A Rage in Harlem (15 page)

Jackson turned his back to the trunk, took the bottom corners in each hand, let the weight rest on his back, led down the steep stairs, his legs buckling at every step.

He had sweated through the back of his coat by the time they came out onto the sidewalk. Sweat was running into his eyes, blinding him. He felt his way across the sidewalk to the back of
the hearse, balanced the trunk with one hand, opened the double-doors with the other, moved some of the junk out of the way, and hoisted his end onto the coffin rack. Then he got back and helped Goldy push the trunk inside.

The trunk sat between the two side windows in clear view, like a sawed-off casket fitted to a legless man.

Jackson closed the doors and went around one side of the hearse to the driver’s seat. Goldy went around the other. They looked at each other across the empty seat.

“Where’d she go?” Jackson asked.

“How the hell do I know where she went? She’s your woman, she ain’t mine.”

Jackson peered up and down the dismal street. Far down on the other side, almost to the station, he saw some people running. It didn’t attract his attention. Somebody was always running in Harlem.

“She must be somewheres.”

Goldy climbed into the front seat, trying to be patient.

“Leave us take the trunk on home and come back for her.”

“I can’t leave her here. You know that. It was her I came after in the first place.”

Goldy began losing his patience. “Man, let’s go. That woman can find her way.”

“You leave me to run my own business,” Jackson said, starting back into the tenement.

“She’s not in the house, God damn it. Are you going to be a square all your life? She’s gone.”

“If she’s gone I’m going to wait right here until she comes back.”

Goldy was fingering the handle of his revolver as he struggled to control his fury.

“Man, all that bitch wants is to save her gold. She’s going to find you. She don’t care nothing ’bout nobody.”

“I’m getting good and sick and tired of you talking about her like that,” Jackson flared, approaching Goldy belligerently.

Goldy drew his revolver halfway out. It was all he could do to stop himself.

“God damn, you black son of a bitch, if you wasn’t my brother I’d kill you,” he said, twitching all over in a doped rage.

Jackson took a new grip on his length of iron pipe, crossed the sidewalk, climbed the tenement stairs back to the flat.

“Imabelle. You here, Imabelle?”

He searched the apartment, looking underneath the bed, behind the sofa, in the kitchen, holding the club gripped firmly in his hand, as though he were searching for someone as small as a puppy dog and dangerous as a male gorilla.

A corner of the kitchen was closed off with a faded green cotton curtain suspended from a line of sagging twine. Jackson pulled the curtain aside and looked inside.

“She left all her clothes,” he said aloud.

Suddenly he felt beat, tired to the bone.

He sat down in the one kitchen chair, laid his head in the cushion of his folded arms on the kitchen table, closed his eyes in weariness, and the next instant he was asleep.

A black delivery truck made a fast turn into Park Avenue from 130th Street, heading south opposite the tenement building, and suddenly slackened speed.

From the driver’s seat Jodie peered intently at the parked hearse. “There’s a hearse out front,” he said needlessly.

“I see it,” Hank said, leaning forward to peer around his shoulder.

“What’s it doing there, you reckon?”

“I ain’t no fortuneteller.”

“You reckon the cops are with it?”

“I don’t reckon nothing. Let’s find out.”

Both of them had changed clothes since their escape from the shack on the Harlem River.

Jodie now wore a blue overcoat, black snap-brim hat parked on the back of his head, a blue suit, brown suede gloves, and black oxfords. He could have passed for a dining-car waiter, a job at which he’d been employed for four years.

Hank wore a dark brown overcoat, brown hat, and a blue suit. He had his hat pulled low over his eyes and both hands dug into his overcoat pockets.

They were dressed for a getaway.

From where he sat on the front seat of the hearse, Goldy saw the
lights of the truck when it first turned into Park Avenue. When it turned so that he could see what type of truck it was, he was instantly suspicious. He knew that a delivery truck of that type had no business on that kind of street at that time of night. He bent over on the seat so that he couldn’t be seen, cocking his ears to listen. He heard the truck going slowly down the opposite side of the street. It occured to him suddenly that it might be Hank and Jodie returning to get the trunk of gold ore. He took the revolver from the folds of his gown, held it against his chest, and twisted about on the seat so that he could see into the rear-view mirror.

