Chester Himes - All shot up

“They might have got ’em,” Grave Digger said without much hope.

The little car skidded when he tamped the brake, and it banged into the rear bumper of the prowl car. They hit the street without giving it a thought.

Coffin Ed went first, overcoat flapping, pistol in his hand. Grave Digger slipped as he was rounding the back of the car and hit the top of the luggage compartment with the butt of his pistol. Coffin Ed wheeled about to find Grave Digger rising from the gutter.

“You’re sending telegrams,” Coffin Ed accused.

“It ain’t my night,” Grave Digger said.

A prowl car rounded the distant corner, siren wide open and red eye blinking.

“Makes no difference now,” Coffin Ed said disgustedly, taking the dimly lit stairs two at a time.

They found a uniformed cop standing beside the door at the head of the staircase with a drawn pistol, another in the shadows of the stairs, leading to the upper floors.

“Where’s the car?” Coffin Ed asked.

“There wasn’t any car,” the cop said.

Grave Digger cursed. “What are you doing here?”

“Lieutenant said to seal up this joint and wait for you.”

“What’s going to stop them from going out the back?”

“Joe and Eddie got the back covered.”

Grave Digger couldn’t hear him over the screaming of the siren down below.

“How’s the back?” he shouted.

“Covered,” the cop shouted back.

“Well, let’s see what gives,” Grave Digger said.

The siren died to a whimper, and. his voice filled the narrow corridor like organ notes.

“Hold it!” a voice cried from below.

Two cops pounded up the stairs like the Russian Army.

“This beats vaudeville,” Coffin Ed said.

The cops came into sight with guns in their fists. They halted at sight of the assemblage, and both turned bright pink.

“We didn’t know anybody was here,” one of them said.

“You were making sure just in case,” Coffin Ed said.

Grave Digger fingered the buzzer beside the door. From inside came the distant sound of a bell ringing.

“These doorbells always sound like they’re miles away,” he said.

The cops looked at him curiously.

No one came to the door.

“Let me shoot the lock off,” a cop said.

“You can’t shoot these locks off,” Grave Digger said. “Look at them; there are more locks on this door than on Fort Knox and there’re more inside.”

“There’s a chance that only one is locked,” Coffin Ed said. “If somebody left here who didn’t have a key-”

“Right,” Grave Digger agreed. “I’m too tired to think.”

A cop raised his eyebrows, but Grave Digger didn’t see it.

“Stand back,” Coffin Ed said.

Everyone backed off to one side.

He backed to the opposite wall, leveled his long-barreled. 38 and put four bullets about the Yale snap lock. Sound shattered the front hall windows, and doors down at the back of the hall cracked open an inch. From all directions came the sound of a sudden scurrying like rats deserting a ship.

“Let’s hit it,” Coffin Ed said, coughing slightly from the cordite fumes filling the hall.

The sound of scurrying ceased.

He and Grave Digger hit the door with left shoulders, and reeled into a room.

It was a reception room. Decrepit kitchen chairs flanked opposite walls. A stained, dusty, dark-blue, threadbare carpet covered the floor. In the center, a round table-top seemed to be floating in the air. It was supported by four small steel cables, which, attached to the ceiling, were practically invisible in the dim light. On the table rested a gruesome-looking sepulcher made of dull-gray papier-mache. Out of this sepulcher was coming the ghost of Jesus Christ.

Coffin Ed caught himself, but Grave Digger reeled into the hanging table with such force that he overturned the sepulcher and the ghost of Christ went sailing across the room as though the devil had grabbed at it.

The uniformed cops followed, looking from one to the other with wide-eyed consternation.

Someone started hammering on the back door. Another bell starting ringing.

“Pipe down!” Grave Digger shouted.

The noise ceased.

The walls of the room were papered with faded blue skies packed with constellations. Across from the entrance was a double doorway closed by a faded red curtain containing the gilded signs of the zodiac.

Coffin Ed stepped over the ghost of Christ and parted the zodiac.

They found themselves in the seance chamber. A crystal ball sat on a draped table. All four walls were curtained in some kind of dark satiny material covered with luminescent figures of stars, moons, suns, ghosts, griffins, animals, angels, devils and faces of African witch doctors,

The room was lit by a faint glow from the crystal ball. Their sudden entrance stirred the curtain to fluttering, and the luminescent figures flickered in and out of sight.

“Where the hell’s the light?” Grave Digger roared. “I’m getting seasick.”

A cop flashed on his torch. They didn’t see another light.

“Let’s find the doors,” he said, tearing the curtains aside.

Behind the curtains there were doors everywhere.

He opened the first one that gave. It led to a dining room. A chandelier with four bulbs lit a square dining room table covered with a black-and-silver checked plastic cloth. Two chairs were drawn up to two dirty plates and the skeleton of a roasted opossum, lying one-sided in congealed possum grease and the remains of baked yellow yams, like the ribs of a derelict ship in shallow surf.

“Possum and taters,” Coffin Ed said, unconsciously licking his lips.

“That’s what they ate, but where are they?” Grave Digger said.

“Ain’t nobody here but us ghosts,” a cop said.

“Don’t forget us possums,” another added.

Coffin Ed opened another door and found himself in a kitchen. He heard movement on the outside open-air stairs.

“Hey, let us in,” a voice called from without.

A cop pushed past Coffin Ed to open the back door.

Grave Bigger had opened another door, which led to a bedroom.

“In here,” he called.

Coffin Ed went in, and six cops followed.

A fat, light-complexioned colored man with a flabby, sensual face and a shining, bald head lay across the bed, breathing heavily with his eyes closed. He wore a big, old-fashioned faded-yellow brassiere, holding his lopping breasts, and a pair of purple-and-golden striped boxer shorts, from which extended the fasteners of a worn garter belt attached to the tops of purple silk stockings. He was fat, but his flesh was so flabby it spread out beside his bones like melted tallow.

Another bald-headed man lay face down on the floor beside the bed. He wore a red-and-gray striped rayon bathrobe over white-dotted blue rayon pyjamas. His face was unseen, but the fringe of hair beneath his bald dome was silky white.

The white cops stared.

“What did they do with Lady Gypsy?” one asked.

“That’s him on the bed,” Coffin Ed said.

“That ain’t the question,” Grave Digger said. “We got to find out who it was slugged him.”

“He isn’t talking,” a white cop said.

“We’ll fix that,” Grave Digger said. “Get a bottle of vinegar from the kitchen.”

He reached over and clutched Lady Gypsy by the arm and pulled him over to the side of the bed. Then, when the cop brought the vinegar, he opened the bottle and poured the lukewarm liquid over Lady Gypsy’s face.

“That the way you do it?” the cop asked.

“It works,” Grave Digger said.

“Every time,” Coffin Ed supplemented.

Lady Gypsy stirred and spluttered. “Who is that pissing on me?” he said in a distinct, cultivated voice.