Read Online The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes - Free Book Online Page A

stockings was back in her original seat in a booth surrounded by three workers.
    “It wasn’t on account of her,” Big Smiley added.
    Grave Digger slid from his stool, went over to her booth and flashed his badge. “I want to talk to you.”
    She looked at the gold badge and complained, “Why don’t you folks leave me alone? I done already told a white cop everything I know about that shooting, which ain’t nothing.”
    “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink,” Grave Digger said.
    “Well, in that case …” she said and went with him to the bar.
    At Grave Digger’s order Big Smiley grudgingly poured her a shot of gin and Grave Digger said, “Fill it up.”
    Big Smiley filled the glass and stayed there to listen.
    “How well did you know the white man?” Grave Digger asked the lady.
    “I didn’t know him at all. I’d just seen him around here once or twice.”
    “Doing what–”
    “Just chasing.”
    “Alone?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Did you see him pick up anyone?”
    “Naw, he was one of those particular kind. He never saw nothing he liked.”
    “Who was the colored man who tried to cut him?”
    “How the hell should I know?”
    “He wasn’t a relative of yours?”
    “A relation of mine. I should hope not.”
    “Just exactly what did he say to the white man when he started to attack him?”
    “I don’t remember exactly; he just said something ’bout him messing about with his gal.”
    “That’s the same thing the other man, Sonny Pickens, accused him of.”
    “I don’t know nothing about that.”
    He thanked her and wrote down her name and address.
    She went back to her seat.
    He returned back to Big Smiley. “What did Pickens and the man argue about?”
    “They ain’t had no argument, Chief. Not in here. It wasn’t on account of nothing that happened in here that he was shot.”
    “It was on account of something,” Grave Digger said. “Robbery doesn’t figure, and people in Harlem don’t kill for revenge.”
    “Naw suh, leastwise they don’t shoot.”
    “More than likely they’ll throw acid or hot lye,” Grave Digger said.
    “Naw, suh, not on no white gennelman.”
    “So what else is there left but a woman,” Grave Digger said.
    “Naw suh,” Big Smiley contradicted flatly. “You know better’n that, Chief. A colored woman don’t consider diddling with a white man as being unfaithful. They don’t consider it no more than just working in service, only they is getting better paid and the work is less straining. ’Sides which, the hours is shorter. And they old men don’t neither. Both she and her old man figger it’s like finding money in the street. And I don’t mean no cruisers neither; I means church people and Christians and all the rest.”
    “How old are you, Smiley?” Grave Digger asked.
    “I be forty-nine come December seventh.”
    “You’re talking about old times, son. These young colored men don’t go in for that slavery-time deal anymore.”
    “Shucks, Chief, you just kidding. This is old Smiley. I got dirt on these women in Harlem ain’t never been plowed. Shucks, you and me both can put our finger on high society colored ladies here who got their whole rep just by going with some big important white man. And their old men is cashing in on it, too; makes them important, too, to have their old ladies going with some big-shot gray. Shucks, even a hard-working nigger wouldn’t shoot a white man if he come home and found him in bed with his old lady with his pants down. He might whup his old lady just to show her who was boss, after he done took the money ’way from her, but he wouldn’t sure ’nough hurt her like he’d do if he caught her screwing some other nigger.”
    “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Grave Digger said.
    “Have it your own way, Chief, but I still think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Lissen, the only way I figger a colored man in Harlem gonna kill a white man is in a fight. He’ll draw his shiv if he getting his ass whupped and