Chester Himes - The crazy kill

"What is this, a pinch?" Chink asked.

Coffin Ed hit him in the solar plexus. Grave Digger had to restrain him. Chink walked out of the house between the two detectives, holding his stomach as though to keep it from falling out.

Chink sat on the stool within the glaring circle of light in the Pigeon Nest, where Detective Sergeant Brody from Central Homicide had questioned him that morning.

But now he was being questioned by the Harlem precinct detectives, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, and it wasn't the same.

Sweat was streaming down his waxen face, and his beige summer suit was wringing wet. He was trembling again and he was scared. He looked at the wet money stacked on one end of the desk through sick, vein-laced eyes.

"I've got a right to have my lawyer," he said.

Grave Digger sat on the edge of the desk in front of him, and Coffin Ed stood in the shadows behind him.

Grave Digger looked at his watch and said, "It's five minutes after two o'clock, and we've got to have some answers."

"But I've got a right to have my lawyer," Chink said in a pleading tone. "Sergeant Brody said this morning I had a right to have my lawyer when I was questioned."

"Listen, boy," Coffin Ed said. "Brody is a homicide man and solving murders is his business. He goes at it in a routine way like the law prescribes, and if some more people get killed while he's going about it, that's just too bad for the victims. But me and Digger are two country Harlem dicks who live in this village and don't like to see anybody get killed. It might be a friend of ours. So we're trying to head off another killing."

"And there ain't much time," Grave Digger added.

Chink mopped his face with a wet handkerchief. "If you think anybody's going to kill me-" he began, but Coffin Ed cut him off.

"I personally wouldn't give a goddam if you were killed-"

"Take it easy, Ed," Grave Digger said, and then to Chink, "We want to ask you one question. And we want a true answer. Did you give Dulcy the knife that killed Val as Reverend Short said you did?"

Chink squeezed out a laugh. "I've already told you, I don't know anything about that knife."

"Because if you did give the knife to her," Grave Digger went on talking softly, "and Johnny got hold of it and killed Val with it, he's going to kill her, too, if we don't stop him. That's for sure. And maybe if we don't get him soon enough he's going to kill you, too."

"You cops act as if Johnny was a black Dillinger or Al Capone-" Chink was saying, but his teeth were chattering so loudly he sounded as though he were speaking pig latin.

Grave Digger cut him off, still talking in a soft, persuasive voice. "And we know that you've got something on Dulcy or else she wouldn't have let you in Johnny's house and taken the risk of talking to you for thirty-three minutes by the clock. And if it wasn't something goddam serious she wouldn't have given you seven hundred and thirty bucks to keep quiet." He banged the meaty edge of his fist on the stack of squashy money, jerked it back and wiped his hand with his handkerchief. "Dirty money. Which one of you puked on it?"

Chink tried to meet his gaze defiantly but couldn't do it, and his own gaze kept dropping until it rested on Grave Digger's big flat feet.

"So there are only two possibilities," Grave Digger went on. "You either gave her the knife or else you found out what Val knew about her that he was going to use to make her dig ten grand out of Johnny. And we don't figure you found that out since we talked to you because we've been shadowing you, and we know you went straight from your room to Johnny's club and from there to see Dulcy. So you must know about the knife."

He stopped talking and they waited for Chink to answer.

Chink didn't speak.

Suddenly, without warning, Coffin Ed stepped forward from the shadows and chopped Chink across the back of his neck with the edge of his hand. It knocked Chink forward, stunning him, and Coffin Ed grabbed him beneath the arms to keep him from falling on his face.

Grave Digger slid quickly from the desk and handcuffed Chink's ankles, drawing the bracelets tight just above the ankle bones. Then Coffin Ed handcuffed Chink's hands behind his back.

Without saying another word, they opened the door, lifted Chink from the chair and hung him upside down from the top of the door by his handcuffed ankles, so that the top part of the door split his legs down to his crotch. His back lay flat against the bottom edge, with the lock bolt sticking into him.

Then Grave Digger inserted his heel into Chink's left armpit and Coffin Ed did the same with his right, and they pushed down gradually.

Chink thought about the ten thousand dollars that Dulcy was going to get for him that day and tried to stand it. He tried to scream, but he had waited too late. All that came out was his tongue and he couldn't get it back. He began choking, and his eyes began to bulge.

"Let's take him down now," Grave Digger said.

They lifted him down and stood him on his feet, but he couldn't stand. He pitched forward. Grave Digger caught him before he hit the floor and lifted him back onto the stool.

"All right, spill it," Coffin Ed said. "And it'd better be straight."

Chink swallowed. "Okay," he said in a gasping voice. "I gave her the knife."

Coffin Ed's burnt face contorted with rage. Chink ducked automatically, but Coffin Ed merely clenched and opened his fists.

"When did you give it to her?" Grave Digger asked.

"It was just like the preacher said," Chink confessed. "One of the club members, Mr. Burns, brought it back from London and gave it to me for a Christmas present, and I gave it to her."

"What for?" Coffin Ed asked.

"Just for a gag," Chink said. "She's so scared of Johnny I thought it'd be a good joke."

"Damn right," Grave Digger said sourly. "It would have been awfully funny if you'd found it stuck between your own ribs."

"I didn't figure she'd let Johnny find it," Chink said.

"How do you know he found it?" Coffin Ed asked.

"We haven't got time for guesses," Grave Digger said. They removed the handcuffs from Chink's wrists and ankles and booked him on suspicion of murder.

Then they tried to contact the Mr. Burns whom he said had given him the knife to verify the story. But the night clerk at the University Club said, in reply to their phone call, that Mr. Burns was in Europe somewhere.

They went back to Johnny's flat, rang the bell and hammered on the door. No one answered. They tried the service door. Grave Digger listened with his ear to the panel.

"Quiet as a grave," he said.

"Something's happened to the dog," Coffin Ed said.

They looked at one another.

"If we go in without a search warrant it's going to be risky," Grave Digger said. "If he's in there and he's already killed her, we're going to have to kill him. And if he hasn't done anything to her at all and they're both in there just keeping quiet and we break in, there's going to be hell to pay. He's liable to get us busted down to harness."

"I just hate to have Johnny kill his woman and go to the chair on account of a rat-tail punk like Chink," Coffin Ed said. "For all we know she might have killed Val herself. But if Johnny finds out she got the knife from Chink, her life ain't worth a damn."

"Chink might be lying," Grave Digger suggested.

"If he is, he'd better disappear from the face of the earth," Coffin Ed said.

"We'd better go in the front way then," Grave Digger said. "If Johnny's laying in there in the dark with his heater we'll have a better chance in that straight hall."

The door was framed on both sides and at the top by heavy iron angle-bars, making it impossible to pry open, and it was secured by three separate Yale locks.