The detectives stood in front of his desk with their hats pushed back on their heads. They stared down at him.
Another woman-the gullible secretary-had been added to the scene since Alberta's departure.
"And I was just trying to help him," she said.
Grave Digger addressed Sweet Prophet, ignoring her. "You reported it, didn't you? This morning, I mean."
"I did," the secretary said.
"She reported it," Sweet Prophet hastened to sustain. "She went to the police right after it happened, but I have just now found out about it."
"Then you have done all you can do," Grave Digger said unsympathetically. "We're after another matter. Why did you go Alberta Wright's bail?"
"That woman! She's the plague of my life!" Sweet Prophet exclaimed in exasperation. "I did not go her bail. I would not have gone her bail. I do not know how she got out of jail. She thinks I went her bail, and I couldn't very well disillusion her. But whoever did go her bail did not do me any favor."
The detectives tensed. Coffin Ed's acid-burned face became grimmer, and a vein began throbbing in Grave Digger's temple. Before it had been necessary to find her; now it was urgent.
"That makes it a horse of another color," Grave Digger said. "You know she's been robbed?"
"Yes, I know all about it," Sweet Prophet admitted. "She came here straight from jail and told me everything."
"She told you that she hit the numbers for thirty-six thousand dollars."
"Yes, and you can take it from me that she is as innocent of those killings as I am," Sweet Prophet said.
"Anybody would be innocent to you with that much money," Coffin Ed remarked.
"That's for later," Grave Digger said roughly. "Where is she now?"
"My God, how do I know?" Sweet Prophet snapped. "I would imagine she's trying to get her money back, if she's got any sense. After what she told me about the payoff, it was as plain as the nose on your face that one of the payoff men named Slick Jenkins stole her money. I sent her to his house to get it back."
"You sent her," Coffin Ed echoed.
The detectives stared at Sweet Prophet incredulously.
"You mean to say you sent her out alone to demand her money from a hoodlum you don't even know, knowing that two men have already been killed about it?" Grave Digger asked, the jugular vein swelling in his neck like corded rope.
"No one is going to hurt that woman," Sweet Prophet said callously. "God takes care of children and fools."
"People will recrucify Jesus Christ for thirty-six grand," Coffin Ed said harshly.
"You're getting alarmed over nothing," Sweet Prophet said.
"Leave off!" Grave Digger grated. "Did she say where Jenkins lives?"
"In the Roger Morris," Elder Jones volunteered.
"Let's go," Grave Digger said, striding toward the door, but just before leaving he turned and called to Sweet Prophet, "I don't think much of your Christianity, buddy."
It was forty-four city blocks to the house on Edgecombe Drive, and the streets were filled with traffic. They went up Seventh Avenue with the siren open, scattering cars like ninepins, and turned over to the Drive on the 155th Street Bridge.
The elevator was occupied. They took the stairs two at a time.
The woman in the Chinese gown answered their ring. They stood flanking the door. Coffin Ed had eased his pistol loose in its holster and stood with his hand resting on the butt.
"Yes?" the woman said, opening the door onto a heavy burglarproof chain. She looked through the crack, but not directly at either of them.
Grave Digger flashed his shield. She didn't look at it.
"Yes?" she asked again, impatiently.
"We want to talk to Jenkins," Grave Digger said.
"Who are you?" she asked.
Both of them looked at her sharply.
"Are you trying to be cute?" Coffin Ed challenged.
"Leave off," Grave Digger said, and told the woman, "We're detectives. Do you want to see our identifications?"
"That's not necessary," she said. "Slick isn't in."
"May we come in and look around?" Grave Digger asked.
"No," she said. "I said he wasn't in."
"You're making life hard for yourself," Coffin Ed said.
"Slick left at a quarter to eight," she said. "He hasn't been back."
She closed the door. They heard keys turning and bolts locking.
Coffin Ed looked at the locks as though he might enjoy shooting them off.
"I don't quite dig her," Grave Digger said.
