The Heat's On

by Chester Himes

  Sister Heavenly was dressed as before. She sat sidewise to the table, one leg crossed over the other exposing the ruffles of her petticoats, and her little finger was extended properly as she held the steaming teacup to her lips. Her black beaded bag lay atop the table and her black-and-white striped parasol was propped against the wall beside her.

  A small electric fan atop the refrigerator stirred the reeking scent of marijuana and the fragrant aroma of sassafras tea.

  She regarded Uncle Saint curiously over the rim of the cup.

  “Well, you’re finally back,” she said.

  Uncle Saint coughed. “You see me,” he grunted.

  Pinky sat across the table from Sister Heavenly, his torso looming so high above her he looked like a barrel-chested midget standing in the chair. He looked from one to the other.

  “Did you see Gus?” he asked Uncle Saint in his whining voice.

  “I said I would tell you in a minute,” Sister Heavenly snapped at him.

  Uncle Saint couldn’t make out her game, so he decided to keep his mouth shut. He sat on his bunk, placed the loaded shotgun close beside him, and reached underneath and dragged out a rusty iron lockbox in which he kept everything he owned. From his side pants pocket he took a single key attached to a long brass chain hanging from his belt and unlocked the tremendous Yale padlock which secured his box.

  Two pairs of eyes followed his every movement, but he studiedly ignored them. He had his own alcohol lamp, teaspoon and spike, and he would use no other.

  Silently they watched him mix a deck of heroin and a deck of cocaine, light the lamp and cook it in a spoon, load the spike. He banged himself in a vein just above his left wrist. His brown decayed teeth bared like an animal’s when the spike went in, but his mouth went loose and sloppy in a soft sighing sound as he drew out the spike.

  Sister Heavenly finished her cup of tea and waited a few minutes for his speedball to work, slowly swallowing the sweet marijuana smoke.

  “What happened to the trunk?” she asked finally.

  Uncle Saint looked around as though expecting to find it in the kitchen. He hadn’t made up any kind of a story and all his furtive looks at her didn’t tell him anything. Outwardly she looked indifferent and serene, but he knew from past experience that didn’t mean a thing. Finally he decided to lie to the bitter end. He had lost the mother-raping trunk and had blown some mother-raper’s brains out to boot, and wasn’t nothing going to change that. He was too mother-raping old to worry about every little thing that came along.

  He licked his dry lips and muttered, “We been barking up the wrong tree. There wasn’t nothing in that trunk. Them expressmen come and got it and took it straight to the docks and left it there. I followed them, but when I seen there wasn’t nothing in it I figured there had been a switch, so I turned around and highballed it back uptown looking for you, but you has gone. So I figures you has already got it — if there was anything to get.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said enigmatically. “We been on a wild-goose chase.”

  Pinky’s battered face contorted in a fit of rage. “You was after Gus’s treasure map,” he accused. “That’s why you give me that knockout shot. You was trying to steal Gus’s treasure map and you done let him get kilt.”

  “He ain’t no more dead than you is,” Sister Heavenly said calmly. “I saw him talking to the expressmen when—”

  “You saw Gus alive!” Pinky exclaimed. His eyes bugged out in an expression of horror.

  Sister Heavenly went on as though she hadn’t noticed. “Not only saw him but I felt him. He talked to the expressmen when they came for the trunk and gave them the treasure map to mail.”

  Pinky stared at her in disbelief. “You saw Gus give the expressmen the treasure map?” he echoed stupidly.

  “What are you so het up about?” she asked sharply. “Ain’t you the one who said he was going to give them the treasure map to mail to him in Ghana?”

  “But I thought he was already kilt by now,” Pinky stammered in confusion.

  Uncle Saint was staring from one to another with a fixed expression of imbecility. He wondered if he was hearing right.

  “He might be killed by now but he was alive when I was there,” she said. “And Ginny and the African was getting the bags ready to leave. Ginny was straightening up for the new couple what comes in today.”

