'Yassuh, boss, where do you want me to begin?' Sugar asked.
'You look like a bright boy,' Grave Digger said. 'Just lead up to it slowly, so we can get the picture. Everything is needed now.'
Sugar didn't need any further prompting. Sweat flowed from the creases of his face, and the smell of animal fear emanated from his skin. He talked fast and eagerly.
'It began like this, boss-me and Alberta has been shacking up together for about eight months. Most times when she came home from work at about eight o'clock, I'd be there waiting for her. Weekdays she'd start drinking as soon as she got in-she liked to drink, but she weren't no lush. She'd just sip enough to knock herself out by ten o'clock and I'd help her get to bed. But shucks, I'd just be getting wide awake myself, so I'd go down to the corner and play tonk, and, if I didn't get home 'til three or four the next morning, it wouldn't make any difference to her because she'd be so dead asleep couldn't nothing wake her-'
'You slept all day,' Coffin Ed cut in with an outburst of contempt.
'You see, boss, I been sick,' Sugar explained.
'For eight months?'
'Let him get to the point,' Grave Digger said.
'Well, last Saturday night I got held up in a poker game and didn't get home until after ten o'clock. I figured she was going to be mad all right, because that's when we generally got together, but I didn't expect her to grab me by the collar and throw me out the house. That's what first made me suspicious, but all I suspected at first was she'd got herself another man. That worried me-'
'I'll bet it did,' Coffin Ed cut in again.
'Yassuh, it sure did,' Sugar admitted. 'So I went down to the bar and thought about it, and the more I thought about it the madder I got. So after a while I crept up on the roof and started to come down the fire escape to sort of spy through the bedroom window. I had made me a little peephole in the window shade in case I was ever going to need it, and I figgered I needed it then. But, when I started to come down from the roof, I saw some joker on the fire escape spying through her window, too. I started to holler at him, but I didn't want-'
'Wait a minute,' Grave Digger said. 'You saw a man looking through her bedroom window?'
'Trying to, anyway. But he saw me 'bout the same time I saw him, and he took off down-'
'Hold on. You saw this man?'
'Yassuh, but I didn't see him good. The fire escape is in the back, and he was gone on down to the bottom 'fore I could get close to him. I would have chased him, but-'
'Hold on, hold on!' Grave Digger grated. 'What did he look like?'
'Like I said, boss, I didn't see him plain but-'
'Big man or little?'
'Big. Rough-looking. Looked like he was young, the way he went down them rungs.'
'How was he dressed?'
'I didn't notice too plain, boss. He was wearing a big hat and a coat like everybody else. He was a colored man, that's for sure.'
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed looked at one another in silence.
'You think he's lying?' Coffin Ed suggested.
'Let him go on. If he's lying, we'll find out,' Grave Digger said.
'And, if you are, it's going to be rough,' Coffin Ed promised.
'I ain't lying, boss, I swear before God,' Sugar said, knuckling the sweat out of his eyes. 'And I couldn't be mistaken, 'cause I seen him again.'
'You saw him again?' Grave Digger echoed.
'Yassuh, when I come down the second time I found him in the same place, and he run down to the bottom again like he done before.'
'And you didn't see him any better?'
'I forgot to tell you. I seen he had on boots-cowboy boots.'
'Boots!' Grave Digger said.
'Yes suh, black and white cowboy boots. I wondered if he belonged to a gang, but I hadn't heard of no gang what wears cowboy boots.'
Grave Digger and Coffin Ed exchanged looks again.
'Sounds a little like him,' Coffin Ed said.
'Could be,' Grave Digger admitted. 'It begins to figure.' He turned back to Sugar. 'How did you figure it?'
Sugar looked puzzled. 'Him, you mean? I didn't think nothing of it. Just another prowler-that neighborhood is full of prowlers. She didn't have nothing for him to steal-' He broke off. His eyes bucked suddenly, and his jaw dropped open. 'Christ almighty, I bet he was after her money!' he exclaimed.
'You just now thought of that?' Grave Digger asked incredulously.
'Well, boss, I admit I've been thinking like a square,' Sugar said. 'But I hadn't figgered out when I first seen him that she had any money. I was looking for another joker in her bed. So I just figgered he was another prowler, and I didn't give him no more thought.'
'All right, all right-if you're lying, we're going to find it out,' Grave Digger said. 'So when did you figger out she had some money?'
'Well, when I seen she didn't have no other joker in her bed, I figgered she must have got hold of some money, because that's the only other reason she'd have for throwing me out the house-to keep me from finding out. Then when I seen her praying-'
'Praying!' Coffin Ed exclaimed.
'Yassuh, boss, she was kneeling beside the bed with her arms hanging down, praying. I figgered right away then she had hit the numbers for a big stake. It figgered. She hadn't had nothing before worth praying about.'
'All right, it figured,' Grave Digger conceded. 'What did you do then.'
'I stayed there, watching all night so she wouldn't get away, but after she turned out the light she didn't get up again. When it got day I had to leave because the people in the windows across the way began watching me suspiciously. I went across the street and watched the door, and when she came out I followed her. When I seen her go into Sweet Prophet's house, I figgered she was giving him the money to keep, so I kissed it goodby, went to the bar and had some drinks. But after a while I figgered I ought to go back-I was getting tired and hungry by then. And that's when I found her getting ready for the baptism and the picnic. I fell in and went along with her because there wasn't nothing else to do. But when I knowed she hadn't given any money to Sweet Prophet was when she told about her dream-'
'Her dream?' Coffin Ed echoed.
'Yassuh, she jumped up right in the middle of the ceremony and said she had dreamed she was baking three pies and when she took them out the oven they exploded with hundred-dollar bills. I knew then she had played the money row in all three houses and had hit; and I knew she hadn't given the money to Sweet Prophet from the way he licked his chops and his eyes bugged out. I could see it was the first he had heard of it, and I knew she still had the money hidden somewhere. So when she was getting herself baptized, I dropped a little mickey into her bottle of drinking water.'
'You had the mickey ready beforehand,' Grave Digger said.
'I always carry a mickey,' Sugar confessed. 'Other folks has their knives and pistols, but I ain't no fighter. And I has to have some kind of way to protect myself. So I just carrys me a little Mickey Finn. But I didn't figger she was going to take the bottle to Sweet Prophet to get it blessed and then start drinking it right away. I figgered she'd drink it while we were having our picnic lunch, and then the others sisters would take her and lay her out somewhere and it would give me a chance to search the house. I didn't have no idea it would cause such a big rumpus. When the people started running and screaming, thinking she'd dropped dead, I beat it before somebody connected me with her and had me held. I had a key to her place what she didn't know about, so I beat it around there and searched it.'
'Then you were there before Rufus and the Jew got there?' Grave Digger said.
'It was me that got them there,' Sugar confessed. 'When I didn't find nothing in the mattress, I remembered that Rufus and the Jew worked this furniture racket, and I made a deal with Rufus to sell the Jew the television set and have him take it away. The way I had it planned was that I'd go get Alberta and bring her home, and when she
