All shot up

Chapter 14

The apartment was on the fifth and top floor of an old stone-fronted building on 110th Street, overlooking the lagoon in upper Central Park.

Colored boys and girls in ski ensembles and ballet skirts were skating the light fantastic at two o’clock when Grave Digger and Coffin Ed parked their half-wrecked car before the building.

The detectives paused for a moment to watch them.

“Reminds me of Gorki,” Grave Digger lisped.

“The writer or the pawnbroker?” Coffin Ed asked.

“The writer, Maxim. In his book called The Bystander. A boy breaks through the ice and disappears. Folks rush to save him but can’t find him-can’t find any trace of him. He’s disappeared beneath the ice. So some joker asks, ‘Was there really a boy?’”

Coffin Ed looked solemn. “So he thought the hole in the ice was an act of God?”

“Must have.”

“Like our friend Baron, eh?”

They went silently up the old marble steps and pushed open the old, exquisitely carved wooden doors with cut-glass panels.

“The rich used to live here,” Coffin Ed remarked.

“Still do,” Grave Digger said. “Just changed color. Colored rich folks always live in the places abandoned by white rich folks.”

They walked through a narrow, oak-paneled hallway with stained-glass wall lamps to an old rickety elevator.

A very old colored man with long, kinky gray hair and parchmentlike skin, wearing a mixed livery of some ancient, faded sort, rose slowly from a padded stool and asked courteously, “What floor, gentlemens?”

“Top,” Coffin Ed said.

The old man drew his cotton-gloved hand back from the lever as though it had suddenly turned red hot.

“Mister Holmes ain’t in,” he said.

“Missus Holmes is,” Coffin Ed said. “We have an appointment.”

The old man shook his cotton-boll head. “She didn’t tell me about it,” he said.

“She doesn’t tell you everything she does, grandfather,” Coffin Ed said.

Grave Digger drew a soft leather folder from his inside pocket and lashed his shield. “We’re the men,” he lisped.

Stubbornly the old man shook his head. “Makes no difference to Mister Holmes. He’s The Man.”

“All right,” Coffin Ed compromised. “You take us up. If Missus Holmes doesn’t receive us, you bring us down. Okay?”

“It’s a gentleman’s agreement,” the old man said.

Grave Digger belched as the ancient elevator creaked upward.

“That lets us out,” Coffin Ed said. “Gentlemen don’t belch.”

“Gentlemen don’t eat pig ears and collard greens,” Grave Digger said. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

The old man gave the appearance of not hearing.

Casper had the whole top floor to himself. It had originally been built for two families with facing doors across a small elevator foyer, but one had been closed and plastered over and there was only the one red-lacquered one left, with a small, engraved brass nameplate in the middle of the upper panel, announcing: Casper Holmes.

“Might just as well say Jesus Christ,” Grave Digger said.

“Go light on this lady, Digger,” Coffin Ed cautioned as he pushed the bell buzzer.

“Don’t I always?” Grave Digger said.

A young black man in a spotless white jacket opened the door. It opened so silently Grave Digger blinked. The young man had shining black curls that looked as though they had been milled from coal tar, a velvet-smooth forehead slightly greasy, and dark-brown eyes, with whites like muddy water, devoid of all intelligence. His flat nose lay against low, narrow cheeks slashed by a thin-lipped mouth of tremendous width. The mouth was filled with white, even teeth.

“Mister Jones and Mister Johnson?” he inquired.

“As if you didn’t know,” Grave Digger said.

“Please come right this way, sirs,” he said, leading them to a front room off the front of the hall.

He came as far as the doorway and left them.

It was a big room with windows overlooking Central Park. In the distance, over treetops, the towers of Rockefeller Center and the Empire Sate Building loomed in the murky haze. It remind in Ed of the lounge of the City Club.

Grave Digger lifted his feet high to keep from stumbling over the thick nap of the Oriental rugs, and Coffin Ed eyed the ornate furniture warily, wondering where he should sit.

Jazz classics were stacked on a combination set, and at their entrance Louis Armstrong was doing an oldy called Where The Chickens Don’t Roost So High.

“Me and my old lady used to dance to that tune at the Savoy-before they tore it down,” Grave Digger said, and started cutting the rug.

He still had on his hat and overcoat, and he was performing the intricate steps of an old-time jitterbug with great abandon. His swollen lips were pecking at the perfumed air, and his overcoat tails were flapping in the breeze.

Coffin Ed stood beside a Louis XIV love seat, scratching his ribs.

