The Real Cool Killers

by Chester Himes

  “All right, Sheik, you got us by the short hair, but you know you can’t get away. Why don’t you come out peaceably and give yourself up like a man. I give you my word that no one will abuse you. The officer you shot ain’t seriously hurt. There’s no other charge against you. You ought to get off with five years. With time off for good behavior, you’ll be back in the big town in three years. Why risk sudden death or the hot seat just for a moment of playing the big shot?”

  “Don’t hand me that mother-raping crap. You’ll hang a kidnapping charge on me for snatching your prisoner.”

  “What the hell! You can keep him. We don’t want him anymore. We found out he didn’t kill the man. All he had was a blank pistol.”

  “So he didn’t kill the man?”

  “No.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “So you don’t know who killed the big Greek, do you?”

  “All right, all right, what’s that to you? What do you want to get mixed up in something that doesn’t concern you?”

  “You’re one of those smart mother-rapers, ain’t you? You’re going to be so smart you’re going to make me cut her mother-raping throat just to show you.”

  “Please don’t argue with him, Mr. Chief, please,” said a small scared voice from within. “He’ll kill me. I know he will.”

  “Shut up!” Sheik said roughly. “I don’t need you to tell ’im I’m going to kill you.”

  Beads of sweat formed on the ridge of the chief’s red nose and about the blue bags beneath his eyes.

  “Why don’t you be a man,” he urged, filling his voice with contempt. “Don’t be a mad dog like Vincent Coll. Be a man like Dillinger was. You won’t get much. Three years and no more. Don’t hide behind an innocent little girl.”

  “Who the hell do you think you’re kidding with that stale crap. This is the Sheik. Can’t no dumb cop like you make a fool out of the Sheik. You got the chair waiting for me and you think you’re going to kid me into walking out there and sitting in it.”

  “Don’t play yourself too big, punk,” the chief said, losing his temper for a moment. “You shot an officer but you didn’t kill him. You snatched a prisoner but we don’t want him. Now you want to take it out on a little girl who can’t defend herself. And you call yourself the Sheik, the big gang leader. You’re just a cheap tinhorn punk, yellow to the core.”

  “Keep on, just keep on. You ain’t kidding me with that mother-raping sucker bait. You know it was me who killed him. You’ve had me tabbed ever since you found out that nigger was shooting blanks.”

  “What!” The chief was startled. Forgetting himself, he asked Grave Digger, “What the hell’s he talking about?”

  “Galen.” Grave Digger formed the word with his lips.

  “Galen!” the chief exclaimed. “You’re trying to tell me you killed the white man, you chicken-livered punk?” he roared.

  “Keep on, just keep on. You know damn well it was me lowered the boom on the big Greek.” He sounded as though he bitterly resented an oversight. “Who do you think you’re kidding? You’re talking to the Sheik. You think ’cause I’m colored I’m dumb enough to fall for that rock-a-bye-baby crap you’re putting down.”

  The chief had to readjust his train of thought.

  “So it was you who killed Galen?”

  “He was just the Greek to me,” Sheik said scornfully. “Just another gray sucker up here trying to get his kicks. Yeah, I killed him.” There was pride in his voice.

  “Yeah, it figures,” the chief said thoughtfully. “You saw him running down the street and you took advantage of that and shot him in the back. Just what a yellow son of a bitch like you would do. You were probably laying for him and were scared to go out and face him like a man.”

  “I wasn’t laying for the mother-raper no such goddam thing,” Sheik said. “I didn’t even know he was anywhere about.”

  “You were nursing a grudge against him.”

  “I didn’t have nothing against the mother-raper. You must be having pipedreams. He was just another gray sucker to me.”

  “Then why the hell did you shoot him?”

  “I was just trying out my new zip gun. I saw the mother-raper running by where I was standing so I just blasted at him to see how good my gun would shoot.”

  “You God damned little rat,” the chief said, but there was more sorrow in his voice than anger. “You sick little bastard. What the God damned hell can be done with somebody like you?”

