It also gave Marshon an early look at any troublemakers. Like the police, he profiled and was openly racist. Any young black man was suspicious, especially if he wore his pants below his hipbones, sported expensive footwear, talked as if he was rapping, and displayed an attitude. Marshon had cultivated an older clientele that didn’t cause much trouble, and could be counted upon for political support. He made it known that drug use at The Wheel was absolutely prohibited. This was a family affair. Around midnight, the parking lot out back would be another story. You could smell the weed two blocks away, but Marshon would be blind to that infringement. He was out to please everyone, if possible.
Marshon took up his position just as Ruby, a well-known local resident, stepped up to pay her fee. She was a stout middle-aged woman appropriately dressed in a red suit with lace on the lapels. She wore a broad-brimmed hat. Marshon took her hand and said, “Ruby, if you were to go to the Kentucky Derby wearing that hat, you’d outshine everyone there and get on national television, I declare.”
Ruby grabbed his neck to pull his head lower and give him a kiss on the cheek, while she inquired if he knew she now was a grandmother for the eighth time.
Next, Marshon singled out an elderly gentleman and handed him a coupon from Jake’s Original Barbecue. “Tyrone, this here coupon is good at Jake’s any day this month.”
A young black woman with short, blond-dyed hair followed Tyrone. She wore a very short skirt with a metallic sheen, black silk blouse with balloon sleeves, wide silver belt, and four-inch silver high heels. She sashayed up to Marshon and said, “What you got for me to eat, Marshon?”
Before he could answer, she strutted away, swinging her substantial behind in an exaggerated fashion that elicited cheers and wolf whistles from several in the crowd near the bar. Marshon wagged his wrist and hand as if it were on fire.
“You shouldn’t be encouraging that young woman, dressed so shamefully like that,” a small old lady wearing a worn coat covering a simple black dress told Marshon. She reached out and took his hand in her trembling hand. Marshon looked down at Naomi, rumored to be in her nineties, and an avid player of The Wheel of Fortune. “Ain’t you still going with that nice young educated woman whose father is a judge?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Marshon replied.
“Well, then, enough said.”
Marshon continued to work the crowd for a few more minutes and then walked to the center of the gambling tables. At the stroke of eight, Jemmy appeared with a wood box that originally held machine parts. Jemmy and Widja had spray-painted the word SOAP on one side, and BOX on the other.
Marshon mounted his pedestal and a collective groan swept the crowd. He smiled back. It was time for his standup routine. He looked out over the crowd, which appeared as a convention of exotic parrots given the multi-colored attire worn by both men and women. The hall was packed and the buzz of conversations had reached a significant decibel level.
Shouts erupted from the crowd waiting to get to the gaming tables, including: “Go away, Marshon.” “Fuck off, Marshon!” “We heard this shit before.” “Shut up and deal!”
Marshon smiled and used the microphone to drown out his good-natured detractors. “I know you want to hear the same old speech again! Know why, because it’s the truth and you don’t always hear the truth here in this city or neighborhood, even in church on Sunday!”
That got the intended laugh and quieted down the crowd somewhat. Marshon hurried on while he had their attention. “The Wheel is an East Side institution. It belongs to us.”
“How come you takin’ all the fuckin’ money then, Marshon?”
