The Real Cool Killers

by Chester Himes

  “Get him over,” Grave Digger said in a flat voice.

  Coffin Ed leaned out of the right side window and shot the rear-view mirror off the door hinge of the big Cadillac.

  The cigar hand of Big Henry became rigid and the back of his fat neck began to swell as he looked at his shattered mirror. Cuts rose up in his seat, twisting about threateningly, and reached for his pistol. But when he saw Coffin Ed’s sinister face staring at him from behind the long nickel-plated barrel of the .38 he ducked like an artful dodger from a hard thrown ball.

  Coffin Ed planted a hole in the Cadillac’s front fender.

  Grave Digger chuckled. “That’ll hurt Big Henry more than a hole in Cousin Cut’s head.”

  Big Henry turned about with a look of pop-eyed indignation on his puffed black face, but it sank in like a burst balloon when he recognized the detectives. He wheeled the car frantically toward the curb and crumpled his right front fender into the side of the bus.

  Grave Digger had space enough to squeeze through. As they passed, Coffin Ed lowered his aim and shot Big Henry’s gold lettered initials from the Cadillac’s door.

  “And stay over!” he yelled in a grating voice.

  They left Big Henry giving them a how-could-you-do-this-to-me-look with tears in his eyes.

  When they came abreast the Dew Drop Inn they saw the deserted ambulance and the crowd running on ahead. Without slowing down, they wormed between the cars parked haphazardly in the street and pushed through the dense jam of people, the sirens shrieking. They dragged to a stop when their headlights focused on the macabre scene.

  “Split!” one of the Arabs hissed. “Here’s the things.”

  “The monsters,” another chimed.

  “Keep cool, fool,” the third admonished. “They got nothing on us.”

  The two tall, lanky, loose-jointed detectives hit the pavement in unison, their nickel-plated .38 specials gripped in their hands. They looked like big-shouldered plowhands in Sunday suits at a Saturday night jamboree.

  “Straighten up!” Grave Digger yelled at the top of his voice.

  “Count off!” Coffin Ed echoed.

  There was movement in the crowd. The morbid and the innocent moved in closer. Suspicious characters began to blow.

  Sonny and his two friends turned startled, pop-eyed faces.

  “Where they come from?” Sonny mumbled in a daze.

  “I’ll take him,” Grave Digger said.

  “Covered,” Coffin Ed replied.

  Their big flat feet made slapping sounds as they converged on Sonny and the Arabs. Coffin Ed halted at an angle that put them all in line of fire.

  Without a break in motion, Grave Digger closed on Sonny and slapped him on the elbow with the barrel of his pistol. With his free hand he caught Sonny’s pistol when it flew from his nerveless fingers.

  “Got it,” he said as Sonny yelped in pain and grabbed his numb arm.

  “I ain’t–” Sonny tried to finish but Grave Digger shouted, “Shut up!”

  “Line up and reach!” Coffin Ed ordered in a threatening voice, menacing them with his pistol. He sounded as though his teeth were on edge.

  “Tell the man, Sonny,” Lowtop urged in a trembling voice, but it was drowned by Grave Diggers’s thundering at the crowd: “Back up!” He lined a shot overhead.

  They backed up.

  Sonny’s good arm shot up and his two friends reached. He was still trying to say something. His Adam’s apple bobbed helplessly in his dry wordless throat.

  But the Arabs were defiant. They dangled their arms and shuffled about.

  “Reach where, man?” one of them said in a husky voice.

  Coffin Ed grabbed him by the neck, lifted him off his feet.

  “Easy, Ed,” Grave Digger cautioned in a strangely anxious voice. “Easy does it.”

  Coffin Ed halted, his pistol ready to shatter the Arab’s teeth, and shook his head like a dog coming out of water. Releasing the Arab’s neck, he backed up one step and said in his grating voice: “One for the money … and two for the show …”

  It was the first line of a jingle chanted in the game of hide-and-seek as a warning from the “seeker” to the “hiders” that he was going after them.

  Grave Digger took the next line, “Three to get ready …”

  But before he could finish it with “And here we go,” the Arabs had fallen into line with Sonny and had raised their hands high into the air.

