The Big Gold Dream

by Chester Himes

  “I done told you,” she said. “I didn’t have nothing but my furniture.”

  “All right,” he said wearily. “That’s your story.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Who were Rufus’s friends?” he asked, trying another tactic.

  “I didn’t know them,” she said.

  “Who was his girl friend? You would know that. He was your husband. You would certainly be curious enough to know who his girl friend was.”

  “Nawsuh. I didn’t care nothing about him nor his girl friend, nor about anything he did - long as he left me alone,” she said.

  “He stole your savings and ran away with a woman and you don’t know who she is,” he said incredulously.

  “Nawsuh, I never knew,” she said.

  “And you didn’t do anything about it,” he said sarcastically.

  “Oh, I would have cut his throat at the time, if I could have found him,” she confessed. “But he left town so I couldn’t find him and I got over it. That was what first turned me to Jesus.”

  “That I believe,” he said. “Now this is the last time I am going to ask you,” he went on. “What did you have that was so valuable that two smart men got killed for stealing it?”

  “They must have got killed for something else,” she said doggedly.

  He wiped his face with the palm of his hand. “Be reasonable, Alberta,” he pleaded with her. “We have got to establish the motive.”

  “I done told you all I know,” she maintained stubbornly.

  “Well, since you won’t tell me, you are going to have to tell the Grand Jury,” he said, getting to his feet.

  15

  AT NINE-THIRTEEN O’CLOCK Dummy was sitting on a stool behind a dilapidated wooden pushcart, watching the entrance of the hotel on 116th Street across from Sweet Prophet’s Temple of Wonderful Prayer.

  His friend, the pushcart proprietor, was carefully quartering watermelons and arranging the quarters on cracked ice in the bed of the pushcart, beneath the strip of faded tan canvas that would protect them from the sun.

  Dummy saw the young man pause in the hotel entrance beneath the faded sign and case the street in both directions. But the young man did not see Dummy.

  This young man was lucky that he was not wearing a tan juniper and a long-billed army cap, because all young men of his size and age wearing tan jumpers and long-billed army caps were being picked up by the police that morning.

  Instead the young man was wearing a heavy tweed jacket with thick shoulder pads, a wide-brimmed beaver hat pulled low over his forehead and skintight mustard-colored corduroy pants tucked into black and white cowboy boots.

  Dummy’s little prostitute could have identified him as the one who had cheated her much earlier that morning, but she was not there.

  Two dark buxom housewives in cotton shifts, carrying shopping bags loaded with assorted groceries, passed the hotel entrance. The young man raised his beaver hat and grinned at them with a suddenness that was startling. The women stiffened with offended dignity, passed him without a word and then, a few paces farther on, looked at one another and giggled.

  Dummy knew instantly that the young man was sky high on marijuana. He grinned to himself. That was going to make it easy.

  The young man stepped to the sidewalk and turned in the direction of Seventh Avenue. Dummy got from his stool and followed at about a ten-yard distance. The pushcart proprietor continued to fiddle with his watermelon display without giving him a glance.

  The young man walked with an exaggerated swagger, tipping his beaver hat indiscriminately to all the women he passed. Beneath the padded coat his shoulders looked as wide as a team of yoked oxen.

  Dummy followed in the shuffling, half-crouching gait of a prize fighter stalking his opponent. He looked constantly to both sides and over his shoulder, using his eyes in place of ears.

  The young man joined the people waiting for the bus around the corner. He puffed his cigarette rapidly, made erratic, meaningless gestures and stared into the women’s faces.

  Dummy loitered in front of a jewelry store next to the comer. The window was filled with watches, atop price tags giving the credit terms. He saw the reflection of the bus when it approached 116th Street.

  It was a green Fifth Avenue bus, a Number Two. It came up Fifth Avenue to the north end of Central Park, turned over to Seventh Avenue, and passed through the middle of Harlem.

  Dummy waited until it had almost finished loading, then dashed around the comer and hopped aboard.

  The young man had stayed up front. Dummy took a seat in the back and looked out of the window.

