Blind Man With a Pistol Read Online Free PDF Page B

clutched Birgit's thigh and shouted, "I've made it, baby. Just look at 'em! Tomorrow my name will be in all the papers."
          She looked back at the wild following, then she gave him a melting look of love. "My man! You're so intelligent. It's just like Walpurgisnacht."
     
     
    4
     
          The Negro detectives, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, were making their last round through Harlem in the old black Plymouth sedan with the unofficial tag, which they used as their official car. In the daytime it might have been recognized, but at night it was barely distinguishable from any number of other dented, dilapidated struggle buggies cherished by the citizens of Harlem; other than when they had to go somewhere in a hurry it went. But now they were idling along, west on 123rd Street, with the lights out as was their custom on dark side streets. The car scarcely made a sound; for all its dilapidated appearance the motor was ticking almost silently. It passed along practically unseen, like a ghostly vehicle floating in the dark, its occupants invisible.
          This was due in part to the fact that both detectives were almost as dark as the night, and they were wearing lightweight black alpaca suits and black cotton shirts with the collars open. Whereas other people were in shirt sleeves on this hot night, they wore their suit coats to cover the big glinting nickel-plated thirty-eight-caliber revolvers they wore in their shoulder slings. They could see in the dark streets like cats, but couldn't be seen, which was just as well because their presence might have discouraged the vice business in Harlem and put countless citizens on relief.
          Actually they weren't concerned with prostitution or its feeder vices, unlicensed clubs, bottle peddlers, petty larceny, short con and steering. They had no use for pansies, but as long as they didn't hurt anyone, pansies could pansy all they pleased. They weren't arbiters of sex habits. There was no accounting for the sexual tastes of people. Just don't let anyone get hurt.
          If white citizens wished to come to Harlem for their kicks, they had to take the venereal risks and the risks of short con or having their money stolen. Their only duty was to protect them from violence.
          They went down the side street without lights to surprise anyone in the act of maiming, mugging, rolling drunks, or committing homicide.
          They knew the first people to turn on them if they tried to keep the white man out of Harlem after dark would be the whores themselves, the madams, the pimps, the proprietors of the late-hour joints, most of whom were paying off some of their colleagues on the force.
          For such a hot night, Harlem had been exceptionally peaceful. No riots, no murders, only a few cars stolen, which wasn't their business, and a few domestic cuttings.
          They were taking it easy.
          "It's been a quiet night," Coffin Ed said from his seat by the sidewalk.
          "Better touch wood," Grave Digger replied, lazily steering with one hand.
          "There ain't any wood in this tin lizzie."
          "There's the baseball bat that man was beating his old lady with."
          "Hell, bats are made of plastic these days. Too bad we ain't got his head."
          "Lots of them around. Next one we come to I'll stop."
          "How about that one?"
          Grave Digger looked ahead through the windscreen and saw the back of a black man in a black ensemble with a red fez stuck on his head. He knew the man hadn't seen them as yet nevertheless he was running as though he meant it. The man was carrying a pair of light gray pants over one arm with the legs blowing in the breeze as though they were running too, but a little faster.
          "Look at that boy picking 'em up and laying 'em down like the earth was red-hot."
          "Reckon we ought to ask him?" Coffin Ed said.
          "What for? To hear