The real cool killers

12

The reception room of the Harlem Hospital, on Lenox Avenue ten blocks south from the scene of the murder, was wrapped in a midnight hush. It was called an interracial hospital; more than half of its staff of doctors and nurses were colored people. A graduate nurse sat behind the reception desk. A bronzeshaded desk lamp spilled light on the hospital register before her while her brown-skinned face remained in shadow. She looked up inquiringly as Grave Digger and Ready Belcher approached, walking side by side. "May I help you," she said in a trained courteous voice. "I'm Detective Jones," Grave Digger said, exhibiting his badge. She looked at it but didn't touch it. "You received an emergency patient here about two hours ago; a man with his right arm cut off." "Yes?" "I would like to question him." "I will call Dr. Banks. You may talk to him. Please be seated." Grave Digger prodded Ready in the direction of chairs surrounding a table with magazines. They sat silently, like relatives of a critical case. Dr. Banks came in silently, crossing the linoleum-tiled floor on rubber-soled shoes. He was a tall, athletic-looking young colored man dressed in white. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Jones," he said to Grave Digger whom he knew by sight. "You want to know about the case with the severed arm." He had a quick smile and a pleasant voice. "I want to talk to him," Grave Digger said. Dr. Banks pulled up a chair and sat down. "He's dead. I've just come from him. He had a rare type of blood — Type O — which we don't have in our blood bank. You realize transfusions were imperative. We had to contact the Red Cross blood bank. They located the type in Brooklyn, but it arrived too late. Is there anything I can tell you?" "I want to know who he was." "So do we. He died without revealing his identity." "Didn't he make a statement of any kind before he died?" "There was another detective here earlier, but the patient was unconscious at the time. The patient regained consciousness later, but the detective had left. Before leaving, he examined the patient's effects, however, but found nothing to establish his identity." "He didn't talk at all, didn't say anything?" "Oh yes. He cried a great deal. One moment he was cursing and the next he was praying. Most of what he said was incoherent. I gathered he regretted not killing the man whom he had attacked — the white man who was killed later." "He didn't mention any names?" "No. Once he said 'the little one' but mostly he used the word mother-raper which Harlemites apply to everybody, enemies, friends and strangers." "Well, that's that," Grave Digger said. "Whatever he knew he took with him. Still I'd like to examine his effects too, whatever they are." "Certainly; they're just the clothes he wore and the contents of his pockets when he arrived here." He stood up. "Come this way." Grave Digger got to his feet and motioned his head for Ready to walk ahead of him. "Are you an officer too?" Dr. Banks asked Ready. "No, he's my prisoner," Grave Digger said. "We're not that hard up for cops as yet." Dr. Banks smiled. He led them down a corridor smelling strongly of ether to a room at the far end where the clothes and personal effects of the emergency and ward patients were stored in neatly wrapped bundles on shelves against the walls. He took down a bundle bearing a metal tag and placed it on the bare wooden table. "Here you are." From the adjoining room an anguished male voice was heard reciting the Lord's Prayer. Ready stared as though fascinated at the number 219 on the metal tag fastened to the bundle of clothes and whispered, "Death row." Dr. Banks flicked a glance at him and said to Grave Digger, "Most of the attendants play the numbers. When an emergency patient arrives they put this tag with the death number on his bundle and if he dies they play it." Grave Digger grunted and began untying the bundle. "If you discover anything leading to his identity, let us know," Dr. Banks said. "We'd like to notify his relatives." He left them. Grave Digger spread the blood-caked mackinaw and overalls on the table. It contained two incredibly filthy one-dollar bills, some loose change, a small brown paper sack of dried roots, two Yale keys and a skeleton key on a rusty key ring, a dried rabbit's foot, a dirty piece of resin, a cheese cloth rag that had served as a handkerchief, a putty knife, a small piece of pumice stone, and a scrap of dirty writing paper folded into a small square. The putty knife and pumice stone indicated that the man had worked somewhere as a porter, using the putty to scrape chewing gum from the floor and the pumice stone for cleaning his hands. That didn't help much. He unfolded the square of paper and found a note on cheap school paper written in a childish hand.

GB, you want to know something. The Big John hangs out in the Inn. How about that. Just like those old

Romans.

Bee.