The Big Gold Dream

14

"What time is it?" the bus driver asked the roving checker at the bus stop at 111th Street.

The checker consulted his watch. "Seventeen minutes and thirteen seconds past seven o'clock," he said.

The driver synchronized his watch and put the bus in gear.

Sugar had been standing with the people waiting for the bus, but he hadn't got on board. He had been watching to see Dummy leave the building up the street. He had seen him come out, place the keys back on the sidewalk and walk off, but a moment later a woman jostled him, and, when he got the street in focus again, Dummy had vanished. However, he was satisfied that Dummy had gone about his business.

He hastened back toward the house, but a woman tenant on her way to work had beaten him to the keys. She was ringing the super's bell when he arrived.

Dummy watched him from the doorway up the street where he had ducked. He grinned to himself. He figured that Sugar had doubled back to search the flat again; perhaps Sugar had found a likely hiding place and had saved it for a private search. But Dummy was satisfied that the money wasn't there.

He waited until Sugar re-entered the building. Then he kept on his way, this time without hesitating or looking back.

Sugar made as if to pass the woman, then stopped and looked inquiringly at the keys.

"You want to return the super's keys?" he asked.

"I found them in the street," she said defensively.

"He must have dropped them," Sugar said. "I'm just going downstairs. I'll take them to him."

The woman looked at him suspiciously, but she was late and didn't have time to argue. She handed him the ring grudgingly, saying, "I hope I'm doing right; I hope you ain't no burglar." He was about to protest, but she salved her conscience by adding, "Anyway, I have rung his bell."

Without replying, Sugar hastened through the basement doorway and descended the stairs. He hadn't seen the janitor return, but it was a risky business.

He found the janitor's wife standing in the open door to their quarters, looking up and down the corridor. She was what he had expected, a loose, ripe, high-yellow woman with cowlike eyes and a petulant expression. Smooth fat arms and mountains of cream-colored flesh showed above the decollete blue rayon nightgown, and black hair hung in long greasy curls about her shoulders.

When she saw it was a man she became coy, more from habit than desire, and asked in a simpering voice, "Did you ring my bell?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said politely, letting his gaze rove approvingly over her padded figure. "I found these keys on the sidewalk out front."

Her expression changed instantly to one of suspicion. "Where's he at?"

"The last I saw of him he was chasing some young girl," Sugar said.

The next instant her face darkened with an evil look. "I'll fix him," she threatened. "Around here chippy-chasing at this hour of the morning."

"Can I come in?" Sugar asked. "I want to ask you some questions."

"Come right on," she said, merely turning her body to let him pass.

She took up most of the doorway, and in passing he rubbed against her body. It was a pleasure.

At seven-forty-four, Alberta was taken by a matron from the cell that she occupied with two other colored women into the small reception room, where lawyers interviewed their clients and detectives re-examined suspects.

She still wore the maid's uniform, but now it was gray all over, and streaked with black. She had removed the bathing cap, and her straightened hair stuck out in all directions. She looked bone-tired, and her expression was sullen.

The shyster waiting for her knew his way around. He had a degree in law from a colored university in Washington, D.C., and a license to practice in New York State. Most of his business was making bail for prostitutes and racketeers and pleading them guilty if the fine was right. His youthful, grinning black face inspired confidence in most people, but it had the opposite effect on Alberta.

"Slick sent me," he said.

"Who is you?" she asked.

"I'm his lawyer," he said.

"What he want?" she asked.

"He said if you will tell him where it is and go halvers, he will get you out when he gets it," he said.

"I wouldn't be surprised but what he ain't already got it himself," she said.

"What would he want to make a deal for if he already had it?" he asked.

"Because if he's got it, he's got two murder charges to go along with it," she said.

"That's just the point," he said. "He ain't got it, and you got the two murder charges instead."

"How can he get me out?" she asked.

"He's got somebody tapped for the killings," he said.

"What killing?" she asked.

"Both of them," he said.

"Then he knows who done them," she said.

"I didn't say that," he denied. "I said he can give somebody to the police to satisfy them so they will let you go."

"I don't want him to do that if the person he's going to accuse ain't guilty," she said.

"All right then, let's say the person is guilty. Does that satisfy you?" he asked.

"Is it somebody I know?" she asked.

He hesitated. "He don't know if it's anybody you know or not. He don't know who you know. It's not your man, if that's what you want to know," he said.

"All right-I'll give him half when I get out if he tells the police who did it," she bargained slyly.

"You've got to tell him where it is first," he said.

"You've got to give me time to think," she said, stalling.

He looked at his watch. "Listen, woman, you ain't got no time to think," he said. "I got to be out of here by eight o'clock, and I'm not coming back, and your case is coming up at ten o'clock."

"You go back and tell Slick he had better watch himself," she said. "God is going to strike him dead like He done those other two."

He jumped up in exasperation. "You are a religious fanatic, woman," he charged. "I don't want to talk to you any more. You're crazy."

