The Big Gold Dream

by Chester Himes

  “They must have had a lookout staked and saw us coming,” Coffin Ed surmised.

  “I don’t dig this business,” Grave Digger admitted.

  While waiting for the ambulance, they went over the apartment briefly. They saw the signs where Sugar had searched, but nothing to indicate that money had been hidden there. They raised the shade, went out through the bedroom window and climbed the fire escape to the roof. They saw nothing that told them anything. It was easy enough to get down to the street in a dozen places from the flat, adjoining roofs on both 118th and 119th Streets.

  “Poking around like this is the long way,” Grave Digger said.

  “Then it might not lead anywhere,” Coffin Ed agreed.

  They went back into the kitchen and looked at the woman on the floor.

  “Either Slick and his muscle boy, or Dummy alone, or all three together,” Coffin Ed said. “Or else somebody we don’t know about.”

  Grave Digger didn’t reply.

  The sound of a siren came through the night.

  “If they were hanging around, they’re gone now,” Coffin Ed said.

  Nothing more was said.

  They heard the ambulance draw to a stop down on the street. Steps sounded on the stairs. Two white-clad colored interns came briskly through the front room, one carrying an instrument case. They were followed by a uniformed white driver carrying a rolled-up canvas stretcher.

  The interns glanced once at the detectives, then knelt beside the woman and made a quick, cursory examination without opening the instrument case. One pressed the skull gently beside the wound. Alberta moaned.

  “Is it bad?” Coffin Ed asked.

  “Can’t say with concussion,” the intern replied without looking up. “Only the X rays will tell. Stretcher,” he said to the driver.

  The driver unrolled the stretcher and laid it on the floor parallel to the body, and the interns worked the edge underneath her side.

  Then, while one intern held her head, the driver and the other intern rolled her over gently on her back onto the stretcher.

  “You want something?” the intern asked Coffin Ed.

  “Just get her to talk,” Grave Digger said in his thick, cottony voice.

  “Talking is not good for a concussion case,” the intern said.

  “Good or not,” Grave Digger said brutally.

  All three of the ambulance crew looked at him.

  The first intern said dispassionately, “All you cops are heartless bastards.”

  Grave Digger let out his breath. “It’s hard to say who’s heartless and who isn’t,” he said. “There’s a woman hurt, and there’s a killer loose. She can tell us who he is before someone else gets it.”

  No one answered him.

  The driver and one of the interns picked up the stretcher and the other intern, carrying the instrument case, led the way out. The detectives followed.

  With the arrival of the ambulance, the tenement had come alive. Tenants crowded into the hallways and peered from open doors.

  “Get back into your holes and thank God it isn’t you,” Coffin Ed said to a group of them.

  The window-watcher was waiting in her doorway. Her red eyes peered from a gray face, on which there was a look of consternation.

  “I don’t see how she could have got in without me seeing her,” she said, clutching at Grave Digger’s sleeve. “I hardly left the window at all.”

  He shook her off and passed without replying.

  The ambulance was rolling when they got into their car.

  “I got a hunch we’re just getting started on this thing,” Grave Digger said as he unhooked the radio telephone and dialed the precinct station.

  “We’re going uptown to Five Fifty-five Edgecombe Drive, Slick Jenkins’ apartment,” he told Lieutenant Anderson. “If anything comes in, you know where to reach us.”

  “No, wait where you are for the sergeant from Homicide,” Anderson directed. “He wants to work this out.”

  “There isn’t time,” Grave Digger said.

  “Wait anyway,” Anderson ordered.

  Grave Digger cradled the telephone and started the motor.

  “Heartless,” he repeated to himself as though it worried him.

  23

  “IS SLICK BACK?” Grave Digger asked Sam, the doorman.

  “Yassuh, boss he come back about fifteen minutes ago, and I phoned the precinct station like you said,” Sam replied.

  “Alone?”

  “Nawsuh, he got the same boy with him.”

  “All right, just don’t try to play both sides of the street,” Grave Digger warned him, and he and Coffin Ed brushed past.

