"Yeah, but how it got stuck into Val, I couldn't say."

"This one wasn't stuck into Val," Brody said. "This one was found on a shelf in your kitchen cabinet less than a half hour ago." He then put the duplicate knife on the desk top. "This was the one found stuck in Val."

Johnny looked from one knife to the other without speaking.

"How do you account for that?" Brody asked.

"I don't know," Johnny said, without expression.

"Could Big Joe have left it in the house at some time, and somebody have put it on the shelf?" Brody asked.

"If he did, I don't know about it," Johnny said.

"All right, that's your story," Brody said. "Let's get back to Val. When was the last time you saw him?"

"It was about ten minutes of four when I came down from the club," Johnny said. "I'd been winning and the players didn't want me to quit, so I was late. Val was setting in the car waiting for me."

"Wasn't that unusual?" Brody interrupted.

Johnny looked at him.

"Why didn't he come up to the club?" Brody asked.

"Wasn't nothing strange 'bout that," Johnny said. "He liked to set in my car and play the radio. He had a set of keys, him and her both, just for emergency 'cause I never let him drive. And he's set in it by the hour. I suppose it made him feel like a big shot. I don't know how long he'd been setting there. I didn't ask him. He'd said he'd come from talking to Reverend Short and he had something to tell me. But we were late and I was afraid the wake would break up before we got there--"

"He said he'd been talking with Reverend Short?" Brody interrupted again. "At that time of night--morning, rather?"

"Yeah, but I didn't think anything about it at the time," Johnny replied. "I told him to stow it and tell me later, but just before we got to Seventh Avenue he said he didn't feel like going to the wake. He said he was going away, he was going to catch an early train to Chicago and he didn't know where he was going from there and I'd better listen to what he had to say 'cause it was important. I pulled up to the corner and parked. He said he'd been up to the preacher's church--if you call it a church; he'd met him there 'bout two o'clock that morning and they'd had a long talk. But before he'd got to say any more I saw a stud slipping along beside the parked cars across the street and I knew he was going to try to steal the A and P store manager's change poke. I said, wait a minute, let's watch this little play. There was a colored cop named Harris standing beside the manager while he unlocked the door, and there was some stud leaning out Big Joe's bedroom window watching the play, too. This stud lifted the poke from the car seat and took off, but the manager saw him, and he and the cop took off after him--"

Brody cut him off. "We know about that. What happened after Reverend Short got up?"

"I didn't know it was the preacher until he got up out of that breadbasket," Johnny said. "Funniest thing you ever saw. He got up and began shaking himself like a cat what's fell in a pile of dung. When I made out who he was I figured he was full of that wild cherry brandy and opium juice he drinks, then he took another drink from his bottle and went back into the house, tiptoeing and shaking himself like a wet-footed cat. Val was laughing, too. He said you can't hurt a drunk. Then all of a sudden I thought of how we could pull a good gag. I told Val to go across the street and lie down in the breadbasket where the preacher had fallen and I'd go around to Hamf at's all night joint and telephone Mamie and tell here there was a dead man there who'd fallen out of her window. Hamfat's place is on 135th and Lenox, and it wouldn't have taken me longer than five minutes to make the call. But some chick was using the phone and I figured by the time I got the call through somebody would have already found Val and the gag would have been lost--"

"How did you go to Hamfat's?" Brody interrupted.

"I drove," Johnny said. "I turned up Seventh Avenue to 135th Street and crossed over. I didn't know he'd been stabbed until Mamie told me on the phone."

"Did you see anyone coming from the house, or anyone at all on the street when you drove up Seventh Avenue?" Brody asked.

"Not a soul."

"Did you tell Mamie who you were?"

"No, I tried to disguise my voice. I knew she'd know it was a gag if she recognized my voice."

"You don't think she recognized it?" Brody insisted.

"I don't think so," Johnny said. "But I couldn't say."

"Okay, that's your story," Brody said. "Now what did you go to Chicago for?"

