Cotton Comes to Harlem

by Chester Himes

  But it had turned dark before Iris left the apartment. By now the tenements had emptied of people seeking the cool of evening, and the sidewalks were crowded. But Iris walked fast, looking straight ahead, as though the people on the street didn’t exist.

  Her skin was a smooth painted tan without a blemish, like the soft velvety leather of an expensive handbag. She wore silk Paisley slacks and a blue silk jersey blouse of Billie’s, and one of the red-haired wigs Billie used in her act. Her hips were pitching like a rowboat on a stormy sea, but her cold, aloof face said: Your eyes may shine and your teeth may grit, but none of this fine ass will you git.

  This puzzled Grave Digger as he pulled the truck out from the curb a half block behind her. She wanted to be seen. Coffin Ed had the telephone covered but she didn’t look towards the bar. Instead she turned north on Lenox, walking fast but not looking back. Grave Digger picked up Coffin Ed and they followed a block behind, careful but not cute.

  She turned east on 121st Street and went directly to O’Malley’s church, The Star of Ham. The front door was locked, but she had a key.

  Grave Digger parked just around the corner on Lenox and they hit the pavement in a flat-footed lope. But she was already out of sight.

  “Cover the back,” he said, and ran up the stairs and tried the front door.

  There was no time for finesse. Coffin Ed jumped the iron gate at the side and ran down the walk towards the back.

  The front door was locked. Grave Digger studied the windows. Coffin Ed studied the back door and found it locked too. He hoisted himself up on to the brick wall separating the back yard of the apartment next door for a better view.

  From the hideout underneath the rostrum, all three distinctly heard her key in the lock, heard the lock click, the door opening and closing, the lock clicking shut, and her footsteps on the wooden floor.

  “Here she is now,” Deke said with relief.

  “It’s a goddamn good thing for you,” the oily-haired gunman said. He had a Colt .45 automatic in his right hand and he kept slapping the barrel in the palm of his left hand as he looked down at Deke.

  Deke was tied to one of the two straight-backed tubular chairs and sweat was streaming down his face as though he were crying. He had been tied in that position, with his arms about the chair’s back, since Iris had first telephoned, seven hours previous.

  The other gunman lay on the couch, his eyes closed, seemingly asleep.

  They were silent as they listened over the electronics pickup to Iris’s footsteps tripping across the floor above, but their attention was alerted when they heard another sound at the front door.

  “She’s tailed,” the gunman on the couch said, sitting up.

  He was a stout, light-complexioned man with thinning straight brown hair, slitted brown eyes and a nasty-looking mouth as though he dribbled food. He spat on the floor as they listened.

  The footsteps rounded the pulpit and stopped on the other side and there was no more sound from the front door.

  “She’s on to it,” Deke said, licking the sweat trickling into his mouth, “She’s going out through the wall to lose them.”

  The gunman on the couch said, “She better lose them good, baby.”

  They heard the secret door through the wall into an apartment in the building next door being opened and closed and then silence.

  The gunman standing slapped the Colt against the palm of his hand as though perplexed. “How come you trust this bitch when she’s ratted on you before?”

  The sweat stung Deke’s eyes and he blinked. “I don’t trust her, but that bitch likes money; and she’s always going keep this secret for her own safety,” he said.

  The gunman on the couch said, “It’s your life, baby.”

  The gunman standing said, “She’d better come back soon or it’s gonna be too late. It’s getting hotter all the time.”

  “It’s safe here,” Deke said desperately. “You’re safer here until we get the money than being on the loose. Nobody knows about this hideout.”

  The gunman on the couch spat. “ ’Cept Iris and the people who built it.”

  “White men built it,” Deke said. He couldn’t keep the smugness out of his voice. “They didn’t suspect a thing. They thought it was to be a crypt.”

  “What’s that?” asked the standing gunman.

  “A vault, for dead saints maybe.”