Marshon located his heckler and responded, “I wish, Solomon. Y’all know what I do, which is make sure we can do what we want in our own neighborhood, in our city. And, be safe doing it. Don’t need people from downtown or over in the state capital tellin’ us what we can and can’t do.” Boos. “This is a charity gambling game to benefit the VFW. You made your donation at the door and it will help support this wonderful institution that honors those men and women who have served and protected us. If you win at the tables, you decide if you want to donate additional funds to the VFW. It’s tax deductible.” That comment drew various derisive remarks. “I’m announcing a few personal donations tonight, including $200 to our local Make a Wish Foundation, $500 to the VFW college scholarship fund, and $800 to Kingston Elementary for new musical instruments. In our community, music is our soul.” He got a round of genuine applause from all in attendance. “We ain’t hypocrites here at The Wheel, like some people and politicians we could mention. You know the ones, who decided so-called legal gambling can only occur on riverboats that ain’t even boats!” Loud laughter. “Or, that only the Indians can host gambling games!” Expressions of disgust and cursing. “Besides, look at us! We’re gonna have us a rockin’ good time here tonight with our own music, the best ribs in the whole city, and the best bar on the East Side.” Loud cheers and whistles. “Later on, after y’all done eating, we’ll clear out some space in the dining room for dancing. Also, behold your neighbor in his or her finery. What you gonna see out on those riverboat casinos? Farmers in jeans and plaid shirts wearing straw hats, drinking Coors and talkin’ all that Republican bullshit?” Laughter, boos, cheers and repeated calls for the gambling to begin.
“Just one final thing. Don’t you let any troublemakers bring the law down on us, so that this is the last evening we can do this.” Contemplative silence followed that plea.
Marshon, ever the politician, knew when to step down from his soapbox, having made his points, subtle and not so subtle.
After that, it was hard to hear in the VFW hall, what with the din of talking, shouting, cursing, the bells and chirps emitted by slot machines, and the sound of ceiling exhaust fans sucking out the cigarette smoke. Over the loudspeakers, the Pointer Sisters shouted, “I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it … “
Marshon retreated to a corner of the bar, sipped Scotch, watched and waited, and secretly hoped for the evening to end soon, safely and profitably.
∞ ∞ ∞
About an hour into the evening, Jemmy tapped Richey on the shoulder as he stood in the middle of the gaming tables, where he had a panoramic view of the ongoing action. “Hey, Richey, some tall white dude wants in. I didn’t like the look of him and was askin’ questions when he mentioned your name. Says he works for you?”
Richey jockeyed for a better look and then frowned at the sight of Ace Semanski. He walked over and asked Ace, “What are you doing here?”
“Heard about the game from some guys at The Stadium. You didn’t tell me your friend, Marshon Johnson, runs gambling on the East Side.”
“It’s a charitable operation.”
“Hey, I play roulette, so I came on over and make a donation. But, they don’t seem to like the color of my skin here at the door.”
Richey debated his decision, but finally said, reluctantly, to Jemmy, “He’s okay, I know him.”
Ace put his belt, car keys, some coins and various other items into a round metal container. Before walking through the metal detector, Ace began taking off his boots, telling the security guard: “There’s this decorative steel ring on each boot. Always sets off the metal detector at the airport.”
After he walked through the metal detector, which remained silent, Ace reclaimed his belongings and put back on his boots. He wore jeans, a long-sleeved denim shirt and a padded, sleeveless blue vest.
“Good luck,” Richey said, and went back about his business.
Ace walked across the room and ordered a beer at the bar. He took the bottle and walked onto the gaming floor, where he sought out the roulette wheel. He threw a $20 bill on the roulette table and asked for five-dollar chips. He put one each on the 32, the middle twelve numbers, odd, and red. The ball came to rest on black eight and he shrugged stoically and walked away. He hadn’t accumulated much of a cash roll working the last few weeks for less than eight bucks an hour. His life was like a roule
tte wheel ball, in fact. It whirled around for a while, got off track, hit more than a few bumps, and landed in some new space. He’d been released from prison in Michigan six weeks ago and landed at Biederman’s, only because he’d ran out of gas and money on the interstate just north of the city. A 7-Eleven clerk told him the canning factory was hiring. He had been headed to California, in clear violation of his parole agreement not to leave the state of Michigan.
Ace circulated among the tables, stopping now and then to watch the action. The boisterous crowd was over eighty percent black and middle-aged. Ace grew up in the African American neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago and didn’t particularly like blacks, although he understood them. He thought of them as racists, opportunists, hustlers and show-offs.
