“Sit down and shut up,” the marshal ordered.
He shut off the gas and began picking up the cardboard tubes for evidence. He opened one, took out a brand-new hundred-dollar bill and held it up toward the light.
“Raised from a ten. The markings are still on it.”
Jackson had started to sit down but he stopped suddenly and began to plead.
“It wasn’t me what done that, Marshal. I swear to God. It was them two fellows who got away. All I done was come into the kitchen to get a drink of water.”
“Don’t lie to me, Jackson. I know you. I’ve got the goods on you, man. I’ve been watching you three counterfeiters for days.”
Tears welled up in Jackson’s eyes, he was so scared.
“Listen, Marshal, I swear to God I didn’t have nothing to do with that. I don’t even know how to do it. The little man called Hank who got away is the counterfeiter. He’s the only one who’s got the paper.”
“Don’t worry about them, Jackson. I’ll get them too. But I’ve already got you, and I’m taking you down to the Federal Building. So I’m warning you, anything you say to me will be used against you in court.”
Jackson slid from the chair and got down on his knees.
“Leave me go just this once, Marshal.” The tears began streaming down his face. “Just this once, Marshal. I’ve never been arrested before. I’m a church man, I ain’t dishonest. I confess, I put up the money for Hank to raise, but it was him who was breaking the law, not me. I ain’t done nothing wouldn’t nobody do if they had a chance to make a pile of money.”
“Get up, Jackson, and take your punishment like a man,” the marshal said. “You’re just as guilty as the others. If you hadn’t put up the tens, Hank couldn’t have changed them into hundreds.”
Jackson saw himself serving ten years in prison. Ten years away from Imabelle. Jackson had only had Imabelle for eleven months, but he couldn’t live without her. He was going to marry her as soon as she got her divorce from that man down South she was still married to. If he went to prison for ten years, by then she’d have another man and would have forgotten all about him. He’d come out of prison an old man, thirty-eight years old, dried up. No one would give him a job. No woman would want him. He’d be a bum, hungry, skinny, begging on the streets of Harlem, sleeping in doorways, drinking canned heat to keep warm. Mama Jackson hadn’t raised a son for that, struggled to send him through the college for Negroes, just to have him become a convict. He just couldn’t let the marshal take him in.
He clutched the marshal about the legs.
“Have mercy on a poor sinner, man. I know I did wrong, but I’m not a criminal. I just got talked into it. My woman wanted a new winter coat, we want to get a place of our own, maybe buy a car. I just yielded to temptation. You’re a coloured man like me, you ought to understand that. Where are we poor colored people goin’ to get any money from?”
The marshal yanked Jackson to his feet.
“God damn it, get yourself together, man. Go take a drink of water. You act as if you think I’m Jesus Christ.”
Jackson went to the sink and drank a glass of water. He was crying like a baby.
“You could have a little mercy,” he said. “Just a little of the milk of human mercy. I’ve done lost all my money in this deal already. Ain’t that punishment enough? Do I have to go to jail too?”
“Jackson, you’re not the first man I’ve arrested for a crime. Suppose I’d let off everybody. Where would I be then? Out of a job. Broke and hungry. Soon I’d be on the other side of the law, a criminal myself.”
Jackson looked at the marshal’s hard brown face and mean, dirty eyes. He knew there was no mercy in the man. As soon as colored folks got on the side of the law, they lost all Christian charity, he was thinking.
“Marshal, I’ll pay you two hundred dollars if you let me off,” he offered.
The marshal looked at Jackson’s wet face.
“Jackson, I shouldn’t do this. But I can see that you’re an honest man, just led astray by a woman. And being as you’re a colored man like myself, I’m going to let you off this time. You give me the two hundred bucks, and you’re a free man.”
The only way Jackson could get two hundred dollars this side of the grave was to steal it from his boss. Mr. Clay always kept two or three thousand dollars in his safe. There was nothing Jackson hated worse than having to steal from Mr. Clay. Jackson had never stolen any money in his life. He was an honest man. But there was no other way out of this hole.
“I ain’t got it here. I got it at the funeral parlor where I work.”
“Well, that being the case, I’ll drive you there in my car, Jackson. But you’ll have to give me your word of honor you won’t try to escape.”
“I ain’t no criminal,” Jackson protested. “I won’t try to escape, I swear to God. I’ll just go inside and get the money and bring it out to you.”
The marshal unlocked Jackson’s handcuffs and motioned him ahead. They went down the four flights of stairs and came out on Eighth Avenue, where the apartment house fronted.
The marshal gestured toward a battered black Ford.
“You can see that I’m a poor man myself, Jackson.”
“Yes, sir, but you ain’t as poor as me, because I’ve not only got nothing but I’ve got minus nothing.”
“Too late to cry now, Jackson.”
They climbed into the car, drove south on 134th Street, east to the corner of Lenox Avenue, and parked in front of the H. Exodus Clay Funeral Parlor.
Jackson got out and went silently up the red rubber treads of the high stone steps; entered through the curtained glass doors of the old stone house, and peered into the dimly lit chapel where three bodies were on display in the open caskets.
Smitty, the other chauffeur and handyman, was silently embracing a woman on one of the red, velvet-covered benches similar to the ones on which the caskets stood. He hadn’t heard Jackson enter.
Jackson tiptoed past them silently and went down the hall to the broom closet. He got a dust mop and cloth and tiptoed back to the office at the front.
At that time of afternoon, when they didn’t have a funeral, Mr. Clay took a nap on the couch in his office. Marcus, the embalmer, was left in charge. But Marcus always slipped out to Small’s bar, over on 135th Street and Seventh Avenue.
Silently Jackson opened the door of Mr. Clay’s office, tiptoed inside, stood the dust mop against the wall and began dusting the small black safe that sat in the corner beside an old-fashioned roll-top desk. The door of the safe was closed but not locked.
Mr. Clay lay on his side, facing the wall. He looked like a refugee from a museum, in the dim light from the floor lamp that burned continuously in the front window.
He was a small, elderly man with skin like parchment, faded brown eyes, and long gray bushy hair. His standard dress was a tail coat, double-breasted dove-gray vest, striped trousers, wing collar, black Ascot tie adorned with a gray pearl stickpin, and rimless nose-glasses attached to a long black ribbon pinned to his vest.
“That you, Marcus?” he asked suddenly without turning over.
Jackson started. “No sir, it’s me, Jackson.”
“What are you doing in here, Jackson?”
“I’m just dusting, Mr. Clay,” Jackson said, as he eased open the door of the safe.
“I thought you took the afternoon off.”
“Yes sir. But I recalled that Mr. Williams’ family will be coming tonight to view Mr. Williams’ remains, and I knew you’d want everything spic and span when they got here.”
“Don’t overdo it, Jackson,” Mr. Clay said sleepily. “I ain’t intending to give you a raise.”
Jackson forced himself to laugh.
“Aw, you’re just joking, Mr. Clay. Anyway, my woman ain’t home. She’s gone visiting.”