The Big Gold Dream

by Chester Himes

“Yeah, but that’s such an old gag for a town like Harlem.”

  “You know, Digger, Harlem’s full of squares,” Coffin Ed said.

  “Maybe this punk is a square himself,” Grave Digger mused. “But we should look into the play just the same - when we get time.”

  “Right now I want to hear somebody talk about a Jew,” Coffin Ed said.

  “Right,” Grave Digger said, and started up the car.

  The next message was a blank. It came from a slap-happy wino whose claim to fame was that once he had fought on the card at Madison Square Garden as a heavyweight. True, he had only been a four-rounder in the prelims and nobody had ever heard of him before or since, but he had been there.

  He started out of the Braddock Bar over on Eighth Avenue, saw the dicks’ car coming and ducked back in.

  “Shall we pass him?” asked Grave Digger, who was driving.

  “We haven’t got much time,” Coffin Ed admitted. “But sometimes out of the mouths of fools comes the solid tip.”

  Grave Digger smiled to himself

  They waited for the wino. He didn’t keep them waiting. He approached their car as if he didn’t care who saw him, opened the back door without waiting for Coffin Ed and crawled up on the seat. His foul breath filled the car with the smell of stockyards.

  “Spit it out and scram,” Coffin Ed said brutally. “You are suffocating us.”

  “You want to know who stuck up that United Cigar store?” the wino asked.

  “Who?” Coffin Ed grated.

  “Me,” the wino said jubilantly, and started laughing like hell.

  Coffin Ed was out of the car, big feet planted on the pavement, he had his gun club-fashion in his hand, the back door open; he reached in, grabbed the ex-pug by the collar of his shirt and was yanking him bodily through the door before Grave Digger realized what was happening.

  “Don’t hurt him, Ed!” Grave Digger cried. “Don’t hurt him - he’s simple-minded.”

  Coffin Ed’s burn-scarred face was diabolical with fury. But he caught the descending gun butt before it crashed against the wino’s skull. He pushed the wino back against the car and slapped him across the mouth.

  “You’re not funny,” he said in a voice so dangerous it sent cold shivers down Grave Digger’s spine.

  The ex-pug fainted from terror.

  Coffin Ed pushed him to one side with his foot.

  “Where is your sense of humor, Ed?” Grave Digger asked.

  “I haven’t got any,” Coffin Ed admitted as he bolstered his revolver and got back into the car. “They burned it out of me.”

  Grave Digger started the car, but Coffin Ed halted him by a touch of the arm.

  “What do we do with this punk?”

  “Leave him there,” Grave Digger said. “If he stuck up that cigar store, I’m Cupid.”

  Coffin Ed grunted.

  “It takes all kinds to make the world, Ed,” Grave Digger added philosophically.

  “Yeah? Some of the funny ones are going to quit work,” Coffin Ed said.

  They had practically covered their route before they got the last message.

  It came from Dummy.

  When they saw Dummy duck into the entrance to Sweet Prophet’s temple, Grave Digger pulled the battered sedan over the curb and off the street into the exit way beside a chain movie theater. On one side were the double iron doors of the movie house, on the other the brick side wall of the adjoining building.

  After a while Dummy showed himself on the sidewalk, walked in that direction - looking on all sides, as was his habit - and suddenly disappeared.

  Coffin Ed looked from the darkened car and saw two eyes gleaming beside him in the dark. He opened the back door and Dummy got in.

  “What’s new?” he asked.

  “He can’t see in here,” Grave Digger said. “Let’s take him to the station.”

  Dummy was squirming about in the back seat, digging out his dirty scratch pad and stub of pencil.

  Coffin Ed got into the back seat with him, and Grave Digger backed the car into the street. When they pulled up before the green lights of the precinct station, Dummy scribbled in alarm: is a pinch?

  Coffin Ed got his face into the light and said, “No pinch, just some questions.”

  Dummy relaxed and grinned.

  They took him to the Pigeon’s Nest. He sat on the stool in the spill of white light and imagined he was back in the ring. He looked as happy as a kid with a new toy.

  “He’d still fight if they let him,” Grave Digger remarked.

