All shot up cjagdj-5

by Chester Himes

  She wore gold lame slacks which fitted so tight that every quiver of a muscle showed. Her waist was drawn in by a black leather belt, four inches wide, decorated with gilt figures. Her breasts stuck out from a turtleneck blue jersey-silk pullover as though taking dead aim at any man in front of her. Black, gilt-edged Turkish slippers turned up at the toes made her feet seem too small to support her. The combination of gold fingernail polish, sparkling rings and dangling charm bracelets gave her hands the appearance of jewelry-store windows.

  Both men whipped off their hats and stood there, looking gawky and sheepish.

  “I was just relaxing a bit,” Grave Digger lisped. “We’ve had a hard night.”

  She glanced at his swollen lips and broke out a slow, insinuating smile. “You shouldn’t love so strenuously,” she murmured.

  Grave Digger felt the heat spread over his face. Coffin Ed seemed to be having trouble figuring what to do with his feet.

  She walked toward a pair of divans flanking an imitation fireplace on the far side of the room. Her hips rolled with the slow tantalizing motion of a natural-born teaser. Grave Digger was thinking how he could put his hands about her waist, while Coffin Ed was telling himself that she was the type of female who would set a man on fire and then direct him to a river.

  Electric logs gave off a red glow. She sat down with her back to the windows and tucked a leg beneath her. She knew the red light on the colors of her skin and ensemble made her look exotic. Her eyes became luminous.

  She waved them to a seat on the facing divan. Between them there was a huge circular table about knee-high, made by cutting down a dining room table. It was littered with the Sunday papers. Casper’s face peered out from beneath the headlines about the robbery.

  “You want to talk to me about my cousin,” she said.

  “Well, it’s like this,” Coffin Ed said. “We’re trying to find the connection between Black Beauty and a man named Baron.”

  She frowned prettily. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t know anyone named Black Beauty or Baron.”

  The detectives stared at her for a moment. Grave Digger leaned forward and placed his hat atop the newspapers. Neither of them had removed their overcoats.

  “Black Beauty’s your cousin,” Grave Digger lisped.

  “Oh,” she said. “I’ve never heard him called by that name. Who told you that?”

  “It’s in the newspapers,” Coffin Ed said.

  Her eyes widened. “Really.” She shifted slightly so that the red light shone on her black belt with its tracery of gilded designs. “I didn’t pay any attention. I was so upset.” She shuddered and covered her face with her hands. Her breasts trembled. Looking at them, Grave Digger wondered how she did it.

  “I understand,” Coffin Ed said sympathetically. “What I don’t understand is how did you know he was your cousin, Junior Ball, since all the papers referred to him as Black Beauty.”

  She took her hands from her face and stared at him haughtily. “Are you cross-examining me?” she asked in a cold, imperious voice.

  “More or less,” Grave Digger lisped, his voice getting dry.

  She jumped to her feet. “Then you may leave,” she said.

  Coffin Ed gave Grave Digger an accusing look, then looked up at Mrs. Holmes and spread his hands entreatingly.

  “Listen, Missus Holmes, we’ve had a long hard night. We’re just trying to catch the bandits who robbed your husband. We know you want them caught as much as he does. We’re not trying to antagonize you. That’s the last thing we want to do. We’re just following a thin lead. Won’t you bear with us for a few minutes?”

  She looked from him to Grave Digger. He looked back at her as though he would like to whip her.

  But he said in a thick, dry lisp, “I didn’t mean it the way you took it. My nerves are kind of raw.”

  “So are mine,” she said in a voice that had roughened.

  She kept staring into Grave Digger’s hot, rapacious gaze until her body seemed to melt; and she sat down again as though from lack of strength.

  “But if you are civil I will help you all I can,” she relented.

  Coffin Ed was fumbling about in his mind for a way to phrase his questions. “Well, the thing is,” he said. “We’d like to know what Ball did-his occupation.”

