A Rage in Harlem (8 page)

“Help! Help! They’s tramplin’ me!”

“They’s killin’ a colored woman!” another prisoner yelled.

Everybody began fighting.

The desk sergeant looked down from the sanctuary of his desk and said in a bored voice, “Jesus Christ.”

At that moment Coffin Ed and Grave Digger entered with their two prisoners.

“Straighten up!” Grave Digger shouted in a stentorian voice.

“Count off!” Coffin Ed yelled.

Both of them drew their pistols at the same time and put a fusillade into the ceiling, which was already filled with holes they’d shot into it before.

The sudden shooting in the jammed room scared hell out of prisoners and cops alike. Everybody froze.

“As you were!” Grave Digger shouted.

He and Coffin Ed pushed their prisoners through the silent pack toward the desk.

The Harlem hoodlums under arrest looked at them from the corners of their eyes.

“Don’t make graves,” Grave Digger cautioned.

The lieutenant in charge glanced out briefly from the precinct captain’s office behind the desk, but everything was quiet.

Goldy slipped unobtrusively into the room and stood just inside the doorway, stopping all the bail bondsmen who passed him with a jangle of his collection box.

“Give to the Lawd, gentlemen. Give to the poor.”

If there was anything strange about a black Sister of Mercy soliciting in a Harlem precinct police station at one o’clock in the morning, no one remarked it.

Coffin Ed and Grave Digger got their prisoners booked immediately and handed them over to the jailor. The captain wanted to keep them in the street, not tied up all night in the station.

When they left, Goldy climbed into the back of their small black sedan and left with them. They parked the car in the dark on 127th Street and Grave Digger turned around.

“All right, what’s the tip about the frogs?”

“ ‘Blessed is he that watcheth—’ ” Goldy began quoting.

Grave Digger cut him off. “Can that Bible-quoting crap. We let
you operate because you’re a stooly, and that’s all. And don’t you forget, we know you, Bud.”

“Know everything there is to know about you,” Coffin Ed added. “And I hate a goddam female impersonator worse than God hates sin. So just give, Bud, give.”

Goldy dropped his pose and talked straight.

“There’s three con men operating here that’s wanted in Mississippi on a murder rap.”

“We know that much already,” Grave Digger said. “Just give us the monickers they’re using and tell us where they’re holed up.”

“Two of them go as Morgan and Walker. I don’t know the slim stud’s handle. And I don’t know where they’re holed up. They’re working the lost-gold-mine pitch and they’re using a shill named Gus Parsons to bring in the suckers blindfolded.”

“Where did you make them?”

“At Big Kathy’s. Morgan and Walker were there tonight.”

“Fill it in, fill it in,” Grave Digger said harshly.

“I got a brother named Jackson, works for Exodus Clay. They took him for fifteen C’s on The Blow. His old lady, Imabelle, tricked him into it, then she ran away with the slim stud.”

“She’s up with the gold-mine pitch?”

“Must be.”

“What are they using for gold ore?”

“They got a few phony rocks.”

Grave Digger turned to Coffin Ed. “We can take them at Big Kathy’s.”

“I got a better plan,” Goldy said. “I’m goin’ to load Jackson with a phony roll and let Gus Parsons contact him. Gus’ll take him in to their headquarters and you-all can follow them.”

Grave Digger shook his head. “You just said they took Jackson on The Blow.”

“But Gus wasn’t with them. Gus don’t know Jackson. By the time Gus finds out his mistake you’ll have the collar on them all.”

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed exchanged looks. Coffin Ed nodded.

“Okay, Bud, we’ll take them tomorrow night,” Grave Digger said, then added grimly, “I suppose you’re your brother’s beneficiary.”

“I’m just tryin’ to help him, that’s all,” Goldy protested. “He wants his woman back.”

“I’ll bet,” Coffin Ed said.

They let Goldy out of the car and drove off.

“Isn’t there a warrant out for Jackson?” Coffin Ed remarked.

“Yeah, stole five hundred dollars from his boss.”

“We’ll take him too.”

“We’ll take them all.”

The next afternoon when Jackson had finished eating, Goldy gave him a fill-in on the gang’s setup and told him his plan to trap them.

“And here’s the bait.”

He made a huge roll out of stage money, encircled it with two bona fide ten-dollar bills, and bound it with an elastic band. That was the way jokers in Harlem carried their money when they wanted to big-time. He tossed it onto the table.

