All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [30]
“Did you tell them?” a white cop asked, eyes popping.
“If I could do that I wouldn’t be living in this dump,” Lady Gypsy said. “I’d be riding in a yacht on the Riviera.”
The man on the floor groaned again, and two white cops lifted him and laid him across the foot of the bed.
“How did he know about you?” Grave Digger asked.
“He didn’t. His girl friend told him. Brought him, rather.”
“Who is she?”
“Sassafras Jenkins. A girl on the town.”
“Did she steer him into Baron?”
“He doesn’t think so. He said he met Mister Baron at the docks in Brooklyn—where the Line has their warehouse. On his last trip in, two months ago. Mister Baron gave him a lift into Harlem; he was driving his own Cadillac convertible. Roman told him he was saving up his money to buy a car, and Mister Brown asked him how much he had saved, and he said he’d have six thousand, five hundred dollars when he came back from his next trip and Mister Baron said he’d get him a Cadillac convertible like the one he was driving for that amount—”
“He was driving a gold-finished Cadillac himself?”
“No, his was gray. But he asked Roman what color he wanted, and Roman said he wanted one that looked like solid gold.”
“What was Baron’s business in Brooklyn?” Grave Digger asked.
“Sailors, Digger,” Coffin Ed said. “Where’s your thinking cap?”
Grave Digger half agreed. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he was fishing frogs for snakes.”
“It’s the same thing,” Coffin Ed contended. “Sailors are everything to everybody.”
“You know Baron?” Grave Digger said to Lady Gypsy.
“It happens that I don’t.”
“You know Black Beauty.”
“Yes.”
“What was his racket?”
“Pimping.”
“Pimping! That pansy!”
“You said his racket, not his pleasure. And you employed the past tense. Is he dead?”
“He was the old woman who got killed.”
“Killed? They said she wasn’t hurt.”
“That’s another story. But you must know Baron. He’s in the clique.”
“That’s what I told myself,” Lady Gypsy admitted. “But truthfully, I don’t.”
“You know the Jenkins girl, however.”
Lady Gypsy shrugged. “I’ve seen her. I don’t know her. She comes in here from time to time with various tricks. She’s always got some little racket going.”
“With Baron?”
“You can’t trick me, Digger. I’ve told you the truth about Mister Baron. I don’t know him, and I don’t think she knew him, either.”
“Okay! Okay! Where do we find her?”
“Find her? How would I know where to find a chippie whore?”
“You got Findings written on your board downstairs,” Coffin Ed put in.
“Yeah, and you’d better live up to it or you are going to find yourself where you don’t want to be found,” Grave Digger added.
“You know that old courtyard between One-eleventh and One-twelfth Streets?”
“The Alley.”
“Yes. She’s got a man in one of those holes in there somewhere.”
“Who’s the man?”
“Just a man, Digger. I don’t know who he is or what he does. You know I wouldn’t be interested in a man who was interested in a chippie like that.”
“Okay, Ed, let’s get going,” Grave Digger said.
“We’d better call the desk first and let Anderson know the horse got out.”
“You call him.”
Coffin Ed reached for the telephone on the night table.
Grave Digger turned to the cops and said, “You men had better get back to your cars; you’ve been off the street too long as it is.”
Lady Gypsy said, “I want to put in a charge against that man for assault and battery and theft.”
“You’ll have to go to the station,” Grave Digger said. “And you had better wear a suit.”
Chapter 10.
When Roman and Sassafras came running down the stairs from Lady Gypsy’s and made for the Buick parked at the curb, it was a good thing that nobody saw them. They were enough to catch the eyes of the blind. Roman had stuck Lady Gypsy’s fortune-telling turban, with its big glass eye, on the side of his head—so now he had three eyes all looking in different directions. He had draped the rainbow-colored gown over his leather jumper and army pants, but it was too short, and his paratrooper boots were showing. He carried his coonskin cap in his left hand and his big rusty .45 in his right.