All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [5]
It was a Buick sedan, and it looked familiar. But not nearly so familiar as the woman he’d seen a short time before in the golden Cadillac. However, now the freak with the coonskin cap who had been driving the Cadillac was driving the Buick.
All of it was so crazy it was reassuring. He bent over the handlebars of his motorcycle and began laughing as though he had gone crazy himself.
“Haw haw haw.” He laughed, and then began talking to himself. “Whatever it is I is dreaming, one thing is for sure—ain’t none of it true.”
Chapter 3.
The switchboard in the precinct station was jammed.
The switchboard sergeant relayed the reports to Desk Lieutenant Anderson in a bored, monotonous voice: “There’s a woman who lives across the street from the convent says murder and rape taking place in the street...”
Lieutenant Anderson yawned. “Every time a man beats his wife some busybody calls in and says she’s being raped and murdered—the wife, I mean. And God knows some of them could use a little of it—the busybodies, I mean.”
“...another woman from the same vicinity. Says someone is torturing a dog...”
“Tell her we’re sending an officer over right away,” Anderson said. “Tell her dogs are our best friends.”
“She hung up. But here’s another one. Claims the nuns are having an orgy.”
“Something’s going on,” Anderson conceded. “Send Joe Abrams and his partner over to take a look.”
The sergeant switched on the radio. “Come in, Joe Abrams.”
Joe Abrams came in.
“Take a look along the south side of the convent.”
“Right,” Joe Abrams said.
“Patrolman Stick calling from a box on 125th Street,” the sergeant said to Anderson. “Claims he and his partner, Sam Price were attacked and unfooted by a flying saucer some one has released in the neighborhood.”
“Order them to report here before going off duty for an alcohol test,” Anderson said sternly.
The sergeant chuckled as he relayed the order. Then he plugged in another call, and his face went grim.
“Man giving his name as Benjamin Zazuly, calling from the Paris Bar on 125th Street, reporting a double murder. Says two men dead on the sidewalk in front of the bar. One a white man. A third man unconscious. Thinks he’s Casper Holmes....”
Anderson’s fist came down on the desk, and his lean, hard face went bitter. “Goddammit, everything happens to me,” he said, but the moment he had said it he regretted it.
“Get the other two cars over there,” he directed in a steady voice. The veins throbbed in his temples, and his pale-blue eyes looked remote.
He waited until the sergeant had contacted the two prowl cars and dispatched them to the scene. Then he said, “Get Jones and Johnson.”
While the sergeant was calling for Jones and Johnson to come in, Anderson said anxiously, “Let us hope nothing has happened to Holmes.”
The sergeant couldn’t get Jones and Johnson.
Anderson stood up. “Keep trying,” he ordered. “I’m going to run over and take a quick look for myself.”
The reason the sergeant couldn’t get Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson is that they were in the back room of Mammy Louise’s pork store eating hot “chicken feetsy,” a Geechy dish of stewed chicken feet, rice, okra and red chili peppers. On a cold night like this it kept a warm fire burning in the stomach, and the white, tender gristle of the chicken feet gave a solid packing to the guts.
There were three wooden tables covered with oilcloth of such a bilious color that only the adhesive consistency of Mammy Louise’s Geechy stews could hold the food in the stomach. Against the side wall was a coal-burning stove flanked by copper water tasks. Pots of cooking foods bubbled on the hot lids, giving the small, close room the steamy, luxurious feeing of a Turkish bath.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed were sitting at the table farthest from the stove, their coats draped over the backs of wooden chairs. Their beat-up black hats hung above their overcoats on nails in the outside wall. Sweat beaded