“Not exactly. I just need some money bad. Or it’s going to look as if I stole some.”
“Ah, yes, I understand,” Reverend Gaines said. “Let us pray, Jackson.”
“Yes, sir, that’s what I want.”
They knelt side by side on the carpeted floor. Reverend Gaines did the praying.
“Lord, help this brother to overcome his difficulties.”
“Amen,” Jackson said.
“Help him to get the money he needs by honest means.”
“Amen.”
“Help his woman find her husband so she can get her divorce and live righteously.”
“Amen.”
“Bless all the poor sinners in Harlem who find themselves having these many difficulties with women and money.”
“Amen.”
Reverend Gaines’s housekeeper knocked at the door and stuck her head inside.
“Dinner is ready, Reverend,” she said. “Mrs. Gaines has already sat down.”
Reverend Gaines said, “Amen.”
All Jackson could do was echo, “Amen.”
“The Lord helps those who help themselves, Brother Jackson,” Reverend Gaines said, hurrying off to dinner.
Jackson felt a lot better. His panic had passed and he began thinking with his head instead of his feet. The main thing was to have the Lord on his side. He had begun to think the Lord had quit him.
He caught a taxi on Seventh Avenue, rode down to 125th Street and turned over to the Last Word, a shoe-shine parlor and record shop at the corner of Eighth Avenue.
He put ninety dollars on numbers in the night house, playing five dollars on each. He played the money row, lucky lady, happy days, true love, sun gonna shine, gold, silver, diamonds, dollars and whiskey. Then to be on the safe side he also played jail house, death row, lady come back, two-timing woman, pile of rocks, dark days and trouble. He wasn’t taking any chances.
While he was putting in his numbers behind blown-up pictures of Bach and Beethoven, the girl selling the real stuff played rock-and-roll records on request, and the shoe-shine boys were beating out the rhythm with their shine cloths. Jackson’s feet took out with the beat, cutting out the steps, as though they didn’t know about the trouble in his head.
Suddenly Jackson began feeling lucky. He gave up on the hope of finding Hank. He stopped worrying about Imabelle. He felt as though he could throw four fours in a row.
“Man, you know one thing, I feel good,” he said to the shoe-shine boy.
“A good feeling is a sign of death, Daddy-o,” the boy said.
Jackson put his faith in the Lord and headed for the dice game upstairs on 126th Street, around the corner.
3
Jackson climbed three flights of stairs and rapped on a red door in a brightly lit hall.
A metal disk moved from a round peephole. Jackson couldn’t see the face, but the lookout saw him.
The door opened. Jackson went into an ordinary kitchen.
“You want to roll ’em or roll with ’em?” the lookout asked.
“Roll ’em,” Jackson said.
The lookout searched him, took his fingernail knife and put it on the pantry shelf alongside several man-killing knives and hard-shooting pistols.
“How can I hurt anybody with that?” Jackson protested.
“You can jab out their eyes.”
“The blade ain’t long enough to go through the eyelid.”
“Don’t argue, man, just go down to the last door to the right,” the lookout said, leaning against the door frame.
There were three loose nails in the door casing. By pressing them the lookout could blink the lights in the parlor, bedrooms, and dice room. One blink for a new customer, two for the law.
Another lookout opened the door from the inside of the dice room, closed and locked it behind Jackson.
There was a billiard table in the center of the room, and a rack holding billiard balls and cue sticks on one wall. The shooters were jammed about the table beneath a glare of light from a green-shaded drop lamp. The stick man stood on one side of the table, handling the dice and bets. Across from him sat the rack man on a high stool, changing greenbacks into silver dollars and banking the cuts. He cut a quarter on all bets up to five dollars, and fifty cents on bets over five dollars.
The bookies sat at each end of the table. A squat, bald-headed, brown-skinned man called Stack of Dollars sat at one end; a gray-haired white man called Abie the Jew sat at the other. Stack of Dollars bet the dice to lose; took any bet to win. Abie the Jew bet the dice to win or lose, barring box cars and snake eyes.
It was the biggest standing crap game in Harlem.
Jackson knew all the famous shooters by sight. They were celebrities in Harlem. Red Horse, Four-Four and Coots were professional gamblers; Sweet Wine, Rock Candy, Chink and Beauty were pimps; Doc Henderson was a dentist; Mister Foot was a numbers banker.
Red Horse was shooting. He shook the number eight bird’s eye dice loosely in his left hand, rolled them with his right hand. The dice rolled evenly down the green velvet cover, jumped the dog chain stretched across the middle of the table like two steeplechasers in a dead heat, came to a stop on four and three.
“Four-trey, the country way,” the stick man sang, raking in the dice. “Seven! The loser!”
Rock Candy reached for the money in the pot. Stack of Dollars raked in his bets. Abie took some, paid some.
“You goin’ to buck ’em?” the stick man asked.
Red Horse shook his head. He could pay a dollar for three more rolls.
“Next good shooter,” the stick man sang and looked at Jackson. “What you shoot, short-black-and-fat?”
“Ten bucks.”
Jackson threw a ten-dollar bill and fifty cents into the circle. Red Horse covered it. The bettors got down, win and lose, in the books. The stick man threw the dice to Jackson, who caught the dice, held them in his cupped hand close to his mouth and talked to them.
“Just get me out of this trouble and I ain’t goin’ to ask for no more.” He crossed himself, then shook the dice to get them hot.
“Turn ’em loose, Reverend,” the stick man said. “They ain’t titties and you ain’t no baby. Let ’em run wild in the big corral.”
Jackson turned them loose. They hopped across the green like scared jackrabbits, jumped the dog chain like frisky kangaroos, romped toward Abie’s field-cloth like locoed steers, got tired and rested on six and five.
“Natural eleven!” the stick man sang. “Eleven from heaven. The winner!”
Jackson let his money ride, threw another natural for the twenty; then crapped out for the forty with snake-eyes. He shot ten again, threw seven, let the twenty ride, threw another seven, shot the forty, and crapped out again. He was twenty dollars loser. He wiped the sweat from his face and head, took off his overcoat, put it with his hat on the coat rack, loosened the double-breasted jacket of his black hard-finished suit, and said to the dice, “Dice, I beg you with tears in my eyes as big as watermelons.”
He shot ten again, rapped three times in a row, and asked the stick man to change the dice.
“These don’t know me,” he said.
The stick man put in some black-eyed number eight dice that were stone cold. Jackson warmed them in his crotch, and threw four naturals in a row. He had eighty dollars in the pot. He took down the fifty dollars he had lost and shot the thirty. He caught a four and jumped it, took down another fifty, and shot ten.
“Jealous man can’t gamble, scared man can’t win,” the stick man crooned.
The bettors got off Jackson to win and bet him to lose. He caught six and sevened out.
“Shooter for the game,” the stick man sang. “The more you put down the more you pick up.”