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to sing, but Kenyatta cut him off.

    "Why don't you leave some of your cash here, Red? You don't need all that money in the streets with you at one time."
    It seemed as if he might comply with Kenyatta's wishes as he stood there rocking back and forth, but the alcohol got the best of him. "Hey, baby boy, why you come down on me like that? I ain't no kid, you know. I can well take care of myself, brother."
    This is the kind of shit that blows everything up in a man's face, Kenyatta thought coldly as he watched the man reel.
    "I can take care of myself," Red repeated. Then he reached inside his shirt and came out with a pistol. "See, Ken, I ain't going in the goddamn street without some kind of help, brother. I wish a motherfucker would try and take something away from me." He waved the gun at the couple sitting in the chairs.
    Kenyatta gritted his teeth. He knew exactly what he was going to have to do. There was no sense in wasting his time trying to talk the man out of his drunken plans. Kenyatta knew from past experience that, once Red started to drink, he was bullheaded and hard to reason with. Even trying to talk him out of the pistol would be a senseless effort.
    Kenyatta hated what he was about to do. He tried to make his mind a blank and stifle any thoughts, because he knew he'd be arguing with himself. Who the hell was he to try to play God? The man had earned the money, so why not let him go out and spend it any way he wanted to? His answer to himself was that the man would probably end up shooting somebody. He would have to disarm him.

    Kenyatta raised up out of the chair and set Betty down on her feet. "Come on, bro," he said, friendly like, "I'll walk you to the front door. I got something I want to talk to you about anyway."
    Red grinned at him foolishly, then started to put the gun away. The punch came at him swiftly. It was short and explosive. If Red had been just a little bit more sober, he would have ducked it. As it was, he almost rolled away from it, revealing how well Kenyatta had trained his people. The blow caught Red on the jaw. He dropped and slowly crumpled up on the floor, knocked completely out.
    "I knew it," Charles said from where he sat. "I couldn't believe you were going to let him go in the streets like that."
    "I hated to do it," Kenyatta explained to the people watching, "but we got too much to lose to allow him to run around in the streets drunk. If the police get him, no telling what he might say while under the influence of that shit, so it's better all the way around if he stays right here until he's sober."
    Kenyatta stopped, reached down, and removed the pistol from the drunken man's coat pocket.
    "That's a funky thing to do," Betty said as her whiskey began to talk for her. "Shit, what did Red do to deserve all that?" She glared around angrily. "I don't care if all the rest of these niggers are scared of you, Kenyatta, but I'm sure in the hell not." She belched loudly.

    "Shit, Kenyatta," Zeke said from where he sat on the couch nursing his small glass of wine, "looks like you might have another one to go."
    "Okay, yeah," she snarled as she staggered around the table to get a better look at Zeke. "Why don't you kill-crazy bastards just kill me, huh? Wouldn't that be the easy way out for all of you? Hell, I know too much for you to let me go on living, don't I? So just shoot me, right here in the top of the head," she said, pointing out the spot.
    Her words had brought a snap of fear to most of the people in the room. They were too involved in the robbery to have someone come up with a loose lip. They glanced up at Kenyatta to see how he was taking his woman's words. This could turn into one hell of a dilemma if Kenyatta didn't get her mind right.
    He raised his hand, asking for silence. "I know what most of you are thinkin', but forget it. This is the first time any of you have ever seen her drunk, and I promise you it will be the last," he said, not realizing that he was making a