Coffin Ed measured him with bloodshot eyes. “Do you belong to the league, too?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“League? Nawsuh, boss. I mean if it’s the wrong league I sure don’t belong to it.”

“The know-nothing league.”

“Not me, boss.” The big joker showed Coffin Ed a mouthful of teeth as proof that he didn’t belong to any league, unless it was the dentist’s league. “I ain’t scairt to tell the truth. I’ll tell you everything I seen, I swear ’fore God. ’Course, that ain’t much, but—”

“You saw two men get shot to death.”

”Heard it, boss. I wasn’t in no position to see.”

“Three men masqueraded as cops—”

“I ain’t seen but two, boss.”

“Robbed a man in broad view right outside of this joint—”

“I couldn’t swear to it, boss; I didn’t seen that.”

“What did they get?”

“Get?” The joker acted as though he were unfamiliar with the word.

“Take?”

“Take? If they took anything, boss, I ain’t seen it. I thought they was just a mess of cops doing their dirty work.”

Coffin Ed flipped.

He looped a right hook to the big joker’s solar plexus, saw his mouth balloon with air. The cowskin fez flew from the big joker’s head as he jackknifed forward. Coffin Ed caught him back of the neck with a loose, pulling grip, jerked his head down and uppercut him in the face with his right knee. It was a good gimmick; the knee was supposed to smash the joker’s nose and fill his head with shooting stars. It worked nine times out of ten. But the big joker had his mouth open from the solar plexus punch, and his teeth crashed into Coffin Ed’s kneecap like the jaws of a bear trap.

Coffin Ed grunted with pain as his leg went stiff and clutched the back of the big joker’s leather jacket to keep from going down. The big joker butted him in the belly in a blind panic, trying to escape. Coffin Ed went down on his back, clinging to the leather jacket; and the big joker plunged forward over him, headed for the door. Coffin Ed pulled at the leather jacket in a choking rage. The jacket turned wrong side out, imprisoning the joker’s arm and halting the forward plunge of his shoulders. But the rest of him kept on going, and he turned in a somersault and landed on his back. Coffin Ed reared up on his shoulders, made a half spin and kicked the big Joker on the side of the jaw from topside, down. The big joker shuddered and passed out.

Coffin Ed clutched the rim of the bar and pulled to his feet, favoring his game leg. He looked about for the next man in line. But there wasn’t any line.

The customers had crowded to the back of the room and were beginning to panic. Knives lashed, and they were pushing and threatening one another.

The white cop at the back door was shouting, “Get back! Get away from me or I’ll shoot!”