When the panel truck was directly opposite the hearse, Jodie said, “It’s empty.”

“Looks empty.”

“But there’s something in the back. Reckon it’s a coffin?”

“You do your own reckoning.”

Suddenly Jodie could see past the end of the trunk through the opposite window.

“It ain’t no coffin.”

Hank took a .38 automatic from his right overcoat pocket and jacked a shell into the breech.

Jodie made a U-turn before reaching the end of the block, came back on the side of the hearse, then turned inside the iron stanchions of the trestle to pass it.

Goldy watched the lights in the rear-view mirror until they had passed out of range, but he heard the truck going slowly ahead.

Now Hank was on the inside of the truck, next to the hearse.

“There’s a trunk in it,” he said.

Jodie peered around Hank’s shoulder.

“You reckon it’s her trunk?”

“We’re going to see.”

Jodie steered the truck to the curb ahead of the hearse, parked, and doused the lights. He took off his gloves, put them into his left overcoat pocket, stuck his hand into his right pocket, and gripped the cold bone-handle of his knife.

He got out on the street side, while Hank alighted on the sidewalk. Both stood poised for an instant, casing the silent street. Then both turned in unison and walked back quietly to the silent hearse. Both glanced casually into the front seat as they passed, but didn’t notice Goldy. His black gown made him invisible in the dark.

At the sides of the hearse they stopped and peered through the
glass windows, examining the trunk on the coffin rack. Their gazes met over the top. They went to the back of the hearse, tried the doors, found them open, and looked inside.

“It’s it, all right,” Jodie said.

“I can see it.”

Goldy had raised his head slightly to watch them in the rear-view mirror. He recognized them instantly. From the way Hank stood with his right hand always in his pocket, Goldy knew he had a gun. He wasn’t sure about Jodie, but he figured Hank was the one to watch.

He saw them turn and look up at the window of the third-floor flat.

“I don’t see no light,” Jodie said.

“That don’t mean nothing.”

“I’m gonna look.”

“Wait a minute.”

“I don’t want to stand out here and get my ass blown off.”

“If anybody’s in there they’ve already seen us.”

“What do you mean, if anybody’s in there? You think spooks brought down this heavy trunk?”

“The way I figure it, she got Jackson to help her.”

“Jackson. That mother-raping tarball. How the hell could he find out where she’s at?”

“How the hell did he find out where our river hideaway was at? An eight-ball like him sweet on a high-yaller gal will find out where Hitler is buried at.”

“Then it must be his boss’s hearse.”

“That’s the way I figure it.”

Jodie laughed softly.

“Let’s take the mother-raping hearse too.”

“Let’s see if he left the keys in it.”

When they turned back toward the front seat, Jodie on the street side and Hank on the sidewalk, Goldy felt along the sill of the street-side window and pushed down the button that locked the door. He figured that all Jodie had was a knife, and he could concentrate on Hank.

His body tensed as he watched their reflections vanish from the opposite edges of the rear-view mirror, his right arm stiffened, fingers tightened on the butt of the big .45. But he waited until Hank turned the handle of the front door before cocking the revolver in order to synchronize the sound with the clicking of the
door lock.

Hank wasn’t expecting danger from that source. When he pulled open the door, Goldy straightened up on the seat, looking like the mother of all the evil ghosts, and said, “Freeze!”

Hank looked into the muzzle of the .45 and froze. His heart stopped beating, his lungs stopped breathing, his blood stopped flowing. That big hole at the end of Goldy’s .45 looked as big as a cannon bore.

Goldy figured he was protected from behind by the locked door. But the door locks on the old Cadillac hearse were out of order.

At the first sight of motion Jodie snatched open the door at Goldy’s back with his left hand, snatched Goldy bodily from the seat into the street with his right hand before Goldy could squeeze the trigger, kicked the gun out of his hand while he was still in the air, kicked him again in the back of the neck the instant Goldy’s fat black-gowned figure hit the pavement.

He didn’t care whether it was a man, woman, or child he was kicking. He was riding a lightning bolt of maniacal violence, and all he could see was a red ball of murder.

As the revolver skidded down the street, he kicked Goldy in the ribs, and when the revolver bumped to a stop in the gutter against the curb and vanished in the black slush, he kicked Goldy in the back above the kidneys.

