The Real Cool Killers (14 page)

“Downstairs,” he said.

“Downstairs! In here?”

“Yas suh. They’s stairs in the back room.”

“What’s downstairs?”

“Just a cellar like any other bar’s got. It’s full of bottles an’ old bar fixtures and beer barrels. The compression unit for the draught beer is down there and the refrigeration unit for the ice boxes. That’s all. Some rats and we keeps a cat.”

“No bed or bedroom?”

“Naw suh.”

“He whipped them down there in that kind of place?”

“I don’t know what he done.”

“Couldn’t you hear them?”

“Naw suh. You can’t hear nothin’ through this floor. You could shoot off your pistol down there and you couldn’t hear it up here.”

Grave Digger looked at Ready. “Did you know that?”

Ready began to wilt again. “Naw suh, I swear ’fore–”

“Sit up straight, God damn it! I don’t want to have to tell you again.”

He turned back to Big Smiley. “Did he know it?”

“Not so far as I know, unless he told him.”

“Is Sissie or Sugartit among those girls over there?”

“Naw suh,” Big Smiley said without looking.

Grave Digger showed him the pornographic photos.

“Know any of them?”

Big Smiley leafed through them slowly without a change of expression. He pulled out three photos. “I’ve seen them,” he said.

“What’re their names?”

“I don’t know only two of ’em.” He separated them gingerly with his fingertips as though they were coated with external poison. “Them two. This here one is called Good Booty, t’other one is called Honey Bee. This one here, I never heard her name called.”

“What are their family names?”

“I don’t know none of ’em’s square monicker’s.”

“He took these downstairs?”

“Just them two.”

“Who came here with them?”

“They came by theyself, most of ’em did.”

“Did he have appointments with them?”

“Naw suh, not with most of ’em, anyway. They just come in here and laid for him.”

“Did they come together?”

“Sometime, sometime not.”

“You just said they came by themselves.”

“I meant they didn’t bring no boy friends.”

“Had he known them before?”

“I couldn’t say. When he come in if he seed any of ’em he just made his choice.”

“He knew they hung around here looking for him?”

“Yas suh. When he started comin’ here he was already known.”

“When was that?”

“Three or four months ago. I don’t remember ’zactly.”

“When did he start taking them downstairs?”

“ ’Bout two months ago.”

“Did you suggest it?”

“Naw suh, he propositioned me.”

“How much did he pay you?”

“Twenty-five bucks.”

“You’re talking yourself into Sing-Sing.”

“Maybe.”

Grave Digger examined the note addressed to GB and signed Bee that he’d taken from the dead man’s effects, then passed it over to Big Smiley.

“That came from the pocket of the man you cut,” he said. Big Smiley read the note carefully, his lips spelling out each word. His breath came out in a sighing sound.

“Then he must be a relation of her,” he said.

“You didn’t know that?”

“Naw suh, I swear ’fore God. If I knowed that I wouldn’t ’ave chopped him with the axe.”

“What exactly did he say to Galen when he started toward him with the knife?”

Big Smiley wrinkled his forehead. “I don’t ’member ’zactly. Something ’bout if he found a white mother-raper trying to diddle his little gals he’d cut his throat. But I just took that to mean colored women in general. You know how our folks talk. I didn’t figure he meant his own kin.”

“Maybe some other girl’s father had the same idea with a pistol,” Grave Digger suggested.

“Could be,” Big Smiley said cautiously.

“So evidently he’s the father and he’s got more girls than one.”

“Looks like it.”

“He’s dead.”

Big Smiley’s expression didn’t change. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

“You look like it. Who went your bail?”

“My boss.”

Grave Digger looked at him soberly. “Who’s covering for you?” he asked.

“Nobody.”

“I know that’s a lie but I’m going to pass it. Who was covering for Galen?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going to pass that lie too. What was he doing here tonight?”

“He was looking for Sugartit.”

“Did he have a date with her?”

“I don’t know. He said she was coming by with Sissie.”

“Did they come by after he’d left?”

“Naw suh.”

“Okay, Smiley, this one is for keeps. Who is Sugartit’s father?”

“I don’t know none of ’em’s kinfolks nor neither where they lives, Chief, like I told you before. It didn’t make no
difference.”

“You must have some idea.”

