Blind Man With a Pistol by Chester Himes Read Free Book Online

risk."
          "Damn right," Grave Digger agreed. "All you got to do is look around and see how many times they've lost."
          The first of the sirens sounded.
          "Here they are," Coffin Ed said.
          The spectators moved back.
     
                            _______________
     
    Interlude
     
          "Like him?" Doctor Mubuta asked.
          "He's beautiful," the white woman said.
          "Wrap him up and take him with you," Doctor Mubuta said, coming as near to leering as he had ever done.
          She blushed furiously.
          Doctor Mubuta motioned to the cretin, who had no compunction about wrap ping up the sleeping beauty in the bed sheet.
          "Take him out and put him into the back of her car," Doctor Mubuta directed. Then, turning to the blushing, speechless Mrs Dawson, he said, "He is now your responsibility, Madame. And I trust that as soon as you have thoroughly investigated this miracle and convinced yourself of its authenticity, you will remit the balance of payment."
          She nodded quickly and left. They all watched her leave. No one said anything. No one on the street gave a second look at the black harelip ped cretin placing a sheet-wrapped figure into the back compartment of an air-conditioned Cadillac limousine. It was Harlem, where anything might happen.
     
                            _______________
     
    5
     
          "You've been trying to outsmart the white folks, and you found that didn't do no good cause they're smarter than you are," Doctor Mubuta was saying in his singsong voice, his heavy jaw moving with the lecherous twist of a big black whore shaking her butt. His voice was as solemn as his expression and his eyes were as humprless as those of a religious fanatic.
          "Yeh!" The obscene twist of his jaw was caught, like one buttock aslant, then it resumed its suggestive grind: "And you've been trying to out-lie the white folk, only to discover it was the white folks who invented lying."
          The teen-aged white girl broke out of her hypnotic trance and giggled like she'd been caught out.
          Everyone else was staring at him with open mouths as though he were exposing himself.
          "Yeh! And you've been trying to out-Tom the white folks, and you're surprised to find the white folks is stealing your talent, like they has stole everything you has invented."
          Mister Sam's old rheumy eyes opened at that and he peeped at Doctor Mubuta. But he shut them immediately as though he didn't want to see what he saw. Dick's head moved slightly and an expression of pained cynicism flickered across his face. A subtle smile tugged at the corners of Anny's mouth. Intolerable outrage took hold of Viola's expression. Sugartit's stretched black eyes remained unchanged as though she weren't tuned in. Van Raff seemed to be smoldering at the incredible theft. The teen-aged white girl giggled again and tried to catch Doctor Mubuta's eye. Suddenly he looked directly at her; his vision lost its vague sightless scope and focused on her, his bright red eyes stripping off her clothes and looking directly between her thighs.
          "Yeh!" He might have said, "Yeh, man!"
          The ejaculation made her start guiltily. She closed her legs and blushed.
          Mister Sam seemed to be sleeping, or else dead.
          Then they were all listening again, like passengers in a runaway bus, not knowing where they were going but expecting momentarily to run off the edge of the earth.
          Doctor Mubuta's expression went vacant again as though he had made his point, whatever it was.
          "Yeh! You've been trying to out-yes white folks, but the white folks is yessing you so fast nowadays you don't know who's yessing who."
          "Shit!" Until then the speaker had been so inconspicuous he had passed for a gray shadow in the brightly lighted room.
          The