The big gold dream cjagdj-4

by Chester Himes

  "We got that settled," Slick said coldly. "Now where's the money?"

  "Listen, I told you what was what," Susie flared.

  Again Slick nodded in the direction of Dummy. "He doesn't believe you."

  Susie turned and looked at Dummy again. "You're going to be sorry you ever messed in my business," he promised.

  "I'm getting tired of this," Slick said in his flat, deadly voice. "I asked you where was the money."

  "I ain't got it," Susie said, giving him a straight answer.

  "Okay-I hope you're leveling," Slick said.

  "I'm leveling," Susie said.

  "Okay, you haven't got it. Let's start from there. What did you find in her joint?"

  "Nothing. Her joker had already searched it again before I got there, and if anything was hid there he'd been sure to find it," Susie said.

  "How do you know he didn't?" Slick asked.

  "He didn't," Susie said. "I found him sleep on the floor, and I looked around and saw he'd searched the joint; then I searched him. He didn't even wake up. You can bet if he'd had anything worth stealing, he'd been wide awake."

  "Let's get back to the mattress," Slick said.

  "I has told you, there wasn't nothing in that mattress," Susie flared angrily.

  "So you did," Slick said. "You also said you saw her put it there."

  Susie corrected him. "I said I seen her sewing the mattress up. And I took it for granted that would be the only reason she'd be sewing up a mattress in the middle of the night."

  "Too bad you didn't get it then," Slick said.

  Neither of them noticed Dummy leaning forward with his eyes stretched.

  "I couldn't have with her joker hanging 'round," Susie said.

  "And it wasn't in the mattress when you got it," Slick said.

  "It weren't there, and the side of the mattress had been cut open again," Susie said. "One of them beat me to it," he added. "But I don't know which one."

  Grunting sounds issuing from Dummy's mouth drew their attention. He had gotten out his scratch pad and was writing in it. He got up and showed Slick what he had written.

  Slick looked up at Susie. "He says neither of them got it."

  Susie's face swelled with sudden rage. "If he keeps on trying to frame me, I'm going to stick him," he threatened again.

  Dummy moved away from the broken table so it wouldn't be in his way if he had to protect himself.

  Slick reached out a foot and touched him on the leg. "How do you know neither of them got it?" he asked.

  Dummy wrote in his pad: i know alright.

  "He just says he knows," Slick told Susie.

  "He knows more than what's good for him," Susie said. maybe she still got it on her, Dummy wrote in his pad and showed it to Slick.

  "Not in jail, she hasn't," Slick said. "And it was you who said she didn't know where it was."

  Dummy shrugged.

  "Maybe she took it out the mattress and hid it somewhere else," Susie said.

  Dummy shook his head in the negative.

  "I got a feeling that we ain't being very smart," Slick said.

  "You're supposed to be the brains," Susie reminded him.

  "That's right," Slick acknowledged. "And I'm going to start using them."

  20

  Between eight and nine o'clock on weekday evenings Sweet Prophet received in private such of his followers who had problems or wished to make confession and new recruits who wished to arrange for baptisms at some future date.

  He sat behind the hand-carved mahogany desk in his sumptuous receiving room on the third-floor front of his Temple of Wonderful Prayer, while his supplicants sat in the high-backed period chairs across from him.

  Attired in a Geneva gown of canary-yellow silk and a sequined headpiece similar to that seen on the statues of Krishna, he looked like the rising sun. The diamonds in the rings on all his fingers sparkled whenever he gestured, and his long twisted fingernails of rainbow hue squirmed as though alive.

  Elder Jones stood at his right side, wearing a fresh white uniform.

  His private secretary-a quiet, middle-aged woman of culture-sedately dressed in a freshly laundered black linen frock, stood at his left.

  The assistant secretary, who had been entrusted with the weekend income to take to the bank, was still downtown in the Fingerprint Bureau of the Central Police Department examining photos of colored confidence men, trying to pick out the one who had swindled her that morning. She had looked at the mugs of criminals until her head swam, but still she stayed on, afraid to report to the Prophet that his money was lost.

