All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [9]
He had a broad, smooth-shaven face with a square, aggressive-looking chin. The black skin had a creamy, massaged look, and the short, carefully clipped kinky hair was snow-white. His appearance was impressive.
“Casper looks natural,” Coffin Ed said with a straight face.
“He was sapped behind the left ear,” Lieutenant Anderson stated.
“How do you figure it?” Grave Digger asked.
“It seems as though Holmes was robbed, but the rest doesn’t figure,” Anderson confessed.
“Laughing-boy yonder must have stepped out the bar to watch the bullets passing,” Haggerty cracked, amused by his own humor.
“One he didn’t see,” a white cop added, grinning.
Anderson wiped off the grin with a look.
“Who’s the gunman?” Coffin Ed asked.
“We haven’t made him,” Anderson said. “Haven’t touched him. We’re waiting for the M.E. and the crew from Homicide.”
“What do the witnesses say?”
“Witnesses?”
“Somebody in the bar must have seen the whole caper.”
“Yeah, but we haven’t got any of them to admit it,” Anderson said. “You know how it is when a white man gets killed. No one wants to get involved. I’ve sent for the wagon, and I’m going to take them all in.”
“Let me talk to them first,” Coffin Ed said.
“Okay, give it a try.”
Coffin Ed ambled toward the entrance to the bar, which was being guarded by a white patrolman.
Grave Digger looked enquiringly at a white civilian who had edged into the group.
“This is Mr. Zazuly,” Anderson said. “He got here right after the shooting and telephoned the station.”
“What did he see?” Grave Digger asked.
“When I got here the street was overrun with people,” Mr. Zazuly said, his magnified eyes blinking rapidly behind the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed spectacles. “The two men were lying there just as you see them, and not an officer in sight.”
“He’s an accountant for Blumstein’s,” Anderson explained.
“Did he hear the shooting?”
“Of course I heard the shooting. It sounded like the Second World War. And not a policeman in sight.” His round, owlish face glared from a mohair muffler with a look of extreme outrage. “Gang wars on a main thoroughfare like this. Right out in the broad open,” he went on indignantly. “Where were the police, I ask you?”
Grave Digger looked sheepish.
No one answered him.
“I’m going to write a complaint to the Commissioner,” he threatened.
The sound of a siren grew quickly in the night.
“Here comes the ambulance,” Anderson said with relief.
The red eye of the ambulance was coming up 125th Street fast, from the direction of Lenox Avenue.
Grave Digger addressed Mr. Zazuly directly. “And that’s all you saw?”
“What did you expect him to see?” Haggerty cracked. “Look at those specs.”
The ambulance double-parked beside a prowl car, and the cops stood by silently while the intern made a cursory examination.
“Can you give him something to bring him to?” Anderson asked him.
“Give him what?” the intern replied.
“Well, when will he be able to talk?”
“Can’t say, Inspector, he might have concussion.”
“I see you’re going to get ahead fast,” Anderson commented.
Nothing more was said while Casper Holmes was rolled onto the stretcher and moved.
Anderson glanced at his watch. “Homicide ought to be getting here,” he said anxiously.
“The stiffs won’t spoil in this weather,” Haggerty said, turning up the collar of his overcoat and putting his back to the ice-cold, dust-laden wind.
“I’m going to see how Ed’s making out,” Grave Digger said, and strolled toward the entrance to the Paris.
When Coffin Ed entered the Paris Bar, not one person looked in his direction.
It was a long, narrow room, with the bar running the length of the left side, taking up hall the space. Customers sat on bar stools or stood; there were no tables.
The usual Saturday night crowd was gathered, bitchy young men wearing peacock clothes with bright-colored caps, blue and silver and gold and purple, perched atop greasy curls straight from the barbershops