Chicago Hustle (2 page)

He held her back from his shirt front, feeling compassion in spite of himself. “I know, baby … I know. But you know how it is, thangs'll be movin' so fast sometimes that I don't really have too much of a chance, sometimes … to be doin' what I really would like to be doin'.”

Dee Dee nodded agreeably, knowing that it was all bullshit, designed to ease his exit and give her something to hang onto for next time. He kissed her and pulled himself out of her embrace a few throbs away from getting back into bed with her.

“I gotta get on my job, baby …” he whispered with a definite move and stood up.

She blew a kiss at him and cocked her right leg lasciviously as he turned to take one last look at her from the bedroom door.

“See you later on,” he signed to her and retrieved his hat from the sofa on his way out.

Closing the door softly, he almost sighhhed … beautiful, I got away clean.

He checked his watch … 4:18 p.m. … groovy … just enough time.

He froze off the attention given him by his friends as he walked quickly past the Stickhall.

“Awww, you don't know us now, huh?… now that you done gone 'n got yo' nuts off.”

He felt no need to reply to Brotherman's comment, what was ahead was more important and he was already wheeling his attention around to it.

On the El heading downtown, his consciousness flickered, as it often did when he was going to run a game, from the game to what he had just finished doing.

He smiled at his reflection in the El window. What could be better preparation for anything than fuckin'?

He held his hand out in front of him slightly, studied it and smiled again. Pussy calms you down.

Dee Dee Wilson. We could've really been into something if she hadn't got herself all fucked up. First, one accident, then another accident and finally, some fool says “Ahhh luvvv you, baybeee,” and you off to the races again, minus his love and support because after he had gotten his “luvvv” thang satisfied, he was off to new fields. Yeahhh, Dee Dee, I can understand you trying to hang around my neck, if I had had as many bitches break my heart, as you've had dudes, I think I'd try to hang on too.

Elijah snorted and sucked phlegm down his throat. Damn … wish I had some more coke … that was some nice girl Monkeydude had. Maybe Nick'll have some.

He popped up at his stop, pleased to see the early birds, the fifteen minute to five guys, rushing onto the El, anxious to get back to their necks of the woods.

Yeahhh, the more the merrier.

He took the steps to the streets two at a time, feeling full, masculine, hip, happy, in a way, to be on his job.

He strolled the block to the first place he and Nick the Geech planned to do, studying the shapely bodies passing him by, the square clothes draped on the flabby shapes of the white businessmen.

Nick stood off to one side of the entrance to the department store, checking his watch four times as Elijah walked up. “Dahm!” he muttered in his sometimes thicker 'n than other times Jamaican accent, “it's aboat time,” as they pushed their way through a traffic hour, five o'clock horde of consumers. They separated after entering, two brown-skinned, medium tall, slender, well-dressed black men.

They moved in a counterclockwise fashion, casually taking note of the most crowded sales places, where the clerk salesperson was catching hell.

With a simple glance, to indicate where the action was going to come off, Elijah eased into the small group herded around a harassed salesgirl at the lingerie counter.

He picked up two pairs of sheer black panties and a pair of panty hose, edged up into the small crowd around the salesgirl and, insistently but pleasantly, held his purchases out to be charged for.

Nick, meanwhile, taking note of Elijah's buy, picked the same set of items and circled to the opposite side of the counter, pushing himself belligerently in front of several ladies who were doing some pushing themselves. He timed his impatience to the moment the salesgirl touched Elijah's purchases.

“Goddamn, Miss! Am I gon' t' ever get waited on?! I been tryin' t' get your attention for the last ten minutes! What're you tryin' to do? Ignore me or something?”

The women around Nick bristled up. They were middle-aged white ladies and afraid of black men, period … and didn't want to create a scene.

The salesgirl, younger and more positive about her attitudes, chewed on one corner of Nick's ass with a brief, cold look and gave him some advice.

“Hold your water, Mister, I only have two hands and no pots.”

Elijah thanked her as she gave him his change from a ten-dollar bill, smiling at her sympathetically and at the putdown Nick had just received.

