Blind Man With a Pistol by Chester Himes Page B

to go to the john."
          "Yeah, but you'd have central heating."
          "Personally, I'd rather live in the cellar. It's private with its own private entrance and I could control the heat."
          "But you'd have to put out the garbage cans," Grave Digger said.
          "Whoever occupied that whore's crib ain't been putting out any garbage cans."
          "Well, let's wake up the brothers on the ground floor."
          "If they ain't already awake."
     
     
    8
     
          "You're assuming that I'm a criminal because I'm married to a Negro and living in a Negro neighbourhood," Anny said tremulously. She still wore the dazed look from too much nigger and too much blood and the two black detectives weren't helping it any. She was down in the pigeon's nest on the bolted stool with the bright lights pouring over her, like any other suspect, but she'd already had a taste of this eye-searing glare and that didn't bother her as much as the indignity.
          Coffin Ed and Grave Digger stood back in the shadow beyond the perimeter of the glare and she couldn't see their expressions.
          "How does it feel?" Grave Digger asked.
          "I know what you mean," she said. "I've always said it was unfair."
          "We're holding you as a material witness," he explained.
          "It's after midnight now," Coffin Ed said. "By eight o'clock this morning you'll be sprung."
          "What he means is we've got to get such information as we can before then," Grave Digger explained.
          "I don't know much," she said. "My husband's the one you ought to question."
          "We'll get to him, we got to you," Coffin Ed said.
          "It all came from Mister Sam wanting to get rejuvenated," she said.
          "Did you believe in that?" Grave Digger asked.
          "You sound like his chauffeur, Johnson X," she said.
          He didn't dispute her.
          "All colored people sound alike," Coffin Ed muttered.
          A slow blush crept over her pale face. "It wasn't so hard," she confessed. "It was harder for my husband. You see, I have come to believe in a lot of things most people consider unbelievable."
          Grave Digger continued the questioning. "How long had you known about it?"
          "A couple of weeks."
          "Did Mister Sam tell you?"
          "No, my husband told me."
          "What did he think about it?"
          "He just thought it was a trick his father was playing on his wife, Viola."
          "What kind of trick?"
          "To get rid of her."
          "Kill her?"
          "Oh, no, he just wanted to be rid of her. You see, he knew she was having an affair with his attorney, Van Raff."
          "Did you know him well?"
          "Not well. He considered me his son's property, and he wouldn't poach --"
          "Although he wanted to?"
          "Maybe, but he was so old -- that's why he wanted to be rejuvenated."
          "To have you?"
          "Oh, no, he had his own. One white woman was the same as another to him -- only younger."
          "Mildred?"
          "Yes , the little tramp." She didn't say it vindictively, it was just descriptive.
          "Anyway, she's young enough," Coffin Ed said.
          "And he figured his wife and his lawyer were after his money?" Grave Digger surmised.
          "That's what started it," she said, and then suddenly, as the memory washed over her, she buried her face in her hands. "Oh, it was horrible," she sobbed. "Suddenly they were savaging one another like wild beasts."
          "It's the jungle, ain't it?" Coffin Ed growled. "What did you expect?"
          "The blood, the blood," she moaned. "Everyone was bleeding."
          Grave Digger waited for her to regain her composure, exchanging looks with Coffin Ed. Both were thinking maybe hers was the solution but was it the time? Would sexual integration start inside the black ghetto or