commissioner. The other detectives looked at them and grinned sympathetically, but no one spoke; no one dared speak, they were hotter than a pussy with the pox.
The commissioner arrived and they were called into the captain's office. The commissioner was distinctly cool, but he had himself well under control, like a man just keeping from biting his nails. He let them stand while he read their report. He leafed through the eighty-seven thousand dollars in cash they had turned in.
'Now, men, I just want the facts,' he said, looking about as though searching for the facts he wanted. 'How was it possible that Colonel Calhoun escaped while you were guarding him?' he asked finally.
'You haven't read our report correctly, sir,' Grave Digger said with great control. 'We said we were waiting for him to come back so we could catch him red-handed taking the money from the bale of cotton. But when he started to unlock the door his nephew said something and they rushed back to their limousine and took off. That was the last we saw of them. We tried to chase them but their car was too fast. They must have had some gadget on the lock to tell them if it had been tampered with.'
'What kind of gadget?'
'We don't know, sir.'
The commissioner frowned. 'Why didn't you report his escape and let the force catch him? Obviously, we have departments better equipped for it — or don't you think so?' he added sarcastically.
'That's right, sir,' Grave Digger said. 'But they didn't catch the two gunmen of Deke's and they had two full days before these same gunmen show up here, in the precinct station, and kill two officers and spring Deke.'
'We figured we'd have a better chance of getting him by ourselves. We figured he'd come back for the money sooner or later, so we just hid there waiting for him,' Coffin Ed added with a straight face.
'For one whole day?' the commissioner asked.
'Yes, sir. Time didn't matter,' Grave Digger said.
The captain cleared his throat angrily but said nothing.
But the commissioner reddened with anger. 'There is no place on this Force for grandstanding,' he said hotly.
Coffin Ed blew up. 'We found Deke and his two killers, didn't we? We gave back Iris, didn't we? We found the money, didn't we? We've got the evidence against the Colonel, haven't we? That's what we're paid for, isn't it? You call that grandstanding?'
'And how did you do it?' the commissioner flared.
Grave Digger spoke quickly, heading Coffin Ed off. 'We did what we thought best, sir,' Grave Digger said amenably. 'You said you'd give us a free hand.'
'Umph,' the commissioner growled, scanning the report in front of him. 'How did this girl, this dancer, Billie Belle, get hold of the cotton?'
'We don't know, sir, we haven't asked her,' Grave Digger said. 'We thought they'd get it out of Iris, they had her all yesterday.'
The captain reddened. 'Iris wouldn't talk,' he said defensively. 'And we didn't know about Billie Belle.'
'Where does she live?' the commissioner asked.
'On 115th Street, not far,' Grave Digger said.
'Get her in here now,' the commissioner ordered.
The captain sent two white detectives for her, glad to get off so easily.
Billie didn't have time for her elaborate onstage make-up and she looked young and demure, almost innocent, without it, like all lesbian sexpots. Her full soft lips were a natural rose color, and without mascara her eyes looked brighter, smaller and rounder. She wore black linen slacks and a white cotton blouse and she looked like anything but a sophisticated belly dancer. She was relaxed and slightly on the flip side.
'It was just a whim,' she said. 'I saw Uncle Bud sleeping in his empty cart when I was driving down beneath the bridge to see about my yawt, and somehow his nappy white head made me think of cotton. I stopped and asked him if he could get me a bale of cotton for my cotton dance; I don't know why, just 'cause if he cut his hair it'd make a bale, I suppose, and he said, 'Gimme fifty dollars and I'll git you a bale of cotton, Miss Billie,' and I gave him the fifty right then and there, knowing I'd get it back from the club. And sure enough, that same night, he delivered it.'
'Where?' the commissioner asked.
'At the club,' she said, lifting her eyebrows. 'What could I do with a bale of cotton in my home?'
'When?' Grave Digger asked.
'I don't know,' she said, becoming impatient with these senseless questions. 'Before I came at ten. He had left it in the stage entrance where it was in the way and I had it moved to my dressing-room until I wanted it on the stage.'
'When did you see Uncle Bud again?' Grave Digger asked.
'I had already paid him,' she said. 'There wasn't any need of seeing him again.'
'Have you ever seen him again?' Grave Digger persisted.
'Why ever should I see him again?' she snapped.
'Think,' Grave Digger said. 'It's important.'
She thought for a moment, then said, 'No, that was the last time I saw him.'
'Did the bale of cotton look as though it had been tampered with?' Coffin Ed asked.
'How the hell would she know?' Grave Digger said.
'I'd never seen a bale of cotton before in my life,' she confessed.
'How did Iris find out about it?' the commissioner asked.
'I don't really know,' she said musingly. 'She must have heard me telephoning. I saw a want ad in the Sentinel for a bale of cotton and called the number. Some man with a southern accent answered and said he was Colonel Calhoun of the Back-to-the-Southland movement and he needed a bale of cotton for a rally he was planning to have. I thought he was some smart alec making a joke and I asked him where this rally was taking place. When he said on Seventh Avenue, I was sure he was joking then. I said I was having a cotton rally on Seventh Avenue myself, at the Cotton Club, and he could come to see it, and he said he would. Anyway, I know I was joking when I asked him for a thousand dollars for my bale of cotton.'
'Where was Iris when you were talking on the telephone?' the commissioner persisted.
'I thought she was still in the bathroom, soaking, but she must have come into the dining-room in her bare feet. I was in the sitting-room lying on the divan with my back to the dining-room door and I didn't hear her. She could have just stood there and eavesdropped and I wouldn't have known it.' She had her little secret smile on again. 'That would be just like Iris. Anyway, I would have told her all about it if she had asked, but she would rather eavesdrop.'
'Didn't you know she had escaped from prison?' the commissioner asked softly.
There was silence for a moment and Billie's eyes stretched. 'She told me that detectives Jones and Johnson had let her out to look for Deke. I didn't approve of it but it wasn't my business.'
Dead silence reigned. The commissioner looked hard at the captain, but the captain wouldn't meet his gaze. Coffin Ed grunted, but Grave Digger kept a straight and solemn face.
Billie noticed the strange looks on everyone and asked innocently, 'What was so important about the bale of cotton?'
Coffin Ed said jubilantly, 'It had the eighty-seven thousand dollars hijacked from Deke's Back-to-Africa pitch hidden inside of it.'
'Ohhhh,' Billie gasped. Her eyes rolled back. Grave Digger caught her as she fell.
Now a week had passed. Harlem had lived notoriously on the front pages of the tabloids. Saucy brown chicks and insane killers were integrated with southern colonels and two mad Harlem detectives for the entertainment of the public. Lurid accounts of robberies and killings pictured Harlem as a criminal inferno. Deke O'Hara and Iris were dished up with the breakfast cereal; both had been indicted for conspiracy to defraud and second-degree murder. Iris screamed in bold black print that she had been double-crossed by the police. The Back-to-Africa movement vied with the Back-to-the-Southland movment for space and sympathy.
Everyone considered the dead gunmen as good gunmen and Grave Digger and Coffin Ed were congratulated for being alive.
Colonel Calhoun and his nephew, Ronald Compton, had been indicted for the murder of Joshua Peavine, a Harlem Negro laborer. But the State of Alabama refused to exradite them on the grounds that killing a Negro did not
