"Himes, Chester - The Real Cool Killers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Himes Chester)

"They'll have to go through this jungle with a finetoothed comb," Grave Digger said. "With all these white cops about, any colored family might hide him."
"I'll want those gangster punks too," Coffin Ed said.
"Well, we'll just have to wait now for the men from homicide."
But Lieutenant Anderson arrived first, with the harness sergeant and Detective Haggerty latched on to him. The five of them stood in a circle in the car's headlights between the two corpses.
"All right, just give me the essential points first," Anderson said. "I put out the flash so I know the start. The man hadn't been killed when I got the first report."
"He was dead when we got here," Grave Digger said in a flat, toneless voice. "We were the first here. The suspect was standing over the victim with the pistol in his hand --"
"Hold it," a new voice said.
A plain-clothes lieutenant and a sergeant from downtown homicide bureau came into the circle.
"These are the arresting officers," Anderson said.
"Where's the prisoner?" the homicide lieutenant asked.
"He got away," Grave Digger said.
"Okay, start over," the homicide lieutenant said.
Grave Digger gave him the first part then, went on:
"There were two friends with him and a group of teenage gangsters around the corpse. We disarmed the suspect and handcuffed him. When we started to frisk the gangster punks we had a rumble. Coffin Ed shot one. In the rumble the suspect got away."
"Now let's get this straight," the homicide lieutenant said.
"Were the teenagers implicated too?"
"No, we just wanted them as witnesses," Grave Digger said. "There's no doubt about the suspect."
"Right."
"When I got here Jones and Johnson were fighting, rolling all over the corpse," Haggerty said. "Jones was trying to disarm Johnson."
Lieutenant Anderson and the men from homicide looked at him, then turned to look at Grave Digger and Coffin Ed in turn.
"It was like this," Coffin Ed said. "One of the punks turned up his ass and fatted toward me and--"
Anderson said, "Huh!" and the homicide lieutenant said incredulously, "You killed a man for farting?"
"No, it was another punk he shot," Grave Digger said in his toneless voice. "One who threw perfume on him from a bottle. He thought it was acid the punk was throwing."
They looked at Coffin Ed's acid-burnt face and looked away embarrassedly.
"The fellow who was killed is an Arab," the sergeant said.
"That's just a disguise," Grave Digger said. "They belong to a group 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.