On leaving the cemetery, the procession disbanded and each car went its own way.

Just before turning into the bridge back to Harlem, Johnny got held up by a traffic jam caused by Yankee Stadium letting out after a ball game.

He and Dulcy, along with other well-heeled Harlem pimps, madams and numbers bankers, lived on the sixth floor of the flashy Roger Morris apartment house. It stood at the corner of 157th Street and Edgecombe Drive, on Coogan's Bluff, overlooking the Polo Grounds, the Harlem River and the inclined streets of the Bronx beyond.

It was seven o'clock when Johnny pulled his fishtail Cadillac before the entrance.

"I've come a long way from an Alabama cotton chopper to lose it all nOW," he said.

Everybody in the car looked at him, but only Dulcy spoke. "What you talking about?" she said warily.

He didn't answer.

Mamie'S joints creaked as she started to alight.

"Come on, Baby Sis, we'll get a taxi," she said.

"You're coming up and eat with us," Johnny said. "Baby Sis and Alamena can fix supper."

She shook her head. "Me and Baby Sis will just go on home. I don't want to start being no trouble to n.o.body."

"It won't be no trouble," Johnny said.

"I ain't hungry," Mamie said. "I just want to go home and lie down and get some sleep. I'm powerfully tired."

"It ain't good for you to be alone now," Johnny argued. "Now's when you need to be around folks."

"Baby Sis'll be there, Johnny, and I just wanna sleep."

"Okay, I'll drive you home," Johnny said. "You know you ain't gotta ride in a taxi long as I got a car that'll run."

No one moved.

He turned to Dulcy and said, "You and Alamena get the h.e.l.l out. I didn't say I was taking you."

"I'm getting good and tired of you hollering at me," Dulcy said angrily, getting from the car with a flounce. "I ain't no dog."

Johnny gave her a warning look but didn't answer.

Alamena got out of the back seat, and Mamie got in front with Johnny and put a hand over her closed eyes to shut out the terrible day.

They drove to her apartment without talking. After Baby Sis had left them and gone inside, Mamie said, "Johnny, you're too hard on womenfolks. You expects them to act like men."

"I just expect them to do what they're told and what they're supposed to do."

She gave a long, sad sigh. "Most women does, Johnny, but they just got their own ways of doing it, and that's what you don't understand."

They were silent for a moment, watching the crowds on the sidewalk drift past in the twilight.

It was a street of paradox: unwed young mothers, suckling their infants, living on a prayer; fat black racketeers coasting past in big bright-colored convertibles with their solid gold babes, carrying huge sums of money on their person; hardworking men, holding up the buildings with their shoulders, talking in loud voices up there in Harlem where the white bosses couldn't hear them; teen-age gangsters grouping for a gang fight, smoking marijuana weed to get up their courage; everybody escaping the hotbox rooms they lived in, seeking respite in a street made hotter by the automobile exhaust and the heat released by the concrete walls and walks.

Finally Mamie said, "Don't kill him, Johnny. I'm an old lady and I tell you there ain't any reason."

Johnny kept looking at the stream of cars pa.s.sing in the street. "Either's he's pressing her or she's asking for it. What do you want me to believe?"

"It ain't drawn that fine, Johnny. I'm an old lady, and I tell you, it ain't drawn that fine. You're splitting snake hairs. He's just a show-off and she just likes attention, that's all."

"He's gonna look good in a shroud," Johnny said.

"Take it from an old lady, Johnny," she said. "You don't give her no attention. You got your own affairs, your gambling club and everything, which takes up all your time, and she ain't got nothing."

"Aunt Mamie, that was the same trouble with my ma," he said. "Pete worked hard for her, but she wasn't satisfied 'less she was messing 'round with other men, and I had to kill him to keep him from killing her. But it was my ma who was wrong, and I always knowed it."

"I know, Johnny, but Dulcy ain't like that," Mamie argued. "She ain't messing around with n.o.body, but you gotta be patient with her. She's young. You knew how young she was when you married her."

"She ain't that young," he said in his toneless voice, still without looking at Mamie. "And if she ain't messing around with him then he's messing around with her-- there ain't no two ways about it."

