'Nawsuh, just an evil lady mad 'cause her hair got wet.'
The driver grinned, but the cop beside him looked at the bale of cotton curiously and asked, 'What you got there, uncle, a corpse bundled up?'
'Cotton, suh.'
Both cops straightened up and the driver leaned over to look at it too.
' Cotton? '
'Yassuh, this is cotton-a bale of cotton.'
'Where the hell did you get a bale of cotton in this city?'
'I found it, suh.'
'Found it? What the hell kind of double-talk is that? Found it where?'
'Right here, suh.'
'Right here?' the cop repeated incredulously. Slowly and deliberately he got out of the car. His attitude was threatening. He looked closely at the bale of cotton. He bent over and felt the cotton poking through the seams of the burlap wrapping. 'By God, it is cotton,' he said straightening up. 'A bale of cotton! What the hell's a bale of cotton doing here in the Street?'
'I dunno, boss, I just found it here is all.'
'Probably fell from some truck,' the driver said from within the cruiser. 'Let somebody else take care of it, it ain't our business.'
The cop in the street said, 'Now, uncle, you take this cotton to the precinct station and turn it in. The owner will be looking for it.'
'Yassuh, boss, but I can't get it into my waggin.'
'Here, I'll help you,' the cop said, and together they got it onto the cart.
The junk man set off in the direction of the precinct station, pushing the cart in the rain, and the cop got back into the cruiser and they went on down the street in the direction of the dead man.
4
When Grave Digger and Coffin Ed arrived at the lot where the Back-to-Africa rally had taken place, they found it closed off by a police cordon and the desolate black people, surrounded by policemen, standing helpless in the rain. The police cruiser was still smoking in the barbecue pit and the white cops in their wet black slickers looked mean and dangerous. Coffin Ed's acid-burned face developed a tic and Grave Digger's neck began swelling with rage.
The dead body of the young recruiting agent lay face up in the rain, waiting for the medical examiner to come and pronounce it dead so the men from Homicide could begin their investigation. But the men from Homicide had not arrived, and nothing had been done.
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed stood over the body and looked down at all that was left of the young black face which a few short minutes ago had been so alive with hope. At that moment they felt the same as all the other helpless black people standing in the rain.
'Too bad O'Malley didn't get it instead of this young boy,' Grave Digger said, rain dripping from his black slouch hat over his wrinkled black suit.
'This is what happens when cops get soft on hoodlums,' Coffin Ed said.
'Yeah, we know O'Malley got him killed, but our job is to find out who pulled the trigger.'
They walked over to the herded people and Grave Digger asked, 'Who's in charge here?'
The other young recruiting agent came forward. He was hatless and his solemn black face was shining in the rain. 'I guess I am; the others have gone.'
They walked him over to one side and got the story of what had happened as he saw it. It wasn't much help.
'We were the whole organization,' the young man said. 'Reverend O'Malley, the two secretaries and me and John Hill who was killed. There were volunteers but we were the staff.'
'How about the guards?'
'The two guards with the armored truck? Why, they were sent with the truck from the bank.'
'What bank?'
'The African Bank in Washington, D.C.'
The detectives exchanged glances but didn't comment.
'What's your name, son?' Grave Digger asked.
'Bill Davis.'
'How far did you get in school?'
'I went to college, sir. In Greensboro, North Carolina.'
'And you still believe in the devil?' Coffin Ed asked.
'Let him alone,' Grave Digger said. 'He's telling us all he knows.' Turning to Bill he asked, 'And these two colored detectives from the D.A.'s office. Did you know them?'
'I never saw them before. I was supicious of them from the first. But Reverend O'Malley didn't seem perturbed and he made the decisions.'
'Didn't seem perturbed,' Grave Digger echoed. 'Did you suspect it might be a plant?'
'Sir?'
'Did it occur to you they might have been in cahoots with O'Malley to help him get away with the money?'
At first the young man didn't understand. Then he was shocked. 'How could you think that, sir? Reverend O'Malley is absolutely honest. He is very dedicated, sir.'
Coffin Ed sighed.
'Did you ever see the ships which were supposed to take you people back to Africa?' Grave Digger asked.
'No, but all of us have seen the correspondence with the steamship company — The Afro-Asian Line — verifying the year's lease he had negotiated.'
'How much did he pay?'
'It was on a per head basis; he was going to pay one hundred dollars per person. I don't believe they are really as large as they look in these pictures, but we were going to fill them to capacity.'
'How much money had you collected?'
'Eighty-seven thousand dollars from the… er… subscribers, but we had taken in quite a bit from other things, church socials and this barbecue deal, for instance.'
'And these four white men in the delivery truck got all of it?'
'Well, just the eighty-seven thousand dollars we had taken in tonight. But there were five of them. One stayed inside the truck behind a barricade all the time.'
The detectives became suddenly alert. 'What kind of barricade?' Grave Digger asked.
'I don't know exactly. I couldn't see inside the truck very well. But it looked like some kind of a box covered with burlap.'
'What provision company supplied your meat?' Coffin Ed asked.
'I don't know, sir. That wasn't part of my duties. You'll have to ask the chef.'
They sent for the chef and he came wet and bedraggled, his white cap hanging over one ear like a rag. He was mad at everything — the bandits, the rain, and the police cruiser that had fallen into his barbecue pit. His eyes were bright red and he took it as a personal insult when they asked about the provision company.
'I don't know where the ribs come from after they left the hog,' he said angrily. 'I was just hired to superintend the cooking. I ain't had nothing to do with them white folks and I don't know how many they was — 'cept too many.'
'Leave this soul-brother go,' Coffin Ed said. 'Pretty soon he wouldn't have been here.'
Grave Digger wrote down O'MaIley's official address, which he already knew, then as a last question asked, 'What was your connection with the original Back-to-Africa movement, the one headed by Mr Michaux?'