"I was trying to find out what it was Val wanted to tell me before he got himself killed," Johnny admitted. "After Doll Baby came to my house that afternoon right after the funeral and claimed that Val was going to get ten grand from me to open up a liquor store, I wanted to know what it was I was going to give him ten grand for to know. He never had a chance to tell me, and I had to find out for myself."

"Did you find out?" Brody asked, leaning forward slightly.

Grave Digger bent over from the waist as though to hear better, and Coffin Ed stepped forward from the shadows.

"Yeah," Johnny said in his toneless voice, his face remaining without expression. "He was her husband. I figure he was going to ask me for ten grand so he could go away. I figure he was going to take Doll Baby with him."

The three detectives remained alert, as though listening for a sound that would presage the instant of danger.

"Would you have given it to him?" Brody asked.

"Not so you could notice," Johnny said.

"Was it his idea or hers?" Brody insisted.

"I couldn't say," Johnny said. "I ain't G.o.d."

"Would she have done it for him if he had made her, tried to make her?" Brody kept on.

"I couldn't say," Johnny said.

Brody kept hammering. "Or would she have killed him?"

"I couldn't say," Johnny said in his toneless voice.

"What was c.h.i.n.k Charlie doing in your house?" Brody continued. "Was he blackmailing her about the knife?"

"I couldn't say," Johnny said.

"Ten thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bifis were strewn over the bed in the other bedroom," Brody said. "Did he come to collect that?"

"I couldn't say what he come for," Johnny said. "You know what he got."

"It was your money," Brody persisted.

"No, it was hers," Johnny said. "I got it for her when I came back from Chicago. If all she wanted out of me was ten grand she was welcome to it. All she had to do was take it and get out. It was easier for me to go in debt to give her ten grand than to have to kill her."

"Do you have any idea where she might have gone?" Brody asked.

"I couldn't say," Johnny said. "She's got her own car, a Chevy convertible I gave her for Christmas. She could have gone anywhere."

"Okay, Johnny, that's all for now," Brody said. "We're going to hold you on manslaughter and suspicion of murder. You can telephone your lawyer now. Maybe he can get you out on bail."

"What for?" Johnny said. "All I want to do is sleep."

"You can sleep better at home," Brody said. "Or else go to a hotel."

"I sleep fine in jail," Johnny said. "It ain't like as if it was the first time."

When the jaiors had taken Johnny away, Brody said, "It looks to me as if she's our little pet. She killed her legal husband to keep from fouling up her little gravy train. Then she had to set a trap and get her illegal husband to kill c.h.i.n.k Charlie, trying to save herself from the electric chair."

"What about the knife?" Coffin Ed said.

"She either had both knives, or else she got this one from c.h.i.n.k and left it there when she went out," Brody said.

"But why did she leave it there where it was sure to be found?" Coffin Ed persisted. "If she really had the second knife, why didn't she get rid of it? Then Johnny would be tapped for killing Val, too. He'd have to prove that he gave the knife to Big Joe, and Big Joe is dead. It would be an open and shut case against Johnny if it wasn't for the second knife."

"Maybe Johnny got the second knife and put it there himself," Grave Digger said. "He's the smartest one of all."

"We should have done like I said and brought her in last night," Coffin Ed said.

"Let's quit guessing and second-guessing and go get her now," Grave Digger said.

"Right," Brody said. "In the meantime I'll go over all the reports."

"Don't take any unnecessary chances with those bad words," Coffin Ed said with a straight face.

"Yeah," Grave Digger amended with equal solemnity. "Don't let none of them sneak up behind you and stab you while you're not looking."

"What the h.e.l.l!" Brody said, reddening. "You guys'll be out chasing the hottest piece of tail in Harlem. I envy you.',

21.

They found Mamie ironing the clothes Baby Sis had washed that morning. It was steaming in the kitchen from the pair of fiatirons Mamie heated on her electric stove.

They told her Dulcy had left home, Johnny had killed c.h.i.n.k and was in jail.

She sat down and started moaning.

"Lord, I knowed there was goin' to be another killing," she said.

"Where would she go, now that both c.h.i.n.k and Val are dead and Johnny's locked up?" Grave Digger asked.

"Only the Lord knows," she said in a wailing voice. "She might have gone to see the reverend."