  Pinky looked flabbergasted. He opened his mouth to say something but was stopped by the sound of an automobile horn from the street in front.

  “That’s Angelo,” she said casually, and looked sharply from one to the other to see their reactions.

  Both looked suddenly guilty and trapped.

  She smiled cynically. “Sit still,” she said. “I’ll go out and see what he wants this early in the morning.”

  “But it ain’t his day,” Pinky whined.

  Uncle Saint threw him a black look.

  But Sister Heavenly merely said, “It sure ain’t,” as she got to her feet.

  The front door was never opened, so she went out the back door and circled the house by the path. Her long skirt caught in the high dry weeds and burs clung to the hem but she paid it no attention.

  A thickset, swarthy, black-haired man wearing a navy blue straw hat with a fluted gray silk band, Polaroid sunglasses in a heavy black frame, a charcoal-gray suit of shantung silk, white silk shirt and knitted maroon tie, sat behind the wheel of a shiny black MGA sports car with white-wall tires. He was a precinct detective sergeant.

  Rows of even white teeth showed in his heavily tanned face at sight of her.

  “How’s tricks, Sister H?” he greeted in a jovial voice.

  She rested her black-gloved hands on the door of the car and looked at him questioningly. “Same as usual.” In the bright sunshine, her black straw hat atop the gray wig glittered like a cockroach.

  “Are you sure?” His voice was insinuating.

  “Now what do you mean by that?”

  “I just came from the station,” he said. “As soon as I got the reader I came straight to see you. It’s the least I could do for an old friend.”

  She looked at the dark green lens of his sunglasses, trying to see his eyes, but she only saw her own reflection. She felt trouble coming on and looked across the street to see if they were being watched.

  The villa opposite was the only other house in the block. It was occupied by a large Italian family, but they were so accustomed to seeing the sergeant’s flashy car parked in front of Sister Heavenly’s, and to all the other strange goings-on in that house, they paid it no attention. At the moment none of the brood was in sight.

  “Let’s finish with the bullshit,” Sister Heavenly said.

  “Finished,” he agreed. “There was a shotgun killing took place down near the French Line dock at about half past six this morning,” he went on, watching her expression sharply from behind his trick glasses, but her expression didn’t change.

  “It seems that a man standing on the sidewalk was shotgunned to death by a man sitting in a parked car. They found a derringer with a silencer attached on the sidewalk near the victim. It had recently been fired. Homicide figures the man with the derringer tried to gun the man in the car and got himself shotgunned instead. This sort of rod is a professional’s tool. Anyway, the killer got away,” he added offhandedly, waiting for her reaction.

  She didn’t show any reaction. All she said was, “What’s that mean to me?”

  He shrugged. “Nobody can get any sense out of it. You see, there’re a lot of conflicting descriptions of both the car and the killer. All they could get for certain about the car is that it was a black low-slung limousine, but no one knew the make. But there was one guy who described the killer as a little dried-up darky with gray kinky hair who was wearing a chauffeur’s uniform; and he can’t be shaken.”

  “Well, now ain’t that lovely!” Sister Heavenly exclaimed in disgust.

  “You ain’t just saying it,” Angelo agreed. “Don’t make any s
ense at all. But one thing is for sure. The car is marked. It seems the victim had a friend in a car parked behind the killer’s. When this friend saw his buddy shot down he opened up with an automatic and put some holes in the back of the killer’s car. That’s the lead homicide is following.”

  She chewed over that for a time. “How about this second gunman?” she asked. “Did he get away too?”

  “Nope. That’s where the killer got lucky. While this second party was following the killer’s car he drove in front of a truck and was run over and killed too.”

  A veil dropped over Sister Heavenly’s old blue-rimmed ocher eyes as her mind worked furiously. “Did anybody make them?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “But they had all the marks of professionals, and they ain’t going to be hard to identify.”

  “All right,” she conceded finally. “I got the message. What’s it worth?”

