“I like y’all better.”
“You’ll like us even better later on,” Grave Digger said, starting the car.
“Where y’all taking me?”
“A place you know.”
“You can come to my place.”
“This is your place.” He drove to the front of the building where the white man had been killed.
Coffin Ed got out on to the sidewalk and reached in to help John out. But he drew back against Grave Digger in alarm.
“This isn’t my place,” he protested. “What kind of place is this?”
“Go on and get out,” Grave Digger said, pushing him. “You’ll like it.”
Looking puzzled and curious, he let Coffin Ed pull him to the sidewalk.
“It’s a basement,” Coffin Ed said, taking his arm as Grave Digger came around the car and took his other arm.
He shook himself but he didn’t struggle. “How about this!” he exclaimed softly. “Is it clean?”
“Be quiet now,” Grave Digger whispered suggestively as they walked him down the narrow, slanting alleyway to the green door halfway down. They found the door locked and sealed.
“It’s locked,” John whispered.
“Shhhh!” Grave Digger cautioned.
A voice from an open window in the building next door whispered hoarsely, “You niggers better get away from there. The police is watching you.”
John stiffened suddenly with suspicion. “What you trying to do to me?”
“Ain’t this your room?” Coffin Ed asked.
The whites of John’s eyes showed suddenly in the dark. “My room? I live on Hamilton Terrace. I ain’t never seen this place.”
“Our error,” Grave Digger said, holding firmly to his arm. He could feel the trembling of his body coming through his arm.
“Maybe he’ll like the Cozy Flats,” Coffin Ed said. He intended to sound persuasive, instead he sounded sinister.
John’s excitement suddenly left him. He felt deflated and a little scared. He was finished with the adventure.
“I ain’t interested,” he said crossly. “Just let me alone.”
“Leave that boy alone,” the voice from the darkened window said. “You come with me, baby, I’ll protect you.”
“I ain’t interested in none of you mother-rapers,” John said, his voice rising. “Just take me back where you got me.”
“Come on then,” Grave Digger said, steering him back to the sidewalk.
“I thought you said you liked us,” Coffin Ed said, bringing up the rear.
John felt safer back on the sidewalk and he tried to shake himself loose from Grave Digger’s grip. His voice was louder too.
“I ain’t said no such thing. What you take me for? I ain’t that way.”
Grave Digger turned him over to Coffin Ed and went around the car.
“Just get in,” Coffin Ed said, applying a little force.
Grave Digger slid beneath the wheel and reached over and pulled him down on to the seat. “Don’t struggle, baby,” he said. “We’re just going to drive by the Cozy Flats and then we’ll take you home.”
“Where you can feel relaxed,” Coffin Ed added, pushing in beside him.
“I don’t want to go to the Cozy Flats,” John screamed. “Leave me out here. Do you think I’m gay? I ain’t gay —”
“Merry then.”
“I’m straight. I just got a happy disposition. Girls like me. I ain’t queer. You’re making a mistake.”
“What are you getting so hysterical about?” Grave Digger said hotly, as though he were annoyed. “What’s the matter with you? What you got against the Cozy Flats? Is there somebody there you don’t want to see?”
“I ain’t never heard of the Cozy Flats, nor nobody lives there, far as I know. And turn me loose, you’re hurting me.”
Grave Digger started the car and drove off.
“I’m sorry,” Coffin Ed said, letting go his arm. “It’s just because I’m so strong.”
“You ain’t exciting me,” John said scornfully.
Grave Digger brought the car to a stop in front of the Cozy Flats.
“Recognize this place?” Coffin Ed asked.
“I ain’t never seen it.”
“Lucas Covey is the super.”
“What about it? I don’t know no Lucas Covey.”
“He knows about you.”
“Lots of people know me who I don’t know.”
“I’ll bet.”
“He said he rented you the room,” Grave Digger said.
“What room?”
“The one we just left.”
“You mean that basement what was locked up?” He looked from one hard black face to the other one. “What’s this? A frame? I should’a known there was something wrong with you mother-rapers. I got a right to call my lawyer.”
“You don’t know his name,” Grave Digger reminded him.
“I’ll just call the personnel office.”
“There ain’t nobody there this time of night.”
“You dirty sadistic bastards!”
“Don’t lose your pretty ways. We got nothing against you, personally. It was Lucas Covey who told us about you. He said he rented the room to a seal-brown young man named John Babson. He said John Babson was beautiful and sweet. That describes you.”
“Don’t hand me that shit,” John said, but he preened with pleasure. “You’re making that up. I ain’t never heard of nobody named Lucas Covey. You take me in and I’ll confront him.”
“I thought you didn’t want to go inside,” Coffin Ed said. “With us, anyway.”
“Maybe by another name,” Grave Digger said.
“Why can’t I confront him?”
“He ain’t there.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Slender black man with narrow face and egg-shaped head. West Indian.”
“I don’t know nobody like that.”
“Don’t lie, baby, I saw the recognition in your eyes.”
“Shit! You see everything in my eyes.”
“Ain’t you pleased?”
“But the man you described could be anybody.”
“This one is gay, like you.”
