Cotton Comes to Harlem
Page 21
But Grave Digger replied with a straight face, “I know just what you mean.”
“Anyway it made it easier for me and Digger to find,” Coffin Ed said.
“How?” Anderson asked.
“How?” Coffin Ed echoed. The question threw him.
“Because it was still there,” Grave Digger said, coming to his rescue.
Anderson blinked uncomprehendingly.
Coffin Ed chuckled. “Damn right,” he said, adding under his breath, “That throws you too.”
Grave Digger said, “I’m hungry,” breaking it up.
Mammy Louise had barbecued an opossum especially for them and with the fat yellow meat she served candied yams, collard greens and okra, and left them to themselves to enjoy it.
“It’s a damn good thing those southern crackers gave Colonel Calhoun enough money to spend to get us back south or we’d still be looking for the Back-to-Africa loot,” Coffin Ed remarked.
“Be a lot of trouble, anyway,” Grave Digger agreed.
“How you reckon he figured it out?” Coffin Ed asked.
“Hell, man, how you think he was going to miss seeing the bale had been tampered with,” Grave Digger said. “As much cotton as he’s handled in his lifetime.”
“You think we should go after him?”
“Man, we’ve already recovered the stolen money. How’re we going to explain another eighty-seven grand?”
“Anyway, let’s find out where he’s gone.”
Two days later they got a verification from Air France that they had flown a very old colored man with a passport issued to Cotton Bud of New York City by way of Paris to Dakar.
They wired the prefecture in Dakar:
WHAT DO YOU HAVE ON OLD COTTON HEADED U.S. NEGRO … NEW YORK TO DAKAR BY AIR FRANCE … Jones, Harlem Precinct, New York City.
SENSATIONAL STUPENDOUS INCROYABLE … M. COTTON HEADED BUD BUYS 500 CATTLE HIRES 6 HERDSMEN 2 GUIDES 1 WITCH DOCTEUR … TOOK TO THE BRUSH … WOMEN FAINTED … THREW SELVES INTO SEA … M. le Prefect, Dakar.
FOR MILK OR MEAT … Jones, Harlem.
MONSIEUR QUELLE QUESTION … FOR WIVES WHAT ELSE … Prefect, Dakar.
HOW MANY WIVES WILL 500 CATTLE BUY … Jones, Harlem.
M. COTTON HEADED BUD ALSO HAS MUCH MONEY … M. BUD HAS BOUGHT 100 WIVES OF MOYEN QUALITE … NOW SHOPPING FOR BEST … WANTS LA MEME NUMERO AS SOLOMAN … Prefect, Dakar.
STOP HIM QUICK … HE WILL DROP DEAD BEFORE SAMPLING … Jones, Harlem.
SHOULD HUSBAND DIE WIVES MAKE BEST MOURNERS … Prefect, Dakar.
“Well, at least Uncle Bud got to Africa,” Coffin Ed said.
“Hell, the way that old mother-raper is behaving, he might have come from Africa,” Grave Digger said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHESTER HIMES was born in Missouri in 1909. He began writing while serving a prison sentence for a jewel theft and published just short of twenty novels before his death in 1984. Among his best-known thrillers are Cotton Comes to Harlem, The Real Cool Killers, and The Heat’s On, all available from Vintage.