  He took a small black cheroot from a black leather case which he carried in his breast pocket and slowly applied a flame from a solid gold Flaminaire lighter imported from France. It looked as though he were doing a takeoff on a private eye.

  Finally he said, “Well, Sister H, seeing as how your nephew Pinky is wanted too for putting in that false fire alarm last night, I figure for the two of them together, fifteen C’s ain’t too much. And while you’re at it, you better give me next month’s sugar at the same time. With all this shooting going on, who knows where we’ll be by then.”

  “Two G’s!” she exploded. “Hell, you can have ’em both right now. They ain’t worth that much to me.”

  He blew out a cloud of smoke and grinned at her. “You didn’t get the message. Homicide is going to wonder what it’s all about. They ain’t going to bite on the idea that one old darky chauffeur dreamed it up — and nobody else, if you get what I mean.”

  She didn’t argue. There was no use.

  “Let’s see if I’ve got that much,” she said and turned back toward the house.

  “Look good and look fast,” he called after her.

  She halted and her body stiffened.

  “You know this is a lamster’s hangout up here in these sticks,” he said. “And I’m the authority on it. People are going to be asking me questions pretty damn soon, and I got to know how to answer.”

  She resumed walking, her long skirts catching in the weeds again as she went around the side of the house. The tethered nanny goat was bleating for water and she stopped for a moment to untie it. Then she kept on through the blistered garden, trampling over the withered vegetables indiscriminately, and looked into the garage. One glance at the Lincoln was enough.

  “Who did he think he was fooling,” she murmured to herself, then added half aloud, “Anyway, I was damn right.”

  She returned to the house and entered her bedroom.

  Uncle Saint and Pinky had disappeared.

  She knelt before the chest of drawers, took out her bunch of keys and selected one and unlocked the bottom drawer. The front of the drawer swung down on hinges, revealing a built-in safe. She spun the dial and opened a small, rectangular door. Then she selected another key and opened an inner compartment which was stuffed with packets of banknotes. She took two packets from the top, closed and locked all three doors and left the room.

  A tall, emaciated colored man flashily dressed in a Palm Beach suit and a hard straw hat with a red band stood beside the door. She quickly slipped the money inside of her dress.

  “I ain’t got no Heavenly Dust now, Slim,” she said. “Come back later.”

  “I need it,” he insisted.

  “Well, I ain’t got it,” she snapped impatiently, brushing past him toward the side walk.

  He followed reluctantly. “When you gonna have it?”

  “At one o’clock,” she said over her shoulder.

  He looked at his watch. “It ain’t but nine-thirty now. That’s three hours and a half,” he whined, following her into the street.

  “Beat it,” she snarled.

  He looked from her to the detective sitting in the car. Angelo turned his head slightly and made a motion with his thumb. Slim hastened down the street. Angelo watched him in the rearview mirror until he turned into a path across a vacant lot.

  “It’s clear now,” he said.

  Sister Heavenly took the packets of banknotes from inside her dress and placed them in his hand. He counted them carefully without looking up or taking any precaution at concealment. Each packet contained ten one-hundred-dollar notes. Negligently he slipped them into his inside coat pocket.

  “Pretty soon you’ll be turning in this heap for a Jaguar,” Sister Heavenly said sarcastically.

  “You ain’t just kidding,” he replied.

  The high-powered motor roared into life. She watched him back the car at high speed into the first cross street, turn and speed away.

  Pinky had the key, she thought. But the question was how to get it out of him.

  Instead of returning to the kitchen she went on to the rabbit hutch to see if Pinky had taken another speedball in her absence. The buck rabbit was huddled in a corner of his cage, watching her with terrified eyes. She dragged him out by the ears and removed the stopper from his rectum. The three capsules of C & H that should have been there were gone.

  No wonder he was talking so strange, she thought. He must be leaping and flying.

  She put the buck back into his cage and walked slowly toward the kitchen, carrying the stopper in her hand.

  I’ll just play it dumb, she decided, and see what those speedballs tell him to do next.