  The gunman looked at him, then looked around as though seeing the room for the first time. It was a small square room with soundproof walls, and access from above through the back of the church organ. There was a niche in one wall with a silver icon flanked by prints of Christ and the Virgin. Deke had furnished it with a couch, two tubular chairs, a small kitchen table and a refrigerator which he kept well stocked with prepared food, beer and whisky. Soiled dishes on the table attested to the fact they had eaten there at least once.

  One entire wall was taken up by the electronics system with pickup and amplifier that recorded every sound made in the church above. When turned up full volume even the footsteps of a mouse could be heard. On the opposite wall was a gun rack containing two rifles, two sawed-off shotguns and a submachine gun. Deke was proud of the place. He had had it built when reconditioning the church. He felt completely safe there. But the gunman was unimpressed.

  “Let’s just hope them white men don’t remember,” he said. “Or that she don’t bring a police tail back here. This place ain’t no more safe than a coffin.”

  “Believe me,” Deke said. “I know it’s safe.”

  “We sprang you, baby, to get the money,” the sitting gunman said flatly. “We figured we’d spring you and then sell your life to you for eighty-seven grand. You get the picture, baby. You going to buy it?”

  “Freddy,” Deke appealed to the sitting gunman but got nothing from his eyes but a blank deadly stare. “Four-Four,” he appealed to the oily-haired one standing with the Colt in his hand and drew another blank stare. “You’ve got to trust me,” he pleaded. “I’ve never let you down. You’ve got to give me time.…”

  “You got time,” Freddy said, standing up and going to the icebox for another can of beer. He spat on the floor, slammed shut the box. “But not all of it.”

  From atop the brick wall in back of the church, Coffin Ed got a glimpse of Iris’s face peeping from behind the curtains of the back window of a first-floor apartment. It came more from a sixth sense than actual sight. There was only a dim light in back of her, outlining a mere shadow, and the light from outside was filtered from surrounding windows. And she was visible for only a moment. It was the timing more than anything which told him. Who else in the vicinity might be peering furtively from a back window at just that moment.

  He knew automatically she had got through the wall. How, he didn’t care. He knew she had not only recognized him then, but had made them both from the start. A smart bitch — too smart. He debated whether to burst in on her openly, or take cover and let her make her move. Then he decided to go back and confer with Grave Digger.

  “Let her go,” Grave Digger said. “She can’t hide for ever, she ain’t invisible. And she’s made us now. So let her go, let her go. Maybe she’ll contact us.”

  They walked back to the truck and drove up to a bar, and Coffin Ed telephoned home. His wife Molly said Abigail hadn’t called but Anderson was on duty now and he wanted them to call him.

  “Call him,” Grave Digger said.

  Anderson said, “Bring in Iris while I’m on duty and I’ll try to cover for you. Otherwise you’re certain to be picked up by tomorrow and you’ll be finished on the Force — probably face a rap. Captain Brice is furious.”

  “He knows about it,” Coffin Ed said. “He promised to lay off.”

  “That’s not the way he tells it. He’s reported to the commissioner that you’ve abducted her and he’s seeing red.”

  “He’s mad just because we tricked him; and he’s covering himself at our expense.”

  “Be that as it may, he’
s mad enough to break you.”

  They sat silent for a moment, tense and worried.

  “You figure she might try to take a powder?” Coffin Ed said.

  “We got enough to worry about without that,” Grave Digger said. “And we ain’t got time for it.”

  “Let’s go to Billie’s.”

  “She’s left there for good. Let’s go back to the church.”

  “That was just to shake us,” Coffin Ed argued. “She’s finished with the church.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Deke wouldn’t put in an escape door for nothing. There must be something else there.”

  Coffin Ed thought about it. “Maybe you’re right.”

  They parked on 122nd Street and cased the back of the church. The backyard was separated by the high brick wall from the garbage-strewn backyards surrounding it. They scaled the wall and examined the back door. It had an ordinary Yale snap lock with an iron grille covering its dirty panes but they didn’t touch it. They peered through a window into the vestry back of the choir but it was black dark inside.

