“Digger and I were sitting outside in the old struggle buggy when the African took it away. We thought then he might have drowned it, but it was none of our business and we didn’t see anything else suspicious, so we left. If we’d stayed twenty minutes longer we’d have seen Sister Heavenly when she arrived.
“She got here about ten minutes to six and said she was looking for Gus. Ginny, that’s the janitor’s wife, was suspicious — said she was, anyway — but she couldn’t get any more out of Sister Heavenly. Then at six o’clock the front doorbell rang. Ginny had no idea who it was, but suddenly Sister Heavenly drew a pistol from her bag and covered her and the African and ordered her to push the buzzer to release the front door latch; and she made them both keep still. Evidently she expected the caller to come straight to the flat. But instead they took away the trunk and left without knocking. When she finally looked out here in the hall and saw the trunk was gone, she ran out of the house without saying a word. And that was the last Ginny saw of her — so she said.”
“What happened to the trunk finally?” the homicide lieutenant asked.
“She claimed she never found out.”
“All right, we’ll get on to the trunk tomorrow.”
“I’m in the dark here,” the T-man said. “Who was going where?”
“She and Gus — he was the janitor — were going to Ghana. They’d bought a cocoa plantation from the African.”
The T-man whistled. “Where’d they get that kind of money?”
“She told us — Digger and me — that his first wife died and left him a tobacco farm in North Carolina, and he sold it.”
“We have all that from your first statement,” the homicide lieutenant said impatiently. “Where did the African fit into this caper?”
“He didn’t. He was an innocent bystander. When Gus didn’t show up after the trunk was taken, Ginny began getting more and more worried. So the African left the house about a half hour after Sister Heavenly to look for Gus. In the meantime it was getting late and Ginny began to dress. They had to go to the dock to get their luggage on board.”
“The trunk should have been delivered the day before,” the T-man said.
“Yeah, but she didn’t know that. All that was worrying her was Gus’s continued absence. She was just hoping the African would find him in time for them to make the boat. She never saw the African again. She had just finished dressing when the two white gunmen who shuttled her about Harlem first turned up. They said Gus had sent them to take her to the dock. She left a note for the African telling him where she was going. Then the gunmen picked up her luggage and took her out to their car. When they got in the fat man drove and the hophead sat in the back and covered her with the derringer. He told her Gus was in trouble and they were taking her to see him.”
“Didn’t she wonder about the gun?”
“She said she thought they were detectives.”
The homicide lieutenant reddened.
“They took her to a walkup apartment on West 10th Street in the Village, near the railroad tracks, and bound and gagged her and tied her to the bed. First they went through her luggage. Then they took off the gag and asked her what she had done with the junk. She didn’t know what they were talking about. They gagged her again and began torturing her.”
Abruptly the atmosphere changed. Faces took on those bleak expressions of men who come suddenly upon an inhumanity not reckoned for.
“Gentle hearts!” the T-man said.
“The next time they took off her gag she blabbed for her life,” Coffin Ed said. “She told them Gus had pawned the stuff but when she saw that wasn’t the answer she said he took it to Chicago to sell. That must have convinced them she really didn’t know about it. One of them went into another room and made a telephone call — to Benny Mason, I suppose — and when he came back they gagged her again and left. I figure they came straight up here and searched the flat.”
“And killed the African.”
“I don’t think they killed him then. The way I figure it they must have searched twice. In the meantime they probably went and had a talk with their boss.”
“No doubt he sent them back and told them to find it or else,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “If it was two kilos of heroin it was worth a lot of money.”
“Yeah. I figure the African must have been here when they returned, or else he came in while they were searching. We’ll never know.”
“You think they tried to make him talk?”
“Who knows? Anyway, that’s when we ran into them and set off the big chase. If I’d listened to Digger’s advice and just laid dead, maybe we’d have never tumbled to the dope angle.”
“Not necessarily,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “We knew a shipment of H had left France, but we didn’t know how or when. The French lost it somewhere between Marseille and Le Havre.”
“But we’ve been on to it for the past week,” the T-man said. “Working with the local squad — secretly. We’ve had the waterfront covered from end to end.”
“Yeah, but you’ll find out later you didn’t cover it far enough,” Coffin Ed said. “When the hoods returned to the flat in the Village, Benny Mason went with them. The woman became hysterical when they took off the gag. She said Benny sat beside her and comforted her. He sent out for a doctor who came and treated her and put her under sedation-”
“What doctor?”
“She didn’t say and I didn’t ask her. Benny sent the doctor away and promised her she wouldn’t be hurt again if she was cooperative. Anyway, he won her confidence. In the meantime he sent the hoods out of the room and pulled up a chair, straddled it and sat facing her. And he leveled with her-”
“Then he intended to have her killed,” the narcotics lieutenant said.
“Yeah, but she was too square to dig it. Anyway, he told her that he was the boss of the narcotics racket, that he had the shit smuggled into the country and he had used Gus to pick it up sometimes; and that was how Gus got the money to buy this farm in Ghana. That shocked her; she had believed Gus’s hype about his wife leaving him a farm down South. He must have figured it would have that effect because he wanted her to start thinking and remember something she hadn’t thought was important before. He went on to tell her that he had had Gus thoroughly investigated and he was certain Gus was a square, just greedy for some money. She agreed to that but she didn’t know what he was leading to. He told her that Gus had picked up a shipment of heroin at midnight, worth more than a million dollars, and he was supposed to pass it on in the trunk that was picked up at six o’clock.”
“Picked up from who?” the narcotics lieutenant asked.
“He said the heroin was smuggled into the country on a French liner.”
“We know the French liner that docked this week,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “We’ve had it under a tight surveillance.”
“Yeah, but you missed the connection. It was dropped overboard to a small motorboat that passed under the bow without stopping at about eleven o’clock night before last.”
“My men were watching that boat through night glasses and there was nothing dropped overboard,” the T-man said.
“Maybe it was already in the water. I’m just repeating what she said Benny told her. Benny had sent a map to Gus by Jake, the pusher — the one Digger and me got suspended for slugging.”
The city detectives looked embarrassed but the T-men missed the connotation.
“The map showed Gus the exact spot where the shipment would be dropped — only a short walk from here. The boat came up the river and delivered the shipment without ever stopping. Benny said he knew that Gus collected it because the connection told him that Gus was waiting when the boat arrived; and furthermore, when the boat returned to the yacht basin in Hoboken the T-men were waiting for it and searched it and they found it clean.”
“By God, I got a report on that boat!” the T-man said. “It’s owned by a taxicab driver named Skelley. He does night fishing.” He turned to one of his men in the background. “Have Skelley and everyone connected with him picked up.”