The crazy kill (coffin johnson and grave digger jones)

by Chester Himes

  The reporter looked disappointed.

  "Ahem," Brody said, clearing his throat. "So when you first looked out of the window you saw Val's body lying in the bread basket with the knife sticking in it. And you recognized the knife as the same knife you had seen Chink Charlie give to Dulcy Perry?"

  "There wasn't any bread there then," Reverend Short stated.

  Sergeant Brody blinked. "What was there if there wasn't any bread?"

  "There was a colored cop and a white man chasing a thief."

  "Ah, so you saw that," Brody said, finally getting something tangible to put his teeth into. "Then you must have actually seen the murder being committed."

  "I saw her stab him," Reverend Short declared.

  "You couldn't have seen her because she hadn't left the flat then," Brody said.

  "I didn't see it then. I was pushed out of the window then. I didn't see it until after I had returned to the room."

  "Returned to what room?"

  "The room where the casket was."

  Brody stared at him and slowly began to redden. "Listen, Reverend," he warned. "This is serious. This is a murder investigation. This is no place to joke."

  "I'm not joking," Reverend Short said.

  "All right, then, you mean you imagined all of this?"

  Reverend Short straightened his back and stared at Brody indignantly.

  "I saw it in a vision."

  "And it was in this vision you saw yourself pushed out of the window?"

  "It was after I was pushed out of the window that I had the vision."

  "Do you have these visions often?"

  "Regularly, and they're always true."

  "All right, then how did she kill him-in your vision, that is?"

  "She went downstairs on the elevator, and when she went outside there was Valentine Haines lying in the basket where I had fallen-"

  "I thought you said there wasn't any basket?"

  "There wasn't at the time, but the body of Christ had turned into a basket of bread, and it was in this bread that he was lying when she took the knife from her pocketbook and went up to him and stabbed him."

  "What was Val doing there?"

  "He was lying there, waiting for her to come out."

  "And stab him, I suppose."

  "He didn't expect her to stab him. He didn't even know she had a knife."

  "All right. I don't buy any of that. Did you see anyone actually leave the house-that is actually see them-while you were downstairs?"

  "My eyes were veiled. I knew a vision was coming on."

  "All right, Reverend, I'm going to let you go," Brody said, looking over the contents of Reverend Short's pockets lying on the desk before him. "But for a man who calls himself a minister of the gospel you haven't been very cooperative."

  Reverend Short didn't move.

  Brody pushed the pocket Bible, handkerchief, bunch of keys and wallet across the desk, hesitated over the bottle of medicine and on sudden impulse drew the cork and smelled it. He looked startled. He tilted it to his lips and tasted it, spat it out on the floor.

  "Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed. "Peach brandy and laudanum. You drink this stuff?"

  "It's for my nerves," Reverend Short said.

  "For your visions, you mean. If I drank this stuff I'd have visions, too." To the cops Brody said disgustedly, "Take him away."

  Suddenly Reverend Short began to scream, "Don't let her get away! Arrest her! Burn her! She's a witch! She's in collusion with the devil! And Chink's her accomplice!"

  "We'll take care of her," one of the cops cajoled as they lifted him from the stool. "We've got just the place for witches-and wizards, too, so you'd better look out."

  Reverend Short broke from their grasp and fell to the floor. He rolled and threshed about convulsively, frothing at the mouth as though having a fit.

  "I see what you mean by Holy Roller," Brody said.

  The police reporter snickered.

  "No, this is probably a vision coming on," Grave Digger said with a straight face.

  Brody looked at him sharply.

  The cops picked Reverend Short up by the feet and shoulders and carried him off bodily. After a moment one of them came back for the reverend's possessions.

  "Is he crazy or just acting?" Brody asked.

  "Maybe both," Grave Digger replied.

  "After all, there might be something in what he said," Coffin Ed ventured. "As I recall my Bible, all the prophets were either crazy or epileptic."

  "I like some of what he said, all right," Brody admitted. "I just don't like the way he said it."

