The big gold dream cjagdj-4

by Chester Himes

"Sleepy who?" one of them asked.

  "How do I know who?" she replied. "You think I knows any niggers who steals mattresses?"

  The muscular man reappeared at her side, and the helpers had business back upstairs.

  The Jew was sniffing about in the kitchen when they came up. Figuring he might find something good to eat, they didn't disturb him with news of the stolen mattress but hurried to get finished.

  The Jew lifted the lid from a big iron pot on the stove and found it half filled with a concoction of boiled rice and squares of orange-colored meat that smelled like fish. He dished up some with his finger and tasted it. "Mmmm, it's good," he said. "What is it?"

  Rufus stuck his nose in the pot and tasted a bit of the bright-colored meat. "It's alligator tails and rice," he said. "It's a great dish in South Carolina." Then he added, "That's where my wife came from."

  "Rest her soul," the Jew said, took a plate from the cupboard and began serving himself.

  When the two helpers finished they found their boss eating from a plate on the stove and Rufus from a plate on top of the icebox.

  "Tails and rice," they chorused in unison and joined the feast, putting their plates on the sink.

  One stopped long enough to look for some whiskey but only found a bottle of black rum behind a stack of used paper sacks on the top shelf.

  "You don't mind if us drink a little of this," he asked Rufus.

  "Help yourself," Rufus said.

  He and the Jew drank beer.

  By the time they had cleaned the pot, everybody felt loveydovey. It wasn't until the three of them had gone downstairs and were about to enter the van that the driver remembered to tell the Jew about the stolen mattress.

  The Jew looked thoughtful. He wasn't worried about the mattress, but with everybody having the same idea, he resolved to look into the stuffings of the living room suite as soon as possible.

  Rufus was thinking along the same lines. Upstairs he had taken off the locked door of the clothes closet by knocking out the pins of the hinges, and was searching inside. But he didn't find anything but clothes, two empty pasteboard suitcases, a stack of shoe boxes filled with slips containing the hit numbers for the past five years and a variety of nameless junk.

  He looked as though he had been taken.

  After a moment he shrugged and walked out of the flat like a man trying to play the part of a good loser. He locked the door with the key that Sugar had given him, went down the stairs and hesitated for a moment in the entrance. He didn't see anyone who seemed concerned with him, so he went down the street and around the corner and got into his car parked in the shade on Lenox Avenue.

  4

  On the south side, Harlem is bounded by 110th Street. It extends west to the foot of Morningside Heights, on which Columbia University stands. Manhattan Avenue, a block to the east of Morningside Drive, is one of the corner streets that screen the Harlem slums from view. The slum tenements give way suddenly to trees and well-kept apartment buildings, where the big cars of the Harlem underworld are parked bumper to bumper. Only crime and vice can pay the high rents charged in such borderline areas. That's where Rufus lived.

  Sugar climbed the stairs of a modern brick building at the corner of 113th Street and knocked at the door of a secondfloor apartment.

  Rufus answered. He had shed his green silk jacket, but was still wearing the pants along with the pink sport shirt.

  "I want to talk to you," Sugar panted menacingly.

  "I got a woman inside," Rufus said. "Let's go in the park."

  They went down to the street and crossed to the small triangular park formed by the converging of Morningside Drive and Manhattan Avenue at 112th Street. Across the Drive was the rocky incline of Morningside Park, filled with Sunday picnickers. They sat on a green wooden bench.

  "Look here, nigger, I told you just to take the television set," Sugar said accusingly.

  "You told me she had some money hid there somewhere," Rufus contended. "I searched the place and I didn't find nothing."

  "Hell, do you think I didn't search it before I came for you?"

  "I heard she dropped dead," Rufus said. "I had to get something for my trouble."

  "You didn't have no right to take the furniture-that was mine," Sugar stated.

  "If she had anything, she didn't hide it in that furniture," Rufus said. "You can take it from me, man; I have searched too many of these places to miss."

  "She had something hidden there, all right," Sugar contended. "I'll bet my life on it."