"Give her a chance, Johnny," Mamie pleaded. "Trust her."

"You don't know how much I wanna trust that gal," Johnny confessed. "But I ain't gonna let her nor him nor n.o.body else make a chump out of me. I ain't gonna fatten no frogs for snakes. And that's final."

"Oh Johnny," she begged, sobbing into her black-lace bordered handkerchief. "There's already been one killing too many. Don't kill n.o.body else."

For the first time Johnny turned and looked at her.

"What killing too many?"

"I know you couldn't help it that time 'bout your ma," she said. "But you ain't got to kill n.o.body else." She was trying to dissemble, but she talked too quickly and in too strained a voice.

"That ain't what you meant," Johnny said. "You meant about Val."

"That ain't what I said," she said.

"But that's what you meant."

"I wasn't thinking about him. Not in that way," she denied again. "I just don't want to see any more blood trouble, that's all."

"You don't have to p.u.s.s.yfoot about what you mean," he said in his toneless voice. "You can call his name. You can say he was stabbed to death, right over there on the sidewalk. It don't bother me. Just say what you mean."

"You know what I mean," she said stubbornly. "I mean just don't let her be the cause of no more killings, Johnny."

He tried to catch her eye, but she wouldn't meet his gaze. "You think I killed him," he said.

"I didn't say no such thing," she denied.

"But that's what you think."

"I ain't said nothing like that and you know it."

"I ain't talking about what you said. What I want to know is why you think I wanted to kill him."

"Oh Johnny, I don't think no such thing that you killed him," she said in a wailing voice.

"That ain't what I'm talking about, Aunt Mamie," he said. "I want to know what reason you think I'd have for killing him. Whether you think I killed him or not don't bother me. I just want to know what reason you think I'd do it for."

She looked him straight in the eyes. "There ain't any reason for you to have killed him, Johnny," she said. "And that's the gospel truth."

"Then why'd you start off pleading for me to trust Dulcy so much and then the next thing you're figuring she's done give me reason enough to kill Val. That's what I want to know," he persisted. "What kind of reasoning is that?"

"Johnny, in this game of life, you got to give her as much as you ask to get from her," she said. "You can't win without risking."

"I know," he admitted. "That's a gambler's rule. But I got to put in eight hours every day in my club. It's as much for her as it is for me. But that means she's got all the chances in the world to play me for a sucker."

Mamie reached her gnarled old hand over and tried to take his hard long-fingered hand, but he drew it back.

"I ain't asking for mercy," he said harshly. "I don't want to hurt n.o.body, either. If she wants him, all I want her to do is walk out and go to him. I ain't gonna hurt her. If she don't want him, I ain't gonna have him pressing her. I don't mind losing. Every gambler got to lose sometime. But I ain't gonna be cheated."

"I know how you feel, Johnny," Mamie said. "But you got to learn to trust her. A jealous man can't win."

"A working man can't gamble and a jealous man can't win," said Johnny, quoting the old gambler's adage. After a moment he added, "If it's like you said, ain't n.o.body going to get hurt."

"I'm going up and get some sleep," she said, getting slowly to the sidewalk. Then she paused with her hand on the door and added, "Somebody's got to preach his funeral. Do you know any preacher who'd do it?"

"Get your own preacher," he said. "That's what he likes best, to preach somebody's funeral."

"You talk to him," she said.

"I don't want to talk to that man," he said. "Not after what he said today."

"You got to talk to him," she insisted. "Do it for Dulcy's sake."

He didn't say anything, and she didn't say any more. When she vanished within the entrance he started the motor and drove slowly through the idling traffic up to the store-front Church of the Holy Rollers on Eighth Avenue.

Reverend Short lived in a room at the back that had once been a storeroom. The street door was unlocked. Johnny entered without knocking and walked down the aisle between the broken benches. The door leading to Reverend Short's bedroom was cracked open a couple of inches. The plate gla.s.s windows at the front were painted black on the inside three-quarters high, but enough twilight filtered through the dingy gla.s.s overtop to glint on Reverend Short's spectacles as he peered through the narrow opening of the door.

