The Heat's On

by Chester Himes

  No one knew what the outcome was outside, and the homicide lieutenant put off interrogating Coffin Ed until his wound had been treated. So they were all just standing about.

  But Coffin Ed had a need to talk.

  “You guys figured too they’d come back?”

  “We didn’t figure it,” the homicide lieutenant said. “We engineered it. We knew you were on the prowl and that they were on your tail. That might have kept up all night. So we had to get you here. We knew they’d come after you, just like you did.”

  “You got me here? How was that?”

  The homicide lieutenant reddened. “You know by now that Grave Digger is alive?”

  Coffin Ed became rigid. “Alive? The radio said—”

  “That was how we did it. We gave out the story. We knew that after you had heard it you would get them here some way to kill them. You’re not sore, are you?”

  “Alive!” Coffin Ed hadn’t heard the rest of it. Tears were streaming unashamedly from his blood-red eyes. He shook his head. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.” It felt as though his brains were banging against his skull. But he didn’t mind. “Then he’ll never die,” he said.

  The lieutenant patted his good shoulder as delicately as though it were made of chocolate icing. “Only way we could figure to cover you. We don’t want to lose our good men.” He smiled a little. “Of course we didn’t expect a theatrical production.”

  Coffin Ed grinned. “I dig you, Jack,” he said. “But sometimes these minstrel shows play on when grand opera folds.”

  Then suddenly and unexpectedly he fainted.

  22

  It was past two o’clock in the morning. The prowl cars and ambulances and hearses had gone from the street and only the black inconspicuous sedans of the plainclothesmen remained among the sedate automobiles of the residents. Quiet once again prevailed in this exclusive residential street.

  The crew from the Medical Examiner’s Office had been and gone and the six corpses had been taken to the morgue. The fat gunman had died before they arrived and had been tagged D.O.A. with the others. He had died without talking. Now there were only the gobs and patches of clotted blood to mark the spots where the six lives had taken exit.

  Wop was in jail, safe at last.

  But there was still activity in the basement of the apartment house where the interrogations continued and the reports of this fantastic caper were being recorded to shock and horrify what one must hope will be a less violent posterity.

  The dining table from the janitor’s flat had been set up in the corridor and the two lieutenants and chief of the T-men were sitting in bloodstained chairs about it. A police stenographer sat apart, taking down the words as they were spoken.

  Coffin Ed sat facing his interrogators across the table. He had been taken to the Polytechnical Clinic in midtown to have the bullet removed from his shoulder blade and the wound dressed. His guns, sap and hunting knife had been taken from him by the homicide lieutenant, and a detective had accompanied him to the clinic. Technically, he was under arrest for homicide and was being held for the magistrate’s court later that morning.

  The hospital doctors had tried to put him to bed, but he had insisted on returning to the scene. In lieu of his bloodstained shirt, he now wore a hospital nightshirt tucked into his pants, and his arm was in a black cotton sling. Bandages made a lump on his right shoulder like a deformity.

  “It’s been a bloody harvest,” the T-man said.

  “Gun-killing is the twentieth-century plague,” the homicide lieutenant said.

  “Let’s get to the story,” the narcotics lieutenant said impatiently. “This business is not finished yet.”

  “All right, Ed, let’s hear your side,” the homicide lieutenant said.

  “I’ll start with the janitor’s wife, and just repeat what she told me. You have my statement from before. Maybe you can fit it all together.”

  “All right, shoot.”

  “According to her, all she knew at first was that Gus had disappeared. He left her and the African in the flat at about eleven-thirty and said he’d be back in an hour. He didn’t come back—”

  “Where was Pinky during this time?”

  “She said she hadn’t seen Pinky since late afternoon and hadn’t thought about him until we questioned her after the false fire alarm.”

  “So he wasn’t around?”

  “He could have been. She just didn’t see him. When she found out he was on the lam and Gus hadn’t come back, she began to worry about what to do with the dog. They weren’t taking the dog and Gus hadn’t made any arrangements for it, and she didn’t know about S.P.C.A. And of course if Pinky turned up, there was the rap against him for the false fire alarm, and she intended phoning the police and having him arrested. So along toward morning she sent the African out to drown the dog in the river.

  “Digger and I were sitting outside in the old struggle buggy when the African took it away. We thought then he might have drowned it, but it was none of our business and we didn’t see anything else suspicious, so we left. If we’d stayed twenty minutes longer we’d have seen Sister Heavenly when she arrived.

  “She got here about ten minutes to six and said she was looking for Gus. Ginny, that’s the janitor’s wife, was suspicious — said she was, anyway — but she couldn’t get any more out of Sister Heavenly. Then at six o’clock the front doorbell rang. Ginny had no idea who it was, but suddenly Sister Heavenly drew a pistol from her bag and covered her and the African and ordered her to push the buzzer to release the front door latch; and she made them both keep still. Evidently she expected the caller to come straight to the flat. But instead they took away the trunk and left without knocking. When she finally looked out here in the hall and saw the trunk was gone, she ran out of the house without saying a word. And that was the last Ginny saw of her — so she said.”

