The Real Cool Killers (15 page)

“Sticks! You mean that there pigeon stick,” Choo-Choo said, pointing at the bamboo pole on the floor beside the bed.

“Don’t get funny with me, boy!”

“I just don’t know what you means, boss.”

“Forget the sticks,” the first cop said. “Let’s find the boy with the gloves.”

He looked about. His gaze lit on Sugartit who was sitting in the straight-backed chair and staring with a fixed expression at what appeared to be a gunny sack filled with huge lumps of coal lying in the middle of the bed.

“What’s in that sack?” he asked suspiciously.

For an instant no one replied.

Then Choo-Choo said, “Just some coal.”

“On the bed?”

“It’s clean coal.”

The cop pinned a threatening look on him.

“It’s my bed,” Sheik said. “I can put what I want on it.”

Both cops turned to stare at him.

“You’re a kind of lippy bastard,” the first cop said. “What’s your name?”

“Samson.”

“You live here?”

“Right here.”

“Then you’re the boy we’re looking for. That’s your pigeon loft on the roof.”

“No, that’s not him,” the second cop said. “The boy we want is blacker than he is and has another name.”

“What’s a name to these coons?” the first cop said. “They’re always changing about.”

“No, the one we want is called Inky. He was the one wearing the gloves.”

“Now I remember. He was called Caleb. He was the one wearing the gloves. The other one was Inky, the one who
couldn’t talk.”

The second cop wheeled on Sheik. “Where’s Caleb?”

“I don’t know anybody named Caleb.”

“The hell you don’t! He lives here with you.”

“Naw suh, you means that boy what lives down on the first floor,” Choo-Choo said.

“Don’t tell me what I mean. I mean the boy who lives here on this floor. He’s the boy who’s got the pigeon loft.”

“Naw suh, boss, if you means the Caleb what’s got the pigeon roost, he lives on the first floor.”

“Don’t lie to me, boy. I saw the sergeant bring him down the fire escape to this floor.”

“Naw suh, boss, the sergeant taken him on by this floor and carried him down on the fire escape to the first floor. We seen ’em when they come by the window. Didn’t we, Amos?” he called to Inky.

“That’s right, suh,” Inky said. “They went right past that window there.”

“What other window could they go by?”

“None other window, suh.”

“They had another boy with ’em called Inky,” Choo-Choo said. “It looked like they had ’em both arrested.”

The second cop was staring at Inky. “This boy here looks like Inky to me,” he said. “Aren’t you Inky, boy?”

“Naw suh–” Inky began, but Choo-Choo quickly cut him off: “They calls him Smokey. Inky is the other one.”

“Let him talk for himself,” the first said.

The second cop pinned another threatening look on Choo-Choo. “Are you trying to make a fool out of me, boy!”

“Naw suh, boss, I’se just tryin’ a help.”

“Let up on him,” the first cop said. “These coons are jagged on weed; they’re not strictly responsible.”

“Responsible or not, they’d better be careful before they get some lumps on their heads.”

The first cop noticed Sissie standing quietly in the corner, holding her hand to her bruised cheek.

“You know them, Caleb and Inky, don’t you girl?” he asked her.

“No sir, I just know Smokey,” she said.

Suddenly Sonny sneezed.

Sugartit giggled.

The cop wheeled toward the bed, looked at the sack and then looked at her.

“Who was that sneezed?”

She put her hand to her mouth and tried to stop laughing.

The cop turned slightly pinkish and drew his pistol.

“Someone’s underneath the bed,” he said. “Keep the other covered while I look.”

The second cop drew his pistol.

“Just relax and no one will get hurt,” he said calmly.

The first cop got down on his hands and knees, holding his cocked pistol ready to shoot, and looked underneath the bed.

Sugartit put both hands over her mouth and bit into her palm. Her face swelled with suppressed laughter and tears flowed down her cheeks.

The cop straightened to his knees and braced himself on the edge of the bed. There was a perplexed look on his red face.

“There’s something funny going on here,” he said. “There’s someone else in this room.”

“Ain’t nobody here but us ghosts, boss,” Choo-Choo said.

The cop threw him a look of frustrated fury, and started to his feet.

“By God, I’ll–” His voice dried up when he heard the choking sounds issuing from inside the sack.

