All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [47]
“Black Beauty’s your cousin,” Grave Digger lisped.
“Oh,” she said. “I’ve never heard him called by that name. Who told you that?”
“It’s in the newspapers,” Coffin Ed said.
Her eyes widened. “Really.” She shifted slightly so that the red light shone on her black belt with its tracery of gilded designs. “I didn’t pay any attention. I was so upset.” She shuddered and covered her face with her hands. Her breasts trembled. Looking at them, Grave Digger wondered how she did it.
“I understand,” Coffin Ed said sympathetically. “What I don’t understand is how did you know he was your cousin, Junior Ball, since all the papers referred to him as Black Beauty.”
She took her hands from her face and stared at him haughtily. “Are you cross-examining me?” she asked in a cold, imperious voice.
“More or less,” Grave Digger lisped, his voice getting dry.
She jumped to her feet. “Then you may leave,” she said.
Coffin Ed gave Grave Digger an accusing look, then looked up at Mrs. Holmes and spread his hands entreatingly.
“Listen, Missus Holmes, we’ve had a long hard night. We’re just trying to catch the bandits who robbed your husband. We know you want them caught as much as he does. We’re not trying to antagonize you. That’s the last thing we want to do. We’re just following a thin lead. Won’t you bear with us for a few minutes?”
She looked from him to Grave Digger. He looked back at her as though he would like to whip her.
But he said in a thick, dry lisp, “I didn’t mean it the way you took it. My nerves are kind of raw.”
“So are mine,” she said in a voice that had roughened.
She kept staring into Grave Digger’s hot, rapacious gaze until her body seemed to melt; and she sat down again as though from lack of strength.
“But if you are civil I will help you all I can,” she relented.
Coffin Ed was fumbling about in his mind for a way to phrase his questions. “Well, the thing is,” he said. “We’d like to know what Ball did—his occupation.”
“He was a dress designer,” she said. “And he made articles from leather.”
She noticed Grave Digger staring at her belt and squirmed slightly.
“Did he make your belt?” he asked.
She hesitated as though she might refuse to answer, then reluctantly said, “Yes.”
Grave Digger had made out some of the gilded designs encircling the belt. They depicted a series of Pans with nude males and females caught in grotesque postures on their horns. The thought struck him suddenly that Junior Ball got gored by one of his own Pans.
Coffin Ed picked up the idea. “Did he ever work for Baron?” he asked. “Design anything for him?”
“I’ve told you I don’t know this Baron,” she said, her voice still rough. “What has he got to do with all of this?”
“Well, I’ll tell you how it goes,” he said, and related the statement they had got from Roman. “So you see how it figures,” he concluded. “Your cousin, Ball, and this man, Baron, were in some kind of racket.”
She frowned, but this time not prettily. “It is possible,” she conceded. “Although I can’t see why Junior should have been mixed up in any kind of racket. He was doing well in his own field; he didn’t need anything. And I still don’t understand how this man, Baron, can help you find the scum who robbed Casper.”
“He got a good look at them, for one thing,” Coffin Ed said. “He talked to them; he knows their voices.”
“And we have a hunch he knew them from before,” Coffin Ed said. “He talked to them; he knows their voices.”
“And we have a hunch he knew them from before,” Grave Digger added.
She sighed theatrically. “I’ve gotten used to a lot of strange things with my husband in politics,” she said. “But all this terrible, horrible violence is too much for me.” A tremor ran over her body, making all of it shake.
Grave Digger licked his swollen lips. He was thinking about some of the lonely women about town he hadn’t stopped in to see lately.
She knew what he was thinking and gave him a quick up-from-under look, her big brown eyes stark naked for an instant; then she turned her face away and looked into the fire, and her