Cotton comes to Harlem cjagdj-6

by Chester Himes

  "The Back-to-Africa money? Honey, that money has gone with the wind."

  "Don't think I don't know it. I just want to get something out of that two-timing mother-raper any kind of way."

  Billie had her secret smile again. "Baby, how you talk," she said, adding: "You can wipe it off now," referring to the cream. "I'll make you up in tan so you'll look brand-new."

  "You're a darling," Iris said absently, but in the back of her mind she was thinking furiously why Deke would want a bale of cotton.

  Billie was looking at her nude body lustfully. "Don't tempt me," she said.

  19

  The Monday edition of the Harlem Sentinel came out around noon. Coffin Ed picked up a copy at the newsstand by the Lexington Avenue Subway Kiosk at one-thirty for them to read with their lunch. There had been no word from Abigail, and Paul had just ridden past giving the high sign that Iris was still put.

  They wanted to eat some place where it was unlikely they'd be spotted, and where they wouldn't look out of place in their black weedhead sunglasses. They decided to go to a joint on East 116th Street called Spotty's, run by a big black man with white skin spots and his albino wife.

  After years of bemoaning the fact that he looked like an overgrown Dalmatian, Spotty had made a peace with life and opened a restaurant specializing in ham hocks, red beans and rice. It sat between a store-front church and a box factory and had no side windows, and the front was so heavily curtained the light of day never entered. Spotty's prices were too moderate and his helpings too big to afford bright electric lights all day. Therefore it attracted customers such as people in hiding, finicky people who couldn't bear the sight of flies in their food, poor people who wanted as much as they could get for their money, weedheads avoiding bright lights, and blind people who didn't know the difference.

  They took a table in the rear across from two laborers. Spotty brought them plates of red beans, rice and ham hocks, and a stack of sliced bread. There wasn't any choice.

  Coffin Ed wolfed a mouthful hungrily and gasped for breath. "This stuff will set your teeth on fire," he said.

  "Take some of this hot sauce and cool it off," one of the laborers said with a straight face.

  "It cools you off these hot days," the other laborer said. "Draws all the heat to the belly and leaves the rest of you cool."

  "What about the belly?" Grave Digger asked.

  "Hell, man, what kind of old lady you got?" the laborer said.

  Grave Digger shouted for two beers. Coffin Ed took out the paper and divided it in two. He could barely see the large print through his smoked glasses. "What you want, the inside or the outside?"

  "You expect to read in here?" Grave Digger said.

  "Ask Spotty to give you a candle," the laborer said with a straight face.

  "Never mind," Grave Digger said. "I'll read one word and guess two."

  He took the inside of the paper and folded it on the table. The classified ads were up. His gaze was drawn to an ad in a box: Bale of cotton wanted immediately. Telephone Tompkins 2 — before seven p.m. He passed the paper to Coffin Ed. Neither of them said anything. The laborers looked curious but Grave Digger turned over the page before they could see anything.

  "Looking for a job?" the talkative laborer asked.

  "Yeah," Grave Digger said.

  "That ain't the paper for it," the laborer said.

  No one replied. Finally the two laborers got tired of trying to find out their business and got up and left. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed finished eating in silence.

  Spotty came to their table. "Dessert?" he asked.

  "What is it?"

  "Blackberry pie."

  "Hell, it's too dark in here to eat blackberry pie," Grave Digger said and paid him and they got up and left.

  Coffin Ed called his home from a street booth, but there was still no word from Abigail. Then he called the Tompkins number. A southern voice answered, "Back-to-the-Southland office, Colonel Calhoun speaking." He hung up.

  "The Colonel," he told Grave Digger when he got back in the truck.

  "Let's don't think about it here," Grave Digger said. "They might be tracing our calls home."

  They drove back past the 125th Street railroad station and found the Chevrolet parked near the Fischer Cafeteria. Ernie gave them the sign that Iris was still put. They were driving on when they saw a blind man tapping his way along. They pulled around the corner of Madison Avenue and waited.

