“Yes, you will,” Coffin Ed said. “Because we don’t want him hurt. You just grab him and hold on to him and start yelling.”

“What if he tries to draw a pistol on me?” Roman wanted to know.

“If you hold him tight enough he’ll forget it.”

“I’s ready if you is,” Roman said.

“Okay,” Coffin Ed said. “We’re going to back up and park next door. When you hear me blowing on the horn one time long and twice short, you come on out.”

”Yes, sir, but I sure hope to see Mister Baron before that.”

“So do we, so do we,” Coffin Ed said.

Grave Digger leaned over the back of the seat, unlocked the handcuffs about Roman’s wrists and removed them.

“Okay, go ahead,” he said. “Just remember one thing. You might run, but you can’t hide.”

“I ain’t going to run,” Roman said.

They watched him walking in his rolling sailor’s gait back to the bronze door and stand looking at the knocker as though he didn’t know what to do with it. They saw him knock on the door with his knuckles.

“He must have never left his ship,” Coffin Ed observed.

Grave Digger grunted.

They saw the door open; a moment later they saw him go inside; they saw the door close. Coffin Ed started the motor and backed up the car.

Chapter 17.

A black Cadillac limousine with scarcely any metal trimmings was parked on 134th Street, a few doors down from Clay’s Funeral Parlor, on the opposite side of the street. It might have been a funeral car judging from its somber appearance.

The motor was idling, but it couldn’t be heard. The defroster was on, the lights were off. The windshield wipers clicked back and forth.

George Drake sat behind the wheel, cleaning his fingernails with a tiny, gold-handled penknife. He was an ordinary-looking colored man of indeterminate age. Even the expensive dark clothes he wore looked ordinary on him. His only distinguishing features were his slightly popping eyes. He didn’t look bored; he didn’t look impatient; he didn’t look patient. He looked as though waiting for someone was his job.

Big Six sat beside him, picking his teeth with a worn whalebone toothpick. He looked enormous in a bright-tan belted polo coat and wide-brimmed black velour hat pulled low over his eyes. His pock-marked face looked oversized; he had big gaps between big stained teeth.

A white drunk staggered past in the ankle-deep snow. A dark felt hat, mashed out of shape as though he had stepped on it in the snow, was stuck precariously on the back of his head. Thick, coarse, straight black hair was plastered back from a forehead as low as that of the Missing Link. The blue-white face with its beetle-brows, high cheekbones, coarse features and wide, thin-lipped mouth looked part Indian. A dark blue overcoat smeared with snow on one side flagged open, showing a wrinkled, double-breasted, unstylish blue serge suit.

The drunk stopped suddenly, opened his trousers and began urinating on the right front fender of the Cadillac, teetering back and forth.