The Real Cool Killers

by Chester Himes

  “For contributing to the delinquency of minors.”

  The manager sputtered, “I’ll be open again by tomorrow night.”

  “Don’t say another God damned word,” Grave Digger said and kept looking at him until the manager closed his mouth and turned away.

  Then he beckoned to one of the white cops on the door and told him, “I’m putting the manager and the bartender under arrest and closing the joint. I want you to hold the manager and some teenagers I’ll turn over to you. I’m going to leave in a minute and I’ll send back the wagon. I’ll take the bartender with me.”

  “Right, Jones,” the cop said, as happy as a kid with a new toy.

  Grave Digger walked back to the rear.

  Ready was down on the floor on his hands and knees, spitting out blood and teeth.

  Grave Digger looked at him and smiled grimly. Then he looked up at Big Smiley who was licking his bruised knuckles with a big red tongue.

  “You’re under arrest, Smiley,” he said. “If you try to escape, I’m going to shoot you through the back of the head.”

  “Yas suh,” Big Smiley said.

  Grave Digger shook a customer loose from a plastic-covered chair and sat astride it at the end of the table in the booth, facing the scared, silent teenagers. He took out his notebook and stylo and wrote down their names, addresses, numbers of the public schools they attended, and their ages. The oldest was a boy of seventeen.

  None of them admitted knowing either Sissie, Sugartit, the big white man Galen, or anyone connected with the Real Cool Moslems.

  He called the second cop away from the door and said, “Hold these kids for the wagon.”

  Then he said to the girl in the green tam who’d given her name as Gertrude B. Richardson. “Gertrude, I want you to come with me.”

  One of the girls tittered. “You might have known he’d take Good Booty,” she said.

  “My name is Beauty,” Good Booty said, tossing her head disdainfully.

  On sudden impulse Grave Digger stopped her as she was about to get up.

  “What’s your father’s name, Gertrude?”

  “Charlie.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a porter.”

  “Is that so? Do you have any sisters?”

  “One. She’s a year younger than me.”

  “What does your mother do?”

  “I don’t know. She don’t live with us.”

  “I see. You two girls live with your father.”

  “Where else we going to live?”

  “That’s a good question, Gertrude, but I can’t answer it. Did you know a man got his arm cut off in here earlier tonight?”

  “I heard about it. So what? People are always getting cut around here.”

  “This man tried to knife the white man because of his daughters.”

  “He did?” She giggled. “He was a square.”

  “No doubt. The bartender chopped off his arm with an axe to protect the white man. What do you think about that?”

  She giggled again, nervously. “Maybe he figured the white man was more important than some colored drunk.”

  “He must have. The man died in Harlem Hospital less than an hour ago.”

  Her eyes got big and frightened. “What are you trying to say, mister?”

  “I’m trying to tell you that he was your father.”

  Grave Digger hadn’t anticipated her reaction. She came up out of her seat so fast that she was past him before he could grab her.

  “Stop her!” he shouted.

  A customer wheeled from his bar stool into her path and she stuck her fingers into his eye. The man yelped and tried to hold her. She wrenched from his grip and sprang towards the door. The white cop headed her off and wrapped his arms about her. She twisted in his grip like a panic-stricken cat and clawed at his pistol. She had gotten it out the holster when a colored man rushed in and wrenched it from her grip. The white cop threw her onto the floor on her back and straddled her, pinning down her arms. The colored man grabbed her by the feet. She writhed on her back and spat into the cop’s face.

  Grave Digger came up and looked down at her from sad brown eyes. “It’s too late now, Gertrude,” he said. “They’re both dead.”

  Suddenly she began to cry. “What did he have to mess in it for?” she sobbed. “Oh, Pa, what did you have to mess in it for?”

  14

  Two uniformed white cops standing guard on a dark roof-top were talking.

  “Do you think we’ll find him?”

