The Heat's On

by Chester Himes

  She didn’t have a telephone. She paid for police protection and protected herself from other hazards and her business was strictly cash and carry. So she had to walk to the nearest taxi stand.

  Outside she opened the parasol, went around the house by the path through the weeds, and set out walking down the middle of the hot dusty road.

  Crouching like an ancient Iroquois, still carrying the loaded shotgun in his right hand, Uncle Saint skulked from corner to corner of the house, watching her. She kept straight on down the street in the direction of White Plains Road without looking back.

  Satisfied that she was not coming back, he returned to the kitchen and said to the rigid epileptic on the floor, “She’s gone.”

  Pinky jumped to his feet. “I got to get out of here,” he whined.

  “Go ahead. What’s stopping you?”

  “Looking like I am. The first cop sees me gonna stop me, and I is wanted anyway.”

  “Git your clothes off,” Uncle Saint said. “I’ll fix that.”

  He seemed possessed with an urgency to be alone.

  Sister Heavenly kept to the road until she knew she couldn’t be seen from the house, then she turned over to the next street and doubled back.

  The house nearest to hers on the same side of the street was in the next block. It was owned by an old Italian couple who lived alone. They were good friends of Sister Heavenly. The man ran a provision house and was away from home during the day.

  When Sister Heavenly called, his wife was in the kitchen, straining and bottling wine.

  Sister Heavenly asked permission to sit in the attic. She often did this. There was a side window in the attic which offered a clear view of her own house, and whenever she found it necessary to check up on Uncle Saint she sat there watching for an hour or two. The old couple had even provided her with a rocking-chair.

  Sister Heavenly climbed the stairs to the attic and, after opening the shutters, settled into her chair.

  It was hot enough in the attic to roast a goose, but that didn’t bother Sister Heavenly. She liked heat and she never perspired. She sat rocking gently back and forth, watching the front and back of her own house at the end of the adjoining block.

  An hour later Uncle Saint said to Pinky, “You is dry enough, put on some clothes and git.”

  Pinky didn’t have a change of clothes in the house and he was more than twice the size of Uncle Saint. The black pants and T-shirt he had taken off were bloodstained and filthy.

  “Where am I gonna git some clothes?” he asked.

  “Look in the souvenir trunk,” Uncle Saint said.

  The souvenir trunk sat beneath a small dormer window in the attic.

  “Take a chisel, it’s locked,” Uncle Saint added as Pinky started ascending the stairs.

  There wasn’t any chisel in the kitchen and Uncle Saint wouldn’t go to the garage to get one. Pinky couldn’t go because he was buck naked, so he took the poker for the stove.

  It was an old-fashioned steamer trunk with a domed lid and was bound with wooden hoops. Sunshine slanted on the dust-covered top and when Pinky began prying at the old rusty lock, dust motes filled the air like glittering confetti. All of the windows had been closed after the night’s performance to keep out the heat and now the sweaty odor of the dancers lingered in the blazing heat. Pinky began to sweat. Sweat drops splattered in the dust like drops of ink.

  “Hey, this stuff is coming off,” he called down to Uncle Saint in a panic.

  “That’s just the excess,” Uncle Saint reassured him. “The main part ain’t coming off.”

  With sudden haste, Pinky levered the poker and the lock flew apart. He raised the lid and looked into the trunk.

  The souvenir trunk was where Sister Heavenly kept various garments left by her former lovers when they had lammed. Pinky rummaged about, holding up pants and shirts and cotton drawers with back flaps. Everything was too small. Evidently Sister Heavenly hadn’t counted any giants amongst her lovers. But finally Pinky came across a pair of peg-top Palm Beach pants which must have belonged to a very tall man at least. He squeezed into a pair of knee-length cotton drawers and pulled the peg-top trousers over them. They fitted like women’s jodhpurs. He looked about until he found a red jersey silk shirt worn by some sharp cat in the early 1930s. It stretched enough for him to get it on. None of the shoes were possible, so he closed the trunk and went down to the kitchen and put on his same old blue canvas sneakers.

