With a weary shake of the head, his eyes glittering with anger, Rufus said, "Hogey's gonna go in with Lombardi. As a partner. I been offered the same deal."

"Which is what?"

"Black Sal gets twenty-five percent."

"For doin' what?"

"For doin' nothin'?" Rufus squeezed the piece of cornbread in his hand and yellow fragments of it popped from his sudden fist like teeth. "Hunky bastards. Why should I?"

Johnson shrugged. "Make a counter offer, why don't you? Offer 'em ten percent."

"Why the fuck should I?"

"They got the power, man. They got City Hall sewed up tighter than Dick's hatband. They got all them white cops in their pocket and more tally torpedoes than Carter's got pills."

"What the hell am I payin' you for?"

Johnson looked at him coldly. "I give you what protection I can. I can't protect you against the will of God and I can't protect you against this."

Rufus was almost sputtering now. "What the hell does Councilman Raney have to say about it?"

"He says you better play along."

"Shit, man! They got Raney in their pocket, too? Shit."

This disparagement of Councilman Eustice Raney made Johnson bristle. Raney was Johnson's political godfather. The two men had both served in the 372nd Regiment in the Great War; every man in the 372nd was black, and every one had either been killed or wounded in the Argonne in September 1918. Raney, a successful lawyer who became the city's first Negro assistant police prosecutor in 1924, had been good to Johnson and other survivors of the 372nd.

"You know better than that," Johnson said, in sharp reply to Murphy questioning the councilman's loyalty. "But Raney's one of three black sailors sittin' in a stone white boat. They got some pull in the Republican party, 'cause of the colored vote, yes; but do you really think three colored councilmen can do doodley-squat when the Mayfield Road mob is in the game?"