“We seldom have dogs that size,” the woman said doubtfully. “And we are very particular about whom we let take them. Could you give me an idea of your reasons for wanting a dog that size?”
“It’s like this,” Sister Heavenly said. “I have a roadhouse in New Jersey. It’s not far from Hoboken. And to be frank with you, it’s not the most law-abiding place you can find. But there’s a big fenced-in yard for the dog to run. And of course there’re always plenty of bones, not to mention meat, for him to eat.”
“I see. You need it for a watchdog?”
“Yes. And he can’t be too big. Our last watchdog was fairly big. He was a German dog. But prowlers killed him.”
“I see. You say him. Does it make any difference if the dog is female?”
“That’s all the better. As long as she’s big.”
“It so happens that you have called at an opportune time,” the pleasant-voiced woman said. “There might be a large female dog available within a few days. Would you mind giving me your name and address?”
“A few days!” Sister Heavenly exclaimed, filling her voice with dismay. “I thought I could get one today. I’m leaving tomorrow on two weeks’ vacation and I want to leave the dog there with the caretaker while I’m gone.”
“Oh, that’s not possible, you see we have to check.… But.… Won’t you hold on for a moment, perhaps.…”
Sister Heavenly held on.
After a time the pleasant voice said, “Hello, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m still here.”
“Well, it’s quite likely that you may get your big dog today just as you wish. It’s highly irregular of course, but one has just come in and — if you will call me back an hour from now we will give you a definite answer. Okay?”
“Okay,” Sister Heavenly said and hung up.
She looked at her watch. It read 4:03.
She telephoned back at exactly 5 o’clock.
The pleasant-voiced woman said she was so sorry, but a detective had come and had taken the dog away.
Sister Heavenly knew just how people felt when they said “Doggone!”
14
Coffin Ed was in a crying rage, caught up in an impotent self-tormenting fury that gave to his slightly disfigured face a look of ineffable danger.
“These miserable mother-raping crumbs,” he grated through clenched teeth. “These sonofabitching rathole snakeshit hopped-up sons of syphilitic whores with their doctored rods trying to play tough by shooting an unarmed man in the back. But they ain’t seen nothing yet.”
He was talking to himself.
There was an electric clock on the wall at the end of the dazzling white hospital corridor. It read 2:26.
He thought bitterly, Yeah, they suspended us for punching a mother-raping pusher in the guts and ain’t three hours passed before some drugged-up killer has got Digger.
Tears were seeping from his eyes and catching in the fine scar ridges between the patches of grafted skin on his face as though his very skin was crying.
Nurses and interns passing down the corridor gave him a wide berth.
What made it all the worse, he felt a sense of guilt. If I hadn’t been so mother-raping cute and had listened to Digger and just let it alone until the guys from homicide came he might not have got it, he thought.
Grave Digger lay on the operating table beyond the closed white door. Death wasn’t two feet off. He needed blood and they had used the one lone pint of his type blood they had in store. It wasn’t enough. The only other place they had it was in the Red Cross blood bank in Brooklyn. A police car led by two motorcycle cops opening up the city traffic was bringing it as fast as anything could possibly move in the big congested town. But time was rapidly running ut.
Coffin Ed had just been told he didn’t have the type of blood Grave Digger needed.
Now I can’t even do this for him, he thought. But one thing is for sure, if he goes down, he ain’t going alone.
He had a lump on the side of his head, back of the left ear, as big as a goose egg, and his head seemed split in all directions by a blinding headache that began behind the eyes. The doctors had said he had concussion and had tried to put him to bed. But he had fought them off with a raving scarcely controlled violence and they had gotten the hell away from him.
It was a high-class, well-equipped hospital, the nearest to the scene of the shooting; and he knew if Grave Digger could be saved, they would save him there. But that did nothing to assuage his self-condemning rage.
Down at the end of the corridor he saw his and Grave Digger’s wife ascending the head of the stairs. He turned and fled through the first doorway. He found himself in a room for minor surgery. The lights were off and it was temporarily out of use.
He couldn’t bear to face Grave Digger’s wife and he didn’t want to see his own. His daughter was in a summer camp in the Catskills. There was no one to hinder him. Mentally, he thanked someone for this small favor.
The wives were not permitted in the operating room. They stood outside the door in the corridor, their brown faces set like graven images. From time to time Grave Digger’s wife touched a handkerchief to her eyes. Neither of them spoke.
Coffin Ed looked for a way to get out. There was a connecting door at the end of the room but it was locked. He raised the bottom half of the frosted-glass window. It opened onto a fire escape. He went outside. A group of medical students in an adjoining building stopped to watch him. He didn’t notice them. He went down one story and the swing ladder dropped to the paved driveway that led to the emergency entrance at the rear.
He went out to the street and walked bareheaded in the blinding midday sunshine to where his car was parked on Riverside Drive. Heat shimmered before his vision, distorting his perspective. His head ached like rheumatic fever of the brain.
Half an hour later he pulled into the driveway of his house in Astoria, Long Island. How he managed to get there he never knew.
He had been given a sedative at the hospital to take home. The label on the bottle read: One teaspoonful every hour. He tossed it into the trash can outside the kitchen door and let himself into the kitchen.
He put the Silex coffee maker on the gas stove, with enough coffee in it to make mud. While waiting for it to boil he stripped off his clothes and piled them on the chair beside the bed. In the bathroom medicine cabinet he found a bottle of Benzedrine tablets. He took two and drank water from the washbowl faucet in his cupped hand. He heard the coffee maker boiling and went into the kitchen and turned off the fire.
After that he took a shower, turning it from lukewarm to as cold as he could bear. He held his breath and his teeth chattered as the cold needles bit into his skin. His head felt as though sheets of lightning were going off in his brain, but the lethargy left his limbs.
He toweled and went into the bedroom and put on jockey shorts, nylon socks, lightweight black shoes with rubber soles, the pants to his brand-new dark gray summer suit, and a blue oxford cloth shirt with a button-down collar. He omitted the tie. He didn’t want anything to be in his way when he reached for the handle of his revolver.
His shoulder holster hung from a hook inside the door of the clothes closet. The special-made, long-barreled, nickel-plated.38-caliber revolver, that had shot its way to fame in Harlem, was in the holster. He took it out, spun the chamber, rapidly ejecting the five brass-jacketed cartridges, and quickly cleaned and oiled it. Then he reloaded it, putting a U.S. army tracer bullet into the last loaded chamber and leaving the one under the trigger empty so there wouldn’t be an accident in case he had to club some joker across the head with the butt.
He placed the revolver on the bed and took down the holster. From the shelf in the closet he took a can of seal fat and smeared a thick coating on the inside of the holster. He wiped the excess off with a clean handkerchief, tossed the hankerchief into the soiled-clothes hamper, and strapped on the shoulder sling. When he had cradled the revolver, he strapped a stopwatch to his left wrist.