Blind Man With a Pistol by Chester Himes

to the dark purple pool of congealing blood where the murdered man had died.
          Before joining the others, Grave Digger went back to their car and turned off the lights.
          The trail wasn't hard to follow. It had a pattern. An irregular patch of scattered spots that looked like spots of tar in the artificial light was interspersed every fourth or fifth step by a dark gleaming splash where blood had spurted from the wound. Now that all the soul people had been removed from the street, the five detectives moved swiftly. But they could still feel the presence of teeming people behind the dilapidated stone façades of the old reconverted buildings. Here and there the white gleams of eyes showed from darkened windows, but the silence was eerie.
          The trail turned from the sidewalk into an unlighted alleyway between the house beyond the rooming house, which described itself by a sign in a front window reading: _Kitchenette Apts. All conveniences_, and the weather-streaked red-brick apartment beyond that. The alleyway was so narrow they had to go in single file. The sergeant had taken the power light from his driver, Joe, and was leading the way himself. The pavement slanted down sharply beneath his feet and he almost lost his step. Midway down the blank side of the building he came to a green wooden door. Before touching it, he flashed his light along the sides of the flanking buildings. There were windows in the kitchenette apartments, but all from the top to the bottom floor had folding iron grilles which were closed and locked at that time of night, and dark shades were drawn on all but three. The apartment house had a vertical row of small black openings one above the other at the rear. They might have been bathroom windows but no light showed in any of them and the glass was so dirty it didn't shine.
          The blood trail ended at the green door.
          "Come out of there," the sergeant said.
          No one answered.
          He turned the knob and pushed the door and it opened inward so silently and easily he almost fell into the opening before he could train his light. Inside was a black dark voids
          Grave Digger and Coffin Ed flattened themselves against the walls on each side of the alley and their big long-barreled .38 revolvers came glinting into their hands.
          "What the hell!" the sergeant exclaimed, startled.
          His assistants ducked.
          "This is Harlem," Coffin Ed grated and Grave Digger elaborated:
          "We don't trust doors that open."
          Ignoring them, the sergeant shone his light into the opening. Crumbling brick stairs went down sharply to a green iron grille.

      "Just a boiler room," the sergeant said and put his shoulders through the doorway. "Hey, anybody down there?" he called. Silence greeted him.
          "You go down, Joe, I'll light your way," the sergeant said.
          "Why me?" Joe protested.
          "Me and Digger'll go," Coffin Ed said. "Ain't nobody there who's alive."
          "I'll go myself," the sergeant said tersely. He was getting annoyed.
          The stairway went down underneath the ground floor to a depth of about eight feet. A short paved corridor ran in front of the boiler room at right angles to the stairs, where each end was closed off by unpainted panelled doors. Both the stairs and the corridor felt like loose gravel underfoot, but otherwise they were clean. Splotches of blood were more in evidence in the corridor and a bloody hand mark showed clearly on the unpainted door to the rear.
          "Let's not touch anything," the sergeant cautioned, taking out a clean white handkerchief to handle the doorknob.
          "I better call the fingerprint crew," the photographer said.
          "No, Joe will call them; I'll need you. And you local fellows better wait outside, we're so crowded in here we'll destroy the evidence."
          "Ed and I won't move,"