Cotton Comes to Harlem (2 page)

But the young recruiting agent at the left end of the table, who was taking a bite of barbecue, saw his dream vanishing and reached towards his hip pocket for his pistol.

There was a burst from a machine gun. A mixture of teeth, barbecued pork ribs, and human brains flew through the air like macabre birds. A woman screamed. The young man, with half a head gone, sank down out of sight.

The Mississippi voice said furiously: “Goddamn stupid mother-raper!”

The softer southern voice of the gunner said defensively, “He was drawing.”

“Mother-rape it! Git the money, let’s git going.” The big heavy white man with his black mask slowly moved the black-holed muzzle of his submachine gun over the crowd like the nozzle of a fire hose, saying, “Doan git daid.”

Bodies remained rigid, eyes riveted, necks frozen, heads stationary, but there was a general movement away from the gun as though the earth itself were moving. Behind, among the people at the rear, panic began exploding like Chinese firecrackers.

The driver’s helper got out from the front seat, waving another submachine gun, and the black people melted away.

The two sullen cops in the police cruiser jumped out and rushed to the fence, trying to see what was happening. But all they could see was a strange milling movement of black people.

The three colored cops inside, pistols drawn, were struggling
forward against a tide of human flesh, but being slowly washed away.

The second machine-gunner, who had fired the burst, slung his gun over his shoulder, rushed towards the armored truck and began scooping money into a “gunny-sack”.

“Merciful Jesus,” a woman wailed.

The black guards backed away, arms elevated, and let the white men take the money. Deke remained unseen beneath the table. All that was seen of the dead young man were some teeth still bleeding on the table, before the horrified eyes of the two young secretaries. The colored detectives hadn’t breathed.

Outside the fence the cops rushed back to their cruiser. The motor caught, roared; the siren coughed, groaned, began screaming as the car went into a U-turn in the middle of the block heading back towards the gate.

The colored cops on the inside began shooting into the air, trying to clear a path, but only increased the pandemonium. A black tidal wave went over them as from a hurricane.

The white machine-gunner got all of the money — all $87,000 — and jumped into the back of the delivery truck. The motor roared. The other machine-gunner followed the first and slammed shut the back door. The driver’s helper climbed in just as the car took off.

The police cruiser came in through the gate, siren screaming, as though black people were invisible. A fat black man flew through the air like an over-inflated football. A fender bumped a woman’s bottom and started her spinning like a whirling dervish. People scattered, split, diving, jumping, running to get out of the cruiser’s path, colliding and knocking one another down.

But a path was made for the rapidly accelerating meat delivery truck. The cops looked at the driver and his helper as they passed. The two white men looked back, exchanging white looks. The cops went ahead, looking for colored criminals. The white machine-gunners got away.

The two black guards climbed into the front seat of the armored truck. The two colored detectives jumped on the running-boards, pistols in their hands. Deke came out from underneath the table and climbed into the back, beside the empty safe. The motor came instantly to life, sounding for all the world like a big Cadillac engine with four hundred horsepower. The armored truck backed, filled, pointed towards the gate, then hesitated.

“You want I should follow them?” the driver asked.

“Get ’em, goddammit. Run ’em down!” one of the colored detectives grated.

The driver hesitated a moment longer. “They’re armed for bear.”

“Bear ass!” the detective shouted. “They’re getting away, mother!”

There was a glimpse of gray paint as the meat delivery truck went past a taxi on Lexington Avenue, headed north.

The big engine of the armored truck roared; the truck jumped. The police cruiser wheeled to head it off. A woman wild with fright ran in front of it. The car slewed to miss her and ran head-on into the barbecue pit. Steam rose from the bursted radiator pouring on to the hot coals. A sudden flash of lightning lit the wild stampede of running people, seen through the cloud of steam.

“Great Godamighty, the earth’s busted open,” a voice cried.

“An’ let out all hell,” came the reply.

“Halt or I’ll shoot,” a cop cried, climbing from the smoking ruins.

It was the same as talking to the lightning.

The armored truck bulldozed a path to the gate, urged on by a voice shouting, “Go get ’em, go get ’em.”

