It was snowing slightly when they got outside. The white snowflakes turned a dirty gray when they hit the black street.
“We got to get some way to move her trunk,” Goldy said.
A black cat slunk from beneath a wet crate filled with garbage. Goldy kicked at it viciously.
Jackson looked disapproving.
“Let’s get one of those big DeSoto taxicabs.”
“Man, quit thinking with your feet. That gold ore is hot enough by now to burn a hole through the Harlem River.”
“Maybe we can find that junk wagon I came home in.”
“That ain’t the lick either. What you got to do is steal your boss’s hearse.”
Jackson stopped dead still to look at Goldy.
“Steal his hearse! She ain’t dead, is she?”
“Jesus Christ, man, you going to be a square all your life. Naw, she ain’t dead. But we gotta have some way to move the trunk.”
“You want me to steal Mr. Clay’s hearse to move the trunk in?”
“You done stole everything else by now, so what are you gagging on a hearse for? You already got the keys.”
Jackson felt his pants-pocket. Attached to an iron chain from his belt were the keys to both the pickup hearse and the garage where it was kept.
“You’ve been searching my pockets while I was asleep.”
“What difference does it make? You ain’t got nothing for nobody to steal. Come on, let’s go.”
Silently they trudged up Seventh Avenue.
Most of the bars were closed. But people were still in the street, heads drawn down into turned-up collars beneath pulled-down hats, like headless people. They came and went from the apartment houses where the after-hours joints were jumping and the house-rent parties swimming and the whores plying their trade and the gamblers clipping chumps.
Traffic still rolled along the avenue, trucks and buses headed north, across the 155th Street Bridge and on up the Saw Mill River Parkway to Westchester County and beyond. Cars and taxis rushed past, stopped short, people got in and out, the cars stayed put and the taxis went on again.
Red-eyed patrol cars darted about like angry bugs, screaming to a stop, cops hitting flatfooted on the pavement, picking up every suspicious-looking character for the lineup. A black hoodlum had thrown acid in a black detective’s eyes and black asses were going to pay for it as long as black asses lasted.
Masquerading as Sister Gabriel, Goldy trudged along the slushy street like a tired saint, holding the gold cross before him like a shield, scrunching to one side to hide the bulging bulk of the Western .45.
Jackson walked beside him, hugging the length of pipe beneath his dirty coat.
A half-high miss coming from an after-hours joint looked at them and said to her tall, dark escort, “He look just like her brother, don’t he?”
“Short, black and squatty,” the tall man said.
“Hush! Don’t talk such way ’bout a nun.”
No police stopped them, nobody molested them. Goldy’s black gown and gold cross covered them with safety.
The garage was on the same street as the funeral parlor, half a block distant. When they came to 133rd Street they turned over to Lenox Avenue and came back on 134th Street to keep from being seen.
Jackson unlocked the door and led the way inside. “Shut the door,” he said to Goldy as he groped for the light-switch.
“What for, man? You don’t need no light. Just get in the wagon and back it out.”
“I got to change clothes. I’m freezing to death in these.”
“Man, you got more excuses than Lazarus,” Goldy complained, closing the door. “We ain’t got all night.”
“It ain’t you that’s freezing,” Jackson said angrily as he stripped to his long damp drawers, stained black from the dye of his suit, put on an old dark gray uniform and overcoat that hung on a nail, and his new chauffeur’s cap he took from a tool chest.
When he turned to climb into the driver’s seat he noticed that the back of the hearse was loaded with funeral paraphernalia. It was a 1947 Cadillac that had first seen service as an ambulance. Now it was used mainly to pick up the bodies for embalming, and to do double duty as a truck. The coffin rack was half hidden beneath a pile of black bunting used to drape the rostrum during a funeral, plaster pedestals for lights and flowers, wreaths of artificial flowers, and a bucket half-filled with dirty motor-oil changed from one of the limousines.
Jackson opened the back double-doors, took out the motor-oil, and started to unload the other things.
