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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, thty’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