  Then they went down the narrow walk alongside the church. It was a brick structure and in good condition and on that side two arched stained-glass windows flanked a stained-glass oval high in the wall. The other side of the church was built flush with the apartment house.

  “If they got a hideout in there they got some kind of hearing device for protection,” Grave Digger reasoned. “They can’t have a lookout hiding all the time.”

  “What do you want to do, wait outside for her?”

  “She’ll return through the wall, or she might already be in there.”

  They looked at one another thinking.

  “Listen–” Coffin Ed began and explained.

  “Anyway, it beats a blank,” Grave Digger said, as he stopped in the darkness to take off his shoes.

  They stood behind the gate and watched the street until it was momentarily empty. Then they scaled the iron gate and hurried up the stairs to the church door, and Coffin Ed began picking the lock. If anyone had passed they would have been taken for two drunks urinating against the church door. When it was open, Grave Digger sat astride Coffin Ed’s shoulders and they went inside and closed the door behind them.

  The tableau in the hideout was much the same. Deke was still tied to the chair and the oily-haired gunman, Four-Four, was letting him drink from a can of beer. Beer was spilling from his mouth onto his pants and Four-Four said irritably, “Can’t you swallow, goddammit?” slapping his own thigh with the barrel of the Colt. Freddy was lying on the couch again as though he were asleep.

  Suddenly they froze at the sound of the front door lock being picked. Four-Four took the beer can from Deke’s mouth and put it atop the table and changed the Colt to his left hand, flexing his right. Freddy swung his feet over to the floor and sat up, listening with his mouth open. They heard the door swing open and someone step inside and the door being closed.

  “We got a visitor,” Freddy said.

  They heard the footsteps come down the centre aisle.

  “A dick,” Four-Four said, appraising the walk.

  Freddy stepped over to the gun rack and casually took down a sawed-off shotgun. They listened to the steps move around the choir and the pulpit and approach the organ. Freddy looked at the access ladder as though in a trance.

  “A big boy,” he said. “Big as two men. Think I ought go up and cut him down to size?”

  “Let him stick his head in, ha-ha,” Four-Four laughed.

  “You’re not going to leave me tied up!” Deke protested.

  “Sure, baby, that or dead,” Freddy said.

  The heavy man’s footsteps passed the organ, paused for a moment as though he were looking around, then moved on slowly as though he were examining everything. Through the electronics pickup they could hear his heavy breathing.

  “A fat baby with a heart,” Four-Four said.

  “Guts too,” Deke said. “Coming here alone.”

  “I got something for his guts,” Freddy said, swinging the sawed-off shotgun.

  The footsteps circled the pulpit, stopped for a moment, then went down into the auditorium and moved along the walls. They could hear knuckles sounding the walls. The footsteps moved slowly as the man encircled the walls, sounding for a false door. Ear-shattering bangs suddenly shook the small hideout as the man began sounding the wooden floor with his pistol butt.

  “Cut that damn thing down,” Four-Four shouted. “The mother-raper will hear himself upstairs.”

  Freddy turned it down until the tapping on the floor became muted. It went on and on until seemingly every inch of the floor was covered. There was silence for a long time as though the man was listening. Then they heard the faint click of his pocket torch being turned on. Finally they heard his footsteps moving towards the door. Half-way they heard him stop and put what sounded like the palms of his hands on the floor.

  “What the hell’s he doing now?” Four-Four asked.

  “Damn if I know,” Freddy said. “Probably planting a time bomb.” He laughed at his own humor.

  “It wouldn’t be so damn funny if you got your ass blown off,” Four-Four said sourly.

  They heard the imagined dick open the snap lock on the front door and pass out, closing the door behind him.

  “It’s time for that bitch of yours to be showing,” Four-Four said disagreeably.

  “She’s coming,” Deke said.

  “She’d better come ready,” Freddy said. “If she don’t know where the money is, you can preach both of youse funerals.” He chuckled.

  “Dry up,” Four-Four said.