“Don’t make a fool out of yourself; I told you, I ain’t gay.”
“All right, but we know you know this man.”
John became appealing. “What can I do to convince you?”
“I thought you said you weren’t gay.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“All right, let’s negotiate.”
“Negotiate how?”
“Like the East and the West. We want information.”
John grinned and forgot to be bitchy. “You’re the West then; what do I get?”
“There’s two of us, you get double the price.”
He broke up as though he would cry. Every time he tried to play straight they wouldn’t let him. He would succumb to desire, but he wasn’t sure. It all left him frustrated and a little frightened.
“Shit on both of you, you sadistic mother-rapers,” he said.
“Listen, baby, we want to know about this man, and if you don’t tell us, we’ll whip your ass.”
“Don’t excite him,” Coffin Ed cautioned. “He’d like that.” Turning to John, he said, “Get this, pretty boy, I’ll knock out your pretty white teeth and gouge your bedroom eyes out of shape. When I get through with you, you’ll be known as the ugly fairy.”
John got truly frightened. He put his hands between his legs and squeezed them. His voice was pleading. “I don’t know nothing, I swear. You bring me here to places I ain’t never seen, and ask me about a man I ain’t never heard of who looks like anybody—”
“Richard Henderson, then?”
John broke off in mid-speech and his mouth hung open.
“I see that name scored.”
He was ludicrous trying to get himself together. He couldn’t follow the sudden switch. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified; w
hether to admit he knew him or deny all acquaintance.
“Er, you mean Mr Henderson, the producer?”
“That’s the one, the white producer who likes pretty colored boys.”
“I don’t know him that well. All I know about him is he produces plays. I had a part in a play he produced on downtown Second Avenue called Pretty People.”
“I’ll bet you were the lead.”
He smiled secretly.
“Just wipe that smirk off your face and tell us where we can find him.”
“At his home, I suppose. He’s got a wife.”
“We don’t want to see his wife. Where does he hang out by himself?”
“Any place in the Village, although this time of night he might be somewhere on St Marks Place.”
“Where else is there on St Marks Place except The Five Spot?”
“Oh, plenty places for the cognoscenti, you just got to know where they are.”
“All right, you show us.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Now? I can’t. I got to go home.”
“You got someone waiting?”
He fluttered his lashes and looked coy again. He had beautiful eyes and he knew it. “Always,” he said.
“Then we’ll have to kidnap you,” Grave Digger said.
“And keep your mother-raping hands away from me,” Coffin Ed snarled.
“Square!” he said contemptuously.
They drove down through Central Park and turned over to Third Avenue on 59th Street, passing first the exclusive high-rent, high-living district around 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, and then the arty, chichi section of antique shops, French restaurants, expensive pederasts on Third Avenue in the fifties and upper forties until they reached the wide, black, smooth paved expanse that passed through Cooper Square, and they had come to the end of their journey. They remembered the days of the Third Avenue elevated, the dark cobblestoned street underneath, where the Bowery bums pissed on passing cars at night, but neither spoke about it for fear of distracting John from the strange, glittering excitement that had overcome him. As far as they could see, St Marks Place itself was no cause for excitement. Externally, it was as dreary a street as one could find, unchanged, dirty, narrow, sinister-looking! It was the continuation of 8th Street, which ran between Third and Second Avenues. On the west side, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, 8th Street was the heart of Greenwich Village, and Richard Henderson had lived in the new luxury apartments on the corner of Fifth Avenue. But St Marks Place was something else again.
Jazz joint on one corner, open for business, The Five Spot. Delicatessen on the other, closed, beer cans in the window. White Mercedes drives up before The Five Spot, white-coated white woman with shining white hair driving. Black man beside her with bebop beard, clown’s hat. Kisses her, gets out. Goes into The Five Spot. She drives away. “Rich white bitch …” John mutters. On other corner in front of beer cans in delicatessen window, two black boys in blue jeans, gray sneakers, black shirts. Faces pitted with smallpox scars. Hair nappy. Teeth white. Faces scarred from razor slashes. Cotton hair, matted, unkempt. All young, early twenties. Three white girls looking like spaceage witches. Young girls. In their teens. Witches are children in this age. Long unkempt dark brown hair. Hanging down. Dirty faces. Dark eyes. Slack mouths. Stained black jeans. All moving in slow motion, as though drugged. It made the detectives feel woozy just looking at them.
“Who was your daddy, blacky boy?” a white girl asks.
“My daddy is a cracker,” the black boy answers. “But he got a job for me.”
“On his plantation,” the white girl says.
“Ole massa McBird!” the black boy says.
They all burst into loud unrestrained laughter.
“Wanna go to The Five Spot?” John asked.
“You think he’s in there?” Grave Digger asked, thinking, If he is, he’s a mother-raping ghost.
“Richard goes there sometimes, but it’s early for him.”
“Richard? If you know him all that well, why don’t you call him Dick?”
“Oh, Dick sounds so vulgar.”
“Well, where else does he go, by any name?”
“He meets people all around. He picks up lots of actors for his plays.”
“I ain’t a damn bit surprised,” Grave Digger said, then pointed to a building next to The Five Spot, asked: “What about that hotel there? You know it?”