“Put that in your pocket, Bruzz, and you’re goin’ to be one big fat black piece of cheese. You’re goin’ to look like the biggest piece of cheese them rats ever seen.”

Jackson looked at the phony roll without touching it.

He didn’t like any part of Goldy’s plan. Anything could go wrong. If there was a rumpus the detectives might grab him and let the real criminals go, like that phony marshal had done. Of course, these were real detectives. But they were colored detectives just the same. And from what he’d heard about them they believed in shooting first and questioning the bodies afterward.

“Course if you don’t want your gal back—” Goldy prodded.

Jackson picked up the phony roll and slipped it into his side pants-pocket. Then he crossed himself and knelt beside the table on the floor. Devoutly bowing his head, he whispered a prayer.

“Dear Lord in heaven, if You can’t see fit to help this poor sinner in his hour of need, please don’t help those dirty murderers either.”

“What are you prayin’ for, man?” Goldy said. “Ain’t nothin’ can happen to you. You goin’ to be covered.”

“That’s what I’m worrying about,” Jackson said. “I don’t want to get covered too deep.…”

The Braddock Bar was on the corner of 126th Street and Eighth Avenue, next door to a Negro-owned loan and insurance company and the Harlem weekly newspaper.

It had an expensive-looking front, small English-type windows with diamond-shaped leaded panes. Once it had claimed respectability, had been patronized by the white and colored businessmen in the neighborhood and their respectable employees. But when the whorehouses, gambling clubs, dope dens had taken over 126th Street to prey on the people from 125th Street, it had gone into bad repute.

“This bar has gone from sugar to shit,” Jackson muttered to himself when he arrived there at seven o’clock.

The cold snowy February night was already getting liquored up.

Jackson squeezed into a place before the long bar, ordered a shot of rye, and looked at his neighbors nervously.

The bar was jammed with the lowest Harlem types, pinched-faced petty hustlers, sneak thieves, pickpockets, muggers, dope pushers, big rough workingmen in overalls and leather jackets. Everyone looked mean or dangerous.

Three hefty bartenders patrolled the sloppy floor behind, silently filling shot glasses and collecting coins.

A jukebox at the front was blaring, a whiskey-voice was shouting,
“Rock me, daddy, eight to the beat. Rock me, daddy, from my head to my feet.”

Goldy had instructed Jackson to flash his roll as soon as he’d ordered his first drink, but Jackson didn’t have the nerve. He felt that everyone was watching him. He ordered a second drink. Then he noticed that everyone was watching everyone else, as though each one regarded his neighbor as either a potential victim or a stool pigeon for the police.

“Everybody in here lookin’ for something, ain’t they?” the man next to him said.

Jackson gave a start. “Looking for something?”

“See them whores, they’re looking for a trick. See them
muggers ganged around the door, they looking for a drunk to roll. These jokers in here are just waiting for a man to flash his money.”

“Seems like I’ve seen you before,” Jackson said. “Your name ain’t Gus Parsons, is it?”

The man looked at Jackson suspiciously and began moving away. “What you want to know my name for?”

“I just thought I knew you,” Jackson said, fingering the roll in his pocket, trying to get up enough courage to flash it.

He was saved for the moment by a fight.

Two rough-looking men jumped about the floor, knocking over chairs and tables, cutting at one another with switchblade knives. The customers at the bar screwed their heads about to watch, but held on to their places and kept their hands on their drinks. The whores rolled their eyes and looked bored.

One joker slashed the other’s arm. A big-lipped wound opened in the tight leather jacket, but nothing came out but old clothes – two sweaters, three shirts, a pair of winter underwear. The second joker slashed back, opened a wound in the front of his foe’s canvas jacket. But all that came out of the wound was dried printer’s ink from the layers of old newspapers the joker had wrapped about him to keep warm. They kept slashing away at one another like two rag dolls battling in buck-dancing fury, spilling old clothes and last week’s newsprint instead of blood.

The customers laughed.

“How them studs goin’ to get cut?” someone remarked. “Might as well be fightin’ old ragman’s bag.”

“They ain’t doin’ nothin’ but cheatin’ the Salvation Army.”

“They ain’t tryin’ to cut each other, man. Them studs know each other. They just tryin’ to freeze each other to death.”

