Cotton comes to Harlem cjagdj-6

by Chester Himes

  Grave Digger pulled up to the curb at 145th Street. "All right, let's give this some thought," he said.

  "What kind of mother-raping thought?" Coffin Ed said.

  He was near enough to the scene where the acid had been thrown into his face to evoke the memory. The tic started in his face and his nerves got on edge.

  Grave Digger looked at him and looked away. He knew how he was feeling but this wasn't the time for it, he thought. "Listen," he said. "They were driving a stolen car. What does that mean?"

  Coffin Ed came back. "A rendezvous or a getaway."

  "Getaway for what? If they had the money they'd already be gone."

  "Well, where the hell would you rendezvous, if you weren't scared?" Coffin Ed said.

  "That's right," Grave Digger said. "Underneath the bridge."

  "Anyway, we ain't scared," Coffin Ed said.

  The two guns who had handled Deke's armored car were on the front seat, the same one driving. He was also a car thief specialist, and had stolen this one. He doused the lights when they came to the end of Bradhurst Avenue and eased the big car off the road that led to the Polo Grounds, stopping between two stanchions underneath the 155th Street bridge.

  "You two guys spot the car," Deke ordered. "We'll wait here."

  The gunmen got out, careful of the rifles on the floor, and split in the darkness.

  Deke took a large manila envelope from his inside coat pocket and handed it to Barry. "Here's the list," he said. He had had it made weeks before from the telephone directories of Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn by a public stenographer in the Theresa Hotel. "You let him do the talking. We're going to have you covered every second."

  "I don't like this," Barry confessed. He was scared and nervous and he couldn't see the Colonel giving any clues away. "He ain't going to pay no fifty grand for this," he said, taking it gingerly and sticking it into his inside pocket above his pistol.

  "Naturally not," Deke said. "But don't argue with him. Answer his questions and take whatever he gives you."

  "Hell, Deke, I don't dig this," Barry protested. "What's this cracker outfit got to do with our eighty-seven grand?"

  "Let me do the thinking," Deke said coldly. "And give me that rod."

  "Hell, you want me to go with my bare ass to see that nut? You're asking me a lot."

  "What the hell can happen to you? We're all going to have you covered. Man, goddammit, you're going to be as safe as in the arms of Jesus Christ."

  As Barry was handing over the gun he remembered, "That's what the Colonel said."

  "He was right," Deke said, taking the pistol from the holster and sticking it into his right coat-pocket. "Just his reasons are wrong."

  They were silent with their thoughts until the gunmen materialized out of the darkness and took their places on the front seat. "They're over by the El," the driver said, easing the big car soundlessly through the dark as though he had eyes of infra-red.

  The trucks and cars manned by the workers cleaning the stadium were moving about in the black dark area beneath the subway extensions and the bridge, which was used by day as a parking space, their bright lights lancing the darkness. Once the black limousine of the Colonel was picked up in a beam of light, but it didn't look out of place in that area where architects and bankers came at night to plan the construction of new buildings when the old stadium was razed. The Lincoln kept to the edge of the area, avoiding the lights, and stopped behind a big trailer truck parked for the night.

  The gunmen picked their rifles from the floor and got out on each side and took stations at opposite ends of the truck. They had. 303 automatic Savage rifles loaded with. 190-point brass-nosed shells, equipped with telescopic sights.

  "All right," Deke said. "Play it cool."

  Barry shook his head once like shaking off a premonition. "My mama taught me more sense than this," he said and got out. Deke got out on the other side. Barry walked around the front of the truck and kept on ahead. His black coat and dark gray trousers were swallowed by the darkness. Deke stopped beside one of his gunmen.

  "How does it look?" he asked.

  In the telescopic sight Barry looked like the silhouette of half a man neatly quartered, the sight lines crossing in the center of his back as the gunman tracked him through the dark.

  "All right," the gunman said. "Black on black, but it'll do."

  "Don't let him get hurt," Deke said.

  "He ain't gonna get hurt," the gunman said.

  When Barry stopped walking, two other silhouettes came into the sights, close together like three wise monkeys.

