handful of mojos?'
'What would she want with mojos if she had just got religion,' Coffin Ed said.
'I'm just telling you what she said,' Dummy repeated.
'You think it was something else?' Lieutenant Anderson asked the detectives.
'In order to bring the Jew into it, there had to be money,' Grave Digger said. 'Or else they thought there was money.'
'What did you think it was, Dummy?' the lieutenant asked.
'I thought she was just mad at Rufus. He had done stole her money once, and I thought she figured him stealing her furniture was the lick that killed Dick.'
'What do you think now?' Coffin Ed asked. 'You know the Jew has been killed, too?'
Dummy nodded. 'I think it was something else,' he admitted.
'What?' Coffin Ed persisted.
'Something she stole,' Dummy said. 'Some jewelry.'
'We can check that soon enough with her employers.'
'Maybe she got it from somebody else.'
'All right,' Anderson said. 'You told her where Rufus lived?'
'No, sir,' Dummy said. 'I told her I would see if I could find out where he lived, and she promised to give me ten dollars if I did.'
'And you found out where he lived and told her?'
'No, sir, I knew where he lived,' Dummy said. 'I left her with Cassie and went to see what I could get out of Rufus. He wasn't at home, and I waited across the street. That's how come I saw him when he drove up.'
'You left her with Cassie, and Cassie gave her Rufus's address,' the lieutenant said.
'No, sir, Cassie didn't know it,' Dummy said. 'And she wouldn't have told her nohow.'
'We'll soon find out,' the lieutenant said. 'I'm going to have her brought in.'
'It won't do no good,' Dummy said. 'By now she's stone drunk.'
'We'll see,' the lieutenant said. He ordered the stenographer to transcribe the notes and have the statement typed, and told the detectives to lock Dummy up until they questioned Cassie.
But Cassie was too drunk to be moved other than in an ambulance, and they figured it best to let her sober up at home.
It was broad daylight by the time the statement was ready for Dummy to sign.
Grave Digger had one last question. 'Have you seen Sugar Stonewall?'
Lieutenant Anderson had gone home, and Dummy had to use his pad and pencil to reply. He wrote: no sir i aint seen sugar in a week.
Coffin Ed asked his question. 'Who's carrying a fresh roll about town?' nobody i know of, Dummy wrote.
They let him sign the statement and drove him back to where they had picked him up. Then they drove back to Lenox Avenue, found an all-night greasy spoon, sat on the counter stools and had coffee and doughnuts.
11
'Let's wake up Sweet Prophet,' Grave Digger said.
'He ain't going to like it,' Coffin Ed said.
'That's for sure,' Grave Digger agreed.
Sweet Prophet received the detectives in the sitting room adjoining his bedroom on the top floor of the building housing his Temple and reception room.
The housekeeper had opened the curtains and raised the windows looking down on the busy shopping area of 116th Street. Motor sounds and loud voices came in with motor exhaust smell and the stink of hot dirty pavement.
The room had a north light and was furnished like a corner of the lobby of the Paramount Theater. Fat, complacent gold and silver cherubs chased coffee-brown angels about the sunrise-pink wall paper, while the appropriately sky-blue ceiling was filled with more golden stars than in the Milky Way, whirling dizzily about a silver moon containing the vague outline of a face with a startling resemblance to that of Sweet Prophet.
'If this ain't heaven, it will have to do until the real heaven comes along,' Coffin Ed remarked.
'Shhh,' Grave Digger cautioned. 'Here's the Prophet.'
Sweet Prophet looked both mad and sleepy. His eyes popped from a scowling countenance. His yellow silk pajamas, peeping from beneath a dressing gown with candy stripes of red and white, gave the impression of a carnival on the loose. His big feet were encased in bright red Turkish slippers trimmed in gold; and his long kinky white hair was topped with a Fez of matching red with a golden tassel falling from the crown.
He greeted them in a vexed manner. 'Gentlemen, I got the best lawyers east of the Mississippi River.'
'Okay, throw us out,' Grave Digger said.
'Since you're here, sit down, sit down,' he said, plumping himself on a high-backed gilded chair that resembled a throne. 'We're all colored folks, ain't we? You don't have to stand on ceremony with me. I am a humble man.'
The detectives pulled up chairs that put them two feet lower than the Prophet.
'We hate to trouble you at this hour, Prophet,' Grave Digger said, 'but it's important.'
Sweet Prophet folded his hands across his stomach. He was wearing all of his diamond rings, but his long fingernails were encased in protective hard-rubber fingers of matching colors.
It must be hell when he's got to scratch himself, Coffin Ed thought.
'Important!' Sweet Prophet echoed. 'More important than a good night's sleep?'
'It's about one of your recent converts,' Grave Digger elaborated.
'My God, don't tell me another one has dropped dead-took off-departed, I mean,' Sweet Prophet said, searching for the appropriate expression. 'That would be the bitter end.'
Grave Digger carefully laid his battered hat on the bright green-carpeted floor. He and Coffin Ed had uncovered their heads in deference to the great man.
'No, it's about Alberta Wright,' Grave Digger said. 'We want to ask you a few questions about her.'
'Gentlemen, let the dead rest in peace, I beg you,' he said piously. 'That poor woman deserves it, as hard as she has worked all of her life.'
'That's the point, Prophet,' Grave Digger said. 'She's not dead.'
'What! Not dead!' Sweet Prophet exclaimed in bug-eyed amazement. 'Do you mean that woman is still alive? Or has she risen from the dead?'
'Pull yourself together, Prophet,' Grave Digger said drily. 'She never was dead.'
'Good God, man, I saw her die myself,' Sweet Prophet snapped.
'She was just unconscious.'
'In a trance, you mean.' Sweet Prophet fished his yellow silk handkerchief from his candy-striped dressing gown pocket and wiped his dark, sweating brow. 'I never thought of that. You startled me.'
'And what we're trying to do,' Grave Digger went on calmly, 'is get her story.'
'That woman's story can be told in two lines,' Sweet Prophet said. 'Born like a fool, and worked like a mule.'
'That might be so,' Grave Digger said. 'But we want to know what happened at the baptism.'
'God only knows, gentlemen. I blessed the bottle of water-I presume it was water-and she drank it and flopped. I thought she was dead, but you say she went into a trance, and that's all right with me. I'll have to remember it.'
'All right, a trance,' Grave Digger said. 'That is as good as any explanation for the present. How long had she been a follower of yours?'
'Bless my soul, gentlemen, she was not strictly a follower of mine, as you put it. Just a new recruit. I never saw the woman before she came to me yesterday morning to confess her sins and request to be baptized.'
'You mean you baptize people without knowing anything about them?' Coffin Ed put in finally.
'Gentlemen, you didn't have to see that woman but once to know everything there was to know about her,
