The Real Cool Killers (10 page)

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 cuttin’.”

“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 glass 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 bass voice said. “Your hat shades your face. Long time no see.”

“Unchain the door, Reba, before I shoot it off.”

A deep bass 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 glasses on the table and sat in a kitchen chair.

“Say when,” she said as she started to pour.

“By me,” Grave Digger said, pushing 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 bass 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?”

“Be your age, Digger. This is a sporting house. If I don’t let a white john with money come here, I must have good reasons. And if I want to keep my other white clients I’d better not say what they are. You can’t close me up and you can’t make me talk, so why don’t you let it go at that?”

“The Greek was shot to death tonight over on Lenox.”

“I just heard it over the radio,” she said.

“I’m trying to find out who did it.”

She looked at him in surprise. “It said on the radio the killer was known. A Sonny Pickens. Said a teenage gang called the something-or-’nother Moslems snatched him.”

“He didn’t do it. That’s why I’m here.”

“Well, if he didn’t do it, you got your job cut out,” she said. “I wish I could help you but I can’t.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”

She raised her eyebrows slightly. “By the way, where’s your sidekick, Coffin Ed? The radio said he shot one of the gang.”

“Yeah, he got suspended.”

She became still, like an animal alert to danger. “Don’t take it out on me, Digger.”

“I just want to know why you stopped the Greek from coming here.”

She stared into his eyes. She had dark brown eyes with clear whites and long black lashes.

“I’ll let you talk to Ready. He knows.”

“Is he here now?”

“He got a little chippie here he can’t stay ’way from for five minutes. I’m going to throw ’em both out soon. Would have before now but my clients like her.”

“Was the Greek her client?”

She got up slowly, sighing slightly from the effort.

“I’ll send him out here.”

“Bring him out.”

“All right. But take him away, Digger. I don’t want him talking in here. I don’t want no more trouble. I’ve had trouble all my days.”

“I’ll take him away,” he said.

She went out and Grave Digger heard doors being discreetly opened and shut and then her controlled bass voice saying, “How do I know? He said he was a friend.”

A tall man with pockmarked skin a dirty shade of black stepped into the kitchen. An old razor scar cut a purple ridge from the lobe of his ear to the tip of his chin. There was a cast in one eye, the other was reddish brown. Thin corked hair
stuck to a double-jointed head shaped like a peanut. He was flashily dressed in a light tan suit. Glass glittered from two gold-plated rings. His pointed tan shoes were shined to mirror brilliance.

At sight of Grave Digger he drew up short and turned a murderous look on Reba.

“You tole me hit was a friend,” he accused in a rough voice.

She didn’t let it bother her. She pushed him into the kitchen and closed the door.

“Well, ain’t he?” she asked.

“What’s this, some kind of frame-up?” he shouted.

Grave Digger chuckled at the look of outrage on his face. “How can a buck as ugly as you be a pimp?” he asked.

“You’re gonna make me talk about you mamma,” Ready said, digging his right hand into his pants pocket.

With nothing moving but his arm, Grave Digger back-handed him in the solar plexus, knocking out his wind, then pivoted on his left foot and followed with a right cross to the same spot, and with the same motion raised his knee and sunk it into Ready’s belly as the pimp’s slim frame jack-knifed forward. Spit showered from Ready’s fishlike mouth, and the sense was already gone from his eyes when Grave Digger grabbed him by the back of the coat collar, jerked him erect, and started to slap him in the face with his open palm.

Reba grabbed his arm, saying. “Not in here, Digger, I beg you; don’t make him bleed. You said you’d take him out.”

“I’m taking him out now,” he said in a cottony voice, shaking off her hold.

“Then finish him without bleeding him; I don’t want nobody coming in here finding blood on the floor.”

Grave Digger grunted and eased off. He propped Ready against the wall, holding him up on his rubbery legs with one hand while he took the knife and frisked him quickly with the other.

The sense came back into Ready’s good eye and Grave
Digger stepped back and said, “All right, let’s go quietly, son.”

Ready fussed about without looking at him, straightening his coat and tie, then fished a greasy comb from his pocket and combed his rumpled conk. He was bent over in the middle from pain and breathing in gasps. A white froth had collected in both corners of his mouth.

Finally he mumbled, “You can’t take me outa here without no warrant.”

“Go ahead with the man and shut up,” Reba said quickly.

He gave her a pleading look. “You gonna let him take me outa here?”

