Blind Man With a Pistol (17 page)

     
"Lieutenant, let me tell you something. Most black men in Harlem who wear red fezzes are Black Muslims, and they're the most bitterly against this shit. Or else they're playing like they're Black Muslims, and they'd be risking their lives running down the street with a stolen pair of pants."

     
"Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, be discreet. Don't rake any more muck than necessary."

     
Grave Digger's neck began to swell and the tic went off in Coffin Ed's face.

     
"Listen, Lieutenant," Grave Digger said thickly. "This motherraping white man gets himself killed on our beat chasing black sissies and you want us to whitewash the investigation."

     
Anderson's face got pink. "No, I don't want you to whitewash the investigation," he denied. "I just don't want you raking up manure for the stink."

     
"We got you; white men don't stink. You can depend on us, boss, we'll just go to the public gardens and watch the pansies bloom."

     
"Without manure," Coffin Ed said.

     
Nine p.m. found them sitting at the lunch counter in the Theresa building, watching the Harlem citizens pass along the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 125th Street.

     
"Two steak sandwiches," Grave Digger ordered.

     
The prissy brownskinned counterman with shiny conked curls gave them an all-inclusive look and batted his eyes. It was only two steps to the grill but he managed to swish on the way. He had a slender graceful neck, smooth brown arms and a wide ass in tight white jeans. He grilled two hamburgers and put them between two toasted buns on paper plates and placed them daintily before his customers. "Kraut or ketchup?" he asked seductively, lowering long black lashes over liquid brown eyes.

     
Grave Digger looked from the hamburgers to the counterman's lowered lashes. "I ordered steak sandwiches," he said be!ligerently.

     
The counterman fluttered his lashes. "This is steak," he said. "Ground steak."

     
"Steak in one piece."

     
The counterman regarded him appraisingly through the corners of his eyes.

     
"And I mean steak off the steer," Grave Digger added. "I ain't talking no doubletalk."

     
The counterman opened his eyes wide and looked straight into Grave Digger's eyes. "We don't have steak in one piece."

     
"Don't ask him," Coffin Ed cautioned out the corner of his mouth.

     
The counterman gave him a wide, white, scintillating smile. "I dig you," he murmured.

     
"Then dig up some ketchup and black coffee," Coffin Ed grated harshly.

     
Grave Digger winked at him as the counterman switched off. Coffin Ed looked disgusted.

     
"It wasn't a bad idea to call this Malcolm X Square," Grave Digger said aloud, to divert the counterman's attention.

     
"Could have just as well called it Khrushchev Place or Castro Corner," Coffin Ed replied, falling in with the maneuver.

     
"No, Malcolm X was a black man and a martyr to the black cause."

     
"You know one thing, Digger. He was safe as long as he kept hating the white folks -- they wouldn't have hurt him, probably made him rich; it wasn't until he began including them in the human race they killed him. That ought to tell you something."

     
"It does. It tells me white people don't want to be included in a human race with black people. Before they'll be included they'll give 'em the whole human race. But it don't tell me who you mean by _they_."

     
"_They_, man, _they_. They'll kill you and me too if we ever stop being colored cops."

     
"I wouldn't blame them," Grave Digger said. "It'd bring about a hell of a lot of confusion." Noticing the counterman listening with rapt attention, he asked him, "What you think, Sugar Baby?"

     
The counterman lifted his upper lip and looked at him scornfully. "My name ain't Sugar Baby, I got a name."

     
"Well, what is it then?"

     
The counterman grinned slyly and said teasingly, "Don't you wish you knew?"

     
"Sweet as you are, what you need with a ilame?" Grave Digger needled.

     
"Don't hand me that shit. I know who you mother-rapers are. I'm here tending strictly to my own business."

     
"Good for you, Honey Baby; it'd be a damn sight better if everybody did that. But our business is to meddle into other people's business. That's why we're meddling into yours."

     
"Go ahead, I won't scream; see anything green, lick it up clean."

     
Grave Digger was stumped for the moment, but Coffin Ed took over for him.

     
"What Black Muslims eat here?"

     
The counterman was stumped. "Black Muslims?"

     
"Yeah, what Black Muslims you have as customers?"

     
"Those squares? They only eat their own food 'cause they claim all other food is dirty."

     
"You sure it ain't because they object to something else?"

     
"What do you mean by that?"

     
"It seems strange they wouldn't eat here when your food's so cheap and clean too."

     
The counterman didn't get it. He had a sneaking notion that Coffin Ed meant something else and he frowned angrily because he didn't understand and turned away. He went down the counter to serve a customer on the 125th Street side. There were only three of them at the counter, but he stayed away from the two detectives. He looked into the faces of the passing people; he stared at the passing traffic. Then suddenly he switched back and placed himself directly in their faces and put his hands on his hips and looked straight into Coffin Ed's eyes.

     
"It ain't that, it's their religion," he said.

     
"What?"

     
"Black Muslims."

     
"That's right. You must see a lot of jokers who look like Black Muslims."

     
"Sure." He raised his gaze and nodded toward the bookstore diagonally across the street. Several black men wearing red fezzes were gathering on the sidewalk. "There're some now."

     
Coffin Ed glanced around and looked back. "We don't want those, we're looking for fakes."

     
"Fake what?"

     
"Fake Muslims."

