Johnny was walking toward the hallway, but he turned suddenly without a break of motion and slapped the gla.s.s from her hand. Brandy splashed in her face as the gla.s.s sailed through the air and went spinning across the floor.

She hit him in the face with her balled right fist as fast as a cat catching fish. It was a solid pop with fury in it, and it knocked tears from his eyes.

He turned in blind rage and clutched her by the shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled.

"Woman!" he said, and for the first time she heard his voice change tone. It was deep, throaty and came out of his guts, and it worked on her like a aphrodisiac. "Woman!"

She shuddered and went candy. Her eyes got limpid and her mouth suddenly wet, and her body just folded into his.

He went as soft as drugstore cotton and pulled her to his chest. He kissed her eyes, her nose and throat, and bent over and kissed her neck and the curve of her shoulder.

Alamena turned quickly and went back to the kitchen.

"Why don't you believe me," Dulcy said against his biceps.

"I'm trying to, baby," he said. "But you got to admit it's hard."

She dropped her arms to her sides and he took his arms from around her and put his hands in his pockets. They went down the hail to the kitchen.

The two bedrooms, separate4 by the bathroom, were on the left side of the hail which opened onto the outside corridor. The dining room and the kitchen were on the right side. There was a back door in the kitchen, and a small alcove opening to the service staircase at the end of the corridor.

The three of them sat on the plastic-covered, foamrubber cushioned chairs about an enamel topped table covered with a red-and-white checked cloth and helped themselves from a steaming dish of boiled collard greens, okra, and pigs feet, a warmed-over bowl of black-eyed peas and a platter of cornbread.

There was half a bottle of bourbon whisky on the table, but the two women avoided it and Johnny asked, "Ain't there no lemonade left?"

Alamena got a gallon jar from the refrigerator and filled a gla.s.s pitcher without comment. They ate without talking.

Johnny doused his food with red-hot sauce from a bottle with a label depicting two bright red, long-horned devils dancing in knee-deep bright red flames, and ate two heaping platefuls, six pieces of cornbread, and drank a half pitcher of ice-cold lemonade.

"It's hot as h.e.l.l in here," he complained and got up and switched on a ten-inch revolving fan attached to the wall; then he sat down again and began picking his teeth with a wooden toothpick selected from the gla.s.s of toothpicks that remained on the table with the salt, pepper and other condiments.

"That fan ain't goin' to help you none with all that red devil sauce you've eaten," Dulcy said. "Some day your guts are going to catch on fire, and you ain't goin' to be able to get enough lemonade down inside of you to put it out."

"Who's going to preach Val's funeral?" Alamena asked.

Johnny and Dulcy stared at her.

Then Johnny started again. "If I hadn't just felt that mother-raper lowering the boom on me I'd be lying there right now blown half in two," he said.

Alamena's eyes stretched. "You mean Reverend Short?" she asked. "He shoot at you?"

Johnny ignored her question and kept hammering at Dulcy. "That don't bother me so much as why," he said.

Dulcy continued to eat without replying. Johnny's veins began to swell again.

"Listen, girl," he said. "I'm telling you, all I want to know is why."

"Well, for Christsake," Dulcy flared. "If I'm going to take the blame for what that opium-drinking lunatic does, I just may as well quit living."

The doorbell rang. Spookie began to bark.

"Shut up, Spoolde," Dulcy said.

Alamena got up and went to the door.

She came back and took her seat without saying anything.

Doll Baby stopped in the doorway and put one hand on her hip.

"Don't bother about me," she said. "I'm practically one of the family."

"You've got the nerve of a bra.s.s monkey," Dulcy cried, starting to her feet. "And I'm going to shut your mouth right now."

"No you ain't," Johnny said without moving. "Just set down and shut up."

Dulcy hesitated for a moment, as though to defy him, but decided against it and sat down. if looks could kill, Doll Baby would have dropped stone-dead.

Johnny turned his head slightly and said to Doll Baby, "What do you want, girlie?"

"I just want what's due me," Doll Baby said. "Me and Val was engaged, and I got a right to his inheritance."

Johnny stared at her. Both Dulcy and Alamena stared at her, too.

"Come again?" Johnny said. "I didn't get that."

She waved her left hand about, flashing a brilliant stone set in a gold-colored band.

"He gave me this diamond engagement ring if you want proof," she said.

Dulcy let loose with a shrill, scornful laugh. "If you got that from Val it ain't nothing but gla.s.s," she said.

"Shut up," Johnny said to her, then to Doll Baby he said, "I don't need no proof. I believe you. So what?"

"So I got a right as his fiance to anything he left," she argued.

"He ain't left nothing but this world," Johnny said.

Doll Baby's stupid expression gave way to a frown. "He must have left some clothes," she said.

Dulcy started to laugh again, but a look from Johnny silenced her. Alamena dropped her head to hide a smile.

"What about his jewelry? His watch and rings and things," Doll Baby persisted.

"The police are the people for you to see," Johnny said. "They got all his jewelry. Go tell them your story."

"I'm going to tell them my story, don't you worry," she said.

"I ain't worrying," Johnny said.

"What about that ten thousand dollars you were going to give him to open a liquor store?" Doll Baby said.

Johnny didn't move. His whole body became rigid, as though it were suddenly turned into bronze. He kept his unblinking gaze pinned on her so long she began to fidget.

Finally he said, "What about it?"

