Chester Himes - The real cool killers

"And strong, honey."

Grave Digger smiled sourly.

"The man who was killed was a patron of yours," he said. "Name of Ulysses Galen."

"My God, Digger, I don't know the names of all the ofays who come into my place," Bucky said. "I just play for them and try to make them happy."

"I believe you," Grave Digger said. "Galen was seen about town with Ready. Does that stir your memory?"

"Ready?" Bucky exclaimed innocently. "He hardly ever comes in here. Who gave you that notion?"

"The hell he doesn't," Grave Digger said. "He panders out of here."

"You hear that!" Bucky appealed to the barman in a shrill horrified voice, then caught himself as the silence from the diners reached his sensitive ears. With hushed indignation he added, "This flatfoot comes in here and accuses me of harboring panderers."

"A little bit of that goes a long way, son," Grave Digger said in his flat voice.

"Oh, that man's an ogre, Bucky," the barman said. "You go back to your entertaining and I'll see what he wants." He switched over to the bar, put his hands on his hips and looked down at Grave Digger with a haughty air. "And just what can we do for you, you mean rude grumpy man?"

The white men at the bar laughed.

Bucky turned and started off.

Grave Digger caught him by the arm and pulled him back. "Don't make me get rough, son," he muttered.

"Don't you dare manhandle me," Bucky said in a low tense whisper, his whole chubby body quivering with indignation. "I don't have to take that from you. I'm covered."

The bartender backed away, shaking himself. "Don't let him hurt Bucky," he appealed to the white men in a frightened voice.

"Maybe I can help you," the white man with the blond crew cut said to Grave Digger. "You're a detective, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Grave Digger said, holding on to Bucky. "A white man was killed in Harlem tonight and I'm looking for the killer."

The white man's eyebrows went up an inch.

"Do you expect to find him here?"

"I'm following a lead, is all. The man has been seen with a pimp called Ready Belcher who hangs out here."

The white man's eyebrows subsided.

"Oh, Ready; I know him. But he's merely — "

Bucky cut him off: "You don't have to tell him anything; you're protected in here."

"Sure," the white man said. "That's what the officer is trying to do, protect us all."

"He's right," one of the evening-gowned colored women said. "If Ready has killed some trick he was steering to Reba's the chair's too good for him."

"Shut your mouth, woman," the barman whispered fiercely.

The muscles in Grave Digger's face began to jump as he let go of Bucky. He stood up with his heels hooked into the rungs of the barstool and leaned over the bar. He caught the barman by the front of his red silk shirt as he was trying to dance away. The shirt ripped down the seam with a ragged sound but enough held for him to jerk the barman close to the bar.

"You got too goddamned much to say, Tarbelle," he said in a thick cottony voice, and slapped the barman spinning across the circular enclosure with the palm of his open hand.

"He didn't have to do that," the first woman said.

Grave Digger turned on her and said thickly, "And you, little sister, you and me are going to see Reba." "Reba!" her companion replied. "Do I know anybody named Reba. Lord no!" Grave Digger stepped down from his high stool. "Cut that Aunt Jemima routine and get up off your ass," he said thickly, "or I'll take my pistol and break off your teeth." The two white men stared at him as though at a dangerous animal escaped from the zoo. "You mean that?" the woman said. "I mean it," he said. She scrunched out of the stool and said, "Gimme my coat, Jule." The chocolate dandy took a coat from the top of the jukebox behind them. "That's putting it on rather thick," the blond white man protested in a reasonable voice. "I'm just a cop," Grave Digger said thickly. "If you white people insist on coming up to Harlem where you force colored people to live in vice-and-crime-ridden slums, it's my job to see that you are safe." The white man turned bright red.

The sergeant knocked at the door. He was flanked by two uniformed cops and a corporal.

Another search party led by another sergeant was at the door across the hail.

Other cops were working all the corridors starting at the bottom and sealing off the area they'd covered.

"Come in," Granny called in a querulous voice. "The door ain't locked." She bit the stem of her corn-cob pipe with toothless gums.

The sergeant and his party entered the small kitchen. It was crowded.

At the sight of the very old woman working innocently at her darning, the sergeant started to remove his cap, then remembered he was on duty and kept it on.

"You don't lock your door, Grandma?" he observed.

Granny looked at the cops over the rims of her ancient spectacles and her old fingers went lax on the darning egg.

"Naw suh, Ah ain't got nuthin' for nobody to steal and ain't nobody want nuthin' else from an old 'oman like me."

The sergeant's beady blue eyes scanned the kitchen. "You keep this place mighty clean, Grandma," he remarked in surprise.

"Yes suh, it don't kill a body to keep clean and my old missy used to always say de cleaness is next to the goddess."

Her old milky eyes held a terrified question she couldn't ask and her thin old body began to tremble.

"You mean goodness," the sergeant said.

"Naw suh, Ah means goddess; Ah knows what she said."

"She means cleanliness is next to godliness," the corporal interposed.

"The professor," one of the cops said.

Granny pursed her lips. "Ah know what my missy said; goddess, she said."

"Were you in slavery?" the sergeant asked as though struck suddenly by the thought.

The others stared at her with sudden interest.

"Ah don't rightly know, suh. Ah 'spect so though."

"How old are you?"

Her lips moved soundlessly; she seemed to be trying to remember.

"She must be all of a hundred," the professor said.

She couldn't stop her body from trembling and slowly it got worse.

"What for you white 'licemen wants with me, suh?" she finally asked.

The sergeant noticed that she was trembling and said reassuringly, "We ain't after you, Grandma; we're looking for an escaped prisoner and some teenage gangsters."

"Gangsters!"

Her spectacles slipped down on her nose and her hands shook as though she had the palsy.

"They belong to a neighbourhood gang that calls itself Real Cool Moslems."

She went from terrified to scandalized. "We ain't no heathen in here, suh," she said indignantly. "We be Godfearing Christians."

The cops laughed.

"They're not real Moslems," the sergeant said. "They just call themselves that. One of them, named Sonny Pickens, is older than the rest. He killed a white man outside on the street."

The darning dropped unnoticed from Granny's nerveless fingers. The corncob pipe wobbled in her puckered mouth; the professor looked at it with morbid fascination.

"A white man! Merciful hebens!" she exclaimed in a quavering voice. "What's this wicked world coming to?"

"Nobody knows," the sergeant said, then changed his manner abruptly. "Well, let's get down to business, Grandma. 'What's your name?"

"Bowee, suh, but e'body calls me Granny."

"Bowee. How do you spell that, Grandma?"

"Ah don't rightly know, suh. Hit's just short for boll weevil. My old missy name me that. They say the boll weevil was mighty bad the year Ah was born."

"What about your husband, didn't he have a name?"

"Ah neber had no regular 'usban', suh. Just whosoever was thar."

"You got any children?"

"Jesus Christ, sarge," the professor said. "Her youngest child would be sixty years old."