  “I just want you to quit trying to kid me, ’cause I’d just as soon cut this girl’s throat right now as not.”

  “All right, Mister Sheik,” the chief said in a cold, quiet voice. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Is Grave Digger come yet?”

  Grave Digger nodded.

  “Yeah, he’s here, Mister Sheik.”

  “Let him say something then, and you better can that mister crap.”

  “Eve, this is me, Digger Jones,” Grave Digger said, spurning Sheik.

  “Answer him,” Sheik said.

  “Yes, Mr. Jones,” she said in a voice so weightless it floated out to the tense group listening like quivering eiderdown.

  “Is Sissie in there with you?”

  “No, sir, just Granny Bowee and she’s sitting in her chair asleep.”

  “Where’s Sissie?”

  “She and Inky are in the front room.”

  “Has he hurt you?”

  “Quit stalling,” Sheik said dangerously. “I’m going to give you until I count to three.”

  “Please, Mr. Jones, do what he says. He’s going to kill me if you don’t.”

  “Don’t worry child, we’re going to do what he says,” he reassured her and then said, “What do you want, boy?”

  “These are my terms: I want the street cleared of cops; all the police blockades moved–”

  “What the hell!” the chief exploded.

  “We’ll do it,” Grave Digger said.

  “I want to hear the chief say it,” Sheik demanded.

  “I’ll be damned if I will,” the chief said.

  “Please,” came a tiny voice no bigger than a prayer.

  “What if she was your daughter,” Grave Digger said.

  “I’m going to give you until I count three,” Sheik said.

  “All right, I’ll do it,” the chief said, sweating blood.

  “On your word of honor as a great white man,” Sheik persisted.

  The chief’s red sweating face drained of color.

  “All right, all right, on my word of honor,” he said.

  “Then I want an ambulance driven up to the door downstairs. I want all its doors left open so I can see inside, the back doors and both the side doors, and I want the motor left running.”

  “All right, all right, what else? The Statue of Liberty?”

  “I want this house cleared—”

  “All right, all right, I said I’d do that.”

  “I don’t want any mother-raping alarm put out. I don’t want anybody to try to stop me. If anybody messes with me before I get away you’re going to have a dead girl to bury. I’ll put her out somewhere safe when I get clear away, clear out of the state.”

  “Don’t cross him,” Grave Digger whispered tensely. “He’s teaed to the eyes.”

  “All right, all right,” the chief said. “We’ll give you safe passage. If you don’t hurt the girl. If you hurt her we won’t kill you, but you’ll beg us to. Now take five minutes and come out and we’ll let you drive away.”

  “Who do you think you’re kidding?” Sheik said. “I ain’t that big a fool. I want Grave Digger to come inside of here and put his pistol down on the table, then I’m going to come out.”

  “You’re crazy if you think we’re going to give you a pistol,” the chief roared.

  “Then I’m going to kill her now.”

  “I’ll give it to you,” Grave Digger said.

  “You’re under suspensi
on as of now,” the chief said.

  “All right,” Grave Digger said: then to Sheik, “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to stand outside the door with the pistol held by the barrel. When I open the door I want you to stick it forward and walk into the room so’s the first thing I see is the butt. Then I want you to walk straight ahead and put it on the kitchen table. You got that?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “The rest of you mother-rapers get downstairs,” Sheik said.

  The two lieutenants and the sergeant looked at the chief for orders.

  “All right, Jones, it’s your show,” the chief said, adding on second thought, “I wish you luck.”

  He turned and started down the stairs.

  The others hesitated. Grave Digger motioned violently for them to leave too. Reluctantly they followed the chief.

  It was silent in the kitchen until the sound of the officers’ receding footsteps diminished into silence below.

  Grave Digger stood facing the kitchen door, holding the pistol as instructed. Sweat poured down his lumpy cordovan-colored face and collected in the collar about his neck.

  Finally the sound of movement came from the kitchen. The bolt of the Yale lock clicked open, a hand bolt was pulled back with a grating snap, a chain was unfastened. The door swung slowly inward.