  Dummy read his lips and nodded vigorously. He jumped to his feet and began shadowboxing, his gaze pinned on the floor, watching his imaginary opponent’s feet.

  “Sit down,” Coffin Ed said, but Dummy wasn’t watching his lips, and Coffin Ed had to push him back onto the stool.

  Grave Digger brought the two straight backed chairs from the comer desk and they sat facing Dummy in the light.

  “Get your paper and pencil out,” he said.

  Dummy wet the stub in his tongueless mouth and poised the scratch pad on his knee.

  “Who killed Rufus?” Grave Digger asked, taking a shot in the dark. He didn’t expect an answer, but Dummy was a night bird, and there was always a chance he might know something.

  mugger, Dummy wrote without hesitation.

  Grave Digger took the pad and passed it to Coffin Ed. They exchanged looks. Grave Digger handed back the pad and asked, “Did you see it?”

  Dummy nodded.

  “Know him?” Coffin Ed asked.

  Dummy shook his head. He drew a circle about his face with his index finger and shook his head again.

  “You didn’t see his face”

  Dummy nodded.

  “Tell us what you saw,” Grave Digger said.

  Dummy wrote: rufus drove up / mugger braced him in car / pulled him out / put knife on throat/ pushed him toward outhouse / rufus try to run / mugger stab him in back / keep stabbin / rufus down on hands and knees / crawl into the bush / mugger follow / i didn see nobody come out.

  The detectives read the scrawled words in amazement.

  “Where were you?” Grave Digger asked.

  Dummy reached for the pad and wrote: i was hidin in bushes.

  “Doing what?” Coffin Ed asked, but Grave Digger held up his hand and said, “We’ll get back to that. Let’s find out what the killer looked like.”

  Dummy shook his head earnestly.

  “All right - you didn’t see his face, but you saw his back,” Grave Digger said.

  Dummy wrote quickly: i saw his arm risin and fallin with the blade.

  “You saw more than that,” Coffin Ed said. “What did he look like? What was he wearing? What size was he?”

  Dummy scribbled frantically: big manbuilt like a heavyweighthad on a tan jumper and longbill army caphe was young strong fastall I saw,

  “Was there anyone else in sight?” Grave Digger asked.

  i didn see nobody.

  As Dummy filled the pages with his answers, Grave Digger tore them from the pad and stuffed them into his pocket.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  i ran up the hilli couldn call the copsi didn want tangle with big strong starker and his knifei couldn tell nobody what i sawi wait to tell you.

  “You know Sugar Stonewall?” Coffin Ed asked.

  Dummy nodded.

  “Was it him?”

  Dummy shook his head.

  “We’d better get the lieutenant in on this,” Grave Digger said.

  Dummy’s mouth flew open, and choking sounds issued from the gruesome cavity.

  “It’s all right,” Grave Digger reassured him. “Take it easy. We have to take a statement.”

  Beads of sweat came out suddenly on Dummy’s scarred, knotty.

  “Who around here talks sign language?” Grave Digger asked his partner.

  “The lieutenant, I think,” Coffin Ed said. “I’ve seen him playing with it.”

  “All right, Dumm
y, you just sit and take it easy,” Grave Digger said, getting to his feet. “We’re not going to hold you unless we have to.”

  Coffin Ed followed, and they went out and locked the door.

  Lieutenant Anderson was in command of the night shift. He was a student of dactylology. He took over the questioning of Dummy, translating Dummy’s replies for the detectives and a police stenographer who sat at the desk and recorded the interrogation in shorthand.

  Dummy stated that Alberta Wright had visited Cassie in her flat on 112th Street at about ten-thirty o’clock the previous night. She had come alone. He had been absent when she arrived. When he returned home Alberta was sitting at the kitchen table across from Cassie. Cassie was eating watermelon seasoned with black pepper and drinking salted beer.

  “Where had you been?” Anderson interrupted to ask.

  “I was watching out for my girls,” Dummy replied.

  “Your girls?”

  “He’s got two chippy whores,” Grave Digger explained. “He’s trying to teach them how to hustle. He wants to be a pimp.”