  The gunmen widened their sights to take in the limousine and its occupants. Their eyes had become accustomed to the dark. In the faint glow of reflected light, the scene was clearly visible. The Colonel sat in the front seat beside the blond young man in the driver's seat. A white man stood on each side of Barry and a third, standing in front of him, shook him down and took the envelope from his inside pocket and passed it to the Colonel. The Colonel put it into his pocket without looking at it. Suddenly the two men flanking Barry seized his arms and twisted them behind him.

  The third man moved up close in front of him.

  Grave Digger cut off his lights when they approached the dark sinister area underneath the bridge. In the faint light reflected from the lights of the trucks and filtering down from above, the area looked like a jungle of iron stanchions, standing like giant sentinels in the eerie dark. The skin on Coffin Ed's face was jumping with a life of its own and Grave Digger felt his collar choking as his neck swelled.

  He pulled the car over into the darkness and let the engine idle soundlessly. "Let's load some light," he said.

  "I got light," Coffin Ed said.

  Grave Digger nodded in the dark and took out his long-barreled, nickel-plated. 38-caliber revolver and replaced the first three shells with tracer bullets. Coffin Ed drew his revolver, identical to the special made job of Grave Digger's, and spun the cylinder once. Then he held it in his lap. Grave Digger slipped his into his side coat pocket. Then they sat in the dark, listening for the sound that might never come.

  "Where's the cotton?" the Colonel asked Barry so abruptly it hit him like a slap.

  "Cotton!" he echoed with astonishment.

  Then something clicked in his brain. He remembered the small sign advertising for a bale of cotton in the window of the Back-to-the-Southland office. His eyes stretched. Good God! he thought. Then he felt the danger of the instant squeeze him like an iron vise. His body turned ice cold as though the blood had been squeezed out; his head exploded with terror. His mind sought an answer that would save his life, but he could only think of one that might satisfy the Colonel. "Deke's got it!" he blurted out.

  Everything happened at once. The Colonel made a gesture. The white men tightened their grips on Barry's arms. The third man in front of Barry drew a hunting knife from his belt. Barry lunged to one side, throwing the man holding his right arm around behind him. And the big hard unmistakable sound of a high-powered rifle shot exploded in the night, followed so quickly by another it sounded like an echo.

  The gunman beside Deke had shot the white man behind Barry dead through the heart. But the high-powered big-game bullet had gone through the white man's body and penetrated Barry just above the heart and lodged in his breastbone. The gunman at the other end of the truck had taken the white man holding Barry's left arm, the bullet going through one lung, ricocheting off a rib and ending up in his hip. All three fell together.

  The third man with the knife wheeled and ran blindly. The big limousine sprang forward like a big cat, knocked him down, and ran over his body as though it were a bump in the road.

  "Take the car!" Deke yelled, meaning, "Take out the car."

  His gunmen thought he meant take their car and they wheeled and ran towards the Lincoln.

  "Mother-rapers," Deke mouthed and followed them.

  Grave Digger was coming from three hundred yards' distance, his bright lights stabbing
the darkness from where he'd heard the shots. Coffin Ed was shouting into the radio-telephone: "All cars! The Polo Grounds. Seal it!"

  The Lincoln was turning past the head of the trailer truck on two wheels when Grave Digger caught it in his lights. Coffin Ed leaned out the window and snapped a tracer bullet. It made a long incandescent streak, missing the rear of the disappearing Lincoln and sloping off towards the innocent earth. Then the truck was between them.

  "Stop for Barry!" Deke yelled to his driver.

  The driver tamped the brakes and the car skidded straight to a stop. Deke leaped out and rushed towards the grotesque pile of bodies. The white man who'd been run over was writhing in agony and Deke hit him with the. 45 in passing and crushed his brain. Then he tried to pull Barry from beneath the other bodies.

  "No!" Barry screamed in pain.

  "For God's sake, the key!" Deke cried.

  "Cotton…" Barry whispered, blood coming from his mouth and nose as his big body relaxed in death.

