The Real Cool Killers

by Chester Himes

  “Dass me,” Sonny said, without an instant neglecting the pigeons.

  “What the hell you call yourself doing?”

  “I’se teaching my pigeons how to fly.”

  The sergeant’s jowls began to swell. “You trying to be funny?”

  “Naw suh, I didn’ mean they didn’ know how to fly. They can fly all right at day but they don’t know how to night fly.”

  The sergeant looked at the professor. “Don’t pigeons fly at night?”

  “Search me,” the professor said.

  “Naw suh, not unless you makes ’em,” Inky said.

  Everybody looked at him.

  “Hell, he can talk,” the professor said.

  “They sleeps,” Sonny added.

  “Roosts,” Inky corrected.

  “We’re going to make some pigeons fly, too,” the sergeant said. “Stool pigeons.”

  “If they don’t fly, they’ll fry,” the professor said.

  The sergeant turned to Inky. “What do they call you, boy?”

  “Inky,” Inky said. “But my name’s Rufus Tree.”

  “So you’re Inky,” the sergeant said.

  “They’re both Inky,” the professor said.

  The cops laughed.

  The sergeant smiled into his hand. Then he wheeled abruptly on Sonny and shouted, “Sonny! Drop that pole!”

  Sonny gave a violent start and speared a pigeon in the craw, but he hung on to the pole. The pigeon flew crazily into the light and kept on going. Sonny watched it until he got control of himself, then he turned slowly and looked at the sergeant with big innocent white eyes.

  “You talking to me, boss?” His black face shone with sweat.

  “Yeah, I’m talking to you, Sonny.”

  “They don’t calls me, Sonny, boss; they calls me Cal.”

  “You look like a boy called Sonny.”

  “Lots of folks is called Sonny, boss.”

  “What did you jump for if your name isn’t Sonny? You jumped halfway out of your skin.”

  “Most anybody’d jump with you hollerin’ at ’em like that, boss.”

  The sergeant wiped off another smile. “You told your grandma you were going downtown to work.”

  “She don’t want me messin’ ’round these pigeons at night. She thinks I might fall off’n the roof.”

  “Where have you been since supper?”

  “Right up here, boss.”

  “He’s just been up here about a half an hour,” one of the cops volunteered.

  “Naw suh, I been here all the time,” Sonny contradicted. “I been inside the coop.”

  “Ain’t nobody in heah but us pigeons, boss,” the professor cracked.

  “Did you look in the coop?” the sergeant asked the cop.

  The cop reddened. “No, I didn’t; I wasn’t looking for a screwball.”

  The sergeant glanced at the coop. “By God, boy, your pigeons lead a hard life,” he said. Then turning suddenly to the other cops, he asked, “Have these punks been frisked?”

  “We were waiting for you,” another cop replied.

  The sergeant sighed theatrically. “Well, who are you waiting for now?”

  Two cops converged on Inky with alacrity; the professor and a third cop took on Sonny.

  “Put that damn pole down!” the sergeant shouted at Sonny.

  “No, let him hold it,” the professor said. “It keeps his hands up.”

  “What the hell are you wearing that heavy overcoat for?” The sergeant kept on picking at Sonny. He was frustrated.

  “I’se cold,” Sonny said. Sweat was running down his face in rivers.

  “You look it,” the sergeant said.

  “Jesus Christ, this coat stinks,” the professor complained, working Sonny over fast to get away from it.

  “Nothing?” the sergeant asked when he’d finished.

  “Nothing,” the professor said. In his haste he hadn’t thought to make Sonny put down the pole and take off his gauntlets.

  The sergeant looked at the cops frisking Inky. They shook their heads.

  “What’s Harlem coming to?” the sergeant complained. “All right, you punks, get downstairs,” the sergeant ordered.

  “I got to get my pigeons in,” Sonny said.

  The sergeant looked at him.

  Sonny leaned the pole against the coop and began moving. Inky opened the door of the coop and began moving too. The pigeons took one look at the open door and began rushing to get inside.

  “IRT subway at Times Square,” the professor remarked.

  The cops laughed and moved on to the next roof.

