the last book I ever read A Rage in Harlem: A Harlem Detectives Novel by Chester Himes, excerpt six)

from A Rage in Harlem (Harlem Detectives Series Book 1) by Chester Himes:

Overhead was the 155th Street Bridge, crossing the Harlem River from Coogan’s Bluff on Manhattan Island to that flat section of the Bronx where the Yankee Stadium is located. The Polo Grounds loomed in the dark on a flat strip between the sheer bluff and the Harlem River. The iron stanchions beneath the bridge were like ghostly sentinels in the impenetrable gloom. A spur of the Bronx elevated line cross the river in the distance connecting with the station near the Stadium gates.

It was a dark, deserted, dismal section of Manhattan, eerie, shunned and unpatrolled at night, where a man could get his throat cut in perfect isolation with no one to hear his cries and no one brave enough to answer them if he did.