The Real Cool Killers Read Online Free Page B

of teenage gangsters who call themselves Real Cool Moslems.”
    “Hah!” the homicide lieutenant said.
    “Mostly they fight a teenage gang of Jews from The Bronx,” Grave Digger elaborated. “We leave that to the welfare people.”
    The homicide sergeant stepped over to the Arab corpse and removed the turban and peeled off the artificial beard. The face of a colored youth with slick conked hair and beardless cheeks stared up. He dropped the disguises beside the corpse and sighed.
    “Just a baby,” he said.
    For a moment no one spoke.
    Then the homicide lieutenant asked, “You have the homicide gun?”
    Grave Digger took it from his pocket, holding the barrel by the thumb and first finger, and gave it to him.
    The lieutenant examined it curiously for some moments. Then he wrapped it in his handkerchief and slipped it into his coat pocket.
    “Had you questioned the suspect?” he asked.
    “We hadn’t gotten to it,” Grave Digger said. “All we know is the homicide grew out of a rumpus at the Dew Drop Inn.”
    “That’s a bistro a couple of blocks up the street,” Anderson said. “They had a cutting there a short time earlier.”
    “It’s been a hot time in the old town tonight,” Haggerty said.
    The homicide lieutenant raised his brows enquiringly at Lieutenant Anderson.
    “Suppose you go to work on that angle, Haggerty,” Anderson said. “Look into that cutting. Find out how it ties in.”
    “We figure on doing that ourselves,” Grave Digger said.
    “Let him go on and get started,” Anderson said.
    “Right-o,” Haggerty said. “I’m the man for the cutting.”
    Everybody looked at him. He left.
    The homicide lieutenant said, “Well, let’s take a look at the stiffs.”
    He gave each a cursory examination. The teenager had been shot once, in the heart.
    “Nothing to do but wait for the coroner,” he said.
    They looked at the unconscious woman.
    “Shot in the thigh, high up,” the homicide sergeant said. “Loss of blood but not fatal – I don’t think.”
    “The ambulance will be here any minute,” Anderson said.
    “Ed shot at the gangster twice,” Grave Digger said. “It must have been then.”
    “Right.”
    No one looked at Coffin Ed. Instead, they made a pretense of examining the area.
    Anderson shook his head. “It’s going to be a hell of a job finding your prisoner in this dense slum,” he said.
    “There isn’t any need,” the homicide lieutenant said. “If this was the pistol he had, he’s as innocent as you and me.This pistol won’t kill anyone.” He took the pistol from his pocket and unwrapped it. “This is a thirty-seven caliber blank pistol. The only bullets made to fit it are blanks and they can’t be tampered with enough to kill a man. And it hasn’t been made over into a zip gun.”
    “Well,” Lieutenant Anderson said at last. “That tears it.”

4
    There was a rusty sheet-iron gate in the concrete wall between the small back courts. The gang leader unlocked it with his own key. The gate opened silently on oiled hinges.
    He went ahead.
    “March!” the henchman with the knife ordered, prodding Sonny.
    Sonny marched.
    The other henchman kept the noose around his neck like a dog chain.
    When they’d passed through, the leader closed and locked the gate.
    One of the henchman said, “You reckon Caleb is bad hurt?”
    “Shut up talking in front of the captive,” the leader said. “Ain’t you got no better sense than that.”
    The broken concrete paving was strewn with broken glass bottles, rags and diverse objects thrown from the back windows: a rusty bed spring, a cotton mattress with a big hole burnt in the middle, several worn-out automobile tires, the half-dried carcass of a black cat with its left foot missing and its eyes eaten out by rats.
    They picked their way through the debris carefully.
    Sonny bumped into a loose stack of garbage cans. One fell with a loud clatter. A sudden putrid stink arose.
    “God damn it, look out!” the leader said.