“Somebody going by way of H. Clay,” one of them remarked.

“Don’t ask who it is,” another replied. “It might be your mammy.”

“Don’t I know it,” the first one replied.

A Cadillac limousine pulled around the truck in the wake of the hearse and carefully crossed the avenue.

“That’s Joe Green’s big Cat,” a third laborer stated.

“Warn’t his men in it,” another replied.

“How you know? You running Joe’s business?”

“Most generally he got George Drake driving and Big Six sitting in the front.”

“Warn’t Joe in the back, neither.”

“Come on, you sports, and bend your backs,” the truck driver said. “You ain’t getting paid to second-guess Joe Green.”

The hearse double-parked beside a Ford station wagon in front of the drugstore adjacent to the Paris Bar. The drugstore was open for business, and a few customers were moving about inside. The Paris Bar seemed crowded as usual. Its plate-glass windows were steamed over, and from within came the muted sound of a jump tune issuing from the juke box.

The Cadillac double-parked at the corner in front of the United Cigar Store.

Jackson got out on the driver’s side, came around the front of the hearse and looked up and down the street. A couple of men issued from the Paris Bar, glanced at the hearse and went the other way.

Jackson went to the back, opened the doors and cut the metal seal on the wicker basket with his pocket-knife.

Casper lay in the basket, fully dressed except for a hat. He wore the same dark clothes he had worn into the hospital. A soft black hat with the crown crushed in lay atop his stomach.

“Want me to help you up?” Jackson asked in a whisper.

“I can get up,” Casper said roughly. “Close the doors and watch the street.”

Jackson left the doors slightly ajar and looked one way and the other and then across the street. Cars passed in the street, a bus went by; people came and went along the sidewalks, trampling the deep snow into slush.

“Where’s Joe’s car parked?” Casper asked from the crack between the doors.

Jackson jumped. He wasn’t used to people talking to him from the back of the hearse. He looked down the street and said, “In front of the Cigar Store.”

“When you leave, give ’em a blink,” Casper instructed. “How is it now?”

For a moment there was no one nearby; no one seemed to be looking in that direction.

“All right, if you come fast,” Jackson said.

Casper came fast. He was down on the street in one jump, the black hat pulled low over his silver white hair. He cleared the back end of the station wagon in two strides, leaped over the snow banked along the curb, slipped in the slush but caught himself, and the next instant was close to the doorway of the stairs leading to his offices above. His back was to the street as he inserted the key in the lock; no one had noticed him jump from the hearse; no one had recognized him; no one was paying him the least bit of attention. He got the door open and went inside, turned once and glanced at Jackson through the upper glass panel, signaled him to go on.