The crazy kill

8

Alamena was waiting for them in the back seat of the car. Johnny and Dulcy got in the front, and the attorney got in the back beside Alamena.

A few doors down the street, Johnny pulled to the curb and turned about to bring both Dulcy and Alamena into vision.

"Listen, I want you women to keep buttoned up about this business. We're going to Fats's, and I don't want either one of you to start making waves. We don't know who did it."

"Chink did it," Dulcy said positively.

"You don't know that."

"The hell I don't."

He looked at her so long she began fidgeting.

"If you know it, then you know why."

She bit off a manicured nail and said with sullen defiance, "I don't know why."

"Did you see him do it?"

"No," she admitted.

"Then keep your goddam mouth shut and let the cops find out who did it," he said. "That's what they get paid for."

Dulcy began to cry. "You don't even care 'bout him being dead," she accused.

"I got my own ways about caring, and I don't want to see nobody framed if he didn't do it."

"You're always trying to play little Jesus Christ," Dulcy blubbered. "Why do all of us have to take the cop's guff if I know Chink did it?"

"Because anybody might have done it. He's been asking for it all his mother-raping life. Him and you both."

No one said anything. Johnny kept looking at Dulcy. She bit off another manicured nail and looked away. The attorney squirmed about in his seat as if ants were stinging him. Alamena stared at Johnny's profile without expression.

Johnny turned about in his seat, eased the car from the curb and drove slowly off.

Fats's Down Home Restaurant had a narrow front, with a curtained plate-glass window beneath a neon sign depicting the outline of a man shaped like a bull hippopotamus.

Before the big Cad had pulled to a full stop, it was surrounded by skinny black children, clad in scant cotton clothes, crying, "Four Ace Johnny Perry… Fishtail Johnny Perry…"

They touched the sides of the car and the gleaming fishtails with bright-eyed awe, as though it were an altar.

Dulcy jumped out quickly, pushing the children aside, and hastened across the narrow sidewalk, her high heels tapping angrily, toward the curtained glass door.

Alamena and the attorney followed at a more leisurely pace, but neither bothered to smile at the children.

Johnny took his time, turned off the ignition and pocketed the keys, watching the kids caress his car. His face was dead-pan, but his eyes were amused. He stepped out to the sidewalk, leaving the top down with the sun beating on the black leather upholstery, and was mobbed by the kids, who pulled at his clothes and stepped on his feet as he crossed the sidewalk toward the door.

He patted the Topsy-plaited heads of the skinny black girls, the burred heads of the skinny black boys. Just before entering he dug into his pockets and turned to scatter the contents of change over the street. He left the kids scrambling.

Inside it was cool, and so dark he had to take off his sun glasses on entering. The unforgettable scent of whisky, whores and perfume filled his nostrils, making him feel relaxed.

Wall light spilled soft stain over shelves of bottles and a small mahogany bar that was presided over by a giant black man in a white sport shirt. At sight of Johnny, he stood silently without moving, holding the glass he'd been polishing.

Three men and two women turned on their high bar stools to greet Johnny. Everything about them said gamblers and their women, whorehouse madams.

"Death always doubles off," one of the madams said sympathetically.

Johnny stood loosely, his big sloping-shouldered frame at perfect ease.

"We all gotta fall when we're on the turn," he said.

Their voices were low-pitched and without inflection, with the flat toneless quality of Johnny's. They talked in the casual manner of their trade.

"Too bad about Big Joe," one of the hustlers said. "I'm going to miss him."

"Big Joe was a real man," a madam said.

"You ain't just saying it," the others confirmed.

Johnny stuck his hand across the bar and shook the giant bartender's hand.

"What say, Pee Wee."

"Just standing here and moaning low, pops." He made a small gesture with the hand holding the half polished glass. "It's on the house."

"Bring us a pitcher of lemonade."

Johnny turned toward the arch leading toward the dining room at the rear.

"See you at the funeral, pops," a voice said behind him.

He didn't reply, because a man living up to his notices had stopped him with his belly. He resembled the balloon that had discovered stratosphere, but hundreds of degrees hotter. He wore an old-fashioned white silk shirt without the collar, fastened about the neck with a diamondstudded collar button, and black alpaca pants; but his legs were so large they seemed joined together, and his pants resembled a funnel-shaped skirt. His round brown head, which could have passed for a safety balloon in case his stomach burst, was clean-shaven. Not a hair showed above his chest-either on his face, nostrils, ears, eyebrows or eyelashes-giving the impression that his whole head had been scalded and scraped like the carcass of a pork.

"How's it going to chafe us, pops?" he asked, sticking out a huge, spongy hand. His voice was a wheezing whisper.

"Nobody knows 'til the deal goes down," Johnny said. "Everybody's just peeping at their hole cards now."

"The betting comes next." He looked down, but his felt-slippered feet, planted on the sawdust-covered floor, were hidden from his view by his belly. "I sure hate to see Big Joe go."

"Lost your best customer," Johnny said, rejecting the consolation.

"You know, Big Joe never ate nothing here. He just come in to gape at the chippies and beef about the cooking." Fats paused, then added, "But he was a man."

"Hurry up, Johnny, for God's sake," Dulcy called from across the room. "The funeral starts at two, and it's almost near one o'clock." She had kept on her sun glasses and looked strictly Hollywoodish in her pink silk dress.

The room was small, its eight square kitchen tables covered with white-and-red checked oilcloth planted in the inch of fresh, slightly damp sawdust covering the floor.

Dulcy sat at the table in the far corner, flanked by Alamena and the attorney.

"I'll let you go eat," Fats said. "You must be hungry."

"Ain't I always?"

The sawdust felt good beneath Johnny's rubber-soled shoes, and he thought fleetingly of how good life had been when he was a simple plough boy in Georgia, before he'd killed a man.

