Pimp (29 page)

“In the meantime I could figure an angle to get your balls outta the hot sand. All you gotta do is call your girls. Tell ’em you want Uncle Sweet to look out for ’em for a coupla weeks. It’s easy, Pal.”

I just lay there for a long moment feeling myself tremble. If he had been lovable Henry, my stepfather, saying he hated me, I couldn’t have felt worse. True, I had conquered the fast track, but that sucker inside me I couldn’t kill was hurting the hell out of me. I looked at him. Somehow I kept my voice steady and the pain outta my eyes.

I said, “Jeez Sweet, I’d have a bitch of a time trying to cop another friend like you. I feel like bawling just to think about it. I ran down my life story to you. You know I love you like I loved Henry. Maybe I love you, Sweet, more than I love Mama.

“Don’t think I’m a chump square when I say it. Sweet, you taught me to be cold-hearted. You’re the only person on Earth who could hurt me. The jokers in the street call me Iceberg.

“They’d laugh their asses off if they knew I was weak for a stud I love like a father. Sweet please don’t hip them I got a sucker weakness. Don’t ever do anything to croak my love for you. Sweet, if you ever do, they’ll all get hip.

“I’ll maybe fall apart and run through the streets wailing like a crazy bitch. Sweet, I’ll wait and think for a day or so. Poison can’t steal Chris. I’ll kick things around in my skull. Maybe you should be looking out for the stable.

The whole time I was talking, he had run his index fingers along the sword edges of his pant’s creases. His gray eyes had found the suitcases and cluttered room fascinating works of art. He swallowed air and tented his bejeweled fingers under his first chin.

He said, “’Berg, this joint is wrecking your skull. Sweet would chop his right arm off before he’d cross you. You’re the only friend I got, sweetheart. Shit, Honey, you could have a hundred whores and I could be whoreless. I’d ask you to give me a bitch. I wouldn’t try to steal no whore from you, Darling. You need anything? I gotta split. I got two whores I gotta pick up downtown.”

I said, “No Sweet, I don’t need anything. I’ll rap to you tomorrow. If you hear anything, wire me fast. I’m sure glad you dropped by.”

I heard his heavy feet pounding down the linoleum in the hall. They stopped. I heard them getting louder. He was coming back. I looked around the suitcase where he had been sitting. I didn’t see anything he had left. He thumped the door. I opened it. He had Miss Peaches in his arms. He was flashing the first gold-toothed grin I’d ever seen on his face.

He said, “’Berg I forgot to tell you. They found old Pretty Preston frozen stiff in the alley back of the Roost. The poor bastard had wrapped himself in newspapers. The Greek fired him a week ago for staying near the fire and not pulling marks on the sidewalk. The drunk half-white bastard thought the newspapers could stand off ten-below-zero.”

He turned and walked down the hall. I shut the door and fell across the bed. At three Chris called. I told her to stay away until my next phony long-distance call to the girls. I told her Poison might try to tail her, and maybe the F.B.I.

She told me they didn’t have a chance. She went in front doors of a half-dozen buildings then out the back doors before she came to me. When she got to my place she’d come in the back door and walk
through the front door. She’d go through the alley then through the back door again before she came to my door.

Maybe they couldn’t keep a tail on her. I told her to stay away to play safe. I told her not to call from the pad. It would be a bitch if one of the girls picked up an extension.

Sweet called the next morning at one
A.M
. The broad next door answered the phone. She knocked on my door. I slipped on an overcoat and walked into the hall. It felt like zero out there.

He said, “’Berg, I just got the wire. Poison stole your young bitch, Fay. I hope she ain’t hip to anything that can cross you. ‘Berg,’ you gotta make some moves. I’ll keep my horns to the wire.”

He hung up. I was in trouble. I went and got back in bed.

I thought, “Poison’s gonna quiz that stinking bitch. She’s gonna spill that ‘queer scratch’ con I’ve been playing. To tighten his game on her he’s gonna wake her to the con. He’s gonna tell her I’m hiding out in the city.

