A Rage in Harlem (Special Edition) (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Anniversary Edition) - Softcover

Himes, Chester

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593311949 ISBN 13: 9780593311943

Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

A special edition of A Rage in Harlem, a ripping introduction to Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, who patrol New York City’s roughest streets in Chester Himes’s groundbreaking Harlem Detectives series. Featuring an introduction by James Ellroy.

For love of fine, wily Imabelle, hapless Jackson surrenders his life savings to a con man who knows the secret of turning ten-dollar bills into hundreds—and then he steals from his boss, only to lose the stolen money at a craps table. Luckily for him, he can turn to his savvy twin brother, Goldy, who earns a living—disguised as a Sister of Mercy—by selling tickets to Heaven in Harlem. With Goldy on his side, Jackson is ready for payback.

“Himes’s Harlem saga vies with the novels of David Goodis and Jim Thompson as the inescapable achievement of postwar American crime fiction.” —The New York Times

A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Special Edition

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

CHESTER HIMES began his writing career while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery from 1929 to 1936. From his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), Himes dealt with the social and psychological repercussions of being black in a white-dominated society. Beginning in 1953, Himes moved to Europe, where he met and was strongly influenced by Richard Wright. It was in France that he began his best-known series of crime novels—including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965)—featuring two Harlem policemen. As with Himes's earlier work, the series is characterized by violence and grisly, sardonic humor. He died in Spain in 1984.

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Hank counted the stack of money. It was a lot of money -- a hundred and fifty brand new ten-dollar bills. He looked at Jackson through cold yellow eyes.

"You give me fifteen C's -- right?"

He wanted it straight. It was strictly business.

He was a small, dapper man with mottled brown skin and thin straightened hair. He looked like business.

"That's right," Jackson said. "Fifteen hundred bucks." It was strictly business with Jackson too.

Jackson was a short, black, fat man with purple-red gums and pearly white teeth made for laughing, but Jackson wasn't laughing. It was too serious for Jackson to be laughing. Jackson was only twenty-eight years old, but it was such serious business that he looked a good ten years older.

"You want me to make you fifteen G's -- right?" Hank kept after him.

"That's right," Jackson said. "Fifteen thousand bucks."

He tried to sound happy, but he was scared. Sweat was trickling from his short kinky hair. His round black face was glistening like an eight-ball.

"My cut'll be ten percent -- fifteen C's -- right?"

"That's right. I pays you fifteen hundred bucks for the deal."

"I take five percent for my end," Jodie said. "That's seven hundred and fifty. Okay?"

Jodie was a working stiff, a medium-sized, root-colored, rough-skinned, muscular boy, dressed in a leather jacket and GI pants. His long, thick hair was straightened on the ends and burnt red, and nappy at the roots where it grew out black. It hadn't been cut since New Year's Eve and this was already the middle of February. One look at Jodie was enough to tell that he was strictly a square.

"Okay," Jackson said. "You gets seven hundred and fifty for your end."

It was Jodie who had got Hank to make all this money for him.

"I gets the rest," Imabelle said.

The others laughed.

Imabelle was Jackson's woman. She was a cushioned-lipped, hot-bodied, banana-skin chick with the speckled-brown eyes of a teaser and the high-arched, ball-bearing hips of a natural-born amante. Jackson was as crazy about her as moose for doe.

They were standing around the kitchen table. The window looked out on 142nd Street. Snow was falling on the ice-locked piles of garbage stretching like levees along the gutters as far as the eye could see.

Jackson and Imabelle lived in a room down the hall. Their landlady was at work and the other roomers were absent. They had the place to themselves.

Hank was going to turn Jackson's hundred and fifty ten-dollar bills into a hundred and fifty hundred-dollar bills.

Jackson watched Hank roll each bill carefully into a sheet of chemical paper, stick the roll into a cardboard tube shaped like a firecracker, and stack the tubes in the oven of the new gas stove.

Jackson's eyes were red with suspicion.

"You sure you're using the right paper?"

"I ought to know it. I made it," Hank said.

