The crazy kill (coffin johnson and grave digger jones)

by Chester Himes

  Alamena came running into the kitchen on its heels. Her brown face had turned pasty gray.

  "Johnny," she whispered, pressing her finger to her lips.

  Chink turned a strange shade of yellow, like a person who'd been sick for a long time with yellow jaundice. He tried to ram the half washed, dripping wet money into his side coat-pocket, but his hands were trembling so violently he could scarcely find it. Then he looked wildly about as though he might jump out of the window if he weren't restrained.

  Dulcy began laughing hysterically. "Who ain't scared of who?" she choked.

  Alamena gave her a furiously frightened look, took Chink by the hand and led him toward the front door.

  "For God's sake, shut up," she whispered toward Dulcy.

  The dog kept barking furiously.

  Then suddenly the sound of voices came from the back stairway.

  Grave Digger and Coffin Ed had converged from the shadows the instant Johnny put his key in the lock.

  In the kitchen they heard Grave Digger saying, "Just one minute, Johnny. We'd like to ask you and the missus some questions."

  "You don't have to shout at me," Johnny said. "I ain't deaf."

  "Occupational traits," Grave Digger said. "Cops talk louder than gamblers."

  "Yeah. You got a warrant?" Johnny said.

  "What for? We just want to ask you some friendly questions," Grave Digger said.

  "My woman's drunk and ain't able to answer any questions, friendly or not," Johnny said. "And I ain't going to."

  "You're getting kind of big for your britches, ain't you, Johnny," Coffin Ed said.

  "Listen," Johnny said. "I ain't trying to be no big shot or play tough. I'm just tired. A lot of folks are pressing me. I pay a lawyer to talk for me in court. If you got a warrant for me or Dulcy, then take us. If you ain't, then let us be."

  "Okay, Johnny," Coffin Ed said. "It's been a long day for everybody."

  "Are you wearing your rod?" Grave Digger asked.

  "Yeah. You want to see my license?" Johnny said.

  "No, I know you got a license for it. I just want to tell you to take it easy, son," Grave Digger said.

  "Yeah," Johnny said.

  While they were talking, Alamena had let Chink out of the front door.

  Chink had buzzed for the elevator and was waiting for it to come when Johnny let himself into the kitchen of his flat.

  Alamena was washing the tablecloth. The dog was barking. Dulcy was still laughing hysterically.

  "Why, imagine seeing you, daddy," Dulcy said in a blurred drunken voice. "I thought you were the garbage man, coming in that way."

  "She's drunk," Alamena said quickly.

  "Why didn't you put her to bed?" Johnny said.

  "She didn't want to go to bed."

  "Nobody puts Dulcy to bed when she don't want to go to bed," Dulcy said drunkenly.

  The dog kept barking.

  "She was sick on the tablecloth," Alamena said.

  "Go home," Johnny said. "And take this little yapping dog with you."

  "Come on, Spookie," Alamena said.

  Johnny picked up Dulcy in his arms and carried her into the bedroom. Outside in the corridor, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed joined Chink at the elevator doors.

  "You're trembling," Grave Digger observed.

  "Sweating, too," Coffin Ed added.

  "I just got a chill is all," Chink said.

  "Damn right," Grave Digger said. "That's the way to get chilled permanently, fooling around with another man's wife, and in his own house, too."

  "I just been tending to my own business," Chink said argumentatively. "Why don't you cops try that sometime?"

  "That's the thanks we get for giving you a break," Grave Digger said. "We held him up until you had time to get away."

  "Don't talk to that son of a bitch," Coffin Ed said harshly. "If he says another word I'll knock out his teeth."

  "Not before he talks," Grave Digger warned. "He's going to need his teeth to make himself understood."

  The automatic elevator stopped on the floor. The three of them got in it.

  "What is this, a pinch?" Chink asked.

  Coffin Ed hit him in the solar plexus. Grave Digger had to restrain him. Chink walked out of the house between the two detectives, holding his stomach as though to keep it from falling out.

  17

  Chink sat on the stool within the glaring circle of light in the Pigeon Nest, where Detective Sergeant Brody from Central Homicide had questioned him that morning.

