All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [7]
Mammy Louise winked her off eye at the detectives. “Mister Louise ain’t so pokey tonight,” she explained. “He just want to set here and keep me company.”
“So we noticed,” Coffin Ed said.
Mister Louise stared longingly at the long-barreled, nickel-plated .38 caliber revolvers sticking from the two detectives’ shoulder holsters.
They heard the front door to the store open and bang shut. Feet stamped. A whisky-thick voice called, “Hey, Mammy Louise, come out here and give me a pot of them frozen chitterlings.”
She waddled through the curtained doorway leading to the store. They heard her opening a five-gallon milk can and shuffling about, and the customer protesting, “I don’t wants them loose chitterlings; I wants some frozen chitterlings,” and her sharp reply, “If you wants to eat ’em frozen just take ’em outside and freeze ’em; hit’s cold enough.”
Grave Digger said, “Mammy Louise can’t stand this Northern climate.”
“She got enough fat to keep her warm at the North Pole,” Coffin Ed replied.
“The trouble is, her fat gets cold.”
Mister Louise begged in a piteous voice, “One of you gentlemens shoot him for me, won’t you.” He glanced toward the curtained doorway and added, “I’ll pay you.”
“It wouldn’t kill him,” Coffin Ed replied solemnly.
“Bullets would just bounce off his head,” Grave Digger supplemented.
Mammy Louise came back and looked at her husband suspiciously. Then she said to the detectives, “Your car is talking.”
“I’ll get it,” Grave Digger said, getting to his feet before he’d finished saying it.
He slipped an arm through his jacket, grabbed his hat from the peg and pushed through the curtains as he poked his second arm into its sleeve.
The bulldog rolled its pink eyes at his receding figure and looked at Mammy Louise for instructions. But she paid it no attention. She was half moaning to herself. “Trouble, always trouble in dis wicked city. Whar Ah comes from—”
“There ain’t no law,” Coffin Ed cut her off as he put on his jacket. “Folks cut one another’s throats and go on about their business.”
“It’s better than getting kilt by the law,” she argued. “You can’t pay for one death by another one. Salvation ain’t the swapping market.”
Coffin Ed jammed his hat on his head, turned up the brim and slipped into his overcoat.
“Tell it to the voters, Mammy,” he said absently as he took down Grave Digger’s overcoat and straightened out a sleeve. “I didn’t make these laws.”
“I’ll tell it to everybody,” she said.
Grave Digger came back in a hurry. His face was set.
“Hell’s broke loose on the street,” he said, poking his arm into the coat Coffin Ed held for him.
“We’d better hop it then,” Coffin Ed said.
Unnoticed by anyone but Mister Louise, the bulldog had moved over to block the curtained doorway. When Grave Digger moved toward it, the dog planted its feet and growled.
Grave Digger’s long, gleaming, nickel-plated revolver came out in his hand like a feat of legerdemain, but Mammy Louise swooped down on the dog and dragged it off before he did it injury.
“Not dem, Lawd Jim, mah God, dawg,” she cried. “You can’t stop dem from goin’ nowhere. Them is de mens.”
Chapter 4.
The small, battered black sedan parked at the curb in front of Mammy Louise’s Hog Store: open day & night was still talking when they came out on the street. Grave Digger slid beneath the wheel, and Coffin Ed went around and climbed in from the other side.
The store was on 124th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, and the car was pointing toward Seventh.
The Paris Bar was due north as the bird flies on 125th Street, midway between the Apollo Bar and the Palm Cafe and across the street from Blumstein’s Department Store.
It was ten minutes by foot, if you were on your way to church, about two and a half minutes if your old lady was chasing you with a razor.
Coffin Ed checked his watch when Grave Digger mashed the starter. The little car might have looked like a bow-legged turtle, but it ran like an antelope.
It passed the Theresa Hotel, going up the wrong side of the street,