curious. She had rushed him up here as though it were a matter of life and death, and all she wanted was to go to church.
Some of these old ladies think all God has got to do is wait on them, he thought sourly and shifted into gear.
Sister Heavenly waited until he had driven out of sight. Then she walked across the street into the park and selected a bench where she could watch the entrance to the apartment unobserved unless Pinky deliberately looked about for her.
Whistles began to blow as she took her seat. She pulled out her locket-watch to see if it was correct. It read twelve noon on the dot.
10
It was twelve noon sharp when Coffin Ed turned his Plymouth sedan into the northbound stream of traffic on lower Broadway.
“What do two cops do who’ve been kicked off the force?” he asked.
“Try to get back on,” Grave Digger said in his thick, cotton-dry voice.
He didn’t say another word all the way uptown; he sat burning in a dry, speechless rage.
It was twelve-thirty when they checked into the Harlem precinct station to turn in their shields to Captain Brice.
They stood for a moment on the steps of the precinct station, watching the colored people pass up and down the street, all citizens of Harlem who stepped out of the way to let the white cops by who had business in the station.
The vertical rays of the sun beat down.
“First thing to do is find Pinky,” Grave Digger said. “All we had on Jake is possession. If we get evidence he was peddling H too, that might give us a start.”
“He’s got to talk,” Coffin Ed pointed out.
“Talk! TALK! You think he ain’t going to talk! Much as you and me need a few kind words. Ain’t no mother- raper who ever knew Jake going to refuse to do a little talking.”
Fifteen minues later they pulled up before the apartment on Riverside Drive.
“Do you see what I see?” Coffin Ed remarked as they alighted.
“There couldn’t be but one of ’em,” Grave Digger said.
The dog was lying in front of the iron gate to the rear entrance. It lay on its side with its back to the gate and all four feet extended. It seemed to be asleep. The vertical rays of the midday sun beat down on its tawny hide.
“It must be cooking in this heat,” Coffin Ed said.
“Maybe she’s dead.”
It still wore the heavy muzzle reinforced with iron and the brass-studded collar with the chain attached.
They walked toward it by common accord.
Its lambent eyes half opened as they approached and a low growl, like distant thunder, issued from its throat. But it didn’t move.
Green flies were feeding from a dirty open wound in its head from which black blood oozed.
“The African did a poor job,” Grave Digger observed.
“Maybe he was in a hurry to get back.”
Grave Digger reached down and took hold of the chain close to the collar. The rest was underneath the dog. He pulled gently and the dog climbed slowly to her feet in sections, like a camel getting up. She stood groggily, looking disinterested.
“She’s about done in,” Coffin Ed said.
“You’d be done in too if you were knocked in the head and thrown in the river.”
The dog followed docilely as they went back to the front entrance and rang the superintendent’s bell. There was no answer. Coffin Ed stepped over to the mailboxes and pushed buttons indiscriminately.
The latch clicked with a ratchetlike sound that went on and on.
“Everyone’s expecting.”
“Looks like it.”
As they were descending the stairs to the basement, Coffin Ed said curiously, “What do we do if we run into trouble?”
They were still in their shirtsleeves and they had left their revolvers at home that morning.
“Pray,” Grave Digger said thickly, the rage building up in him again. “Don’t forget we’re subject to the charge of impersonating officers if we claim to be cops.”
“How can I forget it,” Coffin Ed said bitterly.
The first thing they noticed was that the trunk was gone.
“Looks like we’re too late.”
Grave Digger said nothing.
There was no reply to the janitor’s bell. Grave Digger looked at the Yale lock above the old-fashioned mortise lock. He passed the dog’s chain to Coffin Ed to hold and took a Boy Scout’s knife from his pants pocket.
“Let’s just hope the night lock ain’t on,” he said, opening the screwdriver blade.
“Let’s just hope we don’t get caught, you mean,” Coffin Ed amended, turning to watch all the entrances.
Grave Digger forced the blade between the doorjamb and the lock, slowly forced back the bolt and pushed open the door.