  “He was a dress designer,” she said. “And he made articles from leather.”

  She noticed Grave Digger staring at her belt and squirmed slightly.

  “Did he make your belt?” he asked.

  She hesitated as though she might refuse to answer, then reluctantly said, “Yes.”

  Grave Digger had made out some of the gilded designs encircling the belt. They depicted a series of Pans with nude males and females caught in grotesque postures on their horns. The thought struck him suddenly that Junior Ball got gored by one of his own Pans.

  Coffin Ed picked up the idea. “Did he ever work for Baron?” he asked. “Design anything for him?”

  “I’ve told you I don’t know this Baron,” she said, her voice still rough. “What has he got to do with all of this?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you how it goes,” he said, and related the statement they had got from Roman. “So you see how it figures,” he concluded. “Your cousin, Ball, and this man, Baron, were in some kind of racket.”

  She frowned, but this time not prettily. “It is possible,” she conceded. “Although I can’t see why Junior should have been mixed up in any kind of racket. He was doing well in his own field; he didn’t need anything. And I still don’t understand how this man, Baron, can help you find the scum who robbed Casper.”

  “He got a good look at them, for one thing,” Coffin Ed said. “He talked to them; he knows their voices.”

  “And we have a hunch he knew them from before,” Coffin Ed said. “He talked to them; he knows their voices.”

  “And we have a hunch he knew them from before,” Grave Digger added.

  She sighed theatrically. “I’ve gotten used to a lot of strange things with my husband in politics,” she said. “But all this terrible, horrible violence is too much for me.” A tremor ran over her body, making all of it shake.

  Grave Digger licked his swollen lips. He was thinking about some of the lonely women about town he hadn’t stopped in to see lately.

  She knew what he was thinking and gave him a quick up-from-under look, her big brown eyes stark naked for an instant; then she turned her face away and looked into the fire, and her expression became sad.

  “I’d better not catch him on a dark street,” Grave Digger lisped in a voice so thick it was blurred.

  She whirled about and stared at him. “Oh!” The red light on her face seemed to be reflected from somewhere underneath the brown of her skin. “I thought you said-” She thought he’d said, “I’d better not catch you on a dark street.” She was flustered for a moment. It made her furious with herself.

  “I’ve helped you all I can,” she said abruptly. She began trembling in earnest. “Please go. I can’t stand any more of this.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. She looked even more desirable than with her brassy manner.

  Coffin Ed stood up and tapped Grave Digger on the shoulder. Grave Digger came out of his trance with a start.

  “Just one more thing,” Coffin Ed said. “Do you know if Junior saw your husband last night?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t ask me anything else,” she said tearfully. “All I know is what I’ve read in the newspapers. I haven’t talked to Casper. He’s still in a coma. And I don’t know-” She stopped as though struck by a sudden thought, then said, “And if you’re so interested in Junior’s business, go down on Nineteenth Street and talk to his associate, Zog Ziegler. He ought to know.”

  For an instant the two detectives were held in an imperceptible rigidity, as though listening for a sound to be repeated that had come from fax away.

  “Zog Ziegler,” Coffin Ed repeated in a flat voice. “Do you know his address.”

 
“Somewhere on East Nineteenth Street,” she said. “Just go down and look. You’ll know the house when you see it.”

  She sounded hysterically anxious for them to leave.

  “Good day, Missus Holmes, and thank you,” Coffin Ed said, and Grave Digger said, “You’ve helped us more than you know.”

  She stiffened slightly at the subtle jibe in his words, but she didn’t look up.

  The wide-mouthed boy in the white jacket appeared in the doorway as though by magic. He let them out.

  After an interminable delay, the creaking elevator made its appearance. The old elevator operator with the cotton-boll head refused to look at them for reasons of his own. They left him to his solitude.

  When they came out into the street, big fat snowflakes were drifting from a solid gray sky. The motionless air had become degrees warmer, and the snowflakes stack where they landed, too heavy to roll over.

