A Rage in Harlem (7 page)

Both were tall, loose-jointed, sloppily dressed, ordinary-looking dark-brown colored men. But there was nothing ordinary about their pistols. They carried specially made long-barreled nickel-plated .38-calibre revolvers, and at the moment they had them in their hands.

Grave Digger stood on the right side of the front end of the line, at the entrance to the Savoy. Coffin Ed stood on the left side of the line, at the rear end. Grave Digger had his pistol aimed south, in a straight line down the sidewalk. On the other side, Coffin Ed had his pistol aimed north, in a straight line. There was space enough between the two imaginary lines for two persons to stand side by side. Whenever anyone moved out of line, Grave Digger would shout, “Straighten up!” and Coffin Ed would echo, “Count off!” If the offender didn’t straighten up the line immediately, one of the detectives would shoot into the air. The couples in the queue would close together as though pressed between two concrete walls. Folks in Harlem believed that Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson would shoot a man stone dead for not standing straight in a line.

Grave Digger looked around and saw the black-gowned figure of Sister Gabriel trudging slowly down the street.

“What’s the word, Sister?” he greeted.

“ ‘
And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon
, the sixth angel said,’ ” Sister Gabriel quoted.

The couples nearby in the queue laughed.

“Listen to Sistah Gabriel,” a young woman snickered.

“I hear you, Sister,” Grave Digger said. “And what makes those three frogs hop?”

The listeners laughed again.

Sister Gabriel paused. “ ‘For they are the spirits of devils,
working miracles.’ ”

“Do you think she’s crazy?” a loud whisper was heard.

“Shut your mouth,” came a cautious reply.

“And these frogs?” Grave Digger kept it up. “You mean they’ve got a frog pond in Harlem?”

It was a signal for the listeners to laugh again.

“ ‘And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery,’ ” Sister Gabriel quoted and moved on.

“Everybody to their own Jesus,” Grave Digger said to the audience.

Goldy continued down Lenox Avenue to 131st Street and turned the corner toward Big Kathy’s whorehouse.

It was a six-room apartment on the second floor rear of a big crumbling five-story building. Big Kathy was giving her customers a show and the big living-room was lit brightly for the occasion. The air was tinted blue with the smoke of incense. Five girls and a dozen men sat squeezed together on shabby overstuffed chairs and sofas backed against the walls, leaving the center of the room clear.

A huge yellow woman, almost six feet tall and weighing almost two hundred and fifty pounds, was struggling furiously with a short, skinny, muscular black man about half her weight. Both were clad in skintight rubber suits that had been greased and their faces were streaming with sweat that couldn’t escape through the body pores.

They were working off a bet whether he could throw her. The stake was a hundred dollars. Side bets had been made.

The big woman was clubbing the little man with her fists. The little man was trying to get hold of the big woman’s greased limbs. It was rugged. The spectators were laughing and shouting obscene encouragement.

“Give him some more love licks, baby,” a man kept shouting.

Goldy entered by the service door and went unnoticed down the hall to Big Kathy’s private room. He entered without knocking.

The room was furnished with a bed, chiffonier, a desk for a dressing table, and two red plastic-covered chairs.

Big Kathy was standing at the foot of the bed beside a hinged panel that opened inward from the wall at the height of his face. When closed, the panel was hidden by a lithograph of Mary and her Child. On the other side was a transparent mirror giving a
clear view of the living room without the peeper’s being seen.

Big Kathy turned his head and beckoned to Goldy.

“He’s here,” he whispered. “Over by the radio with Teena in his lap.”

Goldy put his face to the peephole and Big Kathy looked over his shoulder. He spotted Hank instantly. Then he noticed a rough-skinned, broad-shouldered man with half-straightened hair, dressed in working pants and a leather jacket, sitting beside Hank in a straight-backed chair.

“That’s another one,” Goldy whispered. “The one beside him with the burnt hair.”

“He calls himself Walker.”

Goldy’s gaze roved about the room but he didn’t see the slim man.

“Can you get Teena in here?” he asked Big Kathy.

Big Kathy fingered a loose nail in the joist on which the panel was hinged. The radio dial lit up. All five girls in the big room looked at it covertly.

Then Teena got up and excused herself.

