Several cars were parked in the adjoining driveway, while others lined the street in both directions. Most of them were empty, but a few contained a varying assortment of men and women in their front and rear seats. The people inside fell silent as he passed them, and he knew that they were staring at him with a mixture of fear and resentment.
People continued to filter in and out of the house as he approached it through the covering darkness. Others lounged idly on the small front porch, and as he drew steadily closer, he could hear them talking and laughing, but he still could not make out any details. A single lone figure stood silently at the end of the front walkway, glancing left and right down the street, his body bathed in the bluish glare of a streetlamp not far away. His body tightened as Ben emerged suddenly from out of the shadows, still walking slowly but with a steady, determined gait. For a moment the young man stood completely still, his eyes staring straight at Ben as he chewed his lower lip nervously. Then he glanced back toward the house, nodded quickly and raced away.
Instantly the voices on the front porch fell silent.
Ben turned up the walkway. From behind, he could hear several of the cars start their engines and pull away, some peeling loudly as they dashed from the curb.
When he reached the first small step of the front porch, he stopped and looked silently at the people who still remained in place. He could see a tall slender woman in a bright red dress, and another, larger woman beside her. A tall, heavyset man stood behind them, his enormous arms draped loosely over their shoulders.
‘You sure you in the right place?’ the man asked finally.
‘I think so,’ Ben said.
The man pushed his way between the two women, strode to the middle of the porch and glared down toward Ben, his enormous frame blocking the light from the front windows and throwing Ben once again into deep shadow.
‘What you want, mister?’ he asked in a hard, demanding voice. ‘A little jelly-roll?’
‘What?’
‘A little poontang, maybe?’ the man added. He glanced at the women. ‘A little chocolate poontang?’
The women laughed as the man returned his eyes to Ben.
‘So what you want, huh?’
Ben moved his hand inside his coat, reaching for his police identification.
‘Hold it right there now,’ the man said instantly.
Ben’s hand froze in place, then lowered slowly to his side.
‘You wouldn’t happen to be toting a piece, would you now?’ the man asked.
Ben nodded.
The man’s eyes widened. ‘That’s not nice. That’s not friendly. How come you toting a piece?’
‘It’s just my service revolver,’ Ben told him, hoping that would explain it.
The man looked at him oddly. ‘Service revolver? You in the service? How come you ain’t wearing no uniform?’
‘Police Department,’ Ben said.
The man took a step toward him, his eyes darting about nervously. ‘You with them Black Cat boys?’
‘No.’
‘Well, what you want then?’
‘I’m looking for Roy Jolly.’
The man looked surprised. ‘You is? How come you looking for Mr Jolly?’
‘I want to talk to him about something.’
The man smiled, his large white teeth glowing yellow in the kerosene lamp which rested on the rail beside him. ‘You sure them Black Cat boys didn’t send you?’
‘I’m sure.’
The smile disappeared. ‘Well, you ain’t too smart coming over here all by yourself, looking for Mr Jolly.’
‘Is he here?’
The man took the lamp from the rail of the porch and held it up to Ben’s face. ‘I don’t know you,’ he said, ‘and I bet Mr Jolly don’t know you neither.’ He lowered the lamp toward Ben’s chest. ‘Open your coat.’
Ben drew back the sides of his jacket, and in a single, smooth motion, the man quickly reached beneath his arm and snapped out the pistol. ‘Nasty little thing,’ he said as he tossed it over Ben’s shoulder.
It plomped softly into the dry grass, and at the very edge of his vision Ben could see it glinting dully in the lamplight.
‘I’m not here to cause anybody any trouble,’ he said.
The man continued to stare at Ben suspiciously. ‘What you want then?’
‘A little girl was murdered a few days ago,’ Ben said.
‘So what?’
‘A little colored girl.’
The man stared at Ben expressionlessly.
‘So I was hoping Mr Jolly might be able to help me find out who did it.’
The man said nothing. He placed the lamp back on the railing and stepped forward slightly. A purple stud-pin winked from his shirt. Two enormous fingers adjusted it unnecessarily, then crawled up to straighten a light-blue silk tie.
‘We found her body over in that old ballfield not far from here,’ Ben added.
The man cocked his head slightly, as if to listen to the chorus of crickets and katydids that filled the air around them.
‘Just a little girl,’ Ben said. ‘About twelve years old, something like that.’
In a movement that was blindingly swift, the man suddenly swatted at a moth that had swept up from the lantern. ‘Got it,’ he hissed. His hand squeezed together, then opened, and one of the women stepped up and wiped the crushed moth from it with a white handkerchief.
Ben could feel his skin tightening around him. ‘Somebody shot her,’ he said. He pointed to the back of his head. ‘Right here.’
The man grinned lethally. ‘You scared, mister? You look scared.’ He turned to the women and laughed. ‘Don’t he look scared to you?’
‘He gone die of it pretty soon,’ one of the women said jokingly.
Ben nodded quickly and offered her a thin, nervous smile. ‘Yes, ma’am, I think I might,’ he told her.
For a moment the man regarded him closely. Then his belly shook with a small laugh and he stepped back toward the front door of the house. ‘I’ll check with Mr Jolly,’ he said almost playfully. ‘Come on in.’
The people inside stopped talking immediately as Ben followed him slowly through the whole narrow length of the house. The front room was almost entirely filled by a large pool table, but in the second the walls were lined with pinball machines. An odd assortment of chairs and settees were scattered about in the center of the room, along with a few makeshift card tables. Men and women sat drinking from paper cups or playing at the pinball machines whose bells and whistles echoed throughout the smoke-filled house. Their eyes followed him intently as he continued through the house, elbowing his way left and right through the steadily thickening crowd. At the rear of the house, a large bar had been set up, its top covered with a dull speckled formica top, and behind it a man in a dark-blue shirt dispensed bonded whiskey by the bottle, and clear white lightning by the cup. A large sheet of plywood had been spread out near the center of the room, and people danced languidly on it while an old woman in a flowered dress and pillbox hat played honky-tonk tunes on a baby-blue upright piano.