Cotton Comes to Harlem (24 page)

Upstairs in the church, light from the burning gunman on the floor lit up the figure of the gunman with his head on fire crouched behind the end of a bench ahead.

On the other side of the church Coffin Ed was standing with his pistol levelled, shouting, “Come out, mother-raper, and die like a man.”

Grave Digger took careful aim between the legs of the benches at the only part of the gunman that was visible and shot him through the stomach. The gunman emitted an eerie howl of pain, like a mortally wounded beast, and stood up with his .45 spewing slugs in a blind stream. The screaming had risen to an unearthly pitch, filling the mouths of the detectives with the taste of bile. Coffin Ed shot him in the vicinity of the heart and his clothes caught fire. The screaming ceased abruptly as the gunman slumped across the bench in a kneeling posture, as though praying in fire.

Now the entire platform holding the pulpit and the choir and the organ was burning brightly, lighting up the stained-glass pictures of the saints looking down from the windows. From outside came a banshee wail as the first of the cruisers came tearing into the street.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed ran barefooted through the flame and kicked in the back of the organ with scorched feet. But they couldn’t budge the steel trapdoor.

When the first of the police arrived they had reloaded and were shooting into the floor, trying to find the lock. Screams were heard coming from below and a dark cloud of smoke enveloped them. More police arrived and all worked frantically to open the door, but it wasn’t until eight minutes later, when the first firemen arrived with axes and crowbars, it got opened.

Grave Digger pushed everyone aside and went down first with Coffin Ed following. He grabbed the chairs with the two figures and righted them. Iris was facing them and she was strangling in the smoke and tears were streaming down her face. Before moving to release her, he leaned down and looked into her face.

“And now, little sister, where’s the cotton?”

Firemen and policemen were crowding around, coughing and crying in the dense smoke.

“Let them loose, take them out of here,” a uniformed sergeant
ordered. “They’ll suffocate.”

Iris looked down, thinking furiously, trying to figure an angle for herself.

“What cotton?” she said, to give herself time.

Grave Digger leaned forward until his face almost touched hers. His eyes were bright red and veins stood out in his temples. His neck swelled and his lumpy unshaven face contorted with rage.

“Baby, you’d have never come here if you didn’t know,” he said in a cotton-dry voice, gasping and coughing for breath. He raised his long-barreled .38 and aimed it at one of her eyes.

Coffin Ed drew his pistol and held back the policemen and firemen. His acid-burned face was jumping as though cooking in the heat and his eyes looked insane.

“And you’ll never leave her alive unless you tell,” Grave Digger finished.

Silence fell. No one moved. No one believed he would kill her, but no one dared interfere because of Coffin Ed; he looked capable of anything.

Iris looked down at Grave Digger’s burned stockinged feet. Fearfully her gaze lifted to his burning red eyes. She believed it.

“Billie’s doing a dance with it,” she whispered.

“Take them,” Grave Digger said, as he and Coffin Ed turned, hurrying off.

The dance floor of the Cotton Club stood on a platform level with the tops of the tables and also served as a stage for the big floor-shows presented. At the back were curtained exits into the wings which contained the dressing-rooms.

When Grave Digger and Coffin Ed peered from behind the curtains to one of the wings, they saw the club was filled with well-dressed people, white and colored, sitting about small tables with cotton-white covers, their eyes shining like liquid crystals in faces made exotic by candlelight.

A piano was playing frenetically, a saxophone wailing aphrodisiacally, the bass patting suggestively, the horn demanding and the guitar begging. A blue-tinted spotlight from over the heads of the diners bathed the almost naked tan body of Billie in blue mist as she danced slowly about a bale of cotton, her body writhing and her hips grinding as though making easy-riding love. Spasms
caught her from time to time and she flung herself against the bale convulsively. She rubbed her belly against it and she turned and rubbed her buttocks against it, her bare breasts shaking ecstatically. Her wet red lips were parted as though she were gasping, her pearly teeth glistened in the blue light. Her nostrils quivered. She was creating the illusion of being seduced by a bale of cotton.

