All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [68]
“Man, does money mean that much to you?” he asked.
“What money?” Casper said.
Down below on 125th Street was a crowd scene. Traffic was stopped. Joe Green’s big black Cadillac limousine sat in a line of cars a block long, the motor running and nobody in it. The sidewalks on both sides of the street were jammed. The Paris Bar and the Palm Café and the Apollo Bar had erupted their clients. The three movie houses had been deserted for the bigger attraction.
“Gawwwaheddamnnnn. A shooting every night,” a joker crowed triumphantly. “It’s crazy, man, crazy.”
Prowl cars converged from all directions, weaving in and out of the stopped cars, on the right side and on the wrong side of the street, jumping the curb when necessary to get by. Their sirens were screaming like the souls of the damned; their red lights were blinking like eyes from hell
Cops jumped out, big feet splattering in the ankle-deep slush, went up the stairs like the introduction to the television series called “Gang Busters.”
Their eyes popped at the sight that greeted them.
Coffin Ed was telephoning for an ambulance.
Grave Digger looked up from the floor, where he was kneeling beside Leila Baron, stroking her forehead and consoling her.
“It’s all over but the lying,” he lisped.
Chapter 20.
Casper Holmes was back in the hospital.
His eyes and mouth were bandaged; he could not see nor talk. There were tubes up his nostrils, and he had been given enough morphine to knock out a junkie.
But he was still conscious and alert. There was nothing wrong with his ears, and he could write blind.
He was still playing God.
At eleven o’clock that night he held the press conference which he had last scheduled for ten o’clock, against the considered advice of the staff doctors and his own private physician.
His room was packed with reporters and photographers. His chin jutted aggressively. His hands were expressive. He was in his métier.
He had scribbled a statement to the effect that the robbers had evidently been tipped off that he had received another payroll and had attempted a second robbery before getting out of town.
He had equipped himself with a small scratch pad and stylo with which to answer questions.
The questions came hard and fast.
He scribbled the answers, ripped off the pages and flung them toward the foot of the bed.
Question: Were you given a second payoff?
Answer: Hell no.
Question: Where did they get the information?
Answer: Ask a Ouija board.
Question: How did they find out about the first payoff?
Answer: Can’t say.
Question: Why did you slip out of the hospital in a hearse?
Answer: Safety first.
Question: Why did you stop by your office?
Answer: Private reasons.
Question: How did it happen your wife was there?
Answer: I asked her to meet me.
Question: How did detectives Jones and Johnson locate you?
Answer: Ask them.
Question: How do you feel about it all?
Answer: Lucky.
So it went. He didn’t give away a thing.
Afterwards he held a private session with his colored attorney, Frederick Douglas Henderson. He scribbled some instructions:
Get charges against sailor Roman Hill nol-prossed, give him your check for his $6,500 and get him out the country on first ship leaving. Then file claim in his name for the $6,500 found on the white robber’s body. Then I want you to phone Clay and tell him to keep effects of body for me personally. Got all that?
Attorney Henderson read the instructions thoughtfully.
“Whose body?” he asked.
Casper wrote: He’ll know.
When he left, Casper scribbled across a page: Keep your lip buttoned up.
He rang for the nurse and wrote: Get me an envelope.
She returned with the envelope. He folded the note, put it into the envelope and sealed it. He wrote across the face: Mrs. Casper Holmes. He handed it to the nurse.
Leila was in the adjoining room, but the nurse did not deliver the note.
She had been in an oxygen tent, taking plasma transfusions, ever since the operation. It was touch-and-go.
Big Six was in another smaller,