All Shot Up (13 page)

Roman fell into Grave Digger and clutched him by the leg, and, when Coffin Ed jumped forward to kick him away, he clutched his leg.

He got to his feet, holding each big man by a leg, and banged their heads into the ceiling beams.

“Run, Sassy, run!” he shouted. “This ain’t no time for a fit.”

She stopped screaming as suddenly as she had started. She jumped to her feet and started toward the door.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed began raining pistol blows on Roman’s head.

He sank to his knees but held onto their legs.

“Run, Sassy!” he gasped.

But she stopped at the doorway to run back and snatch up her new fur coat.

Grave Digger grabbed at her but missed.

“Turn loose, tough mouth!” Coffin Ed grated as he kept pounding Roman on the head.

But Roman held on long enough for Sassafras to scamper down the stairs like a frightened alley cat. Then he relaxed his grip; he grinned foolishly and murmured, “Solid bone...” He fell forward and rolled over.

Coffin Ed leaped toward the doorway, but Grave Digger called to him, lisping painfully, “Let her go. Let her go. He earned it.”

It was eleven o’clock Sunday morning, and the good colored people of Harlem were on their way to church.

It was a gloomy, overcast day, miserable enough to make the most hardened sinner think twice about the hot, sunshiny streets of heaven before turning over and going back to sleep.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed looked them over indifferently as they drove toward Harlem hospital. A typical Sunday morning sight, come sun or come rain.

Old white-haired sisters bundled up like bales of cotton against the bitter cold; their equally white-haired men, stumbling along in oversize galoshes like the last herd of Uncle Toms, toddling the last mile toward salvation on half-frozen feet.

Middle-aged couples and their broods, products of the postwar generation, the prosperous generation, looking sanctimonious in their good warm clothes, going to praise the Lord for the white folks’ blessings.

Young men who hadn’t yet made it, dressed in lightweight suits and topcoats sold by color instead of quality or weight in the credit stores, with enough brown wrapping paper underneath their pastel shirts to keep them warm, laughing at the strange words of God and making like Solomon at the pretty brownskin girls.

Young women who were sure as hell going to make it or drop dead in the attempt, ashy with cold, clad in the unbelievable colors of cheap American dyes, some at that very moment catching the pneumonia which would take them before that God they were on their way to worship.

From all over town they came.

To all over town they went.

The big churches and little churches, stone churches and store-front churches, to their own built churches and to hand-me-down churches.

To Baptist churches and African Methodist Episcopal churches and African Methodist Episcopal Zionist churches; to Holy Roller churches and Father Divine churches and Daddy Grace churches, Burning Bush churches, and churches of God and Christ.

To listen to their preachers preach the word of God: fat black preachers and tall yellow preachers; straightened-haired preachers and bald-headed preachers; family preachers and playboy preachers; men preachers and lady preachers and children preachers.

To listen to any sermon their preacher cared to preach. But on this cold day it had better be hot.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed parked their wreck in front of the Harlem Hospital and went inside to the reception desk.

They asked to speak with Casper Holmes.

The cool, young colored nurse at the desk lifted a telephone and spoke some words. She put it down and gave them a cool, remote smile. “I am sorry, but he is still in a coma,” she said.

“Don’t be sorry for us, be sorry for him,” Coffin Ed said.

Her smile froze as though the insect had talked back.

“Tell him it’s Digger Jones and Ed Johnson,” Grave Digger lisped.

She stared at the movement of his swollen lips with horrified fascination.

“Tell him we’re just ahead of the Confederates,” he went on. “Maybe that will get him out of his coma.”

Her face twisted as though she had swallowed something disagreeable.

“Confederates,” she murmured.

“You know who the Confederates are,” Coffin Ed said. “They’re the people who fought to keep us slaves.”

She smiled tentatively to prove she wasn’t sensitive about slavery jokes.

They stared at her, grave and unsmiling.

She waited and they waited.

Finally she picked up the telephone again and repeated their message to the floor supervisor.

They heard her say: “No, not conferees; they said
Con-fed-er-ates
... Yes...”

She put down the telephone and said without expression, “You will have to wait.”

