The Real Cool Killers Part 12

"We just told her that to keep her from worrying. She don't like for him to go up on the roof at night."

"If I find you punks are holding out on me, G.o.d help you," the sergeant said in a slow sincere voice.

"Go look then," Sheik said.

The sergeant nodded to the professor. The professor climbed out of the window into the bright glare of the spotlights and began ascending the fire escape.

"What's he doing with them at night?" the sergeant asked Sheik.

"I don't know. Trying to make them lay black eggs, I suppose."

"I'm going to take you down to the station and have a private talk with you, punk," the sergeant said. "You're one punk who needs talking to privately."

The professor came down from the roof and called through the window, "They're holding two c.o.o.ns up here beside a pigeon loft. They're waiting on you."

"Okay, I'm coming. You and Price hold these punks on ice," he directed the other cops and climbed out of the window behind the professor.

9.

"Get in," Grave Digger said.

She pulled up the skirt of her evening gown, drew the black coat tight, and eased her jumbo hams into the seat usually occupied by Coffin Ed.

Grave Digger went around on the other side and climbed beneath the wheel and waited.

"Does I just have to go along, honey," the woman said in a wheedling voice. "I can just as well tell you where she's at."

"That's what I'm waiting for."

"Well, why didn't you say so? She's in the Knickerbocker Apartments on 45th Street -- the old Knickerbocker, I mean. She on the six story, 669."

"Who is she?" Grave Digger asked, probing a little.

"Who she is? Just a landprop is all."

"That ain't what I mean."

"Oh, I know what you means. You means who is she. You means you don't know who Reba is, Digger?" She tried to sound jocular but wasn't successful. "She the landprop what used to be old cap Murphy's go-between 'fore he got sent up for taking all them bribes. It was in all the papers."

"That was ten years ago and they called her Sheba then," he said.

"Yare, that's right, but she changed her name after she got into that last shooting sc.r.a.pe. You musta 'member that. She caught the n.i.g.g.e.r with some chippie or 'nother and made him jump buck naked out the third-story window. That wouldn't 'ave been so bad but she shot 'im through the head as he was going down. That was when she lived in the valley. Since then she done come up here on the hill. 'Course it warn't n.o.body but her husband and she didn't get a day. But Reba always has been lucky that way."

He took a shot in the dark. "What would anybody shoot Galen for?"

She grew stiff with caution, "Who he?"

"You know d.a.m.n well who he was. He's the man who was shot tonight."

"Naw suh, I didn't know nothing 'bout that gennelman. I don't know why n.o.body would want to shoot him."

"You people give me a pain in the seat with all that ducking and dodging every time someone asks you a question. You act like you belong to a race of artful dodgers."

"You is asking me something I don't know nothing 'bout."

"Okay, get out."

She got out faster than she got in.

He drove down the hill of St. Nicholas Avenue and turned up the hill of l45th Street toward Convent Avenue.

On the left-hand corner, next to a new fourteen-story apartment building erected by a white insurance company, was the Brown Bomber Bar; across from it Big Crip's Bar; on the right-hand corner Cohen's Drug Store with its irongrilled windows crammed with electric hair straightening irons, Hi-Life hair cream, Black and White bleaching cream, SSS and 666 blood tonics, Dr. Scholl's corn pads, men's and women's nylon head caps with chin straps to press hair while sleeping, a bowl of blue stone good for body lice, tins of Sterno canned heat good for burning or drinking, Halloween postcards and all the latest in enamelware hygiene utensils; across from it Zazully's Delicatessen with a white-lettered announcement on the plate-gla.s.s window: _We Have Frozen Chitterlings and Other Hard-to-find Delicacies_.

Grave Digger parked in front of a big frame house with peeling yellow paint which had been converted into offices, got out and walked next door to a six-story rotten-brick tenement long overdue at the wreckers.

Three cars were parked at the curb in front; two with upstate New York plates and the other from mid-Manhattan.

He pushed open a scaly door beneath the arch of a concrete block on which the word KNICKER-BOCKER was embossed.

