An old colored woman clad in a faded blue Mother Hubbard with darker blue patches sat in a rocking chair by a coal-burning kitchen stove, darning a threadbare man"s woolen sock on a wooden egg, and smoking a corncob pipe.
"Is that you, Caleb?" she asked, looking over a pair of ancient steel-rimmed spectacles.
"It"s just me and Choo-Choo and Inky," Sheik said.
"Oh, it"s you, Samson." The very note of expectancy in her voice died in disappointment. "Whar"s Caleb?"
"He went to work downtown in a bowling alley, Granny. Setting up pins," Sheik said.
"Lord, that chile is always out working at night," she said with a sigh. "I sho hope G.o.d he ain"t getting into no trouble with all this night work, "cause his old Granny is too old to watch over him as a mammy would."
She was so old the color had faded in spots from her dark brown skin so that it looked like the skin of a dried speckled pea, and once-brown eyes had turned milky blue. Her bony cranium was bald at the front and the speckled skin was taut against the skull. What remained of her short gray hair was gathered into a small tight ball at the back of her head. The outline of each finger bone plying the darning needle was plainly visible through the transparent parchment-like skin.
"He ain"t getting into no trouble," Sheik said.
Inky and Choo-Choo pushed Sonny into the kitchen and closed the door.
Granny peered over her spectacles at Sonny. "I don"t know this boy. Is he a friend of Caleb"s too?"
"He"s the fellow Caleb is taking his place," Sheik said. "He hurt his hands."
She pursed her lips. "There"s so many of you boys coming and going in here all the time I sho hope you ain"t getting into no mischief. And this new boy looks older than you others is."
"You worry too much," Sheik said harshly.
"Hannh?"
"We"re going on to our room," Sheik said. "Don"t wait up for Caleb. He"s going to be late."
"Hannh?"
"Come on," Sheik said. "She ain"t hearing no more."
It was a shotgun flat, one room opening into the other. The next room contained two small white enameled iron beds where Caleb and his grandmother slept, and a small potbellied stove on a tin mat in one corner. A table held a pitcher and washbowl; there was a small dime-store mirror on top of a chest of drawers. As in the kitchen, everything was spotlessly clean.
"Give me your things and watch out for Granny," Sheik said, taking their bundled-up disguises.
Choo-Choo bent his head to the keyhole.
Sheik unlocked a large old cedar chest with another key from his ring and stored their bundles beneath layers of old blankets and house furnishings. It was Granny"s hope chest; there she stored things given her by the white folks she worked for to give Caleb when he got married. Sheik locked the chest and unlocked the door to the next room. They followed him and he locked the door behind them.
It was the room he and Choo-Choo rented. There was a double bed where he and Choo-Choo slept, chest of drawers and mirror, pitcher and bowl on the table, as in the other room. The corner was curtained off with calico for a closet. But a lot of junk lay around and it wasn"t as clean.
A narrow window opened to the platform of the redpainted iron fire escape that ran down the front of the building. It was protected by an iron grille closed by a padlock.
Sheik unlocked the grille and stepped out onto the fire escape.
"Look at this," he said.
Choo-Choo joined him; Inky and Sonny squeezed into the window.
"Watch the captive, Inky," Sheik said.
"I ain"t no captive," Sonny said.
"Just look," Sheik said, pointing toward the street.
Below, on the broad avenue, red-eyed prowl cars were scattered thickly, like monster ants about an ant-hill. Three ambulances were threading through the maze, two police hea.r.s.es, and cars from the police commissioner"s office and the medical examiner"s office. Uniformed cops and men in plain clothes were coming and going in every direction.
"The men from Mars," Sheik said. "The big dragnet. What you think about that, Choo-Choo?"
Choo-Choo was busy counting.
The lower landings and stairs of the fire escape were packed with other people watching the show. Every front window as far as the eye could see on both sides of the street was jammed with black heads.
"I counted thirty-one prowl cars," Choo-Choo said. "That"s more than was up on Eighth Avenue when Coffin Ed got that acid throwed in his eyes."
"They"re shaking down the buildings one by one," Sheik said.
"What we"re going to do with our captive?" Choo-Choo asked.
"We got to get the cuffs off first. Maybe we can hide him up in the pigeon"s roost."
