The one with the burnt face went to the far side of the crowd; the other remained on the near side.
Suddenly a loud voice shouted, 'Straighten up!' An equally loud voice echoed, 'Count off!' 'Detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson reporting for duty, General,' Pigmeat muttered.
'Jesus Christ!' Chink fumed. 'Now we've got those damned Wild West gunmen here to mess up everything.'
The sergeant said, winking at a white cop, 'Herd 'em into the store, Jones, you and Johnson. You fellows know how to handle 'em.'
Grave Digger gave him a hard look. 'They all look alike to us, Commissioner-white, blue, black and merino.' Then turning to the crowd he shouted, 'Inside, cousins.'
'They're going to hold prayer meeting,' Coffin Ed said. As the cops were closing the door on the corraled suspects, a big cream-colored, made-to-order Cadillac convertible with the top down stopped in the street, double- parking behind the row of patrol cars.
A small white-faced playing card was embossed on each door. In the corners of each card were an inlaid spade, heart, diamond and club. Each door was the size of a barn gate.
One of the doors swung open. A man got out. He was a big man but, standing, his six-foot height lost impressiveness in his slanting shoulders and long arms. He was wearing a powder blue suit of shantung silk; a pale yellow crepe silk shirt; a hand-painted tie depicting an orange sun rising on a dark blue morning; highly glossed light tan rubber-soled shoes; a miniature ten-of-hearts tie pin with opal hearts; three rings, including a heavy gold signet ring of his lodge, a yellow diamond set in a heavy gold band and a big mottled stone of a nameless variety, also set in a heavy gold band. His cuff links were heavy gold squares with diamond eyes. It wasn't from vanity he wore so much gold. He was a gambler, and it was his bank account in any emergency.
He was bareheaded. His kinky hair, powdered with gray, was cut as short as a three-days' growth of whiskers, with a part shaved on one side. In the dim light of morning his big-featured, knotty face showed it had taken its lumps. In the center of his forehead was a puffed, bluish scar with ridges pronging off like immobilized octopus tentacles. It gave him an expression of perpetual rage, which was accentuated by the smoldering fire that lay always just beneath the surface of his muddy brown eyes, ready to flame into a blaze.
He looked hard, strong, tough and unafraid.
'Johnny Perry!'
The name came involuntarily to the lips of everyone who lived in Harlem. 'He's the greatest,' they said.
Dulcy waved to him from inside the store.
He walked toward the cops who were congregated about the door. His step was springy, and he walked on the balls of his feet like a prize fighter. A wave of nervous motion stirred among the cops.
'What's the rumble?' he asked the sergeant.
For an instant no one spoke.
Then the sergeant said, nodding toward the bread basket on the sidewalk, 'Man's been killed,' as though the words had been forced from him by the quick hot flame that began to flicker in Johnny's eyes.
Johnny turned his head to look, then walked over and stared down at Val's body. He stood as though frozen for almost a minute. When he walked back his dark face had taken on a deep purple tint, and the tentacles of the scar on his forehead seemed to have come alive. His eyes had the hot steamy glow of water-logged wood beginning to burn.
But his voice had the same slow, deep, gambler's pitch that never changed.
'Do you know who stuck him?'
The sergeant gave him back look for look. 'Not yet. Do you?'
Johnny put his left hand forward, fingers stiff and splayed, then drew it in and stuck it into his coat pocket, the same as his other hand. He did not reply.
Dulcy had wormed between the displays close enough to the plate-glass to rap on it.
Johnny threw her a look, then said to the sergeant, 'You got my old lady in there. Let her out.'
'She's a suspect,' the sergeant said tonelessly.
'It's her brother,' Johnny said.
'You can see her at the station. The wagons will be here soon,' the sergeant replied indifferently.
The flames leaped up in Johnny's muddy eyes.
'Let her out,' Grave Digger said. 'He'll bring her in.'
'Who in the God-damned hell's going to bring him in?' the sergeant raved.
'We'll bring him in,' Grave Digger said. 'Me and Ed.' The first of the wagons turned the corner into Seventh Avenue. The sergeant opened the door and said, 'All right, let's start getting them out.'
Dulcy was the third in line. She had to wait until the cops shook down the two men in front of her. One of the cops asked her to hand over her pocketbook, but she ran past him and flew into Johnny's arms.
'Oh Johnny,' she sobbed, staining the front of his powder blue silk suit with lipstick, mascara and tears as she buried her face in his chest.
He embraced her with a tenderness that seemed startling in a man of his appearance.
'Don't cry, baby,' he said in his changeless voice, 'I'll get the mother-raper.'
'You'd better get into the wagon,' a white patrol cop said, approaching Dulcy. Grave Digger gestured him back.
Johnny escorted Dulcy toward his parked Cadillac convertible as though she were an invalid.
When Alamena came out, she stepped from line, walked quickly to the Cadillac and got in beside Dulcy.
No one said anything to her.
Johnny started the motor, but was held up for a moment by a car from the coroner's office that had stopped in front of him. The assistant coroner got out with his black bag and walked toward the body. Two cops came from the apartment entrance with Mamie Pullen and Reverend Short.
'Over here,' Alamena called.
'Thank God,' Mamie said. She made her way slowly between the parked cars and climbed into the back seat.
'There's room for you too, Reverend Short,' Alamena called.
'I'll not ride with a murderer,' he replied in his croaking voice, and went tottering toward the second of the wagons that had just pulled up.
The eyes of every cop went quickly from his face toward the occupants of the cream-colored Cadillac.
'Take your curse off me!' Dulcy screamed, becoming hysterical again.
'Shut up!' Alamena said harshly.
Johnny shifted into drive without looking around, and the big shiny car moved slowly off. The small black battered sedan bearing Coffin Ed and Grave Digger followed close behind.
6
The preliminary questioning was made by another sergeant, Detective Sergeant Brody from dowtown Homicide, with the precinct detectives, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, assisting.
The questioning was conducted in a soundproof room without windows on the first floor. This room was known to the Harlem underworld as the 'Pigeon Nest.' It was said that no matter how tough an egg was, if they kept him in there long enough he would hatch out a pigeon.
The room was lit by the hot bright glare of a three-hundred-watt spotlight focused on a low wooden stool bolted to the boards in the center of the bare wooden floor. The seat of the stool was shiny from the squirming of countless suspects who had sat on it.
Sergeant Brody sat with his elbows propped atop a big battered flat-topped desk that stood along the inner wall beside the door. The desk was beyond the edge of shadow that screened the interrogator from the suspects sizzling in the glaring light.
At one end of the desk, a police reporter sat in a straight-backed chair with his notebook on the desk in front of him.
Coffin Ed made a tall indistinct shadow in the corner behind.
