A Rage in Harlem (17 page)

The surrounding area was choked with bars, flea-ridden flophouses called hotels, all-night cafetarias, hop dens, whorehouses, gambling joints, catering to all the whims of nature.

Black and white folks rubbed shoulders day and night, over the beer-wet bars, getting red-eyed and rambunctious from the ruckus juice and fist-fighting in the street between the passing cars. They sat side by side in the neon glare of the food factories, eating things from the steam tables that had no resemblance to food.

Whores buzzed about the area like green flies over stewing chitterlings.

The whining voices of blues singers, coming from the nightmare-lighted jukeboxes, floated in noisome air:

Muggers with scarred faces cased the lone pedestrians like hyenas watching lions feast.

Purse snatchers grabbed a poke and ran toward the dark beneath the trestle, trying to dodge the cops’ bullets pinging against the iron stanchions. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t.

White gangsters, four and six together in the bullet-proof limousines, coming and going from the syndicate headquarters down the street, passed the harness cops in the patrol cars, giving them look for look.

Inside the station plainclothes detectives were on twenty-four hour duty. Outside on the street a patrol car was always in sight.

But Imabelle was more scared of Hank and Jodie than she was of the cops. She had never been mugged or fingerprinted. All the cops had ever wanted from her was a piece. Imabelle was a girl who believed that a fair exchange was no robbery.

She had her black coat buttoned tight, but running made the skirt flare, exposing a teasing strip of red dress.

A middle-aged church-going man, good husband and father of three school-age daughters, on his way to work, dressed in clean, starched overalls and an army jumper, heard the tapping of her heels on the pavement when he stepped from his ground-floor tenement.

“A mighty light-footed whore,” he mumbled to himself.

When he came out onto the sidewalk he looked around and saw the flash of her high-yellow face and the tantalizing strip of red skirt in the spill of street light. He caught a sudden live-wire edge. He couldn’t help it. His wife had been ailing and he hadn’t had his ashes hauled in God knows when. As he looked at that fine yaller gal tripping his way, his teeth shone in his black face like a lighthouse on the sea.

“You is for me, baby,” he said in a big bass voice, grabbing her by the arm. He was willing to put out five bucks.

Without breaking the flow of her motion she smacked him in his face with her black pocketbook.

The blow startled him more than it hurt. He hadn’t meant her any harm; he just wanted to give the girl a play. But when he thought about a whore hitting a church man like himself, he became enraged. He closed in and clutched her.

“Don’t you hit me, whore.”

“Turn me loose, you black mother-raper,” she fumed, struggling furiously in his grip.

He was a garbage collector and strong as a horse. She couldn’t break free.

“Don’t cuss me, whore, ’cause I’m going to get some of you whether you like it or not,” he mouthed in a red raving passion of rage and lust, aiming to throw her to the pavement and rape her then and there.

“You going’ to get some of your mama, you big mother-raper,” she cursed, digging a switchblade knife, similar to Jodie’s, from her coat pocket. She slashed him across the cheek.

He jumped back, clinging to her with one hand, and felt his cheek with the other. He took away his bloody hand and looked at the blood on it. He looked surprised. It was his own blood.

“You cut me, you whore,” he said in a surprised voice.

“I’ll cut you again, you mother-raper,” she said, and began slashing at him in a feminine fury.

He released her and backed away, striking at the knife with his bare hands as though trying to beat off a wasp.

“What’s the matter with you, whore?” he was saying, but his voice was drowned by the thunder of a train approaching the station. Suddenly the whistle blew like a human scream.

It scared her so much she jumped back and stared at the slashed man as though it had been he who had screamed.

“I’ll kill you, you whore,” he said, preparing to charge her knife.

She knew she couldn’t make him run, couldn’t cut him down, and if he overpowered her he’d kill her. She turned and ran toward the station, swinging the open knife.

He ran after her, trailing blood from his face and hands.

“Don’t let ’im catch you, baby,” someone called encouragement from the dark.