  Finally the blind man came tapping along Madison. He was selling Biblical calendars. Coffin Ed leaned from the truck and said, "Hey, let me see one of those."

  The blind man tapped over towards the edge of the sidewalk, feeling his way cautiously. He pulled a calendar from his bag and said, "It's got all the names of the Saints and the Holy Days, and numbers straight out of the Apocalypse; and it's got the best days for births and deaths." Lowering his voice he added, "It's the photograph I told you about night before last."

  Coffin Ed made as though he were leafing through it. "How'd you make us?" he whispered.

  "Ernie," the blind man whispered back.

  Satisfied, Coffin Ed said loudly, "Got any dream readings in here?"

  Passersby hearing the question stopped to listen.

  "There's a whole section on dream interpretations," the blind man said.

  "I'll take this one," Coffin Ed said and gave the blind man a half dollar.

  "I'll take one too," another man said. "I dreamed last night I was white."

  Grave Digger drove off, turned east on 127th Street and parked. Coffin Ed passed him the photograph. It showed distinctly the front of a big black limousine. A blond young man sat behind the wheel. Colonel Calhoun sat next to him. Three vague white men sat on the rear seat. Approaching the car was Josh, the murdered junkyard laborer, grinning with relief.

  "This cooks him," Grave Digger said.

  "It won't fry him," Coffin Ed said, "but it'll scorch the hell out of him."

  "Anyway, he didn't get the cotton."

  "What does that prove? He might already have the money and the cotton might just be evidence. He might have killed the boy just to keep from tipping his hand," Grave Digger argued.

  "And advertise for the cotton today? Hell, let's take him anyway, and find the cotton later."

  "Let's get Deke first," Grave Digger said. "The Colonel will keep. He's got more than eighty-seven thousand dollars behind him — the whole mother-raping white South — and he's playing a deeper game than just hijacking."

  "We'll see, said the blind man," Coffin Ed said and they drove back to the White Rose bar at 125th and Park. Paul was waiting at the bar, drinking a Coke. They pushed in beside him. He spoke in a low voice but openly. "We've been assigned to another case. Captain Brice doesn't know we've been working for you and we won't tell him, but we have to report to the station now. Ernie's waiting for you to take over. She hasn't moved but that doesn't mean she hasn't phoned."

  "Right," Grave Digger said. "We're on the lam, you know."

  "I know."

  The bartender approached with a wise, knowing look. These nuts again, he was thinking. But they left without ordering. He nodded his head wisely, as if he'd known it all the time. They drove over to 115th Street and found Ernie parked near the corner watching the entrance of the apartment house through his rearview mirror while pretending to read a newspaper. Coffin Ed gave him a sign and he drove off.

  There was a bar with a public telephone on the corner of Lenox Avenue. So they parked down towards Seventh Avenue, opposite the entrance, so they would be behind Iris if she came out to telephone. Grave Digger got out and began jacking up the right rear wheel, keeping bent over out of sight of Billie's windows. Coffin Ed walked towards the bar, shoulders hunched and red cap pulled low over his black weedhead sunglasses. He looked like one of the real-gone cats with his signifying walk. They figured she had to make her move soon.

  But it had turned dark before Iris left the apartment. By now the tenements had emptied of people
seeking the cool of evening, and the sidewalks were crowded. But Iris walked fast, looking straight ahead, as though the people on the street didn't exist.

  Her skin was a smooth painted tan without a blemish, like the soft velvety leather of an expensive handbag. She wore silk Paisley slacks and a blue silk jersey blouse of Billie's, and one of the red-haired wigs Billie used in her act. Her hips were pitching like a rowboat on a stormy sea, but her cold, aloof face said: Your eyes may shine and your teeth may grit, but none of this fine ass will you git.

  This puzzled Grave Digger as he pulled the truck out from the curb a half block behind her. She wanted to be seen. Coffin Ed had the telephone covered but she didn't look towards the bar. Instead she turned north on Lenox, walking fast but not looking back. Grave Digger picked up Coffin Ed and they followed a block behind, careful but not cute.

