Chester Himes - All shot up

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Coffin Ed said.

“Check,” Grave Digger echoed.

“I was still trying to get Snake Hips’ attention,” the bartender admitted. “But he was scared blind. He was just standing there with his arms straight up and his hands shaking like leaves. He was trembling all over and his coat was open, and I knew he must have been cold. I think he was saying-begging rather-for them not to shoot him-”

“Leave Snake Hips,” Coffin Ed said brutally. “What about the other two?”

“Well, they must have begun shooting when the man in the car finished. Maybe they took advantage to get out their guns. When the shooting from the car stopped more shooting was still going on, and I looked over and saw flashes coming from both of their guns. Their pistols looked like the same kind of snub-nosed pistol the man had on the ground. One of them was shooting from his right hand and the other from his left-”

“The white man the lefty?”

“No, sir, it was the colored man. He had his sap in his right hand and was shooting from his hip-”

“From his hip?” Grave Digger said.

“Yes sir, like a real Western gunman-”

“Hollywood style,” Coffin Ed said scornfully.

“Let him go on,” Grave Digger snapped.

“The white man had the brief case in his left hand, and he was shooting with his right hand held straight out in front of him like the man on the ground had done-”

“He’s the son,” Coffin Ed muttered.

“Was either of them hit?” Grave Digger asked.

“I don’t think so. I don’t think the man on the ground ever got a chance to shoot at them. After the man in the car had finished shooting they opened up; or they might have even opened up before he finished shooting. Anyway, the man on the ground never had a chance.”

“And you were standing there watching all the time?” Grave Digger asked.

“Yes, sir, like a fool. I saw when Snake Hips was hit. At least I knew he was hit because he went straight down. He didn’t fall like they do in the motion pictures; he just collapsed. I don’t know who shot him, of course; but it was one of them up there beside Mr. Holmes, because the man in the car had quit shooting by then. I figure it was the white man who shot him, because he was the one who was holding his pistol so high.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Coffin Ed said. “That son wasn’t throwing bullets that wide apart.”

“His number came up, and that’s that,” Grave Digger said. “And you didn’t see the man on the ground catch his.”

“Next time I noticed him he was just lying there like he had gone to sleep on his stomach, but to tell you the truth, sir, I wasn’t paying him no attention especially. I was waiting for the three cops-heistmen I mean-to leave so I could go out and get Snake Hips. Then when they did leave I thought what was the use-he was dead; I knew he was dead when he went down; then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to move a dead body. So I just stood there.”

“And even then you didn’t call the police,” Coffin Ed accused.

“No, sir.”

“What in the hell were you doing then? Hiding when it was all over?”

The bartender lowered his eyes. When his voice came it was so low they had to lean forward to hear it. “I was crying,” he confessed.

For a moment neither Grave Digger nor Coffin Ed had anywhere to look.

Then Grave Digger asked, in a voice unnecessarily harsh, “Did you see the license of the Buick, by any chance?”

The bartender got himself under control. “I didn’t exactly look at it, I mean make a point of it-looking at it, I mean; then I couldn’t see it too well; but it clicked in the back of my mind that it was a Yonkers number.”

“How did you notice that?”

“I live in Yonkers, and I was thinking It was fate that the car carrying the murderers of Snake Hips came from the place where I live.”

“Goddammit, let’s bury Snake Hips,” Coffin Ed said roughly. “Give us a description of the two men who got out of the car.”

“You’re asking me more than I can do, sir. I really didn’t look at their faces. Then the orange neon light from the bar sign was shining on them, and that makes faces look different from what they actually are; so I hardly ever look at faces outside. All I know is one man was black-”

“Not half black?”

“No sir, all black. And the other one was white.”

“Foreign.”

“It didn’t strike me that way. I’d say Southern. Something about him reminded me of one of those Southern deputy sheriffs-sort of slouching when he moved, but moving faster than what it looked, and strong. Something sort of mean-looking about him, sadistic, I’d say. The kind of man who thinks just being white is everything.”

“Not the kind who’d be welcome in here,” Grave Digger said.

“No, sir. The fellows would be scared of him.”

“But not whores?”

“Whores, too. But they’d take his money just the same. And he might be the kind who’d spend it on cheap whores.”

“All right, describe the car.”

“It was just a plain black Buick. About three years old, I’d say offhand. Plain black tires. Just the ordinary lights, as far as I saw. I wouldn’t have noticed it if it hadn’t been for them.”

“And they drove off toward Eighth Avenue?”

“Yes, sir. Then people came from everywhere. A man came in here from Blumstein’s and telephoned the police. And that’s all I know.”

“It’s been like pulling teeth,” Grave Digger said.

“All right, get on your coat and hat-you’re going to the station,” Coffin Ed said.

The bartender looked shocked. “But I thought-”

“And you can put down that glass before you wear it out.”

“But I thought if I told you everything I saw-I mean-you’re not arresting me, are you?”

“No, son, you’re not being arrested, but you got to repeat your story for the Homicide officers and for the record,” Grave Digger said.

Outside, the experts had itemized the material clues. The Assistant Medical Examiner had been and gone. He hadn’t disclosed anything that wasn’t obvious.

An examination of the white stiff’s clothes had revealed that he was an operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

“It won’t take long to check with the New York office and find out his assignment. That will tell us something,” the Homicide lieutenant said. “What did you boys find out?”

“Just what could be seen without knowing what it meant,” Grave Digger said. “This is the bartender; he saw it all.”

“Fine. We’ll get it down. Too bad you didn’t have a stenographer with you.”

“We might not have got what we did,” Coffin Ed said. “No one talks freely when it’s being taken down.”

“Anyway, you got it in your heads, if I know you two,” the Homicide lieutenant said. “As soon as they move these stiffs, we’ll all get together in the precinct station and correlate what we got.” He turned to the precinct lieutenant, Anderson. “What about those bar jockeys? You want any more of them?”

“I’m having a man take their names and addresses,” Anderson said. “I’ll go along with Jones and Johnson on the witness they picked.”

“Right,” the lieutenant said, beating the cold from his gloved hands and looking up and down the street. “What’s happening to those dead wagons?”

On his radio, Anderson got a call to come in. The bored voice of the switchboard sergeant informed him that the prowl car sent up to the convent reported a corpse, and asked what he wanted done.

Anderson told him to order the car to stay put and he’d send the Homicide crew up there.

The Homicide lieutenant ordered one of his detectives to call the Assistant Medical Examiner again.