He jumped upward and backward as though one of the ghosts had sure enough groaned. Leveling his pistol, he said in a quaking voice, “What’s in that sack?”

Sugartit burst into hysterical laughter.

For an instant no one spoke.

Then Choo-Choo said hastily, “Hit’s just Joe.”

“What!”

“Hit’s just Joe in the sack.”

“Joe!”

Gingerly, the cop leaned over, holding his cocked pistol in his right hand, and with his left untied the cord closing the sack. He drew the top of the sack open.

Popping eyes in a gray-black face stared up at him.

The cop drew back in horror. His face turned white and a shudder passed over his big solid frame.

“It’s a body,” he said in a choked voice. “All trussed up.”

“Hit ain’t no body, hit’s just Joe,” Choo-Choo said, not intending to play the comic.

The second cop hastened over to look. “It’s still alive,” he said.

“He’s choking!” Sissie cried and ran over and began loosening the noose about Sonny’s neck.

Sonny sucked in breath with a gasp.

“My God, what’s he doing in there?” the first cop asked in amazement.

“He’s just studying magic,” Choo-Choo said. He was beginning to sweat from the strain.

“Magic!”

The second cop noticed Sheik inching toward the window and aimed his pistol at him.

“Oh no, you don’t,” he said. “You come over here.”

Sheik turned and came closer.

“Studying magic!” the first cop said. “In a sack?”

“Yas suh, he’s trying to learn how to get out, like Houdini.”

Color flooded back into the cop’s face. “I ought to take him in for indecent exposure,” he said.

“Hell, he’s wearing a sack, ain’t he,” the second cop said, amused by his own wit.

Both of them grinned at Sonny as though he were a harmless halfwit.

Then the second cop said suddenly, “It ain’t possible! There can’t be two such halfwits in the whole world.”

The first cop looked closely at Sonny and said slowly, “I believe you’re right.” Then to the others at large, “Get that boy out of that sack.”

Sheik didn’t move, but Choo-Choo and Inky hastened over and pulled Sonny out while Sissie held the bottom of the sack.

The cops stared at Sonny in awe.

“Looks like barbecued coon, don’t he?” the first cop said.

Sugartit burst into laughter again.

Sonny’s black skin had a gray pallor as though he’d been dusted over lightly with wood ash. He was shaking like a leaf.

The second cop reached out and turned him around.

Everyone stared at the handcuff bracelets clamped about each wrist.

“That’s our boy,” the first cop said.

“Lawd, suh, I wish I’d gone home and gone to bed,” Sonny said in a moaning voice.

“I’ll bet you do,” the cop said.

Sugartit couldn’t stop laughing.

The bodies had been taken to the morgue. All that remained were chalk outlines on the pavement where they had lain.

The street had been cleared of private cars. Police tow trucks had carried away those that had been abandoned in the middle of the street. Most of the patrol cars had returned to duty; those remaining blocked the area.

The chief of police’s car occupied the center of the stage. It was parked in the middle of the intersection of 127th Street and Lenox Avenue.

To one side of it, the chief, Lieutenant Anderson, the lieutenant from homicide and the precinct sergeant who’d
led one of the search parties were grouped about the boy called Bones.

The lieutenant from homicide had a zip gun in his hand.

“All right then, it isn’t yours,” he said to Bones in a voice of tried patience. “Whose is it then? Who were you hiding it for?”

Bones stole a glance at the lieutenant’s face and his gaze dropped quickly to the street. It crawled over the four pairs of big black copper’s boots. They looked like the Sixth Fleet at anchor. He didn’t answer.

He was a slim black boy of medium height with girlish features and short hair almost straight at the roots and parted on one side. He wore a natty topcoat over his sweat shirt and tight-fitting black pants above shiny tan pointed-toed shoes.

An elderly man, a head taller, with a face grizzled from hard outdoor work, stood beside him. Kinky hair grew like burdock weeds on his shiny black dome, and worried brown eyes looked down at Bones from behind steel-rimmed spectacles.

“Go ’head, tell ’em, so, don’t be no fool,” he said; then he looked up and saw Grave Digger approaching with his prisoners. “Here comes Digger Jones,” he said. “You can tell him, cain’t you?”

Everybody looked about.

Grave Digger held Good Booty by the arm and Big Smiley and Ready Belcher, handcuffed together, were walking in front of him.