Dead silence reigned in the audience. Women stared at her greedily, enviously, with glittering eyes. Men stared lustfully, lids lowered to hide their thoughts. The dance quickened and people squirmed. Billie threw her body against the cotton with mad desire. Bodies of women in the audience shook uncontrollably from compulsive motivation. Lust rose in the room like miasma.

The act was working to a climax. Billie was twisting her body and rolling her hips with shocking rapidity. She worked completely around the bale of cotton, then, facing the audience, flung her arms wide apart and gave her hips a final shake. “Ohhh, daddy cotton!” she cried.

Abruptly the lights came on and the audience went wild with applause. Billie’s smooth voluptuous body was wet with sweat. It gleamed like a lecher’s dream of hot flesh. Her breasts were heaving, the nipples pointing like selecting fingers.

“And now,” she said, slightly panting when the applause died down, “I shall auction this bale of cotton for the actors’ benefit fund.” She smiled, panting, and looked down at a nervous young white man with his girl at a ringside table. “If you’re scared, go home,” she challenged, taunting him with a movement of her body. He reddened. A titter arose. “Who’ll bid a thousand dollars?” she said.

Silence fell.

From two tables back someone said in a level southern drawl, “One thousand.”

Eyes pivoted.

A lean-faced white man with long silvery hair, a white moustache and goatee, wearing a black frock coat and black string bow, sat at a table with a young blond white man wearing a white tuxedo jacket and a Dubonnet-coloured bow.

“The mother-raper,” Coffin Ed said.

Grave Digger gestured for silence.

“A gentleman from the Old South!” Billie cried. “I’ll bet you’re a Kentucky Colonel.”

The man stood up, tall and stately, and bowed. “Colonel Calhoun, at your service, from Alabama,” he drawled.

Someone in the audience clapped. “A brother of yours, Colonel,” Billie cried delightedly. “He’s attracted by this cotton
too. Stand up, brother.”

A big black man stood up. The colored people in the audience roared with laughter.

“What you bid, brother rat?” Billie asked.

“He bids fifteen hundred,” a voice cried jubilantly.

“Let him bid for himself,” Billie snapped.

“I don’t bid nothing,” the man said. “You just asted me to stand up, is all.”

“Well, sit down then,” Billie said.

The man sat down self-consciously.

“Going,” Billie said. “Going. This fine bale of natural-grown Alabama field cotton going for one thousand — and maybe I’ll go with it. Any other bids?”

Only silence came.

“Cheapskates,” Billie sneered. “You’re going to close your eyes and imagine it’s me, but it ain’t going to be the same. Last chance. Going, going, gone. And look how many actors will benefit.” She winked brazenly, then said, “Colonel Calhoun, suh, come forward and take possession of it.”

“Of what?” some wit cracked.

“Guess, you idiot,” Billie sneered.

The Colonel arose and went forward to the platform, a tall, straight, confident white man, and handed Billie ten one-hundred-dollar bank notes. “I deem it an honor, Miss Billie, to purchase this cotton from a beautiful nigra girl who might also be from those happy lands–”

“Not me, Colonel,” Billie interrupted.

“– and in so doing benefit many deserving nigra actors,” the Colonel finished.

There was a scattering of applause.

Billie ran and pulled handfuls of cotton from the bale and the Colonel tensed momentarily, but as quickly relaxed when she came running back and showered the strands of cotton on to his silvery head.

“I hereby ordain you as King of Cotton, Colonel,” she said. “And may this cotton bring you wealth and fame.”

“Thank you,” the Colonel said gallantly. “I’m sure it will,” and then signalled to the stage door opposite Grave Digger and Coffin Ed.

Two ordinary-looking colored workmen came forward with a hand truck and took the bale of cotton away.

Grave Digger and Cotton Ed hurried towards the street, limping like soul-brothers with duck feet. The truckmen brought out the bale of cotton and put it in back of an open delivery truck, and
the Colonel followed leisurely and spoke to them and got into his black limousine.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed were already in their panel truck parked a half-block back.

“So he found his car,” Coffin Ed remarked.

“One gets you two it was never lost.”

“That’s a sucker’s bet.”

