Chester Himes - The real cool killers

The bodies had been taken to the morgue. All that remained were chalk outlines on the pavement where they had lain.

The street had been cleared of private cars. Police tow trucks had carried away those that had been abandoned in the middle of the street. Most of the patrol cars had returned to duty; those remaining blocked the area.

The chief of police's car occupied the center of the stage. It was parked in the middle of the intersection of 127th Street and Lenox Avenue.

To one side of it, the chief, Lieutenant Anderson, the lieutenant from homicide and the precinct sergeant who'd led one of the search parties were grouped about the boy called Bones.

The lieutenant from homicide had a zip gun in his hand.

"All right then, it isn't yours," he said to Bones in a voice of tried patience. "Whose is it then? Who were you hiding it for?"

Bones stole a glance at the lieutenant's face and his gaze dropped quickly to the street. It crawled over the four pairs of big black copper's boots. They looked like the Sixth Fleet at anchor. He didn't answer.

He was a slim black boy of medium height with girlish features and short hair almost straight at the roots and parted on one side. He wore a natty topcoat over his sweat shirt and tight-fitting black pants above shiny tan pointedtoed shoes.

An elderly man, a head taller, with a face grizzled from hard outdoor work, stood beside him. Kinky hair grew like burdock weeds on his shiny black dome, and worried brown eyes looked down at Bones from behind steel-rimmed spectacles.

"Go 'head, tell 'em, so, don't be no fool," he said; then he looked up and saw Grave Digger approaching with his prisoners. "Here comes Digger Jones," he said. "You can tell him, cain't you?"

Everybody looked about.

Grave Digger held Good Booty by the arm and Big Smiley and Ready Belcher, handcuffed together, were walking in front of him.

He looked at Anderson and said, "I closed up the Dew Drop Inn. The manager and some juvenile delinquents are being held by the officers on duty. You'd better send a wagon up there."

Anderson whistled for a patrol car team and gave them the order.

"What did you find out on Galen?" the chief asked.

"I found out he was a pervert," Grave Digger said.

"It figures," the homicide lieutenant said.

The chief turned red. "I don't give a goddamn what he was," he said. "Have you found out who killed him?"

"No, right now I'm still guessing at it," Grave Digger said.

"Well, guess fast then. I'm getting goddamned tired of standing up here watching this comedy of errors."

"I'll give you a quick fill-in and let you guess too," Grave Digger said.

"Well, make it short and sweet and I damn sure ain't going to guess," the chief said.

"Listen, Digger," the colored civilian interposed. "You and me is both city workers. Tell 'em my boy ain't done no harm."

"He's broken the Sullivan law concerning concealed weapons by having this gun in his possession," the homicide lieutenant said.

"That little thing," Bones's father said scornfully. "I don't b'lieve that'll even shoot."

"Get these people away from here and let Jones report," the chief said testily.

"Well, do something with them, Sergeant," Lieutenant Anderson said.

"Come on, both of you," the sergeant said, taking the man by the arm.

"Digger — " the man appealed.

"It'll keep," Grave Digger said harshly. "Your boy belonged to the Moslem gang."

"Naw-naw, Digger-"

"Do I have to slug you," the sergeant said.

The man allowed himself to be taken along with his son across the Street.

The sergeant turned them over to a corporal and hurried back. Before he'd gone three steps the corporal was summoning two cops to take charge of them.

"What kind of city work does he do?" the chief asked.

"He's in the sanitation department," the sergeant said. "He's a garbage collector."

"All right, get on Jones," the chief ordered.

"Galen picked up colored school girls, teenagers, and took them to a crib on 145th Street," Grave Digger said in a flat toneless voice.

"Did you close it?" the Chief asked.

"It'll keep; I'm looking for a murderer now," Grave Digger said. Taking the miniature bull whip from his pocket, he went on, "He whipped them with this."

The chief reached out silently and took it from his hand.

"Have you got a list of the girls, Jones?" he asked.

"What for?"

"There might be a connection."

"I'm coming to that-"

"Well, get to it then."

"The landprop, a woman named Reba — used to call herself Sheba — the one who testified against Captain Murphy-"

"Ah, that one," the chief said softly. "She won't slip out of this."

"She'll take somebody with her," Grave Digger warned. "She's covered and Galen was, too."

The chief looked at Lieutenant Anderson reflectively.

The silence ran on until the sergeant blurted, "That's not in this precinct."

Anderson looked at the sergeant. "No one's charging you with it."

"Get on, Jones," the chief said.

"Reba got scared of the deal and barred him. Her story will be that she barred him when she found out what he was doing. But that's neither here nor there. After she barred him Galen started meeting them in the Dew Drop Inn. He arranged with the bartender so he could whip them in the cellar."

Everyone except Grave Digger seemed embarrassed.

"He ran into a girl named Sissie," Grave Digger said. "How doesn't matter at the moment. She's the girl friend of a boy called Sheik, who is the leader of the Real Cool Moslems."

Sudden tension took hold of the group.

"Sheik sold Sissie to him. Then Galen wanted Sissie's girl friend Sugartit. Sheik couldn't get Sugartit, but Galen kept looking for her in the neighbourhood. I have the bartender here and a two-bit pimp who has a girl at Reba's. He steered for Galen. I got this much from them."

The officers stared appraisingly at the two handcuffed prisoners.

"If they know that much, they know who killed him," the chief said.

"It's going to be their asses if they do," Grave Digger said. "But I think they're leveling. The way I figure it, the whole thing hinges on Sugartit. I think he was killed because of her."

"By who?"

"That's the jackpot question."

The chief looked at Good Booty. "Is this girl Sugarrit?"

The others stared at her, too.

"No, she's another one."

"Who is Sugartit then?"

"I haven't found out yet. This girl knows but she doesn't want to tell."

"Make her tell."

"How?"

The chief appeared to be embarrassed by the question. "Well, what the hell do you want with her if you can't make her talk?" he growled.

"I think she'll talk when we get close enough. The Moslem gang hangs out somewhere near here. The bartender here thinks it might be in the flat of a boy who has a pigeon loft."

"I know where that is!" the sergeant exclaimed. "I searched there."

Everyone, including the prisoners, stared at him. His face reddened. "Now I remember," he said. "There were several boys in the flat. The boy who kept pigeons, Caleb Bowee is his name, lives there with his Grandma; and two of the others roomed there."

"Why the hell didn't you bring them in?" the chief asked.

"I didn't find anything on them to connect them with the Moslem gang or the escaped prisoner," the sergeant said, defending himself. "The boy with the pigeons is a halfwit — he's harmless, and I'm sure the grandma wouldn't put up with a gang in there."

"How in the hell do you know he's harmless?" the chief stormed. "Half the murderers in Sing-Sing look like you and me."

The homicide lieutenant and Anderson exchanged smiles.

"They had two girls with them and-" the sergeant began to explain but the chief wouldn't let him.