Numbers (8 page)

Jenny peered on, watching the outcome. The house took one dollar off every ten dollars in the pot. Jenny had already accumulated a good amount of proceeds in a big pickle jar she had in the kitchen. She just hoped she could keep enough players at each table so she wouldn’t have to play and bet back her earnings.

Mac hesitated for a brief moment, then called out and put up twenty dollars. Now Sybil lifted her hole card (the facedown card) slightly, peeking at it, tilting her head almost to table level, contemplating her next move as she waited on Carl. She looked around the table at Mac’s cards and Carl’s cards briefly, then back
at hers with no expression. Crispy Carl didn’t say a word, just pitched his twenty dollars into the pot.

Sybil still didn’t give anything away by way of expression. “I call,” she said, following Crispy Carl.

“It’s getting good now,” said Crispy Carl adjusting himself in his seat, crossing his left leg over his right. The move caused his pants leg to rise up, showing his black, red, and white argyle socks.

All the time the hand was taking place, Numbers did not count cards as he would usually do when he played other card games. The game had him entranced. He did attempt to guess what everyone’s fifth card would be. Numbers drifted off in his mind. He could hear the grown-ups talking, laughing, and taunting one another, but it was all background noise. He started going over in his mind what cards were played, less the cards that were face-down that he couldn’t see. When he snapped back to the here and now, he had an idea of what cards might play. He speculated that the next three cards would be a 10, a 7, and a 4.

Mac was eager to deal. He was finished counting the money he had left in front of him and was ready for the fifth card. Counting out his money was a tactic to pilfer some confidence from the other players. It was in vain.

“Ya dumb blind ass can’t count, but whatever you have there is mine after this,” Crispy Carl said, clowning him.

“Uh-uh, that’s my cash,” Sybil joined in.

Numbers giggled at their banter; so did his mother and a few others.

“Here we go.” Mac ignored them and prepared to deal the fifth and final card.

There was a big ruckus going on at the other table, but no one at this table cared. This was the payoff card.

Mac dealt to Crispy Carl; it was a 10. His final hand minus the
hole card was a pair of 10’s high, a king, and a queen. Before he caught the additional 10, he had a straight working.

Numbers was one for one on his guess.

The next card went to Sybil. It was an 8. She now had a pair of 8s, a queen, and a jack faceup. She smirked.

Numbers was one for two.

Mac dealt himself a 4 of hearts. He now displayed a pair of 4’s, an ace, and a jack.

Numbers was two for three.
Not bad,
he thought to himself.

The bid was on Crispy Carl with the pair of 10s leading. Crispy Carl took a look at his bottom card, then calmly sipped his elixir, fingered his money, and said, “Check”; he didn’t bet any money. “Now you know that shit’s not gonna fly over here,” Sybil said, betting twenty dollars.

Mac was eager; Sybil barely got her money into the pot before he raised the bet ten dollars. Crispy Carl called the thirty dollars. Sybil smirked even more, her face saying,
I got them.
She raised the bet twenty. Mac called the bet and then Crispy Carl. Each player had bet fifty on this card alone. It was surely a hefty pot, the best one of the night, Jenny calculated.

“Well, Sybil, we paid to see your hand, let’s see it,” Crispy Carl directed.

Sybil had a pair of 8’s, a queen, and a jack, and she turned up her hole card, which was an 8. “Three eights, three of a kind, you tricks!” she shouted, slapping the card on the table.

“Fuck!” Mac screamed, revealing his hole card: an ace. He had a pair of aces and a pair of 4’s. Two pair couldn’t beat three of a kind on its best day.

Sybil celebrated with a swallow of her beer. “Well, that’s it, Jenny, count up my winnings for me and take the house cut,” she bragged. “Crispy’s ass probably got a pair of queens to go with the tens, he finished, too.”

“Not quite, Cruella De Vil. Hold your horses,” Crispy Carl said, making fun of the gray streaks in her hair. “Numbers, come and turn this card up for me,” he requested. Numbers moved in, reached and picked up the card. Before he touched it, he knew what it was. He turned it up slowly so all could see, and it was just what he’d guessed it would be: a 10. Crispy Carl won the hand with a higher three of a kind than Sybil’s.

“Come to Daddy.” Crispy Carl swept the money toward him after Jenny took the house cut.

Sybil sulked in her chair, pissed off.

Wow, I need to learn how to play this game,
Numbers thought.

Crispy Carl taught Numbers how to hustle Pitty Pat, poker, Tunk, and craps, but there was something about the game of C-Lo that drew Numbers in. Though he knew he didn’t have any real control of the dice, he felt comfortable in this element. This game was more about confidence, your gift for gab and beating the odds. Numbers loved to listen to the rollers talk smack, as Mr. Carl called it. When he watched Crispy Carl shoot dice, Numbers would soak up all of his lyrics.

Crispy Carl and Numbers emerged from the number spot that had since been converted into the corner bodega divvying up the money from the bolita they hit straight for two dollars. The bet netted them $128. People were still betting
numbers in the back of the store. This business was too lucrative for Louie to give up, so he camouflaged it with the grocery store out front and continued to pay off the powers that be.

A dice game was just getting started on the Cumberland side of the store. Archie, a six-foot-four brown brother from the projects, had the bank. Archie was once an NBA prospect, but he never went to class when he was in college and eventually fell victim to the streets.

“The bank is thirty dollars,” he called out, shaking the three dice in his right hand above his head near his ear. “What you got, old man?” he asked Silver, a brown-skinned old-school cat whose hair had turned white in his teens due to some type of gene disorder.

“I got five of that, young’un,” Silver shouted, placing a five dollar bill under his left foot.

“Ten,” a younger guy called.

