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Authors: Chester Himes

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BOOK: All Shot Up
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He was Mister Louise, Mammy’s husband. He had been picking up a hot little brownskin waitress at the Fischer Cafeteria next to the 125th Street railroad station every Saturday night since the new year began.

But Mammy Louise had got a bulldog. It was a six-year-old bulldog of a dirty white color with a mouth big enough to let in full-grown cats. It sat on its haunches directly in front of Mister Louise’s shinily shod feet and stared up into his desperate face with a lidded, unblinking look. Its pink mouth was wide open as it panted in the steamy heat; its red tongue hung down its chest. There was a big wet spot on the floor where it had been drooling as though it would like nothing better than a hunk of Mister Louise’s fat black meat.

“He wants us to help him,” Coffin Ed whispered.

“And get ourselves chawed up by that dog instead of him.”

Mammy Louise looked up from the stove where she had been stirring a pot. She was fatter than Mister Louise, but not quite as tall. She wore an old woolen bathrobe over an old jersey dress, under which were layers of warm woolen underclothing. Over the bathrobe she wore a black knitted shawl; her head was protected by a man’s beaver hat with a turned-up brim, and her feet were encased in fur-lined woodsmen’s boots.

She was a Geechy, born and raised in the swamps south of Tater Patch, South Carolina. Geechies are a mélange of runaway African slaves and Seminole Indians, native to the Carolinas and Florida. Their mother tongue is a mixture of African dialects and the Seminole language; and she spoke English with a strange, indefinable accent that sounded somewhat similar to a conference of crows.

“What you two p’licemens whispering about so seriously?” she asked suspiciously.

It took a moment before they could piece together what she said.

“We got a bet,” Grave Digger replied with a straight face.

“Naw we haven’t,” Coffin Ed denied.

“You p’licemens,” she said scornfully. “Gamblin’ an’ carryin’ on an’ whippin’ innocent folkses’ heads with your big pistols.”

“Not if they’re innocent,” Grave Digger contradicted.

“Don’t tell me,” she said argumentatively. “I has seen you.” She curled her thick, sensuous lips. “Whippin’ grown men about as if they was children. Mister Louise wouldn’t stand for it,” she added, looking slyly from her husband’s desperate face to the slobbering bulldog. “Get up, Mister Louise, and show these p’licemens how you captured them train robbers that time.”

Mister Louise looked at her gratefully and started to his feet. The bulldog raised up and growled a warning; Mister Louise slumped back into his seat.

Mammy Louise winked her off eye at the detectives. “Mister Louise ain’t so pokey tonight,” she explained. “He just want to set here and keep me company.”

“So we noticed,” Coffin Ed said.

Mister Louise stared longingly at the long-barreled, nickel-plated .38 caliber revolvers sticking from the two detectives’ shoulder holsters.

They heard the front door to the store open and bang shut. Feet stamped. A whisky-thick voice called, “Hey, Mammy Louise, come out here and give me a pot of them frozen chitterlings.”

She waddled through the curtained doorway leading to the store. They heard her opening a five-gallon milk can and shuffling about, and the customer protesting, “I don’t wants them loose chitterlings; I wants some frozen chitterlings,” and her sharp reply, “If you wants to eat ’em frozen just take ’em outside and freeze ’em; hit’s cold enough.”

Grave Digger said, “Mammy Louise can’t stand this Northern climate.”

“She got enough fat to keep her warm at the North Pole,” Coffin Ed replied.

“The trouble is, her fat gets cold.”

Mister Louise begged in a piteous voice, “One of you gentlemens shoot him for me, won’t you.” He glanced toward the curtained doorway and added, “I’ll pay you.”

“It wouldn’t kill him,” Coffin Ed replied solemnly.

“Bullets would just bounce off his head,” Grave Digger supplemented.

Mammy Louise came back and looked at her husband suspiciously. Then she said to the detectives, “Your car is talking.”

“I’ll get it,” Grave Digger said, getting to his feet before he’d finished saying it.

He slipped an arm through his jacket, grabbed his hat from the peg and pushed through the curtains as he poked his second arm into its sleeve.

The bulldog rolled its pink eyes at his receding figure and looked at Mammy Louise for instructions. But she paid it no attention. She was half moaning to herself. “Trouble, always trouble in dis wicked city. Whar Ah comes from—”

“There ain’t no law,” Coffin Ed cut her off as he put on his jacket. “Folks cut one another’s throats and go on about their business.”

