Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes

Author:Chester Himes [Himes, Chester]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9780307803245
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-07-26T14:00:00+00:00

12

When Grave Digger and Coffin Ed came on duty at 8 p.m., Lieutenant Anderson said, “Your car was found abandoned up at 163rd Street and Edgecombe Drive. Does that tell you anything?”

Coffin Ed backed against the wall in the shadows where Anderson couldn’t see his expression, but Anderson heard him make some kind of sound that sounded like a snort. Grave Digger perched a ham on the edge of the desk and massaged his chin. The curve of his back concealed the bulge of the .38 revolver over his heart but made his shoulders look wider. He thought about it and chuckled.

“Tell me it was stolen,” he said finally. “What you think, Ed?”

“Either that or it drove itself.”

Anderson looked quizzically from one to the other. “Well, was it stolen?”

Grave Digger chuckled again. “Think we’re going to admit it if it was?”

“It was them chickens, boss?” Coffin Ed said.

Lieutenant Anderson reddened slightly and shook his head. He didn’t always dig the private humor of his two ace detectives and sometimes it made him feel uncomfortable. But he realized they attached no significance to the fact their car had been stolen. Whenever they got a clue of importance the air around them became electric.

It became electric now when he said, “We’re holding Deke O’Hara’s woman Iris on a homicide rap.”

Both detectives froze in that immobility which denotes full attention. But neither spoke; they knew a story went with it. They waited.

“She was arrested in the apartment of the man killed in the Back-to-Africa hijack, John Hill. John Hill’s wife Mabel had been shot five times; she was dead when the police arrived. Both women were nude and badly mauled — scratched and beaten as though they’d had a furious go with each other. Tenants had called the police before the shooting to report what sounded like a woman fight in the apartment. A gun was found on the floor — a .32 revolver. It had been recently fired and there’s no doubt it is the murder gun; but it has gone to ballistics. Her fingerprints were on the stock and smeared on the trigger but are partly obliterated by a clear set of prints by a man. Homicide figures a man handled the gun afterwards; maybe Deke. They’re checking against his Bertillon card and we’ll soon know.”

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed exchanged looks but said nothing.

“Iris contends Deke wasn’t there. An hour earlier she had escaped from her own apartment. She admits going there looking for him but swears he hadn’t been there. She had escaped on a ruse — you’ll hear all about it. She admits that she and the Hill woman had a fight and she says she took the gun away from the Hill woman and it went off accidentally. She says it was a private fight and had nothing to do with the Back-to-Africa hijacking, but she won’t give any reason for it.”

Both detectives turned ad looked at him as though guided by the same impulse.

“Do you want to talk to her?” Anderson asked.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.