All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [4]
He grunted. The colored cops watched him with silent concentration. He put the package of bills into his side coat pocket and stuffed the remaining items back into Mister Baron’s side overcoat pocket.
“Leave him here?” a colored cop asked.
“Naw, let’s put him in the car,” the white cop said.
“We’d better get going,” the other cop urged. “We’re wasting too much time.”
“No need to hurry now,” the white cop said. “We got it made.”
Without replying, the two colored cops picked up Mister Baron and carried him toward the Buick, while the white cop held the back door open.
Neither Roman nor Sassafras had seen a thing.
“What’s happened to him?” Sassafras stopped crying long enough to ask.
“He fainted,” the white cop said. “Get over.”
She moved toward the middle, and they propped Mister Baron in the corner of the seat.
“Hey, boy,” the white cop called to Roman.
Roman looked around.
“I’m going to impound your car, and my partners are going to stay here until the ambulance comes and then bring you to the station. And I don’t want any trouble out of you folks; you understand?”
“Yassuh,” Roman said duly, as though the world had come to an end.
“All right,” the white cop said. “Just let this be a lesson; you can’t buy justice.”
“It weren’t him,” Sassafras said.
“You just keep him quiet if you know what’s good for you,” the cop said, and slammed the door.
He walked unhurriedly back to the Cadillac. One of the colored cops was sitting behind the wheel, the other sitting beside him. The white cop sat on the outside and slammed the door.
The cop driving started the motor and began easing off without turning on the lights. The big golden Cadillac crept silently around the back end of the Buick and had started past before Sassafras noticed it.
“Look, they is taking our car,” she cried.
Roman was too dejected to look up. “He’s impounding it,” he muttered.
“It ain’t just him; it’s all of them,” she said.
Roman’s cocked eyes came up in a startled face. “Why you reckon they is doing that?” he asked stupidly.
“I bet my life they is stealing it,” she said.
Roman jumped as though a time bomb had gone off in his pants. “Stealing my car!” he shouted, his hard, cable-like muscles coming into violent life.
He had the door open and was out on the pavement and pursuing the golden Cadillac before she could start screaming. She opened her mouth and let loose a scream that caused windows to pop open all up and down the street.
Roman was the only one who didn’t hear her. His big, muscle-bound body was rolling as he ran, as though the sloping black pavement were the deck of a ship caught in a storm at sea. He was tugging at something stuck down his pants leg, beneath his leather jacket. Finally he came out with a big, rusty .45 caliber revolver, but before he had a chance to fire it the Cadillac had turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
A joker on a motorcycle with a sidecar was pulling out from the curb when the big Cadillac suddenly bore down on him and the driver switched on the lights. He did a quick turn back toward the curb. From the corners of his eyes he saw a golden Cadillac pass at a blinding speed. The silhouettes of three cops occupying the front seat lashed briefly across his vision. His brain did a double take and flipped.
This joker had seen this Cadillac a short time before. At that time the occupants had been two civilians and a woman. There couldn’t be but one Cadillac like that in Harlem, he was sure. If there was such a Cadillac. If he wasn’t just blowing his top.
This joker was wearing dark-brown coveralls, a woolen-lined army fatigue jacket and a fur-lined, dark-plaid hunter’s cap. There wasn’t but one joker looking like this outside on this bitter cold night.
“No, it ain’t true,” the joker said to himself. “Either I ain’t me or what I seen ain’t that.”
While he