Cotton Comes to Harlem

by Chester Himes

  “All I wish is that I was God for just one mother-raping second,” Grave Digger said, his voice cotton-dry with rage.

  “I know,” Coffin Ed said. “You’d concrete the face of the mother-raping earth and turn white folks into hogs.”

  “But I ain’t God,” Grave Digger said, pushing into the bar.

  The bar stools were filled with drunken relics, shabby men, ancient whores draped over tired laborers drinking ruckus juice to get their courage up. The tables were filled with the already drunk sleeping on folded arms.

  No one recognized the two detectives. They looked prosperous and sober. A wave of vague alertness ran through the joint; everyone thought fresh money was coming in. This sudden greed was indefinably communicated to the sleeping drunks. They stirred in their sleep and awakened, waiting for the moment to get up and cadge another drink.

  Grave Digger and Coffin Ed leaned against the bar at the front and waited for one of the two husky bartenders to serve them.

  Coffin Ed nodded to a sign over the bar. “Do you believe that?”

  Grave Digger looked up and read: NO JUNKIES SERVED HERE! He said, “Why not? Poor and raggedy as these junkies are, they ain’t got no money for whisky.”

  The fat bald-headed bartender with shoulders like a woodchopper came up. “What’s yours, gentlemen?”

  Coffin Ed said sourly, “Hell, man, you expecting any gentlemen in here?”

  The bartender didn’t have a sense of humor. “All my customers is gentlemen,” he said.

  “Two bourbons on the rocks,” Grave Digger said.

  “Doubles,” Coffin Ed added.

  The bartender served them with the elaborate courtesy he reserved for all well-paying customers. He rang up the bill and slapped down the change. His eyes flickered at the fifty-cent tip. “Tnank you, gentlemen,” he said, and strolled casually down the bar, winking at a buxom yellow whore at the other end clad in a tight red dress.

  Casually she detached herself from the asbestos joker she was trying to kindle and strolled to the head of the bar. Without preamble she squeezed in between Grave Digger and Coffin Ed and draped a big bare yellow arm about the shoulders of each. She smelled like unwashed armpits bathed in dime-store perfume and overpowering bed odor. “You wanna see a girl?” she asked, sharing her stale whisky breath between them.

  “Where’s any girl?” Coffin Ed said.

  She snatched her arm from about his shoulder and gave her full attention to Grave Digger. Everyone in the joint had seen the obvious play and were waiting eagerly for the result.

  “Later,” Grave Digger said. “I got a word first for Early Riser’s gunsel.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Loboy! He ain’t no gunsel, he the boss.”

  “Gunsel or boss, I got word for him.”

  “See me first, honey. I’ll pass him the word.”

  “No, business first.”

  “Don’t be like that, honey,” she said, touching his leg. “There’s no time like bedtime.” She fingered his ribs, promising pleasure. Her fingers touched something hard; they stiffened, paused, and then she plainly felt the big .38 revolver in the shoulder sling. Her hand came off as though it had touched something red hot; her whole body stiffened; her eyes widened and her flaccid face looked twenty years older. “You from the syndicate?” she asked in a strained whisper.

  Grave Digger fished out a leather folder from his right coat pocket, opened it. His shield flashed in the light. “No, I’m the man.”

  Coffin Ed stared at the two bartenders.

  Every eye in the room watched tensely. She backed further away; her mouth came open like a scar. “Git away from me,” she almost screamed. “I’m a respectable lady.”

  All eyes looked down into shot glasses as though reading the answers to all the problems in the world; ears closed up like safe doors, hands froze.

  “I’ll believe it if you tell me where he’s at,” Grave Digger said.

  A bartender moved and Coffin Ed’s pistol came into his hand. The bartender didn’t move again.

  “Where who at?” the whore screamed. “I don’t know where nobody at. I’m in here, tending to my own business, ain’t bothering nobody, and here you come in here and start messing with me. I ain’t no criminal, I’m a church lady —” she was becoming hysterical from her load of junk.

