The difference was they had the pistols, and everyone in Harlem knew them as the “Mens”.
The cook took advantage of this situation to slip back into his kitchen and hide his meat cleaver behind the stove. While the man with the pipe quickly cached his weapon inside his pants leg and went limping rapidly away like a wooden-legged man in a race of one-legged men.
After a little, peace was restored. Without a word or backward glance, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed walked to their car, climbed in and drove off.
They checked into the precinct station and wrote their report.
When Lieutenant Anderson finished reading the statement of the janitor’s wife as to the reason Pinky put in the false fire alarm, he asked incredulously, “Do you believe that?”
“Yeah,” Grave Digger replied. “I’ll believe it until some better reason comes along.”
Lieutenant Anderson shook his head. “The motives these people have for crimes.”
“When you think about them, they make sense,” Coffin Ed said argumentatively.
Lieutenant Anderson wiped the sweat from his face with a limp dirty handkerchief.
“That’s all right for the psychiatrists, but we’re cops,” he said.
Grave Digger winked at Coffin Ed.
“If you’re white, all right,” he recited in the voice of a schoolboy.
Coffin Ed took it up. “If you’re brown, stick around …”
Grave Digger capped it, “If you’re black, stand back.”
Lieutenant Anderson reddened. He was accustomed to his two ace detectives needling him, but it always made him feel a little uneasy.
“That might all be true,” he said. “But these crimes cost the taxpayers money.”
“You ain’t kidding,” Grave Digger confirmed.
Coffin Ed changed the subject. “Have you heard whether they caught him?”
Lieutenant Anderson shook his head. “They caught everyone but him — bums, perverts, whores, tricks, and one hermit.”
“He won’t be too hard to find,” Grave Digger said. “There ain’t too many places for a giant albino Negro turning black-and-blue to hide.”
“All right, let’s stop the clowning,” Anderson said. “What about this charge against a drug pusher?”
“He’s one of the big sources of supply for colored addicts up here, but he’s smart enough to keep out of Harlem,” Grave Digger said.
“When we saw him choking, we knew he’d been eating the decks he had on him, so before he could digest them we got enough out of him to convict him of possession anyway.”
“It’s in that envelope,” Grave Digger said, nodding toward the desk. “When it’s analyzed, they’ll find five or six half-chewed decks of heroin.”
Anderson opened the end of the brown manila envelope lying atop the desk which the detectives had turned in as evidence. He shook out the folded handkerchief and opened it.
“Phew!” he exclaimed, drawing back. “It stinks.”
“It doesn’t stink anymore than a dirty pusher,” Grave Digger said. “I hate this type of criminal worse than God hates sin.”
“What’s the other stuff with it?” Anderson asked, pushing the mess about with the tip of his pencil.
Coffin Ed chuckled. “Whatever he last ate before he started eating evidence.”
Anderson looked sober. “I know your intentions are good, but you can’t go around slugging people in the belly to collect evidence, even if they are felons. You know that this man has been taken to the hospital.”
“Don’t worry, he won’t protest,” Grave Digger said.
“Not if he knows what’s good for him,” Coffin Ed echoed.
“Every precinct’s not like Harlem,” Anderson cautioned. “You get away with tricks here that’ll kick back in any other precinct.”
“If this kicks back, I’ll eat the foot that did it,” Grave Digger said.
“Talking about eating reminds me that we ain’t ate yet,” Coffin Ed said.
Mamie Louise was sick and the other all-night greasy spoons and barbecue joints had no appeal. They decided to eat in the Great Man nightclub on 125th Street.
“I like a joint where you can smell the girls’ sweat,” Coffin Ed said.
It had a bar fronting on the street with a cabaret in back where a two-dollar membership fee was charged to get in.
When the detectives flashed their buzzers they were made members for free.
Noise, heat and orgiastic odors hit them as they entered through the curtained doorway. The room was so small and packed that the celebrants rubbed buttocks with others at adjoining tables. Faces bubbled in the dim light like a huge pot of cannibal stew, showing mostly eyes and teeth. Smoke-blackened nudes frolicked in the murals about the fringes of the ceiling. Beneath were pencil sketches of numerous Harlem celebrities, interspersed with autographed photos of jazz greats. A ventilator fan was laboring in the back wall without any noticeable effect.
“You want stink, you got it,” Grave Digger said.
“And everything that goes with it,” Coffin Ed amended.
Some joker was shouting in a loud belligerent voice, “I ain’t gonna pay for but two whiskeys; dat’s all I drunk. Somebody musta stole the other three ’cause I ain’t seen ’em.”
Behind a dance floor scarcely big enough to hold two pairs of feet, a shining black man wearing a white silk shirt kept banging the same ten keys on a midget piano; while a lank black woman without joints wearing a backless fire-red evening gown did a snake dance about the tables, shouting “Money-money-money-honey,” and holding up her skirt. She was bare beneath. Whenever someone held out a bill, she changed the lyric to, “Ohhhweee, daddy, money makes me feel so funny,” and gave a graphic demonstration by accepting it.
The proprietor cleared a table in the back corner for the two detectives and showed them most of the amalgam fillings in his teeth.
“I believe in live and let live,” he said right off. “What you gentlemen wish to eat?”
There was a choice of fried chicken, barbecued pork ribs and New Orleans gumbo.
They chose the gumbo, which was the specialty of the house. It was made of fresh pork, chicken gizzards, hog testicles and giant shrimp, with a base of okra and sweet potatoes, and twenty-seven varieties of seasonings, spices and herbs.
“It’s guaranteed to cool you off,” the proprietor boasted.
“I don’t want to get so cooled off I can’t warm up no more,” Grave Digger said.
The proprietor showed him some more teeth in a reassuring smile.
They followed the gumbo with huge quarters of ice-cold watermelon which had black seeds.
While they were eating it, a chorus of four hefty, sepia-colored girls took the floor and began doing a bump dance with their backs to the audience, throwing their big strong smooth-skinned hams about as though juggling hundred-pound sacks of brown sugar.
“Throw it to the wind!” someone shouted.
“Those hams won’t stay up on wind,” Coffin Ed muttered.
The tight close air was churned into a steaming bedlam.
The temptation was too great for Coffin Ed. He filled his mouth full of watermelon seeds and began spitting them at the live targets. It was a fifteen-foot shot and before he got the range he had hit a couple of jokers at ringside tables in the back of their necks and almost set off a rumpus. The jokers were puffing up to fight when finally Coffin Ed’s shots began landing on the targets. First one girl and then another began leaping and slapping their bottoms as though stung by bees. The audience thought it was part of the act. It was going over big.
One joker was inspired to give an impromptu rendition of “Ants in your pants.”
Then one of the black seeds stuck to the cream-colored bottom of one of the girls and she captured it. She held it up and looked at it. She stopped dancing and turned an irate face toward the audience.