Cotton Comes to Harlem (13 page)

But finally just before he’d had to holler calf-rope she’d calmed down enough to keep her appointment with the undertaker to go
get John’s body from the morgue.

It gave him a chance to contact Barry and his other two guns and arrange the caper with the Colonel for that night. So when she came home hysterical again he was ready for her.

Afterwards he was just lounging around in his shorts, drinking bourbon highballs, and she was in the kitchen doing he didn’t know what — probably taking an aphrodisiac — when the telephone rang.

It was Barry, telling him that Iris had got loose and was looking for him. He didn’t want to see Iris and he didn’t want her to find him for fear she might be tailed. So he had given Barry his answer. He figured if the police picked her up it was better she didn’t know where he was, then they couldn’t get it out of her. Furthermore, she was too damn jealous, and one hitch at a time was enough.

To his annoyance he saw that Mabel had been listening to his conversation. She made herself a lemon coke with ice and sat down beside him on the sofa.

“I’m glad she’s not coming here,” she said.

“Jealousy is one of the seven cardinal sins,” he said.

For a moment he thought she was going to become hysterical again, but she just looked at him possessively and said, “Oh, Reverend O’Malley, pray with me.”

“Later,” he snapped and got up to get a refill.

He was in the kitchen getting ice from the tray when the doorbell rang. Ice cubes flew into the air like startled birds. He didn’t have time to retrieve them. He shoved the tray back, slammed the door shut and dumped his drink into the sink. Then he rushed into the closet in the back hall opposite the bathroom where his clothes were hung, waving a signal to Mabel as he passed through the sitting-room. He had found an old .32 revolver of John Hill’s and he snatched it from the shelf where he had hidden it and held it in his shaking hand.

Mabel was flustered. She didn’t know whether he had meant she should answer the door or not answer it.

The bell rang again, long and insistently, as though whoever it was must know she was at home. She decided to answer it. There was a chain on the door; and anyway, even if the police did catch Reverend O’Malley there, he hadn’t done anything really wrong, she thought. He was just trying to get their money back.

She unlocked the door and someone tried to push it open but the chain caught it. Then through the crack she saw the face of Iris, distorted with rage.

“Open this mother-raping door,” Iris grated in her throaty voice, her lips popping wetly.

“He’s not here,” Mabel said smugly from behind the chained door. “Reverend O’Malley, I mean.”

“I’ll start screaming and get the police here and then you tell them that,” Iris threatened.

“If that’s all he means to you …” Mabel began and flung wide the door. “Come in.” And she chained and locked the door after her.

Iris went through the house like a gun dog looking for a game bird.

“He heard what you said,” Mabel called after her.

“These mother-raping bitches!” Deke muttered to himself and came out of the closet, covered with a film of sweat, still holding the pistol in his hand. “Why don’t you have some sense?” He said to Iris’s back as she was looking into the bathroom.

She wheeled, and her eyes widened and went pitch-black when she saw him in his shorts. Her face convulsed with uncontrollable jealousy. All she thought of then was him in bed with this other woman.

“You chickenshit cheat,” she mouthed, spittle flying from her popping lips. “You sneaking pimp. You get me out of the way and shack up with some chippy whore.”

“Shut up,” he said dangerously. “I had to hide out.”

“Hide out? Between this slut’s legs!”

From the doorway into the sitting-room Mabel said, “Reverend O’Malley is just trying to get our money back; he doesn’t want it all bungled by the police.”

Iris turned on her. “I suppose you call him Reverend O’Malley in bed,” she stormed. “If your mouth isn’t too full.”

“I’m not like you,” Mabel said angrily. “I do it the way God intended.”

Iris rushed at her and tried to scratch her face. Her coat flew open, showing her naked body. Mabel grabbed her by the wrists and shouted tauntingly, “I’m going to have his baby.” Iris couldn’t have a baby and it was the worst thing Mabel could have said. Iris went berserk; she spat in Mabel’s face and kicked her shins and struggled to break free. But Mabel was the stronger and she spat back in Iris’s face and let go her hands to grab her hair. Iris scratched her on the neck and shoulders and tore her negligee, but Mabel was pulling her hair out by the roots and pain filled her eyes with tears, blinding her.

Deke grabbed Iris by the coat collar with his left hand, still holding the revolver in his right. He hadn’t had time to put it away and he was afraid to drop it on the floor. Iris’s coat came off in his hand and she was naked except for shoes and there was nothing
else to clutch. So he tried to break Mabel’s grip on her hair. But Mabel was so infuriated she wouldn’t turn loose.

“Break loose, you mother-raping whores!” Deke grated and hit at Mabel’s hands with his pistol.

He mashed her fingers against Iris’s skull. Iris screamed and scratched eight red lines across his ribs. He hit her in the stomach with his free left hand, then grabbed Mabel’s negligee to pull her away. The negligee came off in his hand and she was naked too. Iris clawed her like a cat, streaking her body, and the blood began to flow. Mabel couldn’t use her hands but she bent Iris’s head down with her arms and bit her in the shoulder. Screaming in pain, with her head bent down, Iris saw the pistol in Deke’s hand. She snatched it and shot Mabel in the body until it was empty.