“Leave that junk be,” Goldy said. “All the time you’re taking a man would think you don’t care what happens to your old lady.”
“I want to hurry more than you,” Jackson defended himself. “I was just trying to make space for the trunk.”
“We’ll put it where they put the coffins. Come on, man, let’s hurry.”
Jackson slammed shut the back doors, went around to the front and got behind the wheel. He turned on the switch, read the gauges from habit, told Goldy to turn out the light and open the door. He started the motor and backed into the street, straight into the path of a patrol car.
The cop driving stopped the car. They looked from the nun to the driver, and alighted very deliberately, one from one side, one from the other. Moving with the same deliberation, Goldy closed and locked the garage door, thinking fast. He decided they were just meddling; he had to chance it, anyway. He walked back to meet the cops, touching his gold cross.
Jackson looked at the cops and felt the sweat dripping from his face onto his hands, running down his neck.
“Are you riding with this hearse, Sister?” one of the cops asked, touching his cap respectfully.
“Yes, sir, in the service of the Lord,” Goldy said slowly in his most prayerful-sounding voice. “To take that which is left of him who hath been taken in the first death, praise the Lord, to wait in the endless river until he shall be taken in the second death.”
Both cops looked at Goldy uncomprehendingly.
“You mean to pick up a dead body.”
“Yes, sir, to gather in the remains of him who hath been taken in the first death.”
The cops exchanged glances. The other one walked up to Jackson and flashed his light into Jackson’s face. Jackson’s wet face glistened like a smooth wet lump of coal. The cop bent down to smell his breath.
“This driver looks drunk. I can smell the whiskey on him.”
“No sir, I’m not drunk,” Jackson denied. He merely looked scared, but the cop didn’t know it. “I had a drink but I ain’t drunk.”
“Get out,” the cop ordered.
Jackson got out, moving as carefully with the pipe hidden beneath his coat as though his bones were made of sugar candy.
“Walk in a straight line to that post,” the cop ordered, pointing to a lamp post on the other side of the street.
To distract the cops’ attention, Goldy quoted huskily, “ ‘And he laid hold on the dragon—’ ”
The cops turned to look at him.
“What’s that, Sister?”
“ ‘That old serpent,’ ” Goldy quoted, “ ‘which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.’ ”
By that time Jackson had gotten to the post. But Goldy’s dodge had been unnecessary. In order to keep the pipe from slipping from beneath his coat, Jackson had walked as rigidly as a zombie and as straight as the path of a bullet. But sweat was running down his legs.
“He looks sober enough,” the first cop said.
“Yeah, he seems steady enough,” the second cop agreed.
Neither one of them had watched him walking.
“Get back in, boy, and take this nun on her errand of mercy.”
“It’s mighty late to be picking up a body at this hour,” the second cop remarked.
“Nobody can choose their time to go to the first death,” Goldy replied. “They go when the wagon of the Lord calls for them, early or late.”
The cop smile
d. “We all got to go when the wagon comes. Isn’t that what they say here in Harlem?”
“Yes, sir, the wagon of the Lord.”
“Whose body is it?”
“Nobody can claim it now,” Goldy said. “We just take it and bury it.”
The cops were tired of trying to get any sense out of the nun. They shrugged and got back into their patrol car and drove away.
16
Looking eastward from the towers of Riverside Church, perched among the university buildings on the high banks of the Hudson River, in a valley far below, waves of gray rooftops distort the perspective like the surface of a sea. Below the surface, in the murky waters of fetid tenements, a city of black people who are convulsed in desperate living, like the voracious churning of millions of hungry cannibal fish. Blind mouths eating their own guts. Stick in a hand and draw back a nub.
That is Harlem.
The farther east it goes, the blacker it gets.
East of Seventh Avenue to the Harlem River is called The Valley. Tenements thick with teeming life spread in dismal squalor. Rats and cockroaches compete with the mangy dogs and cats for the man-gnawed bones.