  Grave Digger came around the truck so fast the little car slewed sideways and Coffin Ed's tracer bullet intended for the gasoline tank shattered the rear window of the Lincoln Mark IV and set fire to the lining of the roof. The Lincoln went off in a hard straight line like a missile being fired and began zigzagging perilously in the dark. He threw another tracer and punctured the back door. Then he was shooting at the dark and the Lincoln kept going faster.

  Grave Digger dragged the little car down and was out and running towards Deke, gun leveled, before it stopped moving. Coffin Ed hit the ground flat-footed on the other side, prepared to add his one remaining bullet. But it wasn't necessary. Deke saw them coming towards him. He had seen the Lincoln drive away. He dropped the pistol and raised his hands. He wanted to live.

  "Well, well, look who's here," Grave Digger said as he went forward to snap on the handcuffs.

  "Ain't this a pleasant surprise?" Coffin Ed echoed.

  "I want to phone my lawyer," Deke said.

  "All in good time, lover boy, all in good time," Grave Digger said.

  14

  Now it was 1 a.m. Homicide had been there and gone. The medical examiner had pronounced all four bodies "Dead On Arrival". The bodies were on their way to the morgue. Both the Colonel's limousine and the Lincoln had gotten away. A search was being made. The seventeen police cruisers that had bottled up the area to keep them from escaping had been returned to regular duty. The workmen cleaning the Polo Grounds had returned to their work. The city lived and breathed and slept as usual. People were lying, stealing, cheating, murdering; people were praying, singing, laughing, loving and being loved; and people were being born and people were dying. Its pulse remained the same. New York City. The Big Town.

  But the heads, the mothers and fathers, of those eighty-seven families who had sunk their savings on a dream of going back to Africa lay awake, worrying, wondering if they'd ever get their money back.

  Deke was in the "Pigeons' Nest" in the precinct station, sitting on the wooden stool bolted to the floor, facing the barrage of spotlights. He looked fragile and translucent in the bright light; his smooth black face was more the purplish-orange color of an overpowdered whore than the normal gray of a black man terrified.

  "I want to see my lawyer," he was saying for the hundredth time.

  "Your lawyer is asleep at this time of night," Coffin Ed said with a straight face.

  "He'd be mad if we woke him," Grave Digger added.

  Lieutenant Anderson had let them have him first. They were in a jovial mood. They had Deke where they wanted him.

  It wasn't funny to Deke. "Don't get your britches torn," he warned. "All you got against me is suspicion of homicide; and I have a perfect right to see my lawyer."

  Coffin Ed slapped him with his cupped palm. It was a light slap but it sounded like a firecracker and rocked Deke's head.

  "Who's talking about homicide?" Grave Digger said as though he hadn't noticed it.

  "Hell, all we want to know is who's got the money," Coffin Ed said.

  Deke straightened up and took a deep breath.

  "So we can go and get it and give it back to those poor people you swindled," Grave Digger added.

  "Swindled my ass," Deke said. "It was all legitimate." Grave Digger slapped him so hard his body bent one-sided like a rubber man, and Coffin Ed slapped him back. They slapped him back and forth until his brains were addled, but left no bruises.

  They let him get his breath back and gave him time for his brains to settle. Then Grave Digger said, "Let's start over."

  Deke's eyes had turned bright orange in the glaring light. He closed his lids. A trickle of blood flowed from the corner of his mouth. He licked his lips and wiped his hand across his mouth.

  "You're hurting me," he said. His voice sounded as though his tongue had thickened. "But you ain't killing me. And that's all that counts."

  Coffin Ed drew back to hit him but Grave Digger caught his arm. "Easy, Ed," he said.

  "Easy on this mother-raping scum?" Coffin Ed raved. "Easy on this incestuous sister-raping thief?"

  "We're cops," Grave Digger reminded him. "Not judges."

  Coffin Ed restrained himself. "The law was made to protect the innocent," he said.

  Grave Digger chuckled. "You heard the man," he said to Deke.

  Deke looked as though he might reply to that but thought better of it. "You're wasting your time on me," he said instead. "My Back-to-Africa movement was on the square and all I know about this shooting caper is what I saw in passing. I saw the man was dying and tried to save his life."

