The Real Cool Killers

by Chester Himes

  The sergeant wheeled suddenly on Sheik as though he’d forgotten something.

  “Where’s Caleb?”

  “Up on the roof tending his pigeons.”

  All four cops froze. They stared at Sheik with those blank shuttered looks.

  Finally the sergeant said carefully, “His grandma said you told her he was working in a bowling alley downtown.”

  “We just told her that to keep her from worrying. She don’t like for him to go up on the roof at night.”

  “If I find you punks are holding out on me, God help you,” the sergeant said in a slow sincere voice.

  “Go look then,” Sheik said.

  The sergeant nodded to the professor. The professor climbed out of the window into the bright glare of the spotlights and began ascending the fire escape.

  “What’s he doing with them at night?” the sergeant asked Sheik.

  “I don’t know. Trying to make them lay black eggs, I suppose.”

  “I’m going to take you down to the station and have a private talk with you, punk,” the sergeant said. “You’re one punk who needs talking to privately.”

  The professor came down from the roof and called through the window, “They’re holding two coons up here beside a pigeon loft. They’re waiting on you.”

  “Okay, I’m coming. You and Price hold these punks on ice,” he directed the other cops and climbed out of the window behind the professor.

  9

  “Get in,” Grave Digger said.

  She pulled up the skirt of her evening gown, drew the black coat tight, and eased her jumbo hams into the seat usually occupied by Coffin Ed.

  Grave Digger went around on the other side and climbed beneath the wheel and waited.

  “Does I just have to go along, honey,” the woman said in a wheedling voice. “I can just as well tell you where she’s at.”

  “That’s what I’m waiting for.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so? She’s in the Knickerbocker Apartments on 45th Street – the old Knickerbocker, I mean. She on the six story, 669.”

  “Who is she?” Grave Digger asked, probing a little.

  “Who she is? Just a landprop is all.”

  “That ain’t what I mean.”

  “Oh, I know what you means. You means who is she. You means you don’t know who Reba is, Digger?” She tried to sound jocular but wasn’t successful. “She the landprop what used to be old cap Murphy’s go-between ’fore he got sent up for taking all them bribes. It was in all the papers.”

  “That was ten years ago and they called her Sheba then,” he said.

  “Yare, that’s right, but she changed her name after she got into that last shooting scrape. You musta ’member that. She caught the nigger with some chippie or ’nother and made him jump buck naked out the third-story window. That wouldn’t ’ave been so bad but she shot ’im through the head as he was going down. That was when she lived in the valley. Since then she done come up here on the hill. ’Course it warn’t nobody but her husband and she didn’t get a day. But Reba always has been lucky that way.”

  He took a shot in the dark. “What would anybody shoot Galen for?”

  She grew stiff with caution, “Who he?”

  “You know damn well who he was. He’s the man who was shot tonight.”

  “Naw suh, I didn’t know nothing ’bout that gennelman. I don’t know why nobody would want to shoot him.”

  “You people give me a pain in the seat with all that ducking and dodging every time someone asks you a question. You act like you belong to a race of artful dodgers.”

  “You is asking me something I don’t know nothing ’bout.”

  “Okay, get out.”

  She got out faster than she got in.

  He drove down the hill of St. Nicholas Avenue and turned up the hill of 145th Street toward Convent Avenue.

  On the left-hand corner, next to a new fourteen-story apartment building erected by a white insurance company, was the Brown Bomber Bar; across from it Big Crip’s Bar; on the right-hand corner Cohen’s Drug Store with its iron-grilled windows crammed with electric hair straightening irons, Hi-Life hair cream, Black and White bleaching cream, SSS and 666 blood tonics, Dr. Scholl’s corn pads, men’s and women’s nylon head caps with chin straps to press hair while sleeping, a bowl of blue stone good for body lice, tins of Sterno canned heat good for burning or drinking, Halloween postcards and all the latest in enamelware hygiene utensils; across from it Zazully’s Delicatessen with a white-lettered announcement on the plate-glass window: We Have Frozen Chitterlings and Other Hard-to-find Delicacies.