  She turned east on 121st Street and went directly to O'Malley's church, The Star of Ham. The front door was locked, but she had a key.

  Grave Digger parked just around the corner on Lenox and they hit the pavement in a flat-footed lope. But she was already out of sight.

  "Cover the back," he said, and ran up the stairs and tried the front door.

  There was no time for finesse. Coffin Ed jumped the iron gate at the side and ran down the walk towards the back.

  The front door was locked. Grave Digger studied the windows. Coffin Ed studied the back door and found it locked too. He hoisted himself up on to the brick wall separating the back yard of the apartment next door for a better view.

  From the hideout underneath the rostrum, all three distinctly heard her key in the lock, heard the lock click, the door opening and closing, the lock clicking shut, and her footsteps on the wooden floor.

  "Here she is now," Deke said with relief.

  "It's a goddamn good thing for you," the oily-haired gunman said. He had a Colt. 45 automatic in his right hand and he kept slapping the barrel in the palm of his left hand as he looked down at Deke.

  Deke was tied to one of the two straight-backed tubular chairs and sweat was streaming down his face as though he were crying. He had been tied in that position, with his arms about the chair's back, since Iris had first telephoned, seven hours previous.

  The other gunman lay on the couch, his eyes closed, seemingly asleep.

  They were silent as they listened over the electronics pickup to Iris's footsteps tripping across the floor above, but their attention was alerted when they heard another sound at the front door.

  "She's tailed," the gunman on the couch said, sitting up.

  He was a stout, light-complexioned man with thinning straight brown hair, slitted brown eyes and a nasty-looking mouth as though he dribbled food. He spat on the floor as they listened.

  The footsteps rounded the pulpit and stopped on the other side and there was no more sound from the front door.

  "She's on to it," Deke said, licking the sweat trickling into his mouth, "She's going out through the wall to lose them."

  The gunman on the couch said, "She better lose them good, baby."

  They heard the secret door through the wall into an apartment in the building next door being opened and closed and then silence.

  The gunman standing slapped the Colt against the palm of his hand as though perplexed. "How come you trust this bitch when she's ratted on you before?"

  The sweat stung Deke's eyes and he blinked. "I don't trust her, but that bitch likes money; and she's always going keep this secret for her own safety," he said.

  The gunman on the couch said, "It's your life, baby."

  The gunman standing said, "She'd better come back soon or it's gonna be too late. It's getting hotter all the time."

  "It's safe here," Deke said desperately. "You're safer here until we get the money than being on the loose. Nobody knows about this hideout."

  The gunman on the couch spat. "Cept Iris and the people who built it."

  "White men built it," Deke said. He couldn't keep the smugness out of his voice. "They didn't suspect a thing. They thought it was to be a crypt."

  "What's that?" asked the standing gunman.

  "A vault, for dead saints maybe."

  The gunman looked at him, then looked around as though seeing the room for the first time. It was a small square room with soundproof walls, and access from above through the back of the church organ. There was a niche in one wall with a silver icon flanked by prints of Christ and the Virgin. Deke had furnished it with a couch, two tubular chairs, a small kitchen table and a refrigerator which he kept well stocked with prepared food, beer and whisky. Soiled dishes on the table attested to the fact they had eaten there at least once.

  One entire wall was taken up by the electronics system with pickup and amplifier that recorded every sound made in the church above. When turned up full volume even the footsteps of a mouse could be heard. On the opposite wall was a gun rack containing two rifles, two sawed-off shotguns and a submachine gun. Deke was proud of the place. He had had it built when reconditioning the church. He felt completely safe there. But the gunman was unimpressed.

  "Let's just hope them white men don't remember," he said. "Or that she don't bring a police tail back here. This place ain't no more safe than a coffin."

  "Believe me," Deke said. "I know it's safe."

  "We sprang you, baby, to get the money," the sitting gunman said flatly. "We figured we'd spring you and then sell your life to you for eighty-seven grand. You get the picture, baby. You going to buy it?"

