Cotton Comes to Harlem

by Chester Himes

  “Maybe,” Wiley conceded. “But here’s the twist. We found a ball of meat that looks as though it might be poisoned in his pocket — we’ll have it analysed of course. So the dog was already poisoned by someone else. Unless he had two balls of poisoned meat — which wouldn’t seem necessary.”

  “This empty space bothers me,” Grave Digger confessed. “This empty space in all this conglomeration of junk. Was there anything knocked off the hijack truck the other night that might identify it? Something that might wind up in a junkyard. A spare wheel?”

  Wiley shook his head. “Maybe a gun could have been lost, but nothing I can think of that would be sold here. Nothing at least to fill this empty space. I think we’re on the wrong track there.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Grave Digger said.

  Wiley nodded. The door to the office had been forced by Wiley’s men but nothing had been found to draw attention. The three of them went in and Wiley telephoned Mr Goodman at his home in Brooklyn.

  Mr Goodman was horrified. “Everything happens to me,” he cried. “Such a good boy, so honest. He wouldn’t hurt a fly yet.”

  “We want you to come over and tell us what is missing.”

  “Missing!” Mr Goodman screamed. “You’re not thinking Josh was killed protecting my place? He wasn’t a nitwit.”

  “We’re not thinking anything. We just want you to tell us what’s missing.”

  “You think thieves have stolen something from my junkyard? Diamonds, maybe. Bricks of gold. Necklaces of rubies. Have you seen my junk? Only another junk man would want anything from my junkyard and he’d need a truck to take away ten dollar’s worth.”

  “We just want you to come over and take a look, Mr Goodman,” Wiley said patiently.

  “Mein Gott, at this hour of the morning! You say Josh is dead. Poor boy. My heart bleeds. But can I bring him back to life, at two o’clock in the morning? Can I raise the dead? If there is junk missing you can see it for yourself. Do you think I can identify my junk? How can anyone identify junk? Junk is junk; that’s what makes it junk. If someone has taken some of my junk he is welcome. There will be signs where he has taken truck-loads, unless he is a lunatic. Look you for a lunatic, there is your man. And my Reba is awake and worrying should I go over in that place full of lunatic murderers at this time of night. She is a lunatic too. You just put Josh in the morgue and I will come Monday morning and identify his body.”

  “This is important, Mr Goodman —” The line went dead. Wiley jiggled the hook. “Mr Goodman, Mr Goodman —” The voice of the operator came on. Wiley looked about and said, “He hung up,” and hung up himself.

  “Send for him,” Coffin Ed said.

  Wiley looked at him. “On what charge? I’d have to get a court order to get him out of Brooklyn.”

  “There’s more ways than one to skin a cat,” Grave Digger said.

  “Don’t tell me,” Wiley said, leading the way back to the yard. “Let me stay ignorant.”

  They stood for a moment looking at the carcass of the dead dog. The ruddy-faced assistant medical examiner passed them, singing cheerfully, “I’ll be glad when you re dead, you rascal you; I’ll be standing at Broad and High when they bring your dead ass by, I’ll be glad when you’re dead.…”

  Grave Digger and Coffin Ed exchanged looks.

  Wiley noticed and said, “It’s a living.”

  “More bodies, more babies,” Grave Digger agreed.

  The morgue wagon came and took away the body of the man and the carcass of the dog. Wiley called his men and prepared to leave. “I’m going to let you have it,” he said.

  “We got it,” Coffin Ed said. “Sleep tight.”

  Left to themselves they went back over the ground in detail. “Anywhere else it would figure something was stolen,” Coffin Ed said. “Here it don’t make any sense.”

  “Let’s quit guessing, let’s go get Goodman.”

  Coffin Ed nodded. “Right.”

  They closed the shed and turned out the lights and went slowly through the yard to the gate. When they started to cross the street to where their car was parked, a dark shape came from beneath the bridge like a juggernaut. They couldn’t see what it was but they ran because years of police work had taught them that nothing moves in the dark but danger. When they saw it was a black car moving at incredible speed they dove face downward on the pavement on the other side. A burst of flame lit the night as the silence exploded; machine-gun bullets sprayed over them as the black car passed. It was over. For a brief instant there was the diminishing whine of a high-powered engine, then silence again. The black shape had disappeared as though it had never been.

