The counterman gave him his most seductive smile. “Oh, you’ll find him. And give him my love. But come back, anyway.”
They found the door all right just where he had said; it was the entrance to a tenement six storeys high, the iron fire escape along the front descending to the plate-glass window of the luncheonette where pork ribs were barbecuing before an electric grill. But they overcame the temptation and went inside. They found the usual tenement hall, walls scratched with graffiti, urine stink coming up from the floor, food and last week’s air. The hall led to The Temple of the Black Jesus. Hanging by the neck from the rotting plaster ceiling of a large square room was a gigantic plaster of paris image of the Black Jesus. There was an expression of teeth-bared rage on the black face. The arms were spread, the hands were balled into fists, the toes were curled. Black plaster blood dripped from red-pointed nail holes. The legend underneath read: THEY LYNCHED ME.
They went inside. A man stood inside the doorway examining the people who entered and collecting the price of admission. He was a short, fat, black man with a harelip. Sweat ran from his face as though his skin were leaking. His short black hair grew so thick on his round inflated head it looked like nylon pile. His body looked blown up like that of a rubber man. The sky-blue suit he wore glinted like metal.
“Two dollars,” he said.
Grave Digger gave him two dollars and went ahead.
He stopped Coffin Ed. “Two dollars.”
“My friend paid.”
“That’s right. That was for him. Now two dollars for you.” Spit sprayed when he spoke.
Coffin Ed backed away and gave the man two dollars.
Inside there was so little light and so much unrelieved blackness in the walls, the people’s clothes, their skins, their hair, they could only distinguish the white crescents of eyes, hanging in the dark like op art. And then they saw the metallic glitter of the hairlipped man as he took the rostrum and began to harangue: “Now we’re gonna feed him the flesh of the Black Jesus until he choke —”
“Jesus baby!” someone cried. “I hear you!”
“ ’Cause I doan have to tell you the flesh of Jesus is indigestible,” the metallic man went on. “ ’Cause they ain’t even digested the flesh of the white Jesus in these two thousand years, an’ they been eating him every Sunday.…”
They turned around and went back the way they had come. Because they had time to kill before midnight, they stopped at the lunch counter and had two servings of barbecue apiece, with coleslaw and potato salad.
It was midnight when they returned to the lunch counter in Malcolm X Square and the scene had changed. The street was filled with people from the late show at the Apollo and the double feature at Leow’s and RKO. The streets were crowded with motor traffic, going all ways. The lunch counter was filled with hungry people, men and women, couples, straight people who wanted to eat. There was an additional counterman on duty and two darkskinned waitresses. The waitresses looked evil, but there wasn’t anything queer about them but their reasons for looking evil because they had to work. The new counterman looked prissy, too, and they would have liked to talk to him but their counterman spotted them and came over and stood before them with one hand on his hip. He was going off duty and had already taken off his apron and unbuttoned his white coat so that his breasts were almost showing. He licked his lips and fluttered his eyelashes and smiled. They noticed he had already applied some tan lipstick.
“Did you find him all right?” he asked sweetly.
“Sure, just like you said,” Grave Digger replied.
“Did you give him my love?”
“We couldn’t. We forgot to get your name.”
“That was too bad. I didn’t tell it to you.”
“Tell us now, baby? Your straight name? The one you have to give to policemen who don’t like you.”
He blinked his eyes. “Oooo, don’t you like me?”
“Sure we like you. That’s why we came back.”
“John Babson,” he said coyly.
The detectives froze.
“John Babson!” Coffin Ed echoed.
“Well, John Babson, baby, put on your prettiest panties,” Grave Digger said. “You got company, honey.”
14
The panel delivery truck drew up before the front of the “Amsterdam Apartments” on 126th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues. Words on its sides, barely discernible in the dim street light, read: LUNATIC LYNDON … I DELIVER AND INSTALL TELEVISION SETS ANY TIME OF DAY OR NIGHT ANY PLACE.
Two uniformed delivery men alighted and stood on the sidewalk to examine an address book in the light of a torch. Dark faces were highlighted for a moment like masks on display and went out with the light. They looked up and down the street. No one was in sight. Houses were vague geometrical patterns of black against the lighter blackness of the sky. Crosstown streets were always dark.
Above them, in the black squares of windows, crescent-shaped whites of eyes and quarter moons of yellow teeth bloomed like Halloween pumpkins. Suddenly voices bubbled in the night.
“Lookin’ for somebody?”
The driver looked up. “Amsterdam Apartments.”
“These is they.”
Without replying, the driver and his helper began unloading a wooden box. Stenciled on its side were the words: Acme Television “Satellite” A.406.
“What that number?” someone asked.
“Fo-o-six,” Sharp-eyes replied.
“I’m gonna play it in the night house if I ain’t too late.”
“What ya’ll got there, baby?”
“Television set,” the driver replied shortly.
“Who dat getting a television this time of night?”
The delivery man didn’t reply.
A man’s voice ventured, “Maybe it’s that bird liver on the third storey got all them mens.”
A woman said scornfully, “Bird liver! If she bird liver I’se fish and eggs and I got a daughter old enough to has mens.”