  The Theresa Hotel Grill looked busy, but the hotel entrance was dead; not even the doorman was on duty, and the sports who held up the walls later in the day had not yet awakened. The big two-faced clock on the opposite corner in front of the credit jeweler’s said six minutes after nine.

  Along the way the RKO movie theater was closed, the churches were closed, the bars were closed, the pool rooms were closed, the undertakers were closed. Hotel entrances looked dead; a trickle of shoppers patronized the various food stores. Only the greasy spoons were doing good business.

  Across 145th Street, Seventh Avenue passed between two housing developments, the Rockefeller-built Dunbar Apartments and the slum clearance Federal Housing Project. They looked dead, too.

  At 155th Street the bus turned west onto the end of the bridge over the Harlem River and passed high above one of Father Divine’s Heavens on the roof of which, in giant white letters, was the word peace. Then it turned north into the winding strip of Edgecombe Drive, overlooking the flats along the river bank.

  Dummy heard the bell ring, and, as the bus slowed down for the stop at 157th Street, he saw the young man go down the stairs. He let the young man alight; then, just before the door closed, he jumped up to follow as though he’d forgotten his stop. The young man recognized him; Dummy was known to everyone in the Harlem underworld.

  But Dummy didn’t give the young man a glance. He waited for the bus to drive on and cut across the street.

  Only one side of the Drive was built up; the other was a steep rocky park descending to the flats, on which were built the Polo Grounds and a new housing development.

  Without hesitating, Dummy entered the ornate lobby of the Roger Morris Apartment House, better known as 555. In its day it had been a very pretentious apartment dwelling for upper income whites, but now it was occupied for the most part by successful colored racketeers, jazz musicians, madames and current prize fighters.

  He knew that, when the young man had come this far, he was coming here. And he knew there would be nothing to arouse the young man’s suspicions in his coming here, too. He stood in the hall, talking in sign language to the dumb porter, whose hero he was. The young man came in and saw them talking. His face burst into its sudden moronic grin, and he made some eccentric gestures with his hands as though to join in the conversation. The two mutes ignored him.

  He went back to the elevators and went upstairs.

  Dummy and the porter talked about prize fighting. The porter leaned on his mop and let the water stand on the floor. A young woman, passing as a model or a showgirl, came from the elevator and had to walk through the dirty soapy water in her fragile pink shoes. She complained with shocking vulgarity, and the porter told her with gestures what she could do. Dummy went on saying that with a few weeks training he’d be in shape to take on the Cuban Kid.

  The young man came down accompanied by a middle-aged man equally as tall but slimmer, with a pale tan ascetic-looking face. He was dressed in a tropical worsted suit of slate blue, black and white shoes, a dull ivory-colored shirt and a tie and matching display handkerchief the color of tarnished silver.

  “Who are they?” Dummy asked his friend.

  “The slick is a payoff man for the Tia Juana numbers house,” the porter said. “I haven’t seen the starker before.” Then he added, “The slick is called Slick.”

  With h
is hands Dummy said, “I’ll be hearing you,” and moved off.

  Outside, Slick and the starker separated. Slick got into an olive green Chrysler New Yorker hardtop and drove off south. The starker walked down the corner and stood waiting for the bus.

  Dummy walked the short block up the incline to St. Nicolas Avenue and caught the faster Number Three Fifth Avenue bus and was down on 116th Street waiting for the starker. He had resumed his seat on the stool behind the pushcart watermelon stand, and was watching a customer sink his grinning teeth into a quarter of bright red, black-seeded, ice-cold watermelon, when the starker walked rapidly from Seventh Avenue and re-entered the hotel.

  Then suddenly Dummy’s roving gaze picked up the debonair figure of Slick lounging before the entrance to Sweet Prophet’s Temple across the street. Dummy got up, crossed the street and sat on the front stool of a lunch counter, where he could command a view of the whole sidewalk. He pointed to a grill-plate covered with roasting hot dogs. The counter-girl served him one off the front, put it in a bun and slid him the mustard. He then pointed to a shiny nickel-plated juice machine, and the girl drew him a glass of pale yellow liquid called lemon squeeze. He sat there, munching his hot dog in his tongueless mouth and sipping the cold chemical-tasting drink, while watching Slick out of the corners of his eyes.