  By now they had their pistols in their hands, but they still lay cautiously flat to the pavement, searching the night for a moving target. Nothing moved. Finally they crawled to the protection of their little car and stood up, still searching the shadows for movement. They eased into the car like wary shadows themselves. Their breathing was audible. They still looked around.

  Car lights had slowed in the moving chain on the bridge overhead, but the deserted, off-beat street below remained dark.

  “Report it,” Grave Digger said as they sat in the dark.

  Coffin Ed called the precinct from the car and got Lieutenant Anderson. He gave it just like it happened.

  “Why, for God’s sake?” Anderson said.

  “I don’t figure it,” Coffin Ed confessed. “We got nothing, no description, no licence number — and no ideas.”

  “I don’t know what you’re on to, but be careful,” Anderson warned.

  “How much more careful can a cop be?”

  “You could use some help.”

  “Help to get killed,” Coffin Ed grumbled and felt a warning pressure from Grave Digger’s hand. “We’re going to Brooklyn now to get the owner of this junkyard.”

  “Well, if you have to, but for God’s sake go easy; you don’t have any jurisdiction in Brooklyn and you can get us all in a jam.”

  “Easy does it,” Coffin Ed said and cut off.

  Grave Digger mashed the starter and they went down the dark street. He was frowning from his thoughts. “Ed, we’re just missing something,” he said.

  “Goddamned right,” Coffin Ed agreed. “Just missing getting killed.”

  “I mean, doesn’t this tell you something?”

  “Tells me to get the hell off the Force while I’m still alive.”

  “What I mean is, so much nonsense must make sense,” Grave Digger persisted as he entered the approach to the East Side throughway.

  “Do you believe that shit?” Coffin Ed said.

  “I was thinking why would anyone want to rub us out because a junkyard laborer was murdered?”

  “You tell me.”

  “What’s so important about this killing? It smells like some kind of double-cross.”

  “I don’t see it. Unless you’re trying to tie this to the hijack caper. And that sure don’t make any sense. People are getting killed in Harlem all the time. Why not you and me?”

  “I got to think something,” Grave Digger said and entered the stream of traffic on the throughway without stopping.

  Mr Goodman was still awake when they arrived. The news of Josh’s murder had upset him. He was clad in bathrobe and nightgown and looked as though he’d been raiding the kitchen. But he still protested against going back to Harlem just to look over his junkyard.

  “What good can it do? How can it help you? No one steals junk. I only kept the dog to keep bums from sleeping in the yard, and cart pushers like Uncle Bud from filling his cart with my junk to sell to another junk man.”

  “Listen, Mr Goodman, the other night eighty-seven poor colored families lost their life savings in a robbery —”

  “Yes, yes, I read in the papers. They wanted to go back to Africa. I want to get back to Israel where I’ve never been either. It comes to no good, this looking for bigger apples on foreign trees. Here every man is free—”

&nbs
p; “Yes, Mr Goodman,” Grave Digger interrupted with feigned patience. “But we’re cops, not philosophers. And we just want to find out what is missing from your junkyard and we can’t wait until Monday morning because by then someone else might be killed. Even us. Even you.”

  “If I must, I must, to keep some other poor colored man from being killed, about some junk,” Mr Goodman said resignedly, adding bitterly: “What this world is coming to nobody knows, when people are killed about some junk — not to speak of a poor innocent dog.”

  He led them into the parlor to wait while he dressed. When he returned ready to go, he said, “My Reba don’t like it.”

  The detectives didn’t comment on his Reba’s dislikes.

  At first Mr Goodman did not see where anything was missing. It looked exactly as he had left it.

  “All this trouble, getting up and dressing and coming all this distance in the dark hours of morning, for nothing,” he complained.

  “But there must have been something in this empty space,” Coffin Ed insisted. “What are you keeping this space for?”

  “Is that a crime? Always I keep space for what might come in. Did poor Josh get killed for this empty space? Just who is the lunatic, I ask you?” Then he remembered. “A bale of cotton,” he said.