Hank was the only man in the world who possessed the chemically treated paper that was capable of raising the denomination of money. He had developed it himself.

Nevertheless Jackson watched Hank's every move. He even studied the back of Hank's head when Hank turned to put the money into the oven.

"Don't you be so worried, Daddy," Imabelle said, putting her smooth yellow arm about his black-coated shoulder. "You know it can't fail. You saw him do it before."

Jackson had seen him do it before, true enough. Hank had given him a demonstration two days before. He had turned a ten into a hundred right before Jackson's eyes. Jackson had taken the hundred to the bank. He had told the clerk he had won it shooting dice and had asked the clerk if it was good. The clerk had said it was as good as if it had been made in the mint. Hank had had the hundred changed and had given Jackson back his ten. Jackson knew that Hank could do it.

But this time it was for keeps.

That was all the money Jackson had in the world. All the money he'd saved in the five years he'd worked for Mr. H. Exodus Clay, the undertaker. And that hadn't come easy. He drove the limousines for the funerals, brought in the dead in the pickup hearse, cleaned the chapel, washed the bodies and swept out the embalming room, hauled away the garbage cans of clotted blood, trimmed meat and rotten guts.

All the money he could get Mr. Clay to advance him on his salary. All the money he could borrow from his friends. He'd pawned his good clothes, his gold watch and his imitation diamond stickpin and the gold signet ring he'd found in a dead man's pocket. Jackson didn't want anything to happen.

"I ain't worried," Jackson said. "I'm just nervous, that's all. I don't want to get caught."

"How're we goin' to get caught, Daddy? Ain't nobody got no idea what we're doing here."

Hank closed the oven door and lit the gas.

"Now I make you a rich man, Jackson."

"Thank the Lord. Amen," Jackson said, crossing himself.

He wasn't a Catholic. He was a Baptist, a member of the First Baptist Church of Harlem. But he was a very religious young man. Whenever he was troubled he crossed himself just to be on the safe side.

"Set down, Daddy," Imabelle said. "Your knees are shakin'."

Jackson sat down at the table and stared at the stove. Imabelle stood beside him, drew his head tight against her bosom. Hank consulted his watch. Jodie stood to one side, his mouth wide open.

"Ain't it done yet?" Jackson asked.

"Just one more minute," Hank said.

He moved to the sink to get a drink of water.

"Ain't the minute up yet?" Jackson asked.

At that instant the stove exploded with such force it blew the door off.

"Great balls of fire!" Jackson yelled. He came up from his chair as if the seat of his pants had blown up.
"Look out, Daddy!" Imabelle screamed and hugged Jackson so hard she threw him flat on his back.

"Hold it, in the name of the law!" a new voice shouted.

A tall, slim colored man with a cop's scowl rushed into the kitchen. He had a pistol in his right hand and a gold-plated badge in his left.

"I'm a United States marshal. I'm shooting the first one who moves."

He looked as if he meant it.

The kitchen had filled with smoke and stunk like black gun-powder. Gas was pouring from the stove. The scorched card-board tubes that had been cooking in the oven were scattered over the floor.

"It's the law!" Imabelle screamed.

"I heard him!" Jackson yelled.

"Let's beat it!" Jodie shouted.

He tripped the marshal into the table and made for the door. Hank got there before him and Jodie went out on Hank's back. The marshal sprawled across the table top.

"Run, Daddy!" Imabelle said.

"Don't wait for me," Jackson replied.

He was on his hands and knees, trying as hard as he could to get to his feet. But Imabelle was running so hard she stumbled over him and knocked him down again as she made for the door.

Before the marshal could straighten up all three of them had escaped.

"Don't you move!" he shouted at Jackson.

"I ain't moving, Marshal."

When the marshal finally got his feet underneath him he yanked Jackson erect and snapped a pair of handcuffs about his wrists.

"Trying to make a fool out of me! You'll get ten years for this."

Jackson turned a battleship gray.

"I ain't done nothing, Marshal. I swear to God." Jackson had attended a Negro college in...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593311949
• ISBN 13: 9780593311943
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 176
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar