He didn’t know whether Goldy had found Imabelle’s address, whether she’d been arrested, whether she was dead or alive. He hardly knew how he’d gotten out alive himself, but that didn’t matter. He was sitting there riding in a junk wagon and he didn’t know anything. For all he knew, right at that moment, his woman might be in deadly danger. What was more, now that the gang knew the police were on to them, they might run away with Imabelle’s gold ore. But just so long as they didn’t hurt Imabelle, he didn’t care.
His clothes were wet on the outside from the puddle he’d fallen into, and wet on the inside from his own pure sweat. And all of it was icy cold. He sat trembling from cold and worry, and couldn’t do a thing.
Colored people passed along the dark sidewalks, slinking cautiously past the dark, dangerous doorways, heads bowed, every mother’s child of them looking as though they had trouble.
Colored folks and trouble, Jackson thought, like two mules hitched to the same wagon.
“You cold?” the junkman asked.
“I ain’t warm.”
“Wanna drink?”
“Where’s it at?”
The junkman fished a bottle of smoke from his ragged garments.
“You got another bone?”
Jackson skinned off another dollar bill, handed it to the junkman, took the bottle and tilted it to his lips. His teeth chattered on the bottle neck. The smoke burnt his gullet and simmered in his belly, but it didn’t make him feel any better.
He handed the half-emptied bottle back.
“You got a woman?” the junkman asked.
“I got one,” Jackson said mournfully. “But I don’t know where she’s at.”
The junkman looked at Jackson, looked at the bottle of smoke, handed it back to Jackson.
“You keep it,” he said. “You need it more’n me.”
15
Goldy was standing in the dark, watching through the glass front door of the tobacco shop, when Jackson got down from the junk wagon. He opened the door for Jackson to enter, and locked it behind him.
“Did you find out where she’s at?” Jackson asked immediately.
“Come on back to my room where we can talk.”
“Talk? What for?”
“Be quiet, man.”
They groped through the black dark like two ghosts, invisible to each other. Jackson begrudged every second wasted. Goldy was trying to figure out where to hide the gold ore when he’d finally gotten it.
Goldy turned on the light in his room and padlocked the door on the inside.
“What you locking the door for?” Jackson complained. “Ain’t you found out where she’s at?”
Before replying, Goldy went around the table and sat down. His wig and bonnet lay on the table beside a half-empty bottle of whiskey. With his round black head poking from the bulging black gown, he looked like an African sculpture. He was so high he kept brushing imaginary specks from his gown.
“I found out where she’s at all right, but first I got to know what happened.”
Jackson stood just inside the door. He began swelling with rage. “Goldy, unlock this door. I feel like I’m just two feet away from jail as it is.”
Goldy got up to unlock the door, shoulders twitching from the gage.
“Aw, God damn it, set down and cool off,” he muttered. “Drink some of that whiskey there. You’re making me nervous.”
Jackson drank from the bottle. His teeth chattered so loudly on the bottle neck that Goldy jumped.
“Man, quit making those sudden noises. You sound like a rattlesnake.”
Jackson banged the bottle on the table and gave Goldy a look of blue violence.
“Be careful, Brother, be careful. I’ve taken all I’m going to take this night from anybody. You just tell me where my woman is and I’ll go get her.”
Goldy sat down again and began shining his cross with quick, jerky motions. “You tell me first what happened.”
“You ought to know what happened if you found out where she’s at.”
“Listen, man, we’re just wasting time like this. I wasn’t back there when the rumble happened. I was setting in a taxi out front when she and Slim came out and got in and he said she was his wife and had taken poison and he had to get her to Knickerbocker Hospital. They rode with me to the hospital then got out and switched taxis and rode over to the place on Park Avenue where they stay. I followed them and that’s all I know. Now you tell me what happened back there in the shack so we can figure out what to do.”
Jackson began to worry again.
“Do they know you followed them?”
“How do I know? Slim don’t know, anyway, unless Imabelle told him. He was in too much pain to notice anything.”
“Did some get in his eyes too?”
“Naw, just on his neck and face.”
“Did they act suspicious of you?”
“I don’t know. Quit asking so many questions and just tell me what you know.”
“What I know don’t matter if they know you followed them. Because by this time Slim will be long gone from wherever he’s at, if he’s still got his sight.”
“Listen, Bruzz,” Goldy said, trying to remain patient. “That woman is sharp. Chances are that she knows I followed her. But that don’t mean she tells Slim. That depends on how she’s playing it. One thing is sure, she has turned you in for a new model. That’s for sure.”
“I know she ain’t done that,” Jackson insisted doggedly.
“No you don’t neither, Bruzz. But whether she’s ready to turn Slim in now for another new model, nobody can say.”
“That just ain’t so.”
“All right, square. Have it whatever way you wish. We’re going to find out soon enough if you ever get around to telling me what happened back there.”
“Well, Grave Digger shot Gus through the head, and Hank threw acid into Coffin Ed’s eyes — that’s when it got on Slim. Then the lights went out and there was a lot of shooting and fighting in the dark. Somebody was trying to cut Imabelle. I got knocked out trying to get to her to help her. And by the time I came to everybody was gone.”
“Holy jumping Joseph! Did Grave Digger get killed too?”
“I don’t know. When I came to he was lying on the floor — leastways I think it was him — and there weren’t anybody left but me and Coffin Ed. And he was going crazy with pain, in there blind, with a loaded pistol, ready to shoot anything that moved. Only the Lord in Heaven knows how I got out of there alive.”
Goldy got up abruptly and put on his wig and bonnet. Suddenly he was consumed with haste.
“Listen, we got to work fast now because those studs is hotter here in Harlem than a down-home coke oven.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along. Let’s go.”
Goldy paused long enough to give him an angry look.
“Man, wait a minute, God damn it. We can’t go in our bare asses.”
He raised the mattress of the couch and took out a big blued-steel Frontier Colt’s .45 six-shooter.
“Great day alive! You had that thing in here all along!” Jackson exclaimed.
“You just look over there in that corner and get that piece of pipe and don’t ask so many questions.”
Jackson felt in behind the stack of cardboard cartons and hauled out a three-foot length of one-inch iron pipe. One end was wrapped with black machinist’s tape to form a hand hold. He hoisted it once to get the feel but didn’t say anything.
Goldy slipped the .45 revolver into the folds of his Sister of Mercy gown. Jackson stuck the homemade bludgeon beneath his wet, tattered overcoat. Goldy turned out the light and padlocked the door. They moved through the blackness of the store toward the front door, like two ghosts armed for mayhem.
It was snowing slightly when they got outside. The white snowflakes turned a dirty gray when they hit the black street.