Chester Himes - All shot up

They got into the car. Normally at that hour it would have been dark, but the blanket of snow seemed to illuminate the streets. The few cars out were crawling along like snails, leaving black lines on the white blanket.

“Two bull alligators like you and me ain’t going to catch anything in that goldfish bowl downtown,” Coffin Ed stated. “We’re just going to scare the living hell out of everybody and get the deep freeze for our effort.”

“We’ll bait the hook,” Grave Digger suggested.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

Captain Rice was on duty in the precinct station. They asked his permission to take the prisoner along to identify Baron in case they unearthed him. The captain said a Homicide detective had taken Roman Hill down to the Bureau of Criminal Identification at Headquarters, but he gave them an order to pick him up. He was still a precinct prisoner until he appeared before magistrate’s court the next morning. They changed over to Coffin Ed’s new Plymouth and went down the East Side Drive. Coffin Ed took the wheel; he didn’t mind riding with Grave Digger in a city-owned car, but he had paid his own money for the Plymouth.

The small tractor-type snowplows were already at work on the main arteries, scurrying about like orange bugs, piling the snow along the curbs for the trucks to pick up and dump into the river.

The tires sang in the coating of snow, and the windshield wipers clicked back and forth.

They talked about the blizzard of 1949, when city traffic had been paralyzed by thirty-nine inches of snow.

Off to their left, unseen tugboats with green and red lights, barely discernible through the white curtain, raised a cacophony of foghorns. The lights of the petroleum companies across the East River were blanked out.

A ferryboat was docked at the 79th Street pier when they passed, unloading day workers from Welfare Island.

“Damn, this day is moving,” Grave Digger remarked.

They began feeling the pressure of time. A slow buildup of apprehension sobered them.

Coffin Ed stepped on the gas.

They found Roman in the Gallery on the first floor of Headquarters on Centre Street.

Headquarters, and the Annex across the street, were the only lighted buildings in the area. Skyscrapers in the adjacent Wall Street district loomed dark and ghostly against the bottomless gray sky.

They gave the Homicide detective Captain Rice’s order and took the prisoner. He looked scarcely the worse for the headwhipping he had taken; just a mass of unnoticeable clotted wounds in his thick curly hair.

“Do you want the other one, too?” the detective asked. “The bartender from the Paris Bar?”

“You still got him?”

“Got him and going to keep him until he looks at every picture on record-unless you want him.”

“You keep him,” Grave Digger said. “Nothing we can do with him.”

They handcuffed Roman and took him out to the Plymouth. Coffin Ed had left the motor running and the windshield wipers working. But he had to brush the snow from all the windows before he could move on.

They went a couple of blocks beyond Headquarters and stopped.

“You got a sailor suit?” Coffin Ed asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t wear it,” Roman said.

“Where is it?”

“It’s aboard ship.”

“All right, we’re going over to Brooklyn to get it, and you’re going to put it on,” Coffin Ed said, easing the car off slowly through the snow.

When the telephone rang again, Leila Holmes thought it was Casper calling back.

“Yes.” She sounded cold enough to make icicles.

“Leave me talk with Casper,” a man’s voice said.

The hand holding the receiver began to tremble. She thought she recognized the voice, but she wasn’t certain.

“He’s still in the hospital,” she said, a sudden indeterminable fear making her voice sound parrotlike. “He’s had a relapse; he’s in a coma.”

“Can the bull,” the voice said. “That li’l lick on a booger’s head ain’t putting him in no coma.”

She felt certain of it now. It was a Southern voice with a Mississippi accent. It was a white man’s voice.

She began trembling all over, her breasts moving in the jersey-silk pullover like molded Jell-O.

“Telephone the hospital if you don’t believe me,” she said, furious with herself for sounding defensive, but she couldn’t help it. She was scared witless. There was something sadistic and inhuman about the voice. “He is in a coma,” she contended.

“If he wants any of his fifty G’s back, he better come out of it,” the voice said. “And nigger-quick.”

The use of the epithet steadied her fear and scalded her with rage. “Who are you, you mother-raping peckerwood,” she flared.

An evil chuckle came over the wire. “I’m the man who can help him get his money back-for a split,” the voice said.

She tried to think, but she didn’t know where to start. “You’d better call Casper at the hospital,” she said.

“You call him, sugar pie. I’ve called six times and can’t get through to him. So you do it, honey chile.”

“What shall I tell him?” she asked, then added viciously, “Redneck.”

“I’ll make your li’l neck red if I get hold of you,” the voice said, then added, “just tell him what I told you, and if he wants to do business, he better take my call.”

She remembered what Casper had told her about keeping her lip buttoned up. If she did the wrong thing, he’d be furious. She didn’t know what to do.

“It can keep, can’t it?” she said.

“Keep until when?”

“Until he gets out the hospital.”

“When will that be?”

“When?” She felt trapped. “I don’t know when. Ask at the hospital.”

“You ain’t doing him no good, baby doll,” the voice taunted. “He ain’t going to like it when he finds out what he’s missed.”

“All right, sonofabitch!” she flared. “I’ll call him and you call me back.”

“What good is that going to do? I got to do business with him. And it ain’t going to keep. If Casper wants to lie in the hospital with his head underneath the pillow, that’s just going to be his bad luck. And I’ll figure out some other way to get my split.”

Her mind exploded with vulgarity, as it always did when she felt cornered.

“For chrissakes, call back after eight o’clock,” she said exasperatedly. “I don’t know what the hell-”

She didn’t get a chance to finish it. A soft click sounded from the other end, and the line went dead. She sat staring at the receiver. She began trembling again. Scare went through her like acid.

“Now what the hell did I say?” she wondered.

It was twenty minutes past six when the telephone rang.

A proper male voice answered. “H. Exodus Clay’s Funeral Parlor. Good evening. May we be of service to you?”

“This is the Pinkerton Detective Agency,” the voice said at the other end. “Leave me speak to the boss.”

It was a Southern voice with a Mississippi accent. It was a white man’s voice.

The attendant said, “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

A moment later Clay’s querulous voice came on the line, “What is it now?”

“This is the Pinkerton Detective Agency,” the voice repeated.

“You said that before,” Clay snapped. “This is my funeral parlor. Now let’s get on.”

“We are sending three men up to your place to guard the ambulance you’re sending for Mister Holmes,” the voice informed him.

During the past hour, the voice had repeated the same words to sixteen other ambulance services and funeral homes in Harlem without the desired result. But this time the voice struck pay dirt.

“It’s not an ambulance I’m sending,” Clay said tartly. “It’s a hearse.”