"Himes, Chester - All Shot Up" - читать интересную книгу автора (Himes Chester)

The three cops exchanged glances.
Sassafras shook herself and looked at Mister Baron with infinite scorn. A small-boned, doll-like girl with a bottom like a duck's, she was wearing a gray imitation fur coat and a red knitted capwhichmight have belonged tooneofthesevendwarfs.
'If you're including me, you're barking up the wrong tree,' she said.
'What's unusual about you, dear,' Mister Baron said cattily.
'How much?' the white cop asked.
Mister Baron hesitated, appraising the cop. 'Five hundred,' he offered tentatively.
'Well, what about the old lady, if she ain't dead,' Sassafras put in. 'What you going to give her?'
'Let her lump it,' Mister Baron said brutally.
'Put these two squares in the car,' the white cop said.
One of the colored cops took Sassafras by the arm and steered her to the Buick.
Roman went docilely, still holding his hands shoulder-high. He looked like a joker who's bet his fortune on a sure thing and lost.
The cop hadn't troubled to search him. He didn't search him now. 'Get in the back,' he ordered.
Roman began to plead. 'If you-all will give me just one more chance --'
The cop cut him off. 'I ain't your mammy.'
Roman got in and sat dejectedly, shoulders drooping, head so bowed his chin rested on his chest. Sassafras came in from the other side. She took one look at him and burst out crying.
The cops ignored them and turned toward Mister Baron who stood confronting the white cop in the beam from the Cadillac's lamps.
'Douse those lights,' the white cop said
A colored cop walked over and turned off the lights.
The white cop cased the street. On the south side, oldfashioned residences with high stone steps, which had been converted into rooming houses or cut up into kitchenettes, were squeezed between apartment houses built for the overflowing white population in the 1920s, all taken over now by Ham's and Hagar's children.
On the north side was the high, crumbling stone wall of the convent, topped by the skeletons of trees. None of the convent buildings were visible from the street.
Aside from themselves, there was not a person in sight. Nothing moved but grit in the ice-cold wind.
'Five hundred all you got?' the white cop asked Mister Baron.
Mister Baron licked his lips, and his voice began to lilt. 'You and me could talk business,' he whispered.
'Come here,' the white cop said.
Mister Baron walked up close to the white cop as though he were going to nestle in his arms.
The white cop turned him around and closed his windpipe with a half nelson while twisting his right arm behind his back. Mister Baron beat at him futilely with his left hand.
A colored cop closed in and drew a plaited leather sap. The other cop lifted Mister Baron's Homburg, and the first cop sapped him back of the ear. Mister Baron gave a low soft sigh and went liquid. The white cop lowered him to the street, and the colored cop put the Homburg over Mister Baron's face.
The white cop went through Mister Baron's pockets with rapid efficiency. He found two scented white silk handkerchiefs, a case of miscellaneous keys, a diamond engagement ring stuck tightly about a plastic tube of lipstick, an ivory comb containing strands of Mister Baron's long wavy hair, a black rubber object shaped like a banana attached to an elastic band, and a package of one-hundred-dollar bills wrapped in greasy brown paper.
He grunted. The colored cops watched him with silent concentration. He put the package of bills into his side coat pocket and stuffed the remaining items back into Mister Baron's side overcoat pocket.
'Leave him here?' a colored cop asked.
'Naw, let's put him in the car,' the white cop said.
'We'd better get going,' the other cop urged. 'We're wasting too much time.'
'No need to hurry now,' the white cop said. 'We got it made.'
Without replying, the two colored cops picked up Mister Baron and carried him toward the Buick, while the white cop held the back door open.
Neither Roman nor Sassafras had seen a thing.
'What's happened to him?' Sassafras stopped crying long enough to ask.
'He fainted,' the white cop said. 'Get over.'
She moved toward the middle, and they propped Mister Baron in the corner of the seat.
'Hey, boy,' the white cop called to Roman.
Roman looked around.
'I'm going to impound your car, and my partners are going to stay here until the ambulance comes and then bring you to the station. And I don't want any trouble out of you folks; you understand?'
'Yassuh,' Roman said dully, as though the world had come to an end.
'All right,' the white cop said. 'Just let this be a lesson; you can't buy justice.'
'It weren't him,' Sassafras said.
'You just keep him quiet if you know what's good for you,' the cop said, and slammed the door.
He walked unhurriedly back to the Cadillac. One of the colored cops was sitting behind the wheel, the other sitting beside him. The white cop sat on the outside and slammed the door.
The cop driving started the motor and began easing off without turning on the lights. The big golden Cadillac crept silently around the back end of the Buick and had started past before Sassafras noticed it.
'Look, they is taking our car,' she cried.
Roman was too dejected to look up. 'He's impounding it,' he muttered.
'It ain't just him; it's all of them,' she said.