  Grave Digger and Coffin Ed froze. Their nostrils quivered like hound dogs on a scent. Thoughts churned through their heads like sheets of lightning.

  “Uncle Bud brought in a bale of cotton this morning,” Mr Goodman went on. “I had it put out here. I haven’t thought of it since. With income taxes and hydrogen bombs and black revolutions, who thinks of a bale of cotton? Uncle Bud is one of the cart men —”

  “We know Uncle Bud,” Coffin Ed said.

  “Then you know he must have found this bale of cotton on his nightly rounds.” Mr Goodman shrugged and spread his hands. “I can’t ask every cart man for a bill of sale.”

  “Mr Goodman, that’s all we want to know,” Grave Digger said. “We’ll drive you to a taxi and pay for your time.”

  “Pay I want none,” Mr Goodman said. “But curious I am. Who would kill a man about a bale of cotton? Cotton, mein Gott.”

  “That’s what we want to find out,” Grave Digger said and led the way to their car.

  Now it was three-thirty in the morning and they were back at the precinct station talking it over with Lieutenant Anderson. Anderson had already alerted all cars to pick up Uncle Bud for questioning and they were trying to fix the picture.

  “You’re certain this bale of cotton was carried by the meat delivery truck used by the jackers?” Anderson said.

  “We found fibers of raw cotton in the truck. Uncle Bud finds a bale of cotton on 137th Street and sells it to the junkyard. The bale of cotton is missing. A junkyard laborer has been killed. We’re certain of that much,” Grave Digger said.

  “But what could make this bale of cotton that important?”

  “Identification. Maybe it points directly to the hijackers,” Grave Digger said.

  “Yes, but remember the dog was dead before Josh and his murderer arrived. Maybe the cotton was gone by then too.”

  “Maybe. But that doesn’t change the fact that somebody wanted the cotton and didn’t let him live to tell whether they got it, or somebody got it before.”

  “Let’s quit guessing and go find the cotton,” Coffin Ed said.

  Grave Digger looked at him as though he felt like saying, “Go find it then.”

  During the silence the phone rang and Anderson picked up the receiver and said, “Yes … yes … yes, 119th Street and Lenox … yes … well, keep looking.” He hung up.

  “They found the junk cart,” Grave Digger said more than asked.

  Anderson nodded. “But Uncle Bud wasn’t with it.”

  “It figures,” Coffin Ed said. “He’s probably in the river by now.”

  “Yeah,” Grave Digger said angrily. “This mother-raping cotton punished the colored man down south and now it’s killing them up north.”

  “Which reminds me,” Anderson said. “Dan Sellers of Car 90 says he saw an old colored junk man who’d found a bale of cotton on 137th Street right after the trucks crashed the night of the hijack. The old man was trying to get it into his cart — probably Uncle Bud — and they stopped to question him. Then he got out and helped him load it and ordered him to bring it to the station. But he never came.”

  “Now you tell us,” Grave Digger said bitterly.

  Anderson colored. “I’d forgotten it until now. After all, we hadn’t thought of cotton.”

  “You hadn’t,” Coffin Ed said.

  “Speaking of cotton, what do you know about a Colonel Calhoun who’s opened a store-front office on Seventh Avenue to recruit people to go south and pick cotton? Calls it the Back-to-the-Southland movement,” Grave Digger asked.

  Anderson looked at him curiously. “Lay off him,” he warned, “I admit it’s a stupid pitch, but it’s strictly on the legitimate. The captain has questioned him and checked his licence and credentials; they’re all in order. And he’s got influential friends.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Grave Digger said drily. “All southern crackers got influential friends up north.”

  Anderson looked down.

  “The Back-to-Africa members are picketing him,” Coffin Ed said. “They don’t want that crap in Harlem.”

  “The Muslims haven’t bothered him,” Anderson said defensively.

  “Hell, they’re just giving him enough rope.”

  “Just his timing is bad,” Coffin Ed argued. “Right after this Back-to-Africa movement is hijacked he opens this go-south-and-pick-cotton pitch. If you ask me, he’s looking for trouble.”