  “She knew what I meant, the teasing bitch.”

  “Didn’t we all.”

  “She never did answer your question.”

  “She said enough.”

  They stood looking at their wreck of a car for a moment before getting in.

  “We’d better change buggies before going downtown,” Grave Digger said. “We might get booked on vag.”

  “We can go back to the station and get my car.”

  “We might stop at Fat’s for a couple of shots.”

  “Whisky ain’t going to help us think any better,” Coffin Ed cautioned.

  “Hell, beat as I am now it don’t matter,” Grave Digger said.

  Chapter 15

  It was four o’clock when Casper got finished with the brass and the half-brass. He had had it with the chief inspector, the inspector in charge of the Homicide squads, Lieutenant Brogan and a detective stenographer from Homicide, and two lieutenants from the Central Office Bureaus.

  They had handled him gently, with all due respect for the tender sensibilities of a vote-getting politician, but he had been through the wringer nevertheless.

  What they had hammered on mainly was the mystery of the leak. One or the other kept pointing out that the hoods got the tip-off from somewhere, that it didn’t come from heaven, until Casper blew his top.

  “I tipped them!” he had exploded. “I leaked it. I said come on and get it. Knock oat my mother-raping brains and kill a couple of people. Is that what you think?”

  “It could have been somebody in your organization,” the chief inspector had said.

  “All right, it was somebody in my organization. Then go out and arrest them. All of ’em! Start with my two secretaries. Haul in my associates. Don’t forget my field workers. Not to mention my wife. Take ’em all downtown. Give ’em the third degree. Tickle ’em with your mother-raping loaded hose. And see what you get. You’ll get nuttin’, because they didn’t know nuttin’. At least if they did, they didn’t get it from me, because I didn’t know the payoff was coming through when it did my own damn self.”

  No one had batted an eye at the outburst.

  “Grover Leighton said he told you several days ago that he’d bring it up Saturday night,” the chief inspector had said quietly. “He doesn’t remember the exact day.”

  “He doesn’t remember because he didn’t do it,” Casper had raved. “Maybe he thinks he did. But Grover has the whole fifty states to think of; and if you think he can remember every goddam little thing he has done you’re giving him credit for having a mechanical brain.”

  They had let it go at that.

  Now Casper had a headache the likes of which would have made his professed coma preferable.

  A colored trainee nurse had come in to straighten up and remove the saucers filled with cigar butts. She had opened the French windows to clear the air, and sight of the heavy fall of snow added to Casper’s fury.

  “Now they’ll send in Canadian trackers,” he muttered.

  The little girl glanced at him apprehensively; she didn’t know whether she was supposed to answer or not. She began edging toward the door.

  The telephone on the night stand rang. He snatched up the receiver and shouted, “Tell ’em I’m dead!”

  The cool, controlled voice of the reception nurse asked, “Do you care to see the press? Our lobby down here is packed with reporters and photographers.”

  “Tell ’em I’m still in a coma.”

  “They’ve seen the police leave.”

  “Then tell ’em to go to hell. Tell ’em I’ve had a relapse. Tell ’em I’ve developed brain fever. No, don’t tell ’em that. Tell them I’m resting now and that I’ll see them at eight o’clock.”

  “Yes, sir. And there is a telephone call for you from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Shall I put it through?”

  He hesitated for an instant, waiting for his sixth sense to work; but it lay dead.

  “All right, I’ll take it,” he said.

  A calm, soothing-type voice said, “Mister Casper Holmes?”

  “Speaking,” Casper said.

  “I am Herbert Peters from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Mister Grover Leighton has been in contact with us, and he has engaged us to arrange for an ambulance under guard to transport you from the hospital to your home.”

  “Why not a baby carriage?” Casper growled.

  Peters chuckled faintly. “If you will give us the approximate time you will be checking out, we’ll make all the necessary arrangements.”