At one craps table, a white roller wearing a dark blue suit sipped his drink and casually sent the dice tumbling onto the green felt with a practiced flick of the wrist. At an adjacent table, a black shooter in a yellow suit grinned, danced in place, all the time talking a mile-a-minute, insulting his fellow players and The Wheel, until he finally delivered the dice onto the table with a full-arm baseball windup he mitigated at the point of delivery.
Near the front entrance, a group of three individuals preparing to walk through the metal detector caught Ace’s attention. One was a fat girl in a red dress trimmed in white. She had an artificial leg. She activated the alarm and then began to complain loudly to the security guards. “I ain’t taking this leg off and hop around while you two assholes wand it! I’ll fall on my ass and break something, and then I’m gonna sue you and that motherfucker Marshon Johnson. You want to wand my leg, you do it while I’m wearing it.” She pulled up her dress to reveal red panties and overhanging fat rolls. People standing nearby seemed to view the situation either humorously, sympathetically, or with disgust. The security guard quickly swept the wand over her leg and told her to move on. Two young black males behind her walked through the metal detector without incident.
Ace went back to the bar for another beer. He then found a place from which to observe the entire room, which was relatively easy since he was six-five. He leaned against one side of a faux marble column located between the kitchen and dining area, and watched the ebb and flow of the crowd. In the prison yard, he’d developed the valuable survival tool of being able to see and evaluate individual movement within a crowd. Some people couldn’t see the trees for the forest. Sometimes, in the midst of a large group of men who were playing baseball or chess, lifting weights, or arm-wrestling, there’d be three or four guys moving with a purpose. Taking up positions for a hit. Ace had developed a keen, second sight for such movement.
Near the women’s restroom in the back, Ace again saw the fat girl in the red dress, talking to one of the guys who’d followed her through the metal detector. He was dressed in all black. She pushed herself against him, but it wasn’t flirtatious or sexual. To Ace, it looked like an exchange. Maybe drugs. Then, the one-legged girl moved away quickly, walking her awkward, unnatural gait as she passed by Ace and headed toward the front entrance. Sure enough, there was the bookend boy also dressed in black. She made a similar handoff to him.
Ace didn’t know what the girl in red had passed to her two homeboys, but he knew that security at The Wheel was flawed, especially since they lacked an x-ray machine. There were knife holsters in both of his boots and both contained expensive, well-balanced throwing knives. It occurred to him that the girl’s artificial leg might have enough room to conceal a weapon or two.
At this point, Ace had a decision to make. He could seek cover; or, he could consider this developing action an opportunity. Always the opportunist, Ace quickly made up his mind. He bent over and removed both knives from his boots. Overall, they were each about eight inches long, with the blades slightly longer than the handle. They were wider that ordinary knives of this size. Ace moved through the crowd until he was about halfway between the two boys, who had taken up positions at each end of the gaming area.
Later, Marshon and his lieutenants would speculate about their intent. Clearly, they had planned a robbery, but it was a flawed plan. Gamblers purchased chips at the gaming tables or at a central exchange. The cashiers immediately placed all cash into locked boxes. Maybe the two robbers planned to take cash and other valuables from the players; maybe they planned to steal the gambling chips. Most likely, they were just flying by the seat of their pants.
At any rate, they both pulled their nine-millimeter guns at about the same time and each fired a shot into the ceiling. The plan probably was for them to tell everyone to freeze, maybe shoot one of the security guards for effect, and keep everyone covered while the fat girl in the red dress made the rounds with a donation box.
However, it never developed to that point because simultaneously with the gunshots, Ace threw one of the knives. He’d perfected a release movement somewhat similar to a baseball pitcher throwing a knuckleball. The knife didn’t turn end-over-end as it traveled about twenty-five feet. The blade lodged in the throat of the gunman near the front door. While he dropped his gun and clawed at the blade, Ace immediately pivoted and threw the other knife at the other gunman about the same time Jemmy shot him three times.
The action occurred in less than ten seconds. As soon as they heard the gunshots, most of the players and others in the hall ducked, hit the floor or sought cover. Those close to Ace had instinctively recoiled. Now, everyone stood and began to talk and shout until it became impossible to hear any individual voice.
