“Laughing-boy yonder must have stepped out the bar to watch the bullets passing,” Haggerty cracked, amused by his own humor.

“One he didn’t see,” a white cop added, grinning.

Anderson wiped off the grin with a look.

“Who’s the gunman?” Coffin Ed asked.

“We haven’t made him,” Anderson said. “Haven’t touched him. We’re waiting for the M.E. and the crew from Homicide.”

“What do the witnesses say?”

“Witnesses?”

“Somebody in the bar must have seen the whole caper.”

“Yeah, but we haven’t got any of them to admit it,” Anderson said. “You know how it is when a white man gets killed. No one wants to get involved. I’ve sent for the wagon, and I’m going to take them all in.”

“Let me talk to them first,” Coffin Ed said.

“Okay, give it a try.”

Coffin Ed ambled toward the entrance to the bar, which was being guarded by a white patrolman.

Grave Digger looked enquiringly at a white civilian who had edged into the group.

“This is Mr. Zazuly,” Anderson said. “He got here right after the shooting and telephoned the station.”

“What did he see?” Grave Digger asked.

“When I got here the street was overrun with people,” Mr. Zazuly said, his magnified eyes blinking rapidly behind the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed spectacles. “The two men were lying there just as you see them, and not an officer in sight.”

“He’s an accountant for Blumstein’s,” Anderson explained.

“Did he hear the shooting?”

“Of course I heard the shooting. It sounded like the Second World War. And not a policeman in sight.” His round, owlish face glared from a mohair muffler with a look of extreme outrage. “Gang wars on a main thoroughfare like this. Right out in the broad open,” he went on indignantly. “Where were the police, I ask you?”

Grave Digger looked sheepish.

No one answered him.