  “Let’s go,” Coffin Ed said. One of the sleeping drunks staggered out a few minutes later. He found the detectives parked in the black dark in the middle of the slum block on 113th Street. He got quickly into the back and sat in the dark as had the other pigeon.

  “I thought you were drunk, Cousin,” Coffin Ed said.

  Cousin was an old man with unkempt, dirty, gray-streaked, kinky hair, washed-out brown eyes slowly fading to blue, and skin the color and texture of a dried prune. His wrinkled old thrown-away summer suit smelled of urine, vomit and offal. He was strictly a wino. He looked harmless. But he was one of their ace stool pigeons because no one thought he had the sense for it.

  “Nawsah, boss, jes’ waitin’,” he said in a whining, cowardly-sounding voice.

  “Just waiting to get drunk.”

  “Thass it, boss, thass jes’ what.”

  “You know Loboy?” Grave Digger said.

  “Yassah, boss, knows him when I sees him.”

  “Know who he works with?”

  “Early Riser mostly, boss. Leasewise they’s together likes as if they’s working.”

  “Stealing,” Grave Digger said harshly. “Snatching purses. Robbing women.”

  “Yassah, boss, that’s what they calls working.”

  “What’s their pitch? Snatching and running or just mugging?”

  “All I knows is what I hears, boss. Folks say they works the holy dream.”

  “Holy dream! What’s that?”

  “Folks say they worked it out themselves. They gits a church sister what carries her money twixt her legs. Loboy charms her lak a snake do a bird telling her this holy dream whilst Early Riser kneel behind her and cut out the back of her skirt and nip off de money sack. Must work, they’s always flush.”

  “Live and learn,” Coffin Ed said and Grave Digger asked: “You seen either one of them tonight?”

  “Jes’ Loboy. I seen him ’bout an hour ago looking wild and scairt going into Hijenks to get a shot and when he come out he stop in the bar for a glass of sweet wine and then he cut out in a hurry. Looked worried and movin’ fast.”

  “Where does Loboy live?”

  “I dunno, boss, ’round here sommers. Hijenks oughta know.”

  “How ’bout that whore who makes like he’s hers?”

  “She just big-gatin’, boss, tryna run up de price. Loboy got a fay chick sommers.”

  “All right, where can we find Hijenks?”

  “Back there on the corner, boss. Go through the bar an’ you come to a door say ‘Toilet’. Keep on an’ you see a door say ‘Closet’. Go in an’ you see a nail with a cloth hangin’ on it. Push the nail twice, then once, then three times an’ a invisible door open in the back of the closet. Then you go up some stairs an’ you come to ’nother door. Knock three times, then once, then twice.”

  “All that? He must be a connection.”

  “Got a shooting gallery’s all I knows.”

  “All right, Cousin, take this five dollars and get drunk and forget what we asked you,” Coffin Ed said, passing him a bill.

  “Bless you, boss, bless you.” Cousin shuffled about in the darkness, hiding the bill in his clothes, then he said in his whining cowardly voice, “Be careful, boss, be careful.”

  “Either that or dead,” Grave Digger said.

  Cousin chuckled and got out and melted in the dark.

  “This is going to be a lot of trouble,” Grave Digger said. “I hope it ain’t for nothing.”

  6

  Reverend Deke O’Malley didn’t know it was Grave Digger’s voice over the telephone, but he knew it was the voice of a cop. He got out of the booth as though it had caught on fire. It
was still raining but he was already wet and it just obscured his vision. Just the same he saw the light of the taxi coming down the hill on St Nicholas Avenue and hailed it. He climbed in and leaned forward and said, “Penn Station and goose it.”

  He straightened up to wipe the rain out of his eyes and his back hit the seat with a thud. The broad-shouldered young black driver had taken off as though he were powering a rocket ship to heaven.