  Only Granny was visible from the doorway. She sat bolt upright in the immobile rocking chair with her hands gripping the arms and her old milky eyes wide open and staring at Grave Digger with a fixed look of fierce disapproval.

  Sheik spoke from behind the door, “Turn the butt this way so I can see if it’s loaded.”

  Without looking around, Grave Digger turned the pistol so that Sheik could see the shells in the chambers of the cylinder.

  “Go ahead, keep walking,” Sheik ordered.

  Still without looking around, Grave Digger moved slowly across the room. When he came to the table he looked swiftly toward the small window at the far end of the back wall. It was on the other side of an old-fashioned homemade cupboard which partially blocked the view of the kitchen from the outside, so that only the section between the table and the side wall was visible.

  He saw what he was looking for. He leaned slowly forward and placed the pistol on the far side of the table.

  “There,” he said.

  Raising his hands high above his head, he turned slowly away from the table and faced the back wall. He stood so that Sheik had to either pass in front of him to reach the pistol or go around on the other side of the table.

  Sheik kicked the door shut, revealing himself and Sugartit, but Grave Digger didn’t turn his head or even move his eyes to look at them.

  Sheik gripped Sugartit’s pony tail tightly in his left hand, pulling her head back hard to make her slender brown throat taut beneath the blade of the butcher knife. They began a slow shuffling walk, like a weird Apache dance in a Montmartre night club.

  Sugartit’s eyes had the huge liquid look of a dying doe’s, and her small brown face looked as fragile as toasted meringue. Her upper lip was sweating copiously.

  Sheik kept his gaze pinned on Grave Digger’s back while slowly skirting the opposite walls of the room and approaching the table from the far side. When he came within reach of the pistol he released his hold on Sugartit’s pony tail, pressed the knife blade tighter against her throat and reached out with his left hand for the pistol.

  Coffin Ed was hanging head downward from the roof, only his head and shoulders visible below the top edge of the kitchen window. He had been hanging there for twenty minutes waiting for Sheik to come into view. He took careful aim at a spot just above Sheik’s left ear.

  Some sixth sense caused Sheik to jerk his head around at the exact instant Coffin Ed fired.

  A third eye, small and black and sightless, appeared suddenly in the exact center of Sheik’s forehead between his two startled yellow cat’s eyes.

  The high-powered bullet had cut only a small round hole in the window glass, but the sound of the shot shattered the whole pane and blasted a shower of glass into the room.

  Grave Digger wheeled to catch the fainting girl as the knife clattered harmlessly onto the table top.

  Sheik was dead when he started going down. He landed crumpled up beside Granny’s immobile rocking chair.

  The room was full of cops.

  “That was too much of a risk, too much of a risk,” Lieutenant Anderson said, shaking his head, a dazed expression of his face.

  “What isn’t risky on this job?” the chief said authoritatively. “We cops got to take risks.”

  No one disputed him.

  “This is a violent city,” he added belligerently.

  “There wasn’t that much risk,” Coffin Ed said. He had his arm about his daughter’s trembling shoulders. “They don’t have any reflexes when you shoot them in the head.”

  Sugartit winced.

  “Take Eve and go home,” Grave Digger said harshly.

  “I guess I’d better,” Coffin Ed said, limping painfully as he guided Sugartit gently toward the door.

  “Geez,” a young patrol-car rookie was saying. “Geez. He hung there all that time on just some wire tied around his ankles. I don’t know how he stood the pain.”

  “You’d’ve stood it too if she was your daughter,” Grave Digger said.

  “Forget what I said to you about being under suspension, Jones,” the chief said.

  “I didn’t hear you,” Grave Digger said.

  “Jesus Christ, look at that!” the sergeant exclaimed in amazement. “All that noise and Grandma’s still sleeping.”

  Everybody turned and looked at him. They were solemn for a moment.

  “Nothing’s ever going to wake her up again,” the lieutenant from homicide said. “She must have been dead for hours.”