  9

  The house didn’t have a basement. It had been built by Italian immigrants unused to the cold winters of the Bronx and who didn’t have sufficient money for such a luxury.

  Sister Heavenly’s bedroom and the kitchen composed one half of the house. The other half was composed of a large front parlor that was kept shuttered and closed and a small back bedroom which Sister Heavenly had converted into a bathroom.

  The stairway to the attic led up from the kitchen and took up part of the short front hall, which, like the parlor, was never used. The bottom of the stairway which extended into the kitchen was detachable.

  When Sister Heavenly returned to the kitchen she spoke apparently to no one: “You can come out now, he’s gone.”

  The bottom of the stairs moved slowly out into the kitchen, revealing an access to a dugout beneath the house.

  Pinky’s head appeared first. His kinky white hair was covered with cobwebs. On his battered face, ranging in colors from violent purple to bilious yellow, was a look of indescribable stupidity. His shoulders were too large for the opening and he had to put one arm through first and perform a series of contortions. He looked like some unknown monster coming out of hibernation.

  The next thing that appeared was Uncle Saint’s shotgun, which seemed to drag Uncle Saint behind it.

  Pinky shoved the staircase back into place and then stood close to Uncle Saint as though for spiritual comfort.

  Neither of them met Sister Heavenly’s scornful gaze.

  She couldn’t restrain from taunting: “You two innocents are acting mighty strange for people with clear consciences.”

  “Ain’t no need of going looking for trouble,” Uncle Saint said sheepishly.

  Sister Heavenly consulted her old-fashioned locket-watch. “It’s quarter to ten. How about all us going down to the dock and seeing Gus and Ginny off?”

  If she had exploded a bomb filled with ghosts, she couldn’t have gotten stranger reactions.

  Uncle Saint had a sudden heart attack. His eyes rolled back in his head and three inches of tongue fell suddenly from the corner of his dirty-looking mouth. He clutched his heart with his left hand and reeled toward his bunk, taking good care to hold on to the shotgun with his right hand.

  Simultaneously Pinky had an epileptic fit. He fell to the floor and had convulsions, contortions and convolutions. His muscles jumped and jerked and quivered as he thrashed abou
t on the floor. Foam sprayed from his mouth.

  Sister Heavenly backed quickly from the danger zone of flying legs and arms and took up a position behind the stove.

  Pinky’s eyes were set in a fixed stare; his spine stiffened, his legs jerked spasmodically, his arms flailed the air like runaway windmills.

  Sister Heavenly stared at him in admiration. “If I had known you could throw wingdings like that I could have been using you all along as a sideline to faith healing,” she said.

  Seeing that Pinky was stealing the show, Uncle Saint sat up. His eyes were popping and his jaw was working in awe.

  “I’d have never thunk it,” he muttered to himself.

  Sister Heavenly looked at him. “How’s your heart attack?”

  He avoided her gaze. “It was just a twinge,” he said sheepishly. “It’s already let up.”

  He thought it was a good time to get out and let Pinky carry on. “I’ll go start the car,” he said. “We might have to take him to the doctor.”

  “Go ahead,” Sister Heavenly said. “I’ll nurse him.”

  Uncle Saint hastened off toward the garage, still carrying his loaded shotgun. He raised the hood and detached the distributor head, then began to work the starter.

  Sister Heavenly could hear the starter above the gritting sounds of Pinky’s teeth and realized immediately that Uncle Saint had disabled the car.

  She waited patiently.

  Pinky’s convulsions eased and his body turned slowly rigid. Sister Heavenly stepped over and looked into his staring eyes. The pupils were so distended his eyes looked like red-hot metal balls.

  Uncle Saint came in and said the car wouldn’t start.

  “You stay here and look after Pinky, I’ll take a taxi to the docks,” Sister Heavenly decided.

  “I’ll put some ice on his head,” Uncle Saint said and began fiddling about in the refrigerator.

  Sister Heavenly didn’t answer. She picked up her black beaded bag and black-and-white striped parasol and went out of the back door.