A Rage in Harlem (22 page)

“Straighten up,” he said thickly.

“It’s a mother— plant,” Jodie grated.

Jodie had his left hand resting on Jeanie’s curly head, his right hand extended, the knife open. With a sudden tight grip his left hand closed and he lifted the girl up from the floor by her hair, holding her in front of him as a shield, and put the sharp naked blade tight against her throat as he came violently to his feet.

The girl didn’t cry out, didn’t utter a sound, didn’t faint. Her body went flaccid beneath Jodie’s grip. Her face was stretched into distortion, a drop of blood trickled slowly down her taut neck. Her eyes were huge black pools of animal terror, slanting upwards at the edges, overwhelming her small distorted face. She didn’t breathe.

Grave Digger caught a look at her face from the corner of his eye, and didn’t move for fear of starting that knife across her throat.

Hank stared at Grave Digger dreamily without moving, his fingers still curled about the butt of the hidden .38. Grave Digger stared back. They were watching the flicker of each other’s eyes, paying no attention to Jodie and the paralyzed girl. Nobody spoke. Carol stood frozen with one hand on the door knob. Imabelle stood trembling, out of range on the other side. Everything was in pantomime.

Jodie backed toward the door that opened into the kitchen. The girl backed with him, followed his every motion with a corresponding motion, as if performing some macabre dance. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead in pools of undripping tears.

Jodie brought up against the door. “Reach around me and open it,” he ordered the girl.

The girl reached her left hand carefully around his body, felt for the key, turned it, and opened the door.

Jodie backed into the kitchen, still holding the girl in front of him.

Billie stood silently beside the white enamel electric range with a double-bladed wood-chopper’s axe held poised over her right shoulder, waiting for Jodie to come into reach. He took another step backward, his eyes on Grave Digger’s guns. Billie chopped his upper forearm in a forward-moving strike to knock the knife blade forward from the girl’s throat. Jodie wheeled in violent reflex his knife-arm flopping like an empty sleeve, as the knife clattered on the tiled floor, struck out backwards with the edge of his left hand. Billie took the blow across the mouth as she chopped him in the center of the back between the shoulder blades, like splitting a log, knocking him forward to his knees.

His head flew about to look at her as he cried, “Mother-raping—”

She put her whole weight in a down-chopping blow and sank the sharp blade of the axe into the side of his neck with such force it hewed through the spinal column and left his head dangling over his left shoulder on a thin strip of flesh, the epithet still on his lips.

Blood geysered from red stump of neck over the fainting girl as Billie dropped the axe, picked her bodily in her arms, and showered her with kisses.

As if it were a signal Hank was waiting for, he swung up the black snout of his .38 automatic, knowing that he didn’t have a chance.

Before it had cleared his hip, Grave Digger shot him through the right eye with his own pistol held in his right hand. While Hank’s body was jerking from the bullet in the brain, Grave Digger said, “For you, Ed,” took dead aim with Coffin Ed’s pistol held in his left hand, and shot the dying killer through the staring left eye.

Pandemonium broke loose in the house. Imabelle slipped beneath Grave Digger’s arm and bolted toward the door. Guests poured from the rooms into the narrow hall in a panic-stricken stampede.

But Grave Digger had already wheeled into the hall after Imabelle, pushed her into the corner, and blocked the door. He
flicked on the bright overhead lights with the barrel of one gun and stood with his back against the door with a gun in each hand.

“Straighten up,” he shouted in a big loud voice. And then, as if echoing his own voice, he mimicked Coffin Ed, “Count off.”

“And now, Little Sister,” he said to the cowering woman in the corner. “Where’s Slim?”

Her teeth were chattering so she could scarcely speak.

“In the – in the trunk,” she stammered.

It was hot in the small room high up on the twenty-second floor of the granite-faced county building far downtown in City Center. Pink-shirted young Assistant DA John Lawrence, who had been assigned to conduct the interrogation, sat behind a large flat-topped green steel desk, his blond crew-cut hair shining with cleanliness in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun.

Jackson sat on the edge of a green leather chair across from him, dirty and disheveled and shades blacker than he ever looked in Harlem. Grave Digger sat sidewise on the wide window ledge, looking across Manhattan Island at an ocean liner going down the Hudson River, headed for the Narrows and Le Havre. A court stenographer sat at the end of the desk with a stylo poised over his notebook.

