For love of Imabelle

21

Grave Digger stood over the prone figure of Imabelle in a blind rage. That acid-throwing bastard’s woman, trying to play cute with him. And his partner, Coffin Ed, was in the hospital, maybe blinded for life. The air was electric with his rage.

He was wearing Coffin Ed’s pistol along with his own. He had it in his hand without knowing he had drawn it. He had his finger on the hair-trigger, and it was all he could do to keep from blowing off some chunks of her fancy yellow prat.

Two harness cops, passing through the booking room, turned tentatively in his direction to restrain him, saw the pistol trembling in his hand, then drew up in silent amazement.

Two patrol cops bringing in three drunken prostitutes stopped, staring wide-eyed. The loud cursing voices of the prostitutes were cut off in mid-sentence. They seemed to shrink bodily, stood suspended in cowed postures, became sober on the spot.

Everyone in the room thought Grave Digger was going to kill Imabelle.

The silence lasted until Imabelle scrambled hastily to her feet and glared at Grave Digger with a rage equal to his own.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, cop?” she shouted.

She was in such a fury she forgot to pull down her skirt and brush the dust from her clothes.

“If you open your mouth once more—” Grave Digger began.

“Easy does it,” the desk sergeant said, cutting him off.

Imabelle’s left cheek was bright red and swelling. Her hair was disarranged. Her eyes were cat-yellow, her mouth a mangled scar in a face gone bulldog ugly.

The harness cops looked at her sympathetically.

Grave Digger controlled himself with an effort. His motions were jerky as he holstered the pistol. His tall, lank frame moved erratically, like a puppet on strings. He couldn’t trust himself to look at her again. He turned toward the desk sergeant.

“What’s the rap on this woman?” His voice was thick.

“Cuttin up a man over at the 125th Street station.”

“Bad?”

“Naw. A colored worker who lives back of the station in the bucket says she slashed him.”

Grave Digger finally turned back and looked at Imabelle as if to question her, then changed his mind.

“They took him to Harlem Hospital to get stitched,” the desk sergeant added. “They’ll bring him in shortly to prefer charges.”

“I want her,” Grave Digger said in a flat voice.

The desk sergeant looked at Grave Digger’s face.

“Take her,” he said.

At the same time he buzzed the captain’s office from the row of button signals on his desk. He didn’t want to argue with Grave Digger, but he couldn’t let him take the prisoner out of the station without orders.

The lieutenant who was on night duty came from the captain’s office and asked, “Yeah?”

The desk sergeant nodded toward Grave Digger and Imabelle.

“Jones wants this pickup.”

“She was at the whing-ding up on the river tonight,” Grave Digger said thickly.

“What do you want her for?”

“She going to show me where to find them.”

The lieutenant looked as though he didn’t like the idea too well.

“What’s on her in the book?” he asked the desk sergeant.

“A colored man says she cut him. Over on Park Avenue, in the bucket. Haven’t brought him in yet.”

The lieutenant turned back to Grave Digger.

“Any connection?”

“She’s going to tell me,” Grave Digger said in his thick, cottony voice.

“I ain’t cut nobody,” Imabelle said, “I ain’t never seen that man before in my life.”

“Shut up,” the desk sergeant said.

The lieutenant looked her over carefully.

“Strictly penitentiary bait,” he muttered angrily, thinking. It’s these high-yellow bitches like her that cause these black boys to commit so many crimes.

“It’s getting late,” Grave Digger said.

The lieutenant frowned. It was irregular, and he didn’t like any irregularities on his shift. But hoodlums had thrown acid in a cop’s eyes. This was one of the hoodlums’ women. And this was the cop’s partner.

“Take her,” he said. “Take somebody with you. Take O’Malley.”

“I don’t want anybody with me,” Grave Digger said. “I got Ed’s pistol with me, and that’s enough.”

The lieutenant turned without saying another word and went back into the captain’s office.

None of the other cops said anything. They stared from Grave Digger to Imabelle.

Grave Digger walked up to her. She stood her ground defiantly. He snapped handcuffs on her wrists so quickly she didn’t know what was happening. When he took her by the arm and began steering her toward the door, she turned and appealed to the desk sergeant.

“Are you going to let this crazy man take me away from here?”

The desk sergeant looked away without replying.

“I got my rights—” she shouted.

Grave Digger jerked her through the door so violently that her feet flew out from under her. He dragged her down the concrete steps.

His car was parked half a block down the street.

“Turn me loose. I can walk,” she said, and he freed her arm.

The car was the same black sedan in which he had followed Gus’s Cadillac to the gang’s hideaway on the river. He opened the front door. She got in awkwardly, hindered by the handcuffs. he went around and got into the driver’s seat.

“All right, where are they?”

“I don’t know where they’re at,” she said sulkily.

He turned on the seat to face her.

“Don’t play cute with me, woman. I want those acid-throwing bastards and you’re going to take me to them or I’ll pistol-whip your face until no man ever looks at you again.” His voice was so thick she could barely understand him.

