Big Smiley shuffled down the wet footing and showed Grave Digger most of his big yellow teeth.
'Is you drinking, Chief, or just sitting and thinking?'
'How's the wing?' Grave Digger asked.
'Favorable. It wasn't cut deep enough to do no real damage.'
The manager came down and said, 'If I'd thought there was going to be any trouble I'd have called the police right away.'
'What do you calculate as trouble in this joint?' Grave Digger asked.
The manager reddened. 'I meant about the white man getting killed.'
'Just what started all the trouble in here?'
'It wasn't exactly what you'd call trouble, Chief,' Big Smiley said. 'It was only a drunk attacked one of my white customers with his shiv and naturally I had to protect my customer.'
'What did he have against the white man?'
'Nothing, Chief. Not a single thing. He was sitting over there drinking one shot of rye after another and looking at the white man standing here tending to his own business. Then he gets red-eyed drunk and his evil tells him to get up and cut the man. That's all. And naturally I couldn't let him do that.'
'He must have had some reason. You're not trying to tell me he got up and attacked the man without any reason whatever.'
'Naw suh, Chief, I'll bet my life he ain't had no reason at all to wanta cut the man. You know how our folks is, Chief; he was just one of those evil niggers that when they get drunk they start hating white folks and get to remembering all the bad things white folks ever done to them. That's all. More than likely he was mad at some white man that done something bad to him twenty years ago down South and he just wanted to take it out on this white man in here. It's like I told that white detective who was in here, this white man was standing here at the bar by hisseif and that nigger just figgered with all those colored folk in here he could cut him and get away with it.'
'Maybe. What's his name?'
'I ain't ever seen that nigger before tonight, Chief; I don't know what is his name.'
A customer called from up the bar, 'Hey, boss, how about a little service up here?'
'If you want me, Jones, just holler,' the manager said, moving off to serve the customer.
'Yeah,' Grave Digger said, then asked Big Smiley, 'Who was the woman?'
'There she is,' Big Smiley said, nodding toward a booth.
Grave Digger turned his head and scanned her.
The black lady in the pink jersey dress and red silk stockings was back in her original seat in a booth surrounded by three workers.
'It wasn't on account of her,' Big Smiley added.
Grave Digger slid from his stool, went over to her booth and flashed his badge. 'I want to talk to you.'
She looked at the gold badge and complained, 'Why don't you folks leave me alone? I done already told a white cop everything I know about that shooting, which ain't nothing.'
'Come on, I'll buy you a drink,' Grave Digger said.
'Well, in that case…' she said and went with him to the bar.
At Grave Digger's order Big Smiley grudgingly poured her a shot of gin and Grave Digger said, 'Fill it up.'
Big Smiley filled the glass and stayed there to listen.
'How well did you know the white man?' Grave Digger asked the lady.
'I didn't know him at all. I'd just seen him around here once or twice.'
'Doing what-'
'Just chasing.'
'Alone?'
'Yeah.'
'Did you see him pick up anyone?'
'Naw, he was one of those particular kind. He never saw nothing he liked.'
'Who was the colored man who tried to cut him?'
'How the hell should I know?'
'He wasn't a relative of yours?'
'A relation of mine. I should hope not.'
'Just exactly what did he say to the white man when he started to attack him?'
'I don't remember exactly; he just said something 'bout him messing about with his gal.'
'That's the same thing the other man, Sonny Pickens, accused him of.'
'I don't know nothing about that.'
He thanked her and wrote down her name and address.
She went back to her seat.
He returned back to Big Smiley. 'What did Pickens and the man argue about?'
'They ain't had no argument, Chief. Not in here. It wasn't on account of nothing that happened in here that he was shot.'
'It was on account of something,' Grave Digger said. 'Robbery doesn't figure, and people in Harlem don't kill for revenge.'
'Naw suh, leastwise they don't shoot.'
'More than likely they'll throw acid or hot lye,' Grave Digger said.
'Naw, suh, not on no white gennelman.'
'So what else is there left but a woman,' Grave Digger said.
'Naw suh,' Big Smiley contradicted flatly. 'You know better'n that, Chief. A colored woman don't consider diddling with a white man as being unfaithful. They don't consider it no more than just working in service, only they is getting better paid and the work is less straining. 'Sides which, the hours is shorter. And they old men don't neither. Both she and her old man figger it's like finding money in the street. And I don't mean no cruisers neither; I means church people and Christians and all the rest.'
'How old are you, Smiley?' Grave Digger asked.
'I be forty-nine come December seventh.'
'You're talking about old times, son. These young colored men don't go in for that slavery-time deal anymore.'
'Shucks, Chief, you just kidding. This is old Smiley. I got dirt on these women in Harlem ain't never been plowed. Shucks, you and me both can put our finger on high society colored ladies here who got their whole rep just by going with some big important white man. And their old men is cashing in on it, too; makes them important, too, to have their old ladies going with some big-shot gray. Shucks, even a hard-working nigger wouldn't shoot a white man if he come home and found him in bed with his old lady with his pants down. He might whup his old lady just to show her who was boss, after he done took the money 'way from her, but he wouldn't sure 'nough hurt her like he'd do if he caught her screwing some other nigger.'
'I wouldn't bet on it,' Grave Digger said.
'Have it your own way, Chief, but I still think you're barking up the wrong tree. Lissen, the only way I figger a colored man in Harlem gonna kill a white man is in a fight. He'll draw his shiv if he getting his ass whupped and maybe stab him to death. But I'll bet my life ain't no nigger up here gonna shoot down no white man in cold blood — no important white gennelman like him.'
'Would the killer have to know he was important?'
'He'd know it,' Big Smiley said positively.
'You knew him?' Grave Digger said.
'Naw suh, not to say knew him. He come in here two, three times before but I didn't know his name.'
'You expect me to believe he came in here two or three times and you didn't find out who he was?'
'I didn't mean exactly I didn't know his name,' Big Smiley hemmed. 'But I'se telling you, Chief, ain't no leads 'round here, that's for sure.'
'You're going to have to tell me more than that, son,' Grave Digger said in a flat, toneless voice.
Big Smiley looked at him; then suddenly he leaned across the bar and said in a low voice, 'Try at Bucky's,