“It’s a good thing Chris is in on the con. I could blow whoreless in an hour if she wasn’t. I need her to take the rest of the stable underground. Maybe I shoulda split outta town when I first got hot. I gotta move the rest of the stable fast.

“Poison is a cinch to pull their coats to the con I played. It’s the ace to play for a fast cop of maybe the other three. They’ll be salty as hell with me if he gets a chance to wake ’em up. Hurry Chris and call!”

At three Chris called. I ran to the phone in my pajamas. I almost froze to death talking to her.

She said, “Daddy, I had to call you from home. Poison just left with Fay and her clothes. The black bastard has wised up the whole family to that game we played. Dot, Rose, and Penny are larcenied to the gills. They’re crying and packing their clothes. I can’t hold them. They hate me. Poison came into my bedroom before he split. He acted and rapped like I was already his whore. If I’d had a pistol I’d have croaked the strong bastard.

“He said, ‘Well Miss Bitch, your Nigger is finished. You’re the only whore he’s got left. I know a fast pretty bitch like you don’t want no pimp you gotta solo for. With my Fay cop, I got eight whores. I’m on the inside of this game. None of my whores take falls. I’m top pimp in town.

“‘You’re the best whore in town. There ain’t nobody but me you can take for your man. Bitch, come to me and you can be queen boss bitch of the eight-whore stable. Get your domes and get outta here with me and Fay. Iceberg is going to the federal joint.’”

She said, “Daddy, what happens now? Maybe Poison will come back and gorilla me. I’m so upset, I know any minute I’ll scream myself into a padded cell.”

The zero drafts blasting through the gap under the back door kept me from passing out. I felt cold sweat dripping down my shaking legs. My throat was having dry convulsions. My voice sounded like it came from an echo chamber.

I stammered, “Chris, don’t lose your cool. This is Iceberg remember? Like always I’ll put an angle together. Now listen carefully. Pack your things. Go down and get the building flunky. Pay him to take you to a hotel near the garage where the Hog is stashed.

“Check in and leave your things. Go to the Hog. Drive back and pick up your stuff. Go downtown and check into a hotel. Drive the Hog back and stash it back in the garage. Take an El train back to your hotel. Call me then.”

I went back and washed my face in cold water. I looked in the mirror. I looked like I had on a Halloween fright mask. I sure didn’t look a bit like a fresh-faced kid any more. The whites of my oncebright eyes were blood-shot and faded. The deep black circles looked like some tricky practical joker had conned me to ram inked spyglasses against the sockets.

I started looking for a yellow. I had to put a damper on my nerves. I had a little cocaine. I didn’t need racing. I needed some skull pacifying. I was out of yellows.

Somewhere in one of the suitcases I had a notebook. The phone number of a connection no farther than fifteen blocks away was in it. Maybe he had yellows. If not, what the hell, I’d cop a cap of H. One cap couldn’t hook me. Horse was a cinch to kick the jitters outta my skull.

It would be two hours at least before Chris would call back. I found his number. I called him. I told him, in code, I’d pick up six caps within the hour.

I had a fat roll of scratch in a sock pinned inside the sleeve of a trench coat. I started to take it with me. I stuck it in my benny pocket. It bulged like a grapefruit. I’d be back before long. I pinned it back inside the sleeve.

I had close to sixty-eight hundred slats stashed there. I fished out three saw bucks. I slipped pants and a shirt over my pajamas. I put on shoes and a heavy benny.

I was in a helluva hurry. I pulled the door shut. I heard the spring-latch lock. Less than five minutes after I had talked to the peddler, I was on the way. It was four
A.M
. when I left. The wintry winds almost snatched my lid off my skull. It felt good though. It was the first time I’d walked in the fresh air for months.

