There was a jukebox playing softly at one end of the sitting room; two white men sat on divans with three colored girls. At the other end, toward the kitchen, two colored men and a colored woman sat at a large mahogany dining table eating fried chicken and potato salad. The lights were low, the air faintly tinted with incense.
In one of the bedrooms a white man and a colored girl lay embraced between sky-blue sheets. In another, five colored men played a nearly wordless game of stud poker in the smoke-filled air, drinking cold beer from bottles and eating sandwiches.
The pad had a door opening into the hall, and another on the side at the back which opened into one end of the kitchen. Both doors were locked, with the keys in the locks. There was a single window opening onto the landing of the fire escape, but it was hidden behind heavy drapes drawn over Venetian blinds.
Hank lay on a couch, dressed in his blue suit, his head propped on two sofa pillows. He was slowly puffing opium through a water pipe. The shallow bowl with the bubbling opium pill rested on a brazier on a glass-covered cocktail table. The smoke passed through a short curved stem, bubbled in a glass decanter half-filled with tepid water, was drawn through a long transparent plastic tube into the amber mouthpiece which Hank held loosely between slack lips.
His .38 automatic lay beside him, out of sight against the wall.
A young girl wearing a white blouse over full, ripened breasts and tight-fitting slacks sat on the green carpet, her knees drawn up and her head resting back against the sofa. She had a smooth seal-brown face, big staring eyes, and a wide-lipped, flower-like mouth.
Jodie sat across the room, on a green leather ottoman. His head was bent over almost inside of the speaker of a console combination as he listened to a Hot Lips Page recording of Bottom Blues, playing it over and over so low that the notes were heard distinctly only by his drug-sharpened sense of hearing.
A girl sat on the floor between his outstretched legs. She wore a lemon-yellow blouse over budding breasts, and Paisley slacks. She had an olive-skinned, heart-shaped face, long black lashes concealing dark-brown eyes, and a mouth too small for the thickness of the lips. Her head rested on Jodie’s knee.
Jodie was staring over her head, lost in the blue music. He ran his left hand slowly back and forth over her crisp brown curls as though he liked the sensation. His right arm rested on his thigh and in his right hand he held the bone-handled switch-blade knife, snapping it open and shut.
“Don’t you have another record?” Hank asked, as if from a great distance.
“I like this record.”
“Doesn’t it have another side?”
“I like this side.”
Jodie started the record again. Hank looked dreamily at the ceiling.
“When are we going?” Jodie asked.
“As soon as it gets daylight.”
Jodie stared at the dial of his wrist watch.
“It ought to be daylight now.”
“Give it some time. Ain’t no hurry.”
“I want to be on the road. I’m getting nervous sitting around here.”
“Wait a while. Give it some time. Let some traffic get on the road. We don’t want to be the only car leaving town with California plates.”
“How the hell you know there’s going to be any others?”
“Ohio plates, then. Illinois plates. Give it some time.”
“I’m giving it some mother— time.”
The record came to a stop. Jodie started it over again, bent his ear to the speaker, and clicked the knife open and shut.
“Stop clicking that knife,” Hank said indifferently.
“I didn’t know I was clicking it.”
A hesitant knock sounded above the low-playing blues.
Hank stared dreamily at the locked door. Jodie stared tensely. The girls didn’t look up.
“See who’s there, Carol,” Hank said to the girl beside him. She started to get up. “Just ask.”
“Who is it?” she asked in a harsh, startling voice.
“Me. Imabelle.”
Hank and Jodie kept staring at the locked door. The girls turned and stared at it also. No one answered.
“It’s me, Imabelle. Let me in.”
Hank reached down along his side and wrapped his fingers about the butt of the automatic. Jodie’s knife clicked open.
“Who’s with you?” Hank asked in a lazy voice.
“Nobody.”
“Where’s Billie?”
“She’s here.”
“Call her.”
“Billie, Hank wants to talk to you.”
“Hank?” Hank said. “Who’s Hank?”
“Don’t use that name,” Billie said, then to Hank, “I’m here. What do you want?”
“Who’s with Imabelle?”
“Nobody.”
“Open the door a crack,” Hank said to Carol.
She got up and crossed the room in a hip-swinging walk, unlocked the door and opened it a crack. Hank had his automatic aimed at the crack.
Imabelle put her face in view.
“It’s Imabelle,” Carol said.
Billie pushed the door open wider and looked past Imabelle at Hank. “Do you want to see her?”
“Sure, let her come in,” Hank said, putting the gun out of sight beside him.
Carol opened the door wide and Imabelle stepped into the room. She was so scared she was biting down vomit.
Hank and Jodie stared at her tear-streaked face and swollen, purple-tinted cheek.
“Close the door,” Hank said dreamily.
Imabelle stepped to one side, and Grave Digger came out of the dark hall like an apparition coming up from the sea. He had a nickel-plated pistol in each hand.
“Straighten up,” he said thickly.
“It’s a mother— plant,” Jodie grated.
Jodie had his left hand resting on Jeanie’s curly head, his right hand extended, the knife open. With a sudden tight grip his left hand closed and he lifted the girl up from the floor by her hair, holding her in front of him as a shield, and put the sharp naked blade tight against her throat as he came violently to his feet.
The girl didn’t cry out, didn’t utter a sound, didn’t faint. Her body went flaccid beneath Jodie’s grip. Her face was stretched into distortion, a drop of blood trickled slowly down her taut neck. Her eyes were huge black pools of animal terror, slanting upwards at the edges, overwhelming her small distorted face. She didn’t breathe.
Grave Digger caught a look at her face from the corner of his eye, and didn’t move for fear of starting that knife across her throat.
Hank stared at Grave Digger dreamily without moving, his fingers still curled about the butt of the hidden .38. Grave Digger stared back. They were watching the flicker of each other’s eyes, paying no attention to Jodie and the paralyzed girl. Nobody spoke. Carol stood frozen with one hand on the door knob. Imabelle stood trembling, out of range on the other side. Everything was in pantomime.
Jodie backed toward the door that opened into the kitchen. The girl backed with him, followed his every motion with a corresponding motion, as if performing some macabre dance. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead in pools of undripping tears.
Jodie brought up against the door. “Reach around me and open it,” he ordered the girl.
The girl reached her left hand carefully around his body, felt for the key, turned it, and opened the door.
Jodie backed into the kitchen, still holding the girl in front of him.
Billie stood silently beside the white enamel electric range with a double-bladed wood-chopper’s axe held poised over her right shoulder, waiting for Jodie to come into reach. He took another step backward, his eyes on Grave Digger’s guns. Billie chopped his upper forearm in a forward-moving strike to knock the knife blade forward from the girl’s throat. Jodie wheeled in violent reflex his knife-arm flopping like an empty sleeve, as the knife clattered on the tiled floor, struck out backwards with the edge of his left hand. Billie took the blow across the mouth as she chopped him in the center of the back between the shoulder blades, like splitting a log, knocking him forward to his knees.