for playing around with the deck in a five-and-ten-cent blackjack game. Now you’re both going great. Times are good. Tricks are walking. The streets are full of lains. Squares everywhere. The money’s rolling in. You’re paying off the man. You’re sitting pretty. But you’re making one mistake.”
“You said that before. What mistake?”
Coffin Ed let the handle to the dog chain drop to the floor. “I ain’t playing,” he said.
Red Johnny folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. His gaze dropped slightly to the impression of the gun stick in Coffin Ed’s belt.
“Course you ain’t rightly got no authority to come in here and ast me no questions ’bout nobody,” he began, and from across the table Red Marie warned, “Don’t push him, Johnny.”
“I ain’t pushing him and I ain’t going to let him push me neither. I done already told him I don’t know no Pinky and he can-”
He never got to say what Coffin Ed could do. One whole side of Coffin Ed’s face convulsed in a muscular spasm as his right hand flashed toward his hip. Red Johnny moved out of animal reflex; his head jerked about, eyes following the movement of Coffin Ed’s hand; his left foot braced against the floor; his left arm flew up instinctively to ward off the blow. He didn’t see the motion of Coffin Ed’s left hand at all as it came from the front with Grave Digger’s pistol and smashed the barrel in a backhanded swing straight across his loose-lipped mouth.
The whole front line of Red Johnny’s teeth caved into his mouth, two of the bottom teeth flew out sidewise like corn popping, and Red Johnny spun over backward in the tubular chair. The back of his head hit the linoleum floor with a dull thud while at the same instant his feet flew upward and kicked the bottom of the enamel table. The whiskey bottle rose six inches in the air and shattered the drinking glass when it came down.
The abrupt ear-shattering din panicked the dog. She leapt over Red Johnny’s face, making for the inner door. Red Johnny thought she was leaping for his throat and tried to scream. Nothing came out but a spray of blood and he choked on his teeth.
Coffin Ed didn’t see it. He had swung back to take a left-handed bead on Red Marie’s stomach, and had frozen her in midstride, her right hand waving out in front, left hand floating out behind, her big sloppy fat body poised on the ball of her right foot like a rip-roarious burlesque of a ballerina executing a movement in
But no one thought it was funny. Her face was distorted with terror and Coffin Ed looked like a homicidal maniac.
The chair scraped as Red Johnny rolled over, clawing at his throat, making choking sounds.
The inside of Coffin Ed’s head was one great flaming-red blast of pain, through which sound trickled like curses. From somewhere came the thought that Red Johnny was trying to draw a gun. He wheeled back and kicked Red Johnny on the base of the jaw.
“Ugh!” Red Johnny grunted and fainted.
The dog pushed open the inner door and ran down the hall, her chain clanking behind her.
Red Marie grabbed at the table edge for support; her fingers slipped off and she fell to the floor with a crash.
From the front of the house came the sound of women screaming.
Coffin Ed stood in the center of the floor with the long-barreled nickel-plated pistol in one hand and the sap in the other, looking as dazed as though he had just emerged from a shock treatment for insanity.
On the television screen three shrunken lunatics, arms about one another’s shoulders, were dancing frantically back and forth, eyes rolling and lips flapping but no sound coming out.
Coffin Ed’s head suddenly cleared; only a shrill, almost imperceptible whistling in both ears still remained.
He pocketed the sap, stuck the pistol back into his belt, and reached down and rolled Red Johnny over onto his stomach.
“Lawd, don’t kill him,” Red Marie wailed. “I’ll talk.”
“Give me a tablespoon and shut up,” Coffin Ed grated. “He’ll do his own mother-raping talking.”
She crawled on all fours around the table and got a spoon from the drawer.
“Bring it here,” Coffin Ed said, kneeling beside Red Johnny and lifting his head.
Red Johnny had swallowed his tongue. Coffin Ed stuck the spoon down Red Johnny’s throat and kept levering until he got enough tongue out so he could reach in with his other hand and grab hold of the tip. The tongue was so slippery with blood it took half a dozen tries before he got hold of the tip and yanked it back into position. Blood gushed over his hands onto the floor and four broken teeth fell out.
“Here, you hold his tongue down until he gets his breath,” he ordered Red Marie and made her take the handle of the spoon.
He got up and went to the sink and washed the blood from his hands with cold water from the tap, dried them on a kitchen towel. There was a small bloodstain on the cuff of his blue shirt, but he didn’t bother it.
He came back and stood over the two people on the floor. “I’m going to ask some questions-”
“I’ll answer ’em,” Marie said.
“Let him answer them. When the answer is yes, nod your head. You hear me?”
Red Johnny’s head nodded carefully.
“When the answer is no, shake your head. And don’t make any more mistakes.”
Again Red Johnny nodded.
“It hurts him,” Red Marie said.
“I want it to hurt him,” Coffin Ed said. “You run a shooting gallery in here?”
Red Johnny nodded.
“It ain’t really no regular shooting gallery,” Red Marie said defensively. “It’s just we have some jags here sometimes, just folks with a chicken habit-”
“And pushers,” Coffin Ed cut in.
Red Johnny shook his head.
“If I catch you lying-”
“I hope God may kill me,” Red Marie blurted. “We don’t let no pushers come in here. It’s just parties we has and folks bring their own stuff. We gets a few skinpoppers but the H they has ain’t even strong enough to be habit- forming. Ain’t none of ’em real addicts. Most of ’em just blows weed. Just to get a kick. That ain’t our racket. We just sells poontang here.”
“Pinky is an addict.”
“Yes, but-”
“Let him answer.”
Red Johnny nodded.
Coffin Ed stepped back from the pool of blood that was reaching toward his feet.
“Lawd be my secret judge, he don’t come here for it,” Red Marie said. “He don’t come for the jags neither. He just buys pussy.”
“Has he got any particular choice?”
“He too ugly to score a home here; he’s like Jesus, he loves ’em all.”
“Was he here today?”
Red Johnny shook his head.
“Last night?”
Again Red Johnny shook his head.
“Know where he lives?”
The answer was the same.
“You’ve been doing so much talking; talk some now,” Coffin Ed said to Marie.
“We don’t know nothing ’bout Pinky, I swear ’fore God; he just come here to see the girls and I wish to heaven he had picked on somebody else for that; I don’t need his money and I can’t stand his looks.”
“Where does he hang out?”
“Hang out?” She started to parry, but one glance at Coffin Ed’s face loosened her tongue so that she began to stammer. “Kid Blackie’s gym is all I know. I heered him say once he’d just come from there. You know somewheres else, Johnny?”
Red Johnny shook his head.
