"He's dead," Reverend Short said suddenly in his new croaking voice.

Mamie gave a start. She hadn't seen Reverend Short.

He sat slouched on the end of his spine in an overstuffed armchair, staring with a fixed expression toward the opposite wall.

"What the h.e.l.l do you think," she said roughly. All her social affections had left since the discovery of Val's body. "You think I'd bury him if he was alive?"

"I saw it happen," Reverend Short continued as though she hadn't spoken.

She stared at him in perplexity. "Oh, you mean Val."

"A woman filled with the sin of l.u.s.t and adultery came from the pit of h.e.l.l and stabbed him in the heart."

His words sunk slowly into Mamie's clogged thoughts.

"A woman?"

"_And I gave her s.p.a.ce to repent of her fornication, and she repented not_."

"You saw her do it?"

"_For her sins have reached unto heaven, and G.o.d hath remembered her iniquities_."

Mamie saw the room tilt.

"May the Lord have mercy," she said.

She saw Big Joe in his coffin, the grand piano and the console radio-television set begin a slow ascent toward heaven. Then the dark maroon carpet rose slowly until it spread out before her eyes like a sea of dark, congealed blood into which she buried her face.

"Sin and l.u.s.t and abomination in the sight of the Lord," Reverend Short croaked, then added in a small dry whisper, "She ain't nothing but a wh.o.r.e, 0 Lord."

5.

The automatic elevator was on the ground floor, and most of the curious mourners chose to run down the stairs rather than wait for it. But they were not the first to arrive.

Dulcy and c.h.i.n.k stood facing each other across the basket of bread containing the body. He was a big yellow man, young but going to fat, dressed in a beige summer suit. He leaned over tensely.

The first to approach heard Dulcy exclaiming, "Jesus Christ, you didn't have to kill him!" and c.h.i.n.k replying in a voice choked with sudden pa.s.sion, "Not even for you--" Then he broke off and cautioned in a tense whisper, speaking between set lips, "Shut up and play it dumb."

She didn't speak again until all the mourners from the wake had gathered and had their look and said their say.

"It's Val, and he's dead all right."

"If he ain't, Saint Peter's going to be mighty surprised." Alamena had wormed close enough to get a clear view of the body. She heard a dining-car waiter say, "You reckon he was stabbed where he's at?"

A voice behind her replied, "Must have been--there ain't no blood nowhere else."

The body lay at full length on the mattress of soft wrapped loaves of bread as though the basket had been fitted to its measure. The left hand, exhibiting the band of a single gold ring, lay palm upward across a heavy, black silk knitted tie knotted about the collar of a soft sandcolored linen silk shirt; the right hand lay palm downward across the center b.u.t.ton of the jacket of an olive drab sheen gabardine suit. The feet pointed straight up, exposing the slightly worn crepe-rubber soles of lightweight Cordovan English-made shoes.

The knife protruded from the jacket just beneath the breast pocket, which was adorned with a quarter-inch stripe of white handkerchief. It was a stag-handle knife with a push-b.u.t.ton opener and handguard, such as used by hunters to skin game.

Blood made irregular patterns over the jacket, shirt and tie. Splotches were on the waxed-paper wrappings of the loaves of bread, and on one side of the woven rattan basket. There was none on the sidewalk.

The face was set in a fixed expression of utter disbelief; the eyes, widened into protruding white-rimmed b.a.l.l.s, stared fixedly at some point above and beyond the feet.

It was a handsome face, with smooth brown skin and features bearing a close resemblance to Dulcy's. The head was bare, revealing curly black hair, thickly plastered with pomade.

An odd moment of silence followed the last speaker's statement as the fact sunk in that the murder had been committed on the spot.

Dulcy said into the silence, "He looks so surprised."

"You'd look surprised, too, if some one stuck a knife in your heart," Alamena said grimly.

With a startling abruptness, Dulcy became hysterical.

"Val!" she screamed. "I'll get him, Val, sugar, oh G.o.d--"

She would have thrown herself atop Val's body, but Alamena quickly wrenched her away, and several of the mourners closed in and held her.

She struggled furiously and screamed, "Turn me loose, you mother-rapers! He's my brother and some motherraper's going to pay--"

"For Jesus sake, shut up!" Alamena shouted.

c.h.i.n.k stared at her, his big yellow face distorted with rage. She shut up and got herself under control.

A colored patrolman came from the doorway of the adjoining building. When he saw the crowd he drew himself up and began adjusting his uniform.

"What's happened here?" he asked in a loud selfconscious voice. "Somebody get hurt?"

"You can call it that," some one replied.

The patrolman pushed in close and looked down at the body. The collar of his blue uniform was open, and he smelled like sweat.

"Who stabbed him?" he asked.

Pigmeat replied in a high falsetto voice, "Don't you wish you knew."

The patrolman blinked his eyes, then suddenly grinned, showing rows of big yellow teeth.

"What minstrel you with, sonny-o?"

Everyone stared at him, waiting to see what he would do. Their faces took dark shape in the graying light of dawn.

He stood there grinning, doing nothing. He didn't know what to do, but he wasn't perturbed by it.

The distant sound of a siren floated in the humid air. The crowd began to scatter.

"Don't n.o.body leave the scene," the patrolman ordered. The red eye of a patrol car came north up Seventh Avenue. The patrol car made a screaming U-turn around the park dividing the traffic lanes and dragged to a stop, double-parking beside the cars at the curb. Another red eye was coming south down the dark street in a screaming fury. A third turned the corner of 132nd Street, almost coffiding with it. A fourth turned in from 129th Street and screamed north on the wrong side of the avenue.

The white precinct sergeant arrived in the fifth patrol car.

