The real cool killers

He parked directly in front of the Dew Drop Inn and pushed Ready through the door. On first sight it looked just as he had left it; the two white cops guarding the door and the colored patrons celebrating noisily. He ushered Ready between the bar and the booths, toward the rear. The varicolored faces turned toward them curiously as they passed. But in the last booth he noticed an addition. It was crowded with teenagers, three school boys and four school girls, who hadn't been there before. They stopped talking and looked at him intently as he and Ready approached. Then at sight of the bull whip all four girls gave a start and their young dark faces tightened with sudden fear. He wondered how they'd got past the white cops on the door. All the places at the bar were taken. Big Smiley came down and asked two men to move. One of them began to complain. "What for I got to give up my seat for some other niggers." Big Smiley thumbed toward Grave Digger. "He's the man." "Oh, one of them two." Both rose with alacrity, picked up their glasses and vacated the stools, grinning at Grave Digger obsequiously. "Don't show me your teeth," Grave Digger snarled. "I'm no dentist. I don't fix teeth. I'm a cop. I'll knock your teeth out." The men doused their grins and slunk away. Grave Digger threw the bull whip on top of the bar and sat on the high bar stool. "Sit down," he ordered Ready, who stood by hesitantly. "Sit down, Goddamn it." Ready sat down as though the stool were covered with cake icing. Big Smiley looked from one to another, smiling warily. "You held out on me," Grave Digger said in his thick cottony voice of smoldering rage. "And I don't like that." Big Smiley's smile got a sudden case of constipation. He threw a quick look at Ready's impassive face, found nothing there to reassure him, then fell back on his cut arm which he carried in a sling. "Guess I must be runnin' some fever, Chief, 'cause I don't remember what I told you." "You told me you didn't know who Galen was looking for in here," Grave Digger said thickly. Big Smiley stole another look at Ready, but all he got was. a blank. He sighed heavily. "Who he were looking for? Is dat what you ast me?" he stalled, trying to meet Grave Digger's smoldering hot gaze. "I dunno who he were looking for, Chief." Grave Digger rose up on the bar stool rungs as though his feet were in stirrups, snatched the bull whip from the bar and slashed Big Smiley across one cheek after another before Big Smiley could get his good hand moving. Big Smiley stopped smiling. Talk stopped suddenly along the length of the bar, petered out in the booths. In the vacuum that followed, Lil Green's voice whined from the jukebox:

"Why don't you do right

Like other mens do…"