Both of them grunted from shock.
The body of the African was lying in a grotesque position in the center of the bare linoleum floor with its throat cut from ear to ear. The wound had stopped bleeding and the surrounding blood had coagulated, giving the impression of a purple-lipped monster’s mouth.
Blood was everywhere, over the furniture, the floor, the African’s white turban and crumpled robe.
For a moment there was only the sound of their labored breathing and the buzzing of an electric fan somewhere out of sight.
Then Coffin Ed reached behind him, knocking the dog aside, and closed the door. The sound of the clicking of the lock released them from their trance of shock.
“Whoever did that wasn’t joking,” Grave Digger said soberly, the anger drained from him.
“As many as I’ve seen, I always get a shock,” Coffin Ed confessed.
“Me too. This mother-raping senseless violence!”
“Yeah, but what you gonna do?” Coffin Ed said, thinking about themselves.
“Hell, meet it is all.”
The dog inched forward unnoticed and suddenly Coffin Ed looked down and saw it sniff at the cut throat and lick the blood.
“Get back, Goddammit!” he shouted, snatching up the chain.
The dog backed up and cringed.
Finally they got around to noticing that the room was in a shambles. Rugs were scattered; drawers were emptied, the contents strewn about the floor; the stuffed birds and animals had been gutted, the statuettes smashed, the overstuffed furniture slashed and the packing ripped apart; the broken-down TV sets and the radio had been pried open, the housing of the organ bashed in.
Without commenting, Coffin Ed looped the handle of the dog chain over the doorknob. Then he and Grave Digger poked into the other rooms, taking care not to step into the blood. Doors led from the parlor into the kitchen and one bedroom, beyond which was a bathroom. There was the same disorder in all. They went back and stared at the body of the African.
The macabre hideousness of the bloody corpse was accentuated by the buzzing of the fan. Grave Digger bent over and sent his gaze along the floor, underneath the blood stained shattered furniture, searching for it. The fan lay overturned beneath the dining table, half hidden by a broken television screen. He located the wall socket and jerked out the plug.
Silence came down. It was the dinner hour and the basement was deserted.
They could almost hear their thoughts moving around.
“If what the janitor’s wife said about Pinky is true, he might have cut the African’s throat.” Coffin Ed spoke his thoughts aloud.
“I don’t figure him for this,” Grave Digger said. “What would he be looking for?”
“Search me. What about her? Cat-eyed women are known for cutting throats.”
“And search her own house?” Grave Digger said.
“Who knows? All this heat is affecting people’s minds. Maybe she thought her husband had something hidden here.”
“Why would she kill the African? It looked to me like they were cooking with the same gas. It was obvious he was laying her.”
“I don’t dig this at all,” Coffin Ed confessed. “Somebody wanted something bad, but they didn’t find it.”
“That’s obvious. If they had found it, there would be at least one small place that wasn’t torn up, some indication where the search had stopped.”
“But what the hell could they be looking for important enough to murder? What could one old colored janitor have that valuable?”
Grave Digger began considering the sex angle. “You think he’s that old? Old enough to kill the African out of jealousy? Or you think he found out they were crossing him in some way?”
“I ain’t figuring him for doing it. But it figures he was old. And old men don’t generally take chances.”
“Who told you that?”
“Anyway, there’re a hell of a lot of questions here need answering,” Coffin Ed said.
With unspoken accord, they approached the body, picking their way through the blood. Coffin Ed grimaced and his face began to twitch.
Grave Digger lifted one of the African’s arms, holding the wrist between his thumb and first finger, then let it drop. The body was still limp even though the blood had coagulated.
“How do you account for that?” Coffin Ed asked.
“Maybe it’s the heat. In weather this hot it might take some time for rigor mortis to set in.”
“It might be that he ain’t been dead long too.”
They looked at one another with the same sudden thought. A chill seemed to come into the room.
“You think he came in and interrupted the search? And that’s why he got killed?”
“It figures,” Coffin Ed said.
“Then the chances are the murderer might not have finished when we arrived.”
“Or
“In that case they might still be hiding somewhere in this basement.”
Coffin Ed didn’t reply immediately. The grafted patches of skin on his face contorted and the tic set in.
For a time they stood without moving, holding their breath to listen. Vague sounds drifted in from the street — passing automobiles, the distant horn of a ship, the muted, unidentifiable thousand sounds of the city forming an unnoticeable undertone. The rat-tat-tat of a woman’s heels hurrying down the hallway overhead was followed by the rumbling of the elevator starting. But no sound came from the vicinity of the basement. It was a quiet residential street and during this hour most of the tenants, grownups and children alike, were at lunch.
At the same time both were trying to reconstruct the layout of the basement from what little they had seen of it. On their previous visit they had noticed that the laundry was to the right of the back entrance facing a corridor which ran parallel to the back wall. Next to the laundry were the elevator, staircase to the front hall, a toolroom and the door to the janitor’s suite; all of which faced the blank whitewashed wall of the storeroom entered from the other side. Another hall running parallel with the front of the house turned off at right angles at the janitor’s door and no doubt continued around the other side of the house, encircling the basement. They had both noticed that the door to the boiler room opened off the front hall.
“I’d feel a hell of a lot better if I was heeled,” Grave Digger confessed.
“I got a notion we’re making rattlesnakes out of tadpoles,” Coffin Ed said.
“Let’s play it safe,” Grave Digger said. “Whoever cut this boy’s throat wasn’t kidding.”
Coffin Ed unhooked the dog’s chain from the doorknob, cracked the door and peered cautiously down the corridor.
“This situation is funny,” he said. “Here we are, supposed to be tough cops, and are scared to poke our heads out of this door in the basement of one of the safest houses in the city.”
“You call this safe?” Grave Digger said, indicating the gory stiff. “And it wouldn’t be so funny if you got your head blown off.”
“Well, we can’t stay holed up like two rats,” Coffin Ed said and threw open the door.
Grave Digger leaped to one side and flatted himself against the wall flanking the door, but Coffin Ed stood out in the open.
“You remind me of a Spanish captain I read about in a book by Hemingway,” Grave Digger said disgustedly. “This captain figured the enemies were all dead so he charged the dugout single-handed, beating his chest and yelling at them to come out and shoot him, showing how brave he was. And you know what — one of ’em rose up and shot him through the heart.”
“Does that look like any enemy is out there?” Coffin Ed demanded.
In both directions, the brightly lit, whitewashed corridors were deserted and serene. The door to the laundry was open but the doors to the toolroom and boiler room were closed. But they had wire mesh in the place of upper panels and not a sound came from either room. It looked as peaceful as a grave. The idea of killers lurking in ambush seemed suddenly absurd.
“Hell, I’m going to look around,” Coffin Ed said.
