Cotton Comes to Harlem (17 page)

Suddenly they were listening.

“Pres,” Grave Digger recognized, cocking his ear. “And Sweets.”

“Roy Eldridge too,” Coffin Ed added. “Who’s on the bass?”

“I don’t know him or the guitar either,” Grave Digger confessed. “I guess I’m an old pappy.”

“What’s that platter?” Coffin Ed asked the youth standing by the jukebox who had played the number.

His girl looked at them through wide dark eyes, as though they’d escaped from the zoo, but the boy replied self-consciously, “ ‘Laughing to Keep from Crying.’ It’s foreign.”

“No, it ain’t,” Coffin Ed said.

No one contradicted him. They were silent with their thoughts until a waiter brought the food. The table was loaded. Grave Digger chuckled. “Looks like a famine is coming on.”

“We’re going to head it off,” Coffin Ed said.

The waiter brought three kinds of hot sauce — Red Devil, Little Sister’s Big Brother, West Virginia Coke Oven — vinegar, a plate of yellow corn bread and a dish of country butter.

“Bone apperteet,” he said.

“
Merci, m’sieu,
” Coffin Ed replied.

“Black Frenchman,” Grave Digger commented when the waiter had left.

“Good old war,” Coffin Ed said. “It got us out of the South.”

“Yeah, now the white folks want to start another war to get us back.”

That was the last of that conversation. The food claimed their attention. They sloshed the succulent pork barbecue with Coke Oven hot sauce and gnawed it from the bones with noisy relish. It made the chef feel good all over to watch them eat.

When they had finished, Mammmy Louise came from the kitchen. She was shaped like a weather balloon on two feet, with a pilot balloon serving as a head. The round black face beneath the bandanna which encased her head was shiny with sweat, but still she wore a heavy sweater over a black woollen dress. She claimed she had never been warm since coming north. Her ancestors were runaway slaves who had joined a tribe of southern Indians and formed a new race known as “Geechies”. Her native language was a series of screeches punctuated by grunts, but she spoke American with an accent. She smelled like stewed goat.

“How’s y’all, nasty ’licemen?” she greeted them jovially.

“Fine, Mammy Louise, how’s yourself?”

“Cold,” she confessed.

“Don’t your new love keep you warm?” Coffin Ed asked.

She cast a look at the mincing dandy flashing his teeth at two women at a front table. “ ’Oman lak me tikes w’ut de good Lawd send ’thout question, I’se ’fied.”

“If you are satisfied, who’re we to complain?” Grave Digger said.

A man poked his head in the door and said something to her fine young man and he hurried back to their table and said, “Your car’s calling.”

They jumped up and hurried out without paying.

Lieutenant Anderson said, “A man was found dead in a junkyard underneath 125th Street approach to the Triborough Bridge.”

“What about it?” Coffin Ed replied.

“
What about it?
” Anderson flared. “Have you guys quit the force? Go over and look at it. You might learn that killing is a crime. Just the same as robbery.”

Coffin Ed felt his ears burning. “Right away,” he said respectfully.

“What about it?” he heard Anderson muttering as he switched off.

Grave Digger was chuckling as he wheeled the car into the traffic. “Got your ass torn, eh, buddy?”

“Yeah, the boss man got salty.”

“Let that be a lesson to you. Don’t play murder cheap.”

“All right, I’m outnumbered,” Coffin Ed said.

They found Sergeant Wiley in charge of the crew from Homicide. His men were casting footprints, dusting for fingerprints, and taking photographs. A young pink-faced assistant medical examiner was tagging the body DOA and whistling cheerfully.

“My old friends, the lion tamers,” Sergeant Wiley greeted them. “Have no fear, the dog is dead.”

They looked at the dead dog, then glanced casually about.

“What’ve you got here?” Grave Digger asked.

“Just another corpse,” Wiley said. “My fifth for the night.”

“So you covered the caper at the Polo Grounds?”

“Caper! Hell, when I arrived there were only four stiffs. You men got the live one.”

“You can have him.”

“For what? If he wasn’t any good for you what the hell I want him for?”

“Who knows? Maybe he’ll like you better.”

