Prince Thomas

Prince Thomas is an enterprising Memphis bar owner whose sociable, publicity-seeking manner and loyalty to Rudy Baylor coexist with a business life shadowed by allegations of gambling, cash skimming, and criminal connections. Through Yogi’s, he becomes both Rudy’s longtime employer and an important source of practical help; through his association with Bruiser Stone, he is also drawn into the federal investigation that forces him to flee.

Identity and Yogi’s

Prince owns Yogi’s, a student hangout a short walk from Memphis State University, and has operated it for years. The bar’s blue-and-gray décor, team pennants, and photographs of sports figures make it a gathering place for students to talk, laugh, flirt, and drink. Its appeal is deliberately ordinary: onionburgers, inexpensive beer, and long hours spent around the television. During Monday Night Football, pitchers of light beer cost a dollar; at other events, they cost two.

He is an energetic entrepreneur who enjoys seeing his photograph in newspapers and his face on television. He arranges pub crawls and T-shirt contests, and has petitioned the city to let establishments like his stay open all night. The city has sued him over various alleged violations, a kind of public contest that he appears to relish. He also tries to organize campaigns to legalize different vices. Public attention is not an incidental by-product of his work: Prince actively seeks it, even when the attention comes from conflict with local authorities.

At Yogi’s, he prefers to work the front of the house. He welcomes customers, steers young women to booths, flirts, and sometimes makes a spectacle of himself. He also sits near the big-screen television to wager on sports. Baseball is a favorite: early in the season, he is already betting on the Atlanta Braves to reach the World Series, regardless of their opponents or circumstances. His wagers can extend to small details of a game, and Rudy sees him collect money from customers after bets on which player will hit the first home run. Prince’s presence at the bar is thus part hospitality, part performance, and part gambling.

The workplace is informal. Employees largely set their own hours, keep their own tips, and run the bar without close supervision. Prince’s general instructions are practical: keep beer available at the front and ground beef in the kitchen. The loose arrangement helps make the establishment function smoothly, while also giving Rudy room to work around his studies. Prince expects bartenders to have an occasional drink, and Rudy can take a beer from the cooler while tending the bar. Sports, drinking, and wagering are woven into the ordinary routines of the business.

Rudy works for Prince for three years as a bartender and waiter, earning five dollars an hour for about twenty hours a week. The job offers modest pay and small tips, but it accommodates his exams and gives him a steady foothold while he studies law. When graduation approaches without a legal job in sight, Rudy worries that leaving student life will turn him from a struggling student into a casualty of the profession. His attachment to Yogi’s is therefore practical as well as personal: it is the workplace that has supported him while his prospects remain uncertain.

Beneath the bar’s casual operation, Rudy suspects a more deliberate financial arrangement. He estimates that Prince takes at least two thousand dollars a week from the receipts and believes Yogi’s is used to launder money and report an annual loss for tax purposes. He describes Prince’s office as a secure, windowless room below the kitchen, reached through concealed doors and a hidden staircase, where Prince meets associates. These are Rudy’s conclusions about the business, not independently established findings in the account; the narrative places them alongside the rumors and public allegations that surround Prince.

Bruiser Stone and the Federal Investigation

Prince’s closest business and personal association is with Bruiser Stone, his old high-school friend from South Memphis. Their partnership is described as complementary: Prince serves as the public-facing operator, while Bruiser handles legal and strategic matters. The account links the two to concealed cash dealings and alleged payments to politicians and police; these are presented as part of the narrator’s understanding of their operations, not as findings established through a trial. Bruiser, a lawyer with a reputation for questionable ethics, has also represented Prince in gambling cases, where juries failed to reach verdicts.

The prospect of working for Bruiser becomes real when Rudy, newly unemployed after the Lake firm’s fire and under police suspicion, turns to Prince for help. Prince takes Rudy to Bruiser, who agrees to make calls on his behalf and advises him to keep a low profile. Prince then presses Bruiser to hire Rudy. The proposed arrangement offers a monthly draw against fees Rudy must generate, with part of those fees going to the firm and part to Bruiser. Rudy is uneasy about the financially risky terms, but his precarious position makes it difficult to refuse outright. Prince’s intervention shows his loyalty to a longtime employee, while also drawing Rudy deeper into the circle around his friend.