  Deke didn’t mind. Speed was what he needed. He had got so far behind everyone the speed gave him a sense of catching up. He figured he could trust Iris. Anyway, he didn’t have any choice. As long as she kept his documents hidden, he was relatively safe. But he knew the police would keep her under surveillance and there’d be no way to reach her for a time. He didn’t know what the police had on him and that worried him as much as the loss of the money.

  He had to admit the robbery had been a cute caper, well organized, bold, even risky. Perhaps it had succeeded just because it was risky. But it had been too well organized for a crime of that dimension, for $87,000, or so it seemed to him; it couldn’t have been any better organized for a million dollars. But there seemed a lot of easier ways to get $87,000. One interpretation, of course, was that the syndicate had staged it not only to break him but to frame him. But if it had been the syndicate, why hadn’t they just hit him?

  Penn Station came before he had finished thinking.

  He found a long line of telephone booths and telephoned Mrs John Hill, the wife of the young recruiting agent who had been killed. He didn’t remember her but he knew she was a member of his church.

  “Are you alone, Mrs Hill?” he asked in a disguised voice.

  “Yes,” she replied tentatively, fearfully. “That is — who’s speaking, please?”

  “This is Reverend O’Malley,” he announced in his natural voice.

  He heard the relief in hers. “Oh, Reverend O’Malley, I’m so glad you called.”

  “I want to offer my sympathy and condolences. I cannot find the words to express my infinite sorrow for this unfortunate accident which has deprived you of your husband —” He knew he sounded like an ass but she’d understand that kind of proper talk.

  “Oh, Reverend O’Malley, you are so kind.”

  He could tell that she was crying. Good! he thought. “May I be of help to you in any way whatsoever?”

  “I just want you to preach his funeral.”

  “Of course I shall, Mrs Hill, of course. You may set your mind at peace on that score. But, well, if you will forgive my asking, are you in need of money?”

  “Oh, Reverend O’Malley, thank you, but he had life insurance and we have a little saved up — and, well we haven’t any children.”

  “Well, if you have any need you must let me know. Tell me, have the police been bothering you?”

  “Oh, they were here but they just asked questions about our life — where we worked and that kind of thing — and they asked about our Back-to-Africa movement. I was proud to tell them all I knew.…” Thank God that was nothing, he thought. “Then, well, they left. They were — well, they were white and I knew they were unsympathetic — I could just feel it — and I was glad when they left.”

  “Yes, my dear, we must be prepared for their attitude, that is why our movement was born. And I must confess I have no idea who the vicious white bandits are who murdered your fine … er … upstanding husband. But I am going to find them and God will punish them. But I have to do it alone. I can’t depend on the white police.”

  “Oh, don’t I know it.”

  “In fact, they will do everything to stop me.”

  “What makes white folks like that?”

  “We must not think why they are like that. We must accept it as a fact and go ahead and outwit them and beat them at their own game. And I might need your help, Mrs Hill.”

  “Oh, Reverend O’Malley, I’m so glad to hear you say that. I understand just what you mean and I’ll do everything in my power to help you track down those foul murderers and get our money back.”

  Thank God for squares, O’Malley thought as he said, “I have utmost confidence in you, Mrs Hill. We both have the same aim in view.”

  “Oh, Reverend O’Malley, your confidence is not misplaced.”

  He smiled at her stilted speech but he knew she meant it.

  “The main thing is for me to stay free of the police while we conduct our own investigation. The police must not know of my whereabouts or that we are working together to bring these foul murderers to justice. They must not know that I have communicated with you or that I will see you.”

  “I won’t mention your name,” she promised solemnly.

  “Do you expect them to return tonight?”

  “I’m sure they’re not coming back.”

  “In that case I will come to your house in an hour and we will make that our headquarters to launch our investigation. Will that be all right?”

  “Oh, Reverend O’Malley, I’m thrilled to be doing something to get revenge — I mean to see those white murderers punished — instead of just sitting here grieving.”

