'Not me,' said Slick indifferently. 'I just want the money.'
'Because if you is,' Susie went on, 'you're going to have to use that rod 'stead of just waving it 'round.'
Slick nodded toward Dummy. 'Ask him what he's trying to do.'
Both of them turned and stared at Dummy. He sat forward on the edge of his seat, gripping his knees with his hand, and looked from one to the other.
'What you want?' Susie asked in a threatening tone of voice.
Dummy shrugged and made a V with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.
'What's that mean?' Susie asked.
Slick turned his stare back to Susie. 'You're not very bright, rockhead,' he said. 'He wants to cut himself a slice of our pie.'
'He's going to get more slices than he's looking for,' Susie threatened.
'You worry too much,' Slick said. 'I know what I'm doing.'
'Maybe you does, but I don't,' Susie said.
'Let him alone,' Slick said. 'We might need him.'
'Need a stool pigeon?' Susie echoed.
'Why not? If he's really a stool pigeon, it's a damn good thing we got hold of him in time, with what he already knows,' Slick pointed out.
'I just ask you, don't oversport yourself,' Susie said. 'I ain't nobody to play with.'
'We got that settled,' Slick said coldly. 'Now where's the money?'
'Listen, I told you what was what,' Susie flared.
Again Slick nodded in the direction of Dummy. 'He doesn't believe you.'
Susie turned and looked at Dummy again. 'You're going to be sorry you ever messed in my business,' he promised.
'I'm getting tired of this,' Slick said in his flat, deadly voice. 'I asked you where was the money.'
'I ain't got it,' Susie said, giving him a straight answer.
'Okay-I hope you're leveling,' Slick said.
'I'm leveling,' Susie said.
'Okay, you haven't got it. Let's start from there. What did you find in her joint?'
'Nothing. Her joker had already searched it again before I got there, and if anything was hid there he'd been sure to find it,' Susie said.
'How do you know he didn't?' Slick asked.
'He didn't,' Susie said. 'I found him sleep on the floor, and I looked around and saw he'd searched the joint; then I searched him. He didn't even wake up. You can bet if he'd had anything worth stealing, he'd been wide awake.'
'Let's get back to the mattress,' Slick said.
'I has told you, there wasn't nothing in that mattress,' Susie flared angrily.
'So you did,' Slick said. 'You also said you saw her put it there.'
Susie corrected him. 'I said I seen her sewing the mattress up. And I took it for granted that would be the only reason she'd be sewing up a mattress in the middle of the night.'
'Too bad you didn't get it then,' Slick said.
Neither of them noticed Dummy leaning forward with his eyes stretched.
'I couldn't have with her joker hanging 'round,' Susie said.
'And it wasn't in the mattress when you got it,' Slick said.
'It weren't there, and the side of the mattress had been cut open again,' Susie said. 'One of them beat me to it,' he added. 'But I don't know which one.'
Grunting sounds issuing from Dummy's mouth drew their attention. He had gotten out his scratch pad and was writing in it. He got up and showed Slick what he had written.
Slick looked up at Susie. 'He says neither of them got it.'
Susie's face swelled with sudden rage. 'If he keeps on trying to frame me, I'm going to stick him,' he threatened again.
Dummy moved away from the broken table so it wouldn't be in his way if he had to protect himself.
Slick reached out a foot and touched him on the leg. 'How do you know neither of them got it?' he asked.
Dummy wrote in his pad: i know alright.
'He just says he knows,' Slick told Susie.
'He knows more than what's good for him,' Susie said. maybe she still got it on her, Dummy wrote in his pad and showed it to Slick.
'Not in jail, she hasn't,' Slick said. 'And it was you who said she didn't know where it was.'
Dummy shrugged.
'Maybe she took it out the mattress and hid it somewhere else,' Susie said.
Dummy shook his head in the negative.
'I got a feeling that we ain't being very smart,' Slick said.
'You're supposed to be the brains,' Susie reminded him.
'That's right,' Slick acknowledged. 'And I'm going to start using them.'
20
Between eight and nine o'clock on weekday evenings Sweet Prophet received in private such of his followers who had problems or wished to make confession and new recruits who wished to arrange for baptisms at some future date.
He sat behind the hand-carved mahogany desk in his sumptuous receiving room on the third-floor front of his Temple of Wonderful Prayer, while his supplicants sat in the high-backed period chairs across from him.
Attired in a Geneva gown of canary-yellow silk and a sequined headpiece similar to that seen on the statues of Krishna, he looked like the rising sun. The diamonds in the rings on all his fingers sparkled whenever he gestured, and his long twisted fingernails of rainbow hue squirmed as though alive.
Elder Jones stood at his right side, wearing a fresh white uniform.
His private secretary-a quiet, middle-aged woman of culture-sedately dressed in a freshly laundered black linen frock, stood at his left.
The assistant secretary, who had been entrusted with the weekend income to take to the bank, was still downtown in the Fingerprint Bureau of the Central Police Department examining photos of colored confidence men, trying to pick out the one who had swindled her that morning. She had looked at the mugs of criminals until her head swam, but still she stayed on, afraid to report to the Prophet that his money was lost.
Outside, seen through the open front windows, the day was dying. The street lights were on, and the lights in the show windows of stores and in the hot-box apartments; and the sign lights and automobile lights lit up the many-colored faces of the people crowded on the burning hot sidewalks.
Sweet Prophet's hour of consolation was almost over. He was glad of it; other folks' problems had never seemed so distasteful. Strain showed in his face; his bulging eyes looked worried and harassed. It had been a long day for him; he hadn't been able to sleep again after the detectives' predawn visit.
'Who else is there?' he asked.
'Sister Alberta Wright,' Elder Jones replied.
Sweet Prophet looked startled. He hesitated. Finally he sighed and said, 'Send the sister in.'
Alberta paused just inside the door and stared at Sweet Prophet. She looked downcast and bedraggled in the now-filthy garments in which she had been baptized; but her eyes were wide and alight with hope. Sitting there in his brilliant garb, Sweet Prophet appeared to her as a great shining light that had come into this dark moment of her life.
She fished the last ten dollars from her brassiere, went forward and laid it on the desk in front of him. Wearily, he found a crumb of bread for her in the pocket of his gown and pocketed the money. She put the crumb in
