All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [36]
He bent too sharp and bumped over the near-side corner curb. Coffin Ed’s head hit the ceiling.
“Goddam, Digger, you’re beating me to death,” he complained.
“All I can say is I’ve had better nights,” Grave Digger muttered through clenched teeth.
They kept the motorcycle in sight until it turned north on Seventh Avenue, but didn’t gain on it. For a time it was out of sight. When they came into Seventh Avenue, they didn’t see it.
Three tracks were lined up on the outside lane, and a fourth was passing the one ahead.
“We don’t want to lose that son,” Grave Digger said.
“He’s passing on the sidewalk,” Coffin Ed said, leaning out his right-side window.
“Cut one over his head.”
Coffin Ed crossed his left arm to overtop the window ledge, rested the long nickel-plated barrel atop his left wrist and blasted at the night. Flame lanced into the dark, and three blocks ahead a streetlamp went out.
The motorcycle curved from the sidewalk back into the street in front of the line of trucks. Grave Digger came up behind the truck on the inside lane and opened his siren.
At 116th Street Coffin Ed said, “He’s keeping straight ahead. Trying to make the county line.”
Grave Digger swerved to the left of the park that ran down between the traffic lanes and went up the left-hand side. The windshield wipers had cleared half-moons in the dirty glass, and he could see an open road. He pushed the throttle to the floor, gaining on the motorcycle across the dividing park.
“Slow him down, Ed,” he said.
The park, circled by a small wire fence, was higher than the level of the street, and it shielded the motorcycle’s tires. It was going too fast to risk shooting at the lamp. He threw three shots in back of it, but the rider didn’t slow.
They passed two more northbound trucks, and for a time both lanes were clear. The sedan came up level with the motorcycle.
Coffin Ed said, “Watch him close, Digger, he’s going to try some trick.”
“He’s as scared of these corners as we are,” Grave Digger said. “He’s going to try to crash us into a truck.”
“He’s got two up ahead.”
“I’d better get behind him now.”
At 121st Street Grave Digger swerved back to the right-side lanes.
One block ahead, a refrigerator truck was flashing its yellow passing lights as it pulled to the inner lane to pass an open truck carrying sheet metal.
The motorcycle rider had time to pass on the inside, but he hung back, riding the rear of the refrigerator truck until it had pulled clear over to the left, blocking both sides of the street.
“Get a tire now,” Grave Digger said.
Coffin Ed leaned out of his window, took careful aim over his left wrist and let go his last two bullets. He missed the motorcycle tire with both shots, but the fifth and last one in his revolver was always a tracer bullet, since one night he had been caught shooting in the dark. They followed its white phosphorescent trajectory as it went past the rear tire, hit a manhole cover in the street, ricocheted in a slight upward angle and buried Itself in the outside tire of the open truck carrying sheet metal. The tire exploded with a bank. The driver felt the truck lurch and hit the brakes.
This threw the motorcycle rider off his timing. He had planned to cut quickly between the two trucks and shoot ahead before the inside truck drew level with the truck it was passing. When he got them behind him the two tracks would block off the street, and he would make his getaway.
He was pulling up fast behind the car carrying sheet metal when the tire burst and the driver tamped his brakes. He wheeled sharply to the left, but not quickly enough.
The three thin sheets of stainless steel, six feet in width, with red flags flying from both corners, formed a blade less than a quarter of an inch thick. This blade caught the rider above his woolen-lined jacket, on the exposed part of his neck, which was stretched and taut from his physical exertion, as the motorcycle went underneath. He was hitting more than fifty-five