  Lieutenant Anderson had been on night duty in Harlem for over a year. During that time he had come to know his two ace colored detectives well, and he depended on them. He knew they had their own personal interpretation of law enforcement. Some people they never touched - such as madames of orderly houses of prostitution, operators of orderly gambling games, people connected with the numbers racket, streetwalkers who stayed in their district. But they were rough on criminals of violence and confidence men. And he had always thought they were rough on dope peddlers and pimps, too. So Grave Digger’s casual explanation of Dummy’s pimping surprised him.

  “And you let him go about breaking in young girls to hustle?” he asked.

  “If he didn’t do that he would do something worse,” Grave Digger said. “He would be a mugger or a cat burglar or a stick-up man. He can’t talk and he can’t hear. He probably could get a job as a porter or a dishwasher; but he won’t do that. He has been in the chips, and he figures those jobs are degrading. He used to be one of the greatest welterweights in the business, but the racketeers who owned him sent him to the tank so often he got both his eardrums burst. When he was no longer useful to them, they kicked him out of the profession. Then the do-gooders got hold of him and primed him to spill before the state committee investigating boxing, and the gangsters kidnaped him one night and cut his tongue out. They unloaded him from a car in Foley Square in front of the state building where the investigation was being conducted and it was just luck a patrol car passed in time to get him to hospital to save his life. Since then he has tried his hand at the usual occupations of an ex-pug - writing numbers, gambling, bodyguarding. Some big boxer gave him some money to open a shoe-shine parlor, but he used it to buy a new Cadillac, and the first night he had it he got it smashed up because he couldn’t hear the horn of a truck. Now he’s trying to pimp. If these chippies don’t work for him, they will work for some other pimp. At least he treats them better than most pimps would; he protects them and doesn’t beat them up. And when a chippy makes up her mind to be a whore, there is no stopping her. So we let him go. What would you do?”

  “God knows,” Lieutenant Anderson said. “Let’s get back to the story. You live with this woman, Cassie?”

  Dummy nodded. “She’s my old lady,” he said.

  “She lets him stay in her house and does what she can to take care of him,” Grave Digger explained once more. “But she’s just a cook and a liquor-head to boot, so she doesn’t have much money. He doesn’t make much pimping either, but it keeps him in small change.”

  “Yeah,” the lieutenant said. Then to Dummy, “What did you go home for?”

  “To get ten bucks,” Dummy confessed. “Tricks weren’t walking.”

  “And Alberta Wright was there when you arrived?”

  “Yes, sir,” Dummy said.

  He told them that Alberta had told Cassie that Rufus had stolen her furniture while she was in a religious trance. She had stopped by to see if she could find out where Rufus lived from Dummy. She and Rufus had worked together for five years after their marriage as a domestic couple - he as the butler-chauffeur and she as the maid-cook. Then he had stolen their savings and had run away with another woman. She hadn’t seen him for more than two years, and didn’t know where he lived or what name he had taken.

  When Dummy came, he had told Alberta the setup. Rufus had been working with the Jew for more than a year in a furniture-stealing racket. Abie had an outlet second-hand furniture store on Third Avenue near 125th Street in Harlem, and another place on Third Avenue in the Bronx, where he kept the hot stuff to cool off. Rufus entered apartments of people who were out of town on visits or business and sold the furnishings to the Jew in the role of proprietor. The Jew was covered; he demanded a statement of ownership from Rufus and gave a signed and witnessed receipt.

  Dummy had told Alberta that if she wanted her furniture back, the Jew would return it for what he had paid Rufus, plus twenty per cent handling charges, and ten dollars an hour for its removal and return - no questions asked on either side.

  “A slick little racket,” Lieutenant Anderson commented.

  “I saw her furniture,” Grave digger put in. “It wasn’t worth that kind of deal.”

  “That’s what Cassie said,” Dummy told them. “I told Alberta I would handle it for her, but she just wanted to find Rufus.”

  “All right, Dummy, quit beating around the bush,” Grave Digger said. “What did she have hidden in her furniture that made it worth while to steal?”