  The sergeant and the professor followed Inky and Sonny through the window and into the room below.

  Sissie and Sugartit sat side by side on the bed again. Choo-Choo sat in the straight-backed chair. Sheik stood in the center of the floor with his feet wide apart, looking defiant. The two cops stood with their buttocks propped against the edge of the table, looking bored.

  With the addition of the four others, the room was crowded.

  Everybody looked at the sergeant, waiting his next move.

  “Get Grandma in here,” he said.

  The professor went after her.

  They heard him saying, “Grandma, you’re needed.”

  There was no reply.

  “Grandma!” they heard him shout.

  “She’s asleep,” Sissie called to him. “She’s hard to wake once she gets to sleep.”

  “She’s not asleep,” the professor called back in an angry tone of voice.

  “All right, let her alone,” the sergeant said.

  The professor returned, red-faced with vexation. “She sat there looking at me without saying a word,” he said.

  “She gets like that,” Sissie said. “She just sort of shuts out the world and quits seeing and hearing anything.”

  “No wonder her grandson’s a halfwit,” the professor said, giving Sonny a malicious look.

  “Well, what the hell are we going to do with them?” the sergeant said in a frustrated tone of voice.

  The cops had no suggestions.

  “Let’s run them all in,” the professor said.

  The sergeant looked at him reflectively. “If we take in all the punks who look like them in this block, we’ll have a thousand prisoners,” he said.

  “So what,” the professor said. “We can’t afford to risk losing Pickens because of a few hundred shines.”

  “Well, maybe we’d better,” the sergeant said.

  “Are you going to take her in too?” Sheik said, nodding toward Sugartit on the bed. “She’s Coffin Ed’s daughter.”

  The sergeant wheeled on him. “What! What’s that about Coffin Ed?”

  “Evelyn Johnson there is his daughter,” Sheik said evenly.

  The cops turned as though their heads were synchronized and stared at her. No one spoke.

  “Ask her,” Sheik said.

  The sergeant’s face turned bright red.

  It was the professor who spoke. “Well, girl? Are you Detective Johnson’s daughter?”

  Sugartit hesitated.

  “Go on and tell ’em,” Sheik said.

  The red started crawling up the back of the sergeant’s neck and engulfed his ears. “I don’t like you,” he said to Sheik, his voice constricted.

  Sheik threw him a careless look, started to say something, then bit it off.

  “Yes, I am,” Sugartit said finally.

  “We can soon check on that,” the professor said, moving toward the window. “He and his partner must be in the vicinity.”

  “No, Jones might be, but Johnson was sent home,” the sergeant said.

  “What! Suspended?” the professor asked in surprise.

  Sugartit looked startled; Sheik grinned smugly; the others remained impassive.

  “Yeah, for killing the Moslem punk.”

  “For that?” the professor exclaimed indignantly. “Since when did they start penalizing policemen for shooting in self-defense
?”

  “I don’t blame the chief,” the sergeant said. “He’s protecting himself. The punk was under-age and the newpapers are sure to put up a squawk.”

  “Anyway, Jones ought to know her,” the professor said, going out on the fire escape and shouting to the cops below.

  He couldn’t make himself understood so he started down.

  The sergeant asked Sugartit, “Have you got any identification?”

  She drew a red leather card case from her skirt pocket and handed it to him without speaking.

  It held a black, white-lettered identification card with her photograph and thumbprint, similar to the one issued to policemen. It had been given to her as a souvenir for her sixteenth birthday and was signed by the chief of police.

  The sergeant studied it for a moment and handed it back. He had seen others like it, his own daughter had one.

  “Does your father know you’re here visiting these hoodlums?” he asked.

  “Certainly,” Sugartit said. “They’re friends of mine.”

  “You’re lying,” the sergeant said wearily.

  “He doesn’t know she’s over here,” Sissie put in.

  “I know damn well he doesn’t,” the sergeant said.

  “She’s supposed to be visiting me.”

  “Well, do your folks know you’re here?”

  She dropped her gaze. “No.”

  “Eve and I are engaged,” Sheik said with a smirk.