  Rufus looked skeptical. "You know she didn't have much sense. An ignorant woman like her always hides everything in the mattress. And there wasn't nothing in that mattress."

  "She had sense enough to fool both of us so far," Sugar reminded him.

  "Then she must have hid it somewhere else," Rufus said.

  "Where else could she have hid it?" Sugar persisted.

  "How in the hell would I know? I wasn't living with her. You was," Rufus said. "And as far as that goes, you ain't got any proof that she ever had anything."

  "Oh, I got proof enough," Sugar said. "Besides which, she gave herself away."

  "How?"

  "Never mind how-that's my little secret."

  "You mean because she locked you out of the house last night?" Rufus asked.

  "Naw, man, hell, she done that lots of times before," Sugar admitted, but he didn't feel that it was necessary to explain to Rufus the source of his suspicions. He had the feeling that Rufus was smarter than he was, and he didn't want to give him too much to go on. "If you knew her as well as you claim to, you would know she must have got hold of something in order to get religion suddenly," he added.

  Rufus looked thoughtful. "Maybe you're right," he conceded. "I'll go through her junk again, piece by piece."

  "Where is it at?" Sugar demanded.

  "I ain't saying," Rufus replied. "You got your little secret; I got mine."

  "All right, man, just don't get yourself hurt."

  "Hell, man, I trusted you; now you got to trust me."

  "I trust you-. I am just telling you, is all. It's halvers."

  "I know it's halvers, man. If I find it, you'll get your half, all right."

  "Just remember this is worth your life, man," Sugar threatened.

  "You talk like a mugger," Rufus complained aggrievedly. "You don't have to threaten me, man."

  "I ain't threatening you," Sugar denied. "I'm just advising you. Don't try nothing funny."

  Rufus stood up. "I'm going, man, I got a chick waiting."

  "Just don't get careless and find yourself dead," Sugar called after him.

  5

  For years, Third Avenue crossed the Harlem River a few blocks north of 125th Street on the tracks of the Third Avenue Elevated and continued northward through the Bronx to Fordham Road. Now, with the old El gone out of existence, Third Avenue simply leaps from shore to shore. On one shore the address is Third Avenue, Manhattan; on the other it is Third Avenue, Bronx. In both Manhattan and the Bronx, its character is the same. It is a street of the second-hand and the down-and-out; of pawnshops, of grimy bars, of poverty and bums-a truly democratic street.

  In the block between 166th and 167th Street in the Bronx there is a grimy bar owned by a Greek with a colored bartender serving a clientele of all races; an Army-Navy surplus store; a kosher meat market; a second-hand clothing store run by the United Protestant Missions; a pork store; a store front with a name protected by a heavy iron grille strong enough to serve as the gates for Alcatraz; a big wooden gate that had once been painted yellow; and a big weather-blackened brick building housing a brewery owned by the descendants of a German immigrant.

  It was ten o'clock at night. Save for an intermittent bus, scattered automobiles and a few forlorn pedestrians straggling by, the street was deserted. Only the lighted window in the brewery and the fly-specked window of the bar at the opposite end showed signs of life.

  Two brass locks securing the iron grille of the nameless
store gleamed dully in the feeble light from the distant street lamp. Vaguely visible in the display window behind, broken furniture was stacked to the ceiling as though to form a secondary barrier. The windows of the three floors above the store were boarded shut.

  The wooden gate to one side enclosed a short brick-paved driveway leading to a wooden shed with a tin roof. Protruding from the shed was the back end of a moving van.

  There was a small doorway in the back of the shed that opened onto a small concrete courtyard extending across the rear of the store. Two windows, boarded up and barred, flanked a center door that was protected by a grille similar to the one in front. But light was coming from a small basement window at ground level on the far side.

  Through dirt-spattered panes a basement room was visible. One corner of the basement had been partitioned off and equipped for a cabinetmaker's workshop. Workbenches were built along three walls, above which were tool racks containing all types of woodworking tools. Near the inner wall stood a band saw, a wood lathe, a planing mill and an electric drill.