  “Why didn’t yer git a hat?” Uncle Saint said.

  Pink turned around and went back up the stairs and rummaged in the trunk for a hat. The only hat which fitted was a white straw hat with a wide floppy brim and a peaked crown like the hats worn by Mexican peons. It had a black chin strap to keep it on.

  “Look around asee if there’s some sunglasses,” Uncle Saint called.

  There was a shoe box of nothing but sunglasses but the only pair that fitted Pinky had white celluloid frames and plain blue glass lenses. He put them on.

  Uncle Saint surveyed his handiwork when Pinky stood before him.

  “Not even you own mother would recognize you,” he said proudly, but he called a warning as Pinky started off. “Keep out the sun or that stuff’ll turn purple.”

  Sister Heavenly’s eyes popped. She stopped rocking and leaned forward.

  From out of her own front yard came the blackest man she had ever seen, and Sister Heavenly had specialized in black men. This man was so black he had blue-and-purple tints to his skin like wet bituminous coal glinting in the sunshine. Not only was he the blackest, but he was the sportiest man she had ever seen. She hadn’t seen anyone dressed that sporty since minstrel shows went out.

  He was walking fast and there was something about him, especially down around the legs, which reminded her of one of her short-time lovers called Blackberry Slim, but his legs were thicker than Slim’s. And that red jersey silk shirt rising from those peg-top legs was identical with one that Dusty Canes used to wear. But that hat — that big white flopping hat with a chin strap, and those blue-tinted sunglasses with a white frame; she had never seen anyone wear a hat like that but Go-Go Gooseman.

  “My God!” she exclaimed aloud as she suddenly recognized the man. “That’s Pinky and he’s been in my souvenir trunk!”

  Her mind started working lightning fast.… Pinky in disguise. She had expected him to make a move but she hadn’t expected to get such a lucky break. Naturally he was headed for the cache.

  She jumped up so quickly she overturned the rocking chair. The old Italian woman tried to stop her in the kitchen to share a bottle of wine but she hurried past and went around the house. She stood behind a green lattice gate and watched Pinky loping past. He didn’t look in her direction.

  She folded up her parasol to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, and kept well in back of him.

  He went directly to the subway stop on White Plains Road and climbed the stairs to the waiting platform. Sister Heavenly was blowing and puffing by the time she reached the turnstile. She acted as though she hadn’t recognized Pinky and went down to the other end of the platform.

  Looking around he saw her and gave a start. There was no place for him to hide. His only chance was to brazen it out. Everyone was staring at him. Once her gaze wandered in his direction. He stared back at her from behind his blue sunglasses. She looked at him for a moment curiously, then turned as though she had not recognized him and watched the train approach.

  Two cars separated them. Both of them remained standing so they could peek around the doors when the train stopped and see if the other was getting off. But neither saw the other peeping.

  They rode like this down to Times Square. Pinky jumped off just as the doors were closing. Before Sister Heavenly saw him, the doors were closed. She saw him stop and turn and look directly at her as her coach passed.

  She got off at 34th Street and taxied back to Times Square, but he had disappeared. Suddenly she realized that he was trying to outsmart her. He had
ridden down to Times Square and had given her the slip on the chance that she might have recognized him. He figured he was throwing her off his tracks. But there was only one place he could have anything cached, and that was the apartment on Riverside Drive.

  She hailed a taxi and told the driver to step on it.

  The driver leaned over a little to peer at her through the rearview mirror. My God, she’s still trying, he thought. But all the time she’s already had, if she ain’t made it yet she’ll never make it now.

  Sister Heavenly had him stop in front of Riverside Church. She got out and paid him. He paused for a moment to watch her, making as though he was writing in his record sheet. He was curious. She had rushed him up here as though it were a matter of life and death, and all she wanted was to go to church.

  Some of these old ladies think all God has got to do is wait on them, he thought sourly and shifted into gear.