They went down to the lobby and found the doorman, a tall, slender man with a winged mustache and a thin rusty-brown face beneath a yachting cap. His gold-braided purple uniform had been pressed so often it shone like waxed paper.
"We're the men," Grave Digger said, flashing his shield.
"You don't have to tell me, boss," the doorman said.
"When did Slick Jenkins leave?"
"Before eight, boss."
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed exchanged glances.
"Alone?" Grave Digger asked.
"No, boss, he had a mugger with him what's been hanging on to him for the past few days."
"Mugger!" Grave Digger echoed. "Give us a rundown."
The doorman gave a pinpoint description of Susie, then for good measure threw in a description of Slick, of Slick's car, and the license number. He conducted a little business on the side peddling marijuana cigarettes, and he figured every little bit he did for the police would help him if he got into a jam.
Grave Digger described Alberta and asked if she'd been there.
"I ain't seen nobody like her, boss, and if I'd seen her I sure wouldn't have forgot her."
"Okay, boy, when Jenkins turns up I want you to telephone the 126th Street Precinct Station and leave word," Grave Digger ordered.
"Right, boss. My name is Sam. Don't forget old Sam, boss."
"What's your racket?" Coffin Ed asked.
"I ain't got no racket, boss; I'm just a peace-loving boy."
"Damn right," Coffin Ed said. "Peace at what price?"
They went back to their car.
"We're either too late or too early," Grave Digger said.
He got the precinct station on the radio telephone and asked Lieutenant Anderson to put out a pickup for Slick Jenkins, giving a description of his car and the license number.
Lieutenant Anderson said that Sweet Prophet had telephoned in to say that Alberta Wright's man, Sugar Stonewall, was there at the Temple.
"Off again, on again," Grave Digger muttered.
They did the forty-four blocks back to 116th Street with the siren blaring.
Sweet Prophet was sitting as though he hadn't moved.
He greeted them with, "He left. I couldn't hold him."
"We've got to get a new car," Grave Digger said, then asked, "What did he want, did he say?"
"He wanted me to go his woman's bail because I had baptized her, but I told him that someone had beat me to it."
"Yeah, somebody wants her out bad," Grave Digger said. Slowly, his voice was getting thick. "Did he say where he was going?"
"I sent him up to see Slick Jenkins," Sweet Prophet said. "I told him that I had sent his woman up there, and that was where he was most likely to find her. Alter that I couldn't hold him."
"You're sitting there trying to play God with these little people," Grave Digger said in a voice that sounded as though his mouth were stuffed with cotton. "And all you're doing is shilling for Clay, the undertaker."
"I'm a busy man," Sweet Prophet said defensivdy.
"Yeah, but not so busy as you would be breaking up rocks," Grave Digger said, then asked, "What does Stonewall look like, if you weren't too busy to have looked."
Sweet Prophet kept an offended silence, but the two women and Elder Jones gave a composite description.
"Gone again, John again," Grave Digger muttered as he climbed behind the wheel.
They went back up the way they
had come; but traffic had thinned considerably on Seventh Avenue, and everyone with a guilty conscience had got in off the street.
In answer to their questions, Sam the doorman said, "Ain't nobody looked like him been through this door, boss, or I would have seen him, and I ain't blind."
"All right, stand out on the sidewalk where we can watch you," Coffin Ed ordered.
"I ain't going to try to tip nobody off," Sam said aggrievedly.
"I don't want to have to worry about it," Coffin Ed said. "I got other things to worry about."
The doorman came out, stood in the center of the sidewalk and didn't move to open the door when the tenants came in and out.
Grave Digger got into their car and eased it to the curb between the racketeers' big shiny cars. It looked out of place. He sat behind the wheel, watching the people pass. He looked out of place. Coffin Ed took up his station on the other side of the entrance, leaning with one hand propped against the top of another big shiny car. He didn't look as though he went with the car, but the people who passed acted as though they didn't notice.
Grave Digger talked to Lieutenant Anderson again, but nothing new had come in.
There was nothing to do but wait. Half of a detective's working time was spent in waiting and watching. They waited and watched.
