Chester Himes - The real cool killers

"Naw suh, leastwise they don't shoot."

"More than likely they'll throw acid or hot lye," Grave Digger said.

"Naw, suh, not on no white gennelman."

"So what else is there left but a woman," Grave Digger said.

"Naw suh," Big Smiley contradicted flatly. "You know better'n that, Chief. A colored woman don't consider diddling with a white man as being unfaithful. They don't consider it no more than just working in service, only they is getting better paid and the work is less straining. 'Sides which, the hours is shorter. And they old men don't neither. Both she and her old man figger it's like finding money in the street. And I don't mean no cruisers neither; I means church people and Christians and all the rest."

"How old are you, Smiley?" Grave Digger asked.

"I be forty-nine come December seventh."

"You're talking about old times, son. These young colored men don't go in for that slavery-time deal anymore."

"Shucks, Chief, you just kidding. This is old Smiley. I got dirt on these women in Harlem ain't never been plowed. Shucks, you and me both can put our finger on high society colored ladies here who got their whole rep just by going with some big important white man. And their old men is cashing in on it, too; makes them important, too, to have their old ladies going with some big-shot gray. Shucks, even a hard-working nigger wouldn't shoot a white man if he come home and found him in bed with his old lady with his pants down. He might whup his old lady just to show her who was boss, after he done took the money 'way from her, but he wouldn't sure 'nough hurt her like he'd do if he caught her screwing some other nigger."

"I wouldn't bet on it," Grave Digger said.

"Have it your own way, Chief, but I still think you're barking up the wrong tree. Lissen, the only way I figger a colored man in Harlem gonna kill a white man is in a fight. He'll draw his shiv if he getting his ass whupped and maybe stab him to death. But I'll bet my life ain't no nigger up here gonna shoot down no white man in cold blood — no important white gennelman like him."

"Would the killer have to know he was important?"

"He'd know it," Big Smiley said positively.

"You knew him?" Grave Digger said.

"Naw suh, not to say knew him. He come in here two, three times before but I didn't know his name."

"You expect me to believe he came in here two or three times and you didn't find out who he was?"

"I didn't mean exactly I didn't know his name," Big Smiley hemmed. "But I'se telling you, Chief, ain't no leads 'round here, that's for sure."

"You're going to have to tell me more than that, son," Grave Digger said in a flat, toneless voice.

Big Smiley looked at him; then suddenly he leaned across the bar and said in a low voice, "Try at Bucky's, Chief."

"Why Bucky's?"

"I seen him come in here once with a pimp what hangs 'round in Bucky's."

"What's his name?"

"I don't recollect his name, Chief. They driv up in his car and just stopped for a minute like they was looking for somebody and went out and drive away."

"Don't play with me," Grave Digger said with a sudden show of anger. "This ain't the movies; this is real. A white man has been killed in Harlem and Harlem is my beat. I'll take you down to the station and turn a dozen white cops loose on you and they'll work you over until the black comes off."

"Name's Ready Belcher, Chief, but I don't want nobody to know I told you," Big Smiley said in a whisper. "I don't want no trouble with that starker."

"Ready," Grave Digger said and got down from his stool.

He didn't know much about Ready; just that he operated up-town on the swank side of Harlem, above 145th Street in Washington Heights.

He drove up to the 154th Street precinct station at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and asked for his friend, Bill Cresus. Bill was a colored detective on the vice squad. No one knew where Bill was at the time. He left word for Bill to contact him at Bucky's if he called within the hour. Then he got into his car and coasted down the sharp incline to St. Nicholas Avenue and turned south down the lesser incline past 149th Street.

Outwardly it was a quiet neighbourhood of private houses and five- and six-story apartment buildings flanking the wide black-paved street. But the houses had been split up into bed-sized one-room kitchenettes, renting for $25 weekly, at the disposal of frantic couples who wished to shack up for a season. And behind the respectable-looking facades of the apartment buildings were the plush flesh cribs and poppy pads and circus tents of Harlem.

The excitement of the dragnet hadn't reached this far and the street was comparatively empty.

He coasted to a stop before a sedate basement entrance. Four steps below street level was a black door with a shiny brass knocker in the shape of three musical notes. Above it red neon lights spelled out the word BUCKY'S.

It felt strange to be alone. The last time had been when Coffin Ed was in the hospital after the acid throwing. The memory of it made his head tight with anger and it took a special effort to keep his temper under wraps.

He pushed and the door opened.

People sat at white-clothed tables beneath pink-shaded wall lights in a long narrow room, eating fried chicken daintily with their fingers. There was a white party of six, several colored couples, and two colored men with white women. They looked well-dressed and reasonably clean.

The walls behind them were covered with innumerable small pink-stained pencil portraits of all the great and the near-great who had ever lived in Harlem. Musicians led nine to one.

The hat-check girl stationed in a cubicle beside the entrance stuck out her hand with a supercilious look.

Grave Digger kept his hat on and strode down the narrow aisle between the tables.

A chubby pianist with shining black skin and a golden smile who was dressed in a tan tweed sport jacket and white silk sport shirt open at the throat sat at a baby grand piano wedged between the last table and the circular bar. Soft white light spilled on his partly bald head while he played nocturnes with a bedroom touch.

He gave Grave Digger an apprehensive look, got up and followed him to the semi-darkness of the bar.

"I hope you're not on business, Digger. I pay to keep this place off-limits for cops," he said in a fluttery voice.

Grave Digger's gaze circled the bar. Its high stools were inhabited by a varied crew: a big dark-haired white man, two slim young colored men, a short heavy-set white man with blond crew-cut hair, two dark women dressed in white silk evening gowns, a chocolate dandy in a box-backed double-breasted tuxedo sporting a shoestring dubonet bow. A high-yellow waitress waited nearby with a serving tray. Another tall, slim ebony young man presided over the bar.

"I'm just looking around, Bucky," Grave Digger said. "Just looking for a break."

"Many folks have found a break in here," Bucky said suggestively.

"I don't doubt it."

"But that's not the kind of break you're looking for."

"I'm looking for a break on a case. An important white man was shot to death over on Lenox Avenue a short time ago."

Bucky gestured with lotioned hands. His manicured nails flashed in the dim light. "What has that to do with us here? Nobody ever gets hurt in here. Everything is smooth and quiet. You can see for yourself. Genteel people dining in leisure. Fine food. Soft music. Low lights and laughter. Doesn't look like business for the police in this respectable atmosphere."

In the pause that followed, one of the marcelled ebonies was heard saying in a lilting voice, "I positively did not even look at her man, and she upped and knocked me over the head with a whisky bottle."

"These black bitches are so violent," his companion said.