  What was left of Alberta's moth-eaten overstuffed parlor suite was scattered about the center of the floor in the spill of bright white light from a green-shaded drop lamp.

  The Jew was kneeling beside the sofa, which was still intact. The skeletons of the two overstuffed armchairs had been pushed to one side like the bones of a carcass. The covers and overstufling were piled in a heap between them.

  He felt the sofa as though he were assaying a prime beef, poked it here and there and then caressed it with soft loving strokes.

  "Marvelous," he muttered to himself. "Marvelous. More than a hundred years old. Made in New Orleans. Been through the Civil War. Extraordinary! What treasures these black cooks collect."

  Suddenly he picked up his tools and began stripping the sofa like a past master. All the while he talked to himself.

  "That Rufus, what a fool. Trying to outwit Abie-ha ha."

  First he pried loose all the hidden tacks.

  "The mattress-colored people's strongbox, ha ha."

  Then with a razor blade he ripped the seams of the outer fabric and skinned it back as though skinning an animal. Save for the sound of ripping threads arid his labored breathing, it was silent as a tomb. The silence oppressed him. He talked to relieve the silence, not because the words expressed his thoughts.

  "Little fortunes… little fortunes… from little fortunes big fortunes grow…"

  Beneath the covering was a layer of horsehair, and beneath that a layer of yellowed cotton. With immaculate care, the Jew removed each layer. His nimble fingers probed and explored every inch of padding before he laid it aside.

  "He was searching for somcthing. He thinks Abie doesn't know. He thinks he had fooled Abie. The fool-ha ha…"

  He thought be heard a sound.

  "What's that!" he exclaimed.

  His eyes flew to the basement window. Quick as a cat he moved toward a hidden switch beneath the projecting edge of a bench and turned off the light. The small rectangular window was outlined by the almost imperceptible light of a city night. No telltale silhouette was visible. He had been holding his breath. He breathed once and listened. Only the heavy muted sounds penetrating the thick wall of the brewery disturbed the silence.

  "No one in miles," he muttered.

  But he did not switch the light back on yet. He felt an inexplicable nervousness-not a premonition, more a building up of tension. He walked through the darkness to the door leading to the stairs. Something brushed against his leg. Shock went through him like cold fire. He jumped to one side, feeling his hair rise from an ice-cold scalp. His hands clawed desperately along the tool rack for a weapon.

  Then a cat mewed and moved forward to rub against his other leg. He looked down and saw twin ellipsoids of green light shining in the dark.

  He sucked in his breath with a watery sound.

  "Sheba!" he gasped. "Sheba, little pussy."

  He reached down to stroke the purring black cat.

  "Sheba! Little queen. You will make a corpse of old Abie yet."

  He crossed the room, turned on the light and went back to work. The kitten played around his feet.

  He worked absorbedly. When the padding was removed he sounded the burlap-covered wooden frame with a small wooden mallet. His ear was cocked, listening to the sound of the wood. He worked along the back of the frame down the back legs, then around to the front legs and up the sides. The arms of the frame were seemingly solid cylinders of a light white wood. The mallet made small light sounds as it tapped against the solid wood.

  "Impregnable," the Jew muttered.

  Disappointment showed in the creases of his face. The cat rubbed against his leg again, and he shoved it aside with a gesture of frustration.

  He began tapping the other arm. Suddenly he bent his head to listen. There was a slight hollow sound beneath the mallet blows. His face lit slowly with an expression of uncontainable avarice.

  The cat had withdrawn to a distance and sat washing her face with offended dignity.

  The Jew knelt and examined the end of the cylinder in the bright light. It was identical with its mate, the grains of the wood unbroken as though cut from a solid beam. He exchanged his mallet for a small iron hammer and tapped the end gently, listening. Then he took a small wood chisel from the bench and began cutting a small circle. A few minutes later the plug sank in.

  "Ingenious," he muttered admiringly.