“I’ve got to go wee-wee.”

“You’re getting kind of old for that, ain’t you?” Jodie said roughly.

“Quit picking at her,” Hank ordered.

Teena slipped into Big Kathy’s room without its being noticed.

“The Sister here wants you to dig your John tonight about his gold-mine pitch, and to get every angle there is,” Big Kathy said.

Teena looked at the Sister of Mercy curiously. She had discovered by accident that Big Kathy was a man, but she didn’t know anything definite about Goldy.

“What’s her story?” she asked impudently.

“You’re drinking too much,” Big Kathy said. “You’d better be sober when you get to work, and you’d better not miss.”

“I ain’t goin’ to miss,” Teena said sullenly.

As soon as she’d returned to the sitting room, Big Kathy went in and stopped the wrestling match.

“Let’s call it a draw.”

“Let ’em finish!” Jodie shouted. “I got my money up.”

“Take it down then,” Big Kathy said harshly. “I said it’s a draw.”

The wrestlers were on the point of exhaustion and glad to quit.

Jodie took down the money from the girl who was holding the
bet and pushed his way toward the outside door. Big Kathy let him out.

Teena took Hank to a room.

Goldy stretched out on Big Kathy’s bed, but he was too tense to sleep. He was too worried about whether the gold ore was real. He believed Jackson, but he wanted to be sure.

Big Kathy sat in one of the plastic-covered armchairs, skirt drawn up above his big lumpy knees, reading the society page of a Negro weekly newspaper and commenting from time to time about friends of his who were mentioned.

They had a long wait. It was after midnight before Teena knocked softly.

“Come in,” Big Kathy said.

“Whew!” Teena whistled, flopping into the other chair. “He talked my ear off.”

Goldy sat up on the edge of the bed and leaned forward. “Did he want you to go in with them?”

“Hell, no! That stingy son of a bitch! He was tryin’ to sell me some shares.”

“Then you struck,” Big Kathy said.

“I got everything but where they’re making the pitch.”

Goldy looked disappointed. “That was one of the main things.”

“I did my best, but he wouldn’t give.”

“All right,” Big Kathy said. “Let’s have what you got.”

“It’s just the old lost-gold-mine pitch. The one they call Walker is supposed to be the prospector who accidentally discovered the lost gold mine in Mexico. It’s the biggest and richest gold mine he’s ever seen in all his years of prospecting, and all that bullshit.”

“Let’s hear it anyhow,” Goldy said.

Teena threw him another calculating look.

“Well, Walker’s afraid he’d be killed if he even so much as mentioned finding the mine. And naturally the only man he can trust to tell about it is Mr. Morgan, who’s a big-time financier from Los Angeles. Mr. Morgan’s known all over the West Coast for backing big business-deals and has got a reputation from coast to coast for being honest.”

She started giggling.

“Go on,” Big Kathy said roughly.

“Well, what prospector Walker needed was thousands of dollars’ worth of tools and equipment and stuff and about a
hundred miners to work for him. And besides that he’s got to get a permit from the Mexican government to work the mine, which is going to cost a hundred thousand dollars just by itself.

“So the first thing Mr. Morgan does is engage the services – that’s what he said – engage the—”

“Get on with the story,” Big Kathy said.

“Engage the services of a gold assayer from the Federal Bureau of Assayers. I ain’t seen that one, but they call him Goldsmith.”

She began giggling again but a look from Big Kathy stopped her.

“Well, all three of them, Walker and Morgan and Goldsmith, was supposed to have gone to Mexico to investigate the mine. But when Mr. Morgan found out how big it was he knew he couldn’t swing the deal alone. There were billions of dollars’ worth of gold in the mine and it’d take half a million dollars to mine it right. Morgan said he could have financed it through his bank – he told me this straight to my face – but he didn’t want the white folks to get control of it and take all the profits. So he decided to organize a corporation and sell stock just to colored folks. They’re going all over the whole United States selling stock at fifty dollars a share; and to give themselves time to make a load they’re telling everybody it’ll take six months to get the mine in operation and another three or four months before it starts paying off.”

She stopped and lit a cigarette, then looked from one to the other. “Well, that’s it.”

