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

Roman's cocked eyes came up in a startled face. 'Why you reckon they is doing that?' he asked stupidly.
'I bet my life they is stealing it,' she said.
Roman jumped as though a time bomb had gone off in his pants. 'Stealing my car!' he shouted, his hard, cable-like muscles coming into violent life.
He had the door open and was out on the pavement and pursuing the golden Cadillac before she could start screaming. She opened her mouth and let loose a scream that caused windows to pop open all up and down the street.
Roman was the only one who didn't hear her. His big, muscle-bound body was rolling as he ran, as though the sloping black pavement were the deck of a ship caught in a storm at sea. He was tugging at something stuck down his pants leg, beneath his leather jacket. Finally he came out with a big, rusty .45 caliber revolver, but before he had a chance to fire it the Cadillac had turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
A joker on a motorcycle with a sidecar was puffing out from the curb when the big Cadillac suddenly bore down on him and the driver switched on the lights. He did a quick turn back toward the curb. From the corners of his eyes he saw a golden Cadillac pass at a blinding speed. The silhouettes of three cops occupying the front seat flashed briefly across his vision. His brain did a double take and ifipped.
This joker had seen this Cadillac a short time before. At that time the occupants had been two civilians and a woman. There couldn't be but one Cadillac like that in Harlem, he was sure. If there was such a Cadillac. If he wasn't just blowing his top.
This joker was wearing dark-brown coveralls, a woolen-lined army fatigue jacket and a fur-lined, dark-plaid hunter's cap. There wasn't but one joker looking like this outside on this bitter cold night.
'No, it ain't true,' the joker said to himself. 'Either I ain't me or what I seen ain't that.'
While he was trying to figure out which was which a big black sedan screamed around the corner with its bright lights splitting open the black-dark night.
It was a Buick sedan, and it looked familiar. But not nearly so familiar as the woman he'd seen a short time before in the golden Cadillac. However, now the freak with the coonskin cap who had been driving the Cadillac was driving the Buick.
All of it was so crazy it was reassuring. He bent over the handlebars of his motorcycle, and began laughing as though he had gone crazy himself.
'Haw haw haw.' He laughed, and then began talking to himself. Whatever it is i is dreaming, one thing is for sure -- ain't none of it true.'


3

The switchboard in the precinct station was jammed.
The switchboard sergeant relayed the reports to Desk Lieutenant Anderson in a bored, monotonous voice: 'There's a woman who lives across the street from the convent says murder and rape taking place in the street...'
Lieutenant Anderson yawned. 'Every time a man beats his wife some busybody calls in and says she's being raped and murdered -- the wife, I mean. And God knows some of them could use a little of it -- the busybodies, I mean.'
'...another woman from the same vicinity. Says someone is torturing a dog...'
'Tell her we're sending an officer over right away,' Anderson said. 'Tell her dogs are our best friends.'
'She hung up. But here's another one. Claims the nuns are having an orgy.'
'Something's going on,' Anderson conceded. 'Send Joe Abrams and his partner over to take a look.'
The sergeant switched on the radio. 'Come in, Joe Abrams.'
Joe Abrams came in.
'Take a look along the south side of the convent.'
'Right,' Joe Abrams said.
'Patrolman Stick calling from a box on 125th Street,' the sergeant said to Anderson. 'Claims he and his partner, Sam Price were attacked and unfooted by a flying saucer some one has released in the neighborhood.'
'Order them to report here before going off duty for an alcohol test,' Anderson said sternly.
The sergeant chuckled as he relayed the order. Then he plugged in another call, and his face went grim.
'Man giving his name as Benjamin Zazuly, calling from the Paris Bar on 125th Street, reporting a double murder. Says two men dead on the sidewalk in front of the bar. One a white man. A third man unconscious. Thinks he's Casper Holmes...'
Anderson's fist came down on the desk, and his lean, hard face went bitter. 'Goddammit, everything happens to me,' he said, but the moment he had said it he regretted it.
'Get the other two cars over there,' he directed in a steady voice. The veins throbbed in his temples, and his pale-blue eyes looked remote.
He waited until the sergeant had contacted the two prowl cars and dispatched them to the scene. Then he said, 'Get Jones and Johnson.'
While the sergeant was calling for Jones and Johnson to come in, Anderson said anxiously, 'Let us hope nothing has happened to Holmes.'
The sergeant couldn't get Jones and Johnson.
Anderson stood up. 'Keep trying,' he ordered. 'I'm going to run over and take a quick look for myself.'


The reason the sergeant couldn't get Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson is that they were in the back room of Mammy Louise's pork store eating hot 'chicken feetsy,' a Geechy dish of stewed chicken feet, rice, okra and red chili peppers. On a cold night like this it kept a warm fire burning in the stomach, and the white, tender gristle of the chicken feet gave a solid packing to the guts.
There were three wooden tables covered with oilcloth of such a bilious color that only the adhesive consistency of Mammy Louise's Geechy stews could hold the food in the stomach. Against the side wall was a coal-burning stove flanked by copper water tanks. Pots of cooking foods bubbled on the hot lids, giving the small, close room the steamy, luxurious feeling of a Turkish bath.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed were sitting at the table farthest from the stove, their coats draped over the backs of wooden chairs. Their beat-up black hats hung above their overcoats on nails in the outside wall. Sweat beaded on their skulls underneath their short-cropped, kinky hair and streamed down their dark, intent faces. Coffin Ed's hair was peppered with gray. He had a crescent-shaped scar on the right-side top of his skull, where Grave Digger had hit him with his pistol barrel, the time he had gone berserk after being blinded by acid thrown into his face. That had been more than three years ago, and the acid scars had been covered by skin grafted from his thigh. But the new skin was a shade or so lighter than his natural face skin and it had been grafted on in pieces. The result was that Coffin Ed's face looked as though it had been made up in Hollywood for the role of the Frankenstein monster. Grave Digger's rough, lumpy face could have belonged to any number of hard, Harlem characters.
Grave Digger sucked the gristle from his last chicken foot and spat the small white bones onto the pile on his plate.
'I'll bet you a bottle he don't make it,' he said in a low voice, barely audible.
Coffin Ed looked at his wrist watch. 'What kind of bet is that,' he replied in a similar tone of voice. 'It's already five minutes to twelve, and she got off at eleven-thirty. You think she's waiting for him.'
'Naw, but he thinks so.'
They glanced surreptitiously at a man sitting in a worn wooden armchair in the corner beside the stove. He was a short, fat, bald-headed man with the round, black, mobile face of a natural-born comedian. Except for an overcoat, he was dressed for the street.He was staring across at themwith a pleading look.
He was Mister Louise, Mammy's husband. He had been picking up a hot little brownskin waitress at the Fischer Cafeteria next to the 125th Street railroad station every Saturday night since the new year began.
But Mammy Louise had got a bulldog. It was a six-year-old bulldog of a dirty white color with a mouth big enough to let in fuji-grown cats. It sat on its haunches directly in front of Mister Louise's shinily shod feet and stared up into his desperate face with a lidded, unblinking look. Its pink mouth was wide open as it panted in the steamy heat; its red tongue hung down its chest. There was a big wet spot on the floor where it had been drooling as though it would like nothing better than a hunk of Mister Louise's fat black meat.