  He speared the plug with a gimlet and worked it out from the arm. Behind was a cylindrical opening of an inch in diameter. He probed with his finger. His expression changed to astonishment. With a pair of pincers he fished a cylindrical packet, which fitted exactly, from the opening. The outer cover was yellow oiled silk in a state of perfect preservation. He sniffed it; it smelled slightly perfumed.

  He went over to the workbench, switched on another light and smoothed the packet flat. It took the shape of a plain silk pouch, closed with a flap but unsealed. He opened the pouch and extracted a neat sheaf of bright green bank notes held by a paper band. He sucked in his breath. His face was a study in emotions.

  "Fantastic!" he muttered. "Brand-new."

  The notes were of one-hundred-dollar bills.

  Slowly his tongue came out and slid from side to side on his bottom lip.

  As he counted the notes, his eyes widened. There were 1,000 hundred-dollar bills.

  Suddenly he bent double, laughing as though he had suddenly gone stark raving crazy. He was laughing so hard he did not hear the slight sound made by a shoe sole scuffling against the pavement outside the basement window.

  But the cat heard. The cat stopped washing its face and stared unblinkingly at the silhouette of a man peering through the dirty panes.

  The silhouette withdrew, and the cat went back to washing its face.

  The Jew finally got himself under control. He straightened up and stared at the money. Saliva trickled from the corners of his mouth. He wrung his hands as though washing them. The cat stopped washing its face again and watched him silently. He patted the money. He turned it over and looked at the other side, then held one of the notes against the light.

  "Incredible," he muttered.

  The next instant his body went rigid. He froze in a listening attitude, his ear cocked. The unmistakable sound of an automobile starter reached his ear. Before his face could form an expression the motor caught and the loud hard roar of a big truck motor racing at top speed shattered the silence. There could be no mistake. Someone had started the motor of his moving van in the shed. No one but himself had keys to the gate. Someone had broken in.

  The motor raced, then was cut to idle and left running.

  He stacked the money, slipped it back into the pouch, and pulled open a drawer in the workbench, moving with incredible speed. He put the pouch into the drawer and withdrew a. 38 caliber Colt revolver, loaded with tracer bullets, and a large black three-cell flashlight with an oversized lamp. He switched out the light over the
bench and moved quickly toward the master switch beneath the other bench. His body, once put into motion, seemed to gather speed. The black-clad figure capped with yellow-gray hair armed with revolver and flashlight gave the impression of incalculable danger.

  The switch clicked faintly, and the room was plunged into darkness. But the Jew moved through the darkness as though he could see. He ran lightly on tiptoes through the open door and up the stairs. One of the stairs creaked beneath his weight, and he swore silently in Yiddish.

  The staircase turned at a landing and entered the back hall of the first floor, directly beside the back door. The Jew halted for a moment to peer through the grimy panes into the back courtyard. But, coming from the bright light of his workroom, his eyes had not adjusted to the darkness. He put his ear to the pane but could hear only the sound of the idling motor.

  With infinite caution he unlocked the inner door. The slight sound made by the clicking of the bolt was barely perceptible above the sound of the idling motor. The door opened soundlessly.

  He waited with his face pressed to the iron grille, looking and listening. There was still only the sound of the idling motor. The Jew figured it was a trap. But he didn't know whether it was a legitimate burglar or some teenage hoodlums. He had a telephone in the ground floor cubbyhole office. He could have phoned for the police, but he didn't want the police meddling into his business, poking about and asking questions.

  He decided to set a trap of his own. He unlocked the grille and pushed it back on its hinges until it formed a right angle, guarding the entrance from any attack from the left. Then he backed into the shadows and waited.

  Five minutes passed. The cat came up the stairs, looked outside, sniffed and walked in a dignified manner across the courtyard with its tail straight up, looking neither to the right nor the left. The Jew knew that was no indication; Sheba would simply ignore anyone she didn't know.

  Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. The Jew began growing impatient. He wanted to get back to his money. It could have been some pranksters. No one in their right senses would want to steal his moving van. And had anyone wanted to get into the store, they would have made a move by now. He would wait another five minutes.