  He noticed that Slick was watching the entrance of the hotel across the street under the pretense of being interested in Sweet Prophet’s press clippings, which were on display under glass in the Temple entrance.

  Following Slick’s gaze, Dummy saw that the starker had reappeared in the hotel entrance, smoking a cigarette. From the way he held the cigarette, pinched between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, and sucked at it. Dummy knew it was a marijuana cigarette. The starker was watching the entrance to the stairs that led to Sweet Prophet’s private quarters, while Slick watched him. There was an intentness about both of them that caused Dummy to wonder.

  Suddenly the starker tipped his beaver hat to nothing. Slick stepped quickly from the shadowed entrance of the Temple into the bright sunshine. As he passed the entrance to Sweet Prophet’s quarters, a legal size Manila envelope slipped from beneath his coat and fluttered to the sidewalk. He walked a few steps further and paused with his left hand on the handle of a parked car while he fumbled in his pockets with his right hand, as though searching for the keys. No one was close by at the moment, and seemingly no one but Dummy noticed the lost envelope. Nevertheless, the starker kept his gaze riveted on it.

  At that moment a buxom colored woman emerged from Sweet Prophet’s entrance and stepped from the sidewalk. She stopped for a moment to adjust her tight-fitting cotton print dress more sedately over her corseted figure. She looked like a sister who would say “Amen” at the drop of a hat. The pious expression on her face fought a losing battle with a flaunting pride; her soul was saved, and she knew it. Beneath the bare ham-sized, full black arm she carried a flat, black, narrow attaché case. Her hostile gaze roved over the street scene disapprovingly; then she got astride her dignity and started off.

  Her sharp eye lit on the Manila envelope. She started to pass it, but something she saw written on it made her hesitate. She peered with drawn brows, her lips moving slightly as she read. Then suddenly her whole demeanor underwent a complete change. Greed replaced the pious expression on her face. Her dignity gave way to stealth. She looked about furtively to see if she was being watched, then bent over quickly to adjust her shoe. In doing so, the attaché case slipped from beneath her arm and fell directly on top of the envelope, completely hiding it. When she had finished adjusting her shoe and had straightened up with the case, the envelope had disappeared.

  Once more the starker tipped his hat to the bright hot sunshine.

  Slick turned quickly away from the parked car and approached the woman from the rear.

  “I beg your pardon, madame, but I just dropped that envelope,” he said politely. “It must have slipped from my pocket while I was putting away my wallet.”

  The woman looked as offended as though he had said, “Hi, baby, how about a date?” She drew up to her full fat height and said sharply, “What envelope? What are you talking about?”

  They were standing in profile, and Dummy could read their lips. He swallowed with a sound like a dog gulping meat.

  A slight frown creased Slick’s forehead. “The one you just picked up, madame?”

  “I didn’t pick up any envelope,” she said harshly, trying to move off. “And if you don’t let me alone, I’ll call that policeman.”

  A uniformed cop was standing down at the corner, twirling his white billy.

  But Slick put his hand on her arm, nevertheless, and detained her.

  “Now, madame, there is no need of creating a scene,” he said smoothly. “I happened to see your reflection in the window of my car when you stooped to pick up the envelope. You are holding it on the other side of that attaché case.”

  The woman looked suddenly embarrassed. “Oh, that envelope!” she exclaimed with a laugh. Then, as she looked him over more carefully, her eyes got small and hard with suspicion. “How do I know it belongs to you?”

  “How would I know you had picked it up if I hadn’t dropped it?” he countered indulgently.

  The woman thought that over, and wasn’t satisfied. “All right, if it’s yours, then describe it,” she demanded.

  Slick lost his confident expression. He cleared his throat and said hesitatingly. “It’s a brown bank envelope.”

  The woman pounced on him. “What bank?”

  “The Corn Exchange,” he said, as though guessing at random.