“Naw suh, it’s just like I say, I never thought about it. You don’t never think ’bout where a gal lives in Harlem, ’less you goin’ home with her. What do anybody’s address mean up here?”

“Don’t let me catch you in a lie, Smiley.”

“I ain’t lying, Chief. I went with a woman for a whole year once and never did know where she lived. Didn’t care neither.”

“Who are the Real Cool Moslems?”

“Them punks! Just a kid gang around here.”

“Where do they hang out?”

“I don’t know ’zactly. Somewhere down the street.”

“Do they come in here?”

“Only three of ’em sometime. Sheik – I think he’s they leader – and a boy called Choo-Choo and the one they call Bones.”

“Where do they live?”

“Somewhere near here, but I don’t know ’zactly. The boy what keeps the pigeons oughtta know. He lives a coupla blocks down the street on t’other side. I don’t know his name but he got a pigeon coop on the roof.”

“Is he one of ’em?”

“I don’t know for sure but you can see a gang of boys on the roof when he’s flying his pigeons.”

“I’ll find him. Do you know the ages of those girls in the booth?”

“Naw suh, when I ask ’em they say they’re eighteen.”

“You know they’re under age.”

“I s’pect so but all I can do is ast ’em.”

“Did he have any of them?”

“Only one I knows of.”

Grave Digger turned and looked at the girls again.

“Which one?” he asked.

“The one in the green tam.” Big Smiley pushed forward one of the three photos. “She’s this one here, the one called
Good Booty.”

“Okay, son, that’s all for the moment,” Grave Digger said.

He got down from the stool and walked forward to talk to the manager.

As soon as he left, without saying a word or giving a warning Big Smiley leaned forward and hit Ready in the face with his big ham-sized fist. Ready sailed off the stool, crashed into the wall and crumpled to the floor.

Grave Digger looked down in time to see his head disappearing beneath the edge of the bar, then turned his attention to the white manager across from him.

“Collect your tabs and shut the bar; I’m closing up this joint and you’re under arrest,” he said.

“For what?” the manager challenged hotly.

“For contributing to the delinquency of minors.”

The manager sputtered, “I’ll be open again by tomorrow night.”

“Don’t say another God damned word,” Grave Digger said and kept looking at him until the manager closed his mouth and turned away.

Then he beckoned to one of the white cops on the door and told him, “I’m putting the manager and the bartender under arrest and closing the joint. I want you to hold the manager and some teenagers I’ll turn over to you. I’m going to leave in a minute and I’ll send back the wagon. I’ll take the bartender with me.”

“Right, Jones,” the cop said, as happy as a kid with a new toy.

Grave Digger walked back to the rear.

Ready was down on the floor on his hands and knees, spitting out blood and teeth.

Grave Digger looked at him and smiled grimly. Then he looked up at Big Smiley who was licking his bruised knuckles with a big red tongue.

“You’re under arrest, Smiley,” he said. “If you try to escape, I’m going to shoot you through the back of the
head.”

“Yas suh,” Big Smiley said.

Grave Digger shook a customer loose from a plastic-covered chair and sat astride it at the end of the table in the booth, facing the scared, silent teenagers. He took out his notebook and stylo and wrote down their names, addresses, numbers of the public schools they attended, and their ages. The oldest was a boy of seventeen.

None of them admitted knowing either Sissie, Sugartit, the big white man Galen, or anyone connected with the Real Cool Moslems.

He called the second cop away from the door and said, “Hold these kids for the wagon.”

Then he said to the girl in the green tam who’d given her name as Gertrude B. Richardson. “Gertrude, I want you to come with me.”

One of the girls tittered. “You might have known he’d take Good Booty,” she said.

“My name is Beauty,” Good Booty said, tossing her head disdainfully.

On sudden impulse Grave Digger stopped her as she was about to get up.

“What’s your father’s name, Gertrude?”

“Charlie.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a porter.”

“Is that so? Do you have any sisters?”

“One. She’s a year younger than me.”

“What does your mother do?”

“I don’t know. She don’t live with us.”

“I see. You two girls live with your father.”

“Where else we going to live?”

“That’s a good question, Gertrude, but I can’t answer it. Did you know a man got his arm cut off in here earlier tonight?”

“I heard about it. So what? People are always getting cut around here.”

“This man tried to knife the white man because of his daughters.”

“He did?” She giggled. “He was a square.”

