Cotton Comes to Harlem (20 page)

“What about the one he was handcuffed to?” Coffin Ed asked.

“Him too. He was wandering in the street. He had been sapped and the cuffs were still on him.”

“It was organized all right, but it needed luck,” Grave Digger said.

“The mob seemed organized too,” the captain said.

“Probably, but I doubt if there was a connection.”

“More likely some planted agitators. They wouldn’t have to know an escape was planned. They might have thought of freeing O’Malley by numbers,” Coffin Ed said.

“A holy crusade,” Grave Digger amended.

The captain looked sour. “We got three hundred of them in the bullpen. You want to talk to them?”

Grave Digger shook his head. “What are you holding them for?”

Captain Brice reddened with anger. “Complicity, goddammit. Assisting criminals to escape. Rioting. Accessories to murder. Two officers were killed. And I’ll arrest every black son of a bitch in Harlem.”

“Including me and Digger?” Coffin Ed grated, his face jumping
like a live snake in a hot fire.

The captain cooled. “Hell, goddammit, don’t be offended,” he threw out the left-handed apology. “These goddamned lunatics help in a planned escape without knowing what they’re doing and cause two officers to get killed. You ought to be mad too.”

“How mad are
you?
” Grave Digger asked. He felt Coffin Ed look at him. He nodded slightly. He knew Coffin Ed read his thoughts and agreed.

“Mad enough for anything,” Captain Brice said. “Shoot a few of these hoodlums. I’ll cover you.”

Grave Digger shook his head. “The commissioner wants them alive.”

“I’m not talking about them,” the captain raved. “Shoot any of these goddamn hoodlums.”

“Take it easy, Captain,” Coffin Ed said.

Grave Digger shook his head warningly. The room had become silent. Everyone was listening. Grave Digger leaned forward and said in a voice only for the captain’s ears, “Are you mad enough to let us have Iris, Deke’s woman — if she hasn’t gone to county?”

The captain sobered instantly. He looked cornered and annoyed. He wouldn’t meet Grave Digger’s eyes. “You’re asking for too much,” he growled. “And you know it,” he accused. Finally he said, “I couldn’t if I wanted to. Her case is on the docket. I’m responsible to deliver her. If she doesn’t appear it’s officially an escape.”

“Is she still here?” Grave Digger persisted.

“Nobody’s gone out,” the captain said. “All the hearings have been postponed, but that makes no difference.”

Still leaning forward, Grave Digger whispered, “Let her escape.”

The captain banged his fist on the desk. “No, goddammit! And that’s final.”

“The commissioner wants Deke and the two cop killers,” Grave Digger whispered urgently. “You had two nights and a day to find those boys — you and the whole Force. And they weren’t found. We’re only two men. What do you expect us to do that the whole Force couldn’t do?”

“Well,” the captain said, expelling his breath. “Do the best you can.”

“We can find them,” Grave Digger kept on. “But you got to pay for it.”

“I’ll speak to the commissioner,” the captain said, starting to rise.

“No,” Grave Digger said. “He’ll only say
no
and that will be
the end of it. You’ve got to make the decision on your own.”

The captain sat down. He thought for a moment, then looked up into Grave Digger’s eyes. “How bad do you want Deke yourself?” he asked.

“Bad,” Grave Digger said.

“If you can get her out of here without my knowledge, take her,” the captain said. “I won’t know anything about it. If you get caught, take the consequences. I won’t cover for you.”

Grave Digger straightened up. Veins stood out on his temples and his neck had swelled like a cobra’s. His eyes had turned blood-red. He was so mad the captain’s image was blurred in his vision.

“I wouldn’t do this for nobody but my own black people,” he said in a voice that was cotton dry.

He wheeled from the desk and Coffin Ed fell in beside him and they walked fast out of the room and softly closed the door behind them.

They got their official car from the garage and drove up to Blumstein’s Department Store on 125th Street and went into the women’s department. Grave Digger bought a bright red dress, size 14, a pair of dark tan lisle stockings and a white plastic handbag. Coffin Ed bought a pair of gilt sandals, size 7, and a hand mirror. They put their packages into a shopping bag and drove up to Rose Murphy’s House of Beauty on 145th Street, near Amsterdam Avenue, and bought some quick-action black skin dye and some make-up for a black woman and a dark-haired wig. They put these into their shopping bag and returned to the precinct station.

