“I don’t know.”

“You don know? Whoa! That crazy. You gotta be here for somethin. Plenty time they pickin up color peoples for nothing, but, mister, you gotta be here for somethin.”

“I really don’t know,” the old man said glumly. “I was just standing in a crowd in front of D. H. Holmes.”

“And you lif somebody wallet.”

“No, I called a policeman a name.”

“Like wha you callin him?”

“Communiss.”

“Cawmniss! Ooo-woo. If I call a po-lice a cawmniss, my ass be in Angola right now for sure. I like to call one of them mother a cawmniss, though. Like this afternoon I standin aroun in Woolsworth and some cat steal a bag of cashew nuts out the ‘Nut House’ star screaming like she been stab. Hey! The nex thing, a flo’walk grabbin me, and then a po-lice mother draggin me off. A man ain got a chance. Whoa!” His lips sucked at the cigarette. “Nobody findin them cashews on me, but that po-lice still draggin me off. I think that flo’walk a cawmniss. Mean motherfucker.”

The old man cleared his throat and played with his cards.

“They probly let you go,” the sunglasses said. “Me, they probly gimma a little talk think it scare me, even though they know I ain got them cashews. They probly try to prove I got them nuts. They probly buy a bag, slip it in my pocket. Woolsworth probly try to send me up for life.”

The Negro seemed quite resigned and blew out a new cloud of blue smoke that enveloped him and the old man and the little cards. Then he said to himself, “I wonder who lif them nuts. Probly that flo’walk hisself.”

A policeman summoned the old man up to the desk in the center of the room where a sergeant was seated. The patrolman who had arrested him was standing there.

“What’s your name?” the sergeant asked the old man.

“Claude Robichaux,” he answered and put his little cards on the desk before the sergeant.