“Now sir, what can I do for you?” Elijah heard the salesgirl say as he drifted away.

“He wasn't furst, I wuz,” a little, wizened black lady spoke up and handed her items over to the salesgirl.

Elijah circled the first floor of the store, waiting for Nick to get waited on, checked out the prices on a number of items he planned to cop in the near future.

Finally, noting that Nick had been waited on, he headed for the men's room. Nick walked in seconds later, mumbling obscenities. “Mahnnn, ah'm tellin' ya, these bitches really irri-tate me left nut at times!”

They exchanged packages, each of them stapled with the sales ticket at the top, a clever way to prevent thieves from putting more into the bag than they had paid for.

Elijah squeaked, Flip Wilson-Geraldine style, “He wasn't furst, I wuz,” as he made his exit.

Nick the Geech smiled at his partner's humor and leaned close to the mirror. Dahm blackheads! Gotta start gettin' facials more often.

Elijah strode through the store with a straight look about him, as though he were on his way to right a wrong.

He waited patiently through three customers at the lingerie counter.

“Yessir?” the salesgirl smiled brightly at him, liking the hat, his pea-green see-through shirt, despite the smudge on the front, the whole, hip, black fashion effect of him. “May I help you? Back for more goodies?”

Elijah pushed back his urge to smile at where she was coming from … like, this was sho' 'nuff business and no time to be jivin'.

“I hope you can help me, Miss … I gave you a twenty-dollar bill a few minutes ago, for these items.” He held the bag up as though he were doing a mirror league medicine show bit.

Nick smiled at the performance from the far side of the store.

The salesgirl frowned, remembering him and his ten-dollar bill. It had been a ten-dollar bill, she was certain of it. “May I see your sales receipt, sir?” she asked coldly.

Elijah took a deep breath … time for the moment of lie. “My sales receipt!” he nutted up on her, loudly. “My sales receipt! For what!? I'm tellin' you I gave you a twenty and you only gave me change for a ten and you wanna try to put me through a lotta changes. What kinda place is this?!”

Nick frowned, looking around in the pocketbook section. It was always a drag when attention had to be called to the performance, lots of times the salesgirl would just simply give it up after a little hesitation … this was one of those assholes trying to protect the company's money. Nick frowned again at the salesgirl. Bitch should be caned. And smiled at Elijah waving his arms around like a nut.

Several people, nice, clean-cut, home-made types, stopped to watch the angry black man.

“I shouldn't have to show my receipt … I'm an honest man, I work for my money! I'm tellin' you, I didn't get my right change. You didn't …”

The salesgirl, suspecting some kind of game, but not hip to what it might be, cut him off.

“Sir, I'll have to call the floor manager.”

“Hey! I don't care who you call! All I want is the rest of my change! I work too hard for my money to be giving it away.”

The salesgirl ignored him and signaled to a small penguin-shaped figure of a man with a flower in his buttonhole strolling by with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Mr. Morrison … uh, Mr. Morrison! Counter four, please.”

Elijah stood slightly off to one side, his nostrils flared out. Morrison looked at Elijah with the look he reserved for Chicanos, Blacks, Indians and other obviously inferior people.

“Yes, what is it, Mizz Jenkins?”

Elijah caught Nick's worried expression from the corner of his eyes, and signaled to him with a positive gesture that everything was going good.

“Mr. Morrison, this gentleman purchased some items a short time ago …”

Elijah held his package up as Exhibit A.

“And he says I gave him the wrong change.”

Morrison, an old hand at making adjustments, took out a small white pad. “Yes?” he lisped.

“Well … well, I'm almost certain I gave him the right change. He gave me a ten-dollar bill, his items were $4.85, and I gave him the right change!” she closed off aggressively.

“Look, Miss … I told you. Now if I've told you once, I've told you a dozen times, you didn't …”

Morrison, a smug expression on his narrow face, held up both shapely hands pontifically.

“May I see your sales receipt, sir?”

Elijah glared at the salesgirl and pretended that he was about to search his pockets.