"Leave the cuffs on him."
"Can"t do that. We got to get ready for the shakedown."
He and Choo-Choo stepped back into the room. He took Sonny by the arm, and pointed toward the street.
"They"re looking for you, man."
Sonny"s black face began graying again.
"I ain"t done nothing. That wasn"t a real pistol I had. That was a blank gun."
The three of them stared at him disbelievingly.
"Yeah, that ain"t what they think," Choo-Choo said.
Sheik was staring at Sonny with a strange expression. "You sure, man?" he asked tensely.
"Sure I"m sure. It wouldn"t shoot nothing but thirty-seven caliber blanks."
"Then it wasn"t you who shot the big white stud?"
"That"s what I been telling you. I couldn"t have shot him."
A change came over Sheik. His flat, freckled yellow face took on a brutal look. He hunched his shoulders, trying to look dangerous and important.
"The cops are trying to frame you, man," he said. "We got to hide you now for sure."
"What you doing with a gun that don"t shoot bullets?" Choo-Choo asked.
"I keep it in my shine parlor as a gag, is all," Sonny said.
Choo-Choo snapped his fingers. "I know you. You"re the joker what works in that shoe shine parlor beside the Savoy."
"It"s my own shoe shine parlor."
"How much marijuana you got stashed there?"
"I don"t handle it."
"Sheik, this joker"s a square."
"Cut the gab," Sheik said. "Let"s get these handcuffs off this captive."
He tried keys and lockpicks but he couldn"t get them open. So he gave Inky a triangle file and said, "Try filing the chain in two. You and him set on the bed." Then to Sonny, "What"s your name, man?"
"Aesop Pickens, but people mostly call me Sonny."
"All right then, Sonny."
They heard a girl"s voice talking to Granny and listened silently to rubber-soled shoes crossing the other room.
A single rap, then three quick ones, then another single rap sounded on the door.
"Gaza," Sheik said with his mouth against the panel.
"Suez," a girl"s voice replied.
Sheik unlocked the door.
A girl entered and he locked the door behind her.
She was a tall sepia-colored girl with short black curls, wearing a turtle-necked sweater, plaid skirt, bobby socks, and white buckskin shoes. She had a snub nose, wide mouth, full lips, even white teeth, and wide-set brown eyes fringed with long black lashes.
She looked about sixteen years old, and was breathless with excitement.
Sonny stared at her and muttered to himself, "If this ain"t it, it"ll have to do."
"h.e.l.l, it"s just Sissie. I thought it was Bones with the gun," Choo-Choo said.
"Stop beefing about the gun. It"s safe with Bones. The cops ain"t going to shake down no garbage collector"s house. His old man works for the city same as they do."
"What"s this about Bones and the gun?" Sissie asked.
"Sheik"s got --"
"It"s none of Sissie"s business," Sheik cut him off.
"Somebody said an Arab had been shot and at first I thought it was you," Sissie said.
"You hoped it was me," Sheik said.
She turned away, blushing.
"Don"t look at me," Choo-Choo said to Sheik. "You tell her. She"s your girl."
"It was Caleb," Sheik said.
"Caleb! Jesus!" Sissie dropped onto the bed beside Sonny. She looked stunned. "Jesus! Poor little Caleb. What will Granny do?"
"What the h.e.l.l can she do?" Sheik said brutally. "Raise him from the dead?"
"Does she know?"
"Does it look like she knqws?"
"Jesus! Poor little Caleb. What did he do?"
"I gave old Coffin Ed the stink gun and --" Choo-Choo began.
"You didn"t!" she exclaimed.
"The h.e.l.l I didn"t."
"What did Caleb do?"
"He threw perfume over the monster. It"s the Moslem salute for cops. I told you about it before. But the monster must have thought Cal was throwing some more acid into his eyes. He blasted so fast we couldn"t tell him any better."
"Jesus!"
"Where"s Sugart.i.t?" Sheik asked.
"At home. She didn"t come into town tonight. I phoned her and she said she was sick."
"Yeah. Did you have any trouble getting in here?"
"No. I told the cops at the door that I live here."
They heard the signal rapped on the door.
Sissie gasped.
Sheik looked at her suspiciously. "What the h.e.l.l"s the matter with you?" he asked.
"Nothing."