Twenty minutes later they saw Sugar Stonewall alight from a Fifth Avenue bus and cross the street. Coffin Ed intercepted him and took him by the arm.
"I'm the man," he said.
"First time I was ever glad to see the man," Sugar confessed.
Coffin Ed took him to the car and frisked him. Sugar was as docile as a lamb. They put him on the back seat and Coffin Ed sat with him while they drove down to the precinct.
Sugar spoke only once, to ask, "You got a cigarette, chief?"
"Afterwards," Coffin Ed grunted.
They took him in to the Pigeon's Nest and installed him on the wooden stool, beneath the glaring light
"Talk fast and straight," Grave Digger ordered.
"Yassuh, boss, where do you want me to begin?" Sugar asked.
"You look like a bright boy," Grave Digger said. "Just lead up to it slowly, so we can get the picture. Everything is needed now."
Sugar didn't need any further prompting. Sweat flowed from the creases of his face, and the smell of animal fear emanated from his skin. He talked fast and eagerly.
"It began like this, boss-me and Alberta has been shacking up together for about eight months. Most times when she came home from work at about eight o'clock, I'd be there waiting for her. Weekdays she'd start drinking as soon as she got in-she liked to drink, but she weren't no lush. She'd just sip enough to knock herself out by ten o'clock and I'd help her get to bed. But shucks, I'd just be getting wide awake myself, so I'd go down to the corner and play tonk, and, if I didn't get home 'til three or four the next morning, it wouldn't make any difference to her because she'd be so dead asleep couldn't nothing wake her-"
"You slept all day," Coffin Ed cut in with an outburst of contempt.
"You see, boss, I been sick," Sugar explained.
"For eight months?"
"Let him get to the point," Grave Digger said.
"Well, last Saturday night I got held up in a poker game and didn't get home until after ten o'clock. I figured she was going to be mad all right, because that's when we generally got together, but I didn't expect her to grab me by the collar and throw me out the house. That's what first made me suspicious, but all I suspected at first was she'd got herself another man. That worried me-"
"I'll bet it did," Coffin Ed cut in again.
"Yassuh, it sure did," Sugar admitted. "So I went down to the bar and thought about it, and the more I thought about it the madder I got. So after a while I crept up on the roof and started to come down the fire escape to sort of spy through the bedroom window. I had made me a little peephole in the window shade in case I was ever going to need it, and I figgered I needed it then. But, when I started to come down from the roof, I saw some joker on the fire escape spying through her window, too. I started to holler at him, but I didn't want-"
"Wait a minute," Grave Digger said. "You saw a man looking through her bedroom window?"
"Trying to, anyway. But he saw me 'bout the same time I saw him, and he took off down-"
"Hold on. You saw this man?"
"Yassuh, but I didn't see him good. The fire escape is in the back, and he was gone on down to the bottom 'fore I could get close to him. I would have chased him, but-"
"Hold on, hold on!" Grave Digger grated. "What did he look like?"
"Like I said, boss, I didn't see him plain but-"
"Big man or little?"
"Big. Rough-looking. Looked like he was young, the way he went down them rungs."
"How was he dressed?"
"I didn't notice too plain, boss. He was wearing a big hat and a coat like everybody else. He was a colored man, that's for sure."
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed looked at one another in silence.
"You think he's lying?" Coffin Ed suggested.
"Let him go on. If he's lying, we'll find out," Grave Digger said.
"And, if you are, it's going to be rough," Coffin Ed promised.
"I ain't lying, boss, I swear before God," Sugar said, knuckling the sweat out of his eyes. "And I couldn't be mistaken, 'cause I seen him again."
"You saw him again?" Grave Digger echoed.
"Yassuh, when I come down the second time I found him in the same place, and he run down to the bottom again like he done before."
"And you didn't see him any better?"
"I forgot to tell you. I seen he had on boots-cowboy boots."
"Boots!" Grave Digger said.
"Yes suh, black and white cowboy boots. I wondered if he belonged to a gang, but I hadn't heard of no gang what wears cowboy boots."