“The Alicante? Home away from it all? Nobody lives there but junkies, prostitutes, pushers and maybe some Martians too from the looks of them.”
“Henderson ever go there?”
“I don’t know why. Nobody there he’d want to see.”
“No Pretty People, eh? He wasn’t on the shit?”
“Not as far as I know of. He just took a trip now and then.”
“How about you?”
“Me? I don’t even drink.”
“I mean have you ever been there?”
“Goodness no.”
“It figures.”
John grinned and slapped him on the leg.
Next to it in the direction of Second Avenue was a steam-bath establishment calling itself the Arabian Nights Baths.
“That a fish bowl?”
John batted his eyes but didn’t reply.
“Does he go there?”
He shrugged.
“All right, let’s go see if he’s there.”
“I better warn you,” he said. “The markees are there.”
“You mean maquis,” Grave Digger corrected. “M-a-q-u-i-s.”
“No, markees, m-a-r-q-u-i-s-e. Bite each other!”
“Well, well, that is what they do? Bite each other?”
John giggled.
They went up steps from the street and passed through a short narrow hall lit by a bare fly-specked bulb. A fat, greasy-faced man sat behind a counter in a cage at the front of the locker room. He wore a soiled white shirt without a collar from which the sleeves had been torn, sweat-stained suspenders attached to faded, stained seersucker pants big enough to fit an elephant. His head went down in sweat-wet folds of fat into a lump of blubber with arms. His face was only black-rimmed thick lenses holding magnified cooked eyes.
He put three keys on the counter. “Put your clothes in your locker. Got any valuables, better leave them with me.”
“We just want a look,” Grave Digger said.
The fat man rolled cooked eyes at John’s getup. “You got to get naked.”
John’s hand flew to his mouth as though he were shocked.
“You don’t understand me,” Grave Digger said. “We’re the law. Policemen. Detectives. See?” He and Coffin Ed flashed their shields.
The fat man was unimpressed.
“Policemen are my best customers.”
“I’ll bet.”
They meant different things.
“Tell me who you looking for; I know everybody in there.”
“Dick Henderson,” John Babson said.
“Jesus Baby,” Grave Digger said.
The fat man shook his head. The detectives moved toward the steam room.
John hesitated. “I’ll take off my clothes, I don’t want to spoil them.” He looked from one detective to the other. “It won’t take but a minute.”
“We don’t want to lose you,” Grave Digger said.
“Which might happen if you show your shape,” Coffin Ed added.
John pouted. In the familiar scene he felt he could say what he wished. “Old meanies.”
Naked bodies came out of white steam as thick as fog; fat bodies and lean bodies, black bodies and white bodies, scarcely different except in color. Eyes stared resentfully at the clothed figures.
“What they do with the chains?” Grave Digger asked.
“You’re awfully square for a policeman.”
“I’ve always heard it was twigs.”
“That must have been before the markees.”
If John saw anyone whom he kne
w, he didn’t let on. The detectives didn’t expect to recognize anyone. Back on the sidewalk, they stood for a moment looking down toward Second Avenue. On the corner was a sign advertising ice cream and chocolate candies. But next door was a darkened plate-glass front of some kind of auditorium. Cards in the windows announced that Martha Schlame was singing Israeli Folk Songs and Bertolt Brecht.
“The Gangler Circus is generally here,” John said.
“Circus?”
“You got a dirty mind,” John accused. “And it ain’t the kind with lions and elephants either. It’s just the Gangler Brothers and a dog, a rooster, a donkey and a cat. They got a red and gold caravan they travel in.”
“Leave them to the sprouts and let’s finish with this,” Coffin Ed said impatiently.
Down here the people were different from the people in Harlem. Even the soul brothers. They looked more lost. People in Harlem seem to have some purpose, whether good or bad. But the people down here seemed to be wandering around in a daze, lost, without knowing where they were or where they were going. Moving in slow motion. Dirty and indifferent. Uncaring and unwashed. Rejecting reality, rejecting life.
“This makes Harlem look like a state fair,” Grave Digger said.
“Makes us look like we’re from the country too.”
“Feel like it anyway.”
They crossed the street and went back down the other side, coming abreast a big wooden building painted red with green trimmings. The sign over the entrance read: Dom Polsky Nardowy.
“What’s this fire hazard, sonny?”
“That horror? That’s the Polish National Home.”
“For old folks?”
“All I ever seen there was Gypsies,” John confessed, adding after a moment: “I dig Gypsies.”
Suddenly they were all three fed up with the street. By common consent they crossed over to The Five Spot.
Interlude
“I take it you’ve discovered who started the riot,” Anderson said.
“We knew who he was all along,” Grave Digger said.
“It’s just nothing we can do to him,” Coffin Ed echoed.
“Why not, for God’s sake?”
“He’s dead,” Coffin Ed said.
“Who?”
“Lincoln,” Grave Digger said.
“He hadn’t ought to have freed us if he didn’t want to make provisions to feed us,” Coffin Ed said. “Anyone could have told him that.”
Blind Man with a Pistol Page 14