All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [31]
Sassafras started giggling.
Roman gave her a dirty look as he ran around and climbed in beneath the wheel. He put his pistol and coonskin cap on the seat between them and took off in a hurry. But some sixth sense told him he had a better chance of getting away by driving slowly.
He was driving like a preacher on the way to church when he came to Third Avenue and turned south.
The occupants of the first of the prowl cars coming fast from the north saw the slow-moving Buick just before the prowl car screamed around the corner into 116th Street. They didn’t give it a second thought. They hadn’t seen the driver, and they couldn’t imagine anybody crawling along at that speed in the hottest car east of the Mississippi River.
Roman drove down past 114th Street and parked in front of a mattress factory behind an open-bed truck.
“I got to give this situation some thought,” he said.
Sassafras couldn’t stop giggling. Every time she looked at him it got worse.
“This ain’t no laughing time,” he said hoarsely. “You’re going to make me mad.”
“I know it ain’t, sugar,” she admitted, half choking. “But ain’t nobody looking at you in that get-up going to burst out crying.”
“Well, it’s your fault,” he accused. “Taking me to see that stool pigeon—”
“How was I to know he was a stool pigeon,” she flared. “I been there lots of times before with other mens and he ain’t never—” She caught herself.
“I know you has,” he said. “You don’t have to rub it in. I ain’t expected you to get all rusty while I’ve been away. I ain’t no fool.”
She put her arm about his neck and tried to pull his head down to her. “I has been true to you, sugar,” she said. “I swear it on a stack of Bibles.”
He pulled his head back. “Listen, baby, this ain’t no time for sweet talk. Here I is, done blowed a whole year’s pay, and you is swearing to bald-face lies on stacks of Bibles.”
“It ain’t no lie,” she said. “If you’d taken the trouble to test it, instead of buying Cadillacs—”
“You wanted the car as much as me.”
“What if I did? That don’t mean I think a Cadillac is the only thing God made.”
“This ain’t no time to argue,” he said. “We has got to do something—and fast. I got a notion we has been awfully lucky so far, but it ain’t going to last forever. The cops is going to catch us in this hot car and then—”
She cut him off. “We could go see a man I know who’s in the automobile business. He might can help us.”
“I done seen all the men in the automobile business I needs to see,” he said. “I has had it. What I’m thinking of doing is see if I can find some of my ship-buddies and get them to help me look for my car.”
“This man I’m talking about could do more good than them,” she contended. “If that big bright Cadillac is anywhere in Harlem, he is more likely to find it than anybody I know of.”
“If all these mens you know—” he began, but she wouldn’t let him finish.
“What mens?”
“This bald-headed pappy passing himself off as a fortune teller—”
Her lips curled. “You ain’t jealous of him, I hope.”
“Well, he damn sure wasn’t no woman.”
“This man ain’t a bit like him.”
“If you think that makes me happy—”
“It ain’t like that,” she said. “I hardly know him. He’s just a business acquaintance.”
“What kind of business?”
But she ignored that. “We can ask him to look around and see what he might find,” she said. “And also we can stay in his house whilst he’s looking. You ain’t got nowhere to stay.”
“I was depending on staying with you the time I wasn’t staying in my car. Is you got some man staying in your room?”
“You make me sick,” she said. “You know can’t no man stay in my room, as respectable as those people is I room with.”
“Well, how is us going to pay this man for staying in his house and searching for our car?” he wanted to know. “I gave Mister Baron my last dollar.”
“We can sell him the tires off this car,” she said, “He’s in the used-tire business.”
“I get it,” he said. “I ain’t as dumb as you think. He’s tire thief.”
“Well,