  “Do I think we’ll find him? Do you know who we’re looking for? Have you stopped to think for a moment that we’re looking for one colored man who supposedly is handcuffed and seven other colored men who were wearing green turbans and false beards when last seen. Have you turned that over in your mind? By this time they’ve got rid of those phony disguises and maybe Pickens has got rid of his handcuffs too. And then what does that make them, I ask you? That makes them just like eighteen thousand or one hundred and eighty thousand other colored men, all looking alike. Have you ever stopped to think there are five hundred thousand colored people in Harlem – one half of a million people with black skin. All looking alike. And we’re trying to pick eight out of them. It’s like trying to find a cinder in a coal bin. It ain’t possible.”

  “Do you think all these colored people in this neighbourhood know who Pickens and the Moslems are?”

  “Sure they know. Every last one of them. Unless some other colored person turns Pickens in he’ll never be found. They’re laughing at us.”

  “As much as the chief wants that coon, whoever finds him is sure to get a promotion,” the first cop said.

  “Yeah, I know, but it ain’t possible,” the second cop said. “If that coon’s got any sense at all he would have filed those cuffs in two a long time ago.”

  “What good would that do him if he couldn’t get them off?”

  “Hell, he could wear heavy gloves with gauntlets like—Hey! Didn’t we see some coon wearing driving gauntlets?”

  “Yeah, that halfwit coon with the pigeons.”

  “Wearing gauntlets and a ragged old overcoat. And a coal black coon at that. He certainly fits the description.”

  “That halfwitted coon. You think it’s possible he’s the one?”

  “Come on! What are we waiting for?”

  Sheik said, “Now all we’ve got to do is get this mother-raper past the police lines and throw him into the river.”

  “Doan do that to me, please, Sheik,” Sonny’s muffled voice pleaded from inside the sack.

  “Shhhh,” Choo-Choo cautioned. “Chalk the walking Jeffs.”

  The two cops leaned over and peered in through the open window.

  “Where’s that boy who was wearing gloves?” the first cop asked.

  “Gloves!” Choo-Choo echoed, going into his clowning act like a chameleon changing color. “You means boxing gloves?”

  The second cop sniffed. “A weed pad!” he exclaimed.

  They climbed inside. Their gazes swept quickly over the room.

  The roof reeked of marijuana smoke. Everyone was high. The ones who hadn’t smoked were high from inhaling the smoke and watching the eccentric motions of the ones who had smoked.

  “Who’s got the sticks?” the first cop demanded.

  “Come on, come on, who’s got the sticks?” the second cop echoed, looking from one to the other. He passed over Sheik who stood in the center of the floor where he’d been arrested in motion by Choo-Choo’s warning and stared at them as though trying to make out what they were; then over Inky who was caught in the act of ducking behind the curtains in the corner and stood there half in and half out, like a billboard advertisement for a movie about bad girls; and landed on Choo-Choo who seemed the most vulnerable because he was grinning like an idiot. “You got the sticks, boy?”

  “Sticks! You mean that there pigeon stick,” Choo-Choo said, pointing at the bamboo pole on the floor beside the bed.


  “Don’t get funny with me, boy!”

  “I just don’t know what you means, boss.”

  “Forget the sticks,” the first cop said. “Let’s find the boy with the gloves.”

  He looked about. His gaze lit on Sugartit who was sitting in the straight-backed chair and staring with a fixed expression at what appeared to be a gunny sack filled with huge lumps of coal lying in the middle of the bed.

  “What’s in that sack?” he asked suspiciously.

  For an instant no one replied.

  Then Choo-Choo said, “Just some coal.”

  “On the bed?”

  “It’s clean coal.”

  The cop pinned a threatening look on him.

  “It’s my bed,” Sheik said. “I can put what I want on it.”

  Both cops turned to stare at him.

  “You’re a kind of lippy bastard,” the first cop said. “What’s your name?”

  “Samson.”

  “You live here?”

  “Right here.”

  “Then you’re the boy we’re looking for. That’s your pigeon loft on the roof.”

  “No, that’s not him,” the second cop said. “The boy we want is blacker than he is and has another name.”