It turned into Lexington on screaming tyres. The off-side detective fell off to the street, but they didn’t stop for him. A roll of thunder blended with the motor sound as the big engine gathered speed, and another police cruiser fell in behind.

O’Malley tapped on the window separating the front seat from the rear compartment and passed an automatic rifle and a sawed-off shotgun to the guard. The remaining detective on the inside running-board was squatting low, holding on with his left hand and gripping a Colt .45 automatic in his right.

The armored truck was going faster than any armored truck ever seen before or since. The red light showed at 125th Street and a big diesel truck was coming from the west. The armored truck went through the red and passed in front of that big truck as close as a barber’s shave.

A joker standing on the corner shouted jubilantly,

“Gawawwwed damn! Them mothers got it.”

The police cruiser stopped for the truck to pass.

“And gone!” the joker added.

The driver urged greater speed from the big laboring motor, “Get your ass to moving.” But the meat delivery truck had got out of sight. The scream of the police siren was fading in the past.

The meat delivery truck turned left on 137th Street. In turning the back door was flung open and a bale of cotton slid slowly from the clutching hands of the two white machine-gunners and fell into the street. The truck dragged to a screaming sidewise stop
and began backing up. But at that moment the armored truck came roaring around the corner like destiny coming on. The meat delivery truck reversed directions without a break in motion and took off again as though it had wings.

From inside the delivery truck came a red burst of machine-gun fire and the bullet-proof windshield of the armored truck was suddenly filled with stars, partly obscuring the driver’s vision. He narrowly missed the bale of cotton, thinking he must have d.t.’s.

The guard was trying to get the muzzle of his rifle through a gun slot in the windshield when another burst of machine-gun fire came from the delivery truck and its back doors were slammed shut. No one noticed the detective on the running-board of the armored truck suddenly disappear. One moment he was there, the next he was gone.

The colored people on the tenement stoops, seeking relief from the hot night, began running over one another to get indoors. Some dove into the basement entrances beneath the stairs.

One loudmouthed comic shouted from the safety below the level of the sidewalk, “Harlem Hospital straight ahead.”

From across the street another loudmouth shouted back, “Morgue comes first.”

The meat delivery truck was gaining on the armored truck. It must have been powered to keep meat fresh from Texas.

From far behind came the faint sound of the scream of the siren from the police cruiser, seeming to cry, “Wait for me!”

Lightning flashed. Before the sound of thunder was heard, rain came down in torrents.

“Well, kiss my foot if it isn’t Jones,” Lieutenant Anderson exclaimed, rising from behind the captain’s desk to extend his hand to his ace detectives. Slang sounded as phony as a copper’s smile coming from his lips, but the warm smile lighting his thin pale face and the twinkle in his deep-set blue eyes squared it. “Welcome home.”

Grave Digger Jones squeezed the small white hand in his own big, calloused paw and grinned. “You need to get out in the sun, Lieutenant, ’fore someone takes you for a ghost,” he said as though continuing a conversation from the night before instead of a six months’ interim.

The lieutenant eased back into his seat and stared at Grave
Digger appraisingly. The upward glow from the green-shaded desk lamp gave his face a gangrenous hue.

“Same old Jones,” he said. “We’ve been missing you, man.”

“Can’t keep a good man down,” Coffin Ed Johnson said from behind.

It was Grave Digger’s first night back on duty since he had been shot up by one of Benny Mason’s hired guns in the caper resulting from the loss of a shipment of heroin. He had been in the hospital for three months fighting a running battle with death, and he had spent three months at home convalescing. Other than for the bullet scars hidden beneath his clothes and the finger-size scar obliterating the hairline at the base of his skull where the first bullet had burned off the hair, he looked much the same. Same dark brown lumpy face with the slowly smoldering reddishbrown eyes; same big, rugged, loosely knit frame of a day laborer in a steel mill; same dark, battered felt hat worn summer and winter perched on the back of his head; same rusty black alpaca suit showing the bulge of the long-barreled, nickel-plated, brass-lined .38 revolver on a .44 frame made to his own specifications resting in its left-side shoulder sling. As far back as Lieutenant Anderson could remember, both of them, his two ace detectives with their identical big hard-shooting, head-whipping pistols, had always looked like two hog farmers on a weekend in the Big Town.