Wiley smiled. He looked more like a professor of political science at the New School than a homicide detective-sergeant but Grave Digger and Coffin Ed knew him for a cool clever cop. “Let’s look around,” he said, leading the way into the shed where the body was found. “Here’s the score. We got a social security card from his wallet which gives his name as Joshua Peavine and
an address on West 121st Street. He was stabbed once in the heart. That’s all we know.”

The detectives looked carefully over the junk-filled shed. Three aisles, flanked by junk stacked to the corrugated-iron ceiling, branched off from the main aisle that led in from the door. All available space was filled except an empty spot at the end of the main aisle beside the back wall.

“Somebody got something,” Coffin Ed remarked.

“What the hell would anybody want from here?” Wiley asked, gesturing towards the stacks of flattened cardboard, old books and magazines, rags, radios, sewing-machines, rusty tools, battered mannequins and unidentifiable scraps of metal.

“The man got killed for something, much less the dog,” Coffin Ed maintained.

“Might have been a sex crime,” Grave Digger ventured. “Suppose he came here with a white man. It’s happened before.”

“I thought of that,” Wiley said. “But the dead dog contradicts it.”

“He’d kill the dog if it was worth it,” Coffin Ed said.

Wiley raised his eyebrows. “All that secrecy in Harlem?”

“He’d do what was necessary if the pay was right.”

“Maybe,” Wiley conceded. “But here’s the twist. We found a ball of meat that looks as though it might be poisoned in his pocket — we’ll have it analysed of course. So the dog was already poisoned by someone else. Unless he had two balls of poisoned meat — which wouldn’t seem necessary.”

“This empty space bothers me,” Grave Digger confessed. “This empty space in all this conglomeration of junk. Was there anything knocked off the hijack truck the other night that might identify it? Something that might wind up in a junkyard. A spare wheel?”

Wiley shook his head. “Maybe a gun could have been lost, but nothing I can think of that would be sold here. Nothing at least to fill this empty space. I think we’re on the wrong track there.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Grave Digger said.

Wiley nodded. The door to the office had been forced by Wiley’s men but nothing had been found to draw attention. The three of them went in and Wiley telephoned Mr Goodman at his home in Brooklyn.

Mr Goodman was horrified. “Everything happens to me,” he cried. “Such a good boy, so honest. He wouldn’t hurt a fly yet.”

“We want you to come over and tell us what is missing.”

“Missing!” Mr Goodman screamed. “You’re not thinking Josh was killed protecting my place? He wasn’t a nitwit.”

“We’re not thinking anything. We just want you to tell us what’s missing.”

“You think thieves have stolen something from my junkyard? Diamonds, maybe. Bricks of gold. Necklaces of rubies. Have you seen my junk? Only another junk man would want anything from my junkyard and he’d need a truck to take away ten dollar’s worth.”

“We just want you to come over and take a look, Mr Goodman,” Wiley said patiently.

“
Mein Gott
, at this hour of the morning! You say Josh is dead. Poor boy. My heart bleeds. But can I bring him back to life, at two o’clock in the morning? Can I raise the dead? If there is junk missing you can see it for yourself. Do you think I can identify my junk? How can anyone identify junk? Junk is junk; that’s what makes it junk. If someone has taken some of my junk he is welcome. There will be signs where he has taken truck-loads, unless he is a lunatic. Look you for a lunatic, there is your man. And my Reba is awake and worrying should I go over in that place full of lunatic murderers at this time of night. She is a lunatic too. You just put Josh in the morgue and I will come Monday morning and identify his body.”

“This is important, Mr Goodman —” The line went dead. Wiley jiggled the hook. “Mr Goodman, Mr Goodman —” The voice of the operator came on. Wiley looked about and said, “He hung up,” and hung up himself.

“Send for him,” Coffin Ed said.

Wiley looked at him. “On what charge? I’d have to get a court order to get him out of Brooklyn.”

“There’s more ways than one to skin a cat,” Grave Digger said.

“Don’t tell me,” Wiley said, leading the way back to the yard. “Let me stay ignorant.”

They stood for a moment looking at the carcass of the dead dog. The ruddy-faced assistant medical examiner passed them, singing cheerfully, “
I’ll be glad when you re dead, you rascal you; I’ll be standing at Broad and High when they bring your dead ass by, I’ll be glad when you’re dead.…
”

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed exchanged looks.

Wiley noticed and said, “It’s a living.”

“More bodies, more babies,” Grave Digger agreed.