  “What happened to the trunk finally?” the homicide lieutenant asked.

  “She claimed she never found out.”

  “All right, we’ll get on to the trunk tomorrow.”

  “I’m in the dark here,” the T-man said. “Who was going where?”

  “She and Gus — he was the janitor — were going to Ghana. They’d bought a cocoa plantation from the African.”

  The T-man whistled. “Where’d they get that kind of money?”

  “She told us — Digger and me — that his first wife died and left him a tobacco farm in North Carolina, and he sold it.”

  “We have all that from your first statement,” the homicide lieutenant said impatiently. “Where did the African fit into this caper?”

  “He didn’t. He was an innocent bystander. When Gus didn’t show up after the trunk was taken, Ginny began getting more and more worried. So the African left the house about a half hour after Sister Heavenly to look for Gus. In the meantime it was getting late and Ginny began to dress. They had to go to the dock to get their luggage on board.”

  “The trunk should have been delivered the day before,” the T-man said.

  “Yeah, but she didn’t know that. All that was worrying her was Gus’s continued absence. She was just hoping the African would find him in time for them to make the boat. She never saw the African again. She had just finished dressing when the two white gunmen who shuttled her about Harlem first turned up. They said Gus had sent them to take her to the dock. She left a note for the African telling him where she was going. Then the gunmen picked up her luggage and took her out to their car. When they got in the fat man drove and the hophead sat in the back and covered her with the derringer. He told her Gus was in trouble and they were taking her to see him.”

  “Didn’t she wonder about the gun?”

  “She said she thought they were detectives.”

  The homicide lieutenant reddened.

  “They took her to a walkup apartment on West 10th Street in the Village, near the railroad tracks, and bound and gagged her and tied her to the bed. First they went through her luggage.
Then they took off the gag and asked her what she had done with the junk. She didn’t know what they were talking about. They gagged her again and began torturing her.”

  Abruptly the atmosphere changed. Faces took on those bleak expressions of men who come suddenly upon an inhumanity not reckoned for.

  “Gentle hearts!” the T-man said.

  “The next time they took off her gag she blabbed for her life,” Coffin Ed said. “She told them Gus had pawned the stuff but when she saw that wasn’t the answer she said he took it to Chicago to sell. That must have convinced them she really didn’t know about it. One of them went into another room and made a telephone call — to Benny Mason, I suppose — and when he came back they gagged her again and left. I figure they came straight up here and searched the flat.”

  “And killed the African.”

  “I don’t think they killed him then. The way I figure it they must have searched twice. In the meantime they probably went and had a talk with their boss.”

  “No doubt he sent them back and told them to find it or else,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “If it was two kilos of heroin it was worth a lot of money.”

  “Yeah. I figure the African must have been here when they returned, or else he came in while they were searching. We’ll never know.”

  “You think they tried to make him talk?”

  “Who knows? Anyway, that’s when we ran into them and set off the big chase. If I’d listened to Digger’s advice and just laid dead, maybe we’d have never tumbled to the dope angle.”

  “Not necessarily,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “We knew a shipment of H had left France, but we didn’t know how or when. The French lost it somewhere between Marseille and Le Havre.”

  “But we’ve been on to it for the past week,” the T-man said. “Working with the local squad — secretly. We’ve had the waterfront covered from end to end.”

  “Yeah, but you’ll find out later you didn’t cover it far enough,” Coffin Ed said. “When the hoods returned to the flat in the Village, Benny Mason went with them. The woman became hysterical when they took off the gag. She said Benny sat beside her and comforted her. He sent out for a doctor who came and treated her and put her under sedation—”

  “What doctor?”

  “She didn’t say and I didn’t ask her. Benny sent the doctor away and promised her she wouldn’t be hurt again if she was cooperative. Anyway, he won her confidence. In the meantime he sent the hoods out of the room and pulled up a chair, straddled it and sat facing her. And he leveled with her—”

  “Then he intended to have her killed,” the narcotics lieutenant said.

  “Yeah, but she was too square to dig it. Anyway, he told her that he was the boss of the narcotics racket, that he had the shit smuggled into the country and he had used Gus to pick it up sometimes; and that was how Gus got the money to buy this farm in Ghana. That shocked her; she had believed Gus’s hype about his wife leaving him a farm down South. He must have figured it would have that effect because he wanted her to start thinking and remember something she hadn’t thought was important before. He went on to tell her that he had had Gus thoroughly investigated and he was certain Gus was a square, just greedy for some money. She agreed to that but she didn’t know what he was leading to. He told her that Gus had picked up a shipment of heroin at midnight, worth more than a million dollars, and he was supposed to pass it on in the trunk that was picked up at six o’clock.”

  “Picked up from who?” the narcotics lieutenant asked.

  “He said the heroin was smuggled into the country on a French liner.”

  “We know the French liner that docked this week,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “We’ve had it under a tight surveillance.”

  “Yeah, but you missed the connection. It was dropped overboard to a small motorboat that passed under the bow without stopping at about eleven o’clock night before last.”

  “My men were watching that boat through night glasses and there was nothing dropped overboard,” the T-man said.

