Cotton comes to Harlem

5

The rain had stopped when they got outside and people were back on the wet sidewalks, strolling aimlessly and looking about as if to see what might have been washed from heaven. They walked up a couple of blocks where their little black battered sedan with the supercharged motor was parked. It had got much cleaner from the rain.

"You've got to take it easy, Ed man," Grave Digger said. "One more second and you'd have killed her."

Coffin Ed took away the handkerchief and found that his nose had stopped bleeding. He got into the car without replying. He felt guilty for fear he might have gotten Digger into trouble, but for his part he didn't care.

Grave Digger understood. Ever since the hoodlum had thrown acid into his face, Coffin Ed had had no tolerance for crooks. He was too quick to blow up and too dangerous for safety in his sudden rages. But hell, Grave Digger thought, what can one expect? These colored hoodlums had no respect for colored cops unless you beat it into them or blew them away. He just hoped these slick boys wouldn't play it too cute.

The trucks were still where they had been wrecked, guarded by harness cops and surrounded by the usual morbid crowd; but they drove on down to where the bodies lay. They found Sergeant Wiley of Homicide beside the body of the bogus detective, talking to a precinct sergeant and looking bored. He was a quiet, grayhaired, scholarly-looking man dressed in a dark summer suit.

"Everything is wrapped up," he said to them. "We're just waiting for the wagon to take them away." He pointed at the body. "Know him?"

They looked him over carefully. "He must be from out of town, eh, Ed?" Grave Digger said.

Coffin Ed nodded.

Sergeant Wiley gave them a rundown: No real identification of any kind, just a phoney ID card from the D.A.'s office and a bogus detective shield from headquarters. He had been a big man but now he looked small and forlorn on the wet street and very dead.

They went up and looked at the other body and exchanged looks.

Wiley noticed. "Run over by the delivery truck," he said. "Mean anything?"

"No, he was just a sneak thief. Must have got in the way is all. True monicker was Early Gibson but he was called Early Riser. Worked with a partner most of the time. We'll try to find his partner. He might give us a lead."

"Sure as hell ain't got no other," Coffin Ed added.

"Do that," Wiley said. "And let me know what you find out."

"We're going to take a look at the trucks."

"Right-o, there's nothing more here. We took a statement from the driver of the truck that smashed the armored job and let him go. All he knew was what the three of them looked like and we know what they look like."

"Any other witness?" Grave Digger asked.

"Hell, you know these people, Jones. All stone blind."

"What you expect from people who're invisible themselves?" Coffin Ed said roughly.

Wiley let it pass. "By the way," he said, "you'll find those heaps hopped up. The armored truck has an old Cadillac engine and the delivery truck the engine of a Chrysler 300. I've taken the numbers and put out tracers. You don't have to worry about that."

They left Sergeant Wiley to wait for the wagon and went over to examine the trucks. The tonneau of the armored truck had been built on to the chassis of a 1957 Cadillac, but it didn't tell them anything. The Chrysler engine had been installed in the delivery truck, and it might be traced. They copied the licence and engine numbers on the off-chance of finding some garage that had serviced it, but they knew it was unlikely.

The curious crowd that had collected had begun to drift away. The harness cops guarding the wrecks until the police tow trucks carried them off looked extremely bored. The rain hadn't slackened the heat; it had only increased the density. The detectives could feel the sweat trickling down their bodies beneath their wet clothes.

It was getting late and they were impatient to get on to the trail of Deke, but they didn't want to overlook anything so they examined the truck inside and out with their hand torches.

The indistinct lettering: FREYBROS. INC. Quality Meats, 173 West 116th Street, showed faintly on the outside panels. They knew there wasn't any such thing as a meat provision firm at that address.

Then suddenly, as he was flashing his light inside, Coffin Ed said, "Look at this."

From the tone of his voice Grave Digger knew it was something curious before he looked. "Cotton," he said. He and Coffin Ed looked at each other, swapping thoughts.

