Chester Himes
The Heat's On
1
“You’re my friend, ain’t you?” the giant asked.
He had a voice that whined like a round saw cutting through a pine knot.
“What do you need with a friend, as big as you are?” the dwarf kidded.
“I is asking you,” the giant insisted.
He was a milk-white albino with pink eyes, battered lips, cauliflowered ears and thick, kinky, cream-colored hair. He wore a white T-shirt, greasy black pants held up with a length of hemp rope, and blue canvas rubber-soled sneakers.
The dwarf put on an expression of hypocritical solicitude. He flicked back his sleeve and glanced at the luminous dial on his watch. It was 1.22 a.m. He relaxed. There was no need to hurry.
He was a hunchback with a dirty yellow complexion, shades darker than that of the albino. Beady black eyes that could not focus on anything looked out from a ratlike face. But he was dressed in an expensive blue linen, handstitched suit, silk-topped shoes and a black panama hat with a dull orange band.
His shifty gaze flicked for a moment on the rope knot at the giant’s belly, which was on a level with his own eyes. The giant could make four of him, but he was not scared. The giant was just another sucker as far as he was concerned.
“You know I’m your friend, daddy-o. I’m old Jake. I’m your real cool friend.” He spoke in a wheezing voice that was accustomed to whispering.
The giant’s battered white face knotted into a frown. He looked up and down the dimly lit block on Riverside Drive.
On one side was a wall of big dark buildings. Not one lighted window was visible. On the other side was a park. He could make out the shapes of trees and benches, but he could only smell the flowers and the recently watered grass. A block away was the squat dark shape of Grant’s Tomb.
None of that interested him.
The park sloped sharply to the West Side Highway. He saw the scattered lights of late motorists going north toward Westchester County. Beyond the highway was the Hudson River, flickering vaguely in the dark. Across a mile of water was the New Jersey shore. It might have been the Roman walls for all he cared.
He put his ham-size hand on the dwarf’s small bony shoulder. The dwarf’s back seemed to bend.
“Don’t give me that stuff,” he said. “I don’t mean no real cool friend. You is everybody’s real cool friend. I mean is you my sure enough, really and truly friend?”
The dwarf wriggled irritably beneath the weight of the giant’s hand. His shifty gaze traveled up the huge white arm and lit on the giant’s thick white neck. Suddenly he realized that he was alone with a giant halfwit on a dark deserted street.
“Look here, Pinky, ain’t Jake always been your friend?” he said, pumping earnestness into his wheezing whisper.
The giant blinked like a dull mind reacting to a sudden apparition. Knobs of scar tissue shading his pink eyes moved like agitated lugworms. His cauliflowered ears twitched. His thick scarred lips drew back in a grimace. Rows of gold-crowned teeth flashed like a beacon in the semidark.
“I don’t mean no always-been-your-friend friend,” he whined angrily, his grip tightening involuntarily on the dwarf’s shoulder.
The dwarf winced with pain. His gaze flicked up toward the giant’s agitated face; but it bounced right off. It lighted for a moment on the twenty-two-story tower of the Riverside Church, rising in the dark behind the giant’s back. He became increasingly apprehensive.
“I mean is you my friend through thick and thin?” the giant insisted. “Is you my friend through smoke and fire?”
The sound of a fire engine sounded faintly from the distance.
The dwarf heard it … smoke and fire.… He began to get the connection. He struggled to break from the giant’s grip.
“Turn me loose, fool!” he cried. “I got to split.”
But the giant held on to him. “Can’t split now. You got to stay and back me up. You got to tell ’em for me, friend.”
“Tell who what, you fool?”
“The firemen, thass who. You got to tell ’em how my pa is gonna get robbed and murdered.”
“Shit!” the dwarf said, trying to push the giant’s hand from his shoulder. “Ain’t nothing going to happen to Gus, you mother-raping idiot!”
But the giant only tightened his grip; his first finger and thumb closed about the dwarf’s neck.
The dwarf squirmed like a pig in a sack, becoming panic-stricken; his beady black eyes bulged from their sockets. He hammered at the giant’s thick torso with his puny fists.
“Turn me loose, you big mother-raper!” he screamed. “Can’t you hear those sirens? Are you stone-deaf? We can’t be seen together on this plushy street. We’ll get nabbed for sure. I’m a three-time loser. I’ll get life in prison.”
The giant leaned forward and pushed his face before the face of the dwarf. The scar tissue on his blurred white face seemed to be jumping with a life of its own, like snakes in a hot fire. His body trembled and his nostrils flared and his eyes gleamed like pink coals as he stared into the beady black eyes of the dwarf.
“Thass why I been asking is you my friend through thick and thin,” he whined in a desperately urgent whisper.
The quiet environs of Riverside Drive were shattered with ear-splitting noise as fire engines and police cruisers poured into the street.
The dwarf stopped beating futilely at the giant’s torso and began frantically to fish little square paper packets from his own pockets and eat them up. He stuffed them into his mouth, one after another, chewed desperately and swallowed. His face turned purple as he began to choke.
At the same instant, firemen jumped from the still-moving engines and rushed toward the church, brandishing axes. Some burst through the front doors and rushed about in the black dark 215-foot nave, stumbling over pews and banging into pillars, looking for burning timbers to chop away. Others rushed around the sides of the building, searching for other accesses.
The fire captain was already in the street, shouting orders through his megaphone.
A church sexton came from a dark recess beside the huge front doors where he had been hiding.
He leveled an accusing finger at the giant albino and cried, “There’s the man who put in the false alarm!”
The captain saw him but could not hear him. “Get that civilian out of the danger zone!” he shouted.
Two prowl car cops on the alert for trouble rushed forward and seized the sexton.
“All right, buddy, get back,” one of them ordered.
“I am trying to tell you,” the sexton said through gritted teeth. “That big man there put in the fire alarm.”
The cops released the sexton and turned toward the giant.
“What’s going on here? Why are you choking that shrimp?” the vocal one asked in a hard voice.
“He’s my friend,” the giant whined.
The cop reddened with anger.
The dwarf gurgled as though choking and his eyes popped.
The cop looked from one to the other, trying to decide which one to slug. They both looked guilty, he had no choice.
“Which one of you guys put in the alarm?” he asked.
“He did,” the sexton said, pointing at the giant.
The cop looked at the giant and decided to call the fire captain. “We got the man who put in the alarm, sir.”
The fire captain called back, “Ask him where the fire is?”
“Fire?” the giant said as though he didn’t know what it was.
“Fire!” the sexton echoed in outrage. “There isn’t any fire! That’s what I been trying to tell you.”
The two cops looked at one another. All these fire engines and no fire, they thought. Suddenly one was reminded of that song by Louis Armstrong, “All that meat and no potatoes.…”
But the fire captain purpled with rage. He moved toward the giant with balled fists.
“Did you put in the alarm?” he asked dangerously, his chin jutting forward.