All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [17]
“Don’t touch it until the M. E. gets here,” the Homicide lieutenant cautioned. “It might fall.”
“It looks like it might be garroted,” one of the cops from the prowl car offered.
The Homicide lieutenant turned on him with a face suddenly gone beet-red. “Garroted! From within the convent? By who, the nuns?”
The cop backtracked hastily. “I didn’t mean by the nuns. A gang of niggers might have done it.”
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed turned to look at him.
“It’s just a way of speaking,” the cop said defensively.
“I’ll take a look,” Grave Digger said.
He stood on tiptoe and peered down the back of the fur collar.
“Nothing around its neck,” he said.
While still on tiptoe, he sniffed the wavy hair. Then he blew into it softly. Strands of silky hair floated outward. He dropped to his feet.
The lieutenant looked at him questioningly.
“Anyway, she’s no grandma,” Grave Digger said. “Her hair looks like a job from the Rose Meta beauty parlors.”
“Well, let’s see what’s keeping her up,” the lieutenant said.
They discovered an iron bar protruding from the wall at a point about six feet high. Below and above it there were deep cracks in the cement; and, at one point above, the crack had been dug out to form a long, oblong hole. The face of the corpse had been thrust into this hole with sufficient force to clamp it, and the end of the bar was caught between the legs, holding it aloft.
“Jesus Christ, it looks like it’s been hammered in there,” the lieutenant said.
“They’re no signs of bruises on the back of the head,” Grave Digger pointed out.
“One thing is for sure,” Haggerty cracked. “She didn’t get there by herself.”
“You’re going to be a senator someday,” the lieutenant said.
“Maybe she was hit by a car,” a harness cop suggested.
“I’ll buy that,” Coffin Ed said.
“Hit by a car!” the lieutenant exclaimed. “Goddammit, she’d have to be hit by a car traveling like a jet plane to get rammed into that wall like that.”
“Not necessarily,” Grave Digger said.
The flip cop said, “Oh, I forgot—there’s a wig in the gutter across the street.”
The lieutenant gave him a reproving look, but didn’t say the words.
In a group, they trudged across the street. The cold east wind whipped at them, and their mouths gave off steam like little locomotives.
It was a cheap wig of gray hair, fashioned in a bun at the back, and it was weighted down by a car jack.
“Was the jack with it?” the lieutenant asked.
“No sir—I put the jack on it to keep the wind from blowing it away,” the cop replied.
The lieutenant moved the jack with his foot and picked up the wig. A detective held a light.
“All I can say about it is it looks like hair,” the lieutenant said.
“Looks like real nigger hair,” the flip cop said.
“If you use that word again I’ll kick your teeth down your throat,” Coffin Ed said.
The cop bristled. “Knock whose teeth—”
He never got to finish. Coffin Ed planted a left hook in his stomach and crossed an overhand right to the jaw. The cop went down on his hips; his head leaned slowly forward until it stopped between his knees.
No one said anything. It was a delicate situation. Coffin Ed was due a reprimand, but the lieutenant from Homicide was the ranking officer, and the cop had already riled him with the crack about the nuns.
“He asked for it,” he muttered to himself, then turned to the other prowl car cop. “Take him back to the station.”
“Yes, sir,” the cop said with a dead-pan expression, giving Coffin Ed a threatening look.
Grave Digger put a hand on Coffin Ed’s arm. “Easy, man,” he murmured.
The cop helped his partner to his feet. He could stand, but he was groggy. They got in the prowl car and drove off.
The others recrossed the street and stared at the corpse. The lieutenant stuck the wig into his overcoat pocket.
“How old would you say she was?” he asked Grave Digger.
“Young,” Grave Digger said. “Middle twenties.”
”What beats me is why would a young woman masquerade as an old woman for?”
“Maybe she was trying to impersonate a nun, a Homicide detective ventured.