An old gray-haired man with a splotched brown face sat in a chair just inside the doorway to the semi-dark corridor. He cautiously drew back gnarled feet in felt bedroom slippers and looked Grave Digger over with dull, satiated eyes.

"Evenin'," he said.

Grave Digger glanced at him. "Evenin'."

"Fourth story on de right. Number 421," the old man informed him.

Grave Digger stopped. "That Reba's?"

"You don't want Reba's. You want Topsy's. Dat's 421."

"What's happening at Topsy's?"

"What always happen. Dat's where the trouble is."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Just general trouble. Fightin' and curtin'."

"I'm not looking for trouble. I'm looking for Reba."

"You're the man, ain't you?"

"Yeah, I'm the man."

"Then you wants 421. I'se de janitor."

"If you're the janitor then you know Mr. Galen."

A veil fell over the old man's face. "Who he?"

"He's the big Greek man who goes up to Reba's."

"I don't know no Greeks, boss. Don't no white folks come in here. Nothin' but cullud folks. You'll find 'em all at Topsy's."

"He was killed over on Lenox tonight."

"Sho nuff?"

Grave Digger started off.

The old man called to him, "I guess you wonderin' why we got them big numbers on de doors."

Grave Digger paused. "All right, why?"

"They sounds good." The old man cackled.

Grave Digger walked up five flights of shaky wooden stairs and knocked on a red-painted door with a round gla.s.s peephole in the upper panel.

After an interval a heavy woman's voice asked, "Who's you?"

"I'm the Digger."

Bolts clicked and the door cracked a few inches on the chain. A big dark silhouette loomed in the crack, outlined by blue light from behind.

"I didn't recognize you, Digger," a pleasant ba.s.s voice said. "Your hat shades your face. Long time no see."

"Unchain the door, Reba, before I shoot it off."

A deep ba.s.s laugh accompanied chain rattling and the door swung inward.

"Same old Digger, shoot first and talk later. Come on in; we're all colored folks here."

He stepped into a blue-lit carpeted hall reeking of incense.

"You're sure?"

She laughed again as she closed and bolted the door. "Those are not folks, those are clients." Then she turned casually to face him. "What's on your mind, honey?"

She was as tall as his six feet two, with snow-white hair cut short as a man's and brushed straight back from her forehead. Her lips were painted carnation red and her eyelids silver but her smooth unlined jet black skin was untouched. She wore a black sequined evening gown with a red rose in the V of her mammoth bosom, which was a lighter brown than her face. She looked like the last of the Amazons blackened by time.

"Where can we talk?" Grave Digger said. "I don't want to strain you."

"You don't strain me, honey," she said, opening the first door to the right. "Come into the kitchen."

She put a bottle of bourbon and a siphon beside two tall gla.s.ses on the table and sat in a kitchen chair.

"Say when," she said as she started to pour.

"By me," Grave Digger said, pus.h.i.+ng his hat to the back of his head and planting a foot on the adjoining chair.

She stopped pouring and put down the bottle.

"You go ahead," he said.

"I don't drink no more," she said. "I quit after I killed Sam."

He crossed his arms on his raised knee and leaned forward on them, looking at her.

"You used to wear a rosary," he said.

She smiled, showing gold crowns on her outside incisors.

"When I got real religion I quit that too," she said.

"What religion did you get?"

"Just the faith, Digger, just the spirit."

"It lets you run this joint?"

"Why not. It's nature, just like eating. Nothing in my faith 'gainst eating. I just make it convenient and charge 'em for it."

"You'd better get a new steerer; the one downstairs is simple-minded."

Her big ba.s.s laugh rang out again. "He don't work for us; he does that on his own."

"Don't make it hard on yourself," he said. "This can be easy for us both."

She looked at him calmly. "I ain't got nothing to fear."

"When was the last time you saw Galen?"

"The big Greek? Been some time now, Digger. Three or four months. He don't come here no more."

"Why?"

"I don't let him."

"How come?"