“I just hope it hasn’t left you on the quick side,” Lieutenant Anderson said softly.

Coffin Ed’s acid-scarred face twitched slightly, the patches of grafted skin changing shape. “I dig you, Lieutenant,” he said gruffly. “You mean on the quick side like me.” His jaw knotted as he paused to swallow. “Better to be quick than dead.”

The lieutenant turned to stare at him, but Grave Digger looked straight ahead. Four years previous a hoodlum had thrown a glass of acid into Coffin Ed’s face. Afterwards he had earned the reputation of being quick on the trigger.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Grave Digger said roughly. “You’re not getting paid to get killed.”

In the green light Lieutenant Anderson’s face turned slightly purple. “Well, hell,” he said defensively. “I’m on your side. I know what you’re up against here in Harlem. I know your beat. It’s my beat too. But the commissioner feels you’ve killed too many people in this area —” He held up his hand to ward off an interruption. “Hoodlums, I know — dangerous hoodlums — and you killed in self-defence. But you’ve been on the carpet a number of times and a short time ago you had three months’ suspensions.
Newspapers have been yapping about police brutality in Harlem and now various civic bodies have taken up the cry.”

“It’s the white men on the force who commit the pointless brutality,” Coffin Ed grated. “Digger and me ain’t trying to play tough.”

“We are tough,” Grave Digger said.

Lieutenant Anderson shifted the papers on the desk and looked down at his hands. “Yes, I know, but they’re going to drop it on you two — if they can. You know that as well as I do. All I’m asking is to play it safe, from the police side. Don’t take any chances, don’t make any arrests until you have the evidence, don’t use force unless in self-defence, and above all don’t shoot anyone unless it’s the last resort.”

“And let the criminals go,” Coffin Ed said.

“The commissioner feels there must be some other way to curtail crime besides brute force,” the lieutenant said, his blush deepening.

“Well, tell him to come up here and show us,” Coffin Ed said.

The arteries stood out in Grave Digger’s swollen neck and his voice came out cotton dry. “We got the highest crime rate on earth among the colored people in Harlem. And there ain’t but three things to do about it: Make the criminals pay for it — you don’t want to do that; pay the people enough to live decently — you ain’t going to do that; so all that’s left is let ’em eat one another up.”

A sudden blast of noise poured in from the booking room — shouts, curses, voices lifted in anger, women screaming, whines of protest, the scuffling of many feet — as a wagon emptied its haul from a raid on a whore-house where drugs were peddled.

The intercome on the desk spoke suddenly: “Lieutenant, you’re wanted out here on the desk; they’ve knocked over Big Liz’s circus house.”

The lieutenant flicked the switch. “In a few minutes, and for Christ’s sake keep them quiet.”

He then looked from one detective to the other. “What the hell’s going on today? It’s only ten o’clock in the evening and judging from the reports it’s been going on like this since morning.” He leafed through the reports, reading charges: “Man kills his wife with an axe for burning his breakfast pork chop … man shoots another man demonstrating a recent shooting he had witnessed … man stabs another man for spilling beer on his new suit … man kills self in a bar playing Russian roulette with a .32 revolver … woman stabs man in stomach fourteen times, no reason given … woman scalds neighboring woman with pot of boiling water for speaking to her husband … man arrested for
threatening to blow up subway train because he entered wrong station and couldn’t get his token back —”

“All colored citizens,” Coffin Ed interrupted.

Anderson ignored it. “Man sees stranger wearing his own new suit, slashes him with a razor.” he read on. “Man dressed as Cherokee Indian splits white bartender’s skull with homemade tomahawk … man arrested on Seventh Avenue for hunting cats with hound dog and shotgun … twenty-five men arrested for trying to chase all the white people out of Harlem—”

“It’s Independence Day,” Grave Digger interrupted.

“
Independence Day!
” Lieutenant Anderson echoed, taking a long, deep breath. He pushed away the reports and pulled a memo from the corner clip of the blotter. “Well, here’s your assignment — from the captain.”