Well, you asked me so I'll tell you.  I'm a hustler.  Nothing big time or nothing like that.  Just an ordinary  colored fellow doing the best I can with the best I've got and that's all I got to say about that. 

My daddy was a bail bondsman in Jackson, Mississippi back in the thirties thereabouts.  Big, dark-skinned man with hands the size of those heavy, iron skillets, the kind you cook cornbread in.  He looked mad most of the time but I expect that look had a purpose, see, because my daddy was a business man, you know, and he was a alright colored man.  Bailed out the coloreds when they got arrested and coloreds were always getting arrested because every week had a Saturday in it and every Saturday night, some fool was going upside some other fool's head and the white folks was calling my daddy. 

See, my daddy had a reputation.  Mostly because he made good money but like I said he was a big man and he was fair but my daddy could get mean enough to make a bull piss brown liquor or get the hell out of his way.  You putting that in the book, too?  Alright.  Don't misquote me now. 

I remember one time when Floyd Tatum was arrested for damn near beating his own brother to death.  Floyd was a white boxer with a body thick as a tree trunk and a head just as dense.  His woman, Janie Lee Tatum, cried herself sick in my mama's chest all night long 'cause she didn't have no money and couldn't get the white bail bondsman, old Jake Parsimmons, to get Floyd out.  So my daddy bailed him and when Floyd got out, damn if he didn't turn tail and jump bond.  Went all the way to Alabama.  I know you don't know much about Alabama but peckerwoods... that's white folks in Alabama... would kill a colored man for waking up on Sunday.    But my daddy went over there anyway and when he came home, he had Floyd with him.  Had to break one of Floyd's legs and knock out all his teeth but he brought old Floyd Tatum back, yes sir.  Because my daddy didn't take no stuff.

Although... he did let me down some that time.  See, I went with my daddy to take Floyd to the jailhouse and when we showed up, old Judge Crenshaw slapped a fine against my daddy for hitting a white man.  Told my daddy to be grateful that he didn't throw him in jail to boot.  I thought the least my daddy would do was raise hell with old Judge Crenshaw but my daddy wouldn't even look Crenshaw in the eyes.  Just paid his fine and we went on home.  Later on, I asked my daddy why he let Crenshaw do him like that and all my daddy said to me was, "It's the law, son," like that made everything alright.  I knew right then that something was wrong with the law.     

Now, I told you my people had money.  They could afford for me to have schooling and that's why I talk better that most of these Negroes around here.  I went to Beaumont Agriculture School to study farming.  I don't believe they had real schools for colored back then but it wouldn't have mattered anyway.  My mama, see, had this longing for me to farm this piece of land her own daddy had left her over in Tupelo.  My mama was the sweetest woman on this earth and I would do anything my mama asked so I went to Beaumont but I have to tell you.  I couldn't stay my hand at farming because I couldn't stomach the smell of cow shit.  So, I made my mama believe I got the calling.  My mama was a very religious woman and, no doubt, she wanted to believe I got the calling but it wasn't long before she realized the only thing calling me was the streets. 

Shooting pool, playing craps, living fast and sweet.  I used to hang out at Pete Henson's place 'til the rooster crowed.  Pete had a pool hall over on Sugar Creek.  All the big time gamblers and con men would come up to Pete's and there I'd be, cutting my teeth, watching all that green pile up.   

A smart player could turn as much green in one night sitting at a poker table as my daddy could make in one whole month going bail.  Look a man right in his eyes while you doing it, too.  'Course, you could lose it just as fast but that's part of the draw, see?  When you gamble you don't just play the hand, you play the man.  You start with five.  He starts with five.  And, that's the only law.  Don't have to worry about no Crenshaw law at the poker table.

Now, there were rumors when I was a boy that my daddy wasn't my 'real' daddy.  That my real daddy was a white man and that's how I come to be so yellow with a daddy so black but my mama was pretty white looking herself so ... well, I don't know.  Sometimes ... my daddy would look at me funny... like he was trying to see right inside me ... and I could hear the rumors in his head like he was saying them out loud.  I didn't get mad though because I'm a man, too.  My running partners.  They knew better than to repeat that shit but Jimmy Lee...  this white boy I met in Pete's?  We used to hustle pocket change together, you know, Three Card Monty, 10/20 Switch, pente ante con, like that.  Well, Jimmy Lee opened up his trash mouth one day and said the wrong thing.  Said I looked enough like the Willises to be one of 'em and, didn't my daddy do business with old man Willis?  Laughed like he thought he said something funny.  Naturally, I went crazy on him.  Went upside his head so fast, Jimmy Lee thought he'd been struck by lightening.  But God was not doing the striking.     

Well, I had to go.  Even my daddy didn't have that much bank and if the truth be known I couldn't wait to leave Jackson.  Get to the real cities; New York, Harlem, Chicago, Detroit.  Man, you ain't seen ugly until you've seen Detroit, Michigan in the middle of winter when traffic stops and the radiators wheeze and snort all night and you get trapped inside one of those little rooms with bare wood floors where roaches drop dead from the cold and fall off the ceiling.  I had days when a dollar wouldn't match a dime but amounted to the same thing because I didn't have either one.  But I could hustle, see, and a good hustler can talk honey-out-the-pocket.  Anybody's pocket, if you get my drift.  I shot pool, played jack-legged poker, ran scam.  Hell, I talked my way from a poor man's prayer to a rich man's  Hallelujah.  Yes sir. 

