The Real Cool Killers

by Chester Himes

  “Let ’em cut the black mother-raper’s throat,” Sheik said. “That chicken-hearted bastard ain’t no good to us.”

  “I tell you what, Sheik,” Choo-Choo said exuberantly. “We could put him in a sack like them ancient cats like the Dutchman and them used to do and throw him into the Harlem river. I’ve always wanted to put some bastard into a sack.”

  “You know how to put a mother-raper into a sack?” Sheik asked.

  “Sure, you–”

  “Shut up, I’m gonna to tell you how. You knock the mother-raper unconscious first; that’s to keep him from jumping about. Then you put a noose with a slip-knot ’round his neck. Then you double him up into a Z and tie the other end of the wire around his knees. Then when you put him in the gunny sack you got to be sure it’s big enough to give him some space to move around in. When the mother-raper wakes up and tries to straighten out he chokes hisself to death. Ain’t nobody killed ’im. The mother-raper has just committed suicide.” Sheik rolled with laughter.

  “You got to tie his hands behind his back first,” Choo-Choo said.

  Sheik stopped laughing and his face became livid with fury. “Who don’t know that, fool!” he shouted. “ ’Course you got to tie his hands behind his back. You trying to tell me I don’t know how to put a mother-raper into a sack. I’ll put you into a sack.”

  “I know you know how, Sheik,” Choo-Choo said hastily. “I just didn’t want you to forget nothing when we put the captive in a sack.”

  “I ain’t going to forget nothing,” Sheik said.

  “When we gonna put him in a sack?” Choo-Choo asked. “I know where to find a sack.”

  “Okay, we’ll put him in a sack just soon as the police finish here; then we take him down and leave him in the basement,” Sheik said.

  7

  Grave Digger flashed his badge at the two harness bulls guarding the door and pushed inside the Dew Drop Inn.

  The joint was jammed with colored people who’d seen the big white man die, but nobody seemed to be worrying about it.

  The jukebox was giving out with a stomp version of “Big-Legged Woman.” Saxophones were pleading; the horns were teasing; the bass was patting; the drums were chatting; the piano was catting, laying and playing the jive, and a husky female voice was shouting:

  “… you can feel my thigh

  But don’t you feel up high.”

  Happy-tail women were bouncing out of their dresses on the high bar stools.

  Grave Digger trod on the sawdust sprinkled over the bloodstains that wouldn’t wash off and parked on the stool at the end of the bar.

  Big Smiley was serving drinks with his left arm in a sling.

  The white manager, the sleeves of his tan silk shirt rolled up, was helping.

  Big Smiley shuffled down the wet footing and showed Grave Digger most of his big yellow teeth.

  “Is you drinking, Chief, or just sitting and thinking?”

  “How’s the wing?” Grave Digger asked.

  “Favorable. It wasn’t cut deep enough to do no real damage.”

  The manager came down and said, “If I’d thought there was going to be any trouble I’d have called the police right away.”

  “What do you calculate as trouble in this joint?” Grave Digger asked.

  The manager reddened. “I meant about the white man getting killed.”

  “Just what started all the trouble in here?”

  “It wasn’t exactly what you’d call trouble, Chief,” Big Smiley said. “It was only a drunk attacked one of my white customers with his shiv and naturally I had to protect my customer.”

  “What did he have against the white man?”

  “Nothing, Chief. Not a single thing. He was sitting over there drinking one shot of rye after another and looking at the white man standing here tending to his own business. Then he gets red-eyed drunk and his evil tells him to get up and cut the man. That’s all. And naturally I couldn’t let him do that.”

  “He must have had some reason. You’re not trying to tell me he got up and attacked the man without any reason whatever.”