  Sister Heavenly waited until he had driven out of sight. Then she walked across the street into the park and selected a bench where she could watch the entrance to the apartment unobserved unless Pinky deliberately looked about for her.

  Whistles began to blow as she took her seat. She pulled out her locket-watch to see if it was correct. It read twelve noon on the dot.

  10

  It was twelve noon sharp when Coffin Ed turned his Plymouth sedan into the northbound stream of traffic on lower Broadway.

  “What do two cops do who’ve been kicked off the force?” he asked.

  “Try to get back on,” Grave Digger said in his thick, cotton-dry voice.

  He didn’t say another word all the way uptown; he sat burning in a dry, speechless rage.

  It was twelve-thirty when they checked into the Harlem precinct station to turn in their shields to Captain Brice.

  They stood for a moment on the steps of the precinct station, watching the colored people pass up and down the street, all citizens of Harlem who stepped out of the way to let the white cops by who had business in the station.

  The vertical rays of the sun beat down.

  “First thing to do is find Pinky,” Grave Digger said. “All we had on Jake is possession. If we get evidence he was peddling H too, that might give us a start.”

  “He’s got to talk,” Coffin Ed pointed out.

  “Talk! TALK! You think he ain’t going to talk! Much as you and me need a few kind words. Ain’t no mother-raper who ever knew Jake going to refuse to do a little talking.”

  Fifteen minues later they pulled up before the apartment on Riverside Drive.

  “Do you see what I see?” Coffin Ed remarked as they alighted.

  “There couldn’t be but one of ’em,” Grave Digger said.

  The dog was lying in front of the iron gate to the rear entrance. It lay on its side with its back to the gate and all four feet extended. It seemed to be asleep. The vertical rays of the midday sun beat down on its tawny hide.

  “It must be cooking in this heat,” Coffin Ed said.

  “Maybe she’s dead.”

  It still wore the heavy muzzle reinforced with iron and the brass-studded collar with the chain attached.

  They walked toward it by common accord.

  Its lambent eyes half opened as they approached and a low growl, like distant thunder, issued from its throat. But it didn’t move.

  Green flies were feeding from a dirty open wound in its head from which black blood oozed.

  “The African did a poor job,” Grave Digger observed.

  “Maybe he was in a hurry to get back.”

  Grave Digger reached down and took hold of the chain close to the collar. The rest was underneath the dog. He pulled gently and the dog climbed slowly to her feet in sections, like a camel getting up. She stood groggily, looking disinterested.

  “She’s about done in,” Coffin Ed said.

  “You’d be done in too if you were knocked in the head and thrown in the river.”

  The dog followed docilely as they went back to the front entrance and rang the superintendent’s bell. There was no answer. Coffin Ed stepped over to the mailboxes and pushed buttons indiscriminately.

  The latch clicked with a ratchetlike sound that went on and on.

  “Everyone’s expecting.”

  “Looks like it.”

  As they were descending the stairs to the basement, Coffin Ed said curiously, “What do we do if we run into trouble?”

  They were still in their shirtsleeves and they had left their revolvers at home that morning.

  “Pray,” Grave Digger said thickly, the rage building up in him again. “Don’t forget we’re subject to the charge of impersonating officers if we claim to be cops.”

  “How can I forget it,” Coffin Ed said bitterly.

  The first thing they noticed was that the trunk was gone.

  “Looks like we’re too late.”

  Grave Digger said nothing.

  There was no reply to the janitor’s bell. Grave Digger looked at the Yale lock above the old-fashioned mortise lock. He passed the dog’s chain to Coffin Ed to hold and took a Boy Scout’s knife from his pants pocket.

  “Let’s just hope the night lock ain’t on,” he said, opening the screwdriver blade.

  “Let’s just hope we don’t get caught, you mean,” Coffin Ed amended, turning to watch all the entrances.

  Grave Digger forced the blade between the doorjamb and the lock, slowly forced back the bolt and pushed open the door.

  Both of them grunted from shock.