“… or not!” a male voice boomed. “What she got ’ill get television sets when you jealous old hags is fighting over mops and pails.”
“Listen to the loverboy! When yo’ love come down last?”
“Bet loverboy ain’t got none, bird liver or what.”
“Ain’t gonna get none either. She don’t burn no coal.”
“Not in dis life, next life maybe.”
“You people make me sick,” a woman said from a group on the sidewalk that had just arrived. “We looking for the dead man and you talking ’bout tricks.”
The two delivery men were silently struggling with the big television box but the new arrivals got in their way.
“Will you ladies kindly move your asses and look for dead men sommers else,” the driver said. His voice sounded mean.
“ ’Scuse me,” the lady said. “You ain’t got him, is you?”
“Does I look like I’m carrying a dead man ’round in my pocket?”
“Dead man! What dead man? What you folks playing?” a man called down interestedly. “Skin?”
“Georgia skin? Where?”
“Ain’t nobody playing no skin,” the lady said with disgust. “He’s one of us.”
“Who?”
“The dead man, that’s who.”
“One of usses? Where he at?”
“Where he at? He dead, that’s where he at.”
“Let me get some green down on dead man’s row.”
“Ain’t you the mother’s gonna play fo-o-six?”
“Thass all you niggers thinks about,” the disgusted lady said. “Womens and hits!”
“What else is they?”
“Where yo’ pride? The white cops done killed one of usses and thass all you can think about.”
“Killed ’im where?”
“We don’t know where. Why you think we’s looking?”
“You sho’ is a one-tracked woman. I help you look, just don’t call me nigger is all.”
The d
elivery men had got the box halfway up the front steps and had stopped to get their breath. “We could use a little help,” the driver said. “Being as you’re spreading it around.”
No one really believed in the dead man, but the television set was real. A big burly brother clad in blue denim overalls stepped from the ground-floor window. “All right. I’ll help. I’m the super. Where she go?”
“Third-storey front. Miss Barbara Tynes.”
“I said it!” a woman cried triumphantly.
“Why ain’t you gettin’ one then?” the scornful woman said. “You got the same thing she is?”
“He-he, must not have,” a new female voice observed.
“Leave my ol’ lady be,” a man’s voice grumbled from the dark. “She get everything she need.”
“Says you.”
A slim silhouette in a luminous white shirt emerged from the dark entrance hall. “I’ll give you a hand.” Hair like burnished metal gleamed on an egg-shaped head.
“You sniffing at the wrong tuft, Slick, baby,” said a sly female voice from somewhere above. “She like chalk.”
“We got some’pm in common then,” Slick said.
“All right, mens, all together now,” the driver said, putting his weight to the box.
The four men slid it up the front stairs and lifted it over the sill into the front hall.
The big burly super was the first to complain. “This here set must be made of solid lead.”
“You been doing too much night work,” the driver joked.
“Yo’ old lady taken yo’ strength.”
“Maybe it ain’t a television set, maybe it’s gold bars,” a spectator cracked. “Maybe her business is booming.”
“Let’s open it and see,” suggested some unseen agitator.
“We gonna open it when we get it up, and all of youse can see it,” the driver said. “We got an old one to take back.”
“I declare, I never heard of such a thing, changing television sets in the middle of the night.” The woman sounded as though personally affronted.
“Ain’t it a sin?” someone needled.
“I ain’t said that,” the woman denied. “Who she getting it from anyway?”
“Lunatic Lyndon,” the driver replied.
“No wonder,” the woman said in a mollified voice. “Delivering a new set up here in Harlem this time of the night.”
The elevator was out of order, as usual, and the four men had to carry the heavy box up the stairs, sweating and grunting and cursing, with the curious spectators trailing behind like they expected to see a phenomenon.
“Whew! Let’s set it down for a while,” Slick said when they reached the first landing. He looked around at the gaping followers and sneered with contempt. “You people! A man can’t open his fly in this town before you nosy people crowding about to see what he gonna pull out.”
A man chuckled. “Can you blame us? He might pull out a knife.”
“We’re ranking Slick’s play,” another man said.
“Well, I ain’t got no knife in mine,” Slick said.
A woman sniggered. “Better had. Where you going?”
“If he ‘spects to do any cuttin’,” the second man cracked.
The woman from the street who had announced she was looking for the dead man spoke up. “Here you niggers is talking under y’all’s clothes when there is one of usses laying dead somewheres.”
“Aw, woman, look in the undertaker’s, thass where dead mens is.”
“That woman needs a live man to shut her up.”
“Good an’ alive.”
“All right, buddies, let’s go,” the driver said encouragingly, attacking the heavy box like it was a Japanese wrestler. “All this confabulating ain’t getting us nowhere.”
“Listen to the ’fessor sling that jawbreaker.”
But the suggestion of a superior intelligence quieted them for a moment and by then they’d got the box to moving again. When they’d got it into the third-storey hall, the driver checked his delivery book again.
“It’d be funny if he got the wrong address,” a woman said.
Ignoring her, the driver rapped on an oakstained door.