“I got the bank stopped,” Crispy Carl said.

“Okay. Bet goes to the bank stopper. All other bets are dead! I done caught me a sucker.” Archie beamed a picture-perfect smile.

Carl leaned over to Numbers. “Numbers, give me fifteen and go half with me on the bank.”

Numbers was still new to the game, but he trusted Crispy Carl’s hustle.

“Crispy, you finished already? You bumming money off shorty doo-wop? Pay up,” Archie taunted, rolling the dice onto the uneven concrete pavement. The dice came to a stop: 4-3-4.

“Oh, that lady Tracy is hard to beat.”
Tracy
was slang for “three.” “She got you quaking in them fake gators.” Archie tried his hand at intimidating Crispy Carl.

Before Crispy Carl moved toward the dice, he unbuttoned his single-breasted olive-green gabardine jacket. Then he kneeled
down, raising his left pant leg to reveal beige, olive, and brown argyle socks. His shoes weren’t new, but they shined like they were fresh out the box. He’d barely picked up all three dice off the ground when he let them slide back out of his hand proclaiming, “Show ’em how a bottom bitch roll.”

The dice fell into line: 4 … 4 … 4. Trips—instant winner.

“Yeah, baby, pimpin’ ain’t easy, but it’s a living,” he said while taking the money from Archie’s hand. “My bank. The bank is sixty dollars. You see, Numbers, you gotta talk to ya dice and let ’em know you in control, that’s the key. If you don’t mean it”—he fingered the dice—“ya dice will know and they’ll break you!”

Archie peeled some bills from his pocket, “That’s some bullshit, Crispy. I just broke your ass right here last week.” He laughed. “I got the bank stopped. Now what?”

Carl squatted down, this time schooling the dice (flipping them over in front of him without really rolling them). “That’s another thing,” he said, finally picking up the dice and shaking them. “You gotta have a short memory for your losses and disappointments.” He tossed out the dice. “Make that money for your pimp, bitches!” he hollered as if he was preaching a sermon. 1 … 6 …

“Ace, motherfucker!” Archie screamed, waiting for the last chuck to stop spinning. Archie needed it to fall on 6 to give him the win without having to shoot. Crispy Carl, on the other hand, needed the rock to stop on an ace. The last cube spun for a long time before finally coming to a halt.

… 1. “Head-crack baby, pay up.” Crispy Carl showed no expression waiting for Archie to pay.

Archie was huffing, puffing, and cursing under his breath as he flung the money into Crispy Carl’s hand. With his back to everyone so no one would know what his stash looked like, he pulled out his wallet and peeled off a few more bills.

“This is the final lesson, Numbers,” Crispy Carl said, grinning. “The bank’s a buck twenty.” Carl called out what the bank was worth to whoever was listening.

The cipher began calling out their bets. Silver bet twenty, the other young dude wagered fifty, and another young dude in the cipher put down thirty.

“That’s what I’m talking ’bout … twenty dollars open. Who want it?” Crispy asked, schooling the dice again.

“I got the whole one hundred and twenty dollars right here.” Archie slammed the money down at his feet.

“Like I said, Numbers”—Crispy Carl stopped schooling the dice for a moment and turned to Numbers from his squatting position—“the last thing you need to know, when you got ’em down, is to keep ’em there.” With a smile, he started shaking the dice extra elaborately before letting them roll from his fingers. “Bitches, get that trick!” he shouted at the dice.

They landed: 4 … 6 … and 5.

“That’s right, four, five, and six. C-Lo, baby, the name of the game!” Crispy Carl yelled excitedly to everyone in earshot.

“Damn!” Archie kicked the money at his feet. It was evident it was his last. He stood there mumbling to himself, pissed off and broke. Not a good combination.

“Now we cut the bank,” he told Numbers, schooling him on the finer points of the game. “When you roll C-Lo you can do that.”

Numbers watched Crispy Carl make the bank forty. He passed the other two hundred off to Numbers to hold. By the time Crispy Carl was finished ten minutes later, he’d made an additional three hundred bucks. When all was said and done, Numbers and Crispy Carl walked away with $250 each.

“That’s how you finish,” Crispy Carl instructed.

Numbers ran home and gave most of the money to his mother.

Broz, Numbers, Jayquan, Tee, Jarvis, and Waketta were huddled on the rooftop staircase landing in building 79 playing Pitty Pat. Broz sat on the top step closest to the handrail; Waketta sat on the other side closest to the wall. Tee stood on the stairs in between them. Jayquan and Numbers kneeled and squatted on the landing. Jarvis leaned on the wall behind Numbers, eating junk food, as usual waiting for his opportunity to get into the game.

Tee was up about fifteen to twenty dollars, but to hear him tell it he was on the verge of pawning his baby brother just to stay in the game for the next hand. That’s how Tee was—he’d lie about his winnings and exaggerate his losses because he didn’t want anyone trying to bum off him. The
funny thing was, every time he went broke, he’d be the first one with his hand out asking for a loan. He was always begging, but when he had it, you couldn’t get a red nickel out of him.

Fat Boy Broz, on the other hand, loved to brag and boast if he was winning. He didn’t care if he broke one of them or not, he wouldn’t take the chance of lending anyone money to stay in the game and possibly turn the tables and leave him broke.

Waketta was one of the few girls who hung around the boys and gambled. She was fifteen years old, like the rest of them. Well developed up top, with a nice round booty, Waketta was loud and ghetto, just like her momma. She lived on the ninth floor with her mother and little sister. Her mother, Dixie, was always getting into it with some man’s girlfriend or wife. Dixie was promiscuous. She drank too much and talked even more. Waketta had two things in common with her mother: a killer body and a loud mouth.