and draw the cop. But he ain't let out a peep, and there I was, had already done sneaked up beside the car, and I just had to grab the poke and run.'
'Where's Iron Jaw now?' Coffin Ed asked.
'I don't know. I ain't seen him all day.'
'Where does he usually hang out?'
'At Acey-Deucey's like me most times, else downstairs in the Boll Weevil.'
'Where does he live?'
'He got a room at the Lighthouse Hotel at 123rd and Third Avenue, and if'n he ain't there he might be at work. He pick chickens at Goldstein's Poultry Store on 116th Street and sometimes they stay open 'til twelve o'clock.'
Grave Digger started the motor again and turned into 126th Street toward the precinct station.
When they drew up before the entrance, Poor Boy asked, 'It's gonna be like you say, ain't it? If I cop a plea I don't get but thirty days?'
'That depends on how much your pal Iron Jaw saw,' Grave Digger said.
12
'I don't like these mother-raping mysteries,' Johnny said.
His thick brown muscles knotted beneath his sweat-wet yellow crepe shirt as he banged the lemonade glass on the glass top of the cocktail table.
'And that's for sure,' he added.
He sat leaning forward in the center of a long green plush davenport, his silk-stockinged, sweaty feet planted on the bright red carpet. The veins coming from his temples were swollen like exposed tree roots, and the scar on his forehead wriggled like a knot of live snakes. His dark brown lumpy face was taut and sweaty. His eyes were hot, vein-laced and smoldering.
'I done told you a dozen times or more I don't know why that nigger preacher's been telling all those lies about me,' Dulcy said in a whining defensive voice.
Johnny looked at her dangerously and said, 'Yeah, and I'm good and God-damned tired of hearing you tell me.'
Her gaze touched fleetingly on his tight-drawn face and ran off to look for something more serene.
But there wasn't anything serene in that violently colored room. The overstuffed pea green furniture garnished with pieces of blonde wood fought it out with the bright red carpet, but the eyes that had to look at it were the losers.
It was a big front corner room with two windows on Edgecombe drive and one window on 159th Street.
'I'm just as tired of hearing you ask me all those goddam questions as you is tired of hearing me tell you I don't know the answers,' she muttered.
The lemonade glass shattered in his hand. He threw the fragments across the floor and filled another one.
She sat on a yellow leather ottoman on the red carpet, facing the blond television-radio-record set that was placed in front of the closed-off fireplace beneath the mantlepiece.
'What the hell are you shivering for?' he asked.
'It's cold as hell in here,' she complained.
She had shed down to her slip, and her legs and feet were bare. Her toenails were painted the same shade of crimson as her fingernails. Her smooth brown skin was sandy with goose pimples, but her upper lip was sweating, accentuating the downy black hairs of her faint moustache.
The big air conditioner unit in the side window behind her was going full blast, and a twelve-inch revolving fan beside it on the radiator cover sprayed her with cold air.
Johnny drank his glass of lemonade and put the glass down carefully, like a man who prided himself on self- control under any circumstances.
'No wonder,' he said. 'Why don't you get up and put some clothes on?'
'For Christsake, it's too hot to wear clothes,' she said. Johnny poured and gulped another glass of lemonade to keep his brain from overheating.
'Listen, baby, I ain't being unreasonable,' he said. 'All I'm asking you is three simple things-'
'What's simple to you ain't simple to nobody else,' she complained.
His hot glance struck her like a slap.
She said with quick apology, 'I don't know why that preacher's got it in for me.'
'Listen to me, baby,' Johnny went on reasonably. 'I just want to know why Mamie all of a sudden begins pleading your case when I ain't even suspected you of doing nothing. Is that unreasonable?'
'How the hell do I know what goes on in Aunt Mamie's head?' she flared.
Then, on seeing rage pass across his face like summer lightning, she gulped a big swallow of the brandy highball she was drinking and strangled.
Spookie, her black cocker spaniel bitch, who had been resting at her feet, jumped up and tried to climb into her lap.
'And quit drinking so God-damned much,' Johnny said. 'You don't know what you're saying when you're drunk.'
She looked about guiltily for a place to put the glass, started to put it on the television set, caught his warning look, then put it on the floor beside her feet.
'And stop that damn dog from lapping you all the time,' he said. 'You think I want you always covered with dog spit?'
'Get down, Spookie,' she said, pushing the dog from her lap.
The dog stuck his hind leg into the highball glass and turned it over.
Johnny looked at the stain spreading over the red carpet and his jaw muscles roped like ox tendons.
'Everybody knows I'm a reasonable man,' he said. 'All I'm asking you is three simple things. First, how come that preacher tells the police a story about Chink Charlie giving you that knife?'
'For God's sake, Johnny,' she cried, and buried her face in her hands.
'Get me straight,' he said. 'I ain't said I believed that. But even if the mother-raper had it in for you-'
At that moment the commercial appeared on the television screen, and four cute blonde girls wearing sweaters and shorts began singing a commercial in a loud cheerful voice.
'Cut off that mother-raping noise,' Johnny said.
Dulcy reached up quickly and toned down the voice, but the quartet of beautiful-legged pygmies continued to hop about in happy, zippy pantomine.
The veins started swelling in Johnny's forehead.
Suddenly the dog began to bark like a hound treeing a coon.
'Shut up, Spookie,' Dulcy said quickly, but it was too late.
Johnny leaped up from his seat like a raving maniac, overturning the cocktail table and pitcher of lemonade, sprang across the floor and kicked the bitch in the ribs with his stockinged foot. The bitch sailed through the air and knocked over a red glass vase filled with imitation yellow roses sitting on a green lacquered end table. The vase shattered against the radiator, spilling paper yellow roses over the red carpet, and the bitch stuck its tail between its legs and ran yelping toward the kitchen.
The glass cover of the cocktail table had shattered against the overturned pitcher, and fragments of glass mingled with lumps of ice on the big wet splotch made by the spilt lemonade.
Johnny turned around, stepped over the debris and returned to his seat, like a man who prided himself on his self-control under all circumstances.
'Listen, baby,' he said. 'I'm a patient man. I'm the most reasonable man in the world. All I'm asking you is-'
'Three simple things,' she muttered under her breath.
He took a long deep breath and ignored it.