“If he don’t I’m going to throw you out myself,” she said. “I don’t want any hollering and screaming in here scaring my white clients.”

“That’s gonna cost you,” Ready threatened.

“Don’t threaten me, nigger,” she said dangerously. “And don’t set your foot in my door again.”

“Okay, Reba, that’s the lick that killed Dick,” Ready said slowly. “You and him got me outnumbered.” He gave her a last sullen look and turned to go.

Reba walked to the door and let them out.

“I hope I get what I want,” Grave Digger said. “If I don’t I’ll be back.”

“If you don’t it’s your own fault,” she said.

He marched Ready ahead of him down the shaky stairs.

The old man in the ragged red chair looked up in surprise.

“You got the wrong nigger,” he said. “Hit ain’t him what’s makin’ all the trouble.”

“Who is it?” Grave Digger asked.

“Hit’s Cocky. He the one what’s always pulling his shiv.”

Grave Digger filed the information for future reference.

“I’ll keep this one since he’s the one I’ve got,” he said.

“Balls,” the old man said disgustedly. “He’s just a halfass pimp.”

White light coming from the street slanted upward past the edge of the roof and made a milky wall in the dark.

Beyond the wall of light the flat tar roof was shrouded in semi-darkness.

The sergeant emerged from the edge of light like a hammerhead turtle rising from the deep. In one glance he saw Sonny frantically beating a flock of panic-stricken pigeons with a long bamboo pole, and Inky standing motionless as though he’d sprouted from the tar.

“By God, now I know why they’re called tarbabies!” he exclaimed.

Gripping the pole for dear life with both gauntleted hands, Sonny speared desperately at the pigeons. His eyes were white as they rolled toward the red-faced sergeant. His ragged overcoat flapped in the wind. The pigeons ducked and dodged and flew in lopsided circles. Their heads were cocked on one side as they observed Sonny’s gymnastics with beady apprehension.

Inky stood like a silhouette cut from black paper, looking at nothing. The whites of his eyes gleamed in the dark.

The pigeon loft was a rickety coop about six feet high, made of scraps of chicken wire, discarded screen windows and assorted rags tacked to a frame of rotten boards propped against the low brick wall separating the roofs. It had a tarpaulin top and was equipped with precarious roosts, tin cans of rusty water, and a rusty tin feeding pan.

Blue-uniformed white cops formed a jagged semi-circle in front of it, staring at Sonny in silent and bemused amazement.

The sergeant climbed onto the roof, puffing, and paused for a moment to mop his brow.

“What’s he doing, voodoo?” he asked.

“It’s only Don Quixote in blackface dueling a windmill,” the professor said.

“That ain’t funny,” the sergeant said. “I like Don Quixote.”

The professor let it go.

“Is he a halfwit?” the sergeant said.

“If he’s got that much,” the professor said.

The sergeant pushed to the center of the stage, but once there hesitated as though he didn’t know how to begin.

Sonny looked at him through the corners of his eyes and kept working the pole. Inky stared at nothing with silent intensity.

“All right, all right, so your feet don’t stink,” the sergeant said. “Which one of you is Caleb?”

“Dass me,” Sonny said, without an instant neglecting the pigeons.

“What the hell you call yourself doing?”

“I’se teaching my pigeons how to fly.”

The sergeant’s jowls began to swell. “You trying to be funny?”

“Naw suh, I didn’ mean they didn’ know how to fly. They can fly all right at day but they don’t know how to night fly.”

The sergeant looked at the professor. “Don’t pigeons fly at night?”

“Search me,” the professor said.

“Naw suh, not unless you makes ’em,” Inky said.

Everybody looked at him.

“Hell, he can talk,” the professor said.

“They sleeps,” Sonny added.

“Roosts,” Inky corrected.

“We’re going to make some pigeons fly, too,” the sergeant said. “Stool pigeons.”

“If they don’t fly, they’ll fry,” the professor said.

The sergeant turned to Inky. “What do they call you, boy?”

“Inky,” Inky said. “But my name’s Rufus Tree.”

“So you’re Inky,” the sergeant said.

“They’re both Inky,” the professor said.

The cops laughed.

The sergeant smiled into his hand. Then he wheeled abruptly on Sonny and shouted, “Sonny! Drop that pole!”

Sonny gave a violent start and speared a pigeon in the craw, but he hung on to the pole. The pigeon flew crazily into the light and kept on going. Sonny watched it until he got control of himself, then he turned slowly and looked at the sergeant with big innocent white eyes.