  “Now keep them up,” Coffin Ed said.

  “Or you’ll be the next ones lying on the ground,” Grave Digger added.

  Sonny finally got out the words, “He ain’t dead. He’s just fainted.”

  “That’s right,” Rubberlips confirmed. “He ain’t been hit. It just scared him so he fell unconscious.”

  “Just shake him and he’ll come to,” Sonny added.

  The Arabs started to laugh again, but Coffin Ed’s sinister face silenced them.

  Grave Digger stuck Sonny’s revolver into his own belt, holstered his own revolver, and bent down and lifted the white man’s face. Blue eyes stared fixedly at nothing. He lowered the head gently and picked up a limp, warm hand, feeling for a pulse.

  “He ain’t dead,” Sonny repeated. But his voice had grown weaker. “He’s just fainted, that’s all.”

  He and his two friends watched Grave Digger as though he were Jesus Christ bending over the body of Lazarus.

  Grave Digger’s eyes explored the white man’s back. Coffin Ed stood without moving, his scarred face like a bronze mask cast with trembling hands. Grave Digger saw a black wet spot in the white man’s thick gray-shot black hair, low down at the base of the skull. He put his fingertips to it and they came off stained. He straightened up slowly, held his wet fingertips in the white headlights; they showed red. He said nothing.

  The spectators crowded nearer. Coffin Ed didn’t notice; he was looking at Grave Digger’s bloody fingertips.

  “Is that blood?” Sonny asked in a breaking whisper. His body began to tremble, coming slowly upward from his grasshopper legs.

  Grave Digger and Coffin Ed stared at him, saying nothing.

  “Is he dead?” Sonny asked in a terror-stricken whisper. His trembling lips were dust dry and his eyes were turning white in a black face gone gray.

  “Dead as he’ll ever be,” Grave Digger said in a flat toneless voice.

  “I didn’t do it,” Sonny whispered. “I swear ’fore God in heaven.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Rubberlips and Lowtop echoed in unison.

  “How does it figure?” Coffin Ed asked.

  “It figures for itself,” Grave Digger said.

  “So help me God, boss. I couldn’t have done it,” Sonny said in a terrified whisper.

  Grave Digger stared at him from agate hard eyes and said nothing.

  “You gotta believe him, boss, he couldn’t have done it,” Rubberlips vouched.

  “Naw, suh,” Lowtops echoed.

  “I wasn’t trying to hurt him, I just wanted to scare him,” Sonny said. Tears were trickling from his eyes.

  “It were that crazy drunk man with the knife that started it,” Rubberlips said. “Back there in the Dew Drop Inn.”

  “Then afterwards the big white man kept looking in the window,” Lowtop said. “That made Sonny mad.”

  The detectives stared at him with blank eyes. The Arabs were motionless.

  “He’s a comedian,” Coffin Ed said finally.

  “How could I be mad about my old lady,” Sonny argued. “I ain’t even got any old lady.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Grave Digger said in an unrelenting voice, and handcuffed Sonny. “Save it for the judge.”

  “Boss, listen, I beg you, I swear ’fore God–”

  “Shut up, you’re under arrest,” Coffin Ed said.

  3

  A police car siren sounded from the distance. It was coming from the east; it started like the wail of an anguished banshee and grew into a scream. Another sounded from the west; it was joined
by other from the north and south, one sounding after another like jets taking off from an aircraft carrier.

  “Let’s see what these real cool Moslems are carrying,” Grave Digger said.

  “Count off, you sheiks,” Coffin Ed said.

  They had the case wrapped up before the prowl cars arrived. The pressure was off. They felt cocky.

  “Praise Allah,” the tallest of the Arabs said.

  As though performing a ritual, the others said, “Mecca,” and all bowed low with outstretched arms.

  “Cut the comedy and straighten up,” Grave Digger said. “We’re holding you as witnesses.”

  “Who’s got the prayer?” the leader asked with bowed head.

  “I’ve got the prayer,” another replied.

  “Pray to the great monster,” the leader commanded.

  The one who had the prayer turned slowly and presented his white-robed backside to Coffin Ed. A sound like a hound dog baying issued from his rear end.