  20

  Iris came in with perfect assurance. She knew she hadn’t been tailed. She had shaken Grave Digger and Coffin Ed and she wasn’t afraid. She knew where the cotton was and how they could get it. She knew with this information she could handle Deke. And she had confidence that Deke could handle his gorillas.

  Deke and his gunmen heard her when she entered.

  “That’s her now,” Deke said, sighing with relief.

  Freddy got up from the couch and took down the shotgun again. Four-Four jacked a shell into the chamber of his .45 automatic and slid back the safety. Both were tense but neither spoke.

  Deke was listening to her walk. He could tell from the rhythm of her steps she was walking with assurance.

  “She got it,” he said with a confident look.

  “She’d better have it,” Freddy said dangerously.

  “I mean the information,” Deke said hurriedly for fear they might mistake his meaning.

  Neither answered.

  Grave Digger lay face down betwen two benches, breathing into a black cotton handkerchief, his hand on his pistol underneath his body. His black suit blended with the darkness and she didn’t see a thing as she passed. He waited until he heard her footsteps ascending the rostrum, then scuttled down the center aisle on hands and knees to open the front door for Coffin Ed, hoping the sound of her footsteps would cover whatever sound he made.

  But they heard it anyway.

  “What the hell’s she got with her?” Four-Four said.

  “Sounds like her dog,” Freddy said and started to laugh, but the look from Four-Four cut it off.

  They heard the soft tap on the organ pipe that was the signal for entrance. Four-Four pushed a button and a panel in the back of the organ raised, revealing a small square space beneath the pipes. He pushed the second button and a heavy steel trapdoor opened upward. He raised the ladder and her gilt high-heeled sandals and legs encased in Paisley silk slacks came into view as she descended. He pushed the buttons closing the door behind her when her enticing buttocks showed. Then he raised the cocked .45 automatic and levelled it towards her back.

  Her feet touched the floor and she turned around. She looked into the muzzle of the .45 and it looked like the head of a Gorgon. Her body turned to stone. Only the lids of her eyes moved as they continued to stretch as though her eyeballs were squeezed from her head.
Slowly, without breathing, her eyes sought the face of Freddy and saw no pity; they slid off and she saw Deke tied to the chair, looking at her with raw anxiety, sweat streaming from a face contorted with terror; next they took in the shotgun in Freddy’s hands and finally his nasty-mouthed sadistic face.

  Nausea came up in her like the waves of the ocean and she gritted her teeth to keep from fainting. Her terror was so intense it became sexual — and she had an orgasm. All her life she had searched for kicks, but this was the kick she never wanted.

  “Who was with you?” Four-Four asked.

  She swallowed twice before she could find the handle to her voice, then it came in a husky whisper: “No one, I swear.”

  “We heard something strange.”

  “I wasn’t tailed, I know,” she whispered. Sweat beaded on her upper lip and her eyes were limpid pools of terror. “I’m clean, please listen to me,” she begged. “Don’t just kill me for nothing.”

  “Tell them, baby, tell them quick,” Deke babbled in terror.

  “It’s in the cotton,” she said.

  “We know that,” Four-Four said. “Where’s the cotton?”

  She kept swallowing as though choking. “I’m not going to tell you just to get killed,” she whispered.

  With a sudden movement that made her start, Freddy whipped the second straight-backed chair around behind Deke and said, “Sit down.”

  Four-Four stuck his pistol in his belt and took a coil of nylon clothesline from the floor beneath the gun rack. “Put your hands behind you, in back of the chair.” She was slow in obeying and he slapped her across the face with the rope. She did as ordered and he began tying her methodically.

  “Tell them,” Deke begged piteously.

  “She’ll tell us,” Freddy said.

  Four-Four was tying her chair back to back with Deke’s when they heard someone whistling in the street. They froze, listening, but the whistling stopped and there was silence. Four-Four finished tying them together on the two chairs back to back, then they all started nervously as they heard the front door of the church being opened. There was a soft sound like the padded feet of an animal and the door closed softly.