  But now he was being questioned by the Harlem precinct detectives, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, and it wasn't the same.

  Sweat was streaming down his waxen face, and his beige summer suit was wringing wet. He was trembling again and he was scared. He looked at the wet money stacked on one end of the desk through sick, vein-laced eyes.

  "I've got a right to have my lawyer," he said.

  Grave Digger sat on the edge of the desk in front of him, and Coffin Ed stood in the shadows behind him.

  Grave Digger looked at his watch and said, "It's five minutes after two o'clock, and we've got to have some answers."

  "But I've got a right to have my lawyer," Chink said in a pleading tone. "Sergeant Brody said this morning I had a right to have my lawyer when I was questioned."

  "Listen, boy," Coffin Ed said. "Brody is a homicide man and solving murders is his business. He goes at it in a routine way like the law prescribes, and if some more people get killed while he's going about it, that's just too bad for the victims. But me and Digger are two country Harlem dicks who live in this village and don't like to see anybody get killed. It might be a friend of ours. So we're trying to head off another killing."

  "And there ain't much time," Grave Digger added.

  Chink mopped his face with a wet handkerchief. "If you think anybody's going to kill me-" he began, but Coffin Ed cut him off.

  "I personally wouldn't give a goddam if you were killed-"

  "Take it easy, Ed," Grave Digger said, and then to Chink, "We want to ask you one question. And we want a true answer. Did you give Dulcy the knife that killed Val as Reverend Short said you did?"

  Chink squeezed out a laugh. "I've already told you, I don't know anything about that knife."

  "Because if you did give the knife to her," Grave Digger went on talking softly, "and Johnny got hold of it and killed Val with it, he's going to kill her, too, if we don't stop him. That's for sure. And maybe if we don't get him soon enough he's going to kill you, too."

  "You cops act as if Johnny was a black Dillinger or Al Capone-" Chink was saying, but his teeth were chattering so loudly he sounded as though he were speaking pig latin.

  Grave Digger cut him off, still talking in a soft, persuasive voice. "And we know that you've got something on Dulcy or else she wouldn't have let you in Johnny's house and taken the risk of talking to you for thirty-three minutes by the clock. And if it wasn't something goddam serious she wouldn't have given you seven hundred and thirty bucks to keep quiet." He banged the meaty edge of his fist on the stack of squashy money, jerked it back and wiped his hand with his handkerchief. "Dirty money. Which one of you puked on it?"

  Chink tried to meet his gaze defiantly but couldn't do it, and his own gaze kept dropping until it rested on Grave Digger's big flat feet.

  "So there are only two possibilities," Grave Digger went on. "You either gave her the knife or else you found out what Val knew about her that he was going to use to make her dig ten grand out of Johnny. And we don't figure you found that out since we talked to you because we've been shadowing you, and we know you went straight from your room to Johnny's club and from there to see Dulcy. So you must know about the knife."

  He stopped talking and they waited for Chink to answer.

  Chink didn't speak.

  Suddenly, without warning, Coffin Ed stepped forward from the shadows and chopped Chink across the back of his neck with the edge of his hand. It knocked Chink forward, stunning him
, and Coffin Ed grabbed him beneath the arms to keep him from falling on his face.

  Grave Digger slid quickly from the desk and handcuffed Chink's ankles, drawing the bracelets tight just above the ankle bones. Then Coffin Ed handcuffed Chink's hands behind his back.

  Without saying another word, they opened the door, lifted Chink from the chair and hung him upside down from the top of the door by his handcuffed ankles, so that the top part of the door split his legs down to his crotch. His back lay flat against the bottom edge, with the lock bolt sticking into him.

  Then Grave Digger inserted his heel into Chink's left armpit and Coffin Ed did the same with his right, and they pushed down gradually.

  Chink thought about the ten thousand dollars that Dulcy was going to get for him that day and tried to stand it. He tried to scream, but he had waited too late. All that came out was his tongue and he couldn't get it back. He began choking, and his eyes began to bulge.

  "Let's take him down now," Grave Digger said.

