The Real Cool Killers Part 3

"Right."

"When I got here Jones and Johnson were fighting, rolling all over the corpse," Haggerty said. "Jones was trying to disarm Johnson."

Lieutenant Anderson and the men from homicide looked at him, then turned to look at Grave Digger and Coffin Ed in turn.

"It was like this," Coffin Ed said. "One of the punks turned up his a.s.s and fatted toward me and--"

Anderson said, "Huh!" and the homicide lieutenant said incredulously, "You killed a man for farting?"

"No, it was another punk he shot," Grave Digger said in his toneless voice. "One who threw perfume on him from a bottle. He thought it was acid the punk was throwing."

They looked at Coffin Ed's acid-burnt face and looked away embarra.s.sedly.

"The fellow who was killed is an Arab," the sergeant said.

"That's just a disguise," Grave Digger said. "They belong to a group of teenage gangsters who call themselves Real Cool Moslems."

"Hah!" the homicide lieutenant said.

"Mostly they fight a teenage gang of Jews from The Bronx," Grave Digger elaborated. "We leave that to the welfare people."

The homicide sergeant stepped over to the Arab corpse and removed the turban and peeled off the artificial beard. The face of a colored youth with slick conked hair and beardless cheeks stared up. He dropped the disguises beside the corpse and sighed.

"Just a baby," he said.

For a moment no one spoke.

Then the homicide lieutenant asked, "You have the homicide gun?"

Grave Digger took it from his pocket, holding the barrel by the thumb and first finger, and gave it to him.

The lieutenant examined it curiously for some moments. Then he wrapped it in his handkerchief and slipped it into his coat pocket.

"Had you questioned the suspect?" he asked.

"We hadn't gotten to it," Grave Digger said. "All we know is the homicide grew out of a rumpus at the Dew Drop Inn."

"That's a bistro a couple of blocks up the street," Anderson said. "They had a cutting there a short time earlier."

"It's been a hot time in the old town tonight," Haggerty said.

The homicide lieutenant raised his brows enquiringly at Lieutenant Anderson.

"Suppose you go to work on that angle, Haggerty," Anderson said. "Look into that cutting. Find out how it ties in."

"We figure on doing that ourselves," Grave Digger said.

"Let him go on and get started," Anderson said.

"Right-o," Haggerty said. "I'm the man for the cutting."

Everybody looked at him. He left.

The homicide lieutenant said, "Well, let's take a look at the stiffs."

He gave each a cursory examination. The teenager had been shot once, in the heart.

"Nothing to do but wait for the coroner," he said.

They looked at the unconscious woman.

"Shot in the thigh, high up," the homicide sergeant said. "Loss of blood but not fatal -- I don't think."

"The ambulance will be here any minute," Anderson said.

"Ed shot at the gangster twice," Grave Digger said. "It must have been then."

"Right."

No one looked at Coffin Ed. Instead, they made a pretense of examining the area.

Anderson shook his head. "It's going to be a h.e.l.l of a job finding your prisoner in this dense slum," he said.

"There isn't any need," the homicide lieutenant said. "If this was the pistol he had, he's as innocent as you and me. This pistol won't kill anyone." He took the pistol from his 0ocket and unwrapped it. "This is a thirty-seven caliber blank pistol. The only bullets made to fit it are blanks and they can't be tampered with enough to kill a man. And it hasn't been made over into a zip gun."

"Well," Lieutenant Anderson said at last. "That tears it."

4.

There was a rusty sheet-iron gate in the concrete wall between the small back courts. The gang leader unlocked it with his own key. The gate opened silently on oiled hinges.

He went ahead.

"March!" the henchman with the knife ordered, prodding Sonny.

Sonny marched.

The other henchman kept the noose around his neck like a dog chain.

When they'd pa.s.sed through, the leader closed and locked the gate.

One of the henchman said, "You reckon Caleb is bad hurt?"

"Shut up talking in front of the captive," the leader said. "Ain't you got no better sense than that."

The broken concrete paving was strewn with broken gla.s.s bottles, rags and diverse objects thrown from the back windows: a rusty bed spring, a cotton mattress with a big hole burnt in the middle, several worn-out automobile tires, the half-dried carca.s.s of a black cat with its left foot missing and its eyes eaten out by rats.

