'I'm going to tell them my story, don't you worry,' she said.
'I ain't worrying,' Johnny said.
'What about that ten thousand dollars you were going to give him to open a liquor store?' Doll Baby said.
Johnny didn't move. His whole body became rigid, as though it were suddenly turned into bronze. He kept his unblinking gaze pinned on her so long she began to fidget.
Finally he said, 'What about it?'
'Well, after all, I was his fiancee and he said you were going to put up ten grand for him to open that store, and I guess I got some kind of widow's rights,' she said.
Dulcy and Alamena stared at her with a curious silence. Johnny's stare never left her face. She began to squirm beneath the concentrated scrutiny.
'When did he tell you that?' Johnny asked.
'The day after Big Joe died-day before yesterday, I guess it was,' she said. 'Him and me was planning on setting up housekeeping, and he said he was going to get ten grand from you for sure.'
'Listen, girlie, you're sure about that?' Johnny asked. His voice hadn't changed, but he looked thoughtful and puzzled.
'As sure as I'm living,' Doll Baby said. 'I'd swear it on my mother's grave.'
'And you believed it?' Johnny kept after her.
'Well, after all, why shouldn't I?' she countered. 'He had Dulcy batting for him.'
'You lying whore!' Dulcy cried, and was out of her chair and across the room and tangling with Doll Baby before Johnny could move.
He jumped up and pulled them apart, holding them by the backs of their necks.
'I'm going to get you for this,' Doll Baby threatened Dulcy.
Dulcy spat in her face. Johnny hurled her across the kitchen with one hand. She snatched a razor-sharp kitchen knife from the sideboard drawer and charged back across the room. Johnny released Doll Baby and turned to meet her, spearing her wrist with his left hand and twisting the knife from her grip.
'If you don't get her out of here I'm going to kill her,' she raved.
Alamena got up calmly, went out into the hall and closed the front door. When she had returned and taken her seat, she said indifferently, 'She's already gone. She must have been reading your mind.'
Johnny resumed his seat. The cocker spaniel bitch came out from beneath the stove and began licking Dulcy's bare feet.
'Get away, Spookie,' Dulcy said, and took her own seat again.
Johnny poured himself a glass of lemonade.
Dulcy poured a water glass half full of bourbon whisky and drank it down straight. Johnny watched her without speaking. He looked alert and wary, but puzzled. Dulcy choked and her eyes filled with tears. Alamena stared down at her dirty plate.
Johnny lifted the glass of lemonade, changed his mind and poured it back into the pitcher. He then poured the glass one-third full of whisky. But he didn't drink it. He just stared at it for a long time. No one said anything.
He stood up without drinking the whisky, and said, 'Now I got another mother-raping mystery,' and left the kitchen, walking silently on his stockinged feet.
13
It was after seven o'clock when Grave Digger and Coffin Ed parked in front of Goldstein's Poultry Store on 116th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues.
The name appeared in faded gilt letters above dingy plate glass windows, and a wooden sihouette of what passed for a chicken hung from an angle-bar over the entrance, the word chickens painted on it.
Chicken coops, most of which were empty, were stacked six and seven high on the sidewalk flanking the entrance, and were chained together. The chains were padlocked to heavy iron attachments fastened to the front of the store.
'Goldstein don't trust these folks with his chickens,' Coffin Ed remarked as they alighted from the car.
'Can you blame him?' Grave Digger replied. There were more stacks of coops inside the store containing more chickens.
Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein and several younger Goldsteins were bustling about, selling chickens on the feet to a number of late customers, mostly proprietors of chicken shacks, barbecue stands, nightclubs and after-hours joints.
Mr. Goldstein approached them, washing his hands with the foul-scented air. 'What can I do for you gentlemen?' he asked. He had never run afoul of the law and didn't know any detectives by sight.
Grave Digger drew his gold-plated badge from his pocket and exhibited it in the palm of his hand.
'We're the men,' he said.
Mr. Goldstein paled. 'Are we breaking the law?'
'No, no, you're doing a public service,' Grave Digger replied. 'We're looking for a boy who works for you called Iron Jaw. His straight monicker is Ibsen. Don't ask us where he got it.'
'Oh, Ibsen,' Mr. Goldstein said with relief. 'He's a picker. He's in the back.' Then he began worrying again. 'You're not going to arrest him now, are you? I've got many orders to fill.'
'We just want to ask him a few questions,' Grave Digger assured him.
But Mr. Goldstein wasn't assured. 'Please, sirs, don't ask him too many questions,' he entreated. 'He can't think about but one thing at a time, and I think he's been drinking a little, too.'
'We're going to try not to strain him,' Coffin Ed said. They went through the door into the back room. A muscular, broad-shouldered young man, naked to the waist, with sweat streaming from his smooth, jet-black skin, stood over the picking table beside the scalding vat, his back to the door. His arms were working like the driving rod of a speeding locomotive, and wet feathers were raining into a bushel basket at his side.
He was singing to himself in a whisky-thick voice:
'Cap'n walkin' up an' down,
Buddy layin' there dead, Lord,
On de burnin' ground,
If I'da had my weight in line,
I'da whup dat Cap'n till he went stone blind.'
Chickens were lined up on one side of the big table, lying quietly on their backs with their heads tucked beneath their wings and their feet stuck up. Each one had a tag tied to a leg.
A young man wearing glasses come from behind the wrapping table, glanced at Grave Digger and Coffin Ed without curiosity, and walked over behind the picker. He pointed at one of the live chickens on the far corner of the table, a big-legged Plymouth Rock pullet, minus a tag.
'What's that chicken doing there, Ibsen?' he asked in a suspicious voice.
The picker turned to look at him. In profile his jaw stuck out from his muscle-roped neck like a pressing iron, and his flat-nosed face and sloping forehead slanted back at a thirty-degree angle.
'Oh, that there chicken,' he said. 'Well, suh, that there chicken belongs to Missus Klein.'
'Why ain't it got a tag on it then?'
'Well, suh, she don't know whether she gonna take it or not. She ain't come back for it yet.'
'All right, then,' the young man said peevishly. 'Get on with your work. Just don't stand there-we got these orders to fill.'
The picker turned and his arms began working like locomotive driving rods. He began again to sing to himself. He hadn't seen the two detectives standing just inside the doorway.
Grave Digger gestured toward the door with his head. Coffin Ed nodded. They slipped out silently.
Mr. Goldstein deserted a customer for a moment as they passed through the front room. 'I'm glad you didn't