  “Allah be praised,” the leader said, and the loose white sleeves of their robes fluttered in response.

  Coffin Ed didn’t get it until Sonny and his friends laughed in amazement. Then his face contorted in black rage.

  “Punks!” he grated harshly, somersaulted the bowed Arab with one kick, and leveled on him with his pistol as if to shoot him.

  “Easy man, easy,” Grave Digger said, trying to keep a straight face. “You can’t shoot a man for aiming a fart at you.”

  “Hold it, monster,” a third Arab cried, and flung liquid from a glass bottle toward Coffin Ed’s face. “Sweeten thyself.”

  Coffin Ed saw the flash of the bottle and the liquid flying and ducked as he swung his pistol barrel.

  “It’s just perfume,” the Arab cried in alarm.

  But Coffin Ed didn’t hear him through the roar of blood in his head. All he could think of was a con man called Hank throwing a glass of acid into his face. And this looked like another acid thrower. Quick scalding rage turned his acid-burnt face into a hideous mask and his scarred lips drew back from his clenched teeth.

  He fired two shots together and the Arab holding the half-filled perfume bottle said, “Oh,” softly and folded slowly to the pavement. Behind, in the crowd, a woman screamed as her leg gave beneath her.

  The other Arabs broke into wild flight. Sonny broke with them. A split second later his friends took off in his wake.

  “God damn it, Ed!” Grave Digger shouted and lunged for the gun.

  He made a grab for the barrel, deflecting the aim as it went off again. The bullet cut a telephone cable in two overhead. It fell into the crowd, setting off a cacophony of screams.

  Everybody ran.

  The panic-stricken crowd stampeded for the nearest doorways, trampling the woman who was shot and two others who fell.

  Grave Digger grappled with Coffin Ed and they crashed down on top of the dead white man. Grave Digger had Coffin Ed’s pistol by the barrel and was trying to wrest it from his grip.

  “It’s me, Digger, Ed,” he kept saying. “Let go the gun.”

  “Turn me loose, Digger, turn me loose. Let me kill ’im,” Coffin Ed mouthed insanely, tears streaming from his hideous face. “They tried it again, Digger.”

  They rolled over the corpse and rolled back.

  “That wasn’t acid, that was perfume,” Grave Digger said, gasping for breath.

  “Turn me loose, Digger, I’m warning you,” Coffin Ed mumbled.

  While they threshed back and forth over the corpse, two of the Arabs followed Sonny into the doorway of a tenement. The other people crowding into the doorway stepped aside and let them pass. Sonny saw the stairs were crowded and kept on going through, looking for a back exit. He came out onto a small back courtyard, enclosed with stone walls. The Arabs followed him. One put a noose over his head, knocking off his hat, and drew it tight. The other pulled a switch-blade knife and pressed the point against his side.

  “If you holler you’re dead,” the first one said.

  The Arab leader joined them.

  “Let’s get him away from here,” he said.

  At that moment the patrol cars began to unload. Two harness cops and Detective Haggerty hit the deck and were the first on the murder scene.

  “Holy mother!” Haggerty exclaimed.

  The cops stared aghast.

  It looked to them as though the two colored detectives had the big white man locked in a death struggle.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Grave Digger panted. “Give me a hand.”

  “They’ll kill him,” Haggerty said, wrapping his arms about Grave Digger and trying to pull him away. “You grab the other one,” he said to the cops.

  “To hell with that,” the cop said, swinging his black-jack across Coffin Ed’s head, knocking him unconscious.

  The other cop drew his pistol and took aim at the corpse. “One move out of you and I’ll shoot,” he said.

  “He won’t move; he’s dead,” Grave Digger said to Haggerty.

  “Well, Hell,” Haggerty said indignantly, releasing him. “You asked me to help. How in hell do I know what’s going on?”

  Grave Digger shook himself and looked at the third cop. “You didn’t have to slug him,” he said.

  “I wasn’t taking no chances,” the cop said.

  “Shut up and watch the Arab,” Haggerty said.

  The cop moved over and looked at the Arab. “He’s dead, too.”

  “Holy Mary, the plague,” Haggerty said. “Look after that woman then.”