“It’s better than getting kilt by the law,” she argued. “You can’t pay for one death by another one. Salvation ain’t the swapping market.”

Coffin Ed jammed his hat on his head, turned up the brim and slipped into his overcoat.

“Tell it to the voters, Mammy,” he said absently as he took down Grave Digger’s overcoat and straightened out a sleeve. “I didn’t make these laws.”

“I’ll tell it to everybody,” she said.

Grave Digger came back in a hurry. His face was set.

“Hell’s broke loose on the street,” he said, poking his arm into the coat Coffin Ed held for him.

“We’d better hop it then,” Coffin Ed said.

Unnoticed by anyone but Mister Louise, the bulldog had moved over to block the curtained doorway. When Grave Digger moved toward it, the dog planted its feet and growled.

Grave Digger’s long, gleaming, nickel-plated revolver came out in his hand like a feat of legerdemain, but Mammy Louise swooped down on the dog and dragged it off before he did it injury.

“Not dem, Lawd Jim, mah God, dawg,” she cried. “You can’t stop dem from goin’ nowhere. Them is de
mens.

Chapter 4.

The small, battered black sedan parked at the curb in front of Mammy Louise’s
Hog Store: open day & night
was still talking when they came out on the street. Grave Digger slid beneath the wheel, and Coffin Ed went around and climbed in from the other side.

The store was on 124th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, and the car was pointing toward Seventh.

The Paris Bar was due north as the bird flies on 125th Street, midway between the Apollo Bar and the Palm Cafe and across the street from Blumstein’s Department Store.

It was ten minutes by foot, if you were on your way to church, about two and a half minutes if your old lady was chasing you with a razor.

Coffin Ed checked his watch when Grave Digger mashed the starter. The little car might have looked like a bow-legged turtle, but it ran like an antelope.

It passed the Theresa Hotel, going up the wrong side of the street, bright lights on and siren screaming. Jokers in the lobby staring out the windows scattered like a hurricane had passed. They made it in thirty-three seconds.

Two prowl cars and Lieutenant Anderson’s black sedan were parked in front of the Paris Bar, taking up all the available space. Save for the cops standing about in clusters, the street was deserted.

“One’s a white man,” Grave Digger said.

“What else?” Coffin Ed replied.

What he meant was what else could keep the black citizens away from the circus provided by a killing.

“Butts going to jump,” Grave Digger added as he made a sharp-angled turn and squeezed between the front car and a fireplug, jumping the curb.

Before he had dragged to a stop, crosswise the sidewalk, just short of banging into the grilled front of a drugstore adjacent to the Paris Bar, they saw the three prone figures on the sidewalk.

The one nearest wore a belted trench coat and a dark snapbrim hat that was still clinging to his head. He lay that on his belly, his legs spread and his feet resting on his toes. His left arm was folded down beside him with the palm turned up; his right arm was flung out at an angle, still gripping a short-barreled revolver. Street light shone on the soles of his shoes, showing runover rubber heels and recent toecaps. The top part of his face was shaded by his hat brim, but orange light from the neon bar sign lit the lower part, showing the tip of a hooked nose and a long, pointed chin and leaving the thin, compressed lips invisible, so that the face seemed to lack a mouth.

One glance was enough to tell that he was dead.

The Paris Bar had a stainless-steel front framing the two big plate-glass windows that tanked the doorway. The left-side steel baseboard directly behind the stiff was punctured with bullet holes.

With the second stiff, it was different. He lay piled up like a wet towel directly in front of the door. His smooth, handsome black face peered from folds of gay-colored clothes with a look of infinite surprise. He didn’t look so much dead from gunshot as from shock; but the small, round, purple-lipped hole above his right temple told the story.

The third figure was encircled by cops.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed alighted and converged on the first stiff.

“Two hits through the top of the hat,” Grave Digger observed, his gaze roving. “He was lying on his belly and they nailed the hat on tighter.”

“Two in the right shoulder and one in the left neck,” said Coffin Ed. “Somebody sure wanted this son dead.”

“No one man scored five hits on this guy and him with a gun in his hand,” Grave Digger stated.