“No doubt. The bartender chopped off his arm with an axe to protect the white man. What do you think about that?”

She giggled again, nervously. “Maybe he figured the white man was more important than some colored drunk.”

“He must have. The man died in Harlem Hospital less than an hour ago.”

Her eyes got big and frightened. “What are you trying to say, mister?”

“I’m trying to tell you that he was your father.”

Grave Digger hadn’t anticipated her reaction. She came up out of her seat so fast that she was past him before he could grab her.

“Stop her!” he shouted.

A customer wheeled from his bar stool into her path and she stuck her fingers into his eye. The man yelped and tried to hold her. She wrenched from his grip and sprang towards the door. The white cop headed her off and wrapped his arms about her. She twisted in his grip like a panic-stricken cat and clawed at his pistol. She had gotten it out the holster when a colored man rushed in and wrenched it from her grip. The white cop threw her onto the floor on her back and straddled her, pinning down her arms. The colored man grabbed her by the feet. She writhed on her back and spat into the cop’s face.

Grave Digger came up and looked down at her from sad brown eyes. “It’s too late now, Gertrude,” he said. “They’re both dead.”

Suddenly she began to cry. “What did he have to mess in it for?” she sobbed. “Oh, Pa, what did you have to mess in it for?”

Two uniformed white cops standing guard on a dark roof-top were talking.

“Do you think we’ll find him?”

“Do I think we’ll find him? Do you know who we’re looking for? Have you stopped to think for a moment that we’re looking for one colored man who supposedly is handcuffed and seven other colored men who were wearing green turbans and false beards when last seen. Have you turned that over in your mind? By this time they’ve got rid of those phony disguises and maybe Pickens has got rid of his handcuffs too. And then what does that make them, I ask you? That makes them just like eighteen thousand or one hundred and eighty thousand other colored men, all looking alike. Have you ever stopped to think there are five hundred thousand colored people in Harlem – one half of a million people with black skin. All looking alike. And we’re trying to pick eight out of them. It’s like trying to find a cinder in a coal bin. It ain’t possible.”

“Do you think all these colored people in this neighbourhood know who Pickens and the Moslems are?”

“Sure they know. Every last one of them. Unless some other colored person turns Pickens in he’ll never be found. They’re laughing at us.”

“As much as the chief wants that coon, whoever finds him is sure to get a promotion,” the first cop said.

“Yeah, I know, but it ain’t possible,” the second cop said. “If that coon’s got any sense at all he would have filed those cuffs in two a long time ago.”

“What good would that do him if he couldn’t get them off?”

“Hell, he could wear heavy gloves with gauntlets like—Hey!
Didn’t we see some coon wearing driving gauntlets?”

“Yeah, that halfwit coon with the pigeons.”

“Wearing gauntlets and a ragged old overcoat. And a coal black coon at that. He certainly fits the description.”

“That halfwitted coon. You think it’s possible he’s the one?”

“Come on! What are we waiting for?”

Sheik said, “Now all we’ve got to do is get this mother-raper past the police lines and throw him into the river.”

“Doan do that to me, please, Sheik,” Sonny’s muffled voice pleaded from inside the sack.

“Shhhh,” Choo-Choo cautioned. “Chalk the walking Jeffs.”

The two cops leaned over and peered in through the open window.

“Where’s that boy who was wearing gloves?” the first cop asked.

“Gloves!” Choo-Choo echoed, going into his clowning act like a chameleon changing color. “You means boxing gloves?”

The second cop sniffed. “A weed pad!” he exclaimed.

They climbed inside. Their gazes swept quickly over the room.

The roof reeked of marijuana smoke. Everyone was high. The ones who hadn’t smoked were high from inhaling the smoke and watching the eccentric motions of the ones who had smoked.

“Who’s got the sticks?” the first cop demanded.

“Come on, come on, who’s got the sticks?” the second cop echoed, looking from one to the other. He passed over Sheik who stood in the center of the floor where he’d been arrested in motion by Choo-Choo’s warning and stared at them as though trying to make out what they were; then over Inky who was caught in the act of ducking behind the curtains in the corner and stood there half in and half out, like a billboard advertisement for a movie about bad girls;
and landed on Choo-Choo who seemed the most vulnerable because he was grinning like an idiot. “You got the sticks, boy?”