They picked their way through the debris carefully.

Sonny b.u.mped into a loose stack of garbage cans. One fell with a loud clatter. A sudden putrid stink arose.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it, look out!" the leader said. "Watch where you're going."

"Aw, man, ain't n.o.body thinking about us back here," Choo-Choo said.

"Don't call me man," the leader said.

"Sheik, then."

"What you jokers gonna do with me?" Sonny asked.

His weed jag was gone; he felt weak-kneed and hungry; his mouth tasted brackish and his stomach was knotted with fear.

"We're going to sell you to the Jews," Choo-Choo said.

"You ain't fooling me, I know you ain't no Arabs," Sonny said.

"We're going to hide you from the police," Sheik said.

"I ain't done nothing," Sonny said.

Sheik halted and they all turned and looked at Sonny. His eyes were white half moons in the dark.

"All right then, if you ain't done nothing we'll turn you back to the cops," Sheik said.

"Naw, wait a minute, I just want to know where you're taking me."

"We're taking you home with us."

"Well, that's all right then."

There was no back door to the hall as in the other tenement. Decayed concrete stairs led down to a bas.e.m.e.nt door. Sheik produced a key on his ring for that one also. They entered a dark pa.s.sage. Foul water stood on the broken pavement. The air smelled like molded rags and stale sewer pipes. They had to remove their smoked gla.s.ses in order to see.

Halfway along, feeble yellow light slanted from an open door. They entered a small, filthy room.

A sick man clad in long cotton drawers lay beneath a ragged horse blanket on a filthy pallet of burlap sacks.

"You got anything for old Bad-eye," he said in a whining voice. - "We got you a fine black gal," Choo-Choo said.

The old man raised up on his elbows. "Whar she at?"

"Don't tease him," Inky said.

"Lie down and shut," Sheik said. "I told you before we wouldn't have nothing for you tonight." Then to his henchmen, "Come on, you jokers, hurry up."

They began stripping off their disguises. Beneath their white robes they wore sweat shirts and black slacks. The beards were put on with make-up gum.

Without their disguises they looked like three high-school students.

Sheik was a tall yellow boy with strange yellow eyes and reddish kinky hair. He had the broad-shouldered, trimwaisted figure of an athlete. His face was broad, his nose flat with wide, flaring nostrils, and his skin freckled. He looked disagreeable.

Choo-Choo was shorter, thicker and darker, with the egg-shaped head and flat, mobile face of the born joker. He was bowlegged and pigeon-toed but fast on his feet.

Inky was an inconspicuous boy of medium size, with a mild, submissive manner, and black as the ace of spades.

"Where's the gun?" Choo-Choo asked when he didn't see it stuck in Sheik's belt.

"I slipped it to Bones."

"What's he going to do with it?"

"Shut up and quit questioning what I do."

"Where you reckon they all went to, Sheik?" Inky asked, trying to be peacemaker.

"They went home if they got sense," Sheik said.

The old man on the pallet watched them fold their disguises into small packages.

"Not even a little taste of King Kong," he whined.

"Naw, nothing!" Sheik said.

The old man raised up on his elbows. "What do you mean, naw? I'll throw you out of here. I'se the janitor. I'll take my keys away from you. I'll--"

"Shut your mouth before I shut it and if any cops come messing around down here you'd better keep it shut too. I'll have something for you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? A bottle?"

The old man lay back mollified.

"Come on," Sheik said to the others.

As they were leaving he s.n.a.t.c.hed a ragged army overcoat from a nail on the door without the janitor noticing. He stopped Sonny in the pa.s.sage and took the noose from about his neck, then looped the overcoat over the handcuffs. It looked as though Sonny were merely carrying an overcoat with both hands.

"Now n.o.body'll see those cuffs," Sheik said. Turning to Inky, he said, "You go up first and see how it looks. If you think we can get by the cops without being stopped, give us the high sign."

Inky went up the rotten wooden stairs and through the doorway to the ground-floor hall. After a minute he opened the door and beckoned.

They went up in single file.

Strangers who'd ducked into the building to escape the shooting were held there by two uniformed cops blocking the outside doorway. No one paid any attention to Sonny and the three gangsters. They kept on going to the top floor.

Sheik unlocked a door with another key on his ring, and led the way into a kitchen.