  “What’s a name to these coons?” the first cop said. “They’re always changing about.”

  “No, the one we want is called Inky. He was the one wearing the gloves.”

  “Now I remember. He was called Caleb. He was the one wearing the gloves. The other one was Inky, the one who couldn’t talk.”

  The second cop wheeled on Sheik. “Where’s Caleb?”

  “I don’t know anybody named Caleb.”

  “The hell you don’t! He lives here with you.”

  “Naw suh, you means that boy what lives down on the first floor,” Choo-Choo said.

  “Don’t tell me what I mean. I mean the boy who lives here on this floor. He’s the boy who’s got the pigeon loft.”

  “Naw suh, boss, if you means the Caleb what’s got the pigeon roost, he lives on the first floor.”

  “Don’t lie to me, boy. I saw the sergeant bring him down the fire escape to this floor.”

  “Naw suh, boss, the sergeant taken him on by this floor and carried him down on the fire escape to the first floor. We seen ’em when they come by the window. Didn’t we, Amos?” he called to Inky.

  “That’s right, suh,” Inky said. “They went right past that window there.”

  “What other window could they go by?”

  “None other window, suh.”

  “They had another boy with ’em called Inky,” Choo-Choo said. “It looked like they had ’em both arrested.”

  The second cop was staring at Inky. “This boy here looks like Inky to me,” he said. “Aren’t you Inky, boy?”

  “Naw suh–” Inky began, but Choo-Choo quickly cut him off: “They calls him Smokey. Inky is the other one.”

  “Let him talk for himself,” the first said.

  The second cop pinned another threatening look on Choo-Choo. “Are you trying to make a fool out of me, boy!”

  “Naw suh, boss, I’se just tryin’ a help.”

  “Let up on him,” the first cop said. “These coons are jagged on weed; they’re not strictly responsible.”

  “Responsible or not, they’d better be careful before they get some lumps on their heads.”

  The first cop noticed Sissie standing quietly in the corner, holding her hand to her bruised cheek.

  “You know them, Caleb and Inky, don’t you girl?” he asked her.

  “No sir, I just know Smokey,” she said.

  Suddenly Sonny sneezed.

  Sugartit giggled.

  The cop wheeled toward the bed, looked at the sack and then looked at her.

  “Who was that sneezed?”

  She put her hand to her mouth and tried to stop laughing.

  The cop turned slightly pinkish and drew his pistol.

  “Someone’s underneath the bed,” he said. “Keep the other covered while I look.”

  The second cop drew his pistol.

  “Just relax and no one will get hurt,” he said calmly.

  The first cop got down on his hands and knees, holding his cocked pistol ready to shoot, and looked underneath the bed.

  Sugartit put both hands over her mouth and bit into her palm. Her face swelled with suppressed laughter and tears flowed down her cheeks.

  The cop straightened to his knees and braced himself on the edge of the bed. There was a perplexed look on his red face.

  “There’s something funny going on here,” he said. “There’s someone else in this room.”

  “Ain’t nobody here but us ghosts, boss,” Choo-Choo said.

  The cop threw him a look of frustrated fury, and started to his feet.

  “By God, I’ll–” His voice dried up when he heard the choking sounds issuing from inside the sack.

  He jumped upward and backward as though one of the ghosts had sure enough groaned. Leveling his pistol, he said in a quaking voice, “What’s in that sack?”

  Sugartit burst into hysterical laughter.

  For an instant no one spoke.

  Then Choo-Choo said hastily, “Hit’s just Joe.”

  “What!”

  “Hit’s just Joe in the sack.”

  “Joe!”

  Gingerly, the cop leaned over, holding his cocked pistol in his right hand, and with his left untied the cord closing the sack. He drew the top of the sack open.

  Popping eyes in a gray-black face stared up at him.

  The cop drew back in horror. His face turned white and a shudder passed over his big solid frame.

  “It’s a body,” he said in a choked voice. “All trussed up.”

  “Hit ain’t no body, hit’s just Joe,” Choo-Choo said, not intending to play the comic.