  “Maybe it was already in the water. I’m just repeating what she said Benny told her. Benny had sent a map to Gus by Jake, the pusher — the one Digger and me got suspended for slugging.”

  The city detectives looked embarrassed but the T-men missed the connotation.

  “The map showed Gus the exact spot where the shipment would be dropped — only a short walk from here. The boat came up the river and delivered the shipment without ever stopping. Benny said he knew that Gus collected it because the connection told him that Gus was waiting when the boat arrived; and furthermore, when the boat returned to the yacht basin in Hoboken the T-men were waiting for it and searched it and they found it clean.”

  “By God, I got a report on that boat!” the T-man said. “It’s owned by a taxicab driver named Skelley. He does night fishing.” He turned to one of his men in the background. “Have Skelley and everyone connected with him picked up.”

  The agent went toward the telephone.

  “Benny said when his men picked up the trunk the shipment wasn’t in it,” Coffin Ed continued. “She thought maybe Gus had run off with it since it was worth so much. He had gone out before midnight and she hadn’t seen or heard of him since, and that wasn’t like Gus; he didn’t have any friends he could put up with and he didn’t have anywhere else to go. Benny said no, he had probably been robbed. They had found Gus and he was hurt and wasn’t able to talk and he figured someone had hijacked the shipment—”

  “But he left the bundle with Gus for six hours before he sent to pick it up. You think he was that stupid?”

  “It was as safe with Gus as anywhere — in fact safer. They had him covered. And since he was actually supposed to sail that day, they figured the trunk dodge would attract less attention than any other. Besides, Benny wasn’t taking any chances; he had a lookout posted outside all night. The lookout saw Gus come into the apartment after he had kept the rendezvous and he didn’t see anyone leave after then who was carrying anything in which the shipment could have been concealed. The lookout saw Digger and me come and go after the false fire alarm; he saw the African go out with the dog and return without it; he saw Sister Heavenly when she came and left. No, Benny was certain that the shipment hadn’t left this house.”

  The detectives exchanged glances.

  “Then it’s still here,” the homicide lieutenant said.

  “That’s impossible, the way this place has been searched, unless one of the tenants is in on the deal, and we’ve checked them going and coming and I’d bet my job they’re innocent,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “I personally was with the searching crew when they went through every trunk, every box, every piece of furniture in the storage room; they turned the toolroom inside out, took apart the oil burner, dismantled the washing machines, raked out the incinerator, looked into the sewers, even took two stored automobile tires off the rims; and you saw how the janitor’s flat has been searched. We’d have found a signet ring if we’d been looking for it.”

  “That’s the way Benny figured it. It was too big a bundle to hide, and the only way Gus could have got rid of it was to give it to somebody in this house to hold for him.”

  “How big a bundle was it, or did he say?” the T-man asked.

  “He told her there were five kilos of eighty-two percent pure heroin in it.”

  A cacophony of whistling sounded spontaneously.

  “That’s one hell of a load,” the homicide lieutenant said.

  Calculating rapidly, the T-man said, “He pays about fifteen thousand dollars per kilo for the junk. Say around seventy-five thousand for the shipment. And after he cuts it down with lactose to about two percent pure, he can retail it for around a half a million dollars a kilo. Say, give or take a little, it’s worth two and a half million dollars on the retail market.”

  “Now we’ve got the motive for this massacre,” the homicide lietuenant said.

  “But where did the junk disappear to?” the narc
otics lieutenant echoed.

  “That’s the question Benny asked. But she couldn’t help him. She said Gus wasn’t on good terms with any of the tenants; in fact his relations were on the bad side.”

  “No wonder,” the narcotics lieutenant said. “He didn’t need this job.”

  “Then Benny asked her about Pinky. She told him all she knew but he wasn’t interested in Pinky’s life. He wanted to know if Pinky could have got the stuff from Gus and hidden it somewhere in the house. She said he’d have to wait until Gus could talk and ask him, she hadn’t seen either him or Pinky since before midnight. Then he confessed that when they didn’t find the shipment in the trunk they had killed Gus and thrown his body in the river.”

  “That sounds to me like he was lying,” the T-man said, and turned to the narcotics lieutenant. “Do you believe that?”

  “Hell no! They wouldn’t kill Gus, even by accident, as long as the five-kilo bundle of H was missing.”

  “That’s the way I see it.”

  “But where is Gus?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Maybe he’s still somewhere in the house,” the homicide lieutenant ventured.

  “No, he’s not,” the narcotics lieutenant stated flatly.

  “Then maybe Benny was leveling with her.”

  “No, he was probably trying to scare her,” the homicide lieutenant said.

  “He scared her all right,” Coffin Ed said. “But right away he offered her five thousand dollars if she would help them find him — Pinky that is.”

  “Generous bastard,” the T-man said.

  “That’s when she got on their side,” Coffin Ed said. “With Gus dead and five G’s in her apron, and now the farm was hers too, she could marry the African. She didn’t know he was dead. So she put her mind to it, and then she remembered noticing the night before that the trunk had been moved from the storage room into the hall. And as a rule Pinky did all the heavy moving. So she said maybe Pinky had it with him.