One of the bartenders went out with a sawed-off baseball bat and knocked one of the fighters on the head. When that one fell the other one leaned down to cut him again and the bartender knocked him on the head also.

Two white cops strolled in lazily, as though they had smelled the fight, and took the battlers away.

Jackson thought it might be safe then to flash his roll. He took out the phony bills, carefully peeled off a ten, threw it onto the bar.

“Take out for two rye whiskeys,” he said.

A dead silence fell. Every eye in the joint looked at the roll in his
hand, then looked at him, then at the bartender.

The bartender held the bill up to the light, peered through it, turned it over and snapped it between his hands, then he rang it up in the register and slammed the change onto the bar.

“What you want to do, get your throat cut?” he said angrily.

“What you want me to do, walk off without paying?” Jackson argued.

“I just don’t want no trouble in here,” the bartender said, but it was too late for that.

Underworld characters closed in on Jackson from all sides. But the whores got there first, pressing their wares so hard against Jackson he couldn’t tell whether they were soliciting or trying to dispose of surplus merchandise. The pickpockets were trying to break through. The muggers waited at the door. Everyone else watched him, curious and attentive.

“That’s my money,” a big whiskey-headed ex-pug shouted, pushing through the crowd toward Jackson. “That mother–has done picked my pocket.”

Someone laughed.

“Don’t let that joker scare you, honey,” one of the whores encouraged.

Another one said, “That raggedy stud ain’t had two white quarters since Jesus was a child.”

“I don’t want no trouble in here,” the bartender warned, reaching for his sawed-off bat.

“I know my money,” the ex-pug shouted. “Can’t nobody tell me I don’t know my own money.”

“What’s the difference between your money and anybody else’s money?” the bartender said.

A medium-sized, brown-skinned man, dressed in a camel’s-hair coat, brown beaver hat, hard-finished brown-and-white striped suit, brown suede shoes, brown silk tie decorated with hand-painted yellow horses, wearing a diamong ring on his left ring-finger and a gold signet-ring on his right hand, carrying gloves in his left hand, swinging his right hand free, pushed open the street door and came into the bar fast. He stopped short on seeing the ex-pug grab Jackson by the shoulder. He heard the ex-pug say in a threatening voice, “Leave me see that mother-rapin’ roll.” He noticed the two bartenders close in for action. He saw the whores backing away. He cased the situation instantly. Pushing his way through the jam, he walked up behind the ex-pug, took hold of his
arm, spun him about and kicked him solidly in the groin.

The big ex-pug doubled forward, blowing spit in a loud grunt. The man stepped back and kicked him in the solar plexus. The ex-pug’s face ballooned as he gasped for breath, folding head-downward toward the floor. The man stepped back another pace and kicked him in the face with the curve of his instep, hard enough to close one eye without breaking any bones, and timed so that the ex-pug fell on his chest instead of his face. Then the man daintily inserted the tip of his brown suede shoe underneath the ex-pug’s shoulder and flipped him over onto his back. Slowly he stuck his right hand into the side pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a short-barreled .38 police special revolver.

The customers scattered, getting out of range.

“You’re the son of a bitch who robbed me last night,” the man said to the half-conscious ex-pug on the floor. “I’ve got a good notion to blow out your guts.”

He had a good voice and spoke in a soft, slow manner that made him sound like an educated man, to the customers in that joint.

“Don’t shoot him in here, Mister,” one of the bartenders said.

At sight of the gun the ex-pug’s eyeballs rolled back in his head so that only the whites showed. He kept swallowing his tongue as he tried to talk.

“Twarn’t me, Boss,” he finally managed to blubber. “I swear ’fore the cross it warn’t me. I ain’t never tried to rob you, Boss.”

“The hell it wasn’t you. I’d know you anywhere. You jumped me on 129th Street right after midnight last night.”

“I swear it warn’t me, Boss. I been right here in this bar all last night. Joe the bartender’ll tell you. I been right here all last night. Didn’t leave no time.”

“That’s right,” the bartender said. “He was here all last night. I seen him.”

The ex-pug wallowed about the floor, feeling his eye and groaning as though half dead, trying to win sympathy.

The man put away his gun and said evenly, “Well, you son of a bitch, I might be mistaken this time. But you’ve sure as hell robbed somebody in your lifetime, so you just got what was due you.”