Jefferson    Ex Stick-Up Man

Drift on back to Johnny's, Part Eight or to Part One or to Part Two or to Part Three or to Part Four or to Part Six

Johnny pays me good, he pays the best, but when it's quittin' time I go home. I got a family, and I need sleep. So I don't hang around after work unless there's something in the air, some practical reason.

I'm not what you'd call all business, but unlike Johnny I have discipline in my life. Listen, I don't live like he does. I've done it. It's the way I used to live, when I pulled fourteen armed robberies and got away with every one, but I just stopped. There came a day when I wanted something else.

Most of the people who come in here are white. I've never had much trouble with white people, only the ones that are stone dumb. Most of them don't know how to loosen up, or dance, but here in Johnny's it's nearly always loose. Loose, but watched over by Johnny and me.

Johnny's got the right attitude about how to run a club. It's simple. You create a certain true atmosphere, and people who like it will come. You make it an extension of your self.

Plus, Johnny can dance. So can Rousseau. They take a woman and dance every night, at least two or three times. I do it too. Near the bar. Out on that little floor. Different kinds of dancing for different moods. Everybody in here dances sooner or later. It's the music.

The worst time in here was the year we got discovered by the beautiful people. They were a flock of pigeons with cash and platinum cards. Johnny made cash hand over fist, and he tossed it around, too.

New York magazine did a spread on us -- full-page photo of Johnny in his glory. We got six paragraphs in The New Yorker's Talk of the Town column. And Vogue. Johnny was in Vogue wearing a Borsalino and standing beside his Viper.

What a show. White boys from Wall Street and SoHo came in here wearing worsted wool zoot suits. Any little infraction, Johnny or I would throw them out. We were making up rules on the spot. I sent one of them through the door because he had a cello case supposedly concealing his Thompson.

"No cello cases," I said.

All their women tried to look like Wanda.

But Johnny learned a lesson, and it won't happen again.

Pop it here to drift back to Johnny's, Part Eight or to Part One or here for Part Two or here for Part Three or here for Part Four or here to rocket back to Part Six