"Well, after all, I was his fiancee and he said you were going to put up ten grand for him to open that store, and I guess I got some kind of widow's rights," she said.

Dulcy and Alamena stared at her with a curious silence. Johnny's stare never left her face. She began to squirm beneath the concentrated scrutiny.

"When did he tell you that?" Johnny asked.

"The day after Big Joe died--day before yesterday, I guess it was," she said. "Him and me was planning on setting up housekeeping, and he said he was going to get ten grand from you for sure."

"Listen, girlie, you're sure about that?" Johnny asked. His voice hadn't changed, but he looked thoughtful and puzzled.

"As sure as I'm living," Doll Baby said. "I'd swear it on my mother's grave."

"And you believed it?" Johnny kept after her.

"Well, after all, why shouldn't I?" she countered. "He had Dulcy batting for him."

"You lying wh.o.r.e!" Dulcy cried, and was out of her chair and across the room and tangling with Doll Baby before Johnny could move.

He jumped up and pulled them apart, holding them by the backs of their necks.

"I'm going to get you for this," Doll Baby threatened Dulcy.

Dulcy spat in her face. Johnny hurled her across the kitchen with one hand. She s.n.a.t.c.hed a razor-sharp kitchen knife from the sideboard drawer and charged back across the room. Johnny released Doll Baby and turned to meet her, spearing her wrist with his left hand and twisting the knife from her grip.

"If you don't get her out of here I'm going to kill her," she raved.

Alamena got up calmly, went out into the hail and closed the front door. When she had returned and taken her seat, she said indifferently, "She's already gone. She must have been reading your mind."

Johnny resumed his seat. The c.o.c.ker spaniel b.i.t.c.h came out from beneath the stove and began licking Dulcy's bare feet.

"Get away, Spookie," Dulcy said, and took her own seat again.

Johnny poured himself a gla.s.s of lemonade.

Dulcy poured a water gla.s.s half full of bourbon whisky and drank it down straight. Johnny watched her without speaking. He looked alert and wary, but puzzled. Dulcy choked and her eyes filled with tears. Alamena stared down at her dirty plate.

Johnny lifted the gla.s.s of lemonade, changed his mind and poured it back into the pitcher. He then poured the gla.s.s one-third full of whisky. But he didn't drink it. He just stared at it for a long time. No one said anything.

He stood up without drinking the whisky, and said, "Now I got another mother-raping mystery," and left the kitchen, walking silently on his stockinged feet.

13.

It was after seven o'clock when Grave Digger and Coffin Ed parked in front of Goldstein's Poultry Store on 116th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues.

The name appeared in faded gilt letters above dingy plate gla.s.s windows, and a wooden sihouette of what pa.s.sed for a chicken hung from an angle-bar over the entrance, the word chickens painted on it.

Chicken coops, most of which were empty, were stacked six and seven high on the sidewalk flanking the entrance, and were chained together. The chains were padlocked to heavy iron attachments fastened to the front of the store.

"Goldstein don't trust these folks with his chickens," Coffin Ed remarked as they alighted from the car.

"Can you blame him?" Grave Digger replied. There were more stacks of coops inside the store containing more chickens.

Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein and several younger Goldsteins were bustling about, selling chickens on the feet to a number of late customers, mostly proprietors of chicken shacks, barbecue stands, nightclubs and after-hours joints.

Mr. Goldstein approached them, washing his hands with the foul-scented air. "What can I do for you gentlemen?" he asked. He had never run afoul of the law and didn't know any detectives by sight.

Grave Digger drew his gold-plated badge from his pocket and exhibited it in the palm of his hand.

"We're the men," he said.

Mr. Goldstein paled. "Are we breaking the law?"

"No, no, you're doing a public service," Grave Digger replied. "We're looking for a boy who works for you called Iron Jaw. His straight monicker is Ibsen. Don't ask us where he got it."

"Oh, Ibsen," Mr. Goldstein said with relief. "He's a picker. He's in the back." Then he began worrying again. "You're not going to arrest him now, are you? I've got many orders to fill."

"We just want to ask him a few questions," Grave Digger a.s.sured him.

But Mr. Goldstein wasn't a.s.sured. "Please, sirs, don't ask him too many questions," he entreated. "He can't think about but one thing at a time, and I think he's been drinking a little, too."

"We're going to try not to strain him," Coffin Ed said. They went through the door into the back room. A muscular, broad-shouldered young man, naked to the waist, with sweat streaming from his smooth, jet-black skin, stood over the picking table beside the scalding vat, his back to the door. His arms were working like the driving rod of a speeding locomotive, and wet feathers were raining into a bushel basket at his side.

He was singing to himself in a whisky-thick voice:

"Cap'n walkin' up an' down Buddy layin' there dead, Lord, On de burnin' ground, If I'da had my weight in line, I'da whup dat Cap'n till he went stone blind."

Chickens were lined up on one side of the big table, lying quietly on their backs with their heads tucked beneath their wings and their feet stuck up. Each one had a tag tied to a leg.

A young man wearing gla.s.ses come from behind the wrapping table, glanced at Grave Digger and Coffin Ed without curiosity, and walked over behind the picker. He pointed at one of the live chickens on the far corner of the table, a big-legged Plymouth Rock pullet, minus a tag.

"What's that chicken doing there, Ibsen?" he asked in a suspicious voice.