It happened so fast it didn’t register on Deke’s brain. He heard the thunder of shots; he saw the surprised look of anguish on Mabel’s face as she loosened her grip on Iris’s head and slowly began to crumble. But it was like a horrifying nightmare before the horror comes.

Then awareness hit him like a time bomb exploding in his head. His body erupted into action as his brain went rattled with panic. He hit Iris in the breast with his left fist, rocking her back, and crossed a right to her neck, knocking her off-balance. He kicked her in the stomach with his bare foot and, when she doubled over, hit her on the back of the head with the side of his fist, knocking her face downward to the floor.

Suddenly the panic started going off in his head like a chain of explosions, each one bigger than the ones before. He leapt over Iris’s prostrate figure, started towards the closet to get his clothes, then wheeled and snatched up the pistol from the floor where Iris had dropped it. He didn’t look at Mabel; his mind knew she was dead but he tried not to think of it. Somewhere in his head he knew he didn’t have any more bullets for the pistol which wasn’t his. He dropped it to the floor as though it was burning his hand.

Wheeling, he leapt into the hall, rushed to the closet. The knob slipped in his hand and one half of his brain began cursing, the other half praying.

In the front of all other thoughts was the sure knowledge that in a few minutes the police would come. Before the shooting, there had been enough screaming to raise the dead; and he knew in this nigger-proper house someone would have called the police. He knew his only hope was flight. To get away before the police got there. It was his life. And these mother-raping seconds were running out. But he knew he’d never get away looking half-dressed. Some meddling mother-raper in this nigger-heaven house
would stop him on suspicion and he didn’t have a gun.

He tried to dress fast. Quick-quick-quick, urged his brain. But his mother-raping fingers had turned to thumbs. It seemed as though it took him seven hundred mother-raping years to button up his shirt; and some more mother-raping centuries to lace his shoes.

He leapt to the mirror to tie his tie and search for tell-tale scratches. His dark face was powder gray, his stretched eyes like black eight-balls, but there were no scratches showing. He was trying to decide whether to take the elevator down five floors and walk the remaining two, or take the fire-escape and try the roof, He didn’t know how these buildings were made, whether the roofs were on the same level and he could get from one to another. In the back of his head he kept thinking there was something he was leaving. Then he realized it was Iris’s life. Fear urged him to go back and take the pistol and beat her to death; stop her from talking forever.

He turned from the bathroom, turned towards the sitting-room, and was caught in midstep by the hammering on the door. He ran on his toes to the back window in the bedroom that let onto the outside fire-escape. He opened it quickly, went out and down without hesitation. He didn’t have time to decide; he was committed. His feet felt nothing as they touched the iron steps of the steep ladder. His eyes searched the windows he passed.

The fire-escape was on one of the private streets of the housing development. He could only be seen by people across the street or in the windows he passed. Halfway down he saw the hem of a curtain fluttering from a half-open bedroom window. He didn’t hesitate. He stopped at the window, opened it and went in. The apartment was arranged the same as the one he had just quit. There was no one in the bedroom. He went through on his toes, praying the house was empty, but with no intention of stopping if it was filled with wedding guests. He came out into the back hall. He could hear a woman singing in the kitchen at the front of the sitting-room. He got to the front door, found it locked and chained. He tried to open it silently; he held his breath as he turned the lock and took off the chain. Time was drowning him in a whirlpool of flying seconds. He got the door unlocked, the chain off. He heard the singing stop. He closed the door quickly behind him and ran down the hall towards the service stairway. He got onto the landing and closed the door just before he heard a faint woman’s voice call, “Henry, where are you, Henry?”

He went down the stairway like a dive-bomber, didn’t stop until he was in the basement. He heard footsteps coming his way.
He froze behind the closed door, assembling his face, making up his story. But the footsteps went on past him into silence. Cautiously he looked out into the basement. No one was in sight. He went in the direction opposite the one the footsteps had taken and found a door. It opened onto a short flight of stairs. He went up the stairs and found a heavy iron door locked with a Yale snap lock. He unlocked it and pushed the door open a crack and looked out.

He saw 135th Street. Colored people were out in numbers, walking about in their summertime rags. Two men were eating watermelon from a wagon. In the wagon the melons were kept on ice to keep them cool. Children were gathered around a small pushcart, eating cones of shaved ice flavored with colored syrups from bottles. Others were playing stickball in the street. Women were conversing in loud voices; a drunken man weaved down the sidewalk, cursing the world; a blind beggar tapped a path with his white stick, rattling a penny in his tin cup; a dog was messing on the sidewalk; a line of men was sitting in the shade on the steps of a church, talking about the white folks and the Negro problem.

He stepped from the doorway and crossed the street, and soon he was lost in that big turbulent sea of black humanity which is Harlem.

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.