  “Naw suh, Chief, I’ll bet my life he ain’t had no reason at all to wanta cut the man. You know how our folks is, Chief; he was just one of those evil niggers that when they get drunk they start hating white folks and get to remembering all the bad things white folks ever done to them. That’s all. More than likely he was mad at some white man that done something bad to him twenty years ago down South and he just wanted to take it out on this white man in here. It’s like I told that white detective who was in here, this white man was standing here at the bar by hisself and that nigger just figgered with all those colored folk in here he could cut him and get away with it.”

  “Maybe. What’s his name?”

  “I ain’t ever seen that nigger before tonight, Chief; I don’t know what is his name.”

  A customer called from up the bar, “Hey, boss, how about a little service up here?”

  “If you want me, Jones, just holler,” the manager said, moving off to serve the customer.

  “Yeah,” Grave Digger said, then asked Big Smiley, “Who was the woman?”

  “There she is,” Big Smiley said, nodding toward a booth.

  Grave Digger turned his head and scanned her.

  The black lady in the pink jersey dress and red silk stockings was back in her original seat in a booth surrounded by three workers.

  “It wasn’t on account of her,” Big Smiley added.

  Grave Digger slid from his stool, went over to her booth and flashed his badge. “I want to talk to you.”

  She looked at the gold badge and complained, “Why don’t you folks leave me alone? I done already told a white cop everything I know about that shooting, which ain’t nothing.”

  “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink,” Grave Digger said.

  “Well, in that case …” she said and went with him to the bar.

  At Grave Digger’s order Big Smiley grudgingly poured her a shot of gin and Grave Digger said, “Fill it up.”

  Big Smiley filled the glass and stayed there to listen.

  “How well did you know the white man?” Grave Digger asked the lady.

  “I didn’t know him at all. I’d just seen him around here once or twice.”

  “Doing what–”

  “Just chasing.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see him pick up anyone?”

  “Naw, he was one of those particular kind. He never saw nothing he liked.”

  “Who was the colored man who tried to cut him?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “He wasn’t a relative of yours?”

  “A relation of mine. I should hope not.”

  “Just exactly what did he say to the white man when he started to attack him?”

  “I don’t remember exactly; he just said something ’bout him messing about with his gal.”

  “That’s the same thing the other man, Sonny Pickens, accused him of.”

  “I don’t know nothing about that.”

  He thanked her and wrote down her name and address.

  She went back to her seat.

  He returned back to Big Smiley. “What did Pickens and the man argue about?”

  “They ain’t had no argument, Chief. Not in here. It wasn’t on account of nothing that happened in here that he was shot.”

  “It was on account of something,” Grave Digger said. “Robbery doesn’t figure, and people in Harlem don’t kill for revenge.”

  “Naw suh, leastwise they don’t shoot.”

  “More than likely they’ll throw acid or hot lye,” Grave Digger said.

  “Naw, suh, not on no white gennelman.”

  “So what else is there left but a woman,” Grave Digger said.

  “Naw suh,” Big Smiley contradicted flatly. “You know better’n that, Chief. A colored woman don’t consider diddling with a white man as being unfaithful. They don’t
consider it no more than just working in service, only they is getting better paid and the work is less straining. ’Sides which, the hours is shorter. And they old men don’t neither. Both she and her old man figger it’s like finding money in the street. And I don’t mean no cruisers neither; I means church people and Christians and all the rest.”

  “How old are you, Smiley?” Grave Digger asked.

  “I be forty-nine come December seventh.”

  “You’re talking about old times, son. These young colored men don’t go in for that slavery-time deal anymore.”

  “Shucks, Chief, you just kidding. This is old Smiley. I got dirt on these women in Harlem ain’t never been plowed. Shucks, you and me both can put our finger on high society colored ladies here who got their whole rep just by going with some big important white man. And their old men is cashing in on it, too; makes them important, too, to have their old ladies going with some big-shot gray. Shucks, even a hard-working nigger wouldn’t shoot a white man if he come home and found him in bed with his old lady with his pants down. He might whup his old lady just to show her who was boss, after he done took the money ’way from her, but he wouldn’t sure ’nough hurt her like he’d do if he caught her screwing some other nigger.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Grave Digger said.

