Chester Himes - All shot up

They had been asked why they had attempted to apprehend the robbers single-handed, using Mrs. Holmes as a front, instead of contacting their precinct station and getting instructions from the officer in charge.

“We were trying to save his life,” Coffin Ed replied. “If the block had been surrounded by police, those hoods would have killed him for sure.”

The Chief Inspector nodded. It was a straw-man question anyway.

What the Brass really wanted was their opinion as to Casper’s guilt.

“Who knows?” Grave Digger lisped.

“It hasn’t been proven,” Coffin Ed said. “All we know is what his wife said she guessed.”

“What was her racket?” the Chief Inspector asked.

“We haven’t figured it out,” Coffin Ed admitted. “We got wound up in this other business and we haven’t worked on it.”

The Chief Inspector admitted that a crew of detectives from the Safe, Loft and Truck Squad and two experts from the Pinkerton Detective Agency had searched Casper’s office and the entire office building, and had questioned all of the other tenants and the building superintendent. But they had not turned up the $50,000.

“You men know Harlem, and you know Holmes,” the Chief said. “Where would he hide it?”

“If he’s got it,” Grave Digger lisped.

“That’s the fifty-thousand dollar question,” Coffin Ed said.

“All that I have to say about this business,” the assistant D.A. said, “is that it stinks.”

Now it was Monday night.

The snow crews had lost the race. The city was snowed in.

The customary metropolitan roar was muffled to an eerie silence by sixteen inches of snow.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed were in the captain’s office in the Harlem Precinct station, talking over the case with their friend and superior officer, Lieutenant Anderson.

Grave Digger sat with one ham perched on the edge of the captain’s desk, while Coffin Ed leaned against a corner radiator in the shadow.

“We know he did it,” Grave Digger lisped. “But what can you do?”

Veins throbbed in Anderson’s temples, and his pale-blue eyes looked remote.

“How did you figure the tie-in between Baron’s racket and Casper’s caper?” Anderson asked.

Grave Digger chuckled.

“It was easy,” Coffin Ed said. “There wasn’t any.”

“We were just lucky,” Grave Digger admitted. “It was just like she said; she guessed it.”

“But you uncovered her,” Anderson said.

“That’s where we were lucky,” Coffin Ed replied.

“What was her racket?”

“Maybe we’ll never know for sure, but we figure it like this,” Coffin Ed explained. “Leila Baron knew this salesman, Herman Rose. Casper bought his Cadillac from there. When she met Roman and found out he had saved up sixty-five hundred dollars to buy a car, she got Rose to come in with her and Junior Ball-or Black Beauty if you want to call him that-on a deal to trim him. Rose provided the car; he probably has a key to the place; he’s been there long enough, and he’s trusted. And he also acted as notary public. Then his part was finished. Baron was going to take Roman down that deserted street where Black Beauty, masquerading as an old woman, was going to fake being hit. They had no doubt worked out some way to get the car back from Roman and keep the money, too; we’ll never know exactly unless she tells us. Probably she planned to scare him into leaving the country.

“Anyway, these hoods masqueraded as cops turned into the street as they were making their own getaway in time to see the whole play. They saw the Cadillac knock the old woman down; they saw the old woman getting up. They knew immediately it was a racket, and they decided on the spur of the moment to use it for their own purposes. They could get another car, which wouldn’t be reported as stolen, and pick up some additional money too. So they hit the phony victim deliberately to kill.”

“They wouldn’t have had to do that,” Anderson said. “They could have got the Cadillac and the money anyway.”

“They were playing it safe. With the phony victim really killed, no one could go to the police. They could use the Cadillac as long as they wanted without fear of being picked up.”

“Vicious sonsofbitches,” Anderson muttered.

“That was how we got the idea that the cases were connected,” Grave Digger said. “There was an extraordinary viciousness about both capers.”

“But why did they take the car back to the dealer’s?” Anderson wondered.

“It was the safest thing to do when they finished with it,” Coffin Ed contended. “The dealer’s name and address were on a sticker in the rear window. Roman and his girl just didn’t notice it.”

Anderson sat for a time, musing.

“And you don’t think his wife was connected in any way with his caper?” he asked.

“It doesn’t figure,” Grave Digger said. “She hates him.”

“She’d have tipped the police if she had known about it in advance,” Coffin Ed added.

“She tried to give us a lead, but we didn’t pick it up,” Grave Digger admitted. “When she sent us down to Zog Ziegler’s crib. She figured that somebody down there would probably know about it, and we could find it out without her telling us.”

“But we figured she was tipping us on Baron, and we missed it,” Coffin Ed said.

“But she helped you to save him in the end,” Anderson said. “How do you figure that?”

“She didn’t want him taken by those hoodlums who had knocked her out and robbed her,” Grave Digger said.

“Besides, she might still think Casper is a great man,” Coffin Ed said.

“He is a great man,” Grave Digger said. “According to our standards.”

Anderson took his pipe from his side coat pocket and cleaned it with a small penknife over a report sheet. He filled it from an oilskin pouch and struck a kitchen match on the underside of the desk. When he had the pipe going, he said:

“I can understand Casper pulling off a caper like that. He probably wouldn’t even think he was hurting anybody if he got away with it. The only people who’d get hurt would be some out-of-town hoods. But why would his wife get mixed up in a cheap chiseling racket like that? She’s a lovely woman, a socialite. She had a hundred activities to keep her occupied.”

“Hell, the reason is obvious,” Coffin Ed said. “If you were a woman and you had a husband who played about with the little boys, what would you do?”

Anderson turned bright red.

Several minutes passed. No one said anything.

“You can hear your own thoughts moving around in this silence,” Coffin Ed said.

“It’s like an armistice, when the guns stop shooting,” Anderson said.

“Let’s hope we don’t have to go through that again,” Grave Digger said. “What I have been thinking about is why Casper went by his office when it’s obvious by now that he doesn’t have the money hidden there,” Anderson said.

“That’s the big question,” Coffin Ed admitted.

They brooded over it in the eerie silence.

“Maybe to throw off the Pinkertons who were on to him by then, or maybe to set a trap for the hoods if they were still in town. It was a red herring, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Grave Digger said. “We’re missing something.”

“Just like we missed that tip-off on Ziegler.”

Grave Digger screwed about and looked at Coffin Ed.

“Yeah, maybe we’re missing the same thing.”

“You know what it is?” Coffin Ed said.

“Yeah, it just now came to me.”

“Me, too. It was thinking about the clique that did it.”

“Yeah, it’s as obvious as the nose on your face.”

“That’s the trouble. It’s too God-damned obvious.”