Hustling, see, is like making love to a woman.  You got to know where to touch a woman, which spots will tickle and which spots will burn because when the fire starts you don't want to be standing there with your mouth open and no water in your hose.  Then you got to know when to let up.  So the fire don't die out. 

It's the same with a mark.  You got to set him up real slow whether it's poker, pool or wise-crack con.  You got to make him want it.  Make him want it so bad that by the time he thinks he got it then realizes he didn't get it, you got it and gone.  I'm telling you now hustling can be good.  Damn near good as getting your jones off, knowing you're smart enough to talk a man into giving you something he wants to keep, something he knows he ought to keep and there he is, white, black, yellow or brown, giving it to you with a smile, be it his money or his woman. 

That's how I met my wife, Virie.  Met her in Chicago and never will forget the first time I saw her.  Flame red hair wrapped around a shining black face.  She had this tiny black mole on the left side of her cheek right over some sho 'nuff ruby-red lips.  That woman was the prettiest thing I'd seen since I looked into my own mama's face and they didn't come no prettier than my mama, just darker.  Virie used to be a pinup-girl for the colored boys during the war but she was never what you would call a patriot.  Virie was a sporting woman.  We called them playgirls back then and Virie didn't play unless the money played first. 

She belonged to a Mexican named Two Peppers.  I had heard about her before she ever hit the strip because a hustler has got to know faces and places so he don't get tripped up by one and can get lost in the other.  Word on the street was Virie was too much pepper for Two Peppers to handle.

Then she'd drop that fine ass in his lap, plop two plump titties in his face and before long, the square is drooling.  Making puppy eyes, listening to Virie's song and dance about how she's been trying to get away from her dumb daddy because he don't know how to take care of business only she can't get enough money at one time to buy him out.  That's the hook, see.  There's not a white man alive don't think he can take care of business better than a colored man.  Naturally, the square gives Virie all the money she loses in the game and however many bills it takes to buy out her dumb daddy then the sucker sits back ...fat, fed, and grinning... waiting for Virie to come and be his personal ho.

So, now I'm interested because Virie was not your everyday ho.  But, I cool my heels because I know Virie has got to get lost.  Give the mark time to cool and when enough time has passed, I send Cripple Dave over to Virie's hotel to tell her she ought to lose that lame she called a man and come on and be with a real man, namely me.   

Alright.   I'm back in Little Cicero's.  Sipping on a scotch and soda,  smoking a Pall Mall cigarette cool as you please when I see Virie's reflection come onto the bar mirror.  She had on one of those sequinny red dresses with no straps on it.  Red foxtail fur slung over her shoulder trailing about twenty feet in back of her.  She was lit up like Christmas and looking like a hundred dollar bill in the Land of Ones.  Well, she slipped up behind me and pressed into my back with the only part of her holding that dress up. I almost fell off my barstool but I had to maintain.  Then, she put one hand on my shoulder and turned me around to face her while slipping the other hand down between two fat, chocolate mounds that watered my mouth.  Slowly, she pulled out a huge roll of bills with one-triple-zero showing on top.  She waved those bills under my nose like she was waving a bouquet of sweet smelling flowers.  Then, in a voice as smooth as the scotch I was drinking, she said, "Real men don't send messenger boys."  And, without nary another blink, she strutted out of that bar like she was Queen Damn Sheba. 

Naturally, I had to be her man.  Not because she made my dick hard.  Any good looking woman with titties and a fresh ass can hard-up a soft dick but Virie made every move count and in my book that made Virie a woman worth having.

Now, I knew Two Peppers would be mad as a cockeyed rooster 'bout me pulling Virie.  And, the man didn't get his name for being overly fond of chili peppers.  Two Peppers carried two snub nosed, custom designed pistols that broke a bullet in seven pieces when it fired and was guaranteed to pepper your ass.  I also knew I had to make good on whatever Virie heard about me because Virie was not the kind of woman to jump into a cold pond when she could soak in a hot tub, if you get my drift.  And, I was not the kind of man to get shot full of holes over no woman.  I knew I had to play Two Pep right. 

Okay.  I set him up in a skin game.  That's a fast money card game most square folks don't know nothing about.  Naturally, I fix the game so I win all Two Pep's money and I talk shit all through the night about how I got my Mojo working for me.

There's not a hustler in the world don't believe in a good luck Mojo.  Naturally, Two Pep begs me to show him mine.  I show him a 3 carat piece of well-cut glass with a bright red spot in the center.  I tell him it's a real rock with real blood in it, my blood.  Naturally, Two Pep has to have one so... I tell him to get three rocks about the size of mine and meet me on the West Side of Chicago where I introduce him to Sweet Hannah, the best little Mojo hustler New Orleans ever sent north. 

Hannah has her place all spooked up and shit and she takes two rocks as her pay for the Mojo.  This is important, see.  Only a mark thinks he can get something for nothing.  If a hustler doesn't have to pay?  A hustler will not play.