Ace walked toward the gunman lying on the floor near the dining area, bent over and pulled his knife from the dying man’s chest. Ace wiped the bloody blade on gunman’s shirt. As he stood up, Jemmy put the barrel of his gun to the side of Ace’s neck, while a woman inched closer and touched Ace’s arm, as if he were a Martian. She said, “I ain’t never seen anyone throw a knife like that in my whole life!”
Jemmy said, “What the fuck are you doin’?”
“Saving your ass.”
Jemmy was speechless as Ace walked toward the other downed gunman to retrieve his other knife. A small crowd followed him, voicing a cacophony of questions.
Jemmy also followed and demanded that Ace hand over the knives. Ace debated his decision briefly, but then did so, carefully, saying, “They’re sharp and they’re expensive, and I want ʾem back.”
About that time, Marshon appeared, his face flushed and etched with fear. “What the fuck happened?” he asked, looking at Jemmy and then at Ace.
“They got the guns from the one-legged girl in the red dress,” Ace replied, calmly. “I just did your job for you.”
Two of the security guards stood on each side of Marshon and looked menacingly at Ace. About half the crowd was drifting back to the gambling tables, slot machines and the bar. The other half headed for the two exits, presumably wanting to go home before the cops arrived.
“Who the hell are you?” Marshon demanded.
“Ace Semanski. I work for Richey Stanton at Biederman’s. We met Wednesday night at The Stadium. Don’t you remember?”
Marshon squinted. “Oh, yeah.”
“I just did you a big favor,” Ace said, “so I don’t appreciate you giving me a hard time, Marshon. Not only would those guys have robbed you, but there probably would have been a shoot-out. People woulda been wounded and killed. The cops called.”
Several players within hearing distance replied in the affirmative and bobbed their head for emphasis.
“Where’d you get these knives?” Jemmy asked.
“From my boots. You might wanna rethink your security operation. It ain’t for shit!”
Widja pushed through the crowd, pulling along the girl in the red dress. “This here’s Bellamay. I know her. She brought in the guns.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking’ about!” she yelled indignantly.
With genuine interest, Ace said, “How’d you get both guns in the leg?”
She quit cussing and gave him a look of utter amazement
.
In a defensive tone, Jemmy said to Marshon, “I kilt the one motherfucker back there.”
Ace snickered. “My knife went right through his heart. He was dead before you wasted three bullets on him.”
Marshon took charge. “Jemmy, get your guys back on security. There’s no one on the doors! Anybody can walk in. Take control! Widja, have someone take Bellamay to the basement. We’ll talk to her later. Check those two guys and see if they’re dead or alive. Ace, you come with me.”
Marshon walked to the dais, picked up the portable microphone and said to the crowd, “Everybody, be quiet and listen to me! It was an attempted robbery! We’ve dealt with it. It happens, you know! You accept that when you come here! It’s safe now, if you want to go back to your games. We don’t owe these boys anything other than a decent burial! There are no snitches on the East Side! That’s as big a crime as robbery! You remember that. There’s free drinks for the next hour. In addition, we’re gonna have some specials at the tables. The house will match your bet at roulette and The Wheel of Fortune. At the craps table, the house will match your bet on any combination of the number eight.”
That comment caused the crowd to begin another lively and loud debate. The flow at the doors reversed as players began to filter back into the hall, partly because the rumor mill was now operating at maximum efficiency, even outside the VFW hall. The crowd was three deep at the bar.
Widja reappeared and said, “Those boys are both dead, Marshon. We’ve already moved their bodies into the basement. What you want me to do with ʼem?”
Ace said, matter-of-factly, “My suggestion is to drop ʼem in a deep hole, a lake, or run ʼem through a wood chipper. I saw that in a movie once.”
That remark rendered everyone speechless, including Marshon, Jemmy and Widja. They all gave Ace a look that was a mixture of amazement and curiosity, as if they wondered if he was serious about the wood chipper.
The Money Game Page 4