The colored man turned to his companion.
“What he look like, you think?”
The second colored man disapproved of his companion’s volunteering information to white cops about a colored boy.
“I didn’t see him,” he said, showing his disapproval.
Both cops turned to stare at him in rage.
“You didn’t seen him,” one mimicked. “Well, God damn it, you’re both under arrest.”
The cops escorted the two colored men around to the front of the station and put them on the back seat of their patrol car while they got into the front seat. Passersby glanced at them with brief curiosity, and passed on.
The cops turned the car up Park Avenue on the wrong side to show their power. The red light beamed like an evil eye. They drove slowly, flashing the adjustable spotlights along the sidewalks, into the faces of pedestrians, into doorways, cracks, corners, vacant lots, searching for a colored boy who had picked up a bloodstained knife among the half-million colored people in Harlem.
They were just in time to see a panel delivery truck with a mangled rear fender turn the corner into 130th Street, but they weren’t interested in it.
“What shall we do with these black sons of bitches?” one of the cops asked the other.
“Let ’em go.”
The driver stopped the car and said, “Get out.”
The two colored men got out and walked back toward the station.
When they arrived the ambulance was driving off, taking the cut man to Harlem Hospital so his wounds could be stitched before sending him on to the precinct station to prefer charges against Imabelle.
At the same time the patrol car carrying Imabelle to the precinct station was going east on 125th Street. It passed a hearse that turned slowly from Madison Avenue. But there was nothing suspicious about a hearse traveling about the streets in the early hours of morning. Folks were dying in Harlem at all hours.
The patrol cops turned Imabelle over to the desk sergeant to be held until the cut man came to prefer charges.
“You mean I’ve got to stay here until—”
“Shut up and sit down.” The desk sergeant cut her off in a bored voice.
She started to act indignant, thought better of it, crossed the room to one of the wooden benches against the wall, and sat quietly with crossed legs showing six inches of creamy yellow thighs, as she contemplated her red-lacquered fingernails.
While she was sitting there, Grave Digger came out of the captain’s office. He wore a white patch of bandage beneath his pushed-back hat and an expression of unadulterated danger. He looked at Imabelle casually, then did a double-take, recognizing her. He walked slowly across the room and looked down at her.
She gave him her bedroom look, hitched her red skirt higher, exposing more of her creamy yellow thighs.
“Well, bless my big flat feet,” he said. “Baby-o, I got news for you.”
She gave him her pearly smile of promise of pleasant things to come.
He slapped her with such savage violence it spun her out of the chair to land in a grotesque splay-legged posture on her belly on the floor, the red dress hiked so high it showed the black nylon panties she wore.
“And that ain’t all,” he said.
20
When Jackson turned into 125th Street from Madison Avenue, headed toward the station baggage-room, he was driving as cautiously as if the street were paved with eggs.
He was in a slow sweat from the crown of his burr head to the white soles of his black feet. Worrying about Imabelle, wondering if that woman of his was safe, worrying about her trunk full of gold ore, hoping nothing would go wrong now that he had rescued it from those thugs.
He was steering with one hand, crossing himself with the other.
One moment he was praying, “Lord, don’t quit me now.”
The next he was moaning the lowdown blues:
A patrol car passed him, headed toward the precinct station, going like a bat out of hell. It went by so fast he didn’t see Imabelle in the back seat. He thought they were taking some thug to jail. He hoped it was that bastard Slim.
An ambulance shot past. He skinned his eyes, his sweat turning cold, trying to see who was riding in it, and almost rammed into a taxi ahead. He caught a glimpse of the silhouette of a man and was relieved. Weren’t Imabelle, whoever it was.
He wondered where that woman of his could be. He was worrying so hard about her that he almost ran down a big fat black man doing the locomotive shuffle diagonally across the street.
Jackson eased the hearse past Big Fats as though he were picking his way through a brier patch. He didn’t open his mouth again. Couldn’t tell what a drunk might do next. He didn’t want any trouble until he got the trunk checked and safe from Goldy.
He had to drive past the front of the station, circle it on Park Avenue, and come down beside the baggage room entrance from the rear.
By the time he had pulled to the curb before the baggage-room door, behind the line of loading taxicabs, Big Fats had navigated the dangerous rapids of 125th Street traffic and was shuffling up the crowded sidewalk beside the lighted windows of the waiting room, heading up Park Avenue toward the Harlem River.
None of them said anything to Big Fats. No need to borrow trouble with an able-bodied colored drunk the size of Big Fats. Especially if his eyes were red. That’s the way race riots were started.
But it made Jackson nervous to have the police congregating in the vicinity while he was checking the trunk of gold ore. He was so nervous as it was he was jumping from his shadow. He left the motor running from habit. When he got out to go to the baggage room, Big Fats spied him.
“Little brother!” Big Fats shouted, shuffling up to Jackson and putting his big fat arm about Jackson’s short fat shoulders.
“Short-black-and-fat like me. You tell ’em, short and fatty. Can’t trust no fat man, can they?”
Jackson threw the arm off angrily and said, “Why don’t you behave yourself. You’re a disgrace to the race.”
Big Fats put the locomotive in reverse, let it idle on the track, building up steam.
“What race, Little Brother. You want to race?”
“I mean our race. You know what I mean.”
Big Fats bucked his red-veined eyes at Jackson in amazement.
“You mean to say you’d let ’em trust you with they women?” he shouted.
“Go get sober,” Jackson shouted back with uncontrollable irritation, went around Big Fats like skirting a mountain, hurried into the baggage room without looking back.
Big Fats forgot him instantly, began shuffling up the street again.
Jackson found a colored porter.
“I got a trunk I want to check.”
The porter looked at Jackson and became angry just because Jackson had spoken to him.
“Where you going to?” he asked gruffly.
“Chicago.”
“Where’s your ticket at?”
“I ain’t got my ticket yet. I just want to check my trunk until I get my ticket.”
The porter went into a raving fury.
“Can’t check no trunk nowhere if you ain’t got no ticket,” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Don’t you know that?”
“What are you getting so mad about? You act like we’re God’s angry people.”
The porter hunched his shoulders as though he were going to take a punch at Jackson.
“I ain’t mad. Does I look mad?”
Jackson backed away.
“Listen, I don’t want to check it nowhere. I just want to check it here until I come down tonight to get my ticket.”