“Who is it?” a female voice asked from within.
“Lunatic Lyndon. We got a television set for Miss Barbara Tynes.”
“That’s me,” the voice admitted. “Just wait a minute while I put something on.”
“You don’t need to,” a male spectator said.
A laugh tinkled inside. Grins broke out.
“Get yo’ knife ready, Slick, baby,” someone said.
“It stay ready,” Slick said.
“All right, folks, gather ’bout,” the driver said. “We gonna open her and look for them gold bars.”
“I was just joking,” the gold-bar man backtracked.
The driver gave him an evil look. “Damn right. Like half the people in the cemeteries.”
The top of the box was stenciled: THIS SIDE UP. The driver took a short crowbar from beneath his uniform and pried off the boards on the side facing the spectators. A dark glass screen was revealed.
“That a television set?” the big burly super exclaimed. “It look more like the front of a bank.”
“She get tired of looking at it she can go inside it and look out,” a spectator said.
The delivery men looked as proud as though they’d produced a miracle. All thoughts of a dead man were forgotten.
The lock clicked in the oakstained door. The door began to open. Everyone looked. The red-nailed fingers of a woman’s hand held the door open. The head of a woman peered around the edge. It was the head of a young woman with a smooth brownskinned face and straightened black hair pulled tightly aslant her forehead over her right eye. It was a good-looking face with a wide, thick unpainted mouth with brown lips. Brown eyes, magnified behind rimless spectacles, became larger still at sight of the gaping spectators. From her side she couldn’t see into the box; the screen was not visible to her. All she saw was the boarding on the floor and the leering man.
“My TeeVee!” she exclaimed and pitched forward onto the green carpeted floor. The pink silk robe, pulled tight about her voluptuous hips, hiked up from the smooth brown length of legs to show a heavy patch of curly black hair.
Eyes bugged.
The delivery men leaped into the room and pounced on her like vicious dogs on a juicy bone.
“Heart attack!” the driver shouted.
The spectators winced.
“Give her air!” the helper cried.
The spectators surged pell-mell into the room.
A long sofa stretched across the front window. A glass-topped cocktail table sat in front of it. On one side was an armchair. On the other a white-oak television stand. Out in the center of the room was a deal table with four straight-backed chairs. Floor lamps stood about, all lit. A man’s straw hat lay on the sofa, but no man was in sight. Four other doors led somewhere, but all were closed.
“Somebody call a doctor!” the driver cried.
The spectators looked about for a telephone, none was in view.
“Where the hell is the medicine cabinet?” the helper asked in a panic-stricken voice like a peacemaker at sight of a cut throat.
The spectators rushed about to look. They found all doors but the front door locked.
Only the big burly super had the presence of mind to ask, “What you take for these attacks, lady?”
The others were too busy looking at her crotch.
Maybe she heard him. Maybe she didn’t. But suddenly she gasped, “Whiskey!”
Relief fell over the assemblage. If whiskey could save her, she was saved. In a matter of minutes the room looked like a whiskey store.
She clutched the first bottle she saw and drank from the neck as though it were water. Her face took on a different expressions, one after another, then she gasped, “My TeeVee? It’s bursted.”
“No, mam!” the driver cried. “Oh, no, mam, it ain’t bus
ted. I just opened it.”
“Opened it? Opened my TeeVee. I’m going to call the police. Somebody call the police.”
The spectators melted away. Maybe they went for the police. Maybe they didn’t. One minute the room was filled with them. Offering her whiskey. Staring at her crotch. The women for comparison. The men for other reasons. The next minute they were gone.
Only she and the delivery men were left. The delivery men closed and locked the door. A half-hour later they unlocked and opened the door. They began to take away the wooden television box. It had been boarded up again. One was at the front and one at the back. It didn’t seem any lighter than before. They staggered beneath the weight.
No one came to help them. No one appeared to look. No one appeared at all. The upstairs hall was empty. The staircase was empty. The downstairs hall was empty. They encountered no one on the sidewalk or on the street. They didn’t seem surprised. The word police has the power of magic in Harlem. It can make whole houses filled with people disappear.
15
“Sit down between us, baby,” Grave Digger said, patting the seat beside him.
John Babson looked from him to the towering figure of Coffin Ed beside him, and said playfully, “This is sociable, it isn’t an arrest?” He was resplendent in a long-sleeved white silk shirt with a Russian collar and glove-tight skin-colored cotton satin pants that glowed like naked skin. He didn’t think for a moment it was an arrest.
Grave Digger eyed him interestedly from behind the wheel.
“Go on, get in,” Coffin Ed urged, taking his arm like he would a woman’s. “You said you liked policemen.”
He got in exactly like a woman and moved close to Grave Digger to make room for Coffin Ed.
“Because if it is, I want to call my lawyer,” he continued with his little joke.
Grave Digger paused in the act of pressing the starter button. “You got a lawyer?”
He was tired of it. “The company has.”
“Who?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t ever needed him.”
“You don’t need him now, unless you prefer his company.”
“He’s an ofay.”
“Don’t you like ofays?”
Blind Man with a Pistol Page 13