For a moment motion was suspended.

Lawrence had just finished questioning Jackson. Suddenly he stirred. He wiped the sweat from his freckled face, combed his manicured fingernails through his hair, and shifted his athletic shoulders in the Brooks Brothers gray flannel suit.

He had read Grave Digger’s report over twice before he had begun his interrogation. He had read the report from the 95th Street precinct. The trunk containing Slim’s body had been reported by a Fifth Avenue bus driver who had noticed it lying open in the street. The police had found Slim’s body, bearing twenty stab-wounds, wrapped in a blanket weighted with rocks, and had taken it to the morgue.

The bodies of Hank and Jodie had also been taken to the morgue. They had been identified by fingerprints as the men
wanted in Mississippi for murder.

The apartment on Upper Park Avenue had been investigated. All it had revealed as evidence had been a quantity of fool’s gold piled on the coal in the coalbin.

He had listened for two hours to the unfolding of the saga of the high-yellow woman and the trunk full of solid gold ore with increasing stupefaction. Still he did not believe he had heard it all correctly.

He stared at Jackson with a look of awed incredulity.

“Whew!” he whistled softly.

He and the court stenographer exchanged glances.

Grave Digger didn’t look around.

“Any questions you want to ask, Jones?” Lawrence asked with a note of appeal.

Grave Digger turned his head.

“What for?”

Lawrence looked back at Jackson and said helplessly, “And you insist, to the best of your knowledge, that the trunk contained gold ore and nothing else?”

Jackson mopped his own shining black face with a handkerchief almost the same color.

“Yes, sir, I’d swear to it on a stack of Bibles. As many times as I have seen it.”

“You also state, to the best of your knowledge, that the Perkins woman had already left the scene – the area – when your brother—” He consulted his notes. “— er, Sister Gabriel, was murdered.”

“Yes sir. I’d swear to it. I had looked all over for her and she was gone.”

Lawrence cleared his throat.

“Had gone, yes. And you still contend that she – the Perkins woman, was held by this gang – this man Slim – against her will.”

“I know she was,” Jackson declared.

“How can you be so certain about that, Jackson? Did she tell you that?”

“She didn’t have to tell me, Mr. Lawrence. I know she was. I know Imabelle. I know she wouldn’t have taken up with those people without their making her. I know my Imabelle. She wouldn’t do anything like that. I’d swear to it.”

Grave Digger kept looking at the river.

Lawrence studied Jackson covertly, pretending he was reading
his notes. He had heard of gullible colored people like Jackson, but he had never seen one in the flesh before.

“Ahem! And you insist that she had nothing to do with the gang’s cheating you out of your money?”

“No sir. Why would she do that? It was as much her money as it was mine.”

Lawrence sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s any need of asking, but it’s a matter of form. You don’t want to prefer charges against her, do you?”

“Prefer charges against her? Against Imabelle? What for, Mr. Lawrence? What’s she done?”

Lawrence closed his notebook decisively and looked over at Grave Digger. “What’s city got on him, Jones?”

Grave Digger turned back, but still didn’t look at Jackson.

“Reckless driving. Destruction of property. Some of it is covered by the automobile insurance. And resisting arrest.”

“Are you going to take him?”

Grave Digger shook his head. “His boss has already gone his bail.”

Lawrence stared at Grave Digger.

“He has!” Jackson exclaimed involuntarily. “Mr. Clay? He’s gone my bail? He hasn’t got any warrant out for my arrest?”

Lawrence turned to stare at Jackson.

“He stole five hundred dollars from his boss,” Grave Digger said. “Clay swore out a warrant for his arrest but late this morning he withdrew the charge.”

Lawrence ran his fingers through his clipped hair again.

“All of these people sound as though they’re raving crazy,” he muttered, but when he noticed the stenographer taking down his words he said, “Never mind that.” He looked at Grave Digger again. “What do you make of it?”

Grave Digger shrugged slightly. “Who knows?”

Lawrence stared at Jackson. “What have you got on your boss?”

