'Occupational traits,' Grave Digger said. 'Cops talk louder than gamblers.'
'Yeah. You got a warrant?' Johnny said.
'What for? We just want to ask you some friendly questions,' Grave Digger said.
'My woman's drunk and ain't able to answer any questions, friendly or not,' Johnny said. 'And I ain't going to.'
'You're getting kind of big for your britches, ain't you, Johnny,' Coffin Ed said.
'Listen,' Johnny said. 'I ain't trying to be no big shot or play tough. I'm just tired. A lot of folks are pressing me. I pay a lawyer to talk for me in court. If you got a warrant for me or Dulcy, then take us. If you ain't, then let us be.'
'Okay, Johnny,' Coffin Ed said. 'It's been a long day for everybody.'
'Are you wearing your rod?' Grave Digger asked.
'Yeah. You want to see my license?' Johnny said.
'No, I know you got a license for it. I just want to tell you to take it easy, son,' Grave Digger said.
'Yeah,' Johnny said.
While they were talking, Alamena had let Chink out of the front door.
Chink had buzzed for the elevator and was waiting for it to come when Johnny let himself into the kitchen of his flat.
Alamena was washing the tablecloth. The dog was barking. Dulcy was still laughing hysterically.
'Why, imagine seeing you, daddy,' Dulcy said in a blurred drunken voice. 'I thought you were the garbage man, coming in that way.'
'She's drunk,' Alamena said quickly.
'Why didn't you put her to bed?' Johnny said.
'She didn't want to go to bed.'
'Nobody puts Dulcy to bed when she don't want to go to bed,' Dulcy said drunkenly.
The dog kept barking.
'She was sick on the tablecloth,' Alamena said.
'Go home,' Johnny said. 'And take this little yapping dog with you.'
'Come on, Spookie,' Alamena said.
Johnny picked up Dulcy in his arms and carried her into the bedroom. Outside in the corridor, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed joined Chink at the elevator doors.
'You're trembling,' Grave Digger observed.
'Sweating, too,' Coffin Ed added.
'I just got a chill is all,' Chink said.
'Damn right,' Grave Digger said. 'That's the way to get chilled permanently, fooling around with another man's wife, and in his own house, too.'
'I just been tending to my own business,' Chink said argumentatively. 'Why don't you cops try that sometime?'
'That's the thanks we get for giving you a break,' Grave Digger said. 'We held him up until you had time to get away.'
'Don't talk to that son of a bitch,' Coffin Ed said harshly. 'If he says another word I'll knock out his teeth.'
'Not before he talks,' Grave Digger warned. 'He's going to need his teeth to make himself understood.'
The automatic elevator stopped on the floor. The three of them got in it.
'What is this, a pinch?' Chink asked.
Coffin Ed hit him in the solar plexus. Grave Digger had to restrain him. Chink walked out of the house between the two detectives, holding his stomach as though to keep it from falling out.
17
Chink sat on the stool within the glaring circle of light in the Pigeon Nest, where Detective Sergeant Brody from Central Homicide had questioned him that morning.
But now he was being questioned by the Harlem precinct detectives, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, and it wasn't the same.
Sweat was streaming down his waxen face, and his beige summer suit was wringing wet. He was trembling again and he was scared. He looked at the wet money stacked on one end of the desk through sick, vein-laced eyes.
'I've got a right to have my lawyer,' he said.
Grave Digger sat on the edge of the desk in front of him, and Coffin Ed stood in the shadows behind him.
Grave Digger looked at his watch and said, 'It's five minutes after two o'clock, and we've got to have some answers.'
'But I've got a right to have my lawyer,' Chink said in a pleading tone. 'Sergeant Brody said this morning I had a right to have my lawyer when I was questioned.'
'Listen, boy,' Coffin Ed said. 'Brody is a homicide man and solving murders is his business. He goes at it in a routine way like the law prescribes, and if some more people get killed while he's going about it, that's just too bad for the victims. But me and Digger are two country Harlem dicks who live in this village and don't like to see anybody get killed. It might be a friend of ours. So we're trying to head off another killing.'
'And there ain't much time,' Grave Digger added.
Chink mopped his face with a wet handkerchief. 'If you think anybody's going to kill me-' he began, but Coffin Ed cut him off.
'I personally wouldn't give a goddam if you were killed-'
'Take it easy, Ed,' Grave Digger said, and then to Chink, 'We want to ask you one question. And we want a true answer. Did you give Dulcy the knife that killed Val as Reverend Short said you did?'
Chink squeezed out a laugh. 'I've already told you, I don't know anything about that knife.'
'Because if you did give the knife to her,' Grave Digger went on talking softly, 'and Johnny got hold of it and killed Val with it, he's going to kill her, too, if we don't stop him. That's for sure. And maybe if we don't get him soon enough he's going to kill you, too.'
'You cops act as if Johnny was a black Dillinger or Al Capone-' Chink was saying, but his teeth were chattering so loudly he sounded as though he were speaking pig latin.
Grave Digger cut him off, still talking in a soft, persuasive voice. 'And we know that you've got something on Dulcy or else she wouldn't have let you in Johnny's house and taken the risk of talking to you for thirty-three minutes by the clock. And if it wasn't something goddam serious she wouldn't have given you seven hundred and thirty bucks to keep quiet.' He banged the meaty edge of his fist on the stack of squashy money, jerked it back and wiped his hand with his handkerchief. 'Dirty money. Which one of you puked on it?'
Chink tried to meet his gaze defiantly but couldn't do it, and his own gaze kept dropping until it rested on Grave Digger's big flat feet.
'So there are only two possibilities,' Grave Digger went on. 'You either gave her the knife or else you found out what Val knew about her that he was going to use to make her dig ten grand out of Johnny. And we don't figure you found that out since we talked to you because we've been shadowing you, and we know you went straight from your room to Johnny's club and from there to see Dulcy. So you must know about the knife.'
He stopped talking and they waited for Chink to answer.
Chink didn't speak.
Suddenly, without warning, Coffin Ed stepped forward from the shadows and chopped Chink across the back of his neck with the edge of his hand. It knocked Chink forward, stunning him, and Coffin Ed grabbed him beneath the arms to keep him from falling on his face.
Grave Digger slid quickly from the desk and handcuffed Chink's ankles, drawing the bracelets tight just above the ankle bones. Then Coffin Ed handcuffed Chink's hands behind his back.