That circle becomes the target of a federal investigation. Newspaper coverage identifies Bruiser and Prince, under the name Bennie Thomas, in connection with topless clubs and alleged corruption; the reporting also describes Bruiser as a possible federal target. After agents raid their offices, indictments accuse the two men and others in a wide-ranging case. The authorities seize Yogi’s, identify it as Prince’s headquarters, and report that they found no cash there. Prince and Bruiser are both missing, and investigators believe they have left the area.

Rudy does not know where Prince has gone. He hopes his friend is safe, while recognizing that the allegations surrounding him are serious. Later, Deck tells Rudy that Bruiser contacted him after the flight and asked for help recovering cash left behind in Memphis. Deck believes Prince is still with Bruiser, but cannot confirm either man’s location or the details of the request. Rudy refuses to help retrieve the money, judging that the plan could expose them to arrest. Prince’s disappearance thus leaves his friendship with Rudy intact in feeling, but entangles Rudy’s new firm in the practical risks of the fugitives’ unresolved affairs.

Help Offered in Rudy’s Financial Crisis

When Rudy’s debts press toward court action, Prince offers to lend him money. Rudy declines because borrowing would not resolve the larger problem, and he does not tell Prince how uncertain his legal future looks. Instead, after explaining his predicament, Rudy accepts cash wages for his work at Yogi’s, with no employment records for creditors to garnish. Prince approves of the arrangement partly because it fits his own preference for cash and avoiding taxes. His help is therefore personal, but it also reflects the informal, legally dubious economy surrounding the bar.

Prince assumes that Rudy will soon become a prosperous young lawyer and expects the loan would eventually be repaid from that success. Rudy cannot bring himself to explain that he may remain at the bar for some time. When he later receives a legal job, he shares the news with Prince, who responds with a drunken embrace. Rudy asks to keep working weekends until the bar exam, and Prince agrees. The exchange gives their association a measure of warmth beyond employment: Prince helps Rudy through an immediate financial bind, while Rudy’s departure is eased by the promise that he can remain connected to the place and its owner.

Secrecy, Reputation, and Flight

Prince’s hidden office offers a private counterpoint to the sociable barroom persona. Reached through unmarked doors and a concealed staircase beneath the kitchen, it is windowless and covered with photographs of him beside local politicians and framed newspaper clippings. The clippings record a recurring sequence of suspicion, accusation, indictment, arrest, and trial, followed each time by acquittal. Prince makes a display of that record, turning public scrutiny into another form of publicity even as the concealed room keeps his business meetings out of sight.

His daily habits reinforce the divide between the visible proprietor and the guarded operator. After Yogi’s closes, usually around two in the morning, he rides home in the back of his Cadillac; his longtime driver, Firestone, takes the wheel. Prince returns to his office around eleven, where he treats his hangover with painkillers and mineral water before turning to rum and tonic later in the day. He avoids outdoor activities and spends vacations in Las Vegas casinos. These details make his world seem deliberately enclosed, organized around the bar, the hidden office, and gambling.

Secrecy shapes even his dealings with allies. When Prince calls Bruiser to arrange legal help for Rudy Baylor, he speaks in clipped phrases, as though assuming that the telephone may be monitored. Later, Deck reports that Bruiser contacted him after leaving Memphis and directed him to return, claiming federal agents had followed him. Bruiser’s request concerned cash left behind and the possibility that Rudy and Deck might help recover it; the precise amount, location, and terms remain unknown. Rudy declines to participate, recognizing that the proposal could bring criminal exposure. Prince’s disappearance therefore leaves more than an empty bar: it leaves his friends to distinguish loyalty from involvement in a scheme whose details they cannot verify.