  They took the elevator along with two ladies of the night. A rigid silence was maintained. Coffin Ed’s grim, acid-burned face was enough to scare the devil out of hell.

  The sepia-colored woman with the dyed yellow hair, dressed in the same tight-fitting purple silk Chinese gown, answered their ring again. She opened the door onto the safety chain.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re the police - we’re back again,” Grave Digger said.

  “Slick hasn’t come back,” she said, beginning to close the door.

  “We have a search warrant,” Grave Digger said, causing her to hesitate.

  “And we don’t want to have to shoot open the door,” Coffin Ed added.

  “May I see it?” she asked resignedly.

  Grave Digger took a legal size envelope from his inside coat pocket. It bore the return address of an insurance company. From it he extracted a typewritten letter suggesting that he examine their new life premiums. He unfolded the letter and held it out toward her.

  Both detectives had their gazes pinned on her slanting brown eyes. Her eyes looked down in the direction of the letter, but when she reached for it her hand went aside. Grave Digger moved the paper within her grasp. She took it and then instantly returned it.

  “I see,” she said in a low voice. “Then I will have to let you in.”

  She had to close the door to unlatch the chain. Both detectives drew their pistols. The chain made a slight rattling sound, followed immediately by the distant sound of a door being opened. A muted voice asked sharply, “Who is It?” They heard her say, “It’s two policemen; they have a search warrant,” and then the muted voice, lowered to a whisper, saying, “Hold them a minute.” There was an almost imperceptible sound of a door closing and a lock clicking shut.

  Keys turned inside the entrance door, and bolts moved. She drew the door inward.

  “Come in, please.”

  Holding their pistols in their right hands and their flashlights in their left, they entered a pitch-dark hall.

  She closed and locked the door, and turned toward the front of the building.

  “Follow me, please.”

  They tried the doors as they passed. Three opened into darkness, and the fourth was locked. From behind it came the sound of tense whispering, and then a sound like painful retching. Coffin Ed flattened himself against the wall beside the door, while Grave Digger followed the woman through the doorway at the end of the hall into the front sitting room. It was lit by a floor lamp and a table lamp, and through the three front windows the terraced lights of the Bronx were visible.

  From behind the other door to the locked room Grave Digger heard a sharp gasp and the muffled sound of scuffling. Then a key was being turned.

  The thick, enraged voice of an imbecile shouted, “He’s gittin’ away!”

  Grave Digger was already moving toward the closed door, but the woman blocked the way. He reached out to push her aside, but the motion was arrested by the sight of Dummy coining through the opened door. Blood was coming from his mouth, and he was mewling like a cat.

  “He’s hurt my cat!” the woman cried hysterically.

  Grave Digger felt the hair rise on his head.

  The heavy thunder of two shots from an automatic gun crashed, one after another. They were followed almost simultaneously by the hard, deaf
ening impact of Coffin Ed’s .38 as he shot through the lock in the hall door.

  A big broad-shouldered man wearing cowboy boots and a beaver hat staggered after Dummy through the open door. Dummy took four steps into the room and fell face downward on the carpet. The big man fell like a log right behind him. His hat flew off, and his face smashed into the sole of Dummy’s canvas sneaker.

  Then from the room came the low grating sound of Coffin Ed’s voice, sayings “Drop it,” sounding as dangerous as a rattlesnake’s rattle.

  Grave Digger leaped over the big man’s body, knocking the woman to her knees, and went into the room with his pistol ready.

  The room was a bedroom, with twin beds covered with green chenille spreads. Beyond the second bed Slick stood motionless, looking straight ahead. He wore a pink flannel smoking jacket with a blue velvet collar, and in the soft light from the single bed table lamp his thin, ascetic face was expressionless. The blued steel .38 caliber automatic lay on the bedspread in front of him.

  Coffin Ed stood just inside the hall door with its shattered lock. His .38 caliber revolver hung motionless at his side. From the muzzle of its long nickel-plated barrel came a lingering wisp of smoke, adding to the tingling smell of cordite in the room.