The train overtook them, thundered by overhead, shaking the earth, shaking her running ass, shaking the blood from his wounds like scattered rain drops. It started grinding to a stop. The thunder terrified her; the brackish sound filled her mouth with
acid.

She threw the knife into the gutter and ran past the line of waiting taxicabs, the cruising whores, the colored loiterers; turned, without stopping, through the side entrance into the waiting room, ran back to the women’s toilet underneath the stairs, and locked herself inside.

The motley group of people standing about, sitting on the wooden benches, scarcely paid any attention. It wasn’t unusual to see a woman running in that area.

But when the man hit the door, bleeding like a stuck bull, everybody sat up.

“I’m going to kill dat whore,” he raved as he burst into the waiting room.

A colored brother looked at him and said, “She sho gave him some love-licks.”

The man was halfway to the toilet when the white detective ran up and clutched him by both arms.

“Hold on, Brother Jones, hold on. What’s the trouble?”

The man twisted in the detective’s grip, but didn’t break free.

“Listen, white folks, I don’t want no trouble. That whore cut me and I’m going to get some of her.”

“Hold on, hold on, brother. If she cut you we’ll get her. But you’re not going to get anybody. Understand?”

The colored detective sauntered up, looked indifferently at the bleeding man.

“Who cut him?”

“He said some woman did.”

“Where’d she go?”

“She ran into the women’s toilet.”

The colored detective asked the cut man, “What does she look like?”

“Bright woman in a black coat and a red dress.”

The colored detective laughed.

“Better let those bright whores alone, Daddy-o.”

He turned, laughing, and went back toward the women’s toilet.

Two uniformed cops from a patrol car came in quickly, as if expecting trouble. They looked disappointed when they didn’t find any.

“Call the ambulance, will you?” the white detective said to one of them.

The cop hastened out to the patrol car to call the police ambulance
on the two-way radio. The other cop just stood.

People gathered in a circle to stare at the big cut black man dripping red blood on the brown tiled floor. A porter came up with a wet mop and looked disapprovingly at the bloody floor.

Nobody thought it was unusual. It happened once or twice every night in that station. The only thing missing was that no one was dead.

“What did she cut you for?” the white detective asked.

“Just mean, that’s why. She’s just a mean whore.”

The detective looked as though he agreed.

The colored detective found the toilet door locked. He knocked. “Open up, Bright-eyes.”

No one answered. He knocked again.

“It’s the law, honey. Don’t make me have to get the stationmaster to get this door open or papa’s going to be rough.”

The inside bolt was slipped back. He pushed and the door opened.

Imabelle faced him from the mirror. She had washed and powdered her face, straightened her hair, rouged her lips, wiped off her high-heeled black suede shoes, and looked as though she’d just stepped from a band box.

He flashed his badge and grinned at her.

She said complainingly, “Can’t a lady clean up a little in this joint without you cops busting in?”

He looked around. The only other occupants were two white women of middle age, who were cowering in a far corner.

“Are you the woman who’s having trouble with that man?” he asked Imabelle, trying to trick a confession from her.

She didn’t go for it. “Having trouble with what man?” She screwed up her face and looked indignant. “I came in here to clean up. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, Baby, don’t give papa any trouble,” he said, looking her over as though he might consider laying her.

She gave him a look from her big brown bedroom eyes and flashed her pearly smile as though it might be a good consideration.

“If any man says he’s having trouble with me, you can just say that’s his own fault.”

“I know just what you mean, Baby, but you shouldn’t have cut him.”

“I ain’t cut nobody,” she said, switching out into the waiting
room.

“That’s the whore who cut me,” the man said, pointing a finger dripping with blood.

The morbid crowd turned to stare at her.

“Man, I’d have cut her first,” some joker said. “If you know what I mean.”

Imabelle ignored the crowd as she pushed her way forward. She walked up and faced the cut man and looked him straight in the face.