  Grave Digger parked in front of a big frame house with peeling yellow paint which had been converted into offices, got out and walked next door to a six-story rotten-brick tenement long overdue at the wreckers.

  Three cars were parked at the curb in front; two with upstate New York plates and the other from mid-Manhattan.

  He pushed open a scaly door beneath the arch of a concrete block on which the word KNICKER-BOCKER was embossed.

  An old gray-haired man with a splotched brown face sat in a chair just inside the doorway to the semi-dark corridor. He cautiously drew back gnarled feet in felt bedroom slippers and looked Grave Digger over with dull, satiated eyes.

  “Evenin’,” he said.

  Grave Digger glanced at him. “Evenin’.”

  “Fourth story on de right. Number 421,” the old man informed him.

  Grave Digger stopped. “That Reba’s?”

  “You don’t want Reba’s. You want Topsy’s. Dat’s 421.”

  “What’s happening at Topsy’s?”

  “What always happen. Dat’s where the trouble is.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Just general trouble. Fightin’ and cuttin’.”

  “I’m not looking for trouble. I’m looking for Reba.”

  “You’re the man, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah, I’m the man.”

  “Then you wants 421. I’se de janitor.”

  “If you’re the janitor then you know Mr. Galen.”

  A veil fell over the old man’s face. “Who he?”

  “He’s the big Greek man who goes up to Reba’s.”

  “I don’t know no Greeks, boss. Don’t no white folks come in here. Nothin’ but cullud folks. You’ll find ’em all at Topsy’s.”

  “He was killed over on Lenox tonight.”

  “Sho nuff?”

  Grave Digger started off.

  The old man called to him, “I guess you wonderin’ why we got them big numbers on de doors.”

  Grave Digger paused. “All right, why?”

  “They sounds good.” The old man cackled.

  Grave Digger walked up five flights of shaky wooden stairs and knocked on a red-painted door with a round glass peephole in the upper panel.

  After an interval a heavy woman’s voice asked, “Who’s you?”

  “I’m the Digger.”

  Bolts clicked and the door cracked a few inches on the chain. A big dark silhouette loomed in the crack, outlined by blue light from behind.

  “I didn’t recognize you, Digger,” a pleasant bass voice said. “Your hat shades your face. Long time no see.”

  “Unchain the door, Reba, before I shoot it off.”

  A deep bass laugh accompanied chain rattling and the door swung inward.

  “Same old Digger, shoot first and talk later. Come on in; we’re all colored folks here.”

  He stepped into a blue-lit carpeted hall reeking of incense.

  “You’re sure?”

  She laughed again as she closed and bolted the door. “Those are not folks, those are clients.” Then she turned casually to face him. “What’s on your mind, honey?”

  She was as tall as his six feet two, with snow-white hair cut short as a man’s and brushed straight back from her forehead. Her lips were painted carnation red and her eyelids silver but her smooth unlined jet black skin was untouched. She wore a black sequined
evening gown with a red rose in the V of her mammoth bosom, which was a lighter brown than her face. She looked like the last of the Amazons blackened by time.

  “Where can we talk?” Grave Digger said. “I don’t want to strain you.”

  “You don’t strain me, honey,” she said, opening the first door to the right. “Come into the kitchen.”

  She put a bottle of bourbon and a siphon beside two tall glasses on the table and sat in a kitchen chair.

  “Say when,” she said as she started to pour.

  “By me,” Grave Digger said, pushing his hat to the back of his head and planting a foot on the adjoining chair.

  She stopped pouring and put down the bottle.

  “You go ahead,” he said.

  “I don’t drink no more,” she said. “I quit after I killed Sam.”

  He crossed his arms on his raised knee and leaned forward on them, looking at her.

  “You used to wear a rosary,” he said.

  She smiled, showing gold crowns on her outside incisors.

  “When I got real religion I quit that too,” she said.

  “What religion did you get?”

