Blind Man With a Pistol (29 page)

Authors: Chester Himes

Tags: #Police Procedural, #Detective and mystery stories, #Police, #Mystery & Detective, #African American police, #Police - New York (State) - New York, #General, #Johnson; Coffin Ed (Fictitious character), #Harlem (New York; N.Y.), #African American, #Fiction, #Jones; Grave Digger (Fictitious character)

BOOK: Blind Man With a Pistol

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Grave Digger and Coffin Ed watched them in amazement.

"What happened?" Coffin Ed asked.

"Just that fat blacky showing all that blood," Grave Digger said.

"Hell, if it was serious he'd have never got this far," Coffin Ed passed it off.

"You don't get it, Ed," Grave Digger explained. "Those white officers have got to protect white womanhood."

Seeing a white uniformed cop skid to a stop and turn to head him off, the fat black man broke in the direction of the Negro detectives. He didn't know them hut they had pistols and that was enough.

"He's getting away!" the first cop called from behind.

"I'll cool the nigger!" the front cop said. He was the third cop who thought niggers ate rats.

At that moment the big white man who had started all the fracas came up the stairs, heaving and gasping as though he'd just made it. "That ain't the nigger!" he yelled.

The third cop skidded to a halt, looking suddenly bewildered.

Then the blind man stumbled up the stairs, tapping the railing with his pistol.

The big white man leaped aside in blind terror. "There's the nigger with the pistol," he screamed, pointing at the blind man coming up the subway stairs like "shadow" coming out of East River.

At the sound of his voice the blind man froze. "You still alive, mother-raper?" He sounded shocked.

"Shoot him quick!" the big white man warned the alert white cops.

As though the warning had been for him, the blind man upped with his pistol and shot at the big white man the second time. The big white man leaped straight up in the air as though a firecracker had exploded in his ass-hole.

But the bullet had hit the white cop in the middle of the forehead, as he was taking aim, and he fell down dead.

The soul brothers who had been watching the antics of the white cops, petrified with awe, picked up their feet and split.

When the three other uniformed white cops converged on the blind man he was still pulling the trigger of the empty doubleaction pistol. Quickly they cut him down.

The soul brothers who had got as far as doorways and corners, paused for a moment to see the results.

"Great Godamighty!" one of them exclaimed. "The motherraping white cops has shot down that innocent brother!"

He had a loud, carrying voice, as soul brothers are apt to have, and a number of other soul people who hadn't seen it, heard him. They believed him.

Like wildfire the rumor spread.

"DEAD MAN! DEAD MAN! . . ."

"WHITEY HAS MURDERED A SOUL BROTHER!"

"THE MOTHER-RAPING WHITE COPS, THAT'S WHO!"

"GET THEM MOTHER-RAPERS, MAN!"

"JUST LEAVE ME GET MY MOTHER-RAPING GUN!"

An hour later Lieutenant Anderson had Grave Digger on the radio-phone. "Can't you men stop that riot?" he demanded.

"It's out of hand, boss," Grave Digger said.

"All right, I'll call for reinforcements. What started it?"