Caught on a loose screw on the side panel were several strands of cotton. Both of them climbed into the truck and examined it carefully at close range.

"Unprocessed," Grave Digger said. "It's been a long time since I've seen any cotton like that."

"Hush, man, you ain't never seen any cotton like that. You were born and raised in New York."

Grave Digger chuckled. "It was when I was in high school. We were studying the agricultural products of America."

"Now what can a meat provision company use cotton for?"

"Hell, man, the way this car is powered. you'd think meat spoiled on the way to the store — if you want to think like that."

"Cotton," Coffin Ed ruminated. "A mob of white bandits and cotton — in Harlem. Figure that one out."

"Leave it to the fingerprinters and the other experts," Grave Digger said, jumping down to the pavement. "One thing is for sure, I ain't going to spend all night looking for a mother-raping sack of cotton — or a cotton picker either."

"Let's go get Early Riser's buddy," Coffin Ed said following him.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed were realists. They knew they didn't have second sight. So they had stool pigeons from all walks of life: criminals, straight men and squares. They had their time and places for contacting their pigeons well organized; no pigeon knew another; and only a few of those who were really pigeons were known as pigeons. But without them most crimes would never be solved.

Now they began contacting their pigeons, but only those on the petty-larceny circuit. They knew they wouldn't find Deke through stool pigeons; not that night. But they might find a witness who saw the white men leave.

First they stopped in Big Wilt's Small's Paradise Inn at 135th Street and Seventh Avenue and stood for a moment at the front of the circular bar. They drank two whiskies each and talked to each other about the caper.

The barstools and surrounding tables were filled with the flashily dressed people of many colors and occupations who could afford the price for air-conditioned atmosphere and the professional smiles of the light-bright chicks tending bar. The fat black manager waved the bill on the house and they accepted; they could afford to drink freebies at Small's, it was a straight joint.

Afterwards they sauntered towards the back and stood beside the bandstand, watching the white and black couples dancing the twist in the cabaret. The horns were talking and the saxes talking back.

"Listen to that," Grave Digger said when the horn took eight on a frenetic solo. "Talking under their clothes, ain't it?"

Then the two saxes started swapping fours with the rhythm always in the back. "Somewhere in that jungle is the solution to the world," Coffin Ed said. "If we could only find it."

"Yeah, it's like the sidewalks trying to speak in a language never heard. But they can't spell it either."

"Naw," Coffin Ed said. "Unless there's an alphabet for emotion."

"The emotion that comes out of experience. If we could read that language, man, we would solve all the crimes in the world."

"Let's split," Coffin Ed said. "Jazz talks too much to me."

"It ain't so much what it says," Grave Digger agreed. "It's what you can't do about it."

They left the white and black couples in their frenetic embrace, guided by the talking of the jazz, and went back to their car.

"Life could be great but there are hoodlums abroad," Grave Digger said, climbing beneath the wheel.

"You just ain't saying it, Digger; hoodlums high, and hoodlums low."

They turned off on 132nd Street beside the new housing development and parked in the darkest spot in the block, cut the motor and doused the lights and waited.

The stool pigeon came in about ten minutes. He was the shinyhaired pimp wearing a white silk shirt and green silk pants who had sat beside them at the bar, with his back turned, talking to a tan-skinned blonde. He opened the door quickly and got into the back seat in the dark.

Coffin Ed turned around to face him. "You know Early Riser?"

"Yeah. He's a snatcher but I don't know no sting he's made recently."

"Who does he work with?"

"Work with? I never heard of him working no way but alone."

"Think hard," Grave Digger said harshly without turning around.

"I dunno, boss. That's the honest truth. I swear 'fore God."

"You know about the rumble on 137th Street?" Coffin Ed continued.

"I heard about it but I didn't go see it. I heard the syndicate robbed Deke O'Hara out of a hundred grand he'd just collected from his Back-to-Africa pitch."

That sounded straight enough so Coffin Ed just said, "Okay. Do some dreaming about Early Riser," and let him go.