Morrison, patronizing the childlike mentality of the forgetful black, reached over delicately and took the store's brown bag, with the sales receipt stapled to the top, out of Elijah's hand. “May I?”

Morrison quickly noted that the sales receipt showed that the change for a twenty should have been given.

“I'm afraid you have made a misthake, Mizz Jenkins.” He passed the bag over for her to look at, vaguely pissed because of the hassle it had caused.

“I … I'm sorry, Mr. Morrison, I could've sworn …”

Elijah, the gallant winner, winked and rapped.

“Ain't no big thang. I just knew I had paid you with a twenty because … hahhhahhahh … it was the only one I had. My woman almost ripped it out of my hand yesterday, wantin' it for something else, so I had to whip a li'l piece a tape across the split.”

The salesgirl pursed her lips skeptically, anxious to go and take care of other customers. So maybe he was right, but she still didn't believe it.

Morrison, feeling the need to assert his power, chewed on Mizz Jenkins a li'l bit.

“We're not paying you to establish store policy, Mizz Jenkins. Your job is to give our customers the best possible service. Please refund this gentleman hith proper change and make the necethary corrections on your regithter. Sorry for the inconvenience, sir.”

“Aww, like I said before,” Elijah announced grandly, “ain't no big thang.”

Nick took a deep breath as he watched the floor manager go one way, and Elijah the opposite way, after the salesgirl had counted his change out.

Nick started for the exit. Shit gets on my left nerve sometimes, or maybe I'm gettin' old.

Miss Jenkins followed Elijah's jaunty exit as she turned her attention to a waiting row of customers.

She rang the first sale up and quickly leafed through the twenty-dollar bills in her cash register drawer as she made change. The frown distorted her features painfully.

“Anything wrong, my dear?” the little old lady she was making change for asked.

“Oh, nothing, nothing,” she answered, carefully counting change out into the little old lady's hand, puzzled, puzzled, puzzled.

Elijah and Nick walked quickly to the next downtown corner, the next huge department store complex.

“Why did it take so long to get over?” Nick asked from the corner of his mouth, con style.

“I'll tell you about it later, I don't want to break my concentration now.”

Nick rolled his eyes around, expressing absolute skepticism, but who could complain? Elijah was a winner, always on his job, and you never had to worry about not gettin' into something, maybe his concentration helped.

After all, he was the one who had figured out how much you could make, just playing five stores for a li'l taste from each one of them. Say you started off with a base thirty bucks, ten to one and twenty to the other. Running the short change game, even for chump change, was likely to fill your pockets up …

Elijah had made a believer out of Nick the Geech by running the chump change-into-grand-theft-dough game down to him. “See, dig it Nick, lotsa dudes make the big moves, get busted and that's all she wrote. My way is steady and pretty goddamned well organized, if I do say so myself.

“Here's how it works: with the twenty-dollar switch, with the change comin' from it, we can wind up with between forty-five 'n seventy-five bucks for an hour's work, between the hours of five 'n six, you know, right in the middle of the rush hour … and during Christmas time 'n holidays like that … shit! we clean up. Think about it. One hour's work a week, if you only score for the minimum, that's what? Two hundred twenty-five bucks. If you come away with the maximum, that's three hundred seventy-five … now then, if you only manage to come off with the minimum for six months, half a year … well, you can see.”

Nick had seen, was seeing and working at it. It was his turn to return to the salesgirl for the change she had forgotten to give him.

She was nice as pie.

“Oh, sorry, I guess it just isn't my day.”

Nick smiled indulgently, stuffed the change into his pocket, and casually strolled past Elijah, on their way to the next one. They practically yawned their way through the last number, feeling cocky, at ease, with the practice of a string of four stings behind them.

“Dig, brother Geech, you gon' have to get your indignation thang together a li'l bit better.”

Elijah started into his critique as they filed through the cafeteria line of Bowman's in the basement, a favorite of the fast and semi-fast people on the loop track.

“How so?” Nick asked, studious lines across his forehead, beating Elijah to a choice piece of apple pie.