"He's the crazy one," she said, "if he thinks I'm going to split half with him because I'm here in jail for something I ain't never done."

He snatched up his cream-colored straw hat with the fancy red-and-blue polka dot band and left.

The matron took her back to her cell.

At eight-three, Sugar reappeared in front of the house by way of the main entrance just as the janitor was turning into the alleyway beside the house. They saw each other at the same instant. Sugar noticed that the janitor was again decently clad in his overalls. Then he took off, running.

The janitor turned and gave chase.

After they had run about half a block, the janitor called, "Hey, doc! Hey, doc!" They ran another half block and the janitor shouted again, "It worked, doc! It worked!"

Sugar couldn't figure that out. If the janitor hadn't discovered he had been tricked, then why had he chased the girl? That took some deep figuring. But he didn't have the time for it. And what was more, he wasn't taking any chances on stopping and demanding an explanation. He turned the corner into 112th Street running on the edges of his soles and ducked into the first tenement doorway. He hid on the stairs, looking around the banister, and saw the janitor run past. But he didn't leave until he saw the janitor come walking back.

Then he slipped from the building and kept on over to Eighth Avenue, went up to 117th Street, turned back toward Manhattan Avenue and entered a building in the middle of the block. It was a walk-up in fairly good repair; the tiled floors were clean, and the walls were painted.

He walked up to the third-floor front and pushed a buzzer beside a bright red lacquered door. A respectable-looking buxom brown-skinned woman wearing gold-rimmed glasses opened the door onto a chain and asked through the crack, "Who you want to see?"

"Mabel," he said.

The woman smoothed her gray-streaked hair and looked at him appraisingly.

"She ain't in," she decided to say.

"When will she be in?" he asked.

"It's hard to tell," she said. "Who shall I tell her called?"

"She don't know me," he said. "Just tell her I've come from Rufus and I'll be back."

"You say you come from Rufus!" she echoed. Her eyes popped behind the glittering spectacles. "And you say you is coming back. Naw, you ain't, neither!" she concluded, and slammed the door in his face.

"I shouldn't have told her that," he admitted to himself. "She must know that Rufus is dead."

It was eight-twenty-nine.

"Well, well," Sergeant Ratigan from Homicide said. "You are the woman who started all this business. And it looks from here as if you finished it off, too."

Alberta remained silent and sullen.

He was questioning her in the same room where the shyster had propositioned her less than an hour previously.

"Tell me," he said. "Just between us friends, why were you playing dead?"

"I wasn't playing dead," she denied stolidly.

He crossed his legs and strapped his hands about one of his bony knees. "What were you doing then?" he asked. "Playing a joke?"

"I don't know what I was doing," she said.

"Just so," he said, and took time out to reread the long report turned in by Grave Digger and Coffin Ed.

"Everyone is convinced you are not guilty, it seems," he said on finishing. He showed her the front rows of his tobaccostained teeth in what he thought was a sympathetic grin, inviting confidence. "Now! All you have to do is tell me who did it and you can go."

"Go home?" she asked.

"Right," he said.

"I don't know who did it, and that's the God's truth," she said.

He sighed and took a cheap cigar from his pocket. He cut the cellophane band with a small penknife, snipped off the end of the cigar and punctured it with the point of the knife. He lit it with a paper match, spinning it between thumb and forefinger until it was burning evenly.

"All right, Alberta, you can't get away with playing stupid," he said. "Now I want you to tell me what happened from the time you drank the water at the baptism until you were arrested with the bloodstained knife."

"The last thing I remember was feeling the Spirit creeping all through me after I had drunk the water Sweet Prophet blessed and then seeing visions-"

"What kind of visions?" he interrupted with quickened interest.

"Visions of heaven," she said.

His interest faded.

"The air looked like it was full of stars and bubbles, and then it seemed like I fell down and all around me was the faces of angels," she went on.

"What kind of angels?"

"Colored angels. They looked just like ordinary people, but I knew they were angels. I thought I was dying and going straight to heaven. I was that happy!" she stated.

"The prophet said you had a religious trance," he informed her. "Do you believe that?"

"He's a prophet-he ought to know," she said. Then suddenly she was struck by the realization of what he had said. "Oh, you mean a religious trance! " The weariness and sullenness were wiped from her face, and her smooth, dark, immature features lit with ecstasy. "A religious trance," she echoed wonderingly. "Me, Alberta Peavine Wright. I had myself a religious trance. What do you know about that!"

"All I know about it is what I'm told," he said drily, and then suddenly asked, "What did the water taste like?"

"Taste like?" she repeated. "It tasted just like holy water."

"What does holy water taste like? I have never tasted any."

"It tastes just like water what has been made holy," she said. "What do you want me to say?"

"I just want you to say what is true."

"Well, that is true."

"That you drank the water and went into a religious trance?"

"Yassuh." Not the slightest hint of a doubt showed in her face. "Ain't I the lucky one," she exulted. "I'm going to write home and tell Ma so she can tell Reverend Tree, who is always bellyaching about us living in sin up here in Harlem."

