“It’s sitting as big as life down on the street in front of my place,” Lady Gypsy said.

Grave Digger palmed the mouthpiece and whispered an address on 116th Street

Anderson picked up the intercom and ordered the sergeant on the switchboard to alert all prowl cars and await further instructions.

“Who’s in it?” Grave Digger asked.

“Ain’t nobody in it at the moment,” Lady Gypsy said. “I got a square and his girl friend up here in my seance chamber who drove up in it. They got a wild story about a lost Cadillac—”

“Hold the story,” Grave Digger said. “And keep them there, even if you have to use ghosts. Me and Ed will be there before you can say Jack Robinson.”

“I’ll send the cars on,” Anderson said.

“Give us three minutes and seal off the block,” Grave Digger said. “Have them come in quietly with the blinkers off.”

Lady Gypsy’s joint was on the second floor of a tenement on 116th Street, midway between Lexington and Third Avenues. On the ground floor was an ice and coal store.

The painted tin plaque in a box beside the entrance read:

Lady Gypsy

Perceptions—Divinations

Prophesies—Revelations

Numbers Given

The word Findings had been recently added. Business had been bad.

Once upon a time Lady Gypsy had lived an ultrarespectable private life in an old dark house on upper Convent Avenue with her two bosom associates: Sister Gabriel, who sold tickets to heaven and begged alms for nonexistent charities; and Big Kathy, who ran a whorehouse on East 131st Street. They were knows in that upper-crust colored neighborhood as “The Three Black Widows.” But when Sister Gabriel got his throat cut by one of the trio of con men responsible for the acid-throwing caper that permanently scarred Coffin Ed’s face, the two remaining “Widows” let the house go, relinquished respectability and holed up in their dens of vice.

Now Lady Gypsy was seldom seen outside the junk-crammed five-room apartment where she contacted the spirits and sometimes gave messages to the initiate that were out of this world.

It was a normal five-minute drive on open streets from the 126th Street precinct station, but Grave Digger made it in his allotted three. Sleet blew along the frozen streets like dry sand, making the tires sing. The car didn’t skid, but it shifted from side to side of the street, as though on a sanded spot of slick ice. Grave Digger drove from memory of the streets, with the bright lights on, more to be seen than to see, because sighting through his windshield was like looking through frosted glass. His siren was silent.

A prowl car was parked in front of Lady Gypsy’s but no sign of the Buick.

“Anderson jumped the gun,” Coffin Ed said.

“They might have got ’em,” Grave Digger said without much hope.

The little car skidded when he tamped the brake, and it banged into the rear bumper of the prowl car. They hit the street without giving it a thought.