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survive it. Many doubted such people even existed.
    Gunner knew firsthand that they did.
    He had been at the Acey Deuce Bar the last night Barber Jack—whose real name was Johnny Frerotte—made an appearance there. It was nine years ago now, back when J.T. Tennell, the South-Central bar’s original owner and bartender, was still around to manage the conduct of his patrons like a short-tempered prison warden. J.T. had never cared for Frerotte in the first place, never really liked having his kind around, but the squat giant with the fancy knife rarely visited the Deuce, and always managed to behave himself when he did, so the barkeep had little excuse not to tolerate his business.
    On this night Frerotte had been alone, standing at the bar instead of sitting there for fear a stool might fail to bear his weight. He was smoking his customary cigar, a Cuban blend as long and fat as the leg of a chair, and was drinking Johnnie Walker Black, neat, while his eyes rolled over the near-empty house like those of an angry policeman. Gunner sat in a booth with his cousin Del Curry at the opposite end of the room, trying to pretend it didn’t bother him to have Frerotte’s gaze washing over him like that. A broad-shouldered black man named Adam Cowens and his date, a heavy-set sister wearing an unconvincing wig and blatantly false eyelashes, were the only other customers in sight. They sat farther down the bar to Frerotte’s right, whispering various come-on lines into each other’s ear, laughing and giggling like two kids at the movies. Cowens seemed not to notice the avaricious looks Frerotte kept giving his woman, but Gunner had no such problem, even from a distance.
    J.T. noticed them, too. Standing behind the bar directly in front of Frerotte, watching him like he was the only living soul in the house, the big bartender could smell the blood about to flow as if it were already in evidence. His instincts told him to show Frerotte to the door, step in on him now before he could do something irreversible, but he chose instead to give the man the benefit of the doubt, worried that he might be reacting to something that wasn’t really there.
    It was a decision J.T. would regret for the remainder of his life.
    Cowens left his woman to go to the bathroom, and Frerotte took advantage of his absence to eye his lady in earnest, all but licking his lips and rubbing his palms together as he did so. Cowens’s friend, meanwhile, just sat there, doing a masterful job of ignoring his very presence in the room. Without turning her head to one side or the other, she slipped a cigarette into the right side of her mouth and began to rummage around in her purse for something to light it with. Frerotte never hesitated; he lumbered over to her, thumbing a gold-tone lighter to life, and waited for her to make use of the proffered flame.
    “Here you go, little lady,” the fair-skinned giant said.
    The woman with the bad wig looked at him, thought for a moment about turning him away, then tilted her head toward his lighter to accept his invitation.
    That was when Cowens reappeared.
    “What the hell is this?” he asked. Directing the question at Frerotte, and not his friend.
    Gunner sat up in his seat and wondered if Cowens had any idea who Frerotte was.
    “Sister needed a light, I was giving her one,” Frerotte said calmly, his shoulders lifting once in a tiny shrug. He was even smiling to show the man how innocent it all was.
    “She ask you for a light?” Cowens asked.
    “No. You always wait for a lady to ask before you give her somethin’?”
    J.T. started moving toward the pair, said, “All right, all right, chill out a minute.”
    “He was just lighting my cigarette, Adam, that’s all,” the woman said. “Don’t make a thing out of it, please.”
    “Fatboy’s the one makin’ a thing out of somethin’,” Cowens said. “Ain’t that right, fatboy?”
    “I said that’s enough!” J.T. bellowed.
    “I am fat, that’s true,”