“And you looked to get fifteen thousand?”
“Only twelve thousand, two hundred and fifty, after I paid off the commissions.”
“And you got arrested?”
Jackson nodded. “During the operation the marshal broke into the kitchen and put us all under arrest. But the others got away.”
Goldy burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. The C and M speedball had taken hold and the pupils of his eyes had turned as black as ebony and had gotten as big as grapes. He laughed convulsively, as though he were having a fit. Tears streamed down his face. Finally he got himself under control.
“My own brother,” he gasped. “Here us is, got the same mama and papa. Look just alike. And there you is, ain’t got hep yet that you been beat. You has been swindled, man. You has been taken by The Blow. They take you for your money and they blow. You catch on? Changing tens into hundreds. What happened to your brains? You been drinking embalming fluid?”
Jackson looked more hurt than angry. “But I saw him do it once before,” he said. “With my own eyes. I was looking right at him all the time. A man has got to believe his own eyes, ain’t he?”
It hadn’t been too hard for him to believe. Other people in Harlem believed that Father Divine was God.
“Sure, you saw him do it when he was sucking you in,” Goldy said. “But what you didn’t see was when he made the switch. That was when he turned to put the money into the stove to cook. What he put into the oven were just plain dummies along with a black-powder bomb. He put your money into a special pocket in the front of his coat.”
“Then Imabelle got fooled, too. She was watching him, just the same as me. Neither of us saw him make the switch.”
Goldy’s eyelids dropped. “Who’s Imabelle? Your old lady?”
“She’s my woman. And she believed it even more than I did. It was her who first talked to Jodie, the man who told her about Hank. And Jodie looked like an honest, hardworking man, too.”
It didn’t surprise Goldy that Jackson had been trimmed on The Blow. Many smart men, even other con-men, had been stung by The Blow. There was something about raising the denomination of money that appealed to the larceny in men. But with women it was different. They were always suspicious of anything that was scientific. But he didn’t know how Jackson felt about his woman, so all he said was,
“She’s a trusting girl, she believe all that.”
Jackson puffed up with indignation. “Do you think she’d let them cheat me if she didn’t believe it, too?”
“What’d she do when the stove blew up? She try to help you save your money?”
“She tried all she could. But she ain’t no Annie Oakley, carrying around two pistols. When that marshal bust into the kitchen waving his gun and flashing his badge, she ran like all the rest of us were trying to do. I was trying to run, too.”
“They always catch the sucker. How else are they gonna blow with their sting? And you gave the marshal some more money to let you off?”
“I didn’t know he was a crook. I gave him two hundred dollars.”
“Where’d you get two hundred dollars, if he’d already taken all the money you had?”
“I had to take five hundred from Mr. Clay’s safe.”
Goldy whistled softly. “You give me the three hundred you got left, Bruzz, and I’ll find those crooks and get all your money back.”
“I haven’t got it,” Jackson confessed. “I lost it playing the numbers and shooting dice trying to get even.”
Goldy pulled up the hem of his skirt and studied his fat black legs encased in black cotton stockings.
“For a man what calls himself a Christian, you’ve had yourself a night. Now what you goin’ to do?”
“I got to find that man who posed as the marshal. After he took my two hundred dollars he arrested Imabelle so he could shake her down, too.”
“You mean he worked another bribe out of your old lady after he got yours?”
“I don’t know exactly what happened. I haven’t seen her since she ran out of the kitchen with the rest of them. All I know is that when I telephoned my landlady she said a United States marshal brought Imabelle back into the house and that she was under arrest. Then he confiscated her trunk and took her away somewhere. And she hasn’t been back since. That’s what’s got me so worried.”
Goldy gave his brother an incredulous look. “Did you say he took her trunk?”
Jackson nodded. “She’s got a big steamer-trunk.”
Goldy stared so long at Jackson his eyes seemed fixed.
“What has she got in her trunk?”
Jackson evaded Goldy’s stare. “Nothing but clothes and things.”
Goldy kept staring at his brother.
Finally he said, “Bruzz, listen to me close. If all that broad has got in her trunk is clothes, she has teamed up with that slim stud and helped him to swindle you. How long is it goin’ to take you to see that?”
“She ain’t done that,” Jackson contradicted flatly. “She got no need to. I’d have given her all the money if she’d asked for it.”
“How you know she ain’t sweet on the stud? Might not be your money she’s after. Might just be a change of sheets.”
Jackson’s wet-black face became swollen with anger.
“Don’t talk like that about her,” he said threateningly. “She ain’t sweet on nobody but me. We’re going to get married. Besides, she ain’t seen nobody else.”
Goldy shrugged. “You figure it out yourself then, Bruzz. She’s gone off with the man who beat you out o’ your money. If she don’t want the man and if she don’t want the money—”
“She ain’t run off, he taken her off,” Jackson interrupted. “Besides which, if she’d wanted money she got her own money, herself. She can put her hand on more money than either you or me have ever seen.”
Goldy’s fat black body went dead still. Not an eyelash flickered, not a muscle moved in his face. He seemed not to breathe. If she had more money than either of them had ever seen, it was getting down to the nitty-gritty. Those were facts he understood. Money! And she had it stashed in her trunk, else why did she and the slim stud come back for it? She couldn’t have had any clothes in there worth taking, not after living with a low-paid flunky like his twin brother.
His huge black-pupiled eyes lingered trance-like on Jackson’s wet, worried face.
“I’m goin’ to help you find your gal, Bruzz,” he whispered confidentially. “After all, you is my twin brother.”
He took a small bottle from his gown and handed it to Jackson. “Have a little taste.”
Jackson shook his head.
“Go ahead and take a taste,” Goldy urged irritably. “If the devil ain’t already got your soul after all you done last night, you is saved. Take a good taste. We’re going out and look for that stud and your gal, and you is goin’ to need all the courage you can get.”
Jackson wiped the mouth of the bottle with his dirty handkerchief and took a deep drink. The next instant he was gasping for breath. It had tasted like musty tequila flavoured with chicken bile, and it had burned his gullet like cayenne pepper.
“Lord in Heaven!” he gasped. “What’s that stuff?”
“Ain’t nothing but smoke,” Goldy said. “There’s lots of folks here in the Valley won’t drink nothing else.”
The drink numbed Jackson’s brain. He forgot what he’d come there for. He sat on the couch trying to get his thoughts together.
Goldy sat across the table, silently staring at him. Goldy’s huge, black-pupiled eyes were hypnotic. They looked like glinting black pools of evil. Jackson tried to tear his gaze away but couldn’t.
Finally Goldy stood up and put on his wig and bonnet. He hadn’t said anything yet.
Jackson tried to stand too, but the room began to spin. He suddenly suspected Goldy of poisoning him.