All the brass had left but the chief inspector in charge of homicide. They had nothing to say to him. Many of the police cruisers had been assigned to special detail and had gone about their business. But the street was still closed and heavily guarded and no one was permitted to enter the block or leave any of the buildings without police scrutiny.

Grave Digger parked in front of the station house and he and Coffin Ed went inside, carrying their shopping bag. They kept on through the booking room and past the captain’s office and the detectives’ room until they came to the head jailer’s cubicle at the rear.

“Send Iris O’Malley down to the interrogation room and give us the key,” Grave Digger said.

The jailer reached out languidly for the order.

“We haven’t got any order,” Grave Digger said. “The captain’s too busy to write orders at this time.”

“Can’t have her ’less you got an order,” the jailer insisted.

“She’ll keep,” Grave Digger said. “It just holds up the investigation, that’s all.”

“Can’t do it,” the jailer said stubbornly.

“Then give us the key to the bullpen,” Coffin Ed said. “We’ll start in the Back-to-Africa group.”

“You know I can’t do that either ’less you got an order,” the jailer protested. “What’s the matter with you fellows today?”

“Hell, where have you been, man?” Grave Digger said. “The captain’s busy, can’t you understand that?”

The jailer shook his head. He didn’t want to be the cause of any escapes.

“Call the captain for goddamn’s sake,” Coffin Ed grated. “We can’t just stand here and argue with you.”

The jailer got the captain’s office on the intercom, and asked if he should let Jones and Johnson interview the Back-to-Africa group in the bullpen.

“Let them see who they goddamn want,” the captain shouted. “And don’t bother me again.”

The jailer looked crestfallen. Now he was anxious to co-operate to keep in their good graces. “You want to see Iris O’Malley first or afterwards?” he asked.

“Well, we’ll just see her first,” Grave Digger said.

The jailor gave them a key and called his underling on the tier where Iris was celled and instructed him to take her down to the “Pigeons’ Nest”.

They were there waiting when the jailer brought her in and left, and they locked the door behind him. They put her on the stool and turned on the battery of lights. Her scratches were healing and the swelling was almost gone from her face but her skin was still the colors of the rainbow. Without make-up her eyes were sexless and ordinary. She wore a dark blue denim uniform but without a number, since she hadn’t been bound over to the grand jury.

“You look good,” Coffin Ed said levelly.

“Tell it to your mother,” she said.

“Deke got away,” Grave Digger said.

“The lucky mother-raper,” she said, squinting into the light.

Grave Digger turned down all the lights except one. It left her starkly visible but didn’t blind her.

“How’d you like to escape?” Grave Digger asked.

“I’d like it fine,” she said. “How’d you like to lay me? Both of you. At the same time.”

“Where?” Coffin Ed asked.

“How is the question,” Grave Digger said.

“Here,” she said. “And let me worry about
how
.”

“All joking aside–” Grave Digger began again, but she cut him off.

“I’m not joking.”

“All sex aside then. Do you know Deke’s hideout?”

“If I knew I wouldn’t tell you,” she said. “Anyway, not for nothing.”

“We’ll clear you,” he said.

“Shit,” she said. “You can’t clear your own mother-raping selves, much less me. Anyway, I don’t know it,” she added.

“Can you find it?”

A sly look came into her eyes. “I could find it if I was out.”

“I’m reading your mind,” Grave Digger said.

“And it don’t read good,” Coffin Ed said.

The sly look went out of her eyes. “I can’t find him from here, and that’s for sure.”

“That’s for sure,” Grave Digger agreed.

They stared at one another. “What’s in it for me?” she asked.

“Freedom, maybe,” he said. “When we get Deke we’re going to drop the load on him. His two boys are going to fry for cop killing and we’re going to fry him for killing Mabel Hill. And you get the ten per cent reward from the eighty-seven grand if we find it.”

They watched the thoughts reflected in her eyes and Coffin Ed said, “Steady, girl. If you try to cross us there won’t be room enough for you in the world. We’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

“And don’t think you’ll be lucky enough to get shot,” Grave Digger added. His lumpy unshaven face looked sadistic from behind the stabbing light, like the vague shadow of a monster’s.

