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.They’re awful touchy, the colored.They’re like the Jews.One for all and all for one.” He leaned his head on both elbows and muttered.“I been here, you wouldn’t believe it, eighteen years and I can tell that feelin’.”“What kind of a feeling?”“Mister, ever hear of a riot? Get twenty more like that big bastard who come in here and you get yourself a riot.Think he listened when I tell’m I can’t hire a colored man.What’ll I do with the nephew? Five kids and a wife.But that big bastard keeps on hollerin’ until the customers walk out except two guys and one of ‘em tells me to call the Harlem Equalities so I done it.”“Thanks for the information, Mr.Carlucci.”“Okay.Have a drink on the house.”In the next two hours, he spoke to a whole series of proprietors.Only a few wouldn’t talk to him.Mostly, they had a this-is-what-happened attitude.It was after eight o’clock before he took the downtown subway.Hanging on a strap, he asked himself what he had found out? The corpus delicti, he answered himself wearily.The good old corpus delicti, the body of the crime, only there was no body.He had a collection of miscellaneous facts about as valuable as his Kalb-Manders-Congressman Patton-Rodney facts; he was a great detective and he’d be an encyclopedia of useless information before he wound up.The subway thundered into Seventy-Second Street station, into yellow light and new passengers entering between the rubber-edged doors that slid back into metal like blades into their sheaths.He had accomplished nothing the whole long day.Those bars now? The motive had been to pull Negroes out of the Italian bars.He could have stayed in Clair’s office and been as well off.The time? From one p.m.right into the evening.Number of bars? More than the eleven Clair had known of.Several of the proprietors had mentioned other Italian bars not on Clair’s list.Twenty-five bars, approximately.But this wasn’t another Monday in another week.It was the Monday after mass meeting.Sam’s head felt hot as if he were on the verge of a cold.All the facts, half-facts, prejudices and curses he had heard from bar owners and bartenders tumbled inside his brain.All of them had agreed that the hit-run Negroes were big men.Estimated heights went from five feet ten to over six feet.To Sam, this detail, better than anything else, illustrated white Harlem’s pulse beat.From his experience as a policeman, he knew that people reporting the height of a burglar or a mugger usually exaggerated by five inches; five inches added on by the ruler of intense emotion.That was a fact, important not as court evidence, but as a searchlight playing upon the witnesses themselves.Perhaps, the whole city would react in the same way when the story broke in the morning papers.One other detail had also barbed itself into his consciousness.After his interview with Mr.Carlucci, he had begun asking the others whether any out-of-the-ordinary acts had been committed by the hit-runners.It was a question derived from his professional knowledge of criminals and what a police interrogation should consist of; often malefactors would eat, drink, smoke or commit other acts at the scene of a crime which might serve as guideposts to their identities.The proprietor of the Four Flags Bar and Grill had shown Sam a crumpled leaflet that had been thrown into his face.It was the leaflet put out by the All-Negro Harlem Committee.Was it a plant? Why hadn’t the other leaflets been thrown? Why just this one? Who, anyway, was behind all these “big Negroes”? And how could they be apprehended? There was no evidence to speak of.There had been no arrests as far as he knew.Sam stared at the pale reflection of himself in the rattling subway glass.Suppose the All-Negro Harlem Committee were secretly behind the anti-Italian agitation? How did he know they weren’t? Maybe, that was why Clair had been so reluctant about having him work for the Harlem Equality League?Sam pushed through the turnstile at Times Square.He hurried through the electric underground of stores situated near the tracks, the drinking places, shooting galleries, gardenia stands, all a little macabre like a living waxworks in the glaring light.He climbed to the street level.The red and blue neons of Grant’s Bar glowed softly in the twilight, and among other people waiting for sweethearts and husbands, he saw Suzy and Johnny.They weren’t together and Sam realized they had never met; they didn’t know each other.He waved his hand, darted through the crosstown automobiles as if he were playing football again.“Suzy, hello.” He grabbed her hand and half-pulled, half-guided her over to where Johnny was standing.“Hello, Johnny.This is my girl, Suzy.” Hungry people with eyes fascinated by Grant’s hot dogs charged like horses after a day’s work between Sam and Suzy and Johnny.From the doors, a smell of pickles, mustard, weenies and beer rolled out.“This is Johnny, Suzy,” Sam was saying.“I forgot you two were strangers.Boy, I’ve got lapses of memory these days.I’ll make some detective.”Suzy smiled.“Glad to meet you, Johnny.”“Same here.” Johnny had a folded evening newspaper under his arm.Suzy took Sam’s hand.“What a lug you are.I don’t know about your friend but I’ve been here since eight.Eight sharp!”“Did you eat?” Sam asked her.“Not too much.My appetite’s weak when I eat without you, dear.”“How about it, Johnny?” Sam said.“I’m starved.” Johnny nodded and the three of them swung inside.Sam stared at the huge counter with its rows and rows of sizzling hot dogs.“Just look at ‘em.”“Why were you so late?” Suzy said.“There’s a time and a place,” Sam said, trying to catch the eye of the girl in charge of the counter
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