  Outside, seen through the open front windows, the day was dying. The street lights were on, and the lights in the show windows of stores and in the hot-box apartments; and the sign lights and automobile lights lit up the many-colored faces of the people crowded on the burning hot sidewalks.

  Sweet Prophet's hour of consolation was almost over. He was glad of it; other folks' problems had never seemed so distasteful. Strain showed in his face; his bulging eyes looked worried and harassed. It had been a long day for him; he hadn't been able to sleep again after the detectives' predawn visit.

  "Who else is there?" he asked.

  "Sister Alberta Wright," Elder Jones replied.

  Sweet Prophet looked startled. He hesitated. Finally he sighed and said, "Send the sister in."

  Alberta paused just inside the door and stared at Sweet Prophet. She looked downcast and bedraggled in the now-filthy garments in which she had been baptized; but her eyes were wide and alight with hope. Sitting there in his brilliant garb, Sweet Prophet appeared to her as a great shining light that had come into this dark moment of her life.

  She fished the last ten dollars from her brassiere, went forward and laid it on the desk in front of him. Wearily, he found a crumb of bread for her in the pocket of his gown and pocketed the money. She put the crumb in her mouth and knelt on the floor.

  "Arise, my child," he said.

  She got up from her knees and sat forward on the edge of the chair.

  "What is troubling you, my child?" he asked.

  "I hate to keep bothering you after you have been so good to get me out of jail," she said. "But I'm in big trouble."

  "Tell me about it, my child," he said.

  "It began with my dream," she confessed. "When I dreamt about those three pies exploding with hundred dollar bills, I knew The Lord had sent me a message. So I went and played twenty dollars on the money row in the three biggest houses in Harlem. That was all the money I had, sixty dollars, but I knowed The Lord had sent me a message, and I had faith. And just like I believed, my number popped out like it were sent for, and I hit for thirty-six thousand dollars.

  "Thirty-six thousand dollars," Sweet Prophet echoed. "That is a lot of money, child."

  "Yes, Sweet Prophet, it sure was," she admitted.

  "So the houses have gone back to paying six hundred to one," he remarked.

  "Yes, Sweet Prophet, they pays off good if you got the message," she said.

  "And you had twenty-nine thousand, four hundred dollars left after paying off the commissions?"

  "Yes, Sweet Prophet. I had to give the writers the ten per cent which they collects on a hit, and then I had to give the payoff men from each of the houses a thousand dollars for bringing me my money safely. But how did you know?"

  "My child, a prophet must know all the workings of sin in order to combat it," he said.

  "But I didn't figure it was no sin if The Lord himself sent me the message," she argued.

  "No, my child, the sin was that you took this money which The Lord sent to you for the expiation of your sins and hid it for your own self, instead of bringing it to Sweet Prophet, who would have taken a share for The Lord, and returned you the rest in safety."

  "How did you know I hid it?" Alberta asked in surprise.

  "My child, a prophet knows everything," he said.

  "Then where is it now?" she asked.

  "We ain't come to t
hat part yet," he said testily. "You ain't finished your confession."

  "I didn't intend to keep it hid, Sweet Prophet," she resumed. "I honestly intended to bring it to you for you to take out The Lord's share; but I hadn't got religion then, and I figured I ought to get religion first and get myself baptized so I could come to you in my purity and place the money at your feet for you to give me back in your bounty what you figured I should have. And besides that, Sweet Prophet, my man was away from home when they paid me off, and I figured it would be no greater sin to put temptation in his way. So I hid the money in my mattress, figuring you wouldn't want to deal with the money of a sinner anyway. And so that's why I came to you early Sunday morning and gave you the five hundred dollars-"

  "You gave to The Lord through me," Sweet Prophet corrected, to keep the record straight in case of an inquiry by the income tax collectors.

  "Yes, Sweet Prophet, gave to The Lord through you," Alberta parroted, "the five hundred dollars for to pay to get baptized."

  "And afterwards you dilly-dallied around for so long before performing this duty to The Lord that the money was stolen," he said.

