“Shit,” he said, “nigger like me got to have something slow him down, else whitey’d shoot him ’fore he could take over the world. Say I’m right, Country. Say it. ’Cause it’s so and y’ know it.”

Problem was, a habit like Jessie had—and his habit was like the rest of him, large—got expensive, and even though he cleared more tips than any man at the Hotel Tulsa, it didn’t mean much because tips were pooled and then dealt out evenly to each man at the end of a shift. And even though he was running numbers for the Deacon and that was most definitely a paying proposition, the runners getting two cents on every dollar the customers lost and Greenwood customers lost about as much as they played and they played at a fearsome rate, Jessie still couldn’t keep up by playing straight.

So he skimmed.

The way running numbers worked in Deacon Broscious’s town was straight simple: ain’t no such thing as credit. You wanted to put a dime on the number, you paid the runner eleven cents before he left your house, the extra penny to cover the vig. You played for four bits, you paid fifty-five. And so on.

Deacon Broscious didn’t believe in chasing down country niggers for their money after they’d lost, just couldn’t see the sense in that. He had real collectors for real debt, he couldn’t bother fucking up niggers’ limbs for pennies. Those pennies, though, you added it up and you could fill some mail bags with it, boy, could fill a barn come those special days when folks thought luck was in the air.

Since the runners carried that cash around with them, it stood to reason that Deacon Broscious had to pick boys he trusted, but the Deacon didn’t get to be the Deacon by trusting anybody, so Luther had always assumed he was being watched. Not every run, mind you, just every third or so. He’d never actually seen someone doing the watching, but it sure couldn’t hurt matters none to work from that assumption.

Jessie said, “You give Deacon too much credit, boy. Man can’t have eyes everywhere. ’Sides, even if he did, those eyes are human, too. They can’t tell if you went into the house and just Daddy played or if Mama and Grandpa and Uncle Jim all played, too. And you sure don’t pocket all four of them dollars. But if you pocket one? Who’s the wiser? God? Maybe if He’s looking. But the Deacon ain’t God.”

He surely wasn’t that. He was some other thing.

Jessie took a shot at the six ball and missed it clean. He gave Luther a lazy shrug. His buttery eyes told Luther he’d been hitting the spike again, probably in the alley while Luther’d used the bathroom a while back.

Luther sank the twelve.

Jessie gripped his stick to keep him up, then felt behind him for his chair. When he was sure he’d found it and centered it under his ass, he lowered himself into it and smacked his lips, tried to get some wet into that big tongue of his.