The Heat's on

10

It was twelve noon sharp when Coffin Ed turned his Plymouth sedan into the northbound stream of traffic on lower Broadway.

“What do two cops do who’ve been kicked off the force?” he asked.

“Try to get back on,” Grave Digger said in his thick, cotton-dry voice.

He didn’t say another word all the way uptown; he sat burning in a dry, speechless rage.

It was twelve-thirty when they checked into the Harlem precinct station to turn in their shields to Captain Brice.

They stood for a moment on the steps of the precinct station, watching the colored people pass up and down the street, all citizens of Harlem who stepped out of the way to let the white cops by who had business in the station.

The vertical rays of the sun beat down.

“First thing to do is find Pinky,” Grave Digger said. “All we had on Jake is possession. If we get evidence he was peddling H too, that might give us a start.”

“He’s got to talk,” Coffin Ed pointed out.

“Talk! TALK! You think he ain’t going to talk! Much as you and me need a few kind words. Ain’t no mother-raper who ever knew Jake going to refuse to do a little talking.”

Fifteen minues later they pulled up before the apartment on Riverside Drive.

“Do you see what I see?” Coffin Ed remarked as they alighted.

“There couldn’t be but one of ’em,” Grave Digger said.

The dog was lying in front of the iron gate to the rear entrance. It lay on its side with its back to the gate and all four feet extended. It seemed to be asleep. The vertical rays of the midday sun beat down on its tawny hide.

“It must be cooking in this heat,” Coffin Ed said.

“Maybe she’s dead.”

It still wore the heavy muzzle reinforced with iron and the brass-studded collar with the chain attached.

They walked toward it by common accord.

Its lambent eyes half opened as they approached and a low growl, like distant thunder, issued from its throat. But it didn’t move.

Green flies were feeding from a dirty open wound in its head from which black blood oozed.

“The African did a poor job,” Grave Digger observed.

“Maybe he was in a hurry to get back.”

Grave Digger reached down and took hold of the chain close to the collar. The rest was underneath the dog. He pulled gently and the dog climbed slowly to her feet in sections, like a camel getting up. She stood groggily, looking disinterested.

“She’s about done in,” Coffin Ed said.

“You’d be done in too if you were knocked in the head and thrown in the river.”

The dog followed docilely as they went back to the front entrance and rang the superintendent’s bell. There was no answer. Coffin Ed stepped over to the mailboxes and pushed buttons indiscriminately.

The latch clicked with a ratchetlike sound that went on and on.

“Everyone’s expecting.”

“Looks like it.”

As they were descending the stairs to the basement, Coffin Ed said curiously, “What do we do if we run into trouble?”

They were still in their shirtsleeves and they had left their revolvers at home that morning.

“Pray,” Grave Digger said thickly, the rage building up in him again. “Don’t forget we’re subject to the charge of impersonating officers if we claim to be cops.”

“How can I forget it,” Coffin Ed said bitterly.

The first thing they noticed was that the trunk was gone.

“Looks like we’re too late.”

Grave Digger said nothing.

There was no reply to the janitor’s bell. Grave Digger looked at the Yale lock above the old-fashioned mortise lock. He passed the dog’s chain to Coffin Ed to hold and took a Boy Scout’s knife from his pants pocket.

“Let’s just hope the night lock ain’t on,” he said, opening the screwdriver blade.

“Let’s just hope we don’t get caught, you mean,” Coffin Ed amended, turning to watch all the entrances.

Grave Digger forced the blade between the doorjamb and the lock, slowly forced back the bolt and pushed open the door.

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 they. It don’t have to be just one person.”

“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.

But Grave Digger was still for playing it safe. “Not without a gun, man,” he cautioned again. Suddenly he was struck by an idea. “Let’s send out the dog to sniff around.”

Coffin Ed glanced at her scornfully. “She couldn’t hurt a mouse with that muzzle on.”

“I’ll fix that,” Grave Digger said and stepped over to the bitch and removed the muzzle and unhooked the chain.

He pushed her out into the corridor but she merely looked over her shoulder at him as though she wanted to come back in. He looked about for something to throw but everything movable was bloody, so he took off his hat and sailed it down the corridor in the direction of the boiler room door.

“There, boy, there, boy, go get it,” he urged.

But the bitch suddenly turned around with her tail between her legs and ran into the kitchen. They could hear her lapping up water.

“I’m going to call homicide,” Grave Digger said. “Have you seen a phone?”

“In the kitchen.”

“That’s a house phone.”

Coffin Ed stepped outside and looked up and down the corridors. “Here’s a pay phone beside the door. You got a dime?”

