Then Imabelle screamed again, “Don’t you cut me!”
A rage-thickened voice spluttered, “I’ll kill you, you double-crossing bitch.”
Jackson lunged toward the sound of Imabelle’s voice to protect her.
“Where are you, Digger? Speak up, man,” Coffin Ed yelled, groping in the dark. Despite the unendurable pain, his first duty was to his partner.
“Let her alone, she ain’t done it,” another voice said.
A furious struggle broke out between Jodie and Slim. Jackson realized that one of them thought Imabelle had ratted to the cops and was trying to kill her. The other one objected. He couldn’t tell which was which.
He plunged toward the sound of the scuffling, prepared to fight both. Instead he landed in the arms of Coffin Ed. The next moment he was knocked unconscious by a pistol butt laid against his skull.
“Are you hurt, Digger?” Coffin Ed asked anxiously, stumbling over Grave Digger’s unconscious body in the dark.
“Are you hurt, man?”
“Come on, let’s go!” Hank yelled and made a running leap through the doorway.
Imabelle ran out behind him.
Suddenly, by unspoken accord, Slim and Jodie stopped fighting to chase Imabelle. But outside, where they could see better, they squared off again. Both had open knives and began slashing furiously at each other, but cutting only the cold night air.
Behind the house, an outboard motor coughed and coughed again. The third time it coughed the motor caught. Jodie broke away from Slim and ran around the side of the shack. A moment later a boat with an outboard motor roared out into the Harlem River.
Slim clutched Imabelle by the arm.
“Come on, let’s scram, they done left us,” he said, pulling her up the alley toward the street.
Suddenly the night was filled with the screaming of sirens as four patrol cars began converging on the spot. A motorist passing over the 155th Street Bridge had reported hearing shooting on the Harlem River and the cops were coming on like General Sherman tanks.
Coffin Ed heard them like an answer to a prayer. The furiously burning pain had become almost more than he could bear. He hadn’t reloaded his gun for fear of blowing out his brains. Now he began blowing on his police whistle as though he had gone mad. He blew it so long and loud it brought Jackson back to consciousness.
Grave Digger was still out.
Coffin Ed heard Jackson clambering to his feet and quickly reloaded his pistol. Jackson heard bullets clicking into the cylinder slots and felt his flesh crawl.
“Who’s there?” Coffin Ed challenged.
His voice sounded so loud and harsh Jackson gave a start and lost his voice.
“Speak up, God damn it, or I’ll blow you in two,” Coffin Ed threatened.
“It’s just me, Jackson, Mr. Johnson,” Jackson managed to say.
“Jackson! Where the hell is everybody, Jackson?”
“They all done got away ’cept me.”
“Where’s my buddy? Where’s Digger Jones?”
“I don’t know, sir. I ain’t seen him.”
“Maybe he’s gone after them. But you stay right where you are, Jackson. Don’t you move a goddam step.”
“No, sir. Is there any kind of way I can help you, sir?”
“No, God damn it, just don’t move. You’re under arrest.”
“Yes, sir.”
I might have known it, Jackson was thinking. The real criminals had gotten away again and he was the only one caught.
He began inching silently toward the doorway.
“Is that you I hear moving, Jackson?”
“No, sir. It ain’t me.” Jackson moved a little closer. “I swear ’fore God.” He inched a little closer. “Must be rats underneath the floor.”
“Rats, all right, God damn it,” Coffin Ed grated. “And they’re going to be underneath the God damn ground before it’s done with.”
Through the open doorway Jackson could see alongside the abandoned Heaven of Father Divine the lights of the patrol cars moving back and forth, searching the street. He listened to the motors whining, the sirens screaming. He felt the presence of Coffin Ed behind him waving the cocked .38 in the pitch darkness of his blind eyes. The shrill, insistent blast of Coffin Ed’s police whistle scraped layer after layer from Jackson’s nerves. It sounded as if all hell had broken loose everywhere, top and bottom, on this side and that, and he was standing there between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Better to get shot running than standing, he decided. He crouched.
Coffin Ed sensed his movement.
“Are you still there, Jackson?” he barked.
Jackson sprang through the open doorway, landed on his hands and knees, and came up running.
“Jackson, you bastard!” he heard Coffin Ed screaming. “Holy jumping Moses, I can’t take this much longer. Can’t the sons of bitches hear? Jackson!” he yelled at the top of his voice.
Three shots blasted the night, the long red flame bursting the black darkness from the barrel of Coffin Ed’s pistol. Jackson heard the bullets crashing through the wooden walls.
Jackson churned his knees in a froth of panic, trying to get greater speed from his short black legs. It pumped sweat from his pores, steam cooked him in his own juice, squandered his strength, upset his gait, but didn’t increase his speed. In Harlem they say a lean man can’t sit and a fat man can’t run. He was trying to get to the other side of the old brick warehouse that had been converted into Heaven but it seemed as far off as the resurrection of the dead.
Behind him three more shots blasted the enclosing din, inspiring him like a burning rag on a dog’s tail. He couldn’t think of anything but an old folk song he’d learned in his youth:
His foot slipped on a muddy spot and he sailed head-on into the old wooden loading-dock at the back of the reconverted Heaven, invisible in the dark. His fat-cushioned mouth smacked into the edge of a heavy floorboard with the sound of meat slapping on a chopping block. Tears of pain flew from his eyes.
As he jumped back, licking his bruised lips, he heard the clatter of policemen’s feet coming around the other side of the Heaven.
He crawled up over the edge of the dock like a clumsy crab escaping a snapping turtle. A ladder was within reach to his right, but he didn’t see it.
Overhead the 155th Street Bridge hung across the dark night, strung with lighted cars slowing to a stop as passengers craned their necks to see the cause of the commotion.
A lone tugboat towing two empty garbage-scows chugged down the Harlem River to pick up garbage bound for the sea. Its green and red riding lights were reflected in shimmering double-takers on the black river.
Jackson felt hemmed in on both sides; if the cops didn’t get him the river would. He jumped to his feet and started to run again. His footsteps boomed like thunder in his ears on the rotten floorboards. A loose board gave beneath his foot and he plunged face forward on his belly.
A policeman rounding the other side of the Heaven, coming in from the street, flashed his light in a wide searching arc. It passed over Jackson’s prone figure, black against the black boards, and moved along the water’s edge.
Jackson jumped up and began to run again. The old folk song kept beating in his head:
The tricky echo of the river and the buildings made his footsteps sound to the cops as coming from the opposite direction. Their lights flashed downriver as they converged in front of the wooden shack.