  The sergeant wheeled toward him with his right cocked high. Sheik ducked automatically, his guard coming up. The sergeant hooked a left to his stomach underneath his guard, and when Sheik’s guard dropped, he crossed his right to the side of Sheik’s head, knocking him into a spinning stagger. Then he kicked him in the side of the stomach as he spun and, when he doubled over, the sergeant chopped him across the back of the neck with the meaty edge of his right hand. Sheik shuddered as though poleaxed and crashed to the floor. The sergeant took dead aim and kicked him in the valley of the buttocks with all his force.

  The professor returned just in time to see the sergeant spit on him.

  “Hey, what’s happened to him?” he asked, climbing hastily through the window.

  The sergeant took off his hat and wiped his perspiring forehead with a soiled white handkerchief. “His mouth did it,” he said.

  Sheik was groaning feebly, although unconscious.

  The professor chuckled. “He’s still trying to talk.” Then he said, “They couldn’t find Jones. Lieutenant Anderson says he’s working on another angle.”

  “It’s okay, she’s got an ID card,” the sergeant said. Then asked, “Is the chief still there?”

  “Yeah, he’s still hanging around.”

  “Well, that’s his job.”

  The professor looked about at the silent group. “What’s the verdict?”

  “Let’s get on to the next house,” the sergeant said. “If I’m here when this punk comes to I’ll probably be the next one to get suspended.”

  “Can we leave the building now?” Sissie asked.

  “You two girls can come with us,” the sergeant offered.

  Sheik groaned and rolled over.

  “We can’t leave him like that,” she said.

  The sergeant shrugged. The cops passed into the next room. The sergeant started to follow, then hesitated.

  “All right, I’ll fix it,” he said.

  He took the girls out on the fire escape and got the attention of the cops guarding the entrance below.

  “Let these two girls pass!” he shouted.

  The cops looked at the girls standing in the spotlight glare.

  “Okay.”

  The sergeant followed them back into the room.

  “If I were you I’d get the hell away from this punk fast,” he advised, prodding Sheik with his toe. “He’s headed straight for trouble, big trouble.”

  Neither replied.

  He followed the professor out of the flat.

  Granny sat unmoving in the rocking chair where they’d left her, tightly gripping the arms. She stared at them with an expression of fierce disapproval on her puckered old face and in her dim milky eyes.

  “It’s our job, Grandma,” the sergeant said apologetically.

  She didn’t reply.

  They passed on sheepishly.

  Back in the front room, Sheik groaned and sat up.

  Everyone moved at once. The girls moved away from him. Sonny began taking off the heavy overcoat. Inky and Choo-Choo bent over Sheik and, each taking an arm, began helping him to his feet.

  “How you feel, Sheik?” Choo-Choo asked.

  Sheik looked dazed. “Can’t no copper hurt me,” he muttered thickly, wobbling on his legs.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Naw, it don’t hurt,” he said with a grimace of pain. Then he looked about stupidly. “They gone?”

  “Yeah,” Choo-Choo said jubilantly and cut a jig step. “We done beat ’em, Sheik. We done fooled ’em two ways sides and flat.”

  Sheik’s confidence came back in a rush. “I told you we was going to do it.”

  Sonny grinned and raised his clasped hands in the prize-fight salute. “They had me sweating in the crotch,” he confessed.

  A look of crazed triumph distorted Sheik’s flat, freckled face. “I’m the Sheik, Jack,” he said. His yellow eyes were getting wild again.

  Sissie looked at him and said apprehensively, “Me and Sugartit got to go. We were just waiting to see if you were all right.”

  “You can’t go now – we got to celebrate,” Sheik said.

  “We ain’t got nothing to celebrate with,” Choo-Choo said.

  “The hell we ain’t,” Sheik said. “Cops ain’t so smart. You go up on the roof and get the pole.”

  “Who, me, Sheik?”

  “Sonny then.”

  “Me!” Sonny said. “I done got enough of that roof.”

  “Go on,” Sheik said. “You’re a Moslem now and I command you in the name of Allah.”

  “Praise Allah,” Choo-Choo said.