  Four more cops came running. At Haggerty’s order, two turned toward the woman who’d been shot. She was lying in the street, deserted.

  “She’s alive, just unconscious,” the cop said.

  “Leave her for the ambulance,” Haggerty said.

  “Who’re you ordering about?” the cop said. “We know our business.”

  “To hell with you,” Haggerty said.

  Grave Digger bent over Coffin Ed, lifted his head and put an open bottle of ammonia to his nose. Coffin Ed groaned.

  A red-faced uniformed sergeant built like a General Sherman tank loomed above him.

  “What happened here?” he asked.

  Grave Digger looked up. “A rumpus broke and we lost our prisoner.”

  “Who shot your partner?”

  “He’s not shot, he’s just knocked out.”

  “That’s all right then. What’s your prisoner look like?”

  “Black man, about five eleven, twenty-five to thirty years, one-seventy to one-eighty pounds, narrow face sloping down to chin, wearing light gray hat, dark gray hickory-striped suit, white tab collar, red striped tie, beige chukker boots. He’s handcuffed.”

  The sergeant’s small china-blue eyes went from the big white corpse to the bearded Arab corpse.

  “Which one did he kill?” he asked.

  “The white man,” Grave Digger said.

  “That’s all right, we’ll get him,” he said. Raising his voice, he called, “Professor!”

  The corporal who’d stopped to light a cigarette said, “Yeah.”

  “Rope off this whole goddamned area,” the sergeant said. “Don’t let anybody out. We want a Harlem-dressed Zulu. Killed a white man. Can’t have gotten far ’cause he’s handcuffed.”

  “We’ll get ’im,” the corporal said.

  “Pick up all suspicious persons,” the sergeant said.

  “Right,” the corporal said, hurrying off towards the cops that were just arriving.

  “Who shot the Arab?” the sergeant asked.

  “Ed shot him,” Grave Digger said.

  “That’s all right then,” the sergeant said. “We’ll get your prisoner. I’m sending for the lieutenant and the medical examiner. Save the rest for them.”

  He turned and followed the corporal.

  Coffin Ed stood up shakily. “You should have let me killed that son of a bitch, Digger,” he said.

  “Look at him,” Grave Digger said, nodding toward the Arab’s corpse.
>
  Coffin Ed stared.

  “I didn’t even know I hit him,” he said as though coming out of a daze. After a moment he added, “I can’t feel sorry for him. I tell you, Digger, death is on any son of a bitch who tries to throw acid into my eyes again.”

  “Smell yourself, man,” Grave Digger said.

  Coffin Ed bent his head. The front of his dark wrinkled suit reeked with the scent of dime-store perfume.

  “That’s what he threw. Just perfume,” Grave Digger said. “I tried to warn you.”

  “I must not have heard you.”

  Grave Digger took a deep breath. “God damn it, man, you got to control yourself.”

  “Well, Digger, a burnt child fears fire. Anybody who tries to throw anything at me when they’re under arrest is apt to get shot.”

  Grave Digger said nothing.

  “What happened to our prisoner?” Coffin Ed asked.

  “He got away,” Grave Digger said.

  They turned in unison and surveyed the scene.

  Patrol cars were arriving by the minute, erupting cops as though for an invasion. Others had formed blockades across Lenox Avenue at 128th and 126th Streets, and had blocked off 127th Street on both sides.

  Most of the people had gotten off the street. Those that stayed were being arrested as suspicious persons. Several drivers trying to move their cars were protesting their innocence loudly.

  The packed bars in the area were being rapidly sealed by the police. The windows of tenements were jammed with black faces and the exits blocked by police.

  “They’ll have to go through this jungle with a fine-toothed comb,” Grave Digger said. “With all these white cops about, any colored family might hide him.”

  “I’ll want those gangster punks too,” Coffin Ed said.

  “Well, we’ll just have to wait now for the men from homicide.”

  But Lieutenant Anderson arrived first, with the harness sergeant and Detective Haggerty latched on to him. The five of them stood in a circle in the car’s headlights between the two corpses.

  “All right, just give me the essential points first,” Anderson said. “I put out the flash so I know the start. The man hadn’t been killed when I got the first report.”