  “Have it your own way, Chief, but I still think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Lissen, the only way I figger a colored man in Harlem gonna kill a white man is in a fight. He’ll draw his shiv if he getting his ass whupped and maybe stab him to death. But I’ll bet my life ain’t no nigger up here gonna shoot down no white man in cold blood – no important white gennelman like him.”

  “Would the killer have to know he was important?”

  “He’d know it,” Big Smiley said positively.

  “You knew him?” Grave Digger said.

  “Naw suh, not to say knew him. He come in here two, three times before but I didn’t know his name.”

  “You expect me to believe he came in here two or three times and you didn’t find out who he was?”

  “I didn’t mean exactly I didn’t know his name,” Big Smiley hemmed. “But I’se telling you, Chief, ain’t no leads ’round here, that’s for sure.”

  “You’re going to have to tell me more than that, son,” Grave Digger said in a flat, toneless voice.

  Big Smiley looked at him; then suddenly he leaned across the bar and said in a low voice, “Try at Bucky’s, Chief.”

  “Why Bucky’s?”

  “I seen him come in here once with a pimp what hangs ’round in Bucky’s.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t recollect his name, Chief. They driv up in his car and just stopped for a minute like they was looking for somebody and went out and drive away.”

  “Don’t play with me,” Grave Digger said with a sudden show of anger. “This ain’t the movies; this is real. A white man has been killed in Harlem and Harlem is my beat. I’ll take you down to the station and turn a dozen white cops loose on you and they’ll work you over until the black comes off.”

  “Name’s Ready Belcher, Chief, but I don’t want nobody to know I told you,” Big Smiley said in a whisper. “I don’t want no trouble with that starker.”

  “Ready,” Grave Digger said and got down from his stool.

  He didn’t know much about Ready; just that he operated up-town on the swank side of Harlem, above 145th Street in Washington Heights.

  He drove up to the 154th Street precinct station at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and asked for his friend, Bill Cresus. Bill was a colored detective on the vice squad. No one knew where Bill was at the time. He left word for Bill to contact him at Bucky’s if he called within the hour. Then he got into his car and coasted down the sharp incline to St. Nicholas Avenue and turned south down the lesser incline past 149th Street.

  Outwardly it was a quiet neighbourhood of private houses and five- and six-story apartment buildings flanking the wide black-paved street. But the houses had been split up into bed-sized one-room kitchenettes, renting for $25 weekly, at the disposal of frantic couples who wished to shack up for a season. And behind the respectable-looking facades of the apartment buildings were the plush flesh cribs and poppy pads and circus tents of Harlem.

  The excitement of the dragnet hadn’t reached this far and the street was comparatively empty.

  He coasted to a stop before a sedate basement entrance. Four steps below street level was a black door with a shiny brass knocker in the shape of three musical notes. Above it red neon lights spelled out the word BUCKY’S.

  It felt strange to be alone. The last time had been when Coffin Ed was in the hospital after the acid throwing. The memory of it made his head tight with anger and it took a special effort to keep his temper under wraps.

  He pushed and the door opened.

  People sat at white-clothed tables beneath pink-shaded wall lights in a long narrow room, eating fried chicken daintily with their fingers. There was a white party of six, several colored couples, and two colored men with white women. They looked well-dressed and reasonably clean.

  The walls behind them were covered with innumerable small pink-stained pencil portraits of all the great and the near-great who had ever lived in Harlem. Musicians led nine to one.

  The hat-check girl stationed in a cubicle beside the entrance stuck out her hand with a supercilious look.

  Grave Digger kept his hat on and strode down the narrow aisle between the tables.

  A chubby pianist with shining black skin and a golden smile who was dressed in a tan tweed sport jacket and white silk sport shirt open at the throat sat at a baby grand piano wedged between the last table and the circular bar. Soft white light spilled on his partly bald head while he played nocturnes with a bedroom touch.