The morgue wagon came and took away the body of the man and the carcass of the dog. Wiley called his men and prepared to leave. “I’m going to let you have it,” he said.

“We got it,” Coffin Ed said. “Sleep tight.”

Left to themselves they went back over the ground in detail. “Anywhere else it would figure something was stolen,” Coffin Ed said. “Here it don’t make any sense.”

“Let’s quit guessing, let’s go get Goodman.”

Coffin Ed nodded. “Right.”

They closed the shed and turned out the lights and went slowly through the yard to the gate. When they started to cross the street to where their car was parked, a dark shape came from beneath the bridge like a juggernaut. They couldn’t see what it was but they ran because years of police work had taught them that nothing moves in the dark but danger. When they saw it was a black car moving at incredible speed they dove face downward on the pavement on the other side. A burst of flame lit the night as the silence exploded; machine-gun bullets sprayed over them as the black car passed. It was over. For a brief instant there was the diminishing whine of a high-powered engine, then silence again. The black shape had disappeared as though it had never been.

By now they had their pistols in their hands, but they still lay cautiously flat to the pavement, searching the night for a moving target. Nothing moved. Finally they crawled to the protection of their little car and stood up, still searching the shadows for movement. They eased into the car like wary shadows themselves. Their breathing was audible. They still looked around.

Car lights had slowed in the moving chain on the bridge overhead, but the deserted, off-beat street below remained dark.

“Report it,” Grave Digger said as they sat in the dark.

Coffin Ed called the precinct from the car and got Lieutenant Anderson. He gave it just like it happened.

“Why, for God’s sake?” Anderson said.

“I don’t figure it,” Coffin Ed confessed. “We got nothing, no description, no licence number — and no ideas.”

“I don’t know what you’re on to, but be careful,” Anderson warned.

“How much more careful can a cop be?”

“You could use some help.”

“Help to get killed,” Coffin Ed grumbled and felt a warning pressure from Grave Digger’s hand. “We’re going to Brooklyn now to get the owner of this junkyard.”

“Well, if you have to, but for God’s sake go easy; you don’t have any jurisdiction in Brooklyn and you can get us all in a jam.”

“Easy does it,” Coffin Ed said and cut off.

Grave Digger mashed the starter and they went down the dark street. He was frowning from his thoughts. “Ed, we’re just missing something,” he said.

“Goddamned right,” Coffin Ed agreed. “Just missing getting killed.”

“I mean, doesn’t this tell you something?”

“Tells me to get the hell off the Force while I’m still alive.”

“What I mean is, so much nonsense must make sense,” Grave Digger persisted as he entered the approach to the East Side throughway.

“Do you believe that shit?” Coffin Ed said.

“I was thinking why would anyone want to rub us out because a junkyard laborer was murdered?”

“You tell me.”

“What’s so important about this killing? It smells like some kind of double-cross.”

“I don’t see it. Unless you’re trying to tie this to the hijack caper. And that sure don’t make any sense. People are getting killed in Harlem all the time. Why not you and me?”

“I got to think something,” Grave Digger said and entered the stream of traffic on the throughway without stopping.

Mr Goodman was still awake when they arrived. The news of Josh’s murder had upset him. He was clad in bathrobe and nightgown and looked as though he’d been raiding the kitchen. But he still protested against going back to Harlem just to look over his junkyard.

“What good can it do? How can it help you? No one steals junk. I only kept the dog to keep bums from sleeping in the yard, and cart pushers like Uncle Bud from filling his cart with my junk to sell to another junk man.”

“Listen, Mr Goodman, the other night eighty-seven poor colored families lost their life savings in a robbery —”

“Yes, yes, I read in the papers. They wanted to go back to Africa. I want to get back to Israel where I’ve never been either. It comes to no good, this looking for bigger apples on foreign trees. Here every man is free—”

“Yes, Mr Goodman,” Grave Digger interrupted with feigned patience. “But we’re cops, not philosophers. And we just want to find out what is missing from your junkyard and we can’t wait until Monday morning because by then someone else might be killed. Even us. Even you.”

“If I must, I must, to keep some other poor colored man from being killed, about some junk,” Mr Goodman said resignedly, adding bitterly: “What this world is coming to nobody knows, when people are killed about some junk — not to speak of a poor innocent dog.”