The apartment where Slim and Imabelle lived was on Upper Park Avenue, between 129th and 130th Streets. That part of The Valley was called the Dusty Bottom of the Coal Bin.
The trestle of the New York Central railroad, coming from Grand Central out of ground at 95th Street and crossing overtop at the 125th Street Station, runs down the center of the street in place of the park in the downtown section from which the avenue derives its name.
It converges onto the trestle of the Third Avenue Elevated line, then curves across the Harlem River into the Bronx and the big wide world beyond.
Up there in Harlem, Park Avenue is flanked by cold-water, dingy tenement buildings, brooding between junk yards, dingy warehouses, factories, garages, trash-dumps where smart young punks raise marihuana weed.
It is a truck-rutted street of violence and danger, known in the underworld as the Bucket-of-Blood. See a man lying in the gutter, leave him lay, he might be dead.
The fat black men in their black garments in the creeping black hearse were part of the eerie night. The old Cadillac motor, in excellent repair, purred softly as a kitten. Snow floated vaguely through the dim lights.
“That’s it,” Goldy pointed out.
Jackson looked at a doorway to one side of the dirty broken plate-glass windows of a hide shop. A moth-eaten steer’s head stared back at him through mismatched glass eyes. His skin sprouted goose pimples. He had come to the end of the trail and he was so scared he didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry.
“Just park right here,” Goldy said. “Makes no difference.”
Jackson brought the hearse to a stop and doused the lights.
A truck rumbled past, headed downtown toward the Harlem Market beyond 116th Street, leaving a darker gloom in its wake.
He and Goldy peered up and down the deserted street. Jackson felt his flesh crawl.
“Can they see us?” he asked.
“Not if they ain’t looking.”
That wasn’t what Jackson meant, but he didn’t argue. He reached beneath his overcoat for his iron pipe.
“It ain’t time for your club yet,” Goldy cautioned.
Jackson was reluctant to get out of the hearse.
“I’m going to leave the motor running,” he said.
“What for? You want to get it stolen?”
“Nobody’d steal a hearse.”
“What you talking about? These folks over here’ll steal a blind man’s eyes.”
Goldy alighted to the sidewalk noiselessly. Jackson took a deep breath and followed. They went across the sidewalk, entered a long, narrow hall lit by a dim fly-specked bulb. Graffiti decorated the whitewashed walls. Huge genitals hung from crude dwarfed torsos like a harvest of strange fruit. Someone had drawn a nude couple in a sex embrace. Others had added to it. Now it was a mural.
It was a long hall, diminishing into shadow. At the far end stairs climbed steeply into pitch darkness.
Goldy led the way, tiptoeing, the hem of his long black gown sweeping the dirty floor. He went noiselessly up the wooden stairs, disappeared so suddenly in the overhead dark that Jackson’s scalp twitched. Jackson followed, his fat flesh running with ice cold sweat. He took out his pipe again and gripped the taped handle.
The dark hallways above smelled of stale urine and neglected dirt.
Goldy climbed to the third floor, went down the hall to the door at the front. When Jackson caught up he saw the dull blue gleam of Goldy’s revolver in the dark.
Goldy knocked softly on the scabby brown door, once, then three times rapidly, once more, then twice rapidly.
“Is that the signal?” Jackson asked in a whisper.
“How the hell do I know?” Goldy whispered in reply.
Silence greeted them.
“Maybe they’ve left,” Jackson whispered.
“We’ll soon find out.”
“Then what we going to do?”
Goldy gestured for silence, knocked again, softly, changing the signal.
“What are you doing that for if you don’t know the signal?”
“I’m crossing ’em up.”
“You think more than just Slim is here?”
“What the hell do I care? As long as the gold is here.”
“Maybe they’ve taken it.”
Goldy waited and knocked again, softly, giving another signal.
From behind the door a cautious voice asked, “Who there?” It sounded like the voice of a woman with her mouth held close to the panel.
Goldy poked Jackson in the ribs with the muzzle of his revolver, signaling him to answer the voice. But it gave Jackson such a scare he bolted like a wild horse and his pipe flew out and hit the door with a bang that sounded like a gunshot in the pitch-black, silent hall.
