All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [3]
The white cop jerked Mister Baron out of the way so Sassafras could alight.
“Listen to me for a moment,” Mister Baron said in a low, persuasive voice. “There hasn’t anything happened that can’t be settled between the few of us. The woman’s not hurt bad. I could see in the rear view mirror that she was getting up.”
Mister Baron was small and effeminate with unusually expressive eyes for a man. They were a strange shade of light brown, fringed with long, black, curling lashes. But they fitted his girlish, heart-shaped face. His only masculine feature was the small fuzzy mustache and the bebop goatee that looked as though it might have been stuck on his chin with paste.
He was using his eyes now for all they were worth.
“If you want to be reasonable, this doesn’t have to go to court. And,” he added, fluttering his lashes, “you can benefit in more ways than one—if you know what I mean.”
The three cops exchanged glances.
Sassafras shook herself and looked at Mister Baron with infinite scorn. A small-boned, doll-like girl with a bottom like a duck’s, she was wearing a gray imitation fur coat and a red knitted cap which might have belonged to one of the seven dwarfs.
“If you’re including me, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” she said.
“What’s unusual about you, dear,” Mister Baron said cattily.
“How much?” the white cop asked.
Mister Baron hesitated, appraising the cop. “Five hundred,” he offered tentatively.
“Well, what about the old lady, if she ain’t dead,” Sassafras put in. “What you going to give her?”
“Let her lump it,” Mister Baron said brutally.
“Put these two squares in the car,” the white cop said.
One of the colored cops took Sassafras by the arm and steered her to the Buick.
Roman went docilely, still holding his hands shoulder-high. He looked like a joker who’s bet his fortune on a sure thing and lost.
The cop hadn’t troubled to search him. He didn’t search him now. “Get in the back,” he ordered.
Roman began to plead. “If you-all will give me just one more chance—”
The cop cut him off. “I ain’t your mammy.”
Roman got in and sat dejectedly, shoulders drooping, head so bowed his chin rested on his chest. Sassafras came in from the other side. She took one look at him and burst out crying.
The cops ignored them and turned toward Mister Baron who stood confronting the white cop in the beam from the Cadillac’s lamps.
“Douse those lights,” the white cop said.
A colored cop walked over and turned off the lights.
The white cop cased the street. On the south side, old-fashioned residences with high stone steps, which had been converted into rooming houses or cut up into kitchenettes, were squeezed between apartment houses built for the overflowing white population in the 1920’s, all taken over now by Ham’s and Hagar’s children.
On the north side was the high, crumbling stone wall of the convent, topped by the skeletons of trees. None of the convent buildings were visible from the street.
Aside from themselves, there was not a person in sight. Nothing moved but grit in the ice-cold wind.
“Five hundred all you got?” the white cop asked Mister Baron.
Mister Baron licked his lips, and his voice began to lilt. “You and me could talk business,” he whispered.
“Come here,” the white cop said.
Mister Baron walked up close to the white cop as though he were going to nestle in his arms.
The white cop turned him around and closed his windpipe with a half nelson while twisting his right arm behind his back. Mister Baron beat at him futilely with his left hand.
A colored cop closed in and drew a plaited leather sap. The other cop lifted Mister Baron’s Homburg, and the first cop sapped him back of the ear. Mister Baron gave a low soft sigh and went liquid. The white cop lowered him to the street, and the colored cop put the Homburg over Mister Baron’s face.
The white cop went through Mister Baron’s pockets with rapid efficiency. He found two scented white silk handkerchiefs, a case of miscellaneous keys, a diamond engagement ring stuck tightly about