Every Man a King: A King Oliver Novel

by Walter Mosley

“How you doin’, Detective Oliver?” he greeted. “Have a seat.” “You know I haven’t been a cop for nearly fifteen years,” I said as I settled. “Once a cop…” he insinuated on an airy smile. Then: “What you got in the satchel?” It was a slender blue briefcase I’d found in the blue bedroom. I laid the case on Moroccan tile, then opened it to reveal 250 shiny silver disks. “Oh my God,” Lamont said, his eyes alight with the promise of treasure. “You got the cards?” I asked him. “Blackjack?” “Just what I had in mind.” “Loretta,” the luckster called out. “Yeah, baby?” “Bring me out a hundred ones.” “Okay.” “There’s more than twice that here,” I said. “I see,” he assured me. From somewhere in the folds of the housecoat, my friend brought out a blue deck of Bicycle Standard playing cards. Mr. Charles’s face glistened with the fever of gambling. Somehow he managed to shuffle the deck using the good hand and the infirm one. Blackjack. It was the first word of an ancient incantation that sometimes allowed a poor man or woman to dream about deliverance. Lamont grinned at those cards.

“Wherever you got poor people, there’s gonna be black skins somewhere.”