"Reverend Short!" Grave Digger said in a startled voice. "Why would she go to him?"

Mamie looked up in surprise. "Why, she's in deep trouble and he's a man of G.o.d. Dulcy's religious underneath. She might have gone to seek G.o.d in her misery."

Baby Sis giggled. Mamie gave her a threatening look.

"He is a man of G.o.d," Mamie said. "Only thing he drinks too much of that poison and sometimes it makes him a little crazy."

"If she's there, let's just hope be ain't too crazy," Coffin Ed said.

Five minutes later they were tiptoeing through the semidark of the store-front church. The shotgun hole in the door to Reverend Short's room at the rear had been closed by a piece of cardboard, shielding the light from within, but the croaking sound of Reverend Short's voice could be distinctly heard. They crept forward silently and bent toward the door to listen.

"But, Jesus Christ, why did you have to kill him?" they heard a blurred feminine voice exclaim.

"You are a harlot," they heard Reverend Short croak in reply. "I must save thy soul from h.e.l.l. You are mine. I have slain thy husband. Now I must give you unto G.o.d."

"Crazy as a loon," Grave Digger said aloud.

There was a sound of sudden scurrying inside the room. "Who's there?" Reverend Short croaked in a voice as thin and dry as a rattlesnake's warning.

"The law," Grave Digger said, flattening himself against the wall beside the door. "Detectives Jones and Johnson. Come out with your hands up."

Before he'd finished speaking Coffin Ed was sprinting down the corridor between the benches to go outside and circle to the rear windows.

"You can't have her," Reverend Short croaked. "She belongs to G.o.d now."

"We don't want her. We want you," Grave Digger said.

"I'm G.o.d's instrument," Reverend Short said.

"I don't doubt that," Grave Digger said, trying to hold his attention until Coffin Ed had time to approach the rear windows. "All we want to do is see that you get back safe and sound into G.o.d's instrument case."

The shotgun blasted from inside, without the warning sound of being c.o.c.ked, and blew a hole through the center of the door.

"You didn't get me," Grave Digger called. "Try the other barrel."

There was a sound of movement inside the room, and Dulcy screamed. The sound of two shots from a .38 revolver coming from the courtyard in back followed instantly. Grave Digger turned on the b.a.l.l.s of his big flat feet, hit the door with his left shoulder and rocketed into the room with his long barreled nickel-plated .38 c.o.c.ked and ready in his right hand. Reverend Short was sprawled face downward across the seat of the wooden chair beside the bed, trying to reach the shotgun, which lay on the floor half underneath the table. He was reaching for it with his left hand. His right hand dangled uselessly at his side.

Grave Digger leaned forward and hit him across the back of the head with his pistol barrel, just hard enough to knock him unconscious without braining him, then turned to give his attention to Dulcy before Reverend Short had rolled over and fallen to the floor.

She lay spread-eagled on the bed, her hands and feet tied to the bedposts with clothesline. Her torso and feet were bare, but she still wore the pants of a bright red slack Suit. The bone handle of a knife was sticking straight up from the crevice between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She looked at Grave Digger from huge black terror-stricken eyes.

"I bad hurt?" she asked in a whisper.

"I doubt it," Grave Digger said, then looked at her closer and added, "You're too pretty to be bad hurt. Only ugly women ever get hurt bad."

Coffin Ed was tearing off the chicken-wire screen from the rear window. Grave Digger crossed the room and raised the window and finished kicking it out. Coffin Ed climbed inside.

Grave Digger said, "Let's get these beauties to the hospital."

Reverend Short was taken to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital downtown on First Avenue and 29th Street. He was given a shot of paraldehyde and was docile and rational when the detectives went in to wind up the case. He sat propped up in bed with his right arm in a sling.

Detective Sergeant Brody from Homicide had ridden downtown with Grave Digger and Coffin Ed, and he sat beside the bed and did the questioning. The police reporter sat beside him.

Coffin Ed sat on the other side of the bed and stared down at the chart hanging at the foot. Grave Digger sat on the window sill and watched the tugboats chugging up and down the East River.