He looked at Anderson and said, “I closed up the Dew Drop Inn. The manager and some juvenile delinquents are being held by the officers on duty. You’d better send a wagon up there.”

Anderson whistled for a patrol car team and gave them the order.

“What did you find out on Galen?” the chief asked.

“I found out he was a pervert,” Grave Digger said.

“It figures,” the homicide lieutenant said.

The chief turned red. “I don’t give a goddamn what he was,” he said. “Have you found out who killed him?”

“No, right now I’m still guessing at it,” Grave Digger said.

“Well, guess fast then. I’m getting goddamned tired of standing up here watching this comedy of errors.”

“I’ll give you a quick fill-in and let you guess too,” Grave Digger said.

“Well, make it short and sweet and I damn sure ain’t going to guess,” the chief said.

“Listen, Digger,” the colored civilian interposed. “You and me is both city workers. Tell ’em my boy ain’t done no harm.”

“He’s broken the Sullivan law concerning concealed weapons by having this gun in his possession,” the homicide lieutenant said.

“That little thing,” Bones’s father said scornfully. “I don’t b’lieve that’ll even shoot.”

“Get these people away from here and let Jones report,” the chief said testily.

“Well, do something with them, Sergeant,” Lieutenant Anderson said.

“Come on, both of you,” the sergeant said, taking the man by the arm.

“Digger–” the man appealed.

“It’ll keep,” Grave Digger said harshly. “Your boy belonged to the Moslem gang.”

“Naw-naw, Digger–”

“Do I have to slug you,” the sergeant said.

The man allowed himself to be taken along with his son across the street.

The sergeant turned them over to a corporal and hurried back. Before he’d gone three steps the corporal was summoning two cops to take charge of them.

“What kind of city work does he do?” the chief asked.

“He’s in the sanitation department,” the sergeant said. “He’s a garbage collector.”

“All right, get on Jones,” the chief ordered.

“Galen picked up colored school girls, teenagers, and took them to a crib on 145th Street,” Grave Digger said in a flat toneless voice.

“Did you close it?” the Chief asked.

“It’ll keep; I’m looking for a murderer now,” Grave Digger said. Taking the miniature bull whip from his pocket, he went on, “He whipped them with this.”

The chief reached out silently and took it from his hand.

“Have you got a list of the girls, Jones?” he asked.

“What for?”

“There might be a connection.”

“I’m coming to that–”

“Well, get to it then.”

“The landprop, a woman named Reba – used to call herself Sheba – the one who testified against Captain Murphy–”

“Ah, that one,” the chief said softly. “She won’t slip out of this.”

“She’ll take somebody with her,” Grave Digger warned. “She’s covered and Galen was, too.”

The chief looked at Lieutenant Anderson reflectively.

The silence ran on until the sergeant blurted, “That’s not in this precinct.”

Anderson looked at the sergeant. “No one’s charging you with it.”

“Get on, Jones,” the chief said.

“Reba got scared of the deal and barred him. Her story will be that she barred him when she found out what he was doing. But that’s neither here nor there. After she barred him Galen started meeting them in the Dew Drop Inn. He arranged with the bartender so he could whip them in the cellar.”

Everyone except Grave Digger seemed embarrassed.

“He ran into a girl named Sissie,” Grave Digger said. “How doesn’t matter at the moment. She’s the girl friend of a boy called Sheik, who is the leader of the Real Cool Moslems.”

Sudden tension took hold of the group.

“Sheik sold Sissie to him. Then Galen wanted Sissie’s girl friend Sugartit. Sheik couldn’t get Sugartit, but Galen kept looking for her in the neighbourhood. I have the bartender here and a two-bit pimp who has a girl at Reba’s. He steered for Galen. I got this much from them.”

The officers stared appraisingly at the two handcuffed prisoners.

“If they know that much, they know who killed him,” the chief said.

“It’s going to be their asses if they do,” Grave Digger said. “But I think they’re leveling. The way I figure it, the whole thing hinges on Sugartit. I think he was killed because of her.”

“By who?”

“That’s the jackpot question.”

The chief looked at Good Booty. “Is this girl Sugartit?”

The others stared at her, too.

“No, she’s another one.”

“Who is Sugartit then?”

“I haven’t found out yet. This girl knows but she doesn’t want to tell.”

“Make her tell.”

“How?”