“The way I see it, two or more guns were shooting from down there where Casper is lying, and a third gun cross-fired from a car parked at the curb.”

“Yeah,” Grave Digger agreed, counting the bullet holes in the stainless-steel baseboard. “Somebody was using an automatic in the car and missed all ten times.”

“This guy was lying flat, and the gun in the car was shooting over him, but it gave the ones in front a chance to ice him.”

Grave Digger nodded. “This guy knew his business, but he was outgunned.”

“Over here!” Lieutenant Anderson called.

He and a white precinct detective named Haggerty and two prowl-car cops were standing about an unconscious colored man stretched out on the sidewalk.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed glanced briefly at the second stiff as they ambled past.

“Know him?” Grave Digger asked.

“One of the girl-boys,” Coffin Ed said.

Detective Haggerty skinned back his teeth when they approached. “Every time I see you big fellows I think of two hog farmers lost in the city,” he greeted.

Grave Digger flipped him a look. “The office wit.”

Coffin Ed ignored him.

Both of them stared down at the unconscious figure. He had been turned over onto his back, and his bowler placed beneath his head for a pillow. His hands were folded across his chest, and his eyes were closed. But for the labored breathing, he might have been dead.

He was wearing a navy-blue cashmere coat with hand-stitched lapels and patch pockets. His shirt was hidden by a black silk scarf looped at the throat. The trousers were of a dark-blue flannel with a soft chalk stripe. Black calfskin shoes, practically new, finished the ensemble.

He had a broad, smooth-shaven face with a square, aggressive-looking chin. The black skin had a creamy, massaged look, and the short, carefully clipped kinky hair was snow-white. His appearance was impressive.

“Casper looks natural,” Coffin Ed said with a straight face.

“He was sapped behind the left ear,” Lieutenant Anderson stated.

“How do you figure it?” Grave Digger asked.

“It seems as though Holmes was robbed, but the rest doesn’t figure,” Anderson confessed.

“Laughing-boy yonder must have stepped out the bar to watch the bullets passing,” Haggerty cracked, amused by his own humor.

“One he didn’t see,” a white cop added, grinning.

Anderson wiped off the grin with a look.

“Who’s the gunman?” Coffin Ed asked.

“We haven’t made him,” Anderson said. “Haven’t touched him. We’re waiting for the M.E. and the crew from Homicide.”

“What do the witnesses say?”

“Witnesses?”

“Somebody in the bar must have seen the whole caper.”

“Yeah, but we haven’t got any of them to admit it,” Anderson said. “You know how it is when a white man gets killed. No one wants to get involved. I’ve sent for the wagon, and I’m going to take them all in.”

“Let me talk to them first,” Coffin Ed said.

“Okay, give it a try.”

Coffin Ed ambled toward the entrance to the bar, which was being guarded by a white patrolman.

Grave Digger looked enquiringly at a white civilian who had edged into the group.

“This is Mr. Zazuly,” Anderson said. “He got here right after the shooting and telephoned the station.”

“What did he see?” Grave Digger asked.

“When I got here the street was overrun with people,” Mr. Zazuly said, his magnified eyes blinking rapidly behind the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed spectacles. “The two men were lying there just as you see them, and not an officer in sight.”

“He’s an accountant for Blumstein’s,” Anderson explained.

“Did he hear the shooting?”

“Of course I heard the shooting. It sounded like the Second World War. And not a policeman in sight.” His round, owlish face glared from a mohair muffler with a look of extreme outrage. “Gang wars on a main thoroughfare like this. Right out in the broad open,” he went on indignantly. “Where were the police, I ask you?”

Grave Digger looked sheepish.

No one answered him.

“I’m going to write a complaint to the Commissioner,” he threatened.

The sound of a siren grew quickly in the night.

“Here comes the ambulance,” Anderson said with relief.

The red eye of the ambulance was coming up 125th Street fast, from the direction of Lenox Avenue.

Grave Digger addressed Mr. Zazuly directly. “And that’s all you saw?”

“What did you expect him to see?” Haggerty cracked. “Look at those specs.”

The ambulance double-parked beside a prowl car, and the cops stood by silently while the intern made a cursory examination.

“Can you give him something to bring him to?” Anderson asked him.

“Give him what?” the intern replied.

“Well, when will he be able to talk?”

BOOK: All Shot Up
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