“How’re they selling their stock if you couldn’t find out where they’re making their pitch?” Goldy asked intently.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you about that. They got a contact man called Gus Parsons, or Gus somebody-or-other. He’s working all the plush bars, attending businessmen’s conferences, even going to church festivals, Morgan said, contacting the suckers. Investors, Morgan calls them. Then he takes them to their headquarters blindfolded, in his own car.”

Big Kathy’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Teena.

Goldy kept his intent stare pinned on her.

“How come all that?” he asked.

Teena shrugged. “He said they’re afraid of being robbed.”

“Robbed?” Big Kathy echoed.

“Robbed of what?” Goldy asked.

“He say they got a trunk full of gold ore, whatever that is. He said it was taken from the lost mine, as if anybody’d believe that
shit.”

“Do they keep it at their headquarters?” Goldy asked.

There was something in Goldy’s voice that made Big Kathy look at him sharply.

Teena didn’t know what was happening and she began getting scared.

“I don’t know where they keep it. He didn’t say nothing to me about that. All he said to me was they had samples at headquarters to exhibit but if anybody had enough money to invest, they’d show ’em a whole trunk full of pure gold ore.”

Goldy sighed so softly it sounded as though he were crying to himself.

Big Kathy kept staring at him with his eyes full of questions. “You through with Teena?”

Goldy nodded.

“Get out,” Big Kathy said.

As soon as Teena had closed the door, he leaned far over and stared into Goldy’s bowed face.

“Is it true?”

Goldy nodded slowly. “It’s true.”

“How much?”

“Enough for everybody.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just play dead until after I have got it.”

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed weren’t crooked detectives, but they were tough. They had to be tough to work in Harlem. Colored folks didn’t respect colored cops. But they respected big shiny pistols and sudden death. It was said in Harlem that Coffin Ed’s pistol would kill a rock and that Grave Digger’s would bury it.

They took their tribute, like all real cops, from the established underworld catering to the essential needs of the people – gamekeepers, madams, streetwalkers, numbers writers, numbers bankers. But they were rough on purse snatchers, muggers, burglars, con men, and all strangers working any racket. And they didn’t like rough stuff from anybody else but themselves. “Keep it
cool,” they warned. “Don’t make graves.”

When Goldy got to the Savoy they were just leaving with two studs who’d got into a knife fight about a girl. The stud who’d brought the girl had gotten jealous because she’d danced too much with another stud. What made Coffin Ed and Grave Digger mad was the girl had put these two studs to fighting so she could slip away with a third stud, and these two studs were too simple-minded to see it.

Goldy followed them to the 126th Street precinct station in a taxi.

The big booking-room where the desk sergeant sat behind a fortress-like desk five feet high on the side toward the detective bureau was jampacked with the night’s pick-up.

The patrol-car cops, foot patrolmen, plainclothes dicks all had their prisoners in tow, waiting to book them on the blotter at the desk. The desk sergeant was taking them in turn, writing down their names, charges, addresses, and arresting-officers on the blotter, before turning them over to the jailors who hung waiting in the background.

The small-time bondsmen, white and colored, were hanging about the desk and threading among the prisoners, soliciting business. For a ten-dollar fee they went bail for misdemeanors.

The cops were angry because they’d have to appear in court the next morning during their off-hours to testify against the prisoners they’d arrested. They were impatient to get their prisoners booked so they could go to some of their hangouts and take a nap before quitting time.

A young white cop had arrested a middle-aged drunken colored woman for prostitution. The big rough brown-skinned man dressed in overalls and a leather jacket picked up with her claimed she was his mother and he was just walking her home.

“Gettin’ so a woman can’t even walk down the street with her own natural-born son,” the woman complained.

“Shut up, can’t you?” the cop said irritably.

“Don’t you tell my mama to shut up,” the man said.

“If this whore’s your mama, I’m Santa Claus,” the cop said.

“Don’t you call me no whore,” the woman said, and slammed the cop in the face with her pocketbook.

The cop struck back instinctively and knocked the woman down. The colored man hit the cop above the ear and knocked him down. Another cop let go his own prisoner and slapped the
man about the head. The man staggered head-forward into another cop, who slapped him again. In the excitement someone stepped on the woman and she began screaming.