  “I’ll arrange for my own transportation when I leave,” Casper said. “But I’m not thinking of leaving for two or three days.”

  “Then you think you will be checking out on Tuesday?”

  “That’s what I think. But I don’t think I need any of you. If I can’t get from here to my own house, I need to go back to the nursery.”

  “That’s not exactly the situation, sir,” Peters said. “It is not a matter of your ability to take care of yourself. One of our men has been killed, and, unfortunately, you are a witness to the murder. As long as you are alive, the murderers are in danger of-”

  “You ain’t just saying it,” Casper cut in.

  “So Mister Leighton feels it is essential that we give you the protection necessary for a public figure whose life is in danger.”

  “Mister Leighton has already made one mistake by going ahead on his own,” Casper said.

  “That’s why he doesn’t want to make another,” Peters said. “That’s why we are requesting your co-operation in advance.” He paused for a moment, then added, “We will have to cover you in any event, whether you like it or not; but it would be much better all around if we had your co-operation.”

  Casper conceded. “All right. I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you when I’m checking out. Will you be there?”

  “If I’m not, someone else will.”

  “Okay, give me the number.”

  When he had hung up, he waited for a minute, then dialed the number he’d been given.

  An unfamiliar voice said, “Pinkerton Detective Agency.”

  “Let me speak to Herbert Peters.”

  “Who’s calling, please.”

  “Casper Holmes.”

  A moment later Peters’ calm voice said, “Yes, Mister Holmes?”

  “I’m just checking,” Casper said. “Being as I can’t look through the telephone and see just who really is phoning me.”

  “I understand, Mister Holmes. Is that all, sir?”

  “That’s all.”

  Casper cradled the receiver and sat up in bed, thinking. The trainee had finished and closed the windows and left, but he hadn’t noticed.

  He lifted the receiver and told the switchboard operator not to put through any more calls.

  “If some one telephones, what shall I say?”

  “Say that I am sleeping and ask them to phone back after eight o’clock.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And give me an outside line.”

  When he heard the central office buzz, he dialed a number.

  A woman
’s voice answered. “Hel-looo?”

  “Marie?”

  “Yes. Is that you, Casper?”

  “Yeah. Is Joe in?”

  “Yes. I’ll call him. How’s your noggin?”

  “Palpitating. Let me talk to Joe.”

  He heard her calling, “Jooooe! It’s Casper.”

  Joe Green was the biggest numbers banker in Harlem; he had a part of three lotteries.

  “Casper, how’s the boy?” he greeted in a husky voice.

  “Ain’t nothing that a little sleep won’t cure.”

  “Can’t hurt you hitting you on the head,” Joe said. “But snatching all that long green off you must have given you a running fit.”

  “It wasn’t mine,” Casper said. “They didn’t hurt nothing but my feelings.”

  “And you’ll never forgive the mother-rapers for that.”

  “Now that’s for sure. But what I called you for is I want to borrow a couple of your boys for later in the day.”

  “For bodyguards or running errands?”

  “I’m going to check out here at seven-thirty in one of Clay’s hearses-”

  Joe chuckled. “Just don’t go by the way of the cemetery, daddy.”

  Casper laughed. “By way of Clay, neither. Naw, I’m going home. I want to dodge the newsboys; I got a pop call to make on the way. I just want them to trail me.”

  “It’s done,” Joe said. “How ’bout Big Six and George Drake in the Cadillac? They ought to handle any situation that might jump up. Or do you want another one?”

  “Naw, they’ll do. I want them to pick up the hearse at Clay’s and stay with it, but not too close. I don’t want it looking like no procession.”

  “I got you, daddy. What time?”

  “I’m leaving here at seven-thirty. They’d better get to Clay’s by seven.”

  Joe hesitated. “Can’t you make it earlier, daddy? If this snow keeps coming down like it is now, ain’t much going to be moving by seven-thirty.”

  “I’m going to be moving,” Casper said.