He motioned with his head to Wop to open the door. But Wop was paralyzed with terror. Huge obsidian eyes looked out in a hypnotized stare from a face gone battleship gray.

"I wouldn't do it," Madame Cushy said.

"Say good-bye," Coffin Ed said and his arm tightened.

Madame Cushy looked at Wop's eyes. She raised her voice and said, "Just one moment, Ginny."

There was the sound of the lounge door opening and a male voice called, "What is it, baby?" Then it added in a lower tone as though the face had turned away, "Go see what's happening, s.p.u.n.ky."

Coffin Ed transferred Madame Cushy's bun from his left hand to his teeth and drew Grave Digger's pistol from his belt while still holding the knife blade to her throat.

When she moved he moved with her, like a monstrous Siamese twin.

Standing behind the door, she opened it and called out, "It's nothing, dear. I'm trying to fix a rendezvous." Then in a voice that sounded normal she added, "Come on in, Ginny."

Ginny saw Wop's face and hesitated, then stepped inside.

In one continuous motion Coffin Ed kicked the door shut with the edge of his left foot, spun Madame Cushy out of reach, transferred the knife blade to Ginny's throat and closed her mouth with his left forearm, snapping back her head.

She felt the knife blade on her throat, tasted cloth, and saw the huge nickel-plated revolver gripped in a hard black hand just before her eyes. The strength went out of her knees and her body began to sag.

Madame Cushy stepped quickly to the door, opened it and went into the hall. s.p.u.n.ky was a step away, trying to look into the room. She pulled the door shut behind her and said, "Let them alone for a while." Then she turned and called through the closed door, "Call me when you're ready to leave."

For a moment there was only the sound of their footsteps going toward the lounge and the closing of a door.

Inside the room the sound of Wop's teeth chattering was as loud as castanets.

"Stand up!" Coffin Ed grated in Ginny's ear.

Her knees straightened and she tried to talk. The movement of her head pressed her long black oily hair into his face.

"Shut up!" he whispered, turning his head to get his face out of the thick, perfumed, rancid, suffocating ma.s.s of hair.

The tight, close, abnormal contact of their bodies was aphrodisiacal in a s.a.d.i.s.tic manner, and both were shaken with an unnatural l.u.s.t.

"Strip her," Coffin Ed ordered Wop.

She heard the uncontrollable threads of desire in his voice and thought she was about to be raped. She shook her head and tried again to talk, mumbling what sounded like, "You don't have to--', Wop stared in petrified stupidity. "Strip her?" he echoed as though he didn't understand the words.

"Take her mother-raping clothes off," Coffin Ed said through clenched teeth. "Ain't you never done that?"

Wop moved toward her as though she were a lioness with cubs. She was pa.s.sive, raising each foot in turn for him to remove her shoes and stockings. No one spoke. Only their heavy breathing and the chattering of Wop's teeth were audible. But he took so long to remove her sheen gabardine suit and chartreuse underclothes the silence became excruciating.

When she was stark naked, Coffin Ed released her.

She turned and saw him for the first time. "Oh, it's you!" she said in her jarring voice.

"It's me all right."

She dropped to her knees and clasped his thighs in a tight embrace. "Just don't hurt me," she said.

"What the h.e.l.l!" he said, and grabbed a fistful of her hair and dragged her onto the couch.

Her thick cushiony mouth opened in pain as she sucked in breath, but she didn't dare scream. He rolled her over and carefully examined her for needle marks, but didn't find any.

"Tie her down," he ordered Wop.

Wop moved like a robot, joints stiff and eyes senseless.

When he had finished, Coffin Ed said, "Get her compact from her handbag." Then he leaned over and took her by the hair again. Pulling her head back until her throat was taut, he cut the skin in a thin line six inches across her throat.

She didn't move, didn't breathe. Her eyes were limpid pools of terror set in a fixed stare.

"Give me the mirror," he said.

He held it before her eyes. "See your throat."

A thin line of blood showed where he had cut. She fainted.

He tossed away the compact and said with a choked impotent fury, "Let anybody's blood flow but their own!"

Then he slapped her until she came to.

He knew that he had gone beyond the line; that he had gone outside of human restraint; he knew that what he was doing was unforgivable. But he didn't want any more lies.

She lay rigid, looking at him with hate and fear.

"Next time I'll cut it to the bone," he said.

A shudder ran over her body as though a foot had stepped on her grave.

"All right, I'll tell you," she said. "I'll tell you how to get it. It's what you want, isn't it?"

He looked at her without answering.

"We'll split it," she went on. "We'll cut your partner in two. There's enough for all three of us. You don't want me but you can have me too. You'll want me when you've had me. You won't be able to get enough of me. I can make you scream with joy. I can do it in ways you never dreamed of. You're cops. You'll be safe. They can't hurt you. You can kill them."

He was caught for a moment in a hurt as terrible as any he had ever known. "Is everybody crooked on this mother-raping earth?" It came like a cry of agony torn out of him.

Then he said in a voice so tight it was barely audible, "You think because I'm a cop I've got a price. But you're making a mistake. You've got only one thing I want. The truth. You're going to give me that. Or I'm going to fix you so that no man will ever want anything else you got to give. And I ain't playing."

"They'll kill me."

"They're going to kill you anyway if I don't kill them first."

Twenty-three minutes later he had her story. He had no way of knowing whether it was true. Only time would tell.

He looked at his watch. It read 11:57.

He untied her and told her to get up and dress.

He figured he knew as much as he was ever going to know. Before the payoff, anyway. If what she said was true, he had cased it right himself. If it wasn't true, they were all going down together.