They waited; neither moved.

“Please wait in the waiting room,” she said.

Behind them was a small nook with a table and several chairs, some occupied by others who were waiting.

“We’ll wait here,” Grave Digger lisped.

She pursed her lips. The telephone rang. She listened. “Yes,” she said.

She looked up and said, “His room is on the third floor. Take the elevator to the right, please. The floor supervisor will direct you.”

“You see,” Grave Digger lisped. “You don’t know what those Confederates are good for.”

The room was banked with flowers.

Casper sat up in a white bed wearing a turban of white bandages. His broad black face loomed aggressively above yellow silk pajamas. He looked like an African potentate, but it wasn’t a time for flattery.

French windows opened to a terrace facing the east. Two overstuffed chairs ranged along one side of the bed. On the other side, remains of a breakfast littered a wheel tray. The detectives saw at a glance that it had been a substantial breakfast of fried sausage, poached eggs on toast, hominy grits with butter, fruit and cereal with cream and a silver pot of coffee. A box of Havana cigars sat beside a basket of mixed fruit on the night stand.

The detectives took off their hats.

“Sit down, boys,” Casper said. “What’s this about Confederates?”

Grave Digger looked about for a window sill on which to rest a ham, was thwarted by the French window and compromised on the arm of a chair. Coffin Ed backed into a corner and leaned against the wall, his scarred face in the shadows.

“We were just kidding, boss,” Grave Digger lisped. “We thought you might want to talk to us before the big brass from downtown gets up here.”

Casper frowned. He didn’t like the insinuation that he preferred talking to colored precinct detectives rather than to downtown white inspectors. But since he had tacitly admitted as much by seeing them, he decided to pass it.

“A god-damned embarrassing caper,” he conceded. “Right in my own bailiwick.”

Now he looked like a martyred potentate.

“That’s what we figured,” Coffin Ed said.

Casper flicked a quick, sly look from one to the other. “You must feel the same way,” he observed. “Where were you at the time?”

“Eating chicken feetsy at Mammy Louise’s,” Grave Digger confessed.

Casper stared at him to see whether he was joking, decided he wasn’t. He opened the box of cigars and selected one, picked up a gadget from the table and carefully snipped off the end, then reached for an imported gold lighter behind the box and snapped a flame. He applied the flame like a jeweler using a miniature torch on filigree of gold, snapped shut the lighter, slowly rolled the end of the cigar about between his thick lips and blew out a thin stream of smoke. The good smell of fine tobacco dissipated the hospital odors.

As an afterthought, he extended the box toward the detectives. Both declined.

“I will tell you what I know, which isn’t much,” he said. “Then we will see what we can make out of it. You boys must have been working on it all night yourselves.”

“Still at it,” Grave Digger lisped.

“First we’ll tell you what we got,” Coffin Ed said. “A colored sailor, a country boy from Alabama, left his ship at about six o’clock last evening. He had been working for one entire year to save money to buy a car; when he got his final pay, he had six thousand, five hundred dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills in a money belt. The ship docks in Brooklyn. It was eight o’clock before he got uptown. He met his girl friend, Sassafras Jenkins. They had some drinks and then took a taxi over to an office on lower Convent Avenue, where he had an appointment to meet one Mister Baron, who was selling him the car.”

Casper smoked his cigar softly, his black face impassive.

“The appointment was for ten o’clock,” Coffin Ed went on. “Baron was a half hour late. He rode up in the car with a white man. Roman and his girl were waiting on the sidewalk in front of the dermatological clinic near One-twenty-sixth Street. The white man got out and went upstairs to an office in the rear. Roman and his girl stayed downstairs for another half hour with Baron, inspecting the car. A small crowd of people coming from the supermarket up the street collected.

“It was a brand new Cadillac convertible with some kind of gold-like finish. Baron was selling it to Roman for six thousand, five hundred dollars.”

Casper blinked but said nothing.

“You got a Cadillac convertible. What did yours cost?” Grave Digger asked.

“With accessories over eight thousand,” Casper said.

