All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [0]
CHESTER HIMES
PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 1.
It was eleven-thirty at night on ground-hog day in Harlem. It was bitter cold, and the Harlem ground hogs, as the warm-blooded Harlem citizens are called during the cold winter months, were snug in their holes.
All except one.
On the dark crosstown street off Convent Avenue, bordering the estate of the convent from which the avenue derives its name, a man was taking a wheel from a car parked in the shadow of the convent wall. He was wearing dark-brown coveralls, a woolen-lined army fatigue jacket and a fur-lined, dark-plaid hunter’s cap.
He had the inside wheel jacked up on the slanting street, making the car tilt dangerously. But he was unconcerned. He worked swiftly, without light. In the almost black dark, his face was imperceptible. At certain angles the whites of his eyes twinkled like luminous crescents stirred by the wind. His breath made pale white geysers, coming from his unseen face.
He leaned the wheel against the side of the car, lowered the axle to the pavement, glanced briefly up and down the street and began jacking up the outside wheel.
He had the wheel jacked up and the dust cap off and was fitting his wrench to a lug, when the lights of a car, turning into the street from Convent Avenue, caused him to jump back into the shadows.
The car approached and passed, not going fast, not going slow.
His eyes popped. He knew he was sober. He hadn’t been drinking any whisky and he hadn’t been smoking any weed. But he didn’t believe what he saw. It was a mirage; but this was not the desert, and he was not dying of thirst. In fact he was cold enough for his guts to freeze; and the only thing he wanted to drink was hot rum and lemon.
He saw a Cadillac pass, the likes of which he had never seen. And his business was cars.
This Cadillac looked as though it were made of solid gold. All except the top, which was some kind of light, shining fabric. It looked big enough to cross the ocean, if it could swim. It lit up the black-dark street like a passing bonfire.
The instrument panel gave off strange blue light. It was just strong enough to illuminate the three persons occupying the front seat.
The man driving wore a coonskin Davy Crockett cap, with a big bushy tail. Beside him sat the beauty queen of Africa with eyes like frostbitten plums and a smile showing blue-dyed teeth in a black-painted skeleton’s head.
The joker’s heart gave a lurch. There was something shockingly familiar about that face. But it was impossible for his own true Sassafras to be riding about in a brand-new Caddy with two strange men at this hour of the night. So his gaze switched quickly to the third party, who was wearing a black Homburg and a white silk scarf and had a small, bearded face like some kind of amateur magician.
In the soft, blue-tinted light they looked like things that couldn’t happen, not even in Harlem on ground-hog night.
He looked at the license of the big gold car to steady himself. It was a dealer’s license. He felt a momentary reassurance. Must be a publicity gag.
All of a sudden a woman came out of nowhere. He had just time enough to see that she was an old woman dressed in solid black, her silver-white hair shining briefly in the headlights before she was hit by the golden Cadillac and knocked down.
He felt his scalp crawl and his kinky hair stand straight up beneath his fur-lined cap. He wondered if he was dreaming.
But the Cadillac took on speed. That was no dream. That was the thing to do. Just what he would have done if he had run over an old woman on a dark, deserted street.
He hadn’t seen the Cadillac actually run over the old woman. But there she lay and there it went. So it must have run over her. It made sense.
Anyway, he wasn’t flipping his lid. Now the question was—should he get this