The Real Cool Killers Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 hearses, 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.”
    “Hell, it’s just