  “Just the faith, Digger, just the spirit.”

  “It lets you run this joint?”

  “Why not. It’s nature, just like eating. Nothing in my faith ’gainst eating. I just make it convenient and charge ’em for it.”

  “You’d better get a new steerer; the one downstairs is simple-minded.”

  Her big bass laugh rang out again. “He don’t work for us; he does that on his own.”

  “Don’t make it hard on yourself,” he said. “This can be easy for us both.”

  She looked at him calmly. “I ain’t got nothing to fear.”

  “When was the last time you saw Galen?”

  “The big Greek? Been some time now, Digger. Three or four months. He don’t come here no more.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t let him.”

  “How come?”

  “Be your age, Digger. This is a sporting house. If I don’t let a white john with money come here, I must have good reasons. And if I want to keep my other white clients I’d better not say what they are. You can’t close me up and you can’t make me talk, so why don’t you let it go at that?”

  “The Greek was shot to death tonight over on Lenox.”

  “I just heard it over the radio,” she said.

  “I’m trying to find out who did it.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “It said on the radio the killer was known. A Sonny Pickens. Said a teenage gang called the something-or-’nother Moslems snatched him.”

  “He didn’t do it. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Well, if he didn’t do it, you got your job cut out,” she said. “I wish I could help you but I can’t.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”

  She raised her eyebrows slightly. “By the way, where’s your sidekick, Coffin Ed? The radio said he shot one of the gang.”

  “Yeah, he got suspended.”

  She became still, like an animal alert to danger. “Don’t take it out on me, Digger.”

  “I just want to know why you stopped the Greek from coming here.”

  She stared into his eyes. She had dark brown eyes with clear whites and long black lashes.

  “I’ll let you talk to Ready. He knows.”

  “Is he here now?”

  “He got a little chippie here he can’t stay ’way from for five minutes. I’m going to throw ’em both out soon. Would have before now but my clients like her.”

  “Was the Greek her client?”

  She got up slowly, sighing slightly from the effort.

  “I’ll send him out here.”

  “Bring him out.”

  “All right. But take him away, Digger. I don’t want him talking in here. I don’t want no more trouble. I’ve had trouble all my days.”

  “I’ll take him away,” he said.

  She went out and Grave Digger heard doors being discreetly opened and shut and then her controlled bass voice saying, “How do I know? He said he was a friend.”

  A tall man with pockmarked skin a dirty shade of black stepped into the kitchen. An old razor scar cut a purple ridge from the lobe of his ear to the tip of his chin. There was a cast in one eye, the other was reddish brown. Thin corked hair stuck to a double-jointed head shaped like a peanut. He was flashily dressed in a light tan suit. Glass glittered from two gold-plated rings. His pointed tan shoes were shined to mirror brilliance.

  At sight of Grave Digger he drew up short and turned a murderous look on Reba.

  “You tole me hit was a friend,” he accused in a rough voice.

  She didn’t let it bother her. She pushed him into the kitchen and closed the door.

  “Well, ain’t he?” she asked.

  “What’s this, some kind of frame-up?” he shouted.

  Grave Digger chuckled at the look of outrage on his face. “How can a buck as ugly as you be a pimp?” he asked.

  “You’re gonna make me talk about you mamma,” Ready said, digging his right hand into his pants pocket.

  With nothing moving but his arm, Grave Digger back-handed him in the solar plexus, knocking out his wind, then pivoted on his left foot and followed with a right cross to the same spot, and with the same motion raised his knee and sunk it into Ready’s belly as the pimp’s slim frame jack-knifed forward. Spit showered from Ready’s fishlike mouth, and the sense was already gone from his eyes when Grave Digger grabbed him by the back of the coat collar, jerked him erect, and started to slap him in the face with his open palm.

  Reba grabbed his arm, saying. “Not in here, Digger, I beg you; don’t make him bleed. You said you’d take him out.”

  “I’m taking him out now,” he said in a cottony voice, shaking off her hold.

