The real cool killers

Sonny Pickens could not be implicated in the murder. He was being held temporarily on a charge of disturbing the peace while a district attorney's assistant was studying the New York State criminal code to see what other charge could be lodged against him for shooting a citizen with a blank gun. His friends, Lowtop Brown and Rubberlips Wilson had been hauled in as suspicious persons. The cases of the two girls had been referred to the probation officers, but as yet nothing had been done. Both were supposedly at their respective homes, suffering from shock. The bullet had been removed from the victim's brain and given to the ballistics bureau. No further autopsy was required. Mr. Galen's daughter, Mrs. Helen Kruger of Wading River, Long Island, had claimed the body for burial. The bodies of the others, Granny and Caleb, Choo-Choo and Sheik, lay unclaimed in the morgue. Perhaps the Baptist church in Harlem, of which Granny was a member, would give her a decent Christian burial. She had no life insurance and it would be financially inconvenient for the church, unless the members contributed to defray the costs. Caleb would be buried along with Sheik and Choo-Choo in potters field, unless the medical college of one of the universities obtained their bodies for dissection. No college would want Choo-Choo's, however, because it had been too badly damaged. Ready Belcher was in Harlem Hospital, in the same ward where Charlie Richardson, whose arm had been chopped off, had died earlier. His condition was serious, but he would live. He would never look the same, however, and should his teenage whore ever see him again she wouldn't recognize him. Big Smiley and Reba were being held for contributing to the delinquency of minors, manslaughter, operating a house of prostitution, and sundry other charges. The woman who was shot in the leg by Coffin Ed was in Knickerbocker Hospital. Two ambulance-chasing shysters were vying with each other for her consent to sue Coffin Ed and the New York police department on a fifty-fifty split of the judgement, but her husband was holding out for a sixty-percent cut. That was the story; the second and corrected story. The late editions of the morning newspapers had gone hog wild with it: The prominent New York Citizen hadn't been shot, as first reported, by a drunken Negro who had resented his presence in a Harlem bar. No, not at all. He had been shot to death by a teenage Harlem gangster called Sheik, who was the leader of a teenage gang called the Real Cool Moslems. Why? Well, Sheik had wanted to find out if his zip gun would actually shoot. The copy writers used a book of adjectives to describe the bizarre aspects of the three-ring Harlem murder; meanwhile they tossed a bone of commendation to the brave policemen who had worked through the small hours of the morning, tracking down the killer in the Harlem jungle and shooting him to death in his lair less than six hours after the fatal shot

had been fired. The headlines read: POLICE PUT HEAT ON REAL COOL MOSLEMS DEATH IS THE KISS-OFF FOR THRILL KILL HARLEM MANIAC RUNS AMUCK