  "Who's next?" Grave Digger asked.

  "Let's see Johnny's former wife," Brody said. Alamena came in docilely, fingering the high-necked collar about her throat, like a girl who might have been in there before and knew what to expect.

  She sat down in the circle of light and folded her hands in her lap. She wore no jewelry of any kind.

  "What do I call you?" Brody asked.

  "Just Alamena," she said.

  "Fine. Now just give me a quick fill-in on Val and Dulcy."

  "There ain't much to it. Dulcy came here to sing in Small's Cabaret a couple of years ago, and after six months she'd hooked Johnny and landed on easy street. Val came for the wedding and stayed."

  "Who were Dulcy's boy friends before she married?"

  "She played the field, prospecting."

  "How about Val? Was he prospecting, too?"

  "Why should he? He had a claim staked out for him before he got here."

  "He just helped out in the club?" Brody suggested.

  "Not so you could notice," she said. "Anyway, Johnny wouldn't have never trusted Val to gamble his money."

  "Just what was going on between Dulcy and Chink and Val and Johnny?"

  "Nothing, as I know of."

  "All right, all right. Who were Val's enemies?"

  "He didn't have any enemies. He wasn't the type."

  Blood mottled Brody's face.

  "God damn it, he didn't stab himself in the heart."

  "It's been done before," she said.

  "But he didn't. We know that. On the other hand, there were no superficial signs of his being either drugged or drunk. Of course, the coroner can't be absolutely certain until after the autopsy. But let's just imagine he was lying there, at that time of morning, in that basket of bread. Why?"

  "Maybe he was standing up and just fell there after he was stabbed."

  "No, he was stabbed while he was lying there. And from the condition of the bread he knew absolutely that some one or some thing had already lain in it. Perhaps he had even seen Reverend Short fall from the window. Now I want to ask you just one simple question. Why would he lie there of his own free will, let someone lean over him with a knife and stab him to death without his even putting up any kind of defense?"

  "Nobody expects to be stabbed to death by a friend they think is just playing," she said.

  All three detectives tensed imperceptibly.

  "You think a friend did it?"

  She shrugged, gesturing slightly with her hands. "Don't you?"

  Brody took the knife out of the drawer. She looked at it indifferently, as though she'd seen a lot of knives.

  "Is this it?"

  "It looks like it."

  "Have you ever seen it before?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "You'd know of it if you'd seen it?"

  "Everybody in Harlem carries a knife. Do you think I know everybody's knife by sight?"

  "Everybody in Harlem don't carry this kind of knife," Brody said. "This is a hand-tooled, imported English knife with a blade of Sheffield steel. The only place we've found so far where it can be bought in New York City is at Abercrombie and Fitch's, downtown on Madison Avenue. It costs twenty bucks. Can you imagine a Harlem punk going downtown and paying twenty bucks for an imported hunter's knife, then leaving it sticking in his victim?"

  Her face turned a strange shade of dirty yellow, and her dark br
own eyes looked haunted.

  "Why not? It's a free country," she whispered. "So they say."

  "You're free to go now," Brody said.

  No one moved as she got up and went across the floor, in the stiff, blind manner of a sleepwalker, and left the room.

  Brody fumbled in his coat pockets for his pipe and plastic tobacco pouch. He took his time stuffing the battered brier pipe, then struck a kitchen match on the edge of the desk and got his pipe going.

  "Who cut her throat?" he asked through a cloud of smoke, holding the pipe in his teeth.

  Grave Digger and Coffin Ed avoided each other's gazes, and both appeared strangely embarrassed.

  "Johnny," Grave Digger said finally.

  Brody froze, but relaxed so quickly it was scarcely perceptible.

  "Did she charge him?"

  "No. It went as an accident."

  The police reporter stopped fiddling with his notes and stared.

  "How the hell can you get your throat cut accidentally?" Brody asked.

  "She said he didn't intend to do it-that he was just playing."

  "Playing kind of rough," the police reporter commented.