While she was dressing he listened to the sound of a recording coming from the lounge. Other recordings had been playing before, but he hadn't heard them.

It was a saxophone solo by Lester Young. He didn't recognize the tune, but it had the "Pres" treatment. His stomach tightened. It was like listening to someone laughing their way toward death. It was laughter dripping wet with tears. Colored people's laughter.

His thoughts took him back to the late 1930s -- the "depression" years. When he and Digger had attended a P.S. on 112th Street. They'd heard Lester playing with the Count Basie group at the Apollo, swapping fours and eights with Herschel Evans on their tenor horns. Pres! He was the greatest, he thought.

"I'm ready," Ginny said.

"Open the door and call Madame Cushy," he said.

When Madame Cushy entered the room, he looked her over carefully. Satisfied she was unarmed, he said to Ginny, "You go out first, I'll follow you," and then to Wop, "You come behind me and if you see anybody with a gun, just scream."

Madame Cushy's lips curled. "If we were going to hurt you, you'd be dead by now. You won't be hurt around here."

Silently he sheathed the knife and stuck Grave Digger's pistol back inside his waistband. He looked at her again. "Digger's dead," he said, then added, "And you're living."

He motioned with his hand and they left in single file.

Madame Cushy held the door open. When Coffin Ed pa.s.sed her, she said quietly, "I won't forget you."

He didn't answer.

He smelled the stink of terror coming from their bodies as they descended in the elevator. He thought bitterly, They're all scared as h.e.l.l when it's their own lives they're playing around with.

Before crossing the sidewalk to his car, he stood for a moment in the doorway, casing the street, his gun in his hand. He didn't expect any gunplay. If what she had said was true, the gunmen would not be in sight. It was just a precaution. He had learned the hard way not to believe anybody entirely when it's your own life at stake.

He didn't see anyone or anything that looked suspicious.

They walked to the car in the same position as they had left the flat. He got into the front seat from the inside and slid over. The other two came in after him, Ginny in the middle and Wop on the outside.

I wish Digger was here, he thought without thinking.

He didn't think that thought anymore.

20.

It took only seven minutes to get there and he didn't hurry. The hurry was off.

He made a U-turn on St Nicholas Avenue, went down the incline to 125th Street, and turned west toward the Hudson River.

For a couple of blocks more, 125th Street was still in the colored section: jukeboxes blared from the neon-lighted bars, loudmouthed people milled up and down the sidewalks, shrillvoiced pansies crowded in front of the Down Beat where the dusky-skinned female impersonators held forth, weedheads jabbered and gesticulated in front of Pop's Billiards Parlor. And then the big new housing project loomed dark and silent.

He turned south on Broadway, west again on 124th Street, and climbed the steep hill of Clermont Avenue behind the high stone wall of International House. Another turn toward the river and he came out into the quiet confines of Riverside Drive beside Riverside Church.

He had kept an eye on the rearview mirror but had seen no indications that he was being followed.

So far so good, he thought.

He parked directly in front of the apartment house and doused his lights; but he sat for a moment casing the street before alighting. Everything looked normal. Nothing was moving for the moment but the cool breeze coming up from the river. Cars parked for the night lined the inside curb despite a city ordinance forbidding it. Nevertheless he had his pistol in his hand when he got out on the street side and walked around the front of the car.

Wop was already getting out on his side and Ginny followed. They crossed the sidewalk in single file and she unlocked the apartment house door with her own key.

Coffin Ed let them both precede him, then said, "Wait here."

He went down the hail to the elevator door and brought the elevator to the ground floor. He opened the door and looked inside of it, then closed the door to the elevator itself and stood for a moment studying the outside door to the elevator shaft. There was nothing to be seen. The floor of the elevator was flush with the floor of the hall and the top of the elevator door was flush with the top of the door to the shaft.

He came back and said, "All right, let's go down," leading the way.

They came out in the bas.e.m.e.nt corridor and found the night lights turned on as was customary. Coffin Ed stopped them for a moment and made them stand still while he listened. He could see the doors to the janitor's suite, the toolroom, the staircase, the elevator and the laundry, and the one at the back which opened onto the back court. There was not a sound to be heard, not even from outside. His gaze lit for a moment on a short ladder hanging from the inside wall beneath a fire extinguisher. It must have been there before but he hadn't noticed it.

At the end of the corridor, toward the janitor's door, the cheap worn luggage, trunks and household furnishings of the new janitor were stacked against the wall. But the janitor hadn't moved in. There was a police seal on the janitor's door.

Coffin Ed opened his Boy Scout knife and broke the seal. Ginny unlocked the door, stepped inside and switched on the light.

She drew back and cried out, "G.o.d in heaven, what happened?"

It looked the same as when Coffin Ed had seen it last, except the corpse of the African had been removed.

"Your friend got his throat cut," he said.

She stared in horror at the patches and clots of black dried blood and began trembling violently. Wop's teeth began to chatter again.

"What the h.e.l.l you so horrified about? It ain't your blood," Coffin Ed said bitterly, including them both.

Ginny began turning green. He didn't want her sick so he said quickly, "Just get me the keys."

She had to pa.s.s through the room to the kitchen. She skirted the edge, bracing herself with her hand against the wall, as though traversing the deck of a ship in a storm.

When she returned with the ring of house keys, Coffin Ed said to Wop, "You stay here."

Wop looked at the dried blood and the wreckage and turned a shade of light gray that seemed impossible for a person with black skin.

"Do I got to?" he stammered.

"Either that or go home."

He stayed.