Hank was running around the front of the hearse with the cocked .38 automatic in his hand when Jodie kicked Goldy in the solar plexus.

“Leave off,” Hank said, leveling the .38 on Jodie’s heart. “You’ll kill her.”

Goldy writhed on the dirty wet bricks like a fish on a hook, gasping for breath. White froth had collected at the corners of his mouth before he could speak.

Jodie stood poised, anchored by Hank’s gun, panting out his violence.

“One more kick and I’d a’ killed her.”

“Lawd, have mercy on an old lady,” Goldy finally managed to wail.

The whistle of a train approaching the station sounded as it turned across the Harlem River like an echo to Goldy’s wailing plea.

Hank stepped close to Goldy, suddenly reached down with his
left hand and lifted Goldy’s face by the chin.

Goldy was groping desperately for his gold cross that had got entangled in the folds of his gown.

“I’m a Sister of Mercy,” he said in a moaning wail. “I’m in the service of the Lord.”

“Don’t hand us that crap, we know who you are,” Hank said.

“She’s that nun who stools for them two darky dicks ain’t she? How you reckon she got in this deal?”

“How the hell do I know? Ask her.”

Jodie looked down into Goldy’s ash-gray face. There was no mercy in Jodie’s muddy brown eyes.

“Talk fast,” he said. “ ’Cause you ain’t got much time.”

The sound of the approaching train, transmitted by the iron tracks on the iron trestle, slowly grew louder.

“Listen—” Goldy whined.

A short sharp blast of the train whistle, signaling that it had crossed the river into Harlem, cut him off.

“Listen, I can help you get away with it. You’re strangers here, but I know this town in and out.”

Hank’s eyes narrowed. He was listening intently.

Jodie pulled his hand from his overcoat pocket, gripping the handle of his switch-blade knife. It had a push-button on the top of the handle, worked by the thumb, and when he pressed it a six-inch blade leaped forward with a soft click, gleaming dully in the dim light.

Goldy saw the blade from the corners of his eyes and scrambled to his knees.

“Listen, I can hide it for you.”

His instinctive fear of cold steel made his eyes run tears.

“Listen, I can cover for you—”

Jodie showed his hatred for a stooly by slapping off Goldy’s cap. The gray wig came off with it, leaving the round head exposed.

“This black mother-raper is a man,” he said, moving around behind Goldy.

“Listen to him,” Hank said.

“I got a hideout can’t nobody find. Listen, I can take care of you-all. I can cover with the cops. I got ins at the precinct. You know my secret now. You know you can trust me. Listen, I can hide all of you, and there’s enough for—” His voice was lost in the thunder of the approaching train.

Hank bent down to hear him better, staring into his face.

“Who else is with you?”

“Ain’t nobody, I swear—”

The Diesel locomotive of the train was rumbling overhead. The trestle shook, shaking the stanchions. The street shook, the building shook, the whole black night was quaking.

Goldy knelt as though in prayer, knees planted on the wet, dirty-black shaking street, his fat body shaking beneath the flowing folds of the robe, shaking as though praying in a void of pure terror.

Jodie leaned forward quickly behind him. He was shaking too.

“Lying mother—,” he said in a voice of rage.

Goldy realized instantly his mistake. Somebody had had to help him bring down the trunk, it was too heavy to handle alone.

“Ain’t nobody but—”

Jodie reached down with a violent motion, clutched him over the face with the palm of his left hand, put his right knee in Goldy’s back between the shoulder blades, jerked Goldy’s head back against the pressure of his knee, and cut Goldy’s taut black throat from ear to ear, straight down to the bone.

Goldy’s scream mingled with the scream of the locomotive as the train thundered past overhead, shaking the entire tenement city. Shaking the sleeping black people in their lice-ridden beds. Shaking the ancient bones and the aching muscles and the t.b. lungs and the uneasy foetuses of unwed girls. Shaking plaster from the ceilings, mortar from between the bricks of the building walls. Shaking the rats between the walls, the cockroaches crawling over kitchen sinks and leftover food; shaking the sleeping flies hibernating in lumps like bees behind the casings of the windows. Shaking the fat, blood-filled bedbugs crawling over black skin. Shaking the fleas, making them hop. Shaking the sleeping dogs in their filthy pallets, the sleeping cats, the clogged toilets, loosening the filth.