  Grave Digger lowered his pistol and let out his breath.

  “All right, bring him in here,” he said, turning to re-enter the sitting room.

  The woman was on her hands and knees, rocking from side to side.

  Dummy lay on his belly with his arms spread out and his face turned to one side. The handle of the knife Susie had been sharpening on his boot earlier in the day protruded from the center of his back, between the shoulder blades. He was breathing in soft shallow gasps, and shaking his head almost imperceptibly. His brown eyes peered from beneath the lumps of scar tissue with the pleading look of a sick dog.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t pull out the knife,” Grave Digger assured him, and gave his attention to the other man.

  Susie had two bullet holes in the back of his heavy tweed coat, from one of which the heavy pumping of blood was beginning to ebb. He had the absolutely motionless, relaxed, gone-for-good look of the brand-new dead.

  “Straight through the ticker,” Grave Digger muttered.

  He stood aside as Coffin Ed ushered Slick into the room.

  Without looking at the body, Slick stepped over it. He stepped past the woman without looking at her either, and stood with his hands raised shoulder high. He didn’t move while Coffin Ed frisked him.

  “He killed my cat,” the woman said suddenly, and began to cry hysterically.

  “Jesus Christ!” Grave Digger said.

  Roistering his gun, he put his hands beneath the woman’s arms and lifted her gently to her feet.

  “Your cat is all right,” he said. “This man called Dummy was stabbed, and your husband shot his partner in the back.”

  She seemed reassured. He helped her to the chaise longue and laid her down. Then he turned and looked at Slick.

  “Now I know why they call you Slick,” he said.

  Slick didn’t answer.

  Grave Digger found a telephone on a table near the door. He telephoned Harlem Hospital for an ambulance and then contacted Lieutenant Anderson at the Precinct Station.

  “Hold everything,” Anderson ordered. “Sergeant Frick from the Homicide Bureau is on his way up there now.”

  “Right,” Grave Digger said.

  “I don’t know anything about these people,” Slick said. “They’ve been trying to proposition me into helping them rob some woman, but I nixed them off. They came here tonight to try again. When you people came, each one accused the other of stooling. I had to shoot the big guy, Susie, to keep him from killing the little dummy.”

  The detectives stared at him. Neither bothered to answer.

  After a moment Slick added sardonically, “I got a soft heart.”

  Grave Digger slapped him with the open palm of his right hand with such force that he spun three feet, straight into Coffin Ed’s short right to his belly. They beat him until the doorbell rang, one slapping and the other punching - not hard enough to bruise, just hard enough to hurt.

  The room was beginning to empty. For a time it had been crowded.

  The ambulance had come and taken Dummy.

  An assistant Medical Examiner had arrived and examined the body. He had written on the tag that was later tied to the right big toe:

  NAME: Susie Green

  AGE: apprx. 26

  NATIONALITY: colored

  ADDRESS: unknown

  DIED: murdered by two gunshot wounds penetrating the back of the thorax, one penetrating the heart

  The body had begun its lonely journey to the morgue.

  Sergeant Frick had arrived with two assistant detectives. They remained.

  A table had been dragged to the center of the floor, and Sergeant Frick sat behind it. One of the detectives sat beside him with a pad and stylo to take down the preliminary statements.

  “I’ll talk to the woman first and get her out of the way,” Frick said.

  “I had better tell you, she’s blind,” Grave Digger said.

  The woman pulled her knees beneath her and hunched forward on the chaise tongue.

  “I’m blind, but I can hear,” she said.

  The five policemen stared at her with varying emotions.

  Slick, sprawled in an armchair against the inner wall, said menacingly, “Just keep your mouth shut, bitch.”

  His face was swollen, as though he had run into a nest of hornets, and his discolored eyes were almost shut.

  Coffin Ed reached over and slapped him across the mouth. Slick didn’t move.

  “No more of that,” Sergeant Frick said sharply.

  Grave Digger leaned against the wall, looking into the distance.

  “I want to make a statement,” the woman said in a tired, dead voice. “Slick killed the Jew.”

