Chester Himes - The Heat's on

Then he said in a voice so tight it was barely audible, “You think because I’m a cop I’ve got a price. But you’re making a mistake. You’ve got only one thing I want. The truth. You’re going to give me that. Or I’m going to fix you so that no man will ever want anything else you got to give. And I ain’t playing.”

“They’ll kill me.”

“They’re going to kill you anyway if I don’t kill them first.”

Twenty-three minutes later he had her story. He had no way of knowing whether it was true. Only time would tell.

He looked at his watch. It read 11:57.

He untied her and told her to get up and dress.

He figured he knew as much as he was ever going to know. Before the payoff, anyway. If what she said was true, he had cased it right himself. If it wasn’t true, they were all going down together.

While she was dressing he listened to the sound of a recording coming from the lounge. Other recordings had been playing before, but he hadn’t heard them.

It was a saxophone solo by Lester Young. He didn’t recognize the tune, but it had the “Pres” treatment. His stomach tightened. It was like listening to someone laughing their way toward death. It was laughter dripping wet with tears. Colored people’s laughter.

His thoughts took him back to the late 1930s — the “depression” years. When he and Digger had attended a P.S. on 112th Street. They’d heard Lester playing with the Count Basie group at the Apollo, swapping fours and eights with Herschel Evans on their tenor horns.

Pres! He was the greatest, he thought.

“I’m ready,” Ginny said.

“Open the door and call Madame Cushy,” he said.

When Madame Cushy entered the room, he looked her over carefully. Satisfied she was unarmed, he said to Ginny, “You go out first, I’ll follow you,” and then to Wop, “You come behind me and if you see anybody with a gun, just scream.”

Madame Cushy’s lips curled. “If we were going to hurt you, you’d be dead by now. You won’t be hurt around here.”

Silently he sheathed the knife and stuck Grave Digger’s pistol back inside his waistband. He looked at her again. “Digger’s dead,” he said, then added, “And you’re living.”

He motioned with his hand and they left in single file.

Madame Cushy held the door open. When Coffin Ed passed her, she said quietly, “I won’t forget you.”

He didn’t answer.

He smelled the stink of terror coming from their bodies as they descended in the elevator. He thought bitterly, They’re all scared as hell when it’s their own lives they’re playing around with.

Before crossing the sidewalk to his car, he stood for a moment in the doorway, casing the street, his gun in his hand. He didn’t expect any gunplay. If what she had said was true, the gunmen would not be in sight. It was just a precaution. He had learned the hard way not to believe anybody entirely when it’s your own life at stake.

He didn’t see anyone or anything that looked suspicious.

They walked to the car in the same position as they had left the flat. He got into the front seat from the inside and slid over. The other two came in after him, Ginny in the middle and Wop on the outside.

I wish Digger was here, he thought without thinking.

He didn’t think that thought anymore.

It took only seven minutes to get there and he didn’t hurry. The hurry was off.

He made a U-turn on St Nicholas Avenue, went down the incline to 125th Street, and turned west toward the Hudson River.

For a couple of blocks more, 125th Street was still in the colored section: jukeboxes blared from the neon-lighted bars, loudmouthed people milled up and down the sidewalks, shrill-voiced pansies crowded in front of the Down Beat where the dusky-skinned female impersonators held forth, weedheads jabbered and gesticulated in front of Pop’s Billiards Parlor. And then the big new housing project loomed dark and silent.

He turned south on Broadway, west again on 124th Street, and climbed the steep hill of Clermont Avenue behind the high stone wall of International House. Another turn toward the river and he came out into the quiet confines of Riverside Drive beside Riverside Church.

He had kept an eye on the rearview mirror but had seen no indications that he was being followed.

So far so good, he thought.

He parked directly in front of the apartment house and doused his lights; but he sat for a moment casing the street before alighting. Everything looked normal. Nothing was moving for the moment but the cool breeze coming up from the river. Cars parked for the night lined the inside curb despite a city ordinance forbidding it. Nevertheless he had his pistol in his hand when he got out on the street side and walked around the front of the car.

Wop was already getting out on his side and Ginny followed. They crossed the sidewalk in single file and she unlocked the apartment house door with her own key.

Coffin Ed let them both precede him, then said, “Wait here.”

He went down the hall to the elevator door and brought the elevator to the ground floor. He opened the door and looked inside of it, then closed the door to the elevator itself and stood for a moment studying the outside door to the elevator shaft. There was nothing to be seen. The floor of the elevator was flush with the floor of the hall and the top of the elevator door was flush with the top of the door to the shaft.

He came back and said, “All right, let’s go down,” leading the way.

They came out in the basement corridor and found the night lights turned on as was customary. Coffin Ed stopped them for a moment and made them stand still while he listened. He could see the doors to the janitor’s suite, the toolroom, the staircase, the elevator and the laundry, and the one at the back which opened onto the back court. There was not a sound to be heard, not even from outside. His gaze lit for a moment on a short ladder hanging from the inside wall beneath a fire extinguisher. It must have been there before but he hadn’t noticed it.

At the end of the corridor, toward the janitor’s door, the cheap worn luggage, trunks and household furnishings of the new janitor were stacked against the wall. But the janitor hadn’t moved in. There was a police seal on the janitor’s door.

Coffin Ed opened his Boy Scout knife and broke the seal. Ginny unlocked the door, stepped inside and switched on the light.

She drew back and cried out, “God in heaven, what happened?”

It looked the same as when Coffin Ed had seen it last, except the corpse of the African had been removed.

“Your friend got his throat cut,” he said.

She stared in horror at the patches and clots of black dried blood and began trembling violently. Wop’s teeth began to chatter again.

“What the hell you so horrified about? It ain’t your blood,” Coffin Ed said bitterly, including them both.

Ginny began turning green. He didn’t want her sick so he said quickly, “Just get me the keys.”

She had to pass through the room to the kitchen. She skirted the edge, bracing herself with her hand against the wall, as though traversing the deck of a ship in a storm.

When she returned with the ring of house keys, Coffin Ed said to Wop, “You stay here.”

Wop looked at the dried blood and the wreckage and turned a shade of light gray that seemed impossible for a person with black skin.

“Do I got to?” he stammered.

“Either that or go home.”

He stayed.

Coffin Ed pushed Ginny into the corridor, closed and locked the door on Wop, then went and bolted the back door that opened onto the rear court. Ginny stood beside the elevator door as though she were afraid to move.

“Stay put,” Coffin Ed directed when he returned and got into the elevator.