"Let's try lower Eighth," Grave Digger said. "Early was on shit."

"Yeah, I saw the marks," Coffin Ed agreed.

Their next stop was a dingy bar on Eighth Avenue near the corner of 112th Street. This was the neighborhood of the cheap addicts, whisky-heads, stumblebums, the flotsam of Harlem; the end of the line for the whores, the hard squeeze for the poor honest laborers and a breeding ground for crime. Blank-eyed whores stood on the street corners swapping obscenities with twitching junkies. Muggers and thieves slouched in dark doorways waiting for someone to rob; but there wasn't anyone but each other. Children ran down the street, the dirty street littered with rotting vegetables, uncollected garbage, battered garbage cans, broken glass, dog offal — always running, ducking and dodging. God help them if they got caught. Listless mothers stood in the dark entrances of tenements and swapped talk about their men, their jobs, their poverty, their hunger, their debts, their Gods, their religions, their preachers, their children, their aches and pains, their bad luck with the numbers and the evilness of white people. Workingmen staggered down the sidewalks filled with aimless resentment, muttering curses, hating to go to their hotbox hovels but having nowhere else to go.

"All I wish is that I was God for just one mother-raping second," Grave Digger said, his voice cotton-dry with rage.

"I know," Coffin Ed said. "You'd concrete the face of the mother-raping earth and turn white folks into hogs."

"But I ain't God," Grave Digger said, pushing into the bar.

The bar stools were filled with drunken relics, shabby men, ancient whores draped over tired laborers drinking ruckus juice to get their courage up. The tables were filled with the already drunk sleeping on folded arms.

No one recognized the two detectives. They looked prosperous and sober. A wave of vague alertness ran through the joint; everyone thought fresh money was coming in. This sudden greed was indefinably communicated to the sleeping drunks. They stirred in their sleep and awakened, waiting for the moment to get up and cadge another drink.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed leaned against the bar at the front and waited for one of the two husky bartenders to serve them.

Coffin Ed nodded to a sign over the bar. "Do you believe that?"

Grave Digger looked up and read: NO JUNKIES SERVED HERE! He said, "Why not? Poor and raggedy as these junkies are, they ain't got no money for whisky."

The fat bald-headed bartender with shoulders like a woodchopper came up. "What's yours, gentlemen?"

Coffin Ed said sourly, "Hell, man, you expecting any gentlemen in here?"

The bartender didn't have a sense of humor. "All my customers is gentlemen," he said.

"Two bourbons on the rocks," Grave Digger said.

"Doubles," Coffin Ed added.

The bartender served them with the elaborate courtesy he reserved for all well-paying customers. He rang up the bill and slapped down the change. His eyes flickered at the fifty-cent tip. "Thank you, gentlemen," he said, and strolled casually down the bar, winking at a buxom yellow whore at the other end clad in a tight red dress.

Casually she detached herself from the asbestos joker she was trying to kindle and strolled to the head of the bar. Without preamble she squeezed in between Grave Digger and Coffin Ed and draped a big bare yellow arm about the shoulders of each. She smelled like unwashed armpits bathed in dime-store perfume and overpowering bed odor. "You wanna see a girl?" she asked, sharing her stale whisky breath between them.

"Where's any girl?" Coffin Ed said.

She snatched her arm from about his shoulder and gave her full attention to Grave Digger. Everyone in the joint had seen the obvious play and were waiting eagerly for the result.

"Later," Grave Digger said. "I got a word first for Early Riser's gunsel."

Her eyes flashed. "Loboy! He ain't no gunsel, he the boss."

"Gunsel or boss, I got word for him."

"See me first, honey. I'll pass him the word."

"No, business first."

"Don't be like that, honey," she said, touching his leg. "There's no time like bedtime." She fingered his ribs, promising pleasure. Her fingers touched something hard; they stiffened, paused, and then she plainly felt the big. 38 revolver in the shoulder sling. Her hand came off as though it had touched something red hot; her whole body stiffened; her eyes widened and her flaccid face looked twenty years older. "You from the syndicate?" she asked in a strained whisper.