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed exchanged looks again.
"Sounds a little like him," Coffin Ed said.
"Could be," Grave Digger admitted. "It begins to figure." He turned back to Sugar. "How did you figure it?"
Sugar looked puzzled. "Him, you mean? I didn't think nothing of it. Just another prowler-that neighborhood is full of prowlers. She didn't have nothing for him to steal-" He broke off. His eyes bucked suddenly, and his jaw dropped open. "Christ almighty, I bet he was after her money!" he exclaimed.
"You just now thought of that?" Grave Digger asked incredulously.
"Well, boss, I admit I've been thinking like a square," Sugar said. "But I hadn't figgered out when I first seen him that she had any money. I was looking for another joker in her bed. So I just figgered he was another prowler, and I didn't give him no more thought."
"All right, all right-if you're lying, we're going to find it out," Grave Digger said. "So when did you figger out she had some money?"
"Well, when I seen she didn't have no other joker in her bed, I figgered she must have got hold of some money, because that's the only other reason she'd have for throwing me out the house-to keep me from finding out. Then when I seen her praying-"
"Praying!" Coffin Ed exclaimed.
"Yassuh, boss, she was kneeling beside the bed with her arms hanging down, praying. I figgered right away then she had hit the numbers for a big stake. It figgered. She hadn't had nothing before worth praying about."
"All right, it figured," Grave Digger conceded. "What did you do then."
"I stayed there, watching all night so she wouldn't get away, but after she turned out the light she didn't get up again. When it got day I had to leave because the people in the windows across the way began watching me suspiciously. I went across the street and watched the door, and when she came out I followed her. When I seen her go into Sweet Prophet's house, I figgered she was giving him the money to keep, so I kissed it goodby, went to the bar and had some drinks. But after a while I figgered I ought to go back-I was getting tired and hungry by then. And that's when I found her getting ready for the baptism and the picnic. I fell in an
d went along with her because there wasn't nothing else to do. But when I knowed she hadn't given any money to Sweet Prophet was when she told about her dream-"
"Her dream?" Coffin Ed echoed.
"Yassuh, she jumped up right in the middle of the ceremony and said she had dreamed she was baking three pies and when she took them out the oven they exploded with hundred-dollar bills. I knew then she had played the money row in all three houses and had hit; and I knew she hadn't given the money to Sweet Prophet from the way he licked his chops and his eyes bugged out. I could see it was the first he had heard of it, and I knew she still had the money hidden somewhere. So when she was getting herself baptized, I dropped a little mickey into her bottle of drinking water."
"You had the mickey ready beforehand," Grave Digger said.
"I always carry a mickey," Sugar confessed. "Other folks has their knives and pistols, but I ain't no fighter. And I has to have some kind of way to protect myself. So I just carrys me a little Mickey Finn. But I didn't figger she was going to take the bottle to Sweet Prophet to get it blessed and then start drinking it right away. I figgered she'd drink it while we were having our picnic lunch, and then the others sisters would take her and lay her out somewhere and it would give me a chance to search the house. I didn't have no idea it would cause such a big rumpus. When the people started running and screaming, thinking she'd dropped dead, I beat it before somebody connected me with her and had me held. I had a key to her place what she didn't know about, so I beat it around there and searched it."
"Then you were there before Rufus and the Jew got there?" Grave Digger said.
"It was me that got them there," Sugar confessed. "When I didn't find nothing in the mattress, I remembered that Rufus and the Jew worked this furniture racket, and I made a deal with Rufus to sell the Jew the television set and have him take it away. The way I had it planned was that I'd go get Alberta and bring her home, and when she found the set missing she'd get so scared for her money she'd rush right away to see if it was safe, and I'd find out where it was at. But when I went back to get Alberta, I found out they had taken her away in a hearse and didn't nobody know where she was. So I went back to her place to see if she'd come home but didn't nobody answer. I'd given Rufus my key, so I snuck down the fire escape again and spied through the window. That's when I found out they'd taken all of her furniture."
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