  "I weren't dilly-dallying around," she protested. "It was stolen whilst I was In my trance."

  "The Lord will forgive you," he consoled her. "The Lord wouldn't be expecting you to guard your money while you were In a trance."

  "Yes, Sweet Prophet, I believe The Lord will forgive me," she said. "But The Lord ain't done it yet. All The Lord has done so far is chastise me. And that's what I can't understand. Why would The Lord want to chastise me by letting my money be stolen whilst I was setting in heaven at His feet?"

  "You haven't told me all that happened as yet, Sister Wright," Sweet Prophet said. "I can't explain The Lord's actions until I know what you have been up to."

  Alberta recounted in detail everything that had happened to her since her release from the morgue.

  "Now they are saying I beat out the Jew-man's brains with a hammer and cut my husband's throat with a knife," she concluded.

  "If they have charged you with that, you are really in big trouble, Sister Wright," Sweet Prophet admitted. "But you didn't do it?"

  "No, Sweet Prophet, I didn't do it," she wailed. "You've got to believe me, Sweet Prophet. I ain't never in all my life hit 'nobody in the head with a hammer hard enough to kill him, and I didn't cut my husband's throat neither, as much as he deserved it."

  "Then why do they think you did it, Sister Wright?" he asked.

  "It was because of the knife," she said. "They caught me trying to get rid of the knife I found. They said it was the knife that Rufus had been killed with, and, when I saw it lying there, I thought so, too. I didn't know what had happened. All kinds of thoughts ran through my head. I hadn't seen Sugar, and it came to me all of a sudden he might have found out that Rufus had stole my furniture, and I could see them getting into a fight. I figured maybe Sugar might have stabbed Rufus in self-defense, because it would be just like Sugar to throw away the knife and run."

  "If that is what happened, all you have to do is tell the police, and they will arrest Sugar and drop the charges against you," Sweet Prophet said.

  "But he didn't do it," she declared. "I'd bet my life he didn't do it. He's so tenderhearted he won't even cut off a chicken's head, and I know he wouldn't have stabbed Rufus all those times."

  "Well, there is one good thing that has come out of it," Sweet Prophet consoled her. "The Lord has saved you the trouble and expense of getting a divorce; He has made it possible for you to go and sin no more."

  "Well, that much He sure has done," Alberta admitted glumly.

  "Do the police know about the money you had hidden?" Sweet Prophet asked her, his thoughts taking another tack.

  "I didn't tell them," she said. "I wanted to ask you first whether I ought to."

  "No, Sister Wright. If you are innocent, don't tell them about the money," he advised. "If they learn about the money, they will believe for sure that you are guilty."

  "But what am I going to do, Sweet Prophet?"

  "Are you dead sure you left the money in your mattress?" he asked.

  "As sure as I'm sure that I'm setting here and you is setting there," she said.

  "Did anyone see you when you hid it?"

  "Not unless they got eyes that can see through walls," she contended. "The door was locked and the shades were drawn, and I had put Sugar out of the house for the night."

  "How did you know he didn't go back and steal it while you were in your religious trance?" he asked.

  "He wouldn't have stole all of it," she declared. "I know my Sugar. He would have been too scared of me to steal all of it. That's why I love him. If I got to work to support him, the least he can do is be scared of me. Besides which, why did Rufus and the Jew-man steal my furniture if they weren't looking for the money? I got sense enough to know my furniture weren't worth nothing to nobody but me."

  "How would your estranged husband and the Judaist know about the money if you haven't told anybody, Sister Wright?"

  "I don't know, Sweet Prophet. You is the only one I have told, and that's the truth," she said.

  "Somebody knew you had it," he persisted.

  "I don't know who it could have been," she maintained.

  "The man who delivered it knew it," he pointed out.

  "But there were three different payoff men, one from each of the houses," she argued.

  "One of them must have known that you hit in the two other houses," he stated.

  "He didn't find it out from me," she said. "I didn't tell nobody."

  "They delivered the money to your home?" he asked.