     
The counterman broke into sudden laughter. His long-lashed eyes regarded them indulgently. "You policemen, you don't know what you want. Coffee? Pie? Ice cream?"

     
"We got coffee."

     
The counterman pouted. "You want some more?"

     
Their attention was diverted by two women in a foreign sports car that turned the corner from 125th Street and passed at a crawl south on Seventh Avenue. Both were large amazonian types with strong bold features and mannish-cut hair. Their brownskinned faces were handsome. The one driving wore a man's shirt of green crepe de chine and a yellow silk knitted tie; while the other one beside her wore a sun-back dress without shoulder straps and the front so low she looked stark naked sitting there. They stared in the direction of the lunch counter.

     
"Friends of yours?" Grave Digger asked.

     
"Those queers?"

     
"Didn't look queer to me. One was a man; a good-looking man at that."

     
"Man my ass, they were lesbos."

     
"How do you know? You been out with them?"

     
"Don't be insulting. I don't associate with those kind of people."

     
"No Beaux Arts ball? No garden parties?"

     
The counterman curled his upper lip. He was good at it. "You're so crude," he said.

     
"Where's everybody?" Coffin Ed asked to get Grave Digger out of trouble.

     
Willing to call quits, the counterman replied soberly, "It's always slack at this time."

     
But Coffin Ed wouldn't let him off. "That ain't what I mean."

     
The counterman stared at him hostilely. "What do you mean, then?"

     
"You know, _everybody_."

     
Then suddenly the counterman flew coy. "I'm here," he cooed. "Ain't that enough?"

     
"Enough for what?"

     
"Don't play square."

     
"You're forgetting we're policemen."

     
"I like policemen."

     
"Ain't you scared?"

     
"Why, I ain't been caught."

     
"Policemen are brutes."

     
The counterman raised his eyebrows superciliously. "I beg your pardon?"

     
"BRUTES!"

     
"You're just fanning his interest," Grave Digger said. He looked at Grave Digger with a smirk. "You know everything, tell me what I'm thinking?"

     
"When do you get off work?" Grave Digger countered.

     
His eyelashes fluttered uncontrollably as he went all unnecessary. "Twelve o'clock."

     
"Then you weren't here last night after twelve?"

     
His face fell. "You sadistic son of a bitch!"

     
"So you couldn't have seen Jesus Baby when he stopped by?"

     
"Come again?"

     
"_Jesus Baby?_"

     
Neither detective caught a flicker of recognition in his demeanor. "Jesus Baby? That someone?"

     
"A friend of yours."

     
"Not mine, I don't know no one named Jesus Baby."

     
"Sure you do. You're just scared to admit it."

     
"Oh, _Him!_ I love _Him_. And he loves me too."

     
"I'm sure of it."

     
"I'm religious."

     
"All right, all right, now cut out the bullshit. You know exactly who we mean. The colored one. The one who lives right here in Harlem."

     
They noticed a subtle change in his manner but they couldn't tell what it meant. "Oh, _him?_"

     
They waited suspiciously. It was coming too easy.

     
"You mean the one who lives on 116th Street? You don't go for him, do you?"

     
"Where on 116th Street?"

     
"Where?" The counterman tried to look hip. "You know where. That little door beside the movie; between it and the lunch counter. You kidding me?"

     
"What floor?"

     
"You just go straight on through. You'll find him."

     
They had a strong suspicion they were being taken, but there wasn't any choice.

     
"What's his straight name?"

     
"Straight name? _Jesus Baby_, that's all."

     
"If we don't find him, we'll be back," Coffin Ed threatened.

     
The counterman gave him his most seductive smile. "Oh, you'll find him. And give him my love. But come back, anyway."

     
They found the door all right just where he had said; it was the entrance to a tenement six storeys high, the iron fire escape along the front descending to the plate-glass window of the luncheonette where pork ribs were barbecuing before an electric grill. But they overcame the temptation and went inside. They found the usual tenement hall, walls scratched with graffiti, urine stink coming up from the floor, food and last week's air. The hall led to The Temple of the Black Jesus. Hanging by the neck from the rotting plaster ceiling of a large square room was a gigantic plaster of paris image of the Black Jesus. There was an expression of teeth-bared rage on the black face. The arms were spread, the hands were balled into fists, the toes were curled. Black plaster blood dripped from red-pointed nail holes. The legend underneath read: THEY LYNCHED ME.

     
They went inside. A man stood inside the doorway examining the people who entered and collecting the price of admission. He was a short, fat, black man with a harelip. Sweat ran from his face as though his skin were leaking. His short black hair grew so thick on his round inflated head it looked like nylon pile. His body looked blown up like that of a rubber man. The sky-blue suit he wore glinted like metal.

     
"Two dollars," he said.

     
Grave Digger gave him two dollars and went ahead.

     
He stopped Coffin Ed. "Two dollars."

     
"My friend paid."

     
"That's right. That was for him. Now two dollars for you." Spit sprayed when he spoke.

     
Coffin Ed backed away and gave the man two dollars.

     
Inside there was so little light and so much unrelieved blackness in the walls, the people's clothes, their skins, their hair, they could only distinguish the white crescents of eyes, hanging in the dark like op art. And then they saw the metallic glitter of the hairlipped man as he took the rostrum and began to harangue: "Now we're gonna feed him the flesh of the Black Jesus until he choke --"

     
"Jesus baby!" someone cried. "I hear you!"