Chester Himes - The crazy kill

It took Coffin Ed fifteen minutes working with seven master keys before he got it open.

They stood flanking the door with drawn revolvers while Grave Digger pushed it open with his foot. No sound came from the dark tunnel of the hall.

There was a chain-bolt on the door which, when fastened, kept it from opening more than a crack, but it hadn't been fastened.

"The chain's off," Grave Digger said. "He's not here."

"Don't take any chances," Coffin Ed warned.

"What the hell! Johnnys no lunatic," Grave Digger said, and walked into the dark hall. "It's me, Digger, and Ed Johnson, if you're in here, Johnny," he said quietly, felt for the light switch and turned on the hall light.

Their eyes went straight to a hasp and staple fitted to the outside of the master-bedroom door. It was fastened with a heavy brass Yale padlock. Coffin Ed closed the outside door, and they went down the hall and listened with their ears against the panel of the bedroom door. The only sound from within came from a radio tuned to an all-night disk jockey program of swing music.

"Anyway, she ain't dead," Grave Digger said. "He wouldn't lock up a corpse."

"But he's got hold of something or else he's blowing his top," Coffin Ed replied.

"Let's see what's in the rest of the house," Grave Digger suggested.

They started with the sitting room across the front and worked back to the kitchen. None of the rooms had been cleaned or straightened. The broken glass from the overturned cocktail table lay on the sitting-room carpet.

"Looks like it got kind of rough," Coffin Ed observed. "It could be he's beaten her up," Grave Digger conceded.

The two bedrooms were across the hall from the kitchen and were separated by the bathroom. There, doors from each opened into the bathroom, which could be bolted from both sides. The door leading into the room Val had occupied was ajar, but the one to the master bedroom was bolted. Grave Digger slipped the bolt and they went in.

The shades were drawn and the room was dark save for a faint glow from the radio dial.

Coffin Ed switched on the light.

Dulcy lay on her side with her knees drawn up and her hands between her legs. She had kicked the covers off, and her nude sepia body had the dull sheen of metal. She was breathing silently, but her face was greasy from sweat and saliva had drooled from the bottom corner of her mouth.

"Sleeping like a baby," Grave Digger said.

"A drunken baby," Coffin Ed amended.

"Smells it, too," Grave Digger admitted.

There was an empty brandy bottle on the carpet beside the bed and an overturned glass in the center of a wet stain.

Coffin Ed crossed to the single window opening onto the inside fire escape and parted the drapes. The heavy iron grille on the outside of the window was padlocked.

He turned and came back to the bed. "Do you think this sleeping beauty knows she's been locked in?" he asked.

"Hard to say," Grave Digger admitted. "How do you figure it?"

"The way I figure it is Johnny's on to something, but he doesn't know what," Coffin Ed said. "He's out scouting about trying to find out something, and he's locked her up just in case he finds out the wrong thing."

"Do you think he knows about the knife?"

"If he does, he's out looking for Chink, and that's for sure," Coffin Ed said.

"Let's see what she's got to say," Grave Digger suggested, shaking her by the shoulder.

She awakened and brushed at her face drunkenly.

"Wake up, little sister," Grave Digger said.

"Go way," she muttered without opening her eyes. "Done give you all I got." Suddenly she giggled. "All but you-know-what. Ain't never going to give you none of that, nigger. That's all for Johnny."

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed looked at each other. "I don't figure this at all," Grave Digger admitted. "Maybe we'd better take her in," Coffin Ed ventured. "We could, but if it turns out later that we're wrong and Johnny hasn't got anything against her other than just being normally jealous-"

"What do you call being normally jealous?" Coffin Ed interrupted. "You call locking up your woman being normally jealous?"

"For Johnny, anyway," Grave Digger said. "And if he comes back and finds we've broken into his house and arrested his woman-"

"On suspicion of murder," Coffin Ed interrupted again.

"Not even that would save us from a suspension. It's not as if we were picking her up off the street. We've broken into her house, and there's no evidence of a crime having been committed in here. And we'd need a warrant even if the charge were murder itself."

"Well, the only thing to do is to find him before he finds out what he's looking for," Coffin Ed acceded.

"Yeah, and we'd better get going because time is getting short," Grave Digger said.

They went back through the bathroom, leaving the door wide open, and locked the front door with only the automatic lock.

First they went to the garage on 155th Street where Johnny kept his fishtail Cadillac, but he hadn't been in. Then they went by his club. It was dark and closed.

Next they began touring the cabarets, the dice games, the after-hours joints. They dropped the word they were looking for Chink Charlie.

The bartender at Small Paradise Inn said, "I ain't seen Chink all evening. He must be in jail. You looked for him there?"

"Hell, that's the last place cops ever look for anybody," Grave Digger said.

"Let's see if he's gone home yet," Coffin Ed suggested finally.

They went back to the flat, rang the bell. Receiving no answer they went in again. It was just as they had left it. Dulcy was sleeping in the same position. The radio station was signing off.

Coffin Ed looked at his watch. "It's four o'clock," he said. "Nothing for it now but to call it a day."

They drove back to the precinct station and made out their report. The lieutenant on charge at night sent for them and read the report before letting them off.

"Hadn't we better pick up the Perry woman?" he said. "Not without a warrant," Grave Digger said. "We haven't been able to verify Chink Charlie Dawson's story about the knife, and if he's lying she can sue us for false arrest."

"What the hell," the lieutenant said. "You sound like she's Mrs. Vanderbilt."

"Maybe she's not Mrs. Vanderbilt, but Johnny Perry carries his weight in this town," Grave Digger said. "And that's out of our precinct, anyway."

"Okay, I'll have the 152nd Street precinct station put a couple of men in the building to arrest Johnny when he shows," the lieutenant said. "You fellows get some sleep. You've earned it."

"Anything yet from Chicago on Valentine Haines?" Grave Digger asked.

"Not a thing," the lieutenant said.

The sky was overcast when they left the station, and the air was hot and muggy.

"It looks like it's going to rain cats and dogs," Grave Digger said.

"Let it come down," Coffin Ed said.

Mamie Pullen was having breakfast when the telephone rang. She had a plate full of fried fish and boiled rice, and was dipping hot biscuits into a mixture of melted butter and blackstrap sorghum molasses.

Baby Sis had finished her breakfast an hour before, and was filling Mamie's cup from a pot of leftover coffee that had been boiling on the stove.

"Go answer it," Mamie said sharply. "Just don't stand there like a lump on a log."

"I just don't seem to be able to get myself together this mawning," Baby Sis said as she shuffled from the kitchen, through the sitting room, into the bedroom at the front.

When she returned Mamie was sipping jet-black coffee hot enough to scald a fowl.

"It's Johnny," she said.

Mamie was holding her breath as she got up from the table.

She was dressed in a faded red-flannel kimono and a pair of Big Joe's old working shoes. On her head she wore a black cotton stocking, knotted in the middle and hanging down her back.