Chester Himes - Cotton comes to Harlem

Grave Digger slapped her with such sudden violence she caromed off the center table and went sprawling on her hands and knees; her dress hiked up showing black lace pants above the creamy yellow skin of her thighs.

Coffin Ed came up and stood over her, the skin of his face jumping like a snake's belly over fire. "You're so goddamn cute — "

Grave Digger was speaking urgently into the telephone: "O'Malley, we just want some information, that's — " but the line had gone dead.

His neck swelled as he jiggled the hook to get the precinct station.

At the same moment Iris came up from the floor with the smooth vicious motion of a cat and slapped Coffin Ed across the face, thinking he was Grave Digger in her blinding fury.

She was a hard-bodied high-yellow woman with a perfect figure. She never wore a girdle and her jiggling buttocks gave all men amorous ideas. She had a heart-shaped face with the high cheekbones, big wide red painted mouth, and long-lashed speckled brown eyes of a sexpot and she was thirty-three years old, which gave her the experience. But she was strong as an ox and it was a solid pop she laid on Coffin Ed's cheek.

With pure reflex action he reached out and caught her around the throat with his two huge hands and bent her body backward.

"Easy, man, easy!" Grave Digger shouted, realizing instantly that Coffin Ed was sealed in such a fury he couldn't hear. He dropped the telephone and wheeled, hitting Coffin Ed across the back of the neck with the edge of his hand just a fraction of a second before he'd have crushed her windpipe.

Coffin Ed slumped forward, carrying Iris down with him, beneath him, and his hands slackened from her throat. Grave Digger picked him up by the armpits and propped him on the sofa, then he picked up Iris and dropped her into a chair. Her eyes were huge and limpid with fear and her throat was going black and blue.

Grave Digger stood looking down at them, listening to the phone click frantically, thinking, Now we're in for it; then thinking bitterly, These half-white bitches. Then he turned back to the telephone and answered the precinct station and asked for the telephone call to be traced. Before he could hang up, Lieutenant Anderson was on the wire.

"Jones, you and Johnson get over to 137th Street and Seventh Avenue. Both trucks are smashed up and everyone gone, but there are two bodies DOA and there might be a lead." He paused for a moment, then asked, "How's it going?"

Grave Digger looked from the slumped figure of Coffin Ed into the now blazing eyes of Iris and said, "Cool, Lieutenant, everything's cool."

"I'm sending over a man to keep her on ice. He ought to be there any moment."

"Right."

"And remember my warning — no force. We don't want anyone hurt if we can help it."

"Don't worry, Lieutenant, we're like shepherds with new-born lambs."

The lieutenant hung up.

Coffin Ed had come around and he looked at Grave Digger with a sheepish expression. No one spoke.

Then Iris said in a thick, throat-hurting voice, "I'm going to get you coppers fired if it's the last thing I do."

Coffin Ed looked as though he was going to reply, but Grave Digger spoke first: "You weren't very smart, but neither were we. So we'd better call it quits and start all over."

"Start over shit," she flared. "You break into my house without a search warrant, hold me prisoner, attack me physically, and say let's call it quits. You must think I'm a moron. Even if I'm guilty of a murder, you can't get away with that shit."

"Eighty-seven colored families — like you and me — "

"Not like me!"

"— have lost their life's savings in this caper."

"So what? You two are going to lose your mother-raping jobs."

"So if you co-operate and help us get it back you'll get a ten-per cent reward — eight thousand, seven hundred dollars."

"You chickenshit cop, what can I do with that chicken feed? Deke is worth ten times that much to me."

"Not any more. His number's up and you'd better get on the winning side."

She gave a short, harsh laugh. "That ain't your side, big and ugly."

Then she got up and went and stood directly in front of Coffin Ed where he sat on the sofa. Suddenly her fist flew out and hit him squarely on the nose. His eyes filled with tears as blood spurted from his nostrils. But he didn't move.

"That makes us even," he said and reached for his handkerchief.

Someone rapped on the door and Grave Digger let in the white detective who had come to take over. Neither of them spoke; they kept the record straight.

"Come on, Ed," Grave Digger said.

Coffin Ed stood up and the two of them walked to the door, Coffin Ed holding the bloodstained handkerchief to his nose. Just before they went out, Grave Digger turned and said, "Chances go around, baby."

The rain had stopped when they got outside and people were back on the wet sidewalks, strolling aimlessly and looking about as if to see what might have been washed from heaven. They walked up a couple of blocks where their little black battered sedan with the supercharged motor was parked. It had got much cleaner from the rain.

"You've got to take it easy, Ed man," Grave Digger said. "One more second and you'd have killed her."

Coffin Ed took away the handkerchief and found that his nose had stopped bleeding. He got into the car without replying. He felt guilty for fear he might have gotten Digger into trouble, but for his part he didn't care.

Grave Digger understood. Ever since the hoodlum had thrown acid into his face, Coffin Ed had had no tolerance for crooks. He was too quick to blow up and too dangerous for safety in his sudden rages. But hell, Grave Digger thought, what can one expect? These colored hoodlums had no respect for colored cops unless you beat it into them or blew them away. He just hoped these slick boys wouldn't play it too cute.

The trucks were still where they had been wrecked, guarded by harness cops and surrounded by the usual morbid crowd; but they drove on down to where the bodies lay. They found Sergeant Wiley of Homicide beside the body of the bogus detective, talking to a precinct sergeant and looking bored. He was a quiet, grayhaired, scholarly-looking man dressed in a dark summer suit.

"Everything is wrapped up," he said to them. "We're just waiting for the wagon to take them away." He pointed at the body. "Know him?"

They looked him over carefully. "He must be from out of town, eh, Ed?" Grave Digger said.

Coffin Ed nodded.

Sergeant Wiley gave them a rundown: No real identification of any kind, just a phoney ID card from the D.A.'s office and a bogus detective shield from headquarters. He had been a big man but now he looked small and forlorn on the wet street and very dead.

They went up and looked at the other body and exchanged looks.

Wiley noticed. "Run over by the delivery truck," he said. "Mean anything?"

"No, he was just a sneak thief. Must have got in the way is all. True monicker was Early Gibson but he was called Early Riser. Worked with a partner most of the time. We'll try to find his partner. He might give us a lead."

"Sure as hell ain't got no other," Coffin Ed added.

"Do that," Wiley said. "And let me know what you find out."

"We're going to take a look at the trucks."

"Right-o, there's nothing more here. We took a statement from the driver of the truck that smashed the armored job and let him go. All he knew was what the three of them looked like and we know what they look like."

"Any other witness?" Grave Digger asked.

"Hell, you know these people, Jones. All stone blind."

"What you expect from people who're invisible themselves?" Coffin Ed said roughly.

Wiley let it pass. "By the way," he said, "you'll find those heaps hopped up. The armored truck has an old Cadillac engine and the delivery truck the engine of a Chrysler 300. I've taken the numbers and put out tracers. You don't have to worry about that."