Cotton comes to Harlem cjagdj-6
Page 20
"Where?" the commissioner asked.
"At the club," she said, lifting her eyebrows. "What could I do with a bale of cotton in my home?"
"When?" Grave Digger asked.
"I don't know," she said, becoming impatient with these senseless questions. "Before I came at ten. He had left it in the stage entrance where it was in the way and I had it moved to my dressing-room until I wanted it on the stage."
"When did you see Uncle Bud again?" Grave Digger asked.
"I had already paid him," she said. "There wasn't any need of seeing him again."
"Have you ever seen him again?" Grave Digger persisted.
"Why ever should I see him again?" she snapped.
"Think," Grave Digger said. "It's important."
She thought for a moment, then said, "No, that was the last time I saw him."
"Did the bale of cotton look as though it had been tampered with?" Coffin Ed asked.
"How the hell would she know?" Grave Digger said.
"I'd never seen a bale of cotton before in my life," she confessed.
"How did Iris find out about it?" the commissioner asked.
"I don't really know," she said musingly. "She must have heard me telephoning. I saw a want ad in the Sentinel for a bale of cotton and called the number. Some man with a southern accent answered and said he was Colonel Calhoun of the Back-to-the-Southland movement and he needed a bale of cotton for a rally he was planning to have. I thought he was some smart alec making a joke and I asked him where this rally was taking place. When he said on Seventh Avenue, I was sure he was joking then. I said I was having a cotton rally on Seventh Avenue myself, at the Cotton Club, and he could come to see it, and he said he would. Anyway, I know I was joking when I asked him for a thousand dollars for my bale of cotton."
"Where was Iris when you were talking on the telephone?" the commissioner persisted.
"I thought she was still in the bathroom, soaking, but she must have come into the dining-room in her bare feet. I was in the sitting-room lying on the divan with my back to the dining-room door and I didn't hear her. She could have just stood there and eavesdropped and I wouldn't have known it." She had her little secret smile on again. "That would be just like Iris. Anyway, I would have told her all about it if she had asked, but she would rather eavesdrop."
"Didn't you know she had escaped from prison?" the commissioner asked softly.
There was silence for a moment and Billie's eyes stretched. "She told me that detectives Jones and Johnson had let her out to look for Deke. I didn't approve of it but it wasn't my business."
Dead silence reigned. The commissioner looked hard at the captain, but the captain wouldn't meet his gaze. Coffin Ed grunted, but Grave Digger kept a straight and solemn face.
Billie noticed the strange looks on everyone and asked innocently, "What was so important about the bale of cotton?"
Coffin Ed said jubilantly, "It had the eighty-seven thousand dollars hijacked from Deke's Back-to-Africa pitch hidden inside of it."
"Ohhhh," Billie gasped. Her eyes rolled back. Grave Digger caught her as she fell.
Now a week had passed. Harlem had lived notoriously on the front pages of the tabloids. Saucy brown chicks and insane killers were integrated with southern colonels and two mad Harlem detectives for the entertainment of the public. Lurid accounts of robberies and killings pictured Harlem as a criminal inferno. Deke O'Hara and Iris were dished up with the breakfast cereal; both had been indicted for conspiracy to defraud and second-degree murder. Iris screamed in bold black print that she had been double-crossed by the police. The Back-to-Africa movement vied with the Back-to-the-Southland movment for space and sympathy.
Everyone considered the dead gunmen as good gunmen and Grave Digger and Coffin Ed were congratulated for being alive.
Colonel Calhoun and his nephew, Ronald Compton, had been indicted for the murder of Joshua Peavine, a Harlem Negro laborer. But the State of Alabama refused to exradite them on the grounds that killing a Negro did not constitute murder under Alabama law.
The families of the Back-to-Africa group of O'Malley's who had gotten their money back staged an outdoor testimonial for Grave Digger and Coffin Ed in the same lot where they had lost it. Six hogs were barbecued whole and the detectives were presented with souvenir maps of Africa. Grave Digger was called upon to speak. He stood up and looked at his map and said, "Brothers, this map is older than me. If you go back to this Africa you got to go by way of the grave." No one understood what he meant, but they applauded anyway.
The next day Harlem's ace detectives were cited by the commissioner for bravery beyond the call of duty, but no raise came forth.
