Johnson swallowed a slimy bite of okra, savoring it before saying, "This is business. Your hospitality is 'preciated. But first names ain't for business."

Rufus sighed. His muddy brown eyes were bloodshot. He wiped a piece of cornbread through his black-eyed peas and munched it almost absently, saying, with his mouth full, "So it's a business call, then?"

"You know why I asked to see you."

"It ain't payday, is it?"

"That unkind, Mr. Murphy. And uncalled for."

Rufus shook his head; he seemed sad. "You're right. Sure I know why you're here. But maybe I'm not a worryin' man like you is, Toussaint."

"I'm not worried, Mr. Murphy. It ain't my feet that's to the fire."

The features of Rufus's face clenched like a fist. "The great 'Two-Gun' Toussaint, afraid of some goddamn dago pissant bastards… it ain't like you."

Johnson didn't flinch at the insult. He said, "I ain't afraid. And I ain't worried. But you ought to be."

Last week, a quartet of white hoodlums, led by Little Angelo Scalise himself, broke up a Murphy-backed policy drawing, brandishing revolvers, confiscating the small drum-shaped container and its seventy-eight consecutively numbered balls, terrorizing the handful of hired help and the hundred or more patrons.

"Tell your fat boss," Little Angelo had said, "he can get his equipment back by seein' Black Sal."

Black Sal was white. Or dago white, anyway: Salvatore Lombardi, one of the big boys of the Mayfield Road mob, who controlled bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution everywhere in Cleveland but the black ghetto.

"So fuckin' what?" Rufus said, talking through the fog of the steaming dishes between them. "Little Angelo and his tally goons been making ugly noises for months. Nothing come of it. This ain't their side of town. They don't understand it."

"They don't got to understand nothin'. All they got to do is get rid of you and hire some willin' niggers."