“Who there?” a high feminine voice asked in panic.
“It’s me, Jackson. Is that you, Imabelle?”
“Jackson!” the voice said in amazement. It sounded as though it had never heard of Jackson.
Silence reigned.
“It’s me, honey. Your Jackson.”
After a moment the voice asked suspiciously, “If you is Jackson what is the first name of your boss?”
“Hosea. Hosea Exodus Clay. You know that as well as me, honey.”
“What a square,” Goldy muttered to himself.
A lock was turned, then another, then a bolt was slipped back. The door opened a crack, held by an iron chain.
A dim droplight was burning in a squalid bedroom. Jackson stuck his shiny black face into the crack of light.
“Oh, sugar!” The chain was unhooked and the door flung open. “Lawd, is I glad to see you!”
Jackson had just time to see that she was dressed in a red dress and a black coat before she fell into his arms. She smelled like burnt hair-grease, hot-bodied woman, and dime-store perfume. Jackson embraced her, holding the iron pipe clutched against her spine. She wriggled against the curve of his fat stomach and welded her rouge-greasy mouth against his dry, puckered lips.
Then she drew back.
“Lawd, Daddy, I thought you’d never come.”
“I came as soon as I could get here, honey.”
She held him at arms’ length, looked at the pipe still gripped in his hand, then looked at his face and read him like a book. She ran the tip of her red tongue slowly across her full, cushiony, sensuous lips, making them wet-red, and looked him straight in the eyes with her own glassy, speckled bedroom-eyes.
The man drowned.
When he came up, he stared back, passion cocked, his whole black being on a live-wire edge. Ready! Solid ready to cut throats, crack skulls, dodge police, steal hearses, drink muddy water, live in a hollow log, and take any rape-fiend chance to be once more in the arms of his high-yellow heart.
“Where’s Slim? I’m going to bash that bastard’s brains to a raspberry pulp, may the
Lord forgive me,” he said.
“He’s gone. He just left. Come on inside, quick. He’s coming back in a minute.”
When Jackson stepped into the room, Goldy followed.
There was a battered white-painted iron double bed against one wall, with the covers turned back, exposing dirty stained sheets and two pillows with slimy gray circles from hair grease. Against the other wall was an overstuffed sofa with the heads of two springs poking from the rotten faded green seat-covering. At the back a rusty potbellied stove squatted on a square of rusty tin. To one side was a wooden box serving as a coalbin, to the other a doorway leading into the kitchen. A round table with a knife-scarred top and a three-legged straight-backed chair commanded the center of the bare wooden floor. The room was filled to the brim. When the three people entered, it overflowed.
“What’s she doing here?” Imabelle asked, throwing a startled look at Goldy.
“He’s my brother. He’s come to help me get you away.”
She looked at the big .45 in Goldy’s hand. Her eyes stretched and her lips twitched. But she didn’t look surprised.
“You-all has sure come leaded for bear.”
“Can’t come as boys to do a man’s job,” Goldy said.
She peered at Goldy.
“He sure looks like that Sister me and Slim rode with.”
“I is.” Goldy grinned, showing his two gold teeth. “That’s how I found out where you is at. I trailed you.”
“Well, how ’bout that! Impersonating a nun. Everybody got their racket, ain’t they?”
Goldy saw the trunk first. It was at the end of the sofa, hidden from Jackson’s view by the table.
“What they been doing to you, honey?” Jackson asked anxiously.
Suddenly Imabelle got into a lather of haste.
“Daddy, we ain’t got time to talk. Slim has gone after Hank and Jodie. They’re coming back to take my gold ore. You got to save my gold ore, Daddy.”
“What else am I here for, honey? Just tell me where it’s at.”
He was looking through the doorway into the kitchen. The only clean thing in that flat was the kitchen floor. It was still wet from a recent scrubbing.
A Rage in Harlem Page 11