“Roman paid six thousand, five hundred for his,” Coffin Ed said. “The three of them went upstairs to the office where the white man was waiting, and executed the bill of sale. Sassafras witnessed it, and the white man signed as a notary public, using the name Bernard Kaufman. The white man left.

“Then the three of them took the car for a tryout at Baron’s suggestion. He had Roman turn into the street south of the Convent, where there would be little if any traffic, so he could test its pickup. Roman had no sooner started accelerating than he hit an old woman crossing the street. He wanted to stop, but Baron urged him to drive on. He didn’t have any insurance; the car still had dealer’s plates; he couldn’t apply for registration until Monday morning; and he didn’t have a driver’s license. His girl friend didn’t think the old woman was seriously hurt, but he ran anyway. He hadn’t got clear of the block when a Buick drove up and forced him to a stop. Three men in police uniforms got out and accused him of hit-and run manslaughter and forced the three of them out of the car.”

Casper sat up straight. His face turned slightly gray.

Coffin Ed waited for him to comment, but he still said nothing.

“The phony cops forced him and his girl into the Buick, sapped Baron, took the six thousand, five hundred dollars and went away in the Cadillac.

“We’ve been all night running down the Buick. We got it and Roman. We got a statement from Roman. He claims that Baron confessed that the old woman got up after he had hit her. So it must have been the bandits in the Buick who hit her the second time and killed her.”

Casper looked sick. “That’s horrible,” he said.

“More than you think,” Grave Digger lisped.

“But I don’t see what that has got to do with the robbery.”

“I’m coming to that,” Coffin Ed said.

Casper couldn’t see Coffin Ed’s face distinctly in the shadows, and it worried him. “Come over here and sit down where I can hear you,” he said.

“I’ll talk louder,” Coffin Ed said.

A flicker of anger passed over Casper’s face, but he said nothing. He picked up the gold lighter, and relit his cigar and hid behind a cloud of smoke.

“So far we haven’t got a line on Baron,” Coffin Ed went on. “We checked the building superintendent where the office is located and found that it is unoccupied and for rent. The super was out last night from nine o’clock until after two.

“The Cadillac hasn’t been found; there’s none reported stolen. The dealers are closed on Sundays, but there’s been no report that any have been broken into.

“We found the owner of the Buick—the manager of a hardware store in Yonkers. He parked his car in front of his house when he went home at seven o’clock last night and didn’t miss it until this morning. But that doesn’t help us any.

“We checked the listing of notary publics in Manhattan County. There was none named Bernard Kaufman; the address was bogus and the seal was counterfeit.”

“That’s well and good,” Casper rasped impatiently. “But where’s the tie-in?”

“The bandits who robbed you deliberately ran down the old lady a few minutes later and killed her.”

“Just proves they’re brutal mother-rapers,” Casper said, lapsing back to the Harlem vernacular of his youth. “But that’s all.”

“Not quite all,” Grave Digger lisped.

“The old lady was not an old lady,” Coffin Ed said. “He was a sort of a pansy pimp who went by the name Black Beauty.”

Casper strangled on cigar smoke. Grave Digger stepped beside the bed and beat him on the back. The nurse entered at that moment and looked horrified.

“It’s all right,” Casper gasped. “I just strangled.”

“I’ll get you a. glass of water and a sedative,” she said, looking at Grave Digger disapprovingly. “You shouldn’t talk so much, and you’re not allowed to smoke either. And beating a patient on the back,” she said to Grave Digger, “is no cure for strangulation.”

“It works,” Grave Digger lisped.

“For chrissake, don’t bother me now,” Casper said roughly, wiping the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand. “I’m busy as all hell.”

The nurse left in a huff.

“All right, goddammit, he was a mother-raping pansy called Black Beauty,” Casper said to Coffin Ed. “So what?”

“His straight moniker is Junior Ball,” Coffin Ed replied. “This morning at nine-thirty o’clock your wife, Missus Holmes, appeared at the morgue and identified the body and has requested it be released to her for burial.”

Casper gave no sign of outrage or surprise or any of the other emotions they might have expected. He began looking gutter-mean. He spat out shreds of wet tobacco and said in a hard, street-fighter’s voice, “So what! If his name was Junior Ball, he was her cousin.”