Chester Himes - The crazy kill

"No, he was stabbed while he was lying there. And from the condition of the bread he knew absolutely that some one or some thing had already lain in it. Perhaps he had even seen Reverend Short fall from the window. Now I want to ask you just one simple question. Why would he lie there of his own free will, let someone lean over him with a knife and stab him to death without his even putting up any kind of defense?"

"Nobody expects to be stabbed to death by a friend they think is just playing," she said.

All three detectives tensed imperceptibly.

"You think a friend did it?"

She shrugged, gesturing slightly with her hands. "Don't you?"

Brody took the knife out of the drawer. She looked at it indifferently, as though she'd seen a lot of knives.

"Is this it?"

"It looks like it."

"Have you ever seen it before?"

"Not that I know of."

"You'd know of it if you'd seen it?"

"Everybody in Harlem carries a knife. Do you think I know everybody's knife by sight?"

"Everybody in Harlem don't carry this kind of knife," Brody said. "This is a hand-tooled, imported English knife with a blade of Sheffield steel. The only place we've found so far where it can be bought in New York City is at Abercrombie and Fitch's, downtown on Madison Avenue. It costs twenty bucks. Can you imagine a Harlem punk going downtown and paying twenty bucks for an imported hunter's knife, then leaving it sticking in his victim?"

Her face turned a strange shade of dirty yellow, and her dark brown eyes looked haunted.

"Why not? It's a free country," she whispered. "So they say."

"You're free to go now," Brody said.

No one moved as she got up and went across the floor, in the stiff, blind manner of a sleepwalker, and left the room.

Brody fumbled in his coat pockets for his pipe and plastic tobacco pouch. He took his time stuffing the battered brier pipe, then struck a kitchen match on the edge of the desk and got his pipe going.

"Who cut her throat?" he asked through a cloud of smoke, holding the pipe in his teeth.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed avoided each other's gazes, and both appeared strangely embarrassed.

"Johnny," Grave Digger said finally.

Brody froze, but relaxed so quickly it was scarcely perceptible.

"Did she charge him?"

"No. It went as an accident."

The police reporter stopped fiddling with his notes and stared.

"How the hell can you get your throat cut accidentally?" Brody asked.

"She said he didn't intend to do it-that he was just playing."

"Playing kind of rough," the police reporter commented.

"Why?" Brody asked. "Why did he do it?"

"She hung on too long," Grave Digger said. "He wanted Dulcy and she wouldn't let go."

"And she still hangs on to him."

"Why not? He cut her throat, and now she's got him for life."

"It's a funny way to keep a man, is all I can say."

"Maybe. But don't forget this is Harlem. Folks here are happy just to be alive."

They called Chink next.

He said he'd started the night with a little friendly stud poker session in his room. It had broke up at one-thirty and he'd arrived at the wake at two A.M. He had left the wake at five minutes to four to keep a tete-a-tete with Doll Baby in her kitchenette apartment in the building next door.

"Did you look at your watch when you left?" Brody asked.

"No, when I went down in the elevator."

"Exactly where was Reverend Short when you left?"

"Reverend Short? Hell, I didn't pay no attention." He paused briefly, as though trying to remember, and said, "I think he was standing beside the coffin, but I can't be sure."

"What was happening outside when you got down to the street?"

"Nothing. A colored cop was standing there guarding the A amp;P store groceries on the sidewalk. He might remember seeing me."

"Was there anyone with him."

"No, not unless it was a ghost."

"All right, son, let's have the facts without the comedy," Brody said with irritation.

Chink said he'd waited for Doll Baby in the front hall and they had walked up to her apartment on the secondfloor rear. But she hadn't been in the mood, so he'd gone out to pick up a few sticks of marijuana weed from a friend who lived down the street.

"Where?" Brody asked.

"Make a guess," Chink said defiantly.

Brody let it pass.

"Were there any people on the street that time?" he asked.

"Just as I stepped out on the sidewalk Dulcy Perry came from next door, and we saw Val's body in the bread basket at the same time."

"Had you noticed the bread basket before?"

"Sure. It was full of plain bread."

"There was no one else in sight when you and Dulcy met?"

"No one."

"How did she react when she saw her brother's body?"

"She just started going crazy."

"What did she say?"

"I don't remember."

Brody showed him the knife.

Chink admitted that it looked like the knife that had been stuck in Val's body, but denied ever having seen it before.

"Reverend Short testified that he saw you give this knife to Dulcy Perry in front of his church the day after Christmas, and that you showed her how to use it," Brody said.

Chink's sweaty yellow face paled to the color of a dirty sheet.

"That mother-raping preacher's blowing his top drinking that opium extract and cherry brandy," he raved. "I ain't given Dulcy any mother-raping knife and ain't never seen it before."

"But you've been after her like a dog after a bitch in heat," Brody charged. "Everybody says that."

"You can't hang a man for trying," Chink argued.

"No, but you can kill a woman's brother if he gets in the way," Brody said.

"Val wasn't no trouble," Chink muttered. "He'd have set it up for me if he hadn't been scared of Johnny."

Brody called in the harness cops.

"Hold him," he ordered.

"I want to call my lawyer," Chink demanded.

"Let him call his lawyer," Brody said. Then he asked if they'd picked up Doll Baby Grieves.

"Long time ago," one replied.

"Send her in."

Doll Baby had changed into a day dress that still looked like a nightgown in disguise. She sat on the stool in the circle of light and crossed her legs as though she liked being spotlighted in the same room with three men, even though they were cops.

She confirmed Chink's testimony, only she said he'd gone out for sandwiches instead of marijuana.

"Didn't you get enough to eat at the wake?" Brody asked.

"Well, we were just talking and that always makes me hungry," she said.

Brody asked about her relationship with Val, and she said they were engaged.

"And you were entertaining another man in your rooms at that hour of morning?"

"Well, after all, I had waited for Val 'til four o'clock, and I just figured he was out chasing." She giggled. "And what's good for the goose is good for the gander."

"He's dead now, or did you forget?" Brody reminded her.

She sobered suddenly and looked appropriately sad.

Brody asked her if she'd seen anyone when she left the wake. She said she'd seen a colored cop with the A amp;P store manager who'd just driven up. She recognized the manager because she shopped in the store, and she knew the cop personally. Both had greeted her.

"When did you last see Val?" Brody asked.

"He came to see me at about ten-thirty."

"Had he been to the wake?"

"No, he said he'd just come from home. I phoned Mr. Small and got the night off to attend Big Joe's wake-I generally work from eleven till four-and then me and Val sat there talking until one-thirty."

"Are you certain about the time?"

"Yeah, he looked at his watch and said it was one-thirty, and he'd have to leave in a hour because he wanted to stop by Johnny's club before he went to the wake, and I said I wanted some fried chicken."