  "Freddy," Deke appealed to the sitting gunman but got nothing from his eyes but a blank deadly stare. "Four-Four," he appealed to the oily-haired one standing with the Colt in his hand and drew another blank stare. "You've got to trust me," he pleaded. "I've never let you down. You've got to give me time…"

  "You got time," Freddy said, standing up and going to the icebox for another can of beer. He spat on the floor, slammed shut the box. "But not all of it."

  From atop the brick wall in back of the church, Coffin Ed got a glimpse of Iris's face peeping from behind the curtains of the back window of a first-floor apartment. It came more from a sixth sense than actual sight. There was only a dim light in back of her, outlining a mere shadow, and the light from outside was filtered from surrounding windows. And she was visible for only a moment. It was the timing more than anything which told him. Who else in the vicinity might be peering furtively from a back window at just that moment.

  He knew automatically she had got through the wall. How, he didn't care. He knew she had not only recognized him then, but had made them both from the start. A smart bitch — too smart. He debated whether to burst in on her openly, or take cover and let her make her move. Then he decided to go back and confer with Grave Digger.

  "Let her go," Grave Digger said. "She can't hide for ever, she ain't invisible. And she's made us now. So let her go, let her go. Maybe she'll contact us."

  They walked back to the truck and drove up to a bar, and Coffin Ed telephoned home. His wife Molly said Abigail hadn't called but Anderson was on duty now and he wanted them to call him.

  "Call him," Grave Digger said.

  Anderson said, "Bring in Iris while I'm on duty and I'll try to cover for you. Otherwise you're certain to be picked up by tomorrow and you'll be finished on the Force — probably face a rap. Captain Brice is furious."

  "He knows about it," Coffin Ed said. "He promised to lay off."

  "That's not the way he tells it. He's reported to the commissioner that you've abducted her and he's seeing red."

  "He's mad just because we tricked him; and he's covering himself at our expense."

  "Be that as it may, he's mad enough to break you."

  They sat silent for a moment, tense and worried.

  "You figure she might try to take a powder?" Coffin Ed said.

  "We got enough to worry about without that," Grave Digger said. "And we ain't got time for it."

  "Let's go to Billie's."

  "She's left there for goo
d. Let's go back to the church."

  "That was just to shake us," Coffin Ed argued. "She's finished with the church."

  "Maybe, maybe not. Deke wouldn't put in an escape door for nothing. There must be something else there."

  Coffin Ed thought about it. "Maybe you're right."

  They parked on 122nd Street and cased the back of the church. The backyard was separated by the high brick wall from the garbage-strewn backyards surrounding it. They scaled the wall and examined the back door. It had an ordinary Yale snap lock with an iron grille covering its dirty panes but they didn't touch it. They peered through a window into the vestry back of the choir but it was black dark inside.

  Then they went down the narrow walk alongside the church. It was a brick structure and in good condition and on that side two arched stained-glass windows flanked a stained-glass oval high in the wall. The other side of the church was built flush with the apartment house.

  "If they got a hideout in there they got some kind of hearing device for protection," Grave Digger reasoned. "They can't have a lookout hiding all the time."

  "What do you want to do, wait outside for her?"

  "She'll return through the wall, or she might already be in there."

  They looked at one another thinking.

  "Listen — " Coffin Ed began and explained.

  "Anyway, it beats a blank," Grave Digger said, as he stopped in the darkness to take off his shoes.

  They stood behind the gate and watched the street until it was momentarily empty. Then they scaled the iron gate and hurried up the stairs to the church door, and Coffin Ed began picking the lock. If anyone had passed they would have been taken for two drunks urinating against the church door. When it was open, Grave Digger sat astride Coffin Ed's shoulders and they went inside and closed the door behind them.

  The tableau in the hideout was much the same. Deke was still tied to the chair and the oily-haired gunman, Four-Four, was letting him drink from a can of beer. Beer was spilling from his mouth onto his pants and Four-Four said irritably, "Can't you swallow, goddammit?" slapping his own thigh with the barrel of the Colt. Freddy was lying on the couch again as though he were asleep.