  The second cop hastened over to look. “It’s still alive,” he said.

  “He’s choking!” Sissie cried and ran over and began loosening the noose about Sonny’s neck.

  Sonny sucked in breath with a gasp.

  “My God, what’s he doing in there?” the first cop asked in amazement.

  “He’s just studying magic,” Choo-Choo said. He was beginning to sweat from the strain.

  “Magic!”

  The second cop noticed Sheik inching toward the window and aimed his pistol at him.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” he said. “You come over here.”

  Sheik turned and came closer.

  “Studying magic!” the first cop said. “In a sack?”

  “Yas suh, he’s trying to learn how to get out, like Houdini.”

  Color flooded back into the cop’s face. “I ought to take him in for indecent exposure,” he said.

  “Hell, he’s wearing a sack, ain’t he,” the second cop said, amused by his own wit.

  Both of them grinned at Sonny as though he were a harmless halfwit.

  Then the second cop said suddenly, “It ain’t possible! There can’t be two such halfwits in the whole world.”

  The first cop looked closely at Sonny and said slowly, “I believe you’re right.” Then to the others at large, “Get that boy out of that sack.”

  Sheik didn’t move, but Choo-Choo and Inky hastened over and pulled Sonny out while Sissie held the bottom of the sack.

  The cops stared at Sonny in awe.

  “Looks like barbecued coon, don’t he?” the first cop said.

  Sugartit burst into laughter again.

  Sonny’s black skin had a gray pallor as though he’d been dusted over lightly with wood ash. He was shaking like a leaf.

  The second cop reached out and turned him around.

  Everyone stared at the handcuff bracelets clamped about each wrist.

  “That’s our boy,” the first cop said.

  “Lawd, suh, I wish I’d gone home and gone to bed,” Sonny said in a moaning voice.

  “I’ll bet you do,” the cop said.

  Sugartit couldn’t st
op laughing.

  15

  The bodies had been taken to the morgue. All that remained were chalk outlines on the pavement where they had lain.

  The street had been cleared of private cars. Police tow trucks had carried away those that had been abandoned in the middle of the street. Most of the patrol cars had returned to duty; those remaining blocked the area.

  The chief of police’s car occupied the center of the stage. It was parked in the middle of the intersection of 127th Street and Lenox Avenue.

  To one side of it, the chief, Lieutenant Anderson, the lieutenant from homicide and the precinct sergeant who’d led one of the search parties were grouped about the boy called Bones.

  The lieutenant from homicide had a zip gun in his hand.

  “All right then, it isn’t yours,” he said to Bones in a voice of tried patience. “Whose is it then? Who were you hiding it for?”

  Bones stole a glance at the lieutenant’s face and his gaze dropped quickly to the street. It crawled over the four pairs of big black copper’s boots. They looked like the Sixth Fleet at anchor. He didn’t answer.

  He was a slim black boy of medium height with girlish features and short hair almost straight at the roots and parted on one side. He wore a natty topcoat over his sweat shirt and tight-fitting black pants above shiny tan pointed-toed shoes.

  An elderly man, a head taller, with a face grizzled from hard outdoor work, stood beside him. Kinky hair grew like burdock weeds on his shiny black dome, and worried brown eyes looked down at Bones from behind steel-rimmed spectacles.

  “Go ’head, tell ’em, so, don’t be no fool,” he said; then he looked up and saw Grave Digger approaching with his prisoners. “Here comes Digger Jones,” he said. “You can tell him, cain’t you?”

  Everybody looked about.

  Grave Digger held Good Booty by the arm and Big Smiley and Ready Belcher, handcuffed together, were walking in front of him.

  He looked at Anderson and said, “I closed up the Dew Drop Inn. The manager and some juvenile delinquents are being held by the officers on duty. You’d better send a wagon up there.”

  Anderson whistled for a patrol car team and gave them the order.

  “What did you find out on Galen?” the chief asked.

  “I found out he was a pervert,” Grave Digger said.

  “It figures,” the homicide lieutenant said.