legs were so large they seemed joined together, and his pants resembled a funnel-shaped skirt. His round brown head, which could have passed for a safety balloon in case his stomach burst, was clean-shaven. Not a hair showed above his chest-either on his face, nostrils, ears, eyebrows or eyelashes-giving the impression that his whole head had been scalded and scraped like the carcass of a pork.
'How's it going to chafe us, pops?' he asked, sticking out a huge, spongy hand. His voice was a wheezing whisper.
'Nobody knows 'til the deal goes down,' Johnny said. 'Everybody's just peeping at their hole cards now.'
'The betting comes next.' He looked down, but his felt-slippered feet, planted on the sawdust-covered floor, were hidden from his view by his belly. 'I sure hate to see Big Joe go.'
'Lost your best customer,' Johnny said, rejecting the consolation.
'You know, Big Joe never ate nothing here. He just come in to gape at the chippies and beef about the cooking.' Fats paused, then added, 'But he was a man.'
'Hurry up, Johnny, for God's sake,' Dulcy called from across the room. 'The funeral starts at two, and it's almost near one o'clock.' She had kept on her sun glasses and looked strictly Hollywoodish in her pink silk dress.
The room was small, its eight square kitchen tables covered with white-and-red checked oilcloth planted in the inch of fresh, slightly damp sawdust covering the floor.
Dulcy sat at the table in the far corner, flanked by Alamena and the attorney.
'I'll let you go eat,' Fats said. 'You must be hungry.'
'Ain't I always?'
The sawdust felt good beneath Johnny's rubber-soled shoes, and he thought fleetingly of how good life had been when he was a simple plough boy in Georgia, before he'd killed a man.
The cook stuck his head through the opening from the kitchen where the orders were filled and called, 'Hiyuh, pops.'
Johnny waved a hand.
Three other tables were occupied by men and women in the trade. It was strictly a hangout for the upper- class Harlem hustlers, those in the gambling and prostitution professions, and none others were allowed. Everybody knew everybody else, and all the diners greeted Johnny as he passed.
'Sad about Big Joe, pops.'
'You can't stop the deal when the dealer falls.'
Nobody mentioned Val. He'd been murdered, and nobody knew who did it. It was nobody's business but Johnny's, Dulcy's and the cops's; and everybody was letting it strictly alone.
When Johnny sat down the waitress came with the menu, and Pee Wee brought in a big glass pitcher of lemonade, with slices of lemons and limes and big chunks of ice floating about in it.
'I want a Singapore Sling,' Dulcy said.
Johnny gave her a look.
'Well, brandy and soda then. You know good and well that ice-cold drinks give me indigestion.'
'I'll have iced tea,' the attorney said.
'You get that from the waitress,' Pee Wee said.
'Gin and tonic for me,' Alamena said.
The waitress came with the silver, glasses and napkins, and Alamena gave the attorney the menu.
He started to grin as he read the list of dinners:
Today's Special — Alligator tail amp; rice
Baked Ham — sweet potatoes amp; succotash
Chitterlings amp; collard greens amp; okra
Chicken and drop dumplings — with rice or sweet potatoes
Barbecued ribs
Pig's feet a la mode
Neck bones and lye hominy
(Choice of hot biscuits or corn bread)
SIDE DISHES
Collard greens — okra — black-eyed peas amp; rice — corn on the cob — succotash — sliced tomatoes and cucumbers
DESSERTS
Homemade ice cream — deep-dish sweet potatoe pie — peach cobbler — watermelon — blackberry pie
BEVERAGES
Iced tea — buttermilk — sassafras-root tea — coffee
But he looked up and saw the solemn expressions on the faces of the others and broke off.
'I haven't had breakfast as yet,' he said, then to the waitress, 'Can I have an order of brains and eggs, with biscuits?'
'Yes, sir.'
'I want some fried oysters,' Dulcy said.
'We ain't got no oysters. It ain't the month for 'em.' She gave Dulcy a sly, sidewise look.
'Then I'll take the chicken and dumplings, but I don't want nothing but the legs,' Dulcy said haughtily.
'Yes'm.'
'Baked ham for me,' Alamena said.
'Yes'm.' She looked at Johnny with calf-eyed love. 'The same as always, Mr. Johnny?'
He nodded. Johnny's breakfast, which never varied, consisted of a heaping plate of rice, four thick slices of fried salt pork, the fat poured over the rice, and a pitcher of blackstrap sorghum molasses to pour over that. With this came a plate of eight Southern-style biscuits an inch and a half thick.
He ate noisily without talk. Dulcy had drunk three brandy-and-sodas and said she wasn't hungry.
Johnny stopped eating long enough to say, 'Eat anyway.'
She picked at her food, watching the faces of the other diners, trying to catch snatches of their conversation.
Two people got up from a far table. The waitress went over to clear their places. Chink walked in with Doll Baby.
She had changed into a fresh pink linen backless dress, and wore huge black-tinted sun glasses with pink frames.
Dulcy stared at her with liquid venom. Johnny drank two glasses of ice-cold lemonade.
The room filled with silence.
Dulcy stood up suddenly.
'Where you going?' Johnny asked.
'I want to play a record,' she said defiantly. 'Do you have any objections?'
'Sit down,' he said tonelessly. 'And don't be so mother-raping cute.'
She sat down and bit off another fingernail. Alamena fingered her throat and looked down at her plate.
'Tell the waitress,' she said. 'She'll play it.'
'I was going to play that platter of Jelly Roll Morton's, I Want A Little Girl To Call My Own.'
Johnny raised his face and looked at her. Rage started leaping in his eyes.
She picked up her drink to hide her face, but her hand trembled so she spilled some on her dress.
Across the room Doll Baby said in a loud voice, 'After all, Val was my fiance.'
Dulcy stiffened with fury. 'You're a lying bitch!' she yelled back.
Johnny gave her a dangerous look.
'And if the truth be known, he was just knifed to keep me from having him,' Dolly Baby said.
'He'd already had a bellyful of you,' Dulcy said.
Johnny slapped her out of her seat. She spun into the corner of the wall and crumpled to the floor.
Doll Baby let out a high shrill laugh.
Johnny spun his chair about on its hind legs.