The spectacles withdrew and the door closed as Johnny skirted the soapbox pulpit, and he heard the lock click shut as he approached.

He knocked and waited. Silence greeted him.

"It's Johnny Perry, Reverend; I want to talk to you," he said.

There was a rustling sound like rats scurrying about inside, and Reverend Short spoke abruptly in his croaking voice. "Don't think I haven't been expecting you."

"Good," Johnny said. "Then you know it's about the funeral."

"I know why you've come and I'm prepared for you," Reverend Short croaked.

Johnny had had a long hard day, and his nerves were on edge. He tried the door and found it locked.

"Open this door," he said roughly. "How the h.e.l.l you expect to do business through a locked door?"

"Aha, do you think you're deceiving me," Reverend Short croaked.

Johnny rattled the door k.n.o.b. "Listen, preacher," he said. "Mamie Pullen sent me and I'm going to pay you for it, so what the h.e.l.l's the matter with you."

"You expect me to believe that a holy Christian like Mamie Pullen sent you to--" Reverend Short began croaking when all of a sudden Johnny grabbed the k.n.o.b in a fit of rage and started to break in the door.

As though reading his thoughts, Reverend Short warned in a thin dry voice as dangerous as the rattle of a rattlesnake, "Don't you break down that door!"

Johnny s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand back as though a snake had struck at him. "What's wrong with you, preacher, you got a woman in there with you?" he asked suspiciously.

"So that's what you're after?" Reverend Short said. "You think that murderess is hiding in here."

"Jesus Christ, man, are you stone raving crazy?" Johnny said, losing control of his temper. "Just open this mother-raping door. I ain't got all night to stand out here and listen to that loony stuff."

"Drop that gun!" Reverend Short warned.

"I ain't got no gun, preacher--are you jagged?"

Johnny heard the click of some sort of weapon being c.o.c.ked.

"I warn you! Drop that gun!" Reverend Short repeated. "To h.e.l.l with you," Johnny said disgustedly, and started to turn away.

But his sixth sense warned him of imminent danger, and he dropped flat to the floor just before a double blast from a twelve-gauge shotgun blew a hole the size of a dinner plate through the upper panel of the wooden door.

Johnny came up from the floor as though he were made of rubber. He hit the door with a driving shoulder-block that had so much force it broke the lock and flung the door back against the wall with a bang loud enough to be an echo to the shotgun blast.

Reverend Short dropped the gun and whipped a knife from his side pants-pocket, so quick the blade was open in his hand before the shotgun clattered on the floor.

Johnny was charging head first so fast he couldn't stop, so he stuck out his left hand and grabbed the wrist of Reverend Short's knife hand and b.u.t.ted him in the solar plexus. Reverend Short's gla.s.ses flew from his face like a bird taking wing, and he fell backwards across an unmade bed with a white-painted iron frame. Johnny landed on top of him, muscle-free as a cat landing on four feet, and in the same instant twisted the knife from Reverend Short's grip with one hand and began throttling him with the other.

His knees were locked about Reverend Short's middle as he put the pressure on his throat. Reverend Short's nearsighted eyes began bulging like bananas being squeezed from their skins, and all they could see was the livid scar on Johnny's blood-purple forehead, puffing and wriggling like a maddened octopus.

But he showed no signs of fear.

Just short of breaking the skinny neck Johnny caught himself. He took a deep breath, and his whole body shuddered as though from an electric shock to his brain. Then he took his hands from Reverend Short's throat and straightened up, still straddling him, and looked down soberly at the blue-tinted face beneath him on the bed.

"Preacher," he said slowly. "You're going to make me kill you."

Reverend Short returned his stare as he gasped for breath. When finally he could speak, he said in a defiant voice, "Go ahead and kill me. But you can't save her. They're going to get her anyway."

Johnny backed from the bed and got to his feet, stepping on Reverend Short's spectacles. He kicked them angrily from underfoot and looked down at Reverend Short lying supine in the same position.

"Listen, I want to ask you just one question," he said in his toneless, gambler's voice. "Why would she want to kill her own brother?"

Reverend Short returned his look with malevolence.