  “Then finish him without bleeding him; I don’t want nobody coming in here finding blood on the floor.”

  Grave Digger grunted and eased off. He propped Ready against the wall, holding him up on his rubbery legs with one hand while he took the knife and frisked him quickly with the other.

  The sense came back into Ready’s good eye and Grave Digger stepped back and said, “All right, let’s go quietly, son.”

  Ready fussed about without looking at him, straightening his coat and tie, then fished a greasy comb from his pocket and combed his rumpled conk. He was bent over in the middle from pain and breathing in gasps. A white froth had collected in both corners of his mouth.

  Finally he mumbled, “You can’t take me outa here without no warrant.”

  “Go ahead with the man and shut up,” Reba said quickly.

  He gave her a pleading look. “You gonna let him take me outa here?”

  “If he don’t I’m going to throw you out myself,” she said. “I don’t want any hollering and screaming in here scaring my white clients.”

  “That’s gonna cost you,” Ready threatened.

  “Don’t threaten me, nigger,” she said dangerously. “And don’t set your foot in my door again.”

  “Okay, Reba, that’s the lick that killed Dick,” Ready said slowly. “You and him got me outnumbered.” He gave her a last sullen look and turned to go.

  Reba walked to the door and let them out.

  “I hope I get what I want,” Grave Digger said. “If I don’t I’ll be back.”

  “If you don’t it’s your own fault,” she said.

  He marched Ready ahead of him down the shaky stairs.

  The old man in the ragged red chair looked up in surprise.

  “You got the wrong nigger,” he said. “Hit ain’t him what’s makin’ all the trouble.”

  “Who is it?” Grave Digger asked.

  “Hit’s Cocky. He the one what’s always pulling his shiv.”

  Grave Digger filed the information for future reference.

  “I’ll keep this one since he’s the one I’ve got,” he said.

  “Balls,” the old
man said disgustedly. “He’s just a halfass pimp.”

  10

  White light coming from the street slanted upward past the edge of the roof and made a milky wall in the dark.

  Beyond the wall of light the flat tar roof was shrouded in semi-darkness.

  The sergeant emerged from the edge of light like a hammerhead turtle rising from the deep. In one glance he saw Sonny frantically beating a flock of panic-stricken pigeons with a long bamboo pole, and Inky standing motionless as though he’d sprouted from the tar.

  “By God, now I know why they’re called tarbabies!” he exclaimed.

  Gripping the pole for dear life with both gauntleted hands, Sonny speared desperately at the pigeons. His eyes were white as they rolled toward the red-faced sergeant. His ragged overcoat flapped in the wind. The pigeons ducked and dodged and flew in lopsided circles. Their heads were cocked on one side as they observed Sonny’s gymnastics with beady apprehension.

  Inky stood like a silhouette cut from black paper, looking at nothing. The whites of his eyes gleamed in the dark.

  The pigeon loft was a rickety coop about six feet high, made of scraps of chicken wire, discarded screen windows and assorted rags tacked to a frame of rotten boards propped against the low brick wall separating the roofs. It had a tarpaulin top and was equipped with precarious roosts, tin cans of rusty water, and a rusty tin feeding pan.

  Blue-uniformed white cops formed a jagged semi-circle in front of it, staring at Sonny in silent and bemused amazement.

  The sergeant climbed onto the roof, puffing, and paused for a moment to mop his brow.

  “What’s he doing, voodoo?” he asked.

  “It’s only Don Quixote in blackface dueling a windmill,” the professor said.

  “That ain’t funny,” the sergeant said. “I like Don Quixote.”

  The professor let it go.

  “Is he a halfwit?” the sergeant said.

  “If he’s got that much,” the professor said.

  The sergeant pushed to the center of the stage, but once there hesitated as though he didn’t know how to begin.

  Sonny looked at him through the corners of his eyes and kept working the pole. Inky stared at nothing with silent intensity.

  “All right, all right, so your feet don’t stink,” the sergeant said. “Which one of you is Caleb?”