All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [29]
“He isn’t talking,” a white cop said.
“We’ll fix that,” Grave Digger said. “Get a bottle of vinegar from the kitchen.”
He reached over and clutched Lady Gypsy by the arm and pulled him over to the side of the bed. Then, when the cop brought the vinegar, he opened the bottle and poured the lukewarm liquid over Lady Gypsy’s face.
“That the way you do it?” the cop asked.
“It works,” Grave Digger said.
“Every time,” Coffin Ed supplemented.
Lady Gypsy stirred and spluttered. “Who is that pissing on me?” he said in a distinct, cultivated voice.
“It’s me, Digger,” Grave Digger said.
Lady Gypsy sat up suddenly on the side of the bed. He opened his eyes and saw all the white cops staring at him.
“You sonofabitch,” he said.
Grave Digger slapped him with his left hand.
His head fell to one side and straightened up as though his neck were made of rubber.
“It wasn’t my fault the bastard got away,” he said, fingering an egg-size lump on the back of his head. He looked down at his half-naked self. “He took my second-best ensemble.”
“Fill us in,” Grave Digger said. “And don’t start begging for sympathy.”
Lady Gypsy flipped back the covers and wiped his face with the top end of the sheet. “He’s a rough boy,” he said. “A square, but really ragged.” There were threads of desire and admiration in his voice. “And he’s carrying a rusty forty-five.”
“If you go patsy on me, I’ll kick out your teeth,” Grave Digger said.
Again the white cops looked at him curiously.
“You don’t have any compassion for anybody,” Lady Gypsy said in his cultivated voice.
“It’s how you look at it,” Grave Digger said. He turned to Coffin Ed. “Get out your stop watch, Ed. I’m going to give him ninety seconds.”
Lady Gypsy regarded him impassively through glazed, yellow-speckled brownish eyes that had the slight blue cast of age.
“You are an animal,” he said.
Grave Digger hit him in the mouth. It made a sound like water splashing, and blood drops spurted from the corners of Lady Gypsy’s mouth. But his big, flaccid body didn’t move, and his flat, stoical expression went unruffled.
“I’m not scared of you, Digger,” he said. “But I’m going to tell you what I know because I don’t want to get beat up.” He wiped the blood from his bruised and swelling lips with the vinegary sheet end. “You’re forgetting it was me who tipped you.”
“Yeah, and you let him sap you and get away while you was making a pass at him,” Grave Digger accused.
“That’s not so. He followed me in here and heard me phoning.” He nodded toward the telephone on the night table. “Not that I wouldn’t have if I had known what was coming,” he added.
“Forty seconds,” Coffin Ed said.
“He worked for a year as an able-bodied seaman for the South American Shipping Line.” He spoke steadily but unhurriedly. “On the SS Costa Brava. Saved all his money. Bought a new Cadillac from a man called Mister Baron—”
“Baron again,” Grave Digger said, exchanging looks with Coffin Ed.
“Paid six thousand, five hundred for it,” Lady Gypsy went on unemotionally. “Got it for a thousand dollars under the list price. A Cadillac with a golden finish—”
The white cops’ mouths had come open.
“He had just paid the money and got his bill of sale, and he was taking it for a tryout when he hit an old woman—”
“Alongside the convent?”
Lady Gypsy flicked him an upward look, then dropped his gaze and. stared at nothing again.
“Then you know about it?”
“You tell us.”
“I’m just telling you what he told me—”
The man on the floor stirred slightly and moaned.
“Won’t you put Mister Gypsy on the bed,” Lady Gypsy said.
“Let him lay where he is,” Grave Digger said.
“So they hit this old lady and ran,” he went on tonelessly. “They didn’t get far before they were stopped by three men in cops’ uniforms driving a Buick—”
“It begins to click,” Grave Digger said.
“Check,” Coffin Ed replied.
Lady Gypsy told the rest of the story in the same toneless voice. “Then, when Mister Baron got away, they came to me,” he concluded. “They wanted me to tell them