  "Why?" Brody asked. "Why did he do it?"

  "She hung on too long," Grave Digger said. "He wanted Dulcy and she wouldn't let go."

  "And she still hangs on to him."

  "Why not? He cut her throat, and now she's got him for life."

  "It's a funny way to keep a man, is all I can say."

  "Maybe. But don't forget this is Harlem. Folks here are happy just to be alive."

  7

  They called Chink next.

  He said he'd started the night with a little friendly stud poker session in his room. It had broke up at one-thirty and he'd arrived at the wake at two A.M. He had left the wake at five minutes to four to keep a tete-a-tete with Doll Baby in her kitchenette apartment in the building next door.

  "Did you look at your watch when you left?" Brody asked.

  "No, when I went down in the elevator."

  "Exactly where was Reverend Short when you left?"

  "Reverend Short? Hell, I didn't pay no attention." He paused briefly, as though trying to remember, and said, "I think he was standing beside the coffin, but I can't be sure."

  "What was happening outside when you got down to the street?"

  "Nothing. A colored cop was standing there guarding the A amp;P store groceries on the sidewalk. He might remember seeing me."

  "Was there anyone with him."

  "No, not unless it was a ghost."

  "All right, son, let's have the facts without the comedy," Brody said with irritation.

  Chink said he'd waited for Doll Baby in the front hall and they had walked up to her apartment on the secondfloor rear. But she hadn't been in the mood, so he'd gone out to pick up a few sticks of marijuana weed from a friend who lived down the street.

  "Where?" Brody asked.

  "Make a guess," Chink said defiantly.

  Brody let it pass.

  "Were there any people on the street that time?" he asked.

  "Just as I stepped out on the sidewalk Dulcy Perry came from next door, and we saw Val's body in the bread basket at the same time."

  "Had you noticed the bread basket before?"

  "Sure. It was full of plain bread."

  "There was no one else in sight when you and Dulcy met?"

  "No one."

  "How did she react when she saw her brother's body?"

  "She just started going crazy."

  "What did she say?"

  "I don't remember."

  Brody showed him the knife.

  Chink admitted that it looked like the knife that had been stuck in Val's body, but denied ever having seen it before.

  "Reverend Short testified that he saw you give this knife to Dulcy Perry in front of his church the day after Christmas, and that you showed her how to use it," Brody said.

  Chink's sweaty yellow face paled to the color of a dirty sheet.

  "That mother-raping preacher's blowing his top drinking that opium extract and cherry brandy," he raved. "I ain't given Dulcy any mother-raping knife and ain't never seen it before."

  "But you've been after her like a dog after a bitch in heat," Brody charged. "Everybody says that."

  "You can't hang a man for trying," Chink argued.

  "No, but you can kill a woman's brother if he gets in the way," Brody said.

  "Val wasn't no trouble," Chink muttered. "He'd have set it up for me if he hadn't been scared of Johnny."

  Brody called in the harness cops.

  "Hold him," he ordered.

  "I want to call my lawyer," Chink demanded.

  "Let him call his lawyer," Brody said. Then he asked if they'd picked up Doll Baby Grieves.

  "Long time ago," one replied.

  "Send her in."

  Doll Baby had changed into a day dress that still looked like a nightgown in disguise. She sat on the stool in the circle of light and crossed her legs as though she liked being spotlighted in the same room with three men, even though they were cops.

  She confirmed Chink's testimony, only she said he'd gone out for sandwiches instead of marijuana.

  "Didn't you get enough to eat at the wake?" Brody asked.

  "Well, we were just talking and that always makes me hungry," she said.

  Brody asked about her relationship with Val, and she said they were engaged.

  "And you were entertaining another man in your rooms at that hour of morning?"

  "Well, after all, I had waited for Val 'til four o'clock, and I just figured he was out chasing." She giggled. "And what's good for the goose is good for the gander."

  "He's dead now, or did you forget?" Brody reminded her.

  She sobered suddenly and looked appropriately sad.