  “She said it was just mojos and potions and charms,” Dummy said. “African and Haitian stuff. Witch doctor bones that had been dried on the equator and special voodoos from the West Indies; hearts’ blood from Mexico and dried snake bites from East India. All kinds of magic stuff, she said.”

  Grave Digger and Coffin Ed looked at one another and then at Lieutenant Anderson. The lieutenant looked nonplused.

  “Let’s get this straight,” the lieutenant said. “She told you she had this stuff hidden in her furniture.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s what she said.”

  “And you believed it?”

  “No, sir, but that’s what she said.”

  Grave Digger chuckled “Can you imagine the Jew going to all that trouble stripping her furniture looking for a handful of mojos?”

  “What would she want with mojos if she had just got religion,” Coffin Ed said.

  “I’m just telling you what she said,” Dummy repeated.

  “You think it was something else?” Lieutenant Anderson asked the detectives.

  “In order to bring the Jew into it, there had to be money,” Grave Digger said. “Or else they thought there was money.”

  “What did you think it was, Dummy?” the lieutenant asked.

  “I thought she was just mad at Rufus. He had done stole her money once, and I thought she figured him stealing her furniture was the lick that killed Dick.”

  “What do you think now?” Coffin Ed asked. “You know the Jew has been killed, too?”

  Dummy nodded, “I think it was something else,” he admitted.

  “What?” Coffin Ed persisted.

  “Something she stole,” Dummy said. “Some jewelry.”

  “We can check that soon enough with her employers.”

  “Maybe she got it from somebody else.”

  “All right,” Anderson said. “You told her where Rufus lived?”

  “No, sir,” Dummy said. “I told her I would see if I could find out where he lived, and she promised to give me ten dollars if I did.”

  “And you found out where he lived and told her?”

  “No, sir, I knew where he lived,” Dummy said. “I left her with Cassie and went to see what I could get out of Rufus. He wasn’t at home, and I waited across the street. That’s how come I saw him when he drove up.”

  “You left her with Cassie, and Cassie gave her Rufus’s address,” the
lieutenant said.

  “No, sir, Cassie didn’t know it,” Dummy said. “And she wouldn’t have told her nohow.”

  “We’ll soon find out,” the lieutenant said. “I’m going to have her brought in.”

  “It won’t do no good,” Dummy said. “By now she’s stone drunk.”

  “We’ll see,” the lieutenant said. He ordered the stenographer to transcribe the notes and have the statement typed, and told the detectives to lock Dummy up until they questioned Cassie.

  But Cassie was too drunk to be moved other than in an ambulance, and they figured it best to let her sober up at home.

  It was broad daylight by the time the statement was ready for Dummy to sign.

  Grave Digger had one last question. “Have you seen Sugar Stonewall?”

  Lieutenant Anderson had gone home, and Dummy had to use his pad and pencil to reply. He wrote: no sir i aint seen sugar in a week.

  Coffin Ed asked his question. “Who’s carrying a fresh roll about town?”

  nobody i know of, Dummy wrote.

  They let him sign the statement and drove him back to where they had picked him up. Then they drove back to Lenox Avenue, found an all-night greasy spoon, sat on the counter stools and had coffee and doughnuts.

  11

  “LET’S WAKE UP SWEET PROPHET,” Grave Digger said.

  “He ain’t going to like it,” Coffin Ed said.

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

  Sweet Prophet received the detectives in the sitting room adjoining his bedroom on the top floor of the building housing his Temple and reception room.

  The housekeeper had opened the curtains and raised the windows looking down on the busy shopping area of 116th Street. Motor sounds and loud voices came in with motor exhaust smell and the stink of hot dirty pavement.

  The room had a north light and was furnished like a corner of the lobby of the Paramount Theater. Fat, complacent gold and silver cherubs chased coffee-brown angels about the sunrise-pink wall paper, while the appropriately sky-blue ceiling was filled with more golden stars than in the Milky Way, whirling dizzily about a silver moon containing the vague outline of a face with a startling resemblance to that of Sweet Prophet.

  “If this ain’t heaven, it will have to do until the real heaven comes along,” Coffin Ed remarked.