“Yes sir, I’m going to do that right away.”
He stood up, then hesitated, fiddling with his chauffeur’s cap.
“Have any of you-all heard anything from my woman — where she’s at or anything?”
All three of them turned again to stare at him. Finally Lawrence said, “She’s being held.”
“She is? In jail? What for?”
They stared at him in an unbelieving manner. “We’re holding her for questioning,” Lawrence finally said.
“Can I see her? Talk to her, I mean?”
“Not now, Jackson. We haven’t talked to her yet ourselves.”
“When do you think I’ll be able to see her?”
“Pretty soon, perhaps. You don’t have to worry about her. She’s safe. I advise you to get about squaring up those claimants as soon as you can.”
“Yes sir. I’m going to see Mr. Clay right now.”
When Jackson had left, Lawrence said to Grave Digger, “It’s pretty well established that Jackson is as innocent as a lamb, don’t you think?”
“Sheared lamb,” the court stenographer put in.
Grave Digger grunted.
“Have you had any news on your partner, Jones?” Lawrence asked.
“I was by the hospital.”
“How is he?”
“They said he would see, but he’d never look the same.”
Lawrence sighed again, squared his shoulders and assumed a look of grim determination. He pressed a button on his desk, and when a cop poked his head in from the corridor, he said, “Bring in the Perkins woman.”
Imabelle wore the same red dress, but now it looked bedraggled. The side of her face where Grave Digger had slapped her had flowered into deep purple streaked with orange.
She gave Grave Digger a quick look and shied away from his calculating stare. Then she took the seat facing Lawrence, started to cross her legs but thought better of it and sat with her knees pressed together, her back held rigid, on the very edge of the seat.
Lawrence looked at her briefly, then studied the notes in front of him. He took his time and reread all the reports.
“Jesus Christ, all this cutting and shooting,” he muttered. “This room is swimming in blood. No, no, don’t take that,” he added to the court stenographer.
He looked up at Imabelle again, slowly stroking his chin, wondering where to begin questioning her.
“Who was Slim?” he finally asked. “What was his real name? We have him down here as Goldsmith. In Mississippi he was known as Skinner.”
“Jimson.”
“Jimson! Is that a name? Christian name or family name?”
“Clefus Jimson. That was his real name.”
“And the other two. What were their real names?”
“I don’t know. They used a lot of names. I don’t know what their real names were.”
“This Jimson.” The name felt unpleasant in his mouth. “We’ll just call him Slim. Who was Slim? What was your connection with him?”
“He was my husband.”
“I thought as much. Where were you married?”
“We weren’t exactly married. He was my common-law husband.”
“Oh! Were you — did you keep in touch with him? That is, while you were living with Jackson?”
“No sir. I hadn’t seen him or heard anything about him for almost a year.”
“Then how did he get in touch with you — or you in touch with him, however it worked?”
“I ran into him at Billie’s by accident.”
“Billie’s?” Lawrence consulted his notes again. “Oh yes, that’s where the other two were killed.” My God, the blood, he was thinking. “What were you doing at Billie’s?”
“Just visiting. I’d go up there afternoons when Jackson was at work, just to sit around and visit. I didn’t like to hang around in bars where it might cast reflections on him.”
“Ah. I see. And when you met Slim you and he connived together to cheat Jackson on the confidence game—” He glanced at his notes. “The Blow.”
“I didn’t want to. They made me do it.”
“How could they force you to do it if you didn’t want to?”
“I was scared to death of him. All three of them. They had it in for me and I was scared they’d kill me.”
“You mean they had a grudge against you. Why?”
“I’d taken the trunk full of gold ore they used to work their lost-gold-mine racket with.”
“You mean the fool’s gold that was found in the coalbin where you and Slim lived?”
“Yes sir.”
“You took it when?”
“When I left him in Mississippi. He was playing around with another woman and when I left I just up and took it and brought it to New York. I knew they couldn’t work the racket without it.”
“I see. And when he found you at Billie’s he threatened you.”
“He didn’t have to. He just said, ‘I’m gonna take you back and we’re gonna rook that nigger you been living with.’ Hank and Jodie was there too. Hank was all hopped up and in that mean dreamy way he has when he’s hopped and Jodie was gaged on heroin and kept snapping that knife open and shut and looking at me as if he’d like to cut my throat. And Slim, he was half-drunk. And Hank said they were going to take the gold ore and start operating right here in New York. There wasn’t nothing for me to say. I had to do it.”
“All right. Then you contend that you participated under duress. That they forced you on threat of death to work with them in their racket?”
“Yes sir. It was either that or get my throat cut. There was no two ways about it.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“What could I say to the police? They hadn’t done nothing then. And I didn’t know they were wanted in Mississippi for murder. That happened after I’d gone.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police after they had cheated Jackson out of fifteen hundred dollars?”
“It was the same thing. I didn’t know then that Jackson had got hep that he’d been beat. If I’d gone to the police then and Jackson hadn’t preferred charges, the cops would have just let them go. And they’d have killed me then for sure. I didn’t know then about Jackson’s brother. I just knew that Jackson himself was a square and he couldn’t help me none.”
“All right. But why didn’t you go to the police after they’d thrown acid into Detective Johnson’s face?”
She glanced fleetingly in the direction of Grave Digger, and drew into herself. Grave Digger was staring at her with a fixed expression of hate.
“I didn’t have any chance,” she said in a pleading tone of voice. “I would have, but I couldn’t. Slim was with me all the time until we got home. Then after Hank and Jodie came down the river in that motorboat they rented, they got out underneath the railroad bridge and came straight to the place where Slim and me was at. Then there wasn’t any use of thinking about going.”
“What happened there?”
Sweat filmed her bruised face beneath their concentrated stares.
“Well, you see, Jodie thought I’d ratted to the police, until Slim showed him where I couldn’t have ratted. I hadn’t never had no chance. Jodie was gaged and evil and if it hadn’t been for Hank, Jodie and Slim would have got to fighting again. Hank was the only one carried a gun, and he put his gun on Jodie and stopped him. Then Jodie wanted him and Hank to take the gold ore and lam and leave me and Slim there. Slim said they couldn’t take the gold ore without taking him and me too. Then Hank said he agreed with Jodie. They couldn’t take Slim on account of the acid burns on his neck and face. The cops could identify him too easy. They’d put two and two together and know just who he was. Hank said for Slim to hole up somewhere until his face got healed and they’d send for him, but meantime they’d take the gold ore. Slim said nobody was taking his gold ore, he didn’t give a damn what they did. Then before Hank could stop him Jodie had stuck him in the heart and kept sticking him until Hank said, ‘Let up, God damn it, or I’ll kill you.’ But by then Slim was dead.”