  The woman turned her back and slipped the edge of the envelope from beneath the attaché case far enough to read the return address. Nothing else was written on it.

  “Hah!” she exclaimed triumphantly, turning back to confront him. “You didn’t see as good as you thought; it’s from the Manufacturer’s Trust Company.”

  “That’s what I meant,” Slick said, putting on a bright smile. “I have money in several banks, and it slipped my mind which bank I had been to this morning.”

  “It slipped your mind, right enough,” she sneered. “Because it don’t belong to you, slicker. You just figured I was an ignorant woman and you could beat me out of it, but you figured wrong, mister man.”

  “Well, it doesn’t belong to you either,” Slick said, losing philosophically. “And my only purpose in accosting you was to see that it is returned to its owner. No one up here in Harlem can afford to lose that much money.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know how much money is in it,” she demanded, her cupidity getting the better of her logic.

  “Let’s count it and see,” he suggested reasonably.

  “What for?” she asked with growing resentment.

  “So we can divide it,” he said frankly.

  “I’m a law-abiding, religious woman,” she said, getting on her high horse. “I’m not going to have anything to do with you.”

  “Then I’ll call the policeman on the corner and tell him what you found,” he said indifferently.

  “Wait a minute,” she said hastily. “Let’s see how much there is, first.”

  She turned her back and drew forth the envelope, but he demanded, “Let me see, too.”

  Reluctantly, she allowed him to watch her while she opened the flap and looked at the contents. A sheaf of bright green bank notes tied with a paper band peeped out of them.

  She started to pull it out but he stopped her quickly. “Watch out - don’t show it. Somebody will see and get suspicious. Just leaf back the edges.”

  They both looked about and up and down the street, then moved closer together to form a screen. She slid the edges of the notes out far enough to show the hundred-dollar marker. She gasped. Her lips moved slightly as she leafed the notes back one by one. Her hand trembled. “My God,” she whispered. “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Put them back,” he cautioned.

&nbs
p; She pushed the notes back into the envelope.

  “Ten thousand apiece,” he breathed. Taking a Manila envelope of similar shape and size from his inner pocket, he said, “You give me the envelope and keep your eye on the policeman while I take out my half.”

  Sight of the similar envelope combined with the artfulness of his request reawakened her suspicion.

  “Naw you don’t,” she said in a strident voice, clinging to the envelope and drawing away from him. “You must take me for a square. I know all about you slick con men switching envelopes.”

  A look of extreme disgust contorted his features. “Here, woman,” he said, handing her the envelope. “You divide it. I never saw anyone so suspicious.”

  But his ready acquiescence inspired her with cunning. Her face took on a look of sanctimonious concern. “We had better wait,” she suggested in an earnest voice. “Maybe Sweet Prophet lost it. He’s the only person around these parts who ever has that much money, and I don’t want to take nothing of him. I had better take it upstairs and ask him.”

  “I’ll go with you,” he said quickly.

  “No, you had better not,” she said. “He’ll get suspicious if he sees me bringing in a stranger, and he’ll take it away from both of us and turn it over to the police.”

  “Listen, woman,” he said, getting tough. “Do you think I’m going to trust you out of my sight with my ten thousand dollars?”

  She thought for a moment, and her eyes got small as ball bearings. She thrust the attaché case toward him and said, “Here, you keep this bagful of money If you don’t trust me. It’s Sweet Prophet’s weekend take, which I was taking to the bank. I’ll bet there’s more money in there than there is in this envelope anyway.”

  Reluctantly, he accepted the case. “All right, I’m going to trust you this time,” he said. “But don’t you try to double-cross me, because, if you do, I’ll keep the money in this bag.”

  “Oh, you can trust me,” she lilted triumphantly as she turned away. “I believe in what is right.”

  He watched her pass through the entrance and start up the stairs. Then he turned and walked quickly toward his own car parked farther down the street, passing in back of Dummy without noticing him. At the same time the starker quit his post in the hotel entrance across the street, hastened down the opposite sidewalk and cut across the street to pile quickly into the back of Slick’s car. The car started, and they drove off.