Read Online All Shot Up by Chester Himes - Free Book Online

white detective said.
    “The one who got killed in the heist and the one we just saw are newlyweds,” Grave Digger said. “This one—” He nodded toward the bartender—“is Snake Hips’ used-to-be.”
    “How did you dig that?”
    “Just guessing. They’re all just one big club. But you got to know it. It’s like when I was in Paris at the end of the war. All of us colored soldiers, no matter what rank or from what army or division, belonged to the same set. We all hung out at the same joints, ate the same food, told the same jokes, laid the same poules. There wasn’t anything that one of us could do that the whole God-damned shooting party didn’t know about.”
    “I see what you mean. But what’s the angle here?”
    “We haven’t guessed that far,” Grave Digger admitted. “Probably none. We’re just trying to get all these people in position. And this one is going to help us. Or he’s going to get something even he can’t handle.”
    “Not before I get done with him,” the detective said. “My boss man wants him to look at some pictures in the gallery. Maybe he can identify the heistmen—one of them at least.”
    “How long do you think that will take?” Coffin Ed asked.
    “A few hours, maybe, or a few days. We can’t employ your techniques; all we can do is keep him looking until he goes blind.”
    Grave Digger mashed the starter. “We’ll take you down to Centre Street.”
    The detective and his witness got out in front of the Headquarters Annex, a loft building across the street from the domed headquarters building.
    Coffin Ed leaned out of the window and said, “We’ll be waiting for you, lover.”
    By the time they got back uptown, the windshield was frosted over with a quarter-inch coating of ice. Approaching headlights resembled hazy spectrums coming out of the sea.
    They had a new dent in their right fender and a claim against their insurance company from the irate owner of a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce whom they had attempted to pass on a stretch of slick ice just north of the U.N. Building.
    Coffin Ed chuckled. “He was mad, wasn’t he.”
    “Can you blame him?” Grave Digger said. “He felt the same as Queen Elizabeth would if we tramped into Buckingham Palace with muddy feet.”
    “Why don’t you turn off that heater? You’ve said yourself it don’t make nothing but ice.”
    “What, and catch pneumonia!”
    They had been tippling a bottle of bourbon, and Grave Digger felt sort of witty.
    “Anyway, you might slow down if you can’t see,” Coffin Ed said.
    “It’s nights like this that cause wars,” Grave Digger philosophized without slacking speed.
    “How so?”
    “Increases the population. Then when you get enough prime males they start fighting to kill them off.”
    “Look out for that garbage truck!” Coffin Ed cried as they turned on two wheels into 125th Street.
    “Is that what that was?” Grave Digger asked.
    It was past three o’clock. They worked a special detail from eight until four, and this was the hour they usually contacted stool pigeons.
    But tonight even stool pigeons had gone under cover. The 125th Street railroad station was closed and locked, and next door the all-night cafeteria was roped off except for a few tables at the front, occupied by bums clinging to bone-dry coffee cups and keeping one foot moving to prove they weren’t asleep.
    “Going back to the case, or rather cases—the trouble with these people is they lie for kicks,” Grave Digger said seriously.
    “They want to be treated rough; brings out the female in them,” Coffin Ed agreed.
    “But not too rough; they don’t want to lose any teeth.”
    “That’s how we’re going to get them,” Coffin Ed summed up.
    Lieutenant Anderson was waiting for them. He had taken over the captain’s office, and was mulling over reports.
    He greeted them, as they came in bunched up and ashy from cold, with: “We got a line on the private eye who was killed. Paul Zalkin.”
    Coffin