"All right, come down to Earth and let the Lord rest for a moment," he said peevishly. "You were taken to the morgue by a mistake, and you were still there when you regained consciousness. You know all about that?"

"Yassuh."

"You were released from the morgue at four-twenty-six o'clock-so the record states. What did you do?"

"I went home," she said.

"Just that?" he persisted.

"Well, I didn't know then that I had had a religious trance," she elaborated. "The man in the morgue said I had fainted probably from a sunstroke or else being too excited. So I just caught a bus and went home. When I found my furniture had been stolen, I went downstairs and asked Miz Teabone had she seen anybody suspicious about the house. She lives on the first floor and has a window on the street, and she sees nearmost everything that happens around there-"

"I don't doubt it," he muttered.

"She told me what she had seen, and I knew it was some of Rufus's doings," she continued.

He pounced on her. "How did you know it was Rufus?"

"How did I know it were him?" she repeated. "For one thing she described him, and I knew right away it was him because wouldn't anybody else be mean enough to me to steal my furniture. He's always stealing something from me," she added.

"So you started searching for Rufus. With a knife," he said.

"Nawsuh, that ain't so," she said. "I first started looking for Sugar Stonewall. I hadn't seen him since just before it happened and-"

"Just before what happened?" he cut in.

"My religious trance," she replied doggedly. "I didn't know where he had gone or what had happened to him, and I needed him to help me look for Rufus, so I started looking for him first."

He looked at the report again and conjectured, "You must have gotten home at about five o'clock."

"Nawsuh, not that soon. It were Sunday and the buses were slow, and it was nearer six o'clock when I got home. And then, after I found my furniture gone, it took me some time to get myself together. I had just got religion, and I didn't want to go and lose it the first thing. Then it must have taken me an hour to talk to Miz Teabone-she asked that many questions. So it must have been seven-thirty or eight o'clock when I started looking for Sugar."

"And it was around ten-thirty when you wound up at Cassie's. You spent three hours looking for Sugar."

"Yassuh. It took every bit of that long. I went everywhere I thought he might be at."

"Where would all those places be?"

"Oh, around and about," she said. "If you don't know Harlem, it wouldn't be no use of telling you."

"This is quite different from what you told before," he pointed out.

"Yassuh, I'm telling the truth now," she said.

"All right, when did you leave Cassie's?" he asked.

"I don't know exactly. I left there right after Dummy left. I happened to remember that Rufus was on the H."

"Heroin?"

"Yassuh. And I asked Cassie where people bought that stuff. She told me there was a place in a house on 110th Street called Esther's, and I went there and sat on a bench in the park across the street where I could watch the door. I figured that after he had got the money for my furniture he would be going there sooner or later to buy some dope. And after that it were just like I said-I saw the patrol car pass and turn into Manhattan Avenue, and I had a premonition."

"You needn't go into that again," he said. "It is all written down here."

"It is?" she asked in surprise.

"Yes, everything you said has been taken down," he told her. "Now, tell me, just exactly what were these people looking for?" he asked. "Had you come by some money recently?"

"Nawsuh," she denied stolidly.

"Jewelry?"

"Nawsuh."

"You mean to sit there and tell me that these two smart people went to all that trouble and got themselves killed just to get hold of your worn out furniture?"

"It weren't worn out," she denied.

"Worn out or not," he snapped. "Do you want me to believe that was all they were after?"

"It looks like it," she replied evasively.

"It doesn't look like it to me," he said.

"Unless they had some other reasons I didn't know nothing about," she added.

"Listen, Alberta, if you play square with me, I will play square with you," he promised.

"Yassuh," she said noncommittally.

"What did you have?"

"I done told you," she said. "I didn't have nothing but my furniture."

"All right," he said wearily. "That's your story."

She didn't say anything.

"Who were Rufus's friends?" he asked, trying another tactic.

"I didn't know them," she said.

"Who was his girl friend? You would know that. He was your husband. You would certainly be curious enough to know who his girl friend was."

"Nawsuh. I didn't care nothing about him nor his girl friend nor about anything he did-long as he left me alone," she said.

"He stole your savings and ran away with a woman and you don't know who she is," he said incredulously.

"Nawsuh, I never knew," she said.

"And you didn't do anything about it," he said sarcastically.

"Oh, I would have cut his throat at the time, if I could have found him," she confessed. "But he left town so I couldn't find him, and I got over it. That was what first turned me to Jesus."

"That I believe," he said. "Now this is the last time I am going to ask you," he went on. "What did you have that was so valuable that two smart men got killed for stealing it?"

"They must have got killed for something else," she said doggedly.

He wiped his face with the palm of his hand. "Be reasonable, Alberta," he pleaded with her. "We have got to establish the motive."

"I done told you all I know," she maintained stubbornly.

"Well, since you won't tell me, you are going to have to tell the Grand Jury," he said, getting to his feet.