  Coffin Ed turned and walked into the shadow. He slapped the wall with the palm of his hand so hard it sounded like a shot. It was all Grave Digger could do to keep from breaking Deke's jaw. His neck swelled and veins sprouted like ropes along his temples.

  "Deke, don't try us," he said. His voice had turned light and cotton dry. "We'll take you out of here and pistol-whip you slowly to death — and take the charge."

  It showed on Deke's face he believed him. He didn't speak.

  "We know the set-up of the Back-to-Africa movement. We got the FBI records on Four-Four and Freddy. We got the Cook County Bertillon report on Barry and Elmer. We got your prison record too. We know you haven't got the money or you wouldn't still have been around. But you got the key."

  "Got what key?" Deke asked.

  "The key to the door that leads to the money."

  Deke shook his head. "I'm clean," he said.

  "Punk, listen," Grave Digger said. "You're going up any way. We got the proof."

  "Got it from where?" Deke asked.

  "We got it from Iris," Grave Digger said.

  "If she said the Back-to-Africa movement was crooked she's a lying bitch, and I'll tell her to her teeth."

  "All right," Grave Digger said.

  Three minutes later they had Iris in the room. Lieutenant Anderson and two white detectives had come with her.

  She stood in front of Deke and looked him dead in the eyes. "He killed Mabel Hill," she said.

  Deke's face distorted with rage and he tried to leap at her but the white detectives held him.

  "Mabel found out that the Back-to-Africa movement was crooked and she was going to the police. Her husband had been killed and she had lost her money and she was going to get him." She sounded as if it was good to her.

  "You lying whore!" Deke screamed.

  "When I stood up for him, she attacked me," Iris continued. "I was struggling to defend myself. He grabbed me from behind and put the pistol in my hand and shot her. When I tried to wrestle the pistol away from him, he knocked me down and took it."

  Deke looked sick. He knew it was a good story. He knew if she took it to court, dressed in black, her eyes downcast in sorrow, and spoke in a halting manner — with his record — she could make it stick. She didn't have any kind of a criminal record. He could see the chair in Sing Sing and himself sitting in it.

  He stared at her with resignation. "How much are they
paying you?" he asked.

  She ignored the question. "The forged documents which prove the Back-to-Africa movement is crooked are hidden in our apartment in the binding of a book called Sex and Race." She smiled sweetly at Deke. "Good-bye, big shit," she said and turned towards the door.

  The white detectives looked at one another, then looked at Deke. Anderson was embarrassed.

  "How does that feel?" Coffin Ed asked Deke in a grating voice.

  Grave Digger walked with Iris to the door. When he turned her over to the jailer he winked at her. She looked surprised for an instant, then winked back, and the jailer took her away.

  Deke had wilted. He didn't look hurt, or even frightened; he looked beat, like a condemned man waiting for the electric chair. All he needed was the priest.

  Anderson and the two white detectives left without looking at him again.

  When the three of them were again alone, Grave Digger said. "Give us the key and we'll strike off the murder."

  Deke looked up at him as though from a great distance. He looked as though he didn't care about anything any more. "Frig you," he said.

  "Then give us the eighty-seven grand and we'll drop the whole thing," Grave Digger persisted.

  "Frig you twice," Deke said.

  They turned him over to the jailer to be taken back to his cell. "I got a feeling we're overlooking something," Grave Digger said.

  "That is for sure," Coffin Ed agreed. "But what?"

  They were in Anderson's office, talking about Iris. As usual, Grave Digger sat with a ham perched on the edge of the desk and Coffin Ed was backed against the wall in the shadow.

  "She'll never get away with it," Lieutenant Anderson said.

  "Maybe not," Grave Digger conceded. "But she sure scared the hell out of him."

  "How much did it help?"

  Grave Digger looked chagrined.

  "None," Coffin Ed admitted ruefully. "She put it on too thick. We didn't expect her to accuse him of the murder."

  Grave Digger chuckled at that. "She didn't hold anything back. I thought for a moment she was going to accuse him of rape."