“We got to get some way to move her trunk,” Goldy said.
A black cat slunk from beneath a wet crate filled with garbage. Goldy kicked at it viciously.
Jackson looked disapproving.
“Let’s get one of those big DeSoto taxicabs.”
“Man, quit thinking with your feet. That gold ore is hot enough by now to burn a hole through the Harlem River.”
“Maybe we can find that junk wagon I came home in.”
“That ain’t the lick either. What you got to do is steal your boss’s hearse.”
Jackson stopped dead still to look at Goldy.
“Steal his hearse! She ain’t dead, is she?”
“Jesus Christ, man, you going to be a square all your life. Naw, she ain’t dead. But we gotta have some way to move the trunk.”
“You want me to steal Mr. Clay’s hearse to move the trunk in?”
“You done stole everything else by now, so what are you gagging on a hearse for? You already got the keys.”
Jackson felt his pants-pocket. Attached to an iron chain from his belt were the keys to both the pickup hearse and the garage where it was kept.
“You’ve been searching my pockets while I was asleep.”
“What difference does it make? You ain’t got nothing for nobody to steal. Come on, let’s go.”
Silently they trudged up Seventh Avenue.
Most of the bars were closed. But people were still in the street, heads drawn down into turned-up collars beneath pulled-down hats, like headless people. They came and went from the apartment houses where the after-hours joints were jumping and the house-rent parties swimming and the whores plying their trade and the gamblers clipping chumps.
Traffic still rolled along the avenue, trucks and buses headed north, across the 155th Street Bridge and on up the Saw Mill River Parkway to Westchester County and beyond. Cars and taxis rushed past, stopped short, people got in and out, the cars stayed put and the taxis went on again.
Red-eyed patrol cars darted about like angry bugs, screaming to a stop, cops hitting flatfooted on the pavement, picking up every suspicious-looking character for the lineup. A black hoodlum had thrown acid in a black detective’s eyes and black asses were going to pay for it as long as black asses lasted.
Masquerading as Sister Gabriel, Goldy trudged along the slushy street like a tired saint, holding the gold cross before him like a shield, scrunching to one side to hide the bulging bulk of the Western .45.
Jackson walked beside him, hugging the length of pipe beneath his dirty coat.
A half-high miss coming from an after-hours joint looked at them and said to her tall, dark escort, “He look just like her brother, don’t he?”
“Short, black and squatty,” the tall man said.
“Hush! Don’t talk such way ’bout a nun.”
No police stopped them, nobody molested them. Goldy’s black gown and gold cross covered them with safety.
The garage was on the same street as the funeral parlor, half a block distant. When they came to 133rd Street they turned over to Lenox Avenue and came back on 134th Street to keep from being seen.
Jackson unlocked the door and led the way inside. “Shut the door,” he said to Goldy as he groped for the light-switch.
“What for, man? You don’t need no light. Just get in the wagon and back it out.”
“I got to change clothes. I’m freezing to death in these.”
“Man, you got more excuses than Lazarus,” Goldy complained, closing the door. “We ain’t got all night.”
“It ain’t you that’s freezing,” Jackson said angrily as he stripped to his long damp drawers, stained black from the dye of his suit, put on an old dark gray uniform and overcoat that hung on a nail, and his new chauffeur’s cap he took from a tool chest.
When he turned to climb into the driver’s seat he noticed that the back of the hearse was loaded with funeral paraphernalia. It was a 1947 Cadillac that had first seen service as an ambulance. Now it was used mainly to pick up the bodies for embalming, and to do double duty as a truck. The coffin rack was half hidden beneath a pile of black bunting used to drape the rostrum during a funeral, plaster pedestals for lights and flowers, wreaths of artificial flowers, and a bucket half-filled with dirty motor-oil changed from one of the limousines.
Jackson opened the back double-doors, took out the motor-oil, and started to unload the other things.
“Leave that junk be,” Goldy said. “All the time you’re taking a man would think you don’t care what happens to your old lady.”
“I want to hurry more than you,” Jackson defended himself. “I was just trying to make space for the trunk.”
“We’ll put it where they put the coffins. Come on, man, let’s hurry.”
Jackson slammed shut the back doors, went around to the front and got behind the wheel. He turned on the switch, read the gauges from habit, told Goldy to turn out the light and open the door. He started the motor and backed into the street, straight into the path of a patrol car.
The cop driving stopped the car. They looked from the nun to the driver, and alighted very deliberately, one from one side, one from the other. Moving with the same deliberation, Goldy closed and locked the garage door, thinking fast. He decided they were just meddling; he had to chance it, anyway. He walked back to meet the cops, touching his gold cross.
Jackson looked at the cops and felt the sweat dripping from his face onto his hands, running down his neck.
“Are you riding with this hearse, Sister?” one of the cops asked, touching his cap respectfully.
“Yes, sir, in the service of the Lord,” Goldy said slowly in his most prayerful-sounding voice. “To take that which is left of him who hath been taken in the first death, praise the Lord, to wait in the endless river until he shall be taken in the second death.”
Both cops looked at Goldy uncomprehendingly.
“You mean to pick up a dead body.”
“Yes, sir, to gather in the remains of him who hath been taken in the first death.”
The cops exchanged glances. The other one walked up to Jackson and flashed his light into Jackson’s face. Jackson’s wet face glistened like a smooth wet lump of coal. The cop bent down to smell his breath.
“This driver looks drunk. I can smell the whiskey on him.”
“No sir, I’m not drunk,” Jackson denied. He merely looked scared, but the cop didn’t know it. “I had a drink but I ain’t drunk.”
“Get out,” the cop ordered.
Jackson got out, moving as carefully with the pipe hidden beneath his coat as though his bones were made of sugar candy.
“Walk in a straight line to that post,” the cop ordered, pointing to a lamp post on the other side of the street.
To distract the cops’ attention, Goldy quoted huskily, “ ‘And he laid hold on the dragon—’ ”
The cops turned to look at him.
“What’s that, Sister?”
“ ‘That old serpent,’ ” Goldy quoted, “ ‘which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.’ ”
By that time Jackson had gotten to the post. But Goldy’s dodge had been unnecessary. In order to keep the pipe from slipping from beneath his coat, Jackson had walked as rigidly as a zombie and as straight as the path of a bullet. But sweat was running down his legs.
“He looks sober enough,” the first cop said.
“Yeah, he seems steady enough,” the second cop agreed.
Neither one of them had watched him walking.
“Get back in, boy, and take this nun on her errand of mercy.”
“It’s mighty late to be picking up a body at this hour,” the second cop remarked.
“Nobody can choose their time to go to the first death,” Goldy replied. “They go when the wagon of the Lord calls for them, early or late.”