  He gave Grave Digger an apprehensive look, got up and followed him to the semi-darkness of the bar.

  “I hope you’re not on business, Digger. I pay to keep this place off-limits for cops,” he said in a fluttery voice.

  Grave Digger’s gaze circled the bar. Its high stools were inhabited by a varied crew: a big dark-haired white man, two slim young colored men, a short heavy-set white man with blond crew-cut hair, two dark women dressed in white silk evening gowns, a chocolate dandy in a box-backed double-breasted tuxedo sporting a shoestring dubonet bow. A high-yellow waitress waited nearby with a serving tray. Another tall, slim ebony young man presided over the bar.

  “I’m just looking around, Bucky,” Grave Digger said. “Just looking for a break.”

  “Many folks have found a break in here,” Bucky said suggestively.

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “But that’s not the kind of break you’re looking for.”

  “I’m looking for a break on a case. An important white man was shot to death over on Lenox Avenue a short time ago.”

  Bucky gestured with lotioned hands. His manicured nails flashed in the dim light. “What has that to do with us here? Nobody ever gets hurt in here. Everything is smooth and quiet. You can see for yourself. Genteel people dining in leisure. Fine food. Soft music. Low lights and laughter. Doesn’t look like business for the police in this respectable atmosphere.”

  In the pause that followed, one of the marcelled ebonies was heard saying in a lilting voice, “I positively did not even look at her man, and she upped and knocked me over the head with a whisky bottle.”

  “These black bitches are so violent,” his companion said.

  “And strong, honey.”

  Grave Digger smiled sourly.

  “The man who was killed was a patron of yours,” he said. “Name of Ulysses Galen.”

  “My God, Digger, I don’t know the names of all the ofays who come into my place,” Bucky said. “I just play for them and try to make them happy.”

  “I believe you,” Grave Digger said. “Galen was seen about town with Ready. Does that stir your memory?”

  “Ready?” Bucky exclaimed innocently. “He ha
rdly ever comes in here. Who gave you that notion?”

  “The hell he doesn’t,” Grave Digger said. “He panders out of here.”

  “You hear that!” Bucky appealed to the barman in a shrill horrified voice, then caught himself as the silence from the diners reached his sensitive ears. With hushed indignation he added, “This flatfoot comes in here and accuses me of harboring panderers.”

  “A little bit of that goes a long way, son,” Grave Digger said in his flat voice.

  “Oh, that man’s an ogre, Bucky,” the barman said. “You go back to your entertaining and I’ll see what he wants.” He switched over to the bar, put his hands on his hips and looked down at Grave Digger with a haughty air. “And just what can we do for you, you mean rude grumpy man?”

  The white men at the bar laughed.

  Bucky turned and started off.

  Grave Digger caught him by the arm and pulled him back. “Don’t make me get rough, son,” he muttered.

  “Don’t you dare manhandle me,” Bucky said in a low tense whisper, his whole chubby body quivering with indignation. “I don’t have to take that from you. I’m covered.”

  The bartender backed away, shaking himself. “Don’t let him hurt Bucky,” he appealed to the white men in a frightened voice.

  “Maybe I can help you,” the white man with the blond crew cut said to Grave Digger. “You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Grave Digger said, holding on to Bucky. “A white man was killed in Harlem tonight and I’m looking for the killer.”

  The white man’s eyebrows went up an inch.

  “Do you expect to find him here?”

  “I’m following a lead, is all. The man has been seen with a pimp called Ready Belcher who hangs out here.”

  The white man’s eyebrows subsided.

  “Oh, Ready; I know him. But he’s merely–”

  Bucky cut him off: “You don’t have to tell him anything; you’re protected in here.”

  “Sure,” the white man said. “That’s what the officer is trying to do, protect us all.”