Grave Digger fished out a leather folder from his right coat pocket, opened it. His shield flashed in the light. "No, I'm the man."

Coffin Ed stared at the two bartenders.

Every eye in the room watched tensely. She backed further away; her mouth came open like a scar. "Git away from me," she almost screamed. "I'm a respectable lady."

All eyes looked down into shot glasses as though reading the answers to all the problems in the world; ears closed up like safe doors, hands froze.

"I'll believe it if you tell me where he's at," Grave Digger said.

A bartender moved and Coffin Ed's pistol came into his hand. The bartender didn't move again.

"Where who at?" the whore screamed. "I don't know where nobody at. I'm in here, tending to my own business, ain't bothering nobody, and here you come in here and start messing with me. I ain't no criminal, I'm a church lady — " she was becoming hysterical from her load of junk.

"Let's go," Coffin Ed said. One of the sleeping drunks staggered out a few minutes later. He found the detectives parked in the black dark in the middle of the slum block on 113th Street. He got quickly into the back and sat in the dark as had the other pigeon.

"I thought you were drunk, Cousin," Coffin Ed said.

Cousin was an old man with unkempt, dirty, gray-streaked, kinky hair, washed-out brown eyes slowly fading to blue, and skin the color and texture of a dried prune. His wrinkled old thrown-away summer suit smelled of urine, vomit and offal. He was strictly a wino. He looked harmless. But he was one of their ace stool pigeons because no one thought he had the sense for it.

"Nawsah, boss, jes' waitin'," he said in a whining, cowardly-sounding voice.

"Just waiting to get drunk."

"Thass it, boss, thass jes' what."

"You know Loboy?" Grave Digger said.

"Yassah, boss, knows him when I sees him."

"Know who he works with?"

"Early Riser mostly, boss. Leasewise they's together likes as if they's working."

"Stealing," Grave Digger said harshly. "Snatching purses. Robbing women."

"Yassah, boss, that's what they calls working."

"What's their pitch? Snatching and running or just mugging?"

"All I knows is what I hears, boss. Folks say they works the holy dream."

" Holy dream! What's that?"

"Folks say they worked it out themselves. They gits a church sister what carries her money twixt her legs. Loboy charms her lak a snake do a bird telling her this holy dream whilst Early Riser kneel behind her and cut out the back of her skirt and nip off de money sack. Must work, they's always flush."

"Live and learn," Coffin Ed said and Grave Digger asked: "You seen either one of them tonight?"

"Jes' Loboy. I seen him 'bout an hour ago looking wild and scairt going into Hijenks to get a shot and when he come out he stop in the bar for a glass of sweet wine and then he cut out in a hurry. Looked worried and movin' fast."

"Where does Loboy live?"

"I dunno, boss, 'round here sommers. Hijenks oughta know."

"How 'bout that whore who makes like he's hers?"

"She just big-gatin', boss, tryna run up de price. Loboy got a fay chick sommers."

"All right, where can we find Hijenks?"

"Back there on the corner, boss. Go through the bar an' you come to a door say 'Toilet'. Keep on an' you see a door say 'Closet'. Go in an' you see a nail with a cloth hangin' on it. Push the nail twice, then once, then three times an' a invisible door open in the back of the closet. Then you go up some stairs an' you come to 'nother door. Knock three times, then once, then twice."

"All that? He must be a connection."

"Got a shooting gallery's all I knows."

"All right, Cousin, take this five dollars and get drunk and forget what we asked you," Coffin Ed said, passing him a bill.

"Bless you, boss, bless you." Cousin shuffled about in the darkness, hiding the bill in his clothes, then he said in his whining cowardly voice, "Be careful, boss, be careful."

"Either that or dead," Grave Digger said.

Cousin chuckled and got out and melted in the dark.

"This is going to be a lot of trouble," Grave Digger said. "I hope it ain't for nothing."