“This the man you mean?” she asked the colored detective.

“That’s the one who’s cut.”

“I ain’t never seen this man before in my life.”

“You lying whore!” the man shouted.

“Take it easy, Daddy-o,” the colored detective warned.

“What’d I cut you for, if I cut you?” Imabelle challenged.

The onlookers laughed.

One colored brother quoted:

“Come on, where’s the knife?” the white detective said to Imabelle. “I’m getting tired of this horseplay.”

“I’d better search the washroom,” the colored detective said.

“She throwed it away outside,” the cut man said, “I seen her throw it into the street, before she ran inside.”

“Why didn’t you pick it up?” the detective asked.

“Who for?” the cut man asked in surprise. “I don’t need no knife to kill that whore. I can kill her with my hands.”

The detective stared at him.

“For evidence. You say she cut you.”

“Let’s get it,” one of the patrol cops said to the other and they went outside to look for the knife.

“Course she cut me. You can see for yourself,” the cut man said.

The crowd laughed and started drifting away.

“Do you want to make a charge against this woman?”

“Charge? I’m charging her now. You can see for yourself she cut me.”

Some joker said, “If she didn’t cut you, you better see a doctor about those leaky veins.”

“What are you holding me for?” Imabelle said to the white detective. “I tell you I ain’t never seen this man before. He’s got me mistaken for somebody else.”

Another team of patrol-car cops came on the scene, looking at the cut black man with the curiosity of whites as they drew off their heavy gloves.

“You are to take these people to the precinct,” the white detective said. “The man wants to enter a charge of assault against this woman.”

“Jesus, I don’t want him bleeding all over the car,” one of the cops complained.

The whine of an ambulance sounded from the distance.

“Here comes the ambulance now,” the colored detective said.

“Why they going to take me in when I haven’t done anything?” Imabelle appealed to him.

He looked at her sympathetically. “I feel for you but I can’t reach you, Baby,” he said.

“If you prove your innocence you can sue him for false arrest,” the white detective said.

“Well, ain’t that something?” she said angrily.

Outside, the two uniformed cops searched in the gutter for the missing knife. Two colored men standing on the sidewalk watched them silently.

Finally one of the cops thought to ask them, “Did either of you men see anyone pick up a knife around here?”

“I seen a colored boy pick it up,” one of the men admitted.

The cops reddened.

“God damn it, didn’t you see us looking for it?” one asked angrily.

“You didn’t say what you was looking for, Boss.”

“By this time the bastard is probably blocks away,” the second cop complained.

“Where’d he go?” the first cop asked.

The man pointed up Park Avenue.

Both cops gave him a hard threatening look.

“What did he look like?”

The colored man turned to his companion.

“What he look like, you think?”

The second colored man disapproved of his companion’s volunteering information to white cops about a colored boy.

“I didn’t see him,” he said, showing his disapproval.

Both cops turned to stare at him in rage.

“You didn’t seen him,” one mimicked. “Well, God damn it, you’re both under arrest.”

The cops escorted the two colored men around to the front of the station and put them on the back seat of their patrol car while they got into the front seat. Passersby glanced at them with brief curiosity, and passed on.

The cops turned the car up Park Avenue on the wrong side to show their power. The red light beamed like an evil eye. They drove slowly, flashing the adjustable spotlights along the sidewalks, into the faces of pedestrians, into doorways, cracks, corners, vacant lots, searching for a colored boy who had picked up a bloodstained knife among the half-million colored people in Harlem.

They were just in time to see a panel delivery truck with a mangled rear fender turn the corner into 130th Street, but they weren’t interested in it.

“What shall we do with these black sons of bitches?” one of the cops asked the other.

“Let ’em go.”

The driver stopped the car and said, “Get out.”

The two colored men got out and walked back toward the station.

When they arrived the ambulance was driving off, taking the cut man to Harlem Hospital so his wounds could be stitched before sending him on to the precinct station to prefer charges against Imabelle.