He passed three patrol cars on the way. The cops gave the battered, dirty, meat-smeared, egg-stained hearse a cursory look and let it pass. No steamer trunks and dead bodies in that wreck. Jackson didn’t even notice the patrol cars.
He parked in front of his minister’s house, got out and went around to the back to lock the doors. When he found the hearse empty, that was the bitter end. Nothing even left to pray for. His girl was gone. Her gold ore was gone. His brother was dead, and gone too. He just wanted to throw himself on the mercy of the Lord. It was all he could do to keep from weeping.
Reverend Gaines was in the middle of a big religious dream when his housekeeper awakened him.
“Brother Jackson is downstairs in the study and says he wants to see you on something very important.”
“Jackson?” Reverend Gaines exclaimed in extreme irritation, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “You mean our brother Jackson?”
“Yes, sir,” that patient colored woman said. “Your Jackson.”
“Lord save us from squares,” Reverend Gaines muttered to himself as he got up to slip his black silk brocaded robe over his purple silk pyjamas, and descend to the study.
“Brother Jackson, what brings you to the house of the shepherd of the Lord at this ungodly hour, when all the other Lord’s sheep are sleeping peacefully in the meadows?” he asked pointedly.
“I’ve sinned, Reverend Gaines.”
Reverend Gaines stiffened as though someone had uttered blasphemy in his presence.
“Sinned! Good Lord, Brother Jackson, is that sufficient reason to awaken me at this hour of night? Who hasn’t sinned? I was just standing on the banks of the River Jordan, dressed in a flowing white robe, converting sinners by the thousands.”
Jackson stared at him. “Here in the house?”
“In a dream, Brother Jackson, in a dream,” the minister explained, unbending enough to smile.
“Oh, I’m sorry I woke you up, but it’s an emergency.”
“That’s all right, Brother Jackson, sit down.” He sat down himself and poured a glass of liqueur from a cut-glass decanter on his mahogany desk. “Just a little elderberry cordial to awaken my spirit. Will you have a glass?”
“No sir, thank you,” Jackson declined as he sat down facing Reverend Gaines across the desk. “My spirit is already wide awake as it is.”
“You’re in trouble again? Or is it the same trouble? Woman trouble, wasn’t it?”
“No sir, it was about money the last time. I was trying to keep it from looking as if I had stolen some money. But this time it’s worse. It’s about my woman too. I’m in deep trouble this time.”
“Has your woman left you? At last? Because you didn’t steal the money? Or because you did?”
“No sir, it’s nothing like that. She’s gone but she hasn’t left me.”
Reverend Gaines took another sip of cordial. He enjoyed solving domestic mysteries.
“Let us kneel and pray for her safe return.”
Jackson was on his knees before the minister was.
“Yes sir, but I want to confess first.”
“Confess!” Reverend Gaines had started to kneel but he straightened up suddenly like a Jack-in-the-box. “You haven’t killed the woman, Brother Jackson?”
“No sir, it’s nothing like that.”
Reverend Gaines gave a sigh of relief and relaxed.
“But I’ve lost her trunk full of gold ore.”
“What?” Reverend Gaines’s eyebrows shot upward. “Her trunk full of gold ore? Do you mean to say she had a trunk full of gold ore and never told me, her minister? Brother Jackson, you had better make a full confession.”
“Yes sir, that’s what I want to do.”
At first, as Jackson unfolded the story of being swindled on The Blow and stealing five hundred dollars from Mr. Clay’s to bribe the bogus marshal and trying to get even by gambling, Reverend Gaines was filled with compassion.
“The Lord is merciful, Brother Jackson,” he said consolingly. “And if Mr. Clay is half as merciful, you will be able to work off that account. I will telephone to him about the matter. But what about this trunk full of gold ore?”
But when Jackson described the trunk and related how the gang had kidnapped his woman to get possession of it, Reverend Gaines’s eyes began to widen with curiosity.
“You mean to say that that big green steamer trunk in that little room where you and she lived was filled with gold ore?”
“Yes sir. Pure eighteen-carat gold ore. But it didn’t belong to her. It belonged to her husband and she had to give it back. So I had to get my brother, Goldy, to help me find them.”
Revulsion replaced the curiosity in Reverend Gaines’s eyes as Jackson described Goldy.
“You mean to say that Sister Gabriel was a man? Your twin brother? And he swindled our poor gullible people with tickets to heaven?”
“Yes sir, lots of people believed in them. But the only reason I went to him was because he was a crook and I needed him to help me.”
As Jackson related the events of the night, Reverend Gaines’s eyes got wider and wider, and horror began replacing the expression of revulsion. By the time Jackson got to his escape from the police at the 125th Street Station, Reverend Gaines was sitting forward on the edge of his seat with his mouth hanging open and his eyes bulging. But Jackson had related the story as he had seen it happen, and Reverend Gaines did not understand why he had fled from the police.
“Was it because of your brother?” he asked. “Did they discover he was impersonating a nun?”
“No sir, it wasn’t that. It was because he was dead.”
“Dead!” Reverend Gaines jumped as though a wasp had stung him in the rear. “Great God above!”
“Hank and Jodie had cut his throat when I went upstairs to look for Imabelle.”
“Good God, man, why didn’t you call for help? Didn’t you hear his cries?”
“No sir. I had sat down to rest for a minute and I had fell asleep.”
“Merciful heavens, man! You fell asleep while you were looking for your woman who was in grave danger. While her fortune was sitting unprotected in that street — that street too, the most dangerous street in Harlem — protected only by your brother, a foul sinner who was scarcely better than a murderer himself.” Reverend Gaines’s rich black skin was turning gray at the very thought of what had happened. “And they cut his throat? And put his body in the hearse?”
Jackson mopped the sweat from his eyes and face.
“Yes sir. But I didn’t mean to go to sleep.”
“And what did you do with the hearse? Drive it off into the Harlem River?”
“No sir, it’s parked out front.”
“Out front! In front of my house?”
Forgetting his ecclesiastical dignity, Reverend Gaines jumped to his feet and shambled hastily across the room to peer through the front window at the battered hearse parked at the curb in the gray dawn. When he turned back to face Jackson he looked as if he had aged twenty years. His implacable self-confidence was shaken to the core. As he shuffled slowly back to his seat, his silk brocade robe flopped open and the pants of his purple silk pyjamas began slipping down. But he paid no attention.
“Do you mean to sit there, Brother Jackson, and tell me that your brother’s body with its throat cut and your woman’s trunk full of gold ore are in that hearse out there, parked in front of my house?” he asked in horror.
“No sir. I lost them. They fell out somewhere, I don’t know where.”
“They fell out of the hearse? Into the street?”
“It must have been in the street. I didn’t drive anywhere else.”
“Just why did you come here, Brother Jackson? Why did you come to me?”
“I just wanted to kneel here beside you, Reverend Gaines, and give myself up to the Lord.”