Chester Himes - The Heat's on

“Listen to me, snake-eyes,” he grated in a constricted voice. “Walk back to the car ahead of me. And if you run this time I’m going to shoot you in the spine.”

The boy walked back in that high-stepping, cloud-treading gait that marijuana gives. Blood was dripping from his skinned elbows. Silence greeted them along the way.

They crossed Eighth Avenue and stopped beside the car. The dog was gone.

“Who got it?” Coffin Ed asked in a voice that seemed to come from a dried-up throat.

The youth glanced at the tic in Coffin Ed’s face and said, “Sister Heavenly.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t Pinky?”

“Nossuh, ’twere Sister Heavenly.”

“All right, fine, you know the family. Go around and get inside on the front seat and we’re going away where we won’t be disturbed and talk.”

The youth started to obey but Coffin Ed reached out again and took him by the arm. “You want to talk, don’t you, sonny?”

The youth glanced again at the tic in Coffin Ed’s face and choked, “Yessuh.”

“It’s here,” Sister Heavenly told her red-eyed chauffeur.

He pulled the Mercury to the curb beside a red-painted fireplug in front of the Harlem Hospital, cut the motor and reached behind his car for the marijuana butt. There were spaces to park in front and behind.

“Pull away from this fireplug, you lunatic,” Sister Heavenly said. “You want the cops to nab you?”

“Fireplug?” He turned his head and stared. “I didn’t seen it.”

Nonchalantly he shifted into gear and pulled up a space.

“Watch my dog and don’t let nobody steal it,” Sister Heavenly said and got out.

She didn’t hear him mutter “Who’d want it?” She went across the street to a glass-fronted, white-trimmed surgical supply store.

They were getting ready to close but she told the white clerk it was urgent.

She ordered a large package of absorbent cotton, an eight-ounce bottle of chloroform, a scalpel, elbow-length rubber gloves, a full-length rubber apron, a rubber sheet, and a large enamel basin.

“You forgot the forceps,” the clerk said.

“I don’t need any forceps,” she said.

The clerk looked her up and down. She was still carrying her parasol along with her beaded bag, but it was closed. He wanted to be sure to remember her in case of an investigation.

“You ought to leave these things to the hospitals,” he said seriously. “There’re hospitals in the city where they’ll do it if it’s necessary.”

He thought she was planning to perform an abortion. She dug him.

“It’s my daughter,” she said. “I’ll do it myself.”

He shrugged and wrapped up the bundle. She paid him and left.

When she returned to the Mercury, the dog was whining, either from thirst or hunger. She got in and put the bundle on the floor and stroked the bitch’s head. “It won’t be long now,” she said gently.

She had her chauffeur drive her to a fleabag hotel on 125th Street, a block distant from the 125th Street railroad station, and wait for her while she went inside.

A glass-paneled door hanging askew permitted a hazardous entry into a long, narrow hall with a worn-out linoleum floor and peeling wallpaper, smelling of male urine, whore stink, stale vomit and the cheapest of perfume. What was left on the wallpaper was decorated with graffiti that would have embarrassed the peddlers of obscene pictures in Montmartre.

At the back, underneath the staircase, was a scarred wooden counter barricading a padded desk chair behind which hung a letter box holding identical dime store skeleton keys. A hotel bell stood on the counter; above it on the wall was a pushbutton with the legend NIGHT BELL.

No one was in sight.

Sister Heavenly slapped her gloved palm on the hotel bell. No sound came forth. She picked it up and looked underneath. The clapper was missing. She leaned her thumb on the night bell. Nothing happened. She took the handle of her parasol and banged the side of the hotel bell. It sounded like a fire truck.

A long time later a man emerged from a half-door in the dark recess behind the desk chair. He was a middle-aged brownskin man with a face full of boils, a head full of tetter, and glazed brown eyes. He had a thick, fat, powerful-looking torso; his collarless shirt was open showing a chest covered with thick nappy hair.

He limped forward, his heavy body moving sluggishly, and put his hands on the counter.

“What can I do for you, madame?” he said in the voice of a baritone singer. His diction was good and his enunciation distinct.

Sister Heavenly was past being surprised by anything.

“I want a quiet room with a safe lock,” she said.

“All of our rooms are quiet,” he said. “And you are as safe here as in the lap of Jesus.”

“You have a vacancy?”

“Yes, madame, we have vacancies all the time.”

“I’ll bet you do,” she said. “Just a minute while I go get my luggage.”

She went out and paid off her chauffeur and took the dog by the leash and her bundle by the string. When she returned, the proprietor was waiting at the foot of the stairs.

He had an atrophied leg, evidently from polio, and he looked like a spider climbing the stairs. Sister Heavenly followed patiently behind him.

From behind a door on the second floor came loud voices raised in argument: “Who you talking to, you blue-gum nigger!”

“You better shut up, you piss-colored whore.…”

From behind another came the sound of pots and pans banging around and the smell of boiling ham hocks and cabbage.

From a third the sound of bodies crashing against furniture, objects falling to the floor, feet scuffling, panting grunts and a woman’s voice shrilling, “Just wait ’til I get loose-”

The proprietor limped slowly ahead without giving the slightest notice as though he were stone-deaf.

They ascended slowly to the third floor and he opened a door with one of the ten-cent skeleton keys and said, “Here you are, madame, the quietest room in the house.”

A window looked down on 125th Street. It was the rush hour. The roar of the traffic poured in. Directly below was a White Rose bar. A jukebox was blasting and the loud strident voice of Screaming Jay Hawkins was raised in song. From the room next door came the blaring of a radio tuned up so loud the sound was frayed.

The room contained a single bed, straight-backed chair, chest of drawers, six eight-penny nails driven into a board on the inner wall to serve as a clothes closet, a chamber pot, and a washbasin with two taps.

Sister Heavenly went across the room and tried the taps. The cold water ran but the hot water tap was dry.

“Who wants hot water in this weather?” the proprietor said, carefully touching his face with a dirty handkerchief.

“I’ll take it,” Sister Heavenly said, tossing her bundle onto the bed.

“That will be three dollars, please,” the proprietor said.

She gave him three dollars in small change.

He thanked her and snapped the inside bolt back and forth suggestively and limped off.

She closed the door, locked it on the inside, and snapped the bolt. Then she laid her bag and parasol on the bed beside the bundle, removed her hat and wig, sat on the side of the bed and took off her shoes and stockings. When she stood up she was baldheaded and barefooted.

The dog began to whine again.

“In just a moment, honey,” she said.

She took out her pipe, loaded it with the finely ground stems of marijuana and lit it with her gold-plated lighter. The dog laid its head in her lap and she stroked it gently as she sucked the smoke deep into her lungs.

Someone knocked on the door and a slick, ingratiating voice said, “Hey Jack, I hears you, man. Leave me blow a little with you. This is old Playboy.”