"Keep everybody here," he ordered in a loud voice.

By then half-clad people were hanging from every front window in the block, and others began collecting in the street.

The sergeant noticed a white man clad in a shortsleeved white sport shirt and khaki trousers standing apart, and asked him, "Do you work in this A&P store?"

"I'm the manager."

"Open it up. We're going to put these suspects inside."

"I object," the white man said. "I've been robbed once tonight by a shine, right under my eyes, and the cop hasn't even caught the thief."

The sergeant looked at the colored cop.

"It was his buddy," the A&P manager said. "Where is he now?" the sergeant asked. "How in the h.e.l.l do I know?" the store manager replied. "I had to leave and come back to open the store."

"Well, go ahead and open it," the colored cop said. "I'll be responsible if anything is stolen," the sergeant said.

The manager went to unlock the door without replying. An inconspicuous black sedan pulled to the curb and parked at the end of the block unnoticed, and two tall, lanky colored men dressed in black mohair suits that looked as though they'd been slept in got out and walked back toward the scene. Their wrinkled coats bulged beneath their left shoulders. The shiny straps of their shoulder holsters showed across the fronts of their blue cotton shirts.

The one with the burnt face went to the far side of the crowd; the other remained on the near side.

Suddenly a loud voice shouted, "Straighten up!" An equally loud voice echoed, "Count off!" "Detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson reporting for duty, General," Pigmeat muttered.

"Jesus Christ!" c.h.i.n.k fumed. "Now we've got those d.a.m.ned Wild West gunmen here to mess up everything."

The sergeant said, winking at a white cop, "Herd 'em into the store, Jones, you and Johnson. You fellows know how to handle 'em."

Grave Digger gave him a hard look. "They all look alike to us, Commissioner--white, blue, black and merino." Then turning to the crowd he shouted, "Inside, cousins."

"They're going to hold prayer meeting," Coffin Ed said. As the cops were closing the door on the corraled suspects, a big cream-colored, made-to..order Cadillac convertible with the top down stopped in the street, double-parking behind the row of patrol cars.

A small white-faced playing card was embossed on each door. In the corners of each card were an inlaid spade, heart, diamond and club. Each door was the size of a barn gate.

One of the doors swung open. A man got out. He was a big man but, standing, his six-foot height lost impressiveness in his slanting shoulders and long arms. He was wearing a powder blue suit of shantung silk; a pale yellow crepe silk shirt; a hand-painted tie depicting an orange sun rising on a dark blue morning; highly glossed light tan rubber-soled shoes; a miniature ten-of-hearts tie pin with opal hearts; three rings, including a heavy gold signet ring of his lodge, a yellow diamond set in a heavy gold band and a big mottled stone of a nameless variety, also set in a heavy gold band. His cuff links were heavy gold squares with diamond eyes. It wasn't from vanity he wore so much gold. He was a gambler, and it was his bank account in any emergency.

He was bareheaded. His kinky hair, powdered with gray, was cut as short as a three-days' growth of whiskers, with a part shaved on one side. In the dim light of morning his big-featured, knotty face showed it had taken its lumps. In the center of his forehead was a puffed, bluish scar with ridges p.r.o.nging off like immobilized octopus tentacles. It gave him an expression of perpetual rage, which was accentuated by the smoldering fire that lay always just beneath the surface of his muddy brown eyes, ready to flame into a blaze.

He looked hard, strong, tough and unafraid.

"Johnny Perry!"

The name came involuntarily to the lips of everyone who lived in Harlem. "He's the greatest," they said.

Dulcy waved to him from inside the store.

He walked toward the cops who were congregated about the door. His step was springy, and he walked on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet like a prize fighter. A wave of nervous motion stirred among the cops.

"What's the rumble" he asked the sergeant.

For an instant no one spoke.

Then the sergeant said, nodding toward the bread basket on the sidewalk, "Man's been killed," as though the words had been forced from him by the quick hot flame that began to ificker in Johnny's eyes.

Johnny turned his head to look, then walked over and stared down at Val's body. He stood as though frozen for almost a minute. When he walked back his dark face had taken on a deep purple tint, and the tentacles of the scar on his forehead seemed to have come alive. His eyes had the hot steamy glow of water-logged wood beginning to burn.

But his voice had the same slow, deep, gambler's pitch that never changed.

"Do you know who stuck him?"

The sergeant gave him back look for look. "Not yet. Do you?"

Johnny put his left hand forward, fingers stiff and splayed, then drew it in and stuck it into his coat pocket, the same as his other hand. He did not reply.

Dulcy had wormed between the displays close enough to the plate-gla.s.s to rap on it.

Johnny threw her a look, then said to the sergeant, "You got my old lady in there. Let her out."

"She's a suspect," the sergeant said tonelessly.

"It's her brother," Johnny said.

"You can see her at the station. The wagons will be here soon," the sergeant replied indifferently.

The flames leaped up in Johnny's muddy eyes.

"Let her out," Grave Digger said. "He'll bring her in."

"Who in the G.o.d-d.a.m.ned h.e.l.l's going to bring him in?" the sergeant raved.

"We'll bring him in," Grave Digger said. "Me and Ed." The first of the wagons turned the corner into Seventh Avenue. The sergeant opened the door and said, "All right, let's start getting them out."

Dulcy was the third in line. She had to wait until the cops shook down the two men in front of her. One of the cops asked her to hand over her pocketbook, but she ran past him and flew into Johnny's arms.

"Oh Johnny," she sobbed, staining the front of his powder blue silk suit with lipstick, mascara and tears as she buried her face in his chest.

He embraced her with a tenderness that seemed startling in a man of his appearance.

"Don't cry, baby," he said in his changeless voice, "I'll get the mother-raper."