'They say Scalise tossed acid in your face.'
'That's a fact, Jack. Damn near blinded me.'
And Slippery took off his glasses; Curry flinched on seeing the scar tissue around the man's eyes. Slippery was a handsome man, but his scars weren't.
'Good thing I seen it comin',' Slippery said, sliding the shades back on, 'and shut my peepers. Or I'd done lost my only other money-makin' knack. Blind men shoot piss-poor pool, you know.'
Johnson walked over close to Slippery; he put a hand on the man's shoulder. 'We puttin' together a Grand Jury. We gonna boot them tally fuckers outa the Roarin' Third.'
'You and what the fuck army?'
'Me and Eliot Ness,' Johnson grinned.
Fifteen minutes of explanation later, Johnson and Curry were back in the Chevy sedan, driving to their next destination.
'Sounds like he might cooperate,' Curry said.
'He will,' Johnson said. 'He hates them bastards much as me.'
The next stop was a tenement that even by Scovill Avenue standards was vile. Three old men, wrapped in threadbare sweaters and frayed mufflers, sat in kitchen chairs on the sidewalk right up against the front of the dilapidated frame building; it was even money whether the building was propping up the old men or vice versa. It wasn't a cold afternoon, but was chilly enough, and the old men's breath rose like steam. Johnson and Curry entered the building and walked down a long, narrow, dark, urine-scented hallway, the only light coming from one hanging bulb. The walls were whitewashed, or had been once, before filth and obscene graffiti had taken over. Curry blinked at the sight of a gigantic phallus with a comic-strip speech balloon hovering over it, saying, 'Fuk fuk fuk.' Johnson, a literate man, was dismayed himself-kids couldn't spell for shit no more.
They climbed three floors of dark stairs, occasionally skirting a wino or necking teenagers, and Johnson banged his fist on a numberless door, three times. The door shook from the blows.
'I can't stop you,' a ragged male voice from within said.
Johnson opened the door and Curry meekly followed; the white boy's eyes were as round and white as Stepin Fetchit's.
It was a small, one-room apartment with cracked plaster walls, against one of which was a faded red overstuffed sofa that was sprouting its springs. Against another was a battered steel bed, its white paint chipping away, its tattered blankets and dirty sheets mingling in an unmade pile, one of its two pillows greasy with hair oil. Nearby was a chest of drawers with a catalog substituting for one busted-off leg and a cracked marble top bearing a single-burner gas plate. Near that was a small square table stacked with dirty dishes, and under the table was a cracked porcelain washbowl and pitcher. The water source was a single tap down at the base-board, with several feet of garden-type hose attached. A single drop light hung like a noose from the center of the cracked ceiling. In back a rusted potbelly stove crouched beside a wooden box of coal. There was no bathroom.
A skinny black man in a T-shirt and shabby dungarees, thirty-some years of age, stood in the center of the room, just under the hanging light, as if contemplating tying its cord around his neck. His eyes were muddy, his posture stooped, his greased-back hair the only remaining sign of the street-smart slick hep cat he had been not. so long ago.
'The man,' he said, hollowly, looking at Toussaint.
'Hello, Eli.'
'Can't offer you nothin'. Nothin' to drink right now.'
'We'll just sit, then.'
Johnson motioned to Curry and the two cops sat on the shabby sofa; a spring jabbed Curry in the ass, and he moved quickly to one side.
Eli stood before them. He looked weak, but he wasn't shaking, and he wasn't tottering,
'Are you on the sauce, Eli?'
'No, sir.'
'Stickin' anything in your arm? Up your nose?'
'No, sir.'
'What are you doin', then?'
'Tryin' to get myself back on my feet, sir.'
'Looking for work?'
'I will be, sir. Can't go back to numbers runnin', not in this town.'
'I hear Scalise had some boys beat you up, while back.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Why is that, Eli?'
'I was diddlin' this little high-yeller gal.'
'Ah. Dancer at the Cedar Garden nightclub.'
'Yes, sir. They calls her Ginger. Mr. Scalise was diddlin' her, too. I didn't mind. That comes with the territory, don't it?'
'Seems to, Eli.'
'But he minded me diddlin' her. They busted me up pretty good.'
'What about the girl?'
'She left town. She went to Chicago town. I might look her up there, when I gets on my feet.'
'Did Scalise do any beatin' on you himself, Eli?'
'Yes, sir, he did.'
'Would you testify to that?'
'No, sir, I would not.'
'What if you had immunity?'
'What's that, sir?'
Johnson told him.
'I likes the sound of that. But Mr. Scalise is a bad motherfucker. He'd kill a black man soon as look at him.'
'That right there is a good reason to testify, Eli. You heard of Eliot Ness?'
'Sure.'
'How 'bout Reverend Hollis, the Future Outlook League?'
'Everybody heard of Reverend Hollis.'
Johnson patted the sofa cushion next to him. 'Sit down with us, Eli. This is Detective Curry, from the office of Eliot Ness. We want to talk to you.'
In the car, Curry said, 'I think that fellow could clean up into a damn good witness.'
'So do I.'
'He'll talk, won't he?'
'If he don't kill himself first.'
'Kill himself?'
'He been curled up in that rat-hole healing himself. From that beating. Scalise took his girl, took his pride. Some wounds don't heal over.'
Their next stop was a yellow Victorian on 46th off Carnegie, just west of Central-Scovill. The neighborhood was just one small grade up from the nearby slum, and many of the houses-single-family dwellings intermingling with larger rooming-house buildings-were pretty run-down. But the house that belonged to John C. Washington, retired policy king, was well kept-up; it even had a picket fence to make it seem almost idyllic-and to separate it from its more ramshackle neighbors.
When Washington had bought this property years ago, this neighborhood was a real step up from the slums; but the slums had spread like a disease, though Washington's dwelling had remained immune, an island of relative affluence. In the last several years, some buildings of the nearby slum area had been, and continued to be, torn down, as the WPA housing projects inexorably took their place.
'Toussaint, you are always welcome here,' Washington said warmly, ushering Johnson and Curry through the vestibule, past the second-floor stairs, into the living room.
The living room was a small but beautifully furnished affair, floral wallpaper, oriental rugs, fringed draperies,