  They lifted him down and stood him on his feet, but he couldn't stand. He pitched forward. Grave Digger caught him before he hit the floor and lifted him back onto the stool.

  "All right, spill it," Coffin Ed said. "And it'd better be straight."

  Chink swallowed. "Okay," he said in a gasping voice. "I gave her the knife."

  Coffin Ed's burnt face contorted with rage. Chink ducked automatically, but Coffin Ed merely clenched and opened his fists.

  "When did you give it to her?" Grave Digger asked.

  "It was just like the preacher said," Chink confessed. "One of the club members, Mr. Burns, brought it back from London and gave it to me for a Christmas present, and I gave it to her."

  "What for?" Coffin Ed asked.

  "Just for a gag," Chink said. "She's so scared of Johnny I thought it'd be a good joke."

  "Damn right," Grave Digger said sourly. "It would have been awfully funny if you'd found it stuck between your own ribs."

  "I didn't figure she'd let Johnny find it," Chink said.

  "How do you know he found it?" Coffin Ed asked.

  "We haven't got time for guesses," Grave Digger said. They removed the handcuffs from Chink's wrists and ankles and booked him on suspicion of murder.

  Then they tried to contact the Mr. Burns whom he said had given him the knife to verify the story. But the night clerk at the University Club said, in reply to their phone call, that Mr. Burns was in Europe somewhere.

  They went back to Johnny's flat, rang the bell and hammered on the door. No one answered. They tried the service door. Grave Digger listened with his ear to the panel.

  "Quiet as a grave," he said.

  "Something's happened to the dog," Coffin Ed said.

  They looked at one another.

  "If we go in without a search warrant it's going to be risky," Grave Digger said. "If he's in there and he's already killed her, we're going to have to kill him. And if he hasn't done anything to her at all and they're both in there just keeping quiet and we break in, there's going to be hell to pay. He's liable to get us busted down to harness."

  "I just hate to have Johnny kill his woman and go to the chair on account of a rat-tail punk like Chink," Coffin Ed said. "For all we know she might have killed Val herself. But if Johnny finds out she got the knife from Chink, her life ain't worth a damn."

  "Chink might be lying," Grave Digger suggested.

  "If he is, he'd better disappear from the face of the earth," Coffin Ed said.

  "We'd better go in the front way then," Grave Digger said. "If Johnny's laying in there in the dark with his heater we'll have a better chance in that straight hall."

  The door was framed on both sides and at the top by heavy iron angle-bars, making it impossible to pry open, and it was secured by three separate Yale locks.

  It took Coffin Ed fifteen minutes working with seven master keys before he got it open.

  They stood flanking the door with drawn revolvers while Grave Digger pushed it open with his foot. No sound came from the dark tunnel of the hall.

  There was a chain-bolt on the door which, when fastened, kept it from opening more than a crack, but it hadn't been fastened.

  "The chain's off," Grave Digger said. "He's not here."

  "Don't take any chances," Coffin Ed warned.

  "What the hell! Johnnys no lunatic," Grave Digger said, and walked into the dark hall. "It's me, Digger, and Ed Johnson, if you're in here, Johnny," he said quietly, felt for the light switch and turned on the hall light.

  Their eyes went straight to a hasp and staple fitted to the outside of the master-bedroom door. It was fastened with a heavy brass Yale padlock. Coffin Ed closed the outside door, and they went down the hall and listened with their ears against the panel of the bedroom door. The only sound from within came from a radio tuned to an all-night disk jockey program of swing music.

  "Anyway, she ain't dead," Grave Digger said. "He wouldn't lock up a corpse."

  "But he's got hold of something or else he's blowing his top," Coffin Ed replied.

  "Let's see what's in the rest of the house," Grave Digger suggested.

  They started with the sitting room across the front and worked back to the kitchen. None of the rooms had been cleaned or straightened. The broken glass from the overturned cocktail table lay on the sitting-room carpet.

  "Looks like it got kind of rough," Coffin Ed observed. "It could be he's beaten her up," Grave Digger conceded.