  “I don’t want to be no Moslem,” Sonny said.

  “All right, you’re still our captive then,” Sheik decreed. “You go get the pole, Inky. I got five sticks stashed in the end.”

  “Hell, I’ll go,” Choo-Choo said.

  “No, let Inky go, he’s been up there before and they won’t think it’s funny.”

  When Inky left for the pole, Sheik said to Choo-Choo, “Our captive’s getting biggety since we saved him from the cops.”

  “I ain’t gettin’ biggety,” Sonny declared. “I just want to get the hell outen here and get these cuffs off’n me without havin’ to become no Moslem.”

  “You know too much for us to let you go now,” Sheik said, exchanging a look with Choo-Choo.

  Inky returned with the pole and, pulling the plug out of the end joint, he shook five cigarettes onto the table top.

  “A feast!” Choo-Choo exclaimed. He grabbed one, opened the end with his thumb, and lit up.

  Sheik lit another.

  “Take one, Inky,” he said.

  Inky took one.

  Everybody put on smoked glasses.

  “Granny will smell it if you smoke in here,” Sissie said.

  “She thinks they’re cubebs.” Choo-Choo mimicked Granny: “Ah wish you chillens would stop smokin’ them coo-bebs ’cause they make a body feel moughty funny in de head.”

  He and Sheik doubled over with laughter.

  The room stank with the pungent smoke.

  Sugartit picked up a stick, sat on the bed and lit it.

  “Come on, baby, strip,” Sheik urged her. “Celebrate your old man’s flop by getting up off of some of it.”

  Sugartit stood up and undid her skirt zipper and began going into a slow striptease routine.

  Sissie clutched her by the arms. “You stop that,” she said. “You’d better go on home before your old man gets there first and comes out looking for you.”

  In a sudden rage,
Sheik snatched Sissie’s hands away from Sugartit and flung her across the bed.

  “Leave her alone,” he raved. “She’s going to entertain the Sheik.”

  “If her old man’s really Coffin Ed you oughta let her go on home,” Sonny said soberly. “You just beggin’ for trouble messin’ round with his kinfolks.”

  “Choo-Choo, go to the kitchen and get Granny’s wire clothesline,” Sheik ordered.

  Choo-Choo went out grinning.

  When he saw Granny staring at him with such fierce disapproval, he said guiltily, “Pay no ’tention to me, Granny,” and began clowning.

  She didn’t answer.

  He tiptoed with elaborate pantomime to the closet and took out her coil of clothesline.

  “Just wanna hang out the wash,” he said.

  Still she didn’t answer.

  He tiptoed close to the chair and passed his hand slowly in front of her face. She didn’t bat an eyelash. His grin widened. Returning to the front room, he said, “Granny’s dead asleep with her eyes wide open.”

  “Leave her to Gabriel,” Sheik said, taking the line and beginning to uncoil it.

  “What you gonna do with that?” Sonny asked apprehensively.

  Sheik made a running loop in one end. “We going to play cowboy,” he said. “Look.”

  Suddenly he threw the loop over Sonny’s head and pulled on the line with all his strength. The loop tightened about Sonny’s neck and jerked him off his feet.

  Sissie ran toward Sheik and tried to pull the wire from his hands. “You’re choking him,” she said.

  Sheik knocked her down with a backhanded blow.

  “You can let up on him now,” Choo-Choo said. “We got ’im.”

  “Now I’m gonna show you how to tie up a mother-raper to put him in a sack,” Sheik said.

  11

  Grave Digger halted on the sidewalk in front of the yellow frame house next door to the Knickerbocker. It had been partitioned into offices and all of the front windows were lettered with business announcements.

  “Can you read that writing on those windows?” Grave Digger asked Ready Belcher.

  Ready glanced at him suspiciously. “Course I can read that writing.”

  “Read it then,” Grave Digger said.

  Ready stole another look. “Read what one?”

  “Take your choice.”

  Ready squinted his good eye against the dark and read aloud, “Joseph C. Clapp, Real Estate and Notary Public.” He looked at Grave Digger like a dog who has retrieved a stick. “That one?”