"Did she charge him?"

"No. It went as an accident."

The police reporter stopped fiddling with his notes and stared.

"How the h.e.l.l can you get your throat cut accidentally?" Brody asked.

"She said he didn't intend to do it--that he was just playing."

"Playing kind of rough," the police reporter commented.

"Why?" Brody asked. "Why did he do it?"

"She hung on too long," Grave Digger said. "He wanted Dulcy and she wouldn't let go."

"And she still hangs on to him."

"Why not? He cut her throat, and now she's got him for life."

"It's a funny way to keep a man, is all I can say."

"Maybe. But don't forget this is Harlem. Folks here are happy just to be alive."

7.

They called c.h.i.n.k next.

He said he'd started the night with a little friendly stud poker session in his room. It had broke up at one-thirty and he'd arrived at the wake at two A.M. He had left the wake at five minutes to four to keep a tete-a-tete with Doll Baby in her kitchenette apartment in the building next door.

"Did you look at your watch when you left?" Brody asked.

"No, when I went down in the elevator."

"Exactly where was Reverend Short when you left?"

"Reverend Short? h.e.l.l, I didn't pay no attention." He paused briefly, as though trying to remember, and said, "I think he was standing beside the coffin, but I can't be sure."

"What was happening outside when you got down to the street?"

"Nothing. A colored cop was standing there guarding the A&P store groceries on the sidewalk. He might remember seeing me."

"Was there anyone with him."

"No, not unless it was a ghost."

"AU right, son, let's have the facts without the comedy," Brody said with irritation.

c.h.i.n.k said he'd waited for Doll Baby in the front hall and they had walked up to her apartment on the secondfloor rear. But she hadn't been in the mood, so he'd gone out to pick up a few sticks of marijuana weed from a friend who lived down the street.

"Where?" Brody asked.

"Make a guess," c.h.i.n.k said defiantly.

Brody let it pa.s.s.

"Were there any people on the street that time?" he asked.

"Just as I stepped out on the sidewalk Dulcy Perry came from next door, and we saw Val's body in the bread basket at the same time."

"Had you noticed the bread basket before?"

"Sure. It was full of plain bread."

"There was no one else in sight when you and Dulcy met?"

"No one."

"How did she react when she saw her brother's body?"

"She just started going crazy."

"What did she say?"

"I don't remember."

Brody showed him the knife.

c.h.i.n.k admitted that it looked like the knife that had been stuck in Val's body, but denied ever having seen it before.

"Reverend Short testified that he saw you give this knife to Dulcy Perry in front of his church the day after Christmas, and that you showed her how to use it," Brody said.

c.h.i.n.k's sweaty yellow face paled to the color of a dirty sheet.

"That mother-raping preacher's blowing his top drinking that opium extract and cherry brandy," he raved. "I ain't given Dulcy any mother-raping knife and ain't never seen it before."

"But you've been after her like a dog after a b.i.t.c.h in heat," Brody charged. "Everybody says that."

"You can't hang a man for trying," c.h.i.n.k argued.

"No, but you can kill a woman's brother if he gets in the way," Brody said.

"Val wasn't no trouble," c.h.i.n.k muttered. "He'd have set it up for me if he hadn't been scared of Johnny."

Brody called in the harness cops.

"Hold him," he ordered.

"I want to call my lawyer," c.h.i.n.k demanded.

"Let him call his lawyer," Brody said. Then he asked if they'd picked up Doll Baby Grieves.

"Long time ago," one replied.

"Send her in."

Doll Baby had changed into a day dress that still looked like a nightgown in disguise. She sat on the stool in the circle of light and crossed her legs as though she liked being spotlighted in the same room with three men, even though they were cops.

She confirmed c.h.i.n.k's testimony, only she said he'd gone out for sandwiches instead of marijuana.

"Didn't you get enough to eat at the wake?" Brody asked.

"Well, we were just talking and that always makes me hungry," she said.

Brody asked about her relationship with Val, and she said they were engaged.

"And you were entertaining another man in your rooms at that hour of morning?"

"Well, after all, I had waited for Val 'til four o'clock, and I just figured he was out chasing." She giggled. "And what's good for the goose is good for the gander."

"He's dead now, or did you forget?" Brody reminded her.

She sobered suddenly and looked appropriately sad.

Brody asked her if she'd seen anyone when she left the wake. She said she'd seen a colored cop with the A&P store manager who'd just driven up. She recognized the manager because she shopped in the store, and she knew the cop personally. Both had greeted her.

"When did you last see Val?" Brody asked.

"He came to see me at about ten-thirty."

"Had he been to the wake?"

"No, he said he'd just come from home. I phoned Mr. Small and got the night off to attend Big Joe's wake--I generally work from eleven till four--and then me and Val sat there talking until one-thirty."

"Are you certain about the time?"

"Yeah, he looked at his watch and said it was one-thirty, and he'd have to leave in a hour because he wanted to stop by Johnny's club before he went to the wake, and I said I wanted some fried chicken."

"You don't like Mamie Pullen's cooking," Brody suggested.

"Oh, sure, I like it fine, but I was hungry."

"You're a hungry girl."

She giggled. "Talking always makes me hungry."

"Where did you go for your fried chicken?"

"We got a taxi and went over to the College Inn at 151st Street and Broadway. We just stayed there for an hour, and then he looked at his watch and said it was two-thirty and he was going by Johnny's and would meet me at the Wake in about an hour. We got a taxi and he dropped me off at Mamie's and kept on downtown to Johnny's."

"What was his racket?" Brody shot at her.

"Racket? He didn't have any. He was a gentleman."

"Who were his enemies?"

"He didn't have any, unless it was Johnny."

"Why Johnny?"

"Johnny might have got tired of having him around all the time. Johnny's funny and awfully hot-headed."

"How about c.h.i.n.k? Didn't Va! resent c.h.i.n.k's familiarity with his fiancee?"

"He didn't know about it."

Brody showed her the knife. She denied ever having seen it at any time.

He released her.

Dulcy was brought in next. She was accompanied by Johnny's attorney, Ben Williams.

Ben was a brown-skinned man of about forty, slightly on the fat side, with neatly barbered hair, and a heavy moustache. He was wearing the double-breasted gray flannel suit, horn-rimmed spectacles and conservative black shoes of the Harlem professional man.

Brody skipped the routine questions and asked Dulcy, "Were you the first one to discover the body?"

"You don't have to answer that," the attorney said quickly.

"Why the h.e.l.l doesn't she?" Brody flared.

"The Fifth Amendment," the attorney stated.

"This isn't any Communist investigation," Brody said disgustedly. "I can hold her as a material witness and let her talk to the Grand Jury, if that's what you want."

The attorney appeared to meditate. "Okay, you can answer," he said to Dulcy. After that he kept quiet; he had earned his money.

She said that c.h.i.n.k was standing beside the bread basket when she came out of the door.

"Are you certain of that?" Brody asked.

"I ain't blind," she retorted. "That's what made me look down to see what he was looking at, and then I saw Val."