Chester Himes - All shot up

He took his short-barreled police special from his right overcoat pocket, held it in his lap and spun the chamber, then put it back into his pocket.

“I’ll go first,” he said.

He got out and crossed the sidewalk, side-stepped two men and a woman and tried the handle to the door.

The two colored men closed in behind him.

The handle turned; the door opened.

“He made it easy for us,” the white man said, and started up the stairs, keeping close to the edges and walking on the balls of his feet.

The colored men followed.

“Lock the door behind you,” the white man whispered over his shoulder.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed sat in the car with the lights off on 19th Street, and waited. The motor was idling and the windshield wipers working.

Snow drifted down. The superintendents of the swank high-rent apartment houses flanking the private residences had their helpers out cleaning the sidewalks. Snowplows had already passed. The streets in this neighborhood were kept clean.

“I got a feeling we’re missing something,” Grave Digger lisped.

“Me, too,” Coffin Ed agreed. “But we got to have somewhere to start.”

“Maybe the sailor boy will hit it.”

Coffin Ed looked at his watch.

“It’s a quarter past seven. He’s had ten minutes. If he hasn’t hit it by now, he ain’t never going to hit it.”

“Blow for him then.”

Coffin Ed touched the horn, giving the prearranged signal. They watched in the rear-view mirrors.

Roman came out. Someone stood out of sight in the open door, watching him. He put his hat on the back of his head and started along the street.

When he came level, Grave Digger reached back, opened the door and said, “Get in.”

A head came out of the open door, peered briefly and then withdrew. The door closed.

“What did you make out of it?” Coffin Ed asked.

“Whew!” Roman blew. A film of sweat shone on his smooth tan skin. “Nobody knew Mister Baron,” he said. “Leastwise they all said they didn’t.” He blew again. “Jesus Godamighty!” he exclaimed. “Them people! And they’s rich. And educated, too!”

“They knocked you out, eh?” Coffin Ed said absently.

He and Grave Digger stared at one another.

“We’d better stop by the hospital again,” Coffin Ed suggested. He sounded dispirited and perplexed.

“We’re losing time,” Grave Digger said. “We had better phone.”

Coffin Ed drove around Gramercy Square and stopped in front of a quiet, discreet-looking bar on Lexington. He got out and went inside.

Well-dressed white people were drinking aperitifs in a dim-lighted atmosphere of gold-lined wickedness. Coffin Ed fitted like Father Divine in the Vatican. He didn’t let it bother him.

The bartender informed him with a blank face that they didn’t have a phone. Bar customers on high stools looked at him covertly.

Coffin Ed flashed his shield. “Do that once more and you’re out of business,” he said.

Without a change of expression the bartender said, “In the rear to the right.”

Coffin Ed restrained the impulse to yank him over the bar and hurried back to the telephone booth. A man was coming out; one was waiting to enter. Coffin Ed flashed his shield again and claimed priority.

He got the reception desk at the hospital.

“Mister Holmes is resting and cannot be disturbed,” the cool voice said with a positive accent.

“This is Precinct Detective Edward Johnson on a matter of police business of an urgent nature,” Coffin Ed said.

“I’ll switch you to the supervisor,” the reception nurse said.

The supervising nurse was patient and polite. She said that Mr. Holmes was not feeling well and could not for any reason be disturbed at that time; he had postponed his scheduled press conference until ten o’clock, and the doctor had given him a sedative.

“I can’t say that I believe it, but what can I do?” Coffin, Ed said angrily.

“Precisely,” the supervisor said and hung up.

He phoned Casper’s house. Mrs. Holmes answered. He identified himself. She waited.

“Have you been in contact with Casper?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“He telephoned this afternoon.”

“Not during the past hour?”

“No.”

“Might I ask when he is expected home?”

“He said that he will come home Tuesday evening-if there are no complications.”

He thanked her, hung up and went back to the car.

“I don’t like this,” Grave Digger said.

Coffin Ed drove up Lexington Avenue, going fast, and turned over to Park Avenue at 35th Street, where the traffic moved faster. He skirted Grand Central Station on the upper ramp, skidding on the sharp corners and causing taxi drivers to shout at him.

“If I know Casper he’d get the hell out of that hospital as soon as he could,” he half muttered as he accelerated up the slope toward 50th Street.

“Unless he’s hiding,” Grave Digger offered.

From the back seat Roman said, “If you-all are talking about Mister Holmes, he done already left the hospital.”

The car slewed about and just missed a Lincoln limousine highballing in the middle lane. Coffin Ed pulled over to the curb, easing between two fast-moving cars, and parked at the corner of 51st Street He joined Grave Digger in staring at Roman.

“Leastwise, that’s what them people were saying in that house back there,” Roman added defensively. “He’d phoned one of ’em from the hospital and said he’d be home by eight o’clock-one named Johnny.”

“It’s thirteen minutes to eight now,” Coffin Ed said, looking at his watch. “I’d like to have that supervisor-”

“He fixed her; you know Casper,” Grave Digger said absently.

They were both thinking hard.

“If you were Casper and you wanted to slip out, how would you do it?” Grave Digger asked.

“I ain’t Casper, but I’d hire an ambulance.”

“That’s too obvious. The joint is crawling with newsmen, and, if anybody was laying for him, they’d spot it too.”

“A hearse,” Coffin Ed suggested. “As many people as die in that hospital-”

“Clay!” Grave Digger said, cutting him off.

He looked about; the street was flanked with new skyscraper office buildings and a few remaining impregnable apartment houses.

“We got to get to a phone,” he said, then added on sudden thought, “Drive over to the Seventeenth.”

The 17th Precinct was on 51st Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues. They were there in two minutes.

Coffin Ed telephoned Clay with Grave Digger standing by. They had left Roman handcuffed in the car.

“Clay’s burial home,” came the old man’s querulous voice.

“Clay. Ed Johnson and Digger Jones this end. Did you send a hearse to take Casper home?”

“I’m getting sick and tired of everybody wanting to guard the hearse I sent for Casper,” the old man said tartly. “He already had Joe Green’s boys-as if he couldn’t take care of himself, mean as he is. And besides which he wanted it kept quiet. Then the Pinkertons sent men up-”

“What? The Pinkerton Agency?”

“That’s what they told me. That they were sending three men on orders from-”

“Jesus Christ!” Coffin Ed said, breaking the connection. “Get the Pinkerton Detective Agency,” he asked the switchboard operator.

When he had finished talking, he and Grave Digger looked at one another with as much fear in their eyes as either had ever seen.

“They no doubt got him by now-but why?” Coffin Ed said.

“That ain’t the question now,” Grave Digger lisped. “It’s where?”

“There’s got to be a tie-in,” Coffin Ed said. “We’ve just missed it is all.”