“Digger, you’re a pappy,” he said. “Those steps you’re doing went out with zoot suits.”

“Don’t I know it,” Grave Digger said, sighing.

Mrs. Holmes swung into the room from an inner doorway like a stripteaser coming on stage. She stopped short in open-mouth amazement and put her hands on her hips.

“If you want to dance, go to the Theresa ballroom,” she said in a cool contralto voice. “There’s a matinee this afternoon.”

Grave Digger froze with a foot in the air, and Coffin Ed laughed: “Haw haw.”

In unison they turned and stared at Mrs. Holmes.

She had the type of beauty made fashionable in the 1930’s by an all-colored musical called Brownskin Models. She was rather short and busty, with a pear-shaped bottom and slender legs. She had short wavy hair, a heart-shaped face, and long-lashed, expressive brown eyes; and her mouth was like a red carnation.

She wore gold lame slacks which fitted so tight that every quiver of a muscle showed. Her waist was drawn in by a black leather belt, four inches wide, decorated with gilt figures. Her breasts stuck out from a turtleneck blue jersey-silk pullover as though taking dead aim at any man in front of her. Black, gilt-edged Turkish slippers turned up at the toes made her feet seem too small to support her. The combination of gold fingernail polish, sparkling rings and dangling charm bracelets gave her hands the appearance of jewelry-store windows.

Both men whipped off their hats and stood there, looking gawky and sheepish.

“I was just relaxing a bit,” Grave Digger lisped. “We’ve had a hard night.”

She glanced at his swollen lips and broke out a slow, insinuating smile. “You shouldn’t love so strenuously,” she murmured.

Grave Digger felt the heat spread over his face. Coffin Ed seemed to be having trouble figuring what to do with his feet.

She walked toward a pair of divans flanking an imitation fireplace on the far side of the room. Her hips rolled with the slow tantalizing motion of a natural-born teaser. Grave Digger was thinking how he could put his hands about her waist, while Coffin Ed was telling himself that she was the type of female who would set a man on fire and then direct him to a river.

Electric logs gave off a red glow. She sat down with her back to the windows and tucked a leg beneath her. She knew the red light on the colors of her skin and ensemble made her look exotic. Her eyes became luminous.

She waved them to a seat on the facing divan. Between them there was a huge circular table about knee-high, made by cutting down a dining room table. It was littered with the Sunday papers. Casper’s face peered out from beneath the headlines about the robbery.

“You want to talk to me about my cousin,” she said.

“Well, it’s like this,” Coffin Ed said. “We’re trying to find the connection between Black Beauty and a man named Baron.”

She frowned prettily. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t know anyone named Black Beauty or Baron.”

The detectives stared at her for a moment. Grave Digger leaned forward and placed his hat atop the newspapers. Neither of them had removed their overcoats.

“Black Beauty’s your cousin,” Grave Digger lisped.

“Oh,” she said. “I’ve never heard him called by that name. Who told you that?”

“It’s in the newspapers,” Coffin Ed said.

Her eyes widened. “Really.” She shifted slightly so that the red light shone on her black belt with its tracery of gilded designs. “I didn’t pay any attention. I was so upset.” She shuddered and covered her face with her hands. Her breasts trembled. Looking at them, Grave Digger wondered how she did it.

“I understand,” Coffin Ed said sympathetically. “What I don’t understand is how did you know he was your cousin, Junior Ball, since all the papers referred to him as Black Beauty.”

She took her hands from her face and stared at him haughtily. “Are you cross-examining me?” she asked in a cold, imperious voice.

“More or less,” Grave Digger lisped, his voice getting dry.

She jumped to her feet. “Then you may leave,” she said.

Coffin Ed gave Grave Digger an accusing look, then looked up at Mrs. Holmes and spread his hands entreatingly.

“Listen, Missus Holmes, we’ve had a long hard night. We’re just trying to catch the bandits who robbed your husband. We know you want them caught as much as he does. We’re not trying to antagonize you. That’s the last thing we want to do. We’re just following a thin lead. Won’t you bear with us for a few minutes?”

She looked from him to Grave Digger. He looked back at her as though he would like to whip her.

But he said in a thick, dry lisp, “I didn’t mean it the way you took it. My nerves are kind of raw.”

“So are mine,” she said in a voice that had roughened.

She kept staring into Grave Digger’s hot, rapacious gaze until her body seemed to melt; and she sat down again as though from lack of strength.

“But if you are civil I will help you all I can,” she relented.