  "Yes, Sweet Prophet, they sent it as soon as the drawings were over."

  "But not at the same time?"

  "No, Sweet Prophet. The Dollar house sent theirs first. They were drawing in Harlem on Saturday and didn't have far to come. A man called Buddy brought it. Then the Monte Carlo house sent theirs next. They were drawing in the Bronx and had farther to come. A man called Bunch Boy brought theirs. And the Tia Juana house sent theirs last because they were drawing away over in Brooklyn. They got a new man called Slick Jenkins who brought theirs."

  "And this Slick Jenkins was the last one to come?" Sweet Prophet asked.

  "Yes, Sweet Prophet, but he didn't know I had hit in the other two houses," Alberta said.

  "It stands to reason that he found it out in some way, came back and stole your money, child," Sweet Prophet declared.

  "I don't see how he could have found out," Alberta contradicted. "He didn't see the other money because I hid it as soon as I got it, and I didn't tell him nothing."

  "You must have given yourself away in some manner," Sweet Prophet persisted. "If this Slick Jenkins is accustomed to paying off big hits, then he is accustomed to the winners hiding their money, and he would know just where to look. You probably left your mattress uncovered when you hid the other money."

  "That's just it, Sweet Prophet, I didn't hide the money in my mattress at first. I cleaned out a lard can and put the money in that and hid it in the refrigerator. I didn't put it in the mattress until after Sugar had come home and I had put him out. I got to thinking it would be safer if I slept on it; but there weren't nobody around when I hid it, and it was still there when I got up yesterday morning because I took out the five hundred dollars to pay for my baptism, and it was there then."

  "Of course, child," Sweet Prophet said. "Slick didn't have a chance to steal it until after you had left for the baptism."

  "But what about Rufus and the Jew-man stealing my furniture?" she argued stubbornly. "What did they do that for if Slick had already stole my money."

  "Just think about one thing at the time," Sweet Prophet said angrily.

  "I'm thinking about it," she muttered. "And it don't seem right. He'd be scared to steal the money. The houses wouldn't have no payoff man who stole back the hits; they'd kill him."

  "You said he was a new man."

  "He's just new
in Harlem. He was doing the same thing for a house in Chicago before he came here, and he'd know better," she contended.

  Sweet Prophet lost patience. "Can't you get it through your thick head that he stole your money, woman?" he said angrily. "There is no other way it could have happened."

  "If you say he stole it, he stole it," Alberta said, quailing.

  "You go to him and tell him to give you your money back," Sweet Prophet commanded her. "You tell him that I said so. Tell him that I said I will call down the wrath of heaven on his head if he doesn't give you back your money. Do you know where he lives?"

  "Yes, Sweet Prophet, he lives at Five Fifty-five."

  "Then you go up there and get your money back," he concluded.

  "Yes, Sweet Prophet," she said docilely.

  21

  "We should have thought of that before," Grave Digger said.

  "It was the Jew who threw us," Coffin Ed reflected. "Taking that furniture apart."

  "He's still throwing us," Grave Digger admitted. "But first things first."

  "Let's go find her then and lock her up again," Coffin Ed suggested.

  "And fast, before somebody gets hurt," Grave Digger said.

  Fifteen minutes after Alberta had left Sweet Prophet, the detectives' small battered black sedan pulled up before the entrance.

  Sweet Prophet was still sitting behind his desk. He still looked like the rising sun. But the lines of weariness on his popeyed countenance had been replaced with a look of fury. He was drinking ice-cold lemonade from a frosted silver pitcher in a cut champagne glass, but the way he gulped it, it didn't seem cold enough to satisfy him.

  He greeted the detectives irritably. "It took you long enough to get here."

  "How did you know we were coming?" Coffin Ed demanded.

  Sweet Prophet wiped his face with his yellow silk handkerchief. "I telephoned for you," he said.

  "We didn't get your call, but here we are," Grave Digger said. "What's the beef?"

  "My secretary was swindled out of three thousand dollars this morning by a confidence man, right outside of my door, and he hasn't been caught."