All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [58]
He started across Seventh Avenue. Snow was banked against the curb, and his feet plowed into the snow bank. He slipped but somehow managed not to fall. He got into the traffic lane. He stepped in front of a fast-moving car. Brakes shrieked.
“Drunken idiot!” the driver cried. Then he saw the knife sticking from Big Six’s head.
He jumped from his car, ran forward and took Big Six gently by the arm.
“My God in heaven,” he said.
He was a young colored doctor doing his internship in Brooklyn hospital. They had had a case similar to that a year ago; the other victim had been a colored man, also. The only way to save him was to leave the knife in the wound.
A woman started to get out of the car.
“Dick, can I help?” She had only seen the handle of the knife. She hadn’t seen the blade coming out the other side.
“No-no, don’t come near,” he cautioned. “Drive to the first bar and telephone for an ambulance—better cross over to Small’s; make a U-turn.”
As she drove off, another car with two men stopped. “Need any help?” the driver called.
“Yeah, help me lay this man on the sidewalk. He’s got a knife stuck through his head.”
“Jumping Jesus!” the second occupant exclaimed, opening the far door to get out. “They think of new ways every day.”
Cars were double-parked on Lexington Avenue in front of the hospital, and a large crowd of people milled about on the slushy sidewalks. Photographers and newsmen guarded the front door and the ambulance driveway looking sharply at everyone who left. Somehow word had got out that Casper Holmes was leaving the hospital, and they were determined he wouldn’t get past.
Two prowl cars were parked across the street; uniformed cops stood about, beating their gloved hands together.
The heavy snow drifted down, leaving a mantle of white on hats and overcoats and umbrellas.
When the hearse drew up the cops cleared the entrance to the driveway.
A reporter opened the door of the driver’s compartment and flashed a light into Jackson’s face.
“It’s just the chauffeur,” he called over his shoulder to his colleagues; then he asked, “Who are you taking, Jack?”
“The late Mister Clefus Harper, a pneumonia victim,” Jackson replied with a straight face.
“Anybody know a Clefus Harper?” the reporter asked.
No one knew him.
“Don’t let me hold you up, Jack,” he said.
The hearse purred slowly down the driveway toward the back exit.
“Keep on going,” the white man in the rear of the Cadillac limousine said. “They’re going to take a little time to get him out, and we got to get rid of this stiff.”
The driver stepped it up, went past the double-parked cars and crossed 121st Street.
“Is he dead?” his companion asked.
“He ain’t alive,” the white man said as he bent over and began removing the noose from George Drake’s neck.
When he had finished he began emptying all of Drake’s pockets.
“Where we going to dump him?” the driver asked, as they approached 119th Street.
The white man looked about. He was not very familiar with Harlem.
“Turn down this street,” he said. “It looks all right.” The big car floundered in inches of snow.
“Can you get through to Third Avenue?” the white man asked.
“Sure,” the driver said confidently. “A little snow like this won’t stop a Cadillac.”
The white man looked, up and down the street. There was no one in sight. He opened the curb-side door.
“Pull in a little,” he said.
The driver brushed the curb.
The white man rolled the body of George Drake out into the deep snow on the sidewalk. He closed the door and looked back once. The body looked like that of a fallen drunk, only there were no footsteps.
“Step it up,” he said.
Jackson pulled up before the back door of the hospital from which the dead were removed. He was no stranger there.
He got out, went around, opened the back of the hearse and began dragging out a long wicker basket. Two grinning colored attendants came from within the hospital and took the wicker basket inside with them.
Jackson got back into the driver’s seat and waited. He listened to an argument