  Brody asked her if she'd seen anyone when she left the wake. She said she'd seen a colored cop with the A amp;P store manager who'd just driven up. She recognized the manager because she shopped in the store, and she knew the cop personally. Both had greeted her.

  "When did you last see Val?" Brody asked.

  "He came to see me at about ten-thirty."

  "Had he been to the wake?"

  "No, he said he'd just come from home. I phoned Mr. Small and got the night off to attend Big Joe's wake-I generally work from eleven till four-and then me and Val sat there talking until one-thirty."

  "Are you certain about the time?"

  "Yeah, he looked at his watch and said it was one-thirty, and he'd have to leave in a hour because he wanted to stop by Johnny's club before he went to the wake, and I said I wanted some fried chicken."

  "You don't like Mamie Pullen's cooking," Brody suggested.

  "Oh, sure, I like it fine, but I was hungry."

  "You're a hungry girl."

  She giggled. "Talking always makes me hungry."

  "Where did you go for your fried chicken?"

  "We got a taxi and went over to the College Inn at 151st Street and Broadway. We just stayed there for an hour, and then he looked at his watch and said it was two-thirty and he was going by Johnny's and would meet me at the wake in about an hour. We got a taxi and he dropped me off at Mamie's and kept on downtown to Johnny's."

  "What was his racket?" Brody shot at her.

  "Racket? He didn't have any. He was a gentleman."

  "Who were his enemies?"

  "He didn't have any, unless it was Johnny."

  "Why Johnny?"

  "Johnny might have got tired of having him around all the time. Johnny's funny and awfully hot-headed."

  "How about Chink? Didn't Val resent Chink's familiarity with his fiancee?"

  "He didn't know about it."

  Brody showed her the knife. She denied ever having seen it at any time.

  He released her.

  Dulcy was brought in next. She was accompanied by Johnny's attorney, Ben Williams.

  Ben was a brown-skinned man of about forty, slightly on the fat side, wit
h neatly barbered hair, and a heavy moustache. He was wearing the double-breasted gray flannel suit, horn-rimmed spectacles and conservative black shoes of the Harlem professional man.

  Brody skipped the routine questions and asked Dulcy, "Were you the first one to discover the body?"

  "You don't have to answer that," the attorney said quickly.

  "Why the hell doesn't she?" Brody flared.

  "The Fifth Amendment," the attorney stated.

  "This isn't any Communist investigation," Brody said disgustedly. "I can hold her as a material witness and let her talk to the Grand Jury, if that's what you want."

  The attorney appeared to meditate. "Okay, you can answer," he said to Dulcy. After that he kept quiet; he had earned his money.

  She said that Chink was standing beside the bread basket when she came out of the door.

  "Are you certain of that?" Brody asked.

  "I ain't blind," she retorted. "That's what made me look down to see what he was looking at, and then I saw Val."

  Brody left it for a moment and started at the beginning of her career in Harlem. The gist of what he got had already been given.

  "Did your husband give him an allowance?" Brody asked.

  "Naw, he just slipped him money from his pocket whenever Val asked for a loan, and sometimes he'd let him win in the game. Then I gave him what I could."

  "How long had he been engaged to Doll Baby?"

  She laughed sarcastically. "Engaged! He was just keeping himself regular with that slut."

  Brody dropped it and repeated the questions about Val's racket, enemies, whether he was carrying a large sum of money when he was killed, and asked her to describe the jewelry he was wearing. The wrist watch, gold ring and cuff links checked with what had been found on the body. She said the thirty-seven dollars found in his wallet would be about right.

  Then Brody worked on the time element.

  She said Val had left home about ten o'clock. He had said he was going to see a show at the Apollo Theatre-Billy Eckstein's band was doubling with the Nicholas brothers-and had asked to come with him, but she had an appointment with her hairdresser. So he'd decided to drop by the club and come with Johnny to the wake, and said they'd pick her up there.

  She'd left home at twelve midnight with Alamena, who lived in a rented room downstairs in the same building.