Undertaker H. Exodus Clay was kept busy all week burying the dead, which turned out to be so profitable he gave his chauffeur and handyman, Jackson, a bonus which enabled Jackson to marry his fiancee, Imabelle, with whom he had been living off and on for six years.
It was a quiet Wednesday midnight a week later and Grave Digger, Coffin Ed and Lieutenant Anderson were gathered in the captain's office, drinking beer and shooting the breeze.
"I don't dig Colonel Calhoun," Anderson said. "Was his object to break up the Back-to-Africa movement or just to rob them? Was he a man with a cause or just a thief?"
"He's a dedicated man," Grave Digger said. "Dedicated to the idea of keeping the black man picking cotton in the South."
"Yeah, the Colonel thought the Back-to-Africa movement was as sinful and un-American as bolshevism and should be stamped out at any cost," Coffin Ed added.
"I suppose he thought it was the American thing to do to rob those colored people out of their money," Anderson said sarcastically.
"Well, ain't it?" Coffin Ed said.
Anderson reddened.
"Hell, you don't know the Colonel," Grave Digger said pacifyingly. "He intended to give them back the money if they went south and picked cotton for a year or so. He's a benevolent man."
Anderson nodded knowingly. "It figures," he said. "That's why he hid the money in a bale of cotton. It was a symbol."
Grave Digger stared at Anderson and then looked over at Coffin Ed. Coffin Ed didn't get it either.
But Grave Digger replied with a straight face, "I know just what you mean."
"Anyway it made it easier for me and Digger to find," Coffin Ed said.
"How?" Anderson asked.
"How?" Coffin Ed echoed. The question threw him.
"Because it was still there," Grave Digger said, coming to his rescue.
Anderson blinked uncomprehendingly.
Coffin Ed chuckled. "Damn right," he said, adding under his breath, "That throws you too."
Grave Digger said, "I'm hungry," breaking it up.
Mammy Louise had barbecued an opossum especially for them and with the fat yellow meat she served candied yams, collard greens and okra, and left them to themselves to enjoy it.
"It's a damn good thing those southern crackers gave Colonel Calhoun enough money to spend to get us back south or we'd still be looking for the Back-to-Africa loot," Coffin Ed remarked.
"Be a lot of trouble, anyway," Grave Digger agreed.
"How you reckon he figured it out?" Coffin Ed asked. "Hell, man, how you think he was going to miss seeing the bale had been tampered with," Grave Digger said. "As much cotton as he's handled in his lifetime."
"You think we should go after him?"
"Man, we've already recovered the stolen money. How're we going to explain another eighty-seven grand?"
"Anyway, let's find out where he's gone."
Two days later they got a verification from Air France that they had flown a very old colored man with a passport issued to Cotton Bud of New York City by way of Paris to Dakar.
They wired the prefecture in Dakar:
WHAT DO YOU HAVE ON OLD COTTON HEADED U.S. NEGRO… NEW YORK TO DAKAR BY AIR FRANCE… Jones, Harlem Precinct, New York City.
SENSATIONAL STUPENDOUS INCROYABLE… M. COTTON HEADED BUD BUYS
50 °CATTLE HIRES 6 HERDSMEN 2 GUIDES 1 WITCH DOCTEUR… TOOK TO THE
BRUSH… WOMEN FAINTED… THREW SELVES INTO SEA… M. le Prefect, Dakar.
FOR MILK OR MEAT… Jones, Harlem.
MONSIEUR QUELLE QUESTION… FOR WIVES WHAT ELSE… Prefect, Dakar.
HOW MANY WIVES WILL 50 °CATTLE BUY… Jones, Harlem.
M. COTTON HEADED BUD ALSO HAS MUCH MONEY… M. BUD HAS BOUGHT
100 WIVES OF MOYEN QUALITE… NOW SHOPPING FOR BEST… WANTS LA
MEME NUMERO AS SOI. OMAN… Prefect, Dakar.
STOP HIM QUICK… HE WILL DROP DEAD BEFORE SAMPLING…
Jones, Harlem.
SHOULD HUSBAND DIE WIVES MAKE BEST MOURNERS… Prefect, Dakar.
"Well, at least Uncle Bud got to Africa," Coffin Ed said.
"Hell, the way that old mother-raper is behaving, he might have come from Africa," Grave Digger said.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-e5b391-314d-834a-07a6-903b-d901-898e41
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 15.01.2012
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