  Anderson thumbed through the reports on his desk. “Last night at ten p.m. he phoned and reported that his car had been stolen from in front of his office on Seventh Avenue. Gave his home address as Hotel Dixie on 42nd Street. A cruiser stopped by but the office was closed for the night. We gave it a routine check at midnight. The desk said he had come home at ten-thirty-five p.m. and hadn’t left his suite. His nephew was with him.”

  “What kind of car?” Grave Digger asked.

  “Black limousine. Special body. Ferrari chassis. Birmingham, Alabama, plates. And just lay off of him. We got enough trouble as it is.”

  “I’m just thinking that cotton grows in the South,” Grave Digger said.

  “And tobacco grows in Cuba,” Anderson said. “Go home and get some sleep. Whatever’s going to happen has happened by now.”

  “We’re going, boss,” Grave Digger said. “No more we can do tonight anyway. But don’t hand us that crap. This caper has just begun.”

  16

  Everything happens in Harlem six days a week, but Sunday morning, people worship God. Those who are not religious stay in bed. The whores, pimps, gamblers, criminals and racketeers catch up on their sleep or their love. But the religious get up and put on their best clothes and go to church. The bars are closed. The stores are closed. The streets are deserted save for the families on their way to church. A drunk better not be caught molesting them; he’ll get all the black beat off him.

  All of the Sunday newspapers had carried the story of the arrest of Reverend D. O’Malley, leader of the Back-to-Africa movement, on suspicion of fraud and homicide. The accounts of the hijacking had been rehashed and pictures of O’Malley and his wife, Iris, and Mabel Hill added to the sensationalism.

  As a consequence Reverend O’Malley’s interdenominational church, “The Star of Ham”, on 121st Street between Seventh and Lenox Avenues, was crowded with the Back-to-Africa followers and the curious. A scattering of Irish people who had read the story in The New York Times, which didn’t carry pictures, had made their way uptown, thinking Reverend O’Malley was one of them.

  Reverend T. Booker Washington (no relation to the great Negro educator), the assistant minister, led the services. At first he led the congregation in prayer. He prayed for the Back-to-Africa followers, and he prayed that t
heir money be returned; and he prayed for sinners and for good people who had been falsely accused, and for all black people who had suffered the wages of injustice.

  Then he began his sermon, speaking quietly and with dignity and understanding of the unfortunate robbery, and of the tragic deaths of young Mr and Mrs Hill, members of the church and active participants in the Back-to-Africa movment. The congregation sat in hushed silence. Then Reverend Washington spoke openly and frankly of the inexplicable tragedy which seemed to haunt the life of that saintly man, Reverend O’Malley, as though God were trying him.

  “It is as though God was testing this man with the trials of Job to ascertain the strength of his faith and his endurance and courage for some great task ahead.”

  “Amen,” a sister said tentatively.

  Reverend Washington moved carefully, sampling the reaction of his audience before proceeding to controversial ground.

  “All of his life this noble and selfless man has been subjected to the cruel and biased judgement of the white people whom he defies for you.”

  “Amen,” the sister cried louder and with more confidence. A few timid “amens” echoed.

  “I know Reverend O’Malley is innocent of any crime,” Reverend Washington said loudly, letting passion creep into the solemnity of his voice. “I would trust him with my money and I would trust him with my life.”

  “Amen!” the sister shouted, rising from her seat. “He’s a good man.”

  The congregation warmed up. Ripples of confirmation ran through all the women.

  “He will conquer this calumny of false accusation; he will be vindicated!” Reverend Washington thundered.

  “Set him free!” a woman screamed.

  “Justice will set him free!” Reverend Washington roared. “And he will get back our money and lead us out of this land of oppression back to our beloved homeland in Africa.”

  “Amens” and “hallelujas” filled the air as the congregation was swept off its feet. In the grip of emotionalism, O’Malley appeared in their imaginations as a martyr to the injustice of whites, and a brave and noble leader.

  “His chains will be broken by the Almighty God and he will come and set us free,” Reverend Washington concluded in a thundering voice.