Coffin Ed was fumbling about in his mind for a way to phrase his questions. “Well, the thing is,” he said. “We’d like to know what Ball did-his occupation.”

“He was a dress designer,” she said. “And he made articles from leather.”

She noticed Grave Digger staring at her belt and squirmed slightly.

“Did he make your belt?” he asked.

She hesitated as though she might refuse to answer, then reluctantly said, “Yes.”

Grave Digger had made out some of the gilded designs encircling the belt. They depicted a series of Pans with nude males and females caught in grotesque postures on their horns. The thought struck him suddenly that Junior Ball got gored by one of his own Pans.

Coffin Ed picked up the idea. “Did he ever work for Baron?” he asked. “Design anything for him?”

“I’ve told you I don’t know this Baron,” she said, her voice still rough. “What has he got to do with all of this?”

“Well, I’ll tell you how it goes,” he said, and related the statement they had got from Roman. “So you see how it figures,” he concluded. “Your cousin, Ball, and this man, Baron, were in some kind of racket.”

She frowned, but this time not prettily. “It is possible,” she conceded. “Although I can’t see why Junior should have been mixed up in any kind of racket. He was doing well in his own field; he didn’t need anything. And I still don’t understand how this man, Baron, can help you find the scum who robbed Casper.”

“He got a good look at them, for one thing,” Coffin Ed said. “He talked to them; he knows their voices.”

“And we have a hunch he knew them from before,” Coffin Ed said. “He talked to them; he knows their voices.”

“And we have a hunch he knew them from before,” Grave Digger added.

She sighed theatrically. “I’ve gotten used to a lot of strange things with my husband in politics,” she said. “But all this terrible, horrible violence is too much for me.” A tremor ran over her body, making all of it shake.

Grave Digger licked his swollen lips. He was thinking about some of the lonely women about town he hadn’t stopped in to see lately.

She knew what he was thinking and gave him a quick up-from-under look, her big brown eyes stark naked for an instant; then she turned her face away and looked into the fire, and her expression became sad.

“I’d better not catch him on a dark street,” Grave Digger lisped in a voice so thick it was blurred.

She whirled about and stared at him. “Oh!” The red light on her face seemed to be reflected from somewhere underneath the brown of her skin. “I thought you said-” She thought he’d said, “I’d better not catch you on a dark street.” She was flustered for a moment. It made her furious with herself.

“I’ve helped you all I can,” she said abruptly. She began trembling in earnest. “Please go. I can’t stand any more of this.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. She looked even more desirable than with her brassy manner.

Coffin Ed stood up and tapped Grave Digger on the shoulder. Grave Digger came out of his trance with a start.

“Just one more thing,” Coffin Ed said. “Do you know if Junior saw your husband last night?”

“I don’t know. Don’t ask me anything else,” she said tearfully. “All I know is what I’ve read in the newspapers. I haven’t talked to Casper. He’s still in a coma. And I don’t know-” She stopped as though struck by a sudden thought, then said, “And if you’re so interested in Junior’s business, go down on Nineteenth Street and talk to his associate, Zog Ziegler. He ought to know.”

For an instant the two detectives were held in an imperceptible rigidity, as though listening for a sound to be repeated that had come from fax away.

“Zog Ziegler,” Coffin Ed repeated in a flat voice. “Do you know his address.”

“Somewhere on East Nineteenth Street,” she said. “Just go down and look. You’ll know the house when you see it.”

She sounded hysterically anxious for them to leave.

“Good day, Missus Holmes, and thank you,” Coffin Ed said, and Grave Digger said, “You’ve helped us more than you know.”

She stiffened slightly at the subtle jibe in his words, but she didn’t look up.

The wide-mouthed boy in the white jacket appeared in the doorway as though by magic. He let them out.

After an interminable delay, the creaking elevator made its appearance. The old elevator operator with the cotton-boll head refused to look at them for reasons of his own. They left him to his solitude.

When they came out into the street, big fat snowflakes were drifting from a solid gray sky. The motionless air had become degrees warmer, and the snowflakes stack where they landed, too heavy to roll over.

“She knew what I meant, the teasing bitch.”

“Didn’t we all.”

“She never did answer your question.”

“She said enough.”

They stood looking at their wreck of a car for a moment before getting in.

“We’d better change buggies before going downtown,” Grave Digger said. “We might get booked on vag.”

“We can go back to the station and get my car.”

“We might stop at Fat’s for a couple of shots.”

“Whisky ain’t going to help us think any better,” Coffin Ed cautioned.

“Hell, beat as I am now it don’t matter,” Grave Digger said.