When the truck drove off they followed it openly. It went up Seventh Avenue and drew to the curb in front of the Back-to-the-Southland office. Grave Digger drove past and turned into the driveway of a repair garage, closed for the night, and Coffin Ed got out and began picking the lock of the roll-up door as though he worked there. He was working at the lock when the Colonel’s limousine pulled up behind the truck across the street and the Colonel got out and looked about. He got the lock open and was rolling up the door by the time the Colonel had unlocked the door to his own office and the truckmen began easing the bale of cotton down onto the sidewalk. Grave Digger drove the panel truck into the strange garage and cut the lights and got out beside Coffin Ed. They stood in the dark doorway, checking their pistols, and watched the truckmen wheel the bale of cotton into the brightly lighted office and drop it in the center of the floor. They saw the Colonel pay them and speak to the blond young man, and when the truckmen left, the two of them spoke briefly again and the blond young man returned to the limousine while the Colonel turned out the lights and locked the door and followed him.

When they drove off, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed hurried across the street, and Coffin Ed began picking the lock to the Back-to-the-Southland office while Grave Digger shielded him.

“How long is it going to take?” Grave Digger asked.

“Not long. It’s an ordinary store lock but I got to get the right tumbler.”

“Don’t take too long.”

The next moment the lock clicked. Coffin Ed turned the knob and the door came open. They went inside and locked the door behind them and moved quickly through the darkness to a small broom closet at the rear. It was hot in the closet and they began to sweat. They kept their pistols in their hands and their palms became wet. They wanted to talk but were afraid to risk it. They had to let the Colonel get the money from the bale of cotton himself.

They didn’t have long to wait. In less than fifteen minutes there was the sound of a key in the lock. The door opened and two pairs of footsteps entered and the door closed.

They heard the Colonel say, “Pull down the shades.”

They heard the sounds of the shades covering the front windows and the door being pulled to the bottom and latched. Then there was the click of the light switch and the keyhole in the closet had sudden dimensions.

“Do you think that’ll be enough?” a voice questioned. “Anyone can see there’s a light on inside.”

“There’s no risk, son, everything is covered,” the Colonel said. “Let’s don’t be too secretive. We pay the rent here.”

There was the sound of the bale of cotton being shifted, probably being turned over, Grave Digger thought.

“Just give me that knife and keep the bag ready,” the Colonel said.

Grave Digger felt in the darkness of the closet for the doorknob, and squeezed it hard and pulled it. But he waited until he heard the sound of the knife cut into the bale of cotton before turning it. Soundlessly he opened the door a crack and released the knob with the same caution.

Now through the crack they could see the Colonel engrossed in his work. He was cutting through the cotton with a sharp hunting knife and pulling out the fibers with a double-pronged hook. The blond young man stood to one side, watching intently, holding open a Gladstone bag. Neither looked around.

Grave Digger and Coffin Ed breathed silently through their mouths as they watched the hole grow larger and deeper. Loose cotton began piling up on the floor. The Colonel’s face began sweating. The blond young man looked increasingly anxious. A frown appeared between his eyes.

“Have you got the right side?” he asked.

“Certainly, it shows where we opened it,” the Colonel said in a controlled voice, but his expression and his haste expressed his own growing anxiety.

The blond young man’s breathing had become labored. “You should be down to the money,” he said finally.

The Colonel stopped digging. He put his arm into the hole to measure its depth. He straightened up and looked at the blond young man as though he didn’t see him. For a long moment he seemed lost in thought.

“Incredible!” he said.

“What?” the blond young man blurted.

“There isn’t any money.”

The blond young man’s mouth flew open. Shock stretched his eyes and he grunted as though someone had hit him in the solar plexus.

“Impossible,” he gasped.

Suddenly the Colonel went berserk. He began stabbing the bale of cotton with the hunting knife as though it were human and he was trying to kill it. He slashed it and raked it with the hook. His face had turned bright red and foam collected in the corners of his mouth. His blue eyes looked stone crazy.

“Gawdammit, I tell you there isn’t any money!” he shouted accusingly, as though it were the young man’s fault.

Grave Digger pushed open the closet door and stepped into the room, his long-barreled, nickelplated .38 revolver leveled on the Colonel’s heart and glinting deadly in the bright light.