Chester Himes - All shot up

“Yes, sugar, I got it.” Under her breath she added, “And I’m going to keep it, too.”

“What’s that?”

“I didn’t say anything. Somebody must be talking on your end.”

“All right. And for once keep your lip buttoned up.”

“Is that all?”

He put down the receiver and reached for his cigar. Before he could pick it up, the phone rang. He picked up the receiver again.

“What is it?”

“Washington, D.C. calling,” the operator said “A Mister Grover Leighton. Shall I put him through?”

“Yes.”

Grover’s sunshiny, glad-handing Pennsylvania voice came on. “Casper. How are you?”

“Fine. Just resting. It’s all I can do at the moment.”

“That’s the thing to do. Just keep it up. We’ve all been worried about you.”

“Nothing to worry about. You can’t hurt an old dog like me.” Casper’s voice had taken on a subtle obsequious quality.

“That’s what I told them,” Grover said cheerfully. “And don’t you worry, either. We’ll come through again soon with the same score.”

“Oh, I’m not worrying about that,” Casper said. “But some of the city brass here have been making it a little rough.”

“For you?” Grover sounded slightly shocked. “Why so?”

“They’re trying to figure out how the hoods got the tipoff,” Casper said. “And the chief inspector claims that you told him that you had told me sometime early last week that you were stopping by last night with the payroll.”

There was a pause as though Grover was trying to remember. “Well, I guess I did tell him something like that,” he said finally. “But I thought I told you about it Wednesday, or was it Thursday, when we talked on the phone about the precinct units.”

“Listen, Grover, I want you to think, try to remember. Because I’m sure you didn’t tell me then. You might forget a thing like that, but I wouldn’t. All I’ve got to think of is my little group in Harlem, while you’ve got the whole country on your mind. And I’m sure I wouldn’t have forgotten your telling me that, because that’s what starts the cart to rolling.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Grover conceded. “It was in my mind to tell you, but it must have slipped. But that’s not important, is it?”

“Not to you and me; but the brass here are insinuating that the leak came from me.”

“My God!” Grover sounded really shocked. “They must be crazy. They’re not trying to push you around, are they?”

“Naw, it’s not that. But I don’t like all the innuendo, especially at the beginning of a campaign.”

“You’re right. I’ll telephone the chief inspector and put an end to that. And when they’re arrested we’ll find out where they got their information. But I telephoned you about another matter. I have asked the Pinkerton Agency in New York to keep an eye on you; we don’t want a duplication of this business, and we certainly don’t want anything to happen to you. And they are involved now also, since they lost one of their men.”

“You know I’ll co-operate, Grover. Be glad to. It’s as much to my interest as to anyone’s.”

“That’s what I told them. I asked them to arrange for an ambulance with a guard to take you home when you leave there-unless, of course, you have arranged something else.”

“Naw, I haven’t made any arrangements,” Casper said. “That suits me fine. One of the men phoned from the agency, said you had spoken to them. I told him I’d let him know in advance when I planned to leave.”

“Well, then, it’s all settled.” Grover sounded relieved. “Take care of yourself, Casper. We don’t want anything to happen to you. The Harlem vote is going to be mighty important in this coming election. It might mean the balance that will swing the whole state of New York in our favor.”

“I’m going to take damn good care of myself from now on,” Casper said.

Grover laughed. “Good fellow! Let us know if there is anything we can do for you.”

“Nothing at the moment, Grover. Thanks for everything.”

“Don’t mention it. We’ll be thanking you before it’s done with.”

When they had hung up, Casper lit his cigar and sat smoking it slowly, looking thoughtful.

“It’s in the fire now,” he said to no one, and picked up the receiver again.

“Give me a line, honey,” he said.

He dialed a downtown number.

“Now who can this be?” a voice of indeterminate gender asked with an affected lisp.

“Let me speak to Johnny.”

“Oh, and not with me?”

Casper didn’t answer.

“And who shall I tell him is calling, dear?”

“None of your God-damned business.”

“Oh! You’re rude!”

He heard the receiver dropped on a table-top. After what seemed to him much longer than was necessary, a pleasant male tenor voice said, “Hello, Casper, it couldn’t be anybody but you who’d be so unkind to Zog.”

“I’m going home around eight o’clock,” Casper said “I want you to come up later.”

“I knew they couldn’t hurt you,” Johnny said, and then “How much later?”

“Around ten o’clock. Use your own key and come on in.”

“Will do,” Johnny said.

When Johnny had hung up, Casper jiggled the hook and asked the operator to have the supervising nurse come up to his room.

It was past four o’clock when Grave Digger and Coffin Ed got away from Fats’s Down Home Restaurant-just about the time Casper had got finished with the brass.

They hadn’t intended to stay that long. But the place was filled with gamblers and whorehouse madams, all curious about the Casper caper, and they had been fishing themselves, to see what they could pick up about any new jokers in town on a kick binge.

The gamblers hadn’t run across any fresh money; if they had, they wouldn’t admit it. The madams hadn’t come across any mew customers, not with big money, anyway.

“If I had,” one madam confessed, “I’d have handcuffed each of ’em to two girls, and foot-chained ’em to the bed, bad as I need money.”

Pee Wee, the giant black bartender, had fixed them some hot bourbon teas to stave off grippe and pneumonia. Before they had a chance to test what those potent drinks might stave off, they were clutched in the throes of tremendous appetites.

Then Fats had appeared, looking like the scalded and scraped carcass of a hippopotamus, and said he was taking a Smithfield ham out of the oven. That did it.

They ate baked ham and sweet potatoes while Grave Digger held everybody entranced giving a detailed account of the joker getting his head cut off.

By the time they got back outside, they were both willing to believe the gremlins had done it.

The snow was drifting down like endless fields of cotton, and the street was covered an inch thick. Their wreck of a car, sitting at the curb, looked like an abandoned derelict. They hadn’t got to the precinct station as yet.

Grave Digger took hold of Coffin Ed’s sleeve and detained him for a discussion on criminology.

“Take a detective,” he said. “Like you and me. A man gets robbed in the street. The robber taps his victim on the head, knocks him unconscious and runs. Ain’t nobody seen him; the victim don’t know him. Then we come up. We don’t know a damn thing. Don’t even know the man’s been robbed. All we got is his word for it. But everybody expects us to run off and nab the criminals as if we got a robber’s preserve.”

“Maybe they expect us to crawl along and sniff them out, like human bloodhounds,” Coffin Ed said. “Maybe they think we got the nose for it.”

“That Casper,” Grave Digger said. “He got more twists in him than a barrel full of snakes.”