  Grave Digger pushed from the wall, and his body tensed. The other four policemen froze.

  Slick sat forward in his chair. “Bitch, if you try to frame me, I’ll kill you, if it takes all my life to do it,” he threatened in a deadly voice.

  “Take him out,” Frick said.

  Grave Digger reached down, clamped Slick back of the neck and yanked him to his feet. Coffin Ed took him by the arm.

  “Let Haines take him - I want you two here,” Frick said.

  The second white detective from the Homicide Bureau handcuffed Slick’s hands behind him and marched him down the hall toward the kitchen.

  “Go on,” Frick told the woman.

  “Slick knew that a woman named Alberta Wright hit the numbers for thirty-six thousand dollars,” the woman said.

  The detective scratched rapidly on his pad.

  “He propositioned Susie to rob her on a half-and-half basis,” she went on. “He told Susie where she lived and gave him the setup. Susie went down to rob her, but he didn’t get a chance. Her man was hanging around outside her window all night. But Susie got a chance to see her hide the money in her mattress before he was chased away. When he got back on Sunday and looked through the window, he saw Rufus there. He went down the street to wait for Rufus to leave, but the Jew came with his moving van and started taking away all of her furniture. So he stole the mattress from the van. But the money wasn’t in the mattress.

  “He came here Sunday afternoon and told Slick what had happened. Slick thought that either Rufus or the Jew had found the money; he didn’t know which. He and Susie left the house and were gone for about an hour. I heard them talking when they came back. They had found out where Rufus lived, but they weren’t sure he had found the money, and they didn’t know where the Jew had taken the furniture. Slick decided he’d watch Rufus. He told Susie to wait here for a telephone call in case he would need him. He telephoned here Sunday night, sometime between ten-thirty and eleven o’clock. When I heard the phone ring I went to the kitchen and listened in on the extension.

&nb
sp; “Slick told Susie that the Jew had searched the furniture and had found the money. He said he had followed Rufus to the Jew’s place in the Bronx and had seen the Jew find the money. He said he had trapped the Jew and killed him; he didn’t say how he had done it; but he said the Jew had given the money to Rufus and that Rufus had got away. Susie asked him how he had let Rufus get away, and he said Rufus had stabbed him in the shoulder. He told Susie to go to Rufus’s place on Manhattan Avenue and get the money from him before he could get into his house and hide it.

  “When Slick came home he gave me the clothes he was wearing and told me to get rid of them. Then he went into the bathroom, and bandaged his shoulder and had me fix him three pipes of opium. Before he went to sleep, he told me to wake him up when Susie called. Susie didn’t call at all that night, and it was morning when Slick woke up. He thought that Susie had double-crossed him. He had dressed and had started out to look for Susie when Susie came here. Susie told him he had got the money from Rufus, but it was only Confederate money. Slick didn’t believe him.

  “Susie had some plan of using the money for a confidence game to beat Sweet Prophet, and Slick agreed. They went out together and came back a couple of hours later with the money they had made. But Slick wasn’t satisfied; he still thought Susie was trying to trick him. They left again when Slick went to work - he was a payoff man for the Tia Juana house - and when they came back they brought Dummy. There was a fight, and Slick drew his pistol on Dummy.

  “Later on Slick called up a bail-bondsman and had him go Alberta Wright’s bail. When the bondsman phoned around eight o’clock to say that Alberta Wright was out, they left the house. They got back a few minutes before the policemen arrived.

  She stopped talking suddenly and waited for someone else to speak.

  Frick looked from Grave Digger to Coffin Ed.

  “Do you believe it?” he asked them.

  The detectives exchanged looks.

  “I believe it,” Grave Digger said. “It figures all around.”

  “It’s just her word,” Frick said. “She hasn’t offered any substantiating evidence.”

  “You’ll find the clothes he was wearing in my overnight case in the bedroom clothes closet,” she said. “There’s a pocketbook in one of the pockets that might mean something. And you ought to be able to find some kind of evidence in his car - maybe he stepped in some blood or something.”