  The body of the African was lying in a grotesque position in the center of the bare linoleum floor with its throat cut from ear to ear. The wound had stopped bleeding and the surrounding blood had coagulated, giving the impression of a purple-lipped monster’s mouth.

  Blood was everywhere, over the furniture, the floor, the African’s white turban and crumpled robe.

  For a moment there was only the sound of their labored breathing and the buzzing of an electric fan somewhere out of sight.

  Then Coffin Ed reached behind him, knocking the dog aside, and closed the door. The sound of the clicking of the lock released them from their trance of shock.

  “Whoever did that wasn’t joking,” Grave Digger said soberly, the anger drained from him.

  “As many as I’ve seen, I always get a shock,” Coffin Ed confessed.

  “Me too. This mother-raping senseless violence!”

  “Yeah, but what you gonna do?” Coffin Ed said, thinking about themselves.

  “Hell, meet it is all.”

  The dog inched forward unnoticed and suddenly Coffin Ed looked down and saw it sniff at the cut throat and lick the blood.

  “Get back, Goddammit!” he shouted, snatching up the chain.

  The dog backed up and cringed.

  Finally they got around to noticing that the room was in a shambles. Rugs were scattered; drawers were emptied, the contents strewn about the floor; the stuffed birds and animals had been gutted, the statuettes smashed, the overstuffed furniture slashed and the packing ripped apart; the broken-down TV sets and the radio had been pried open, the housing of the organ bashed in.

  Without commenting, Coffin Ed looped the handle of the dog chain over the doorknob. Then he and Grave Digger poked into the other rooms, taking care not to step into the blood. Doors led from the parlor into the kitchen and one bedroom, beyond which was a bathroom. There was the same disorder in all. They went back and stared at the body of the African.

  The macabre hideousness of the bloody corpse was accentuated by the buzzing of the fan. Grave Digger bent over and sent his gaze along the floor, underneath the blood stained shattered furniture, searching for it. The fan lay overturned beneath the dining table, half hidden by a broken television screen. He located the wall socket and jerked out the plug.

  Silence came down. It was the dinner hour and the basement was deserted.

  They could almost hear their thoughts moving around.

  “If what the janitor’s wife said about Pinky is true, h
e might have cut the African’s throat.” Coffin Ed spoke his thoughts aloud.

  “I don’t figure him for this,” Grave Digger said. “What would he be looking for?”

  “Search me. What about her? Cat-eyed women are known for cutting throats.”

  “And search her own house?” Grave Digger said.

  “Who knows? All this heat is affecting people’s minds. Maybe she thought her husband had something hidden here.”

  “Why would she kill the African? It looked to me like they were cooking with the same gas. It was obvious he was laying her.”

  “I don’t dig this at all,” Coffin Ed confessed. “Somebody wanted something bad, but they didn’t find it.”

  “That’s obvious. If they had found it, there would be at least one small place that wasn’t torn up, some indication where the search had stopped.”

  “But what the hell could they be looking for important enough to murder? What could one old colored janitor have that valuable?”

  Grave Digger began considering the sex angle. “You think he’s that old? Old enough to kill the African out of jealousy? Or you think he found out they were crossing him in some way?”

  “I ain’t figuring him for doing it. But it figures he was old. And old men don’t generally take chances.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Anyway, there’re a hell of a lot of questions here need answering,” Coffin Ed said.

  With unspoken accord, they approached the body, picking their way through the blood. Coffin Ed grimaced and his face began to twitch.

  Grave Digger lifted one of the African’s arms, holding the wrist between his thumb and first finger, then let it drop. The body was still limp even though the blood had coagulated.

  “How do you account for that?” Coffin Ed asked.

  “Maybe it’s the heat. In weather this hot it might take some time for rigor mortis to set in.”

  “It might be that he ain’t been dead long too.”

  They looked at one another with the same sudden thought. A chill seemed to come into the room.

  “You think he came in and interrupted the search? And that’s why he got killed?”