Grave Digger fished some change from his pocket. “Yeah.”

It was an old-fashioned telephone box attached to the wall with the mouthpiece on a level with the average man’s mouth. Grave Digger stepped around the corner, lifted the receiver and put in a dime. He held the receiver to his ear, waiting for the dial tone.

“I’m going to get a couple of wrenches or something we can use for saps, just in case,” Coffin Ed said, stepping over toward the toolroom.

“Why don’t you let it alone and let’s just wait for some cops with pistols,” Grave Digger called over his shoulder.

But Coffin Ed thought better. He pushed open the toolroom door and leaned inside, reaching for the light switch.

He never knew what hit him. Lights exploded in his head as though his brain had been dynamited right behind the eyes.

Grave Digger had just gotten the dial tone and had stuck his right index finger on the figure 7 when he heard the flat whacking sound made by the impact of a blunt instrument against a human skull. There could be no mistaking the sound; he had heard it often enough. He was moving, his head wheeling and ducking, before the sound of the following grunt reached his ears.

He never got around but his head had moved enough so that the bullet intended for his temple struck the guttapercha receiver in his left hand, shattered it but was deflected so that it merely burned a blister across the back of his neck.

The gunman was a marksman with a pistol. He was using a derringer with a sawed-off barrel and a silencer attached, similar to the one used by the gunman whom Uncle Saint had killed. At the sound of Coffin Ed opening the toolroom door, he had stepped from the boiler room into the corridor and had taken a bead on Grave Digger’s head, resting the meat side of his trigger hand in the crook of his raised left arm. But even the best of marksmen could miss with a one-shot gun, so he also held a.38-caliber police positive in his left fist as insurance.

Grave Digger’s left hand and the whole left side of his head went numb and he felt as though he had been kicked in the head by a mule. But he was not stunned. He erupted into motion like the snapping of a clock spring. He went down into a rolling plunge toward the open door of the janitor’s suite.

He wasn’t looking toward the gunman; his eyes, his mind, his straining muscles, and all his five senses were concentrating on escape. But somehow his mind retained the impression of a face — a dead-white, death’s head face with colorless lips pulled back from small yellow teeth and huge deep-set eyes like targets on a pistol range: black balls rimmed with a thin line of white about which were large irregular patches of black — a hophead’s face.

The gunman straightened out his left arm and fired the police positive.

The bullet caught Grave Digger in his spin as he was turning on a long slant, almost horizontal to the floor. It went in underneath the left shoulder blade and came out three inches above the heart.

Grave Digger grunted once like a stuck hog and was knocked flat on his face. But he didn’t lose consciousness. He felt his face skidding across the slick cool surface of linoleum and he knew he had got inside the room. With a quick convulsive movement which consumed the last of his strength, he rolled over on his back like a cat turning in midair and kicked with his left foot toward the door, trying to close it. He missed it and his foot was in the air. His stabbing, desperate gaze went across it, and he found himself looking straight down the barrel of the police positive.

He thought fleetingly, without fear or regret, Digger, your number’s up.

That’s the last he knew.

Hopped to the gills, the gunman stalked forward on the balls of his feet to place another slug in the absolutely motionless body, but the second gunman, standing by the toolroom, door, shouted, “For chrissakes, cummon, Goddammit! Did you have to use that sonofabitching cannon?”

The hopped-up gunman paid him no attention. He was intent on pumping another slug into his victim.

But suddenly a woman let out a scream. It was a scream of unbelievable volume and immeasurable terror. You could tell it was a colored woman screaming by the heart she put into it. It was the loudest screaming the hopped-up gunman had ever heard and it shattered his control like glass breaking.

He started to run blindly and without direction. He ran headlong into the second gunman, who grappled with him and they struggled furiously for a brief moment.

The colored maid was standing as she had stepped from the elevator. The basket of soiled clothes lay overturned on the floor where it had fallen from her hands. Her body was rigid. Her mouth formed an ellipsoid big enough to swallow an ostrich egg, showing the chewing edges of her molars, a white-coated tongue flatted between the bottom teeth and humped in the back against the tip of a palate which hung down like a blood-red stalagmite. Her neck muscles were corded. Her popeyed stare was fixed. Screams kept pouring from her mouth with an unvarying, nerve-shattering resonance.

The second gunman got his left arm free and slapped the hopped-up gunman twice across the face.

Sanity returned to the dilated pupils, along with terror.

He holstered the police positive in a right-shoulder sling, dropped the derringer into his right coat pocket, and went up the stairs as though the furies were after him.

“Not so fast, you hophead bastard!” the second gunman called from behind him. “Walk out into the street.”