The cook stuck his head through the opening from the kitchen where the orders were filled and called, "Hiyuh, pops."

Johnny waved a hand.

Three other tables were occupied by men and women in the trade. It was strictly a hangout for the upper-class Harlem hustlers, those in the gambling and prostitution professions, and none others were allowed. Everybody knew everybody else, and all the diners greeted Johnny as he passed.

"Sad about Big Joe, pops."

"You can't stop the deal when the dealer falls."

Nobody mentioned Val. He'd been murdered, and nobody knew who did it. It was nobody's business but Johnny's, Dulcy's and the cops's; and everybody was letting it strictly alone.

When Johnny sat down the waitress came with the menu, and Pee Wee brought in a big glass pitcher of lemonade, with slices of lemons and limes and big chunks of ice floating about in it.

"I want a Singapore Sling," Dulcy said.

Johnny gave her a look.

"Well, brandy and soda then. You know good and well that ice-cold drinks give me indigestion."

"I'll have iced tea," the attorney said.

"You get that from the waitress," Pee Wee said.

"Gin and tonic for me," Alamena said.

The waitress came with the silver, glasses and napkins, and Alamena gave the attorney the menu.

He started to grin as he read the list of dinners:

Today's Special — Alligator tail amp; rice

Baked Ham — sweet potatoes amp; succotash

Chitterlings amp; collard greens amp; okra

Chicken and drop dumplings — with rice or sweet potatoes

Barbecued ribs

Pig's feet a la mode

Neck bones and lye hominy

(Choice of hot biscuits or corn bread)

SIDE DISHES

Collard greens — okra — black-eyed peas amp; rice — corn on the cob — succotash — sliced tomatoes and cucumbers

DESSERTS

Homemade ice cream — deep-dish sweet potatoe pie — peach cobbler — watermelon — blackberry pie

BEVERAGES

Iced tea — buttermilk — sassafras-root tea — coffee

But he looked up and saw the solemn expressions on the faces of the others and broke off.

"I haven't had breakfast as yet," he said, then to the waitress, "Can I have an order of brains and eggs, with biscuits?"

"Yes, sir."

"I want some fried oysters," Dulcy said.

"We ain't got no oysters. It ain't the month for 'em." She gave Dulcy a sly, sidewise look.

"Then I'll take the chicken and dumplings, but I don't want nothing but the legs," Dulcy said haughtily.

"Yes'm."

"Baked ham for me," Alamena said.

"Yes'm." She looked at Johnny with calf-eyed love. "The same as always, Mr. Johnny?"

He nodded. Johnny's breakfast, which never varied, consisted of a heaping plate of rice, four thick slices of fried salt pork, the fat poured over the rice, and a pitcher of blackstrap sorghum molasses to pour over that. With this came a plate of eight Southern-style biscuits an inch and a half thick.

He ate noisily without talk. Dulcy had drunk three brandy-and-sodas and said she wasn't hungry.

Johnny stopped eating long enough to say, "Eat anyway."

She picked at her food, watching the faces of the other diners, trying to catch snatches of their conversation.

Two people got up from a far table. The waitress went over to clear their places. Chink walked in with Doll Baby.

She had changed into a fresh pink linen backless dress, and wore huge black-tinted sun glasses with pink frames.

Dulcy stared at her with liquid venom. Johnny drank two glasses of ice-cold lemonade.

The room filled with silence.

Dulcy stood up suddenly.

"Where you going?" Johnny asked.

"I want to play a record," she said defiantly. "Do you have any objections?"

"Sit down," he said tonelessly. "And don't be so mother-raping cute."

She sat down and bit off another fingernail. Alamena fingered her throat and looked down at her plate.

"Tell the waitress," she said. "She'll play it."

"I was going to play that platter of Jelly Roll Morton's, I Want A Little Girl To Call My Own."

Johnny raised his face and looked at her. Rage started leaping in his eyes.

She picked up her drink to hide her face, but her hand trembled so she spilled some on her dress.

Across the room Doll Baby said in a loud voice, "After all, Val was my fiance."

Dulcy stiffened with fury. "You're a lying bitch!" she yelled back.

Johnny gave her a dangerous look.

"And if the truth be known, he was just knifed to keep me from having him," Dolly Baby said.

"He'd already had a bellyful of you," Dulcy said.

Johnny slapped her out of her seat. She spun into the corner of the wall and crumpled to the floor.

Doll Baby let out a high shrill laugh.

Johnny spun his chair about on its hind legs.

"Keep the bitch quiet," he said.

Fats waddled over and put his bloated hand on Johnny's shoulder.

Pee Wee came from behind the bar and stood in the entrance.

Silently, Dulcy got back into her chair.

"Keep her quiet your God-damned self," Chink said.

Johnny stood up. Chairs scraped as everybody moved away from Chink's table. Doll Baby jumped up and ran into the kitchen. Pee Wee moved toward Johnny.

"Easy, pops," Pee Wee said.

Fats waddled quickly over to Chink's table and said, "Get her out. And don't you never come in here no more neither. Taking advantage of me like that."

Chink stood up, his yellow face flushed and swollen. Doll Baby came from the kitchen and joined him. As he left, walking high-shouldered and stiff-kneed, he said to Johnny, "I'll see you, big shot."

"See me now," Johnny said tonelessly, starting after him.

The scar on his forehead had swollen and come alive.

Pee Wee blocked his path.

"That nigger ain't worth killing, pops."

Fats gave Chink a push in the back.

"Punk, you're lucky, lucky, lucky," he wheezed. "Git going before your luck runs out."

Johnny looked at his watch, giving Chink no more attention.

"We gotta go, the funeral's already started," he said.

"We all is coming," Fats said. "But you go on ahead 'cause you is the number two mourner."