Chester Himes - All shot up

“We got one more card that we can play; we can make like we’re a joker called Bernard Kaufman.”

“We’d need to know his straight moniker.”

“Makes no difference; we can play that one, since it’s all we got to play,” Grave Digger argued, “it might flush Baron into the open.”

Coffin Ed began getting the idea. “You know, it might work at that,” he conceded. “But we’re going to need Roman’s girl friend.”

“Let’s go get her, and let’s hurry. We’ve just about ran out of time.”

They went outside to their car and braced Roman.

“We’re going to set a trap for Baron, son, and we’re going to need your African queen to identify him,” Coffin Ed said.

“I can’t do that,” Roman said. “You-all don’t need her.”

“We want you both, and there isn’t any time to argue about it. A man’s life might depend on this, a big man’s life, an important man to us colored people any way you look at it-the way things are set up. If you help us now, we’ll help you later. But if you don’t we’ll crucify you. Have you ever been cold?”

“Yes, sir, lots of times.”

“But not as cold as we’ll make you. We’ll take you over to the river, handcuff your feet together, and let you hang in the water with all that snow they’re dumping from the bridges.”

Roman began to shiver just thinking about it.

Afterwards Coffin Ed admitted it might only have worked on an Alabama boy.

“If I tell you where she’s at, you won’t arrest her, will you?” Roman begged. “She ain’t done nothing.”

“If she helps us catch Baron, we’ll decorate her,” Coffin Ed promised.

They stood in the deserted office of the boathouse beside the lagoon, across from the apartment house in which Casper Holmes lived, using the telephone.

It was cold and damp; an inch-thick coating of ice covered the floor.

Coffin Ed was on the telephone, talking through the fine-tooth end of a gutta-percha comb held tight against the mouthpiece.

“This Bernie,” he said. “Just listen, don’t talk. There’s a police tap on your line. Have Baron get in touch with me immediately.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” a voice said coldly at the other end of the wire.

He hung up.

Grave Digger looked a question.

He shrugged.

Roman and Sassafras, standing to one side and handcuffed together, stared at him as though he had taken leave of his senses.

“If you is trying to imitate the Mister Bernard Kaufman, who stamped that bill of sale Mister Baron gave to Roman, you don’t sound nothing’ like him,” Sassafras said scornfully,

But the detectives had considered this.

“Well, let’s go see if it works,” Grave Digger lisped.

They took the handcuffed couple outside and crossed the sidewalk to Coffin Ed’s Plymouth.

It was parked between two snow-covered cars of indistinguishable make, directly across 110th Street from the entrance to Casper’s apartment house. Nothing about it indicated a police car.

Coffin Ed unlocked it, got in and started the motor and the windshield wipers. Grave Digger got into the front beside him; Roman and Sassafras piled into the back. Roman was still wearing his sailor suit; Sassafras wore the same ensemble she had the day before, with the exception of the red knitted cap, which she had exchanged for a green one.

Passing pedestrians, half-blinded by the snow, paid them no attention.

Sassafras leaned close to Roman and whispered conspiratorially, “I ain’t heard yet from my friend.”

She had been in hiding all day and hadn’t learned that her friend with the experience had finally lost his head.

“But as soon as I do-”

“Hush your mouth!” Roman said tensely. “You ain’t going to.”

“Well, I like that!” she exclaimed indignantly and withdrew to the other side.

The Plymouth was pointed toward Fifth Avenue, which bounds Central Park on the east. All Fifth Avenue buses going north turned the corner into 110th Street and branched out toward their various destinations further on. The line’s control office, where the schedules were checked and the personnel changed, was directly around the corner on the north side of 110th Street. Adjacent was a bar, facing the circular square, it contained the nearest public telephone.

Coffin Ed turned about on his seat and said, “Listen, we want you to watch the door across the street. If you see anyone come out that you know-anyone at all-tell us who it is.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison and stared across the street.

A short, fat man came from the apartment. He was wearing a blue chesterfield overcoat, white scarf and a black Homburg. Grave Digger looked from Roman to Sassafras. Neither showed any sign of recognition.

A middle-aged couple came out; a woman with a little girl went in; a tall man in a polo coat rushed out.

Leila Holmes came out. She was wearing dark slacks, black fur-lined boots and a flowing ranch-mink coat. A wheat-colored cashmere scarf was wrapped about her head.

She began walking hurriedly toward the corner of Fifth Avenue.

Coffin Ed pushed the button for drive and eased the Plymouth out into the traffic lane. He drove ahead of the hurrying woman on the other side of the street and slowed down.

A street lamp spilled a circle of white light on the white snow.

When Leila came into the circle of light, Sassafras exclaimed, “There’s Mister Baron!”

Roman stiffened, leaned forward peering; his eyes popped. “Where?”

“Across the street!” Sassafras cried in her high keeping voice. “In that fur coat! That’s him!”

“That’s a woman!” Roman shouted. “Has you gone crazy?”

“’Course he’s a woman.” Sassafras shrieked in an outraged voice. “I’d know that bitch anywhere.”

Coffin. Ed had already pulled ahead and was making a U-turn to head Leila off.

“Goddammit, girl, why didn’t you tell me!” Roman raved in a popeyed fury.

“You think I was going to tell you he was a woman?” Sassafras said triumphantly.

The Plymouth had drawn abreast of Leila. Grave Digger got out, stepped over the snowbank and passed between two parked cars. Leila didn’t see him until he took her by the arm.

Her face jerked up, tight with panic; her big brown eyes were pools of fear. Her smooth brown skin had turned powdery gray.

Then she recognized him. “Get your dirty hands off me, you stinking cop!” she screamed in a sudden rage and tried to jerk her arm free from his grip.

“Let’s get into the car, Mister Baron,” Grave Digger lisped in a cottony voice. “Or I’ll slap you down right here in the street.”

Blood surging to her face had given it the bright painted look of an Indian’s. Her eyes had slitted like a cat’s and glittered with animal fury. But she ceased to fight. She merely said in a strangled voice, “Play tough, buster; I’ll have Casper break you for this.”

“Casper ain’t going to live that long, unless we find him quick,” he lisped.

“Oh God!” she said with a moan and went limp.

He had practically to carry her to the waiting car. Coffin Ed opened the front door, and they installed her between them on the front seat.

“How did you make me?” she asked.

“It figures,” Coffin Ed explained. “You had to be a woman or you’d be in the clique. And no one in the clique knew you.”

“They only knew Casper,” she said bitterly.

Grave Digger looked at his watch. “It’s nineteen minutes past eight,” he lisped. “Our only chance rides on how tough Casper is; and how much you’re going to tell us; and how fast you’re going to tell it.”

She began to bridle. “I wasn’t in with it, if that’s what you think-”