  The two bedrooms were across the hall from the kitchen and were separated by the bathroom. There, doors from each opened into the bathroom, which could be bolted from both sides. The door leading into the room Val had occupied was ajar, but the one to the master bedroom was bolted. Grave Digger slipped the bolt and they went in.

  The shades were drawn and the room was dark save for a faint glow from the radio dial.

  Coffin Ed switched on the light.

  Dulcy lay on her side with her knees drawn up and her hands between her legs. She had kicked the covers off, and her nude sepia body had the dull sheen of metal. She was breathing silently, but her face was greasy from sweat and saliva had drooled from the bottom corner of her mouth.

  "Sleeping like a baby," Grave Digger said.

  "A drunken baby," Coffin Ed amended.

  "Smells it, too," Grave Digger admitted.

  There was an empty brandy bottle on the carpet beside the bed and an overturned glass in the center of a wet stain.

  Coffin Ed crossed to the single window opening onto the inside fire escape and parted the drapes. The heavy iron grille on the outside of the window was padlocked.

  He turned and came back to the bed. "Do you think this sleeping beauty knows she's been locked in?" he asked.

  "Hard to say," Grave Digger admitted. "How do you figure it?"

  "The way I figure it is Johnny's on to something, but he doesn't know what," Coffin Ed said. "He's out scouting about trying to find out something, and he's locked her up just in case he finds out the wrong thing."

  "Do you think he knows about the knife?"

  "If he does, he's out looking for Chink, and that's for sure," Coffin Ed said.

  "Let's see what she's got to say," Grave Digger suggested, shaking her by the shoulder.

  She awakened and brushed at her face drunkenly.

  "Wake up, little sister," Grave Digger said.

  "Go way," she muttered without opening her eyes. "Done give you all I got." Suddenly she giggled. "All but you-know-what. Ain't never going to give you none of that, nigger. That's all for Johnny."

  Grave Digger and Coffin Ed looked at each other. "I don't figure this at all," Grave Digger admitted. "Maybe we'd better take her in," Coffin Ed ventured. "We could, but if it turns out later that we're wrong and Johnny hasn't got anything against her other than just being normally jealous-"

  "What do you call being normally jealous?" Coffin Ed interrupted. "You call locking up your woman being normally jealous?"

  "For Johnny, anyway," Grave
Digger said. "And if he comes back and finds we've broken into his house and arrested his woman-"

  "On suspicion of murder," Coffin Ed interrupted again.

  "Not even that would save us from a suspension. It's not as if we were picking her up off the street. We've broken into her house, and there's no evidence of a crime having been committed in here. And we'd need a warrant even if the charge were murder itself."

  "Well, the only thing to do is to find him before he finds out what he's looking for," Coffin Ed acceded.

  "Yeah, and we'd better get going because time is getting short," Grave Digger said.

  They went back through the bathroom, leaving the door wide open, and locked the front door with only the automatic lock.

  First they went to the garage on 155th Street where Johnny kept his fishtail Cadillac, but he hadn't been in. Then they went by his club. It was dark and closed.

  Next they began touring the cabarets, the dice games, the after-hours joints. They dropped the word they were looking for Chink Charlie.

  The bartender at Small Paradise Inn said, "I ain't seen Chink all evening. He must be in jail. You looked for him there?"

  "Hell, that's the last place cops ever look for anybody," Grave Digger said.

  "Let's see if he's gone home yet," Coffin Ed suggested finally.

  They went back to the flat, rang the bell. Receiving no answer they went in again. It was just as they had left it. Dulcy was sleeping in the same position. The radio station was signing off.

  Coffin Ed looked at his watch. "It's four o'clock," he said. "Nothing for it now but to call it a day."

  They drove back to the precinct station and made out their report. The lieutenant on charge at night sent for them and read the report before letting them off.

  "Hadn't we better pick up the Perry woman?" he said. "Not without a warrant," Grave Digger said. "We haven't been able to verify Chink Charlie Dawson's story about the knife, and if he's lying she can sue us for false arrest."

  "What the hell," the lieutenant said. "You sound like she's Mrs. Vanderbilt."