“Want me to spell it out?”

She shuddered. “And if I don’t find him?”

He chuckled. “We’ll arrest you for escaping.”

She was consumed with sudden rage. “You dirty mother-rapers,” she mouthed.

“Better to be dirty than dumb,” Coffin Ed said. “Are you on?”

She blushed beneath her rainbow color. “If I could only rape you, you dirty bastard.”

“You can’t. So are you on?”

“I’m on,” she said. “You son of a bitch, you knew it all the time.” After a moment she added, “Maybe if I don’t find Deke you’ll rape me.”

“You’ll have a better chance if you find him,” he said.

“I’ll find him,” she promised.

“Make yourself into a black woman and don’t ask any questions,” Grave Digger said. “You’ll find everything in there you’ll need — make-up, clothes and some money. Don’t worry about the dye; it’ll come off.”

He turned on the bright lights and he and Coffin Ed went out and locked the door behind them. She found the mirror and went to work. Coffin Ed stood outside the door and listened for a time; he didn’t think she’d yell and try to draw attention, but he wanted to make sure. Satisfied she was tending to the business, he went upstairs and waited for Grave Digger to come with the keys to the bullpen. They went inside and interrogated the sullen prisoners until they found a young black woman about Iris’s size and age, named Lotus Green. They filled out a card on Lotus, then took her down to the Pigeons’ Nest for further questioning.

“What you want with me?” she protested. “I done tole you everything I know.”

“We like you,” Coffin Ed said.

She shocked the hell out of him by blowing coy. “You got to pay me,” she said. “I don’t do it with strangers for nothing.”

“We ain’t strangers by now,” he said.

He stood outside, listening to her explain why he was still a stranger while Grave Digger went inside to get Iris. She was ready, a fly black woman in a cheap red dress.

“These shit-skin sandals are too big,” she complained.

“Watch your language and act dignified,” Grave Digger said.

“You’re a churchwoman named Lotus Green and you hope to go back to Africa.”

“My God!” she exclaimed.

He took her out past the real Lotus while Coffin Ed took the real Lotus inside.

“We’re going to put you in the bullpen and when the officer comes for Lotus Green you come out with him,” Grave Digger instructed. “Just act sullen and don’t answer any questions.”

“That won’t be hard,” she said.

Coffin Ed locked the real Lotus in the place of Iris, assuring her that he was going to get some money, and joined Grave Digger. They went to the captain’s office and asked permission to take out
Lotus Green, one of the Back-to-Africa group.

“She saw where the woman went who was robbed that night, but she doesn’t know the number,” Grave Digger explained. “And that woman might have seen all the hijackers.”

The captain suspected some kind of trick. Furthermore he wasn’t interested in the hijacking, he just wanted Deke. But it put him on the spot.

“All right, all right,” he snapped. “I’ll send for her and you can take her from my office. Just don’t forget your assignment.”

“It’s all the same thing,” Grave Digger said. “Here’s the report on her,” and gave him the card.

They went back to see the head jailer. “We’re going to try Iris once more and if she doesn’t give we’re going to leave her in the dark for a spell. We’ll fix it so she can’t hurt herself and don’t get edgy if someone hears her screaming. She won’t be hurt.”

“I don’t know what you fellers do down there and I don’t want to know,” the jailer said.

“Right,” Grave Digger said and they went down and stood outside the bullpen. When they saw a jailer taking Iris, disguised as Lotus, to the captain’s office, they went downstairs and got the real Lotus Green and took her back to the bullpen.

“I waited and I waited,” she complained.

“What else could you do?” Coffin Ed said and they went back upstairs to the captain’s office and walked out of the station with Iris between them. They got into their car and drove off.

“We’re on our own now,” Coffin Ed said.

“Yeah, we’ve jumped into the fire,” Grave Digger agreed.

“Well, little sister, where do you want to get out?” Coffin Ed asked the black woman on the back seat.

“Let me out on the corner,” she said.

“What corner?”

“Any corner.”

They pulled to the curb on Seventh Avenue and 125th opposite the Theresa Hotel. They wanted all the stool pigeons in the neighborhood to see her getting out of their car. They knew no one would recognize her, but they were marking her for themselves — just in case.

“This is what you do,” Coffin Ed said, turning about to face her. “When you contact Deke—”