  “All right, all right, all right,” the chief shouted. “Let’s clean up here and get away. We’ve got this case tied up tighter than Dick’s hatband.” Then he added in a pleased tone of voice, “That wasn’t too difficult, was it?”

  17

  It was eleven o’clock the next morning.

  Inky and Bones had spilled their guts.

  It had gone hard for them and when the cops got through with them they were as knotty as fat pine.

  The remaining members of the Real Cool Moslems–Camel Mouth, Beau Baby, Punkin Head and Slow Motion – had been rounded up, questioned and were now being held along with Inky and Bones.

  Their statements had been practically identical:

  They had been standing on the corner of 127th Street and Lenox Avenue.

  Q. What for?

  A. Just having a dress rehearsal.

  Q. What? Dress rehearsal?

  A. Yas suh. Like they do on Broadway. We was practicing wearing our new A-rab costumes.

  Q. And you saw Mr. Galen when he ran past?

  A. Yas suh, that’s when we seed him.

  Q. Did you recognize him?

  A. Naw suh, we didn’t know him.

  Q. Sheik knew him.

  A. Yas suh, but he didn’t say he knew ’im and we’d never seen him before.

  Q. Choo-Choo must have known him, too.

  A. Yas suh, must’ave. Him and Sheik usta room together.

  Q. But you saw Sheik shoot him?

  A. Yas suh. He said, “Watch this,” and pulled out his new zip gun and shot at him.

  Q. How many times did he shoot?

  A. Just once. That’s all a zip gun will shoot.

  Q. Yes, these zip guns are single shots. But you knew he had the gun?

  A. Yas suh. He’d been working on it for ’most a week.

  Q. He made it himself?

  A. Yas suh.

  Q. Had you ever seen him shoot it previously?

  A. Naw suh. It were just finished. He hadn’t tried it out.

  Q. But you knew he had it on his person?

  A. Yas suh. He were going to try it out that night.

  Q. And afte
r he shot the white man, what did you do?

  A. The man fell down and we went up to see if he’d hit him.

  Q. Were you acquainted with the first suspect, Sonny Pickens?

  A. Naw suh, we seed him for the first time too when he come past there shootin’.

  Q. When you saw the white man had been killed, did you know Sheik had shot him?

  A. Naw suh, we thought the other fellow had did it.

  Q. Which one of you, er, passed the wind?

  A. Suh?

  Q. Which one of you broke wind?

  A. Oh, that were Choo-Choo, suh, he the one farted.

  Q. Was there any special significance in that?

  A. Suh?

  Q. Why did he do it?

  A. That were just a salute we give to the cops.

  Q. Oh! Was the perfume throwing part of it?

  A. Yas suh, when they got mad Caleb thew the perfume on them.

  Q. To allay their anger, er, ah, make them jolly?

  A. Naw suh, to make them madder.

  Q. Oh! Well, why did Sheik kidnap Pickens, the other suspect?

  A. Just to put something over on the cops. He hated cops.

  Q. Why?

  A. Suh?

  Q. Why did he hate cops? Did he have any special reason to hate cops?

  A. Special reason? To hate cops? Naw suh. He didn’t need none. Just they was cops, is all.

  Q. Ah, yes, just they was cops. Is this the zip gun Sheik had?

  A. Yas suh. Leastwise it looks like it.

  Q. How did Bones come to be in possession of it?

  A. He gave it to Bones when he was running off. Bones’s old man work for the city and he figgered it was safe with Bones.

  Q. That’s all for you, boy. You had better be scared.

  A. Ah is.

  That was the case. Open and shut.

  Sonny Pickens could not be implicated in the murder. He was being held temporarily on a charge of disturbing the peace while a district attorney’s assistant was studying the New York State criminal code to see what other charge could be lodged against him for shooting a citizen with a blank gun.

  His friends, Lowtop Brown and Rubberlips Wilson had been hauled in as suspicious persons.

  The cases of the two girls had been referred to the probation officers, but as yet nothing had been done. Both were supposedly at their respective homes, suffering from shock.