Jackson fidgeted beneath the stare and mopped his face to hide his confusion. “I ain’t got nothing on him.”

“Shall I hold him as a material witness?” Lawrence appealed again to Grave Digger.

“What for? Witness against whom? He’s told all he knows, and he’s not going anywhere.”

Lawrence let out his breath. “Well, you’re free to go, Jackson.
The county has nothing on you. But I advise you to contact all those claimants immediately – those people whose property you destroyed. Get them squared up before they press charges.”

“Yes sir, I’m going to do that right away.”

He stood up, then hesitated, fiddling with his chauffeur’s cap.

“Have any of you-all heard anything from my woman – where she’s at or anything?”

All three of them turned again to stare at him. Finally Lawrence said, “She’s being held.”

“She is? In jail? What for?”

They stared at him in an unbelieving manner. “We’re holding her for questioning,” Lawrence finally said.

“Can I see her? Talk to her, I mean?”

“Not now, Jackson. We haven’t talked to her yet ourselves.”

“When do you think I’ll be able to see her?”

“Pretty soon, perhaps. You don’t have to worry about her. She’s safe. I advise you to get about squaring up those claimants as soon as you can.”

“Yes sir. I’m going to see Mr. Clay right now.”

When Jackson had left, Lawrence said to Grave Digger, “It’s pretty well established that Jackson is as innocent as a lamb, don’t you think?”

“Sheared lamb,” the court stenographer put in.

Grave Digger grunted.

“Have you had any news on your partner, Jones?” Lawrence asked.

“I was by the hospital.”

“How is he?”

“They said he would see, but he’d never look the same.”

Lawrence sighed again, squared his shoulders and assumed a look of grim determination. He pressed a button on his desk, and when a cop poked his head in from the corridor, he said, “Bring in the Perkins woman.”

Imabelle wore the same red dress, but now it looked bedraggled. The side of her face where Grave Digger had slapped her had flowered into deep purple streaked with orange.

She gave Grave Digger a quick look and shied away from his calculating stare. Then she took the seat facing Lawrence, started to cross her legs but thought better of it and sat with her knees pressed together, her back held rigid, on the very edge of the seat.

Lawrence looked at her briefly, then studied the notes in front of him. He took his time and reread all the reports.

“Jesus Christ, all this cutting and shooting,” he muttered. “This room is swimming in blood. No, no, don’t take that,” he added to the court stenographer.

He looked up at Imabelle again, slowly stroking his chin, wondering where to begin questioning her.

“Who was Slim?” he finally asked. “What was his real name? We have him down here as Goldsmith. In Mississippi he was known as Skinner.”

“Jimson.”

“Jimson! Is that a name? Christian name or family name?”

“Clefus Jimson. That was his real name.”

“And the other two. What were their real names?”

“I don’t know. They used a lot of names. I don’t know what their real names were.”

“This Jimson.” The name felt unpleasant in his mouth. “We’ll just call him Slim. Who was Slim? What was your connection with him?”

“He was my husband.”

“I thought as much. Where were you married?”

“We weren’t exactly married. He was my common-law husband.”

“Oh! Were you – did you keep in touch with him? That is, while you were living with Jackson?”

“No sir. I hadn’t seen him or heard anything about him for almost a year.”

“Then how did he get in touch with you – or you in touch with him, however it worked?”

“I ran into him at Billie’s by accident.”

“Billie’s?” Lawrence consulted his notes again. “Oh yes, that’s where the other two were killed.” My God, the blood, he was thinking. “What were you doing at Billie’s?”

“Just visiting. I’d go up there afternoons when Jackson was at work, just to sit around and visit. I didn’t like to hang around in bars where it might cast reflections on him.”

“Ah. I see. And when you met Slim you and he connived together to cheat Jackson on the confidence game–” He glanced at his notes. “The Blow.”

“I didn’t want to. They made me do it.”

“How could they force you to do it if you didn’t want to?”

“I was scared to death of him. All three of them. They had it in for me and I was scared they’d kill me.”

“You mean they had a grudge against you. Why?”

“I’d taken the trunk full of gold ore they used to work their lost-gold-mine racket with.”

“You mean the fool’s gold that was found in the coalbin where you and Slim lived?”