She felt the danger emanating from him. She might have still defied him if he had threatened to kill her. She wanted to get away herself before Hank and Jodie were caught and made to talk. Nothing could be done to her without their testimony. But she knew he meant what he said about destroying her face.

“I’ll take you where they live. I want ’em caught. But I don’t know whether they’re still there. They might have lammed already.”

He started the motor, tuned in the short-wave radio to the police signal.

“Where is it?”

“In a rooming house up on St. Nicholas Avenue, over a doctor’s. He lives in the first two floors and rents out the top two to roomers.”

“I know where it is and you’d better pray that they’re still there.”

She had nothing to say to that.

As they turned north on St. Nicholas Avenue, a metallic voice from the radio said.

“... pick up a black open-face hearse; 1947 Cadillac; M-series license, number unknown, driven by short, black-skinned Negro wearing chauffeur’s uniform... Dark green steamer trunk riding on coffin carrier visible through side windows, containing corpse of male Negro dressed in nun’s habit. Known as Sister Gabriel. Slashed throat... Hearse heading south on Park Avenue... Over... Repeat... Pick up—”

“That complicates matters.” Grave Digger knew immediately that Jackson was driving the hearse. It had to be one of Clay’s hearses. Somehow the gang had gotten to Goldy. But why was Jackson running from the police?

Imabelle shuddered, thinking of how close she’d come to getting her own throat cut.

Grave Digger took a shot in the dark. “Where did you contact Jackson?”

“I haven’t seen Jackson.”

“What’s in the trunk?”

“Gold ore.”

He didn’t look around.

They were going fast up the wet black pavement of St. Nicholas Avenue. On the east side of the street were rows of apartment buildings, becoming larger, more spacious, better kept; facing the steep cliff of the rocky park across the street. Above was the university plateau, overlooking the Hudson River.

“I haven’t got time to put it together now. I’m going to get the bastards first and put it together afterward.”

“I hope you kill ’em,” she said viciously.

“You’re going to have a lot to talk to me about later, Little Sister.”

Day was breaking. The buildings high up on the plateau stood out in the morning light.

They passed the intersection of 145th Street with the subway kiosks on each corner. The car made a sickening dip and rose sharply into the section where the elite of the underworld lived among the working strivers.

A delivery truck was dumping stacks of the Daily News onto the wet sidewalk. Next to the drugstore was an all-night barbecue-joint, the counter stools filled with early workers in the glaring neon light, eating barbecued ribs for breakfast. The hot pork-ribs turned on four automatic spits before a huge electric grill built into the wall near the plate-glass front window, tended by a tall black man in a white chef’s uniform.

Two doors beyond Eddie’s Cellar Restaurant she pointed toward a yellow hardtop Roadmaster Buick, parked beneath a street light in front of a four-storied stone-fronted house.

“There’s their car.”

Grave Digger pulled in ahead, skidded to a stop, got out and looked at the dark front windows of the house. At street level was a black lacquered door with a shiny brass knocker. Three white enamel door bells were placed in a vertical row on the red door frame beneath a black-and-white plaque bearing the name of Dr. J.P. Robinson.

The house was asleep.

Grave Digger walked quickly back to the car, casing the street as he went and memorizing the number on the yellow California license plate. First he opened the engine hood, disconnected the wires from the distributor head and put it into his coat pocket, and slammed the hood down with a bang. Then he tried the doors, found them locked, and peered inside. There was a tan cowhide suitcase in back on the floor. He went around to the luggage compartment, sprung the lock with the screwdriver blade from his heavy jackknife, glanced briefly at the luggage stacked inside, pushed the lid down and walked back to his car. The operation hadn’t taken more than a minute.

“Where are they?”

“At Billie’s.”

“All three of them?”

She nodded. “If they haven’t left.”

He got into his seat behind the wheel, looked up the black macadam surface of St. Nicholas rising in a wide black stripe between rows of fashionable apartment buildings on both sides, taking gray shape in the morning light.

Early workers were trudging in from the side streets, hurrying toward the subway. Later the downtown office-porters would pour from the crowded flats in a steady stream, carrying polished leather briefcases stuffed with overalls to look like businessmen, and buy the Daily News to read on the subway.

The men he was looking for were not in sight.

“Who has the habit?” he asked.

“Both of ’em. Hank and Jodie, I mean. Hank’s on hop and Jodie on heroin.”

“How about the slim one?”

“He just drinks.”

“What monickers are they using with Billie?”

“Hank calls himself Morgan; Jodie — Walker; Slim — Goldsmith.”

“Then Billie knows about their gold-mine pitch?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Woman, there are a thousand questions you’re going to have to answer,” he said as he shifted into gear and got the car to moving again.

They went past Lucky’s Cabaret, King-of-the-Chicken restaurant, Elite Barbershop, the big stone private mansion known as Harlem’s Castle, made a U-turn at 155th Street between the subway kiosks, came back past The Fat Man’s Bar and Grill, and drew up before the entrance to a large swank six-storied gray-stone apartment-building. Big expensive cars lined the curbs in that area.

From there, going down the steep descent of 155th Street to the bridge, it was less than a five-minute walk to that dark, dismal section along the Harlem River where the shooting fracas had taken place.