like I said before,' Sweet Prophet declared. 'She was a born kitchen mechanic.'
'Okay, be that as it may,' Grave Digger said. 'What prompted her to get religion all of a sudden?'
'Who knows?' Sweet Prophet said, gesturing with his elongated hands. 'Women of that type get religion for ten thousand reasons-some have just murdered their husbands, others have had nightmares.'
'She must have given some reason,' Grave Digger persisted.
'If she did, I didn't listen,' Sweet Prophet said. 'Women always lie about the reason they get religion. If I harkened to them, I couldn't last.'
'Okay, let's skip it,' Grave Digger said. 'Just tell me what she might have owned that someone would go to the trouble of stealing.'
Sweet Prophet's eyebrows went up an inch, and his eyeballs extended precariously. 'You mean to say someone stole something from her?' he asked in an incredulous voice. 'Gentlemen, that would be the miracle.'
'Her furniture was stolen while she was unconscious, and two people have been killed about it,' Grave Digger informed him.
His eyeballs came out so far they seemed on the verge of rolling down his cheeks. 'She killed them,' he stated more than asked.
'We don't think so,' Grave Digger said.
'Look, brothers,' Sweet Prophet began, wiping his face with the big yellow handkerchief. 'We are more or less in the same business, collaring the sinners. Let us level with each other. Nobody has been killed about that sister's furniture, unless she killed them. I looked on that sister's face and listened to her confession. She has never owned anything in her life that the white folks didn't give her. And they haven't given that sister anything that anybody else would want. She was that kind of woman-is, rather.'
'Would you be breaking any kind of vows or such if you told us what sins she confessed to?' Grave Digger asked.
'Nothing worth repeating,' Sweet Prophet assured him. 'She was just a poor woman living in adultery and working like a dog to pay for it-like any other thousands of poor simpleminded colored women in Harlem. Nothing to make the Lord skin back His ears.'
'She had something,' Coffin Ed stated.
Sweet Prophet looked at him from his popping eyes. 'The only thing that sister had was faith,' he said. 'And between you and me, gentlemen, her faith were not worth stealing.'
'Well, let's try to get some facts,' Grave Digger said. 'What happened to her after she seemed to drop dead?'
'I never found out,' Sweet Prophet confessed. 'Until you told me better, I thought the sister at rest with her Maker. Brother Clay's hearse came and took her away, and afterwards the downtown policemen asked me some questions. But one of them got a phone call, and they dropped it without any explanations.'
'You didn't make any effort to find out what had happened to her?' Grave Digger asked.
'No, with death the work of Sweet Prophet ends and the Lord takes charge,' Sweet Prophet said. 'You might ask undertaker Clay.'
'We will,' Grave Digger said.
He and Coffin Ed stood up.
'Thank you for you cooperation, Prophet,' he added. 'We hope we haven't disturbed you too much.'
'I am always glad to be of service to our colored police,' Sweet Prophet declared. 'As long as you don't come to arrest me.'
'I may as well tell you that Alberta Wright wants to see you, if you haven't already got the message,' Coffin Ed said before leaving.
'Don't they all,' Sweet Prophet said.
Mr. H. Exodus Clay had just come down from his living quarters on the top floor of the old brownstone mansion on 134th Street, where he had his undertaking parlor. He looked more than ever like a body dressed for burial, with his parchment-colored skin still half dead from sleep and his long white dried-out kinky hair freshly combed and brushed.
He received them in his office, the front room that had the light in the window that never went out.
They went straight to the point.
'We're trying to find out what happened to the woman one of your drivers picked up for dead at Sweet Prophet's baptism yesterday,' Grave Digger said.
Mr. Clay adjusted his pince-nez. 'You mean the body that came to life,' he said in his dry, impersonal voice. 'Just a minute-I will send for the driver.'
'It was like this, Mr. Clay,' the young man who drove the hearse explained. 'They-all sent me to the morgue to get the death certificate. But when I got there the man said I had to bring the body inside so he could look at it before he could give me the certificate, but I couldn't handle it alone and he helped me. We carried it into a big white room and laid it on a long white table, then the man began messing around with a lot of instruments and things and kept on talking about what a fine specimen it was. I asked him if it was dead, and he asked me where I got it from. I told him, and he said it would take him about an hour to finish his examination and for me to go outside and come back in an hour. Then I asked him if it was going to take a whole hour just to find out if it was dead, and he said it wasn't dead but it would take him that much time to find out what was wrong with it. So I figured there wasn't any need of me waiting a whole hour for it if it wasn't dead. So I just came on back here and put the hearse away and wiped it good and clean.'
Mr. Clay turned to the detectives and asked, without batting an eye, 'Does that answer your question?'
Grave Digger put on his hat, and Coffin Ed did likewise.
'It does indeed,' he said.
They went next to the morgue.
The morgue attendant who was on duty Sundays was off on Mondays, and the one on duty didn't know anything about the case.
'You think we ought to rouse him at his house?' Coffin Ed asked.
Grave Digger looked at his watch. 'Not this morning. It's already nine o'clock, and my wife has probably begun to worry.'
'Mine, too,' Coffin Ed said. 'So let's call it a day.'
'Right,' Grave Digger said. 'As long as we keep the woman locked up, nothing is going to happen.'
12
The three steep flights of stairs led to a long dimly lit hall with eight flanking doors. It was the fourth floor, and that was as high as the stairway went.
Sugar ran to the grimy front window and looked down on the street. Dummy was nowhere in sight. The detectives' car had disappeared, too. He walked slowly back to the other end and joined the girl, who was huddling in the corner. There was something screwy about this business, he was thinking. It was moving too fast. Too much was happening for Alberta's money to have been a secret.
'He lives in there,' the girl whispered, pointing toward a warped door showing yellow light about the edges.
Sugar smelt the sharp scent of marijuana coming through the cracks.
'Who?'
'The man I was talking about with all the money.'
The door had been fitted with a staple and hasp; it had shrunk so much that the cheap Warder lock was useless.
'If anyone with a lot of money lives in there, he ought to have his head examined,' Sugar said absently.
'It ain't his,' she said. 'He stole it.'
'Shut up and let me think,' Sugar said.
