“If you’re including me, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” she said.

“What’s unusual about you, dear,” Mister Baron said cattily.

“How much?” the white cop asked.

Mister Baron hesitated, appraising the cop. “Five hundred,” he offered tentatively.

“Well, what about the old lady, if she ain’t dead,” Sassafras put in. “What you going to give her?”

“Let her lump it,” Mister Baron said brutally.

“Put these two squares in the car,” the white cop said.

One of the colored cops took Sassafras by the arm and steered her to the Buick.

Roman went docilely, still holding his hands shoulder-high. He looked like a joker who’s bet his fortune on a sure thing and lost.

The cop hadn’t troubled to search him. He didn’t search him now. “Get in the back,” he ordered.

Roman began to plead. “If you-all will give me just one more chance-”

The cop cut him off. “I ain’t your mammy.”

Roman got in and sat dejectedly, shoulders drooping, head so bowed his chin rested on his chest. Sassafras came in from the other side. She took one look at him and burst out crying.

The cops ignored them and turned toward Mister Baron who stood confronting the white cop in the beam from the Cadillac’s lamps.

“Douse those lights,” the white cop said.

A colored cop walked over and turned off the lights.

The white cop cased the street. On the south side, old-fashioned residences with high stone steps, which had been converted into rooming houses or cut up into kitchenettes, were squeezed between apartment houses built for the overflowing white population in the 1920’s, all taken over now by Ham’s and Hagar’s children.