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Ed backed up against the radiator, and Grave Digger perched a ham on the edge of the desk. The rough whisky humor was knocked out of them, and they looked serious and intent.
    “Casper talk?” Grave Digger asked.
    “No, he’s still in a coma. But Lieutenant Brogan got through to the Pinkerton Agency and got a fill-in on Zalkin’s assignment. The secretary of the national committee of Holmes’ party stopped by his office earlier last night and left him fifty grand in cash, for organizational expenses for the presidential election this fall. Holmes hinted that he might take the money home with him rather than leave it in his office safe over the weekend. You know he lives in one of those old apartment houses on 110th Street, overlooking Central Park.”
    “We know where he lives,” Coffin Ed said.
    “Well, the secretary got to thinking about it after he had left, so he called the Pinkerton Agency and asked them to send a man up to cover Holmes on his way home. But he didn’t want Holmes to think he was spying on him, so he asked that the man keep out of sight. That’s how come Zalkin was there when the heist was staged.”
    “How long was it before the secretary left Casper?” Grave Digger asked, frowning with an idea.
    “The agency got the call at ten-twenty o’clock.”
    “Then somebody knew about the payoff beforehand,” Grave Digger said. “You can’t organize a heist like that in that length of time.”
    “Not even in a day,” Coffin Ed said. “These men were pros; and you can’t get pros like ordering groceries. They might have had their uniforms, but they’d have to lift a car—”
    “It hasn’t even been reported as stolen yet,” Anderson cut in.
    “I got a notion these guns were from out of town,” Coffin Ed went on. “No local hoods would choose 125th Street for a caper like that. Not that block of 125th Street. They couldn’t depend on the weather to drive the ground-hogs in their holes; and normally on a Saturday night that block, with all its bars and restaurants, would be jumping with pedestrians. They had to be somebody who didn’t know this.”
    “That doesn’t help us much,” Anderson said. “If they’re from out of town, they’re long gone by now.”
    “Maybe,” Grave Digger said. “Maybe not. If it wasn’t for this hit-and-run business, I might buy it.”
    Anderson gave him a startled look.
    “What the hell, Jones; you can’t think there’s a tie-in.”
    Coffin Ed grunted.
    “Who knows,” Grave Digger said. “There is something specially vicious about both those capers, and there ain’t that many vicious people running loose in Harlem on a night as cold as this.”
    “My God, man, you can’t think that hit-and-run was done deliberately.”
    “And then in both instances pansies were croaked,” Grave Digger went on. “Accidents just don’t happen to those people like that.”
    “The hit-and-run driver couldn’t have possibly known his victim was a man,” Anderson argued.
    “Not unless he knew who he was and what racket he was pulling,” Grave Digger said.
    “What racket was he pulling?”
    “Don’t ask me. It’s just a feeling I got.”
    “Hell, man, you’re going mystical on me,” Anderson said. “How about you, Johnson. Do you go along with that?”
    “Yep,” Coffin Ed said. “Me and Digger have been drinking out the same bottle.”
    “Well, before you get too drunk with that mysticism, let me fill you in with the latest facts. The two patrolmen, Stick and Price, who thought it was a joke to report they’d been knocked down by a homemade flying saucer, have admitted they were hit by a run-away automobile wheel coming down Convent Avenue. Does that give you any ideas?”
    Grave Digger looked at his watch. It said five minutes to four.
    “Not any that won’t keep until tomorrow,” he said. “If I start talking to my old lady about automobile tires, as fat as she’s getting, I’m subject to losing my happy home.”

Chapter 8.
    When