  “Yes, Mrs Hill, we shall hunt down the killers for God to punish and perhaps you will draw your shades before I come.”

  “And I’ll turn out the lights too so you won’t have to worry about anyone seeing you.”

  “Turn out the lights?” For a moment he was startled. He envisioned himself walking into a pitch-dark ambush and being seized by the cops. Then he realized he had nothing to fear from Mrs Hill. “Yes, very good,” he said. “That will be fine. I will telephone you shortly before arriving and if the police are there you must say, ‘Come on up,’ but if you are alone, say, ‘Reverend O’Malley, it’s all right.’ ”

  “I’ll do just that,” she promised. He could hear the excitement in her voice. “But I’m sure they won’t be here.”

  “Nothing in life is certain,” he said. “Just remember what to say when I telephone — in about an hour.”

  “I will remember; and good-bye now, until then.”

  He hung up. Sweat was streaming down his face. He hadn’t realized until then it was so hot in the booth.

  He found the big men’s room and ordered a shower. Then he undressed and gave his suit to the black attendant to be pressed while he was taking his shower. He luxuriated in the warm needles of water washing away the fear and panic, then he turned on cold and felt a new life and exhilaration replace the fatigue.… The indestructible Deke O’Hara, he thought gloatingly. What do I care about eighty-seven grand as long as there are squares?

  “Your suit’s ready, daddy,” the attendant called, breaking off his reverie.

  “Right-o, my man.”

  Deke dried, dressed, paid and tipped the attendant and sat on the stand for a shoeshine, reading about the robbery and himself in the morning Daily News. The clock on the wall read 2.21 a.m.

  Mrs Hill lived uptown in the Riverton Apartments near the Harlem River north of 135th Street. He knew she would be waiting impatiently. He was very familiar with her type: young, thought herself good-looking with the defensive conceit with which they convinced themselves they were more beautiful than all white women; ambitious to get ahead and subconsciously desired white men, hating them at the same time because they frustrated her attempts to get ahead and refused to recognize her innate superiority over white women. More than anything she wanted to escape her drab existence; if she couldn’t be middle class and live in a big house in the suburbs she wanted to leave it all and go back to Africa, where she just knew she would be important. He didn’t care for the type, but he knew for these reasons he could trust her.

  He went out to the ramp to get a taxi. Two empty taxis with white drivers passed him; then a colored driver, seeing his predicament, passed some white people to pick him up. The white policeman supervising the loading saw nothing.

  “You know ain’t no white cabby gonna take you to Harlem, man,” the colored driver said.

  “Hell, they’re just losing
money and ain’t making me mad at all,” Deke said.

  The colored driver chuckled.

  Deke had him wait at the 125th Street Station while he phoned. The coast was clear. She buzzed the downstairs door the moment he touched the bell and he went up to the seventh floor and found her waiting in her half-open doorway. Behind her the apartment was pitch dark.

  “Oh, Reverend O’Malley, I was worried,” she greeted him. “I thought the police had got you.”

  He smiled warmly and patted her hand as he passed to go inside. She closed the door and followed him and for a moment they stood in the pitch dark of the small front hall, their bodies slightly touching.

  “We can have some light,” he said. “I’m sure it’s safe enough.”

  She clicked switches and the rooms sprang into view. The shades were drawn and the curtains closed and the apartment was just as he had imagined it. A living-room opening through a wide archway to a small dining-room with the closed door of the kitchen beyond. On the other side a door opening to the bedroom and bath. The furniture was the polished oak veneer featured in the credit stores that tried to look expensive, and to one side of the living-room was a long sofa that could be let out into a bed. It had already been let out and the bed made up.

  She saw him looking and said apologetically, “I thought you might want to sleep first.”

  “That was very thoughtful of you,” he said. “But first we must talk.”

  “Oh, yesss,” she agreed jubilantly.