A bleak overcast blotting out the sky. Slipping and sliding on the icy sidewalks, I finally got to the connection. He lived on the second floor over an all-night chili joint. The joint was crowded. There was no one on the sidewalk. I went up the rickety stairs and copped five caps of H. He put the caps into the cellophane shell from a cigarette pack. He twisted the end and balled the package.

I took it and went down the stairs to the street. I had the sizzle in my hand. I started to walk by the chili spot on my way home. Two neatly dressed brown skin studs were standing on the sidewalk in front of the joint. Its bright lights floodlighted the sidewalk. It was like walking a show-up stage at a police station.

From the side vent in my eye I saw them pinning me. They
stiffened. One of them reached toward his chest. I looked back. He was showing his buddy a small square of paper. I started walking fast away from them.

I remembered the sizzle. I downed it and walked faster. I knew they couldn’t see in the darkness that I had dropped it. I glanced over my shoulder. I saw a rod in the hand of the taller one as they ran toward me. I ran.

They were bellowing, “Halt! Police! Halt! Stop or we’ll shoot!”

I had reached the corner and was halfway around it. I saw a fourman squad of white detectives. They were cruising toward me in a police car. They threw a blinding spotlight on me. I froze. They all looked at me. I saw a shotgun muzzle ease out of a fast-lowering rear side window.

The two rollers chasing me skidded around the corner. In a way I was glad to see them. Those rollers in the cruiser probably hadn’t croaked anybody in a week. I really didn’t want them to break their luck on me.

The two held onto me like I was Sutton. The white rollers shut off the spotlight and moved slowly down the street past us. The shorter one had handcuffed my hands behind me. He showed his buddy the picture. They looked up at me.

The taller one said, “Yeah, it’s the bastard all right. Look at the eyes.”

They searched me head to toe. They saw the lone saw buck I had. They hustled me back around the corner. We passed a skinny black joker standing on the corner. He nodded at me. I recognized him. He was in my building. I had sent him for groceries and change for the phone a dozen times.

I got a fast glimpse of the picture as the roller slipped it back inside his coat pocket. It was me. I remembered the pearl-gray sharkskin suit and black shirt. Top and I had been together four years ago. The two white rollers who had hit on us hated Top because he had white whores. They wouldn’t take a pay off. They booked us on
suspicion of homicide and mugged us. Top and I were out in less than two hours. It was the one and only time I had been taken in on the fast track.

They put me into the rear seat of an unmarked Chevy. They were in the front seat as the tall one drove away.

I said, “Gentlemen, it’s not gonna put any scratch in your mitts to take me in. Let me give you the price of a couple fine vines to cut me loose.”

Slim said, “Shit, you couldn’t cop one bullshit vine in a hock shop with the scratch you’re carrying.”

I said, “I got more scratch at my pad. Knowing I’m Iceberg you can believe that, can’t you? Just run me by there, I’ll get it, lay a coupla C’s apiece on you and fade away. How about it?”

Slim and Shorty looked at each other.

Shorty said, “You think we’re suckers? You got a federal warrant for white slavery outstanding. We didn’t hear a word you said about that chicken shit four C’s.”

I said, “All right, so we’re all like black brothers. The bad difference is the F.B.I. wants to lynch your brother in court. You gonna throw me to the white folks for hanging? I’ll give you two grand apiece to beat the F.B.I. outta their pound of black meat.”

Slim said, “Where’s your pad?”

I thought fast. It had been a mistake to crack about my pad. If I told them they could take my whole stash and still bust me or croak me. I was a fugitive. They might even come back to the stash after they took me in. I had the key to the kitchenette in my pocket. I tested them.

I said, “You know Sweet Jones. He’s a friend of mine. I can get four G’s from him five minutes after we get to his place. I can’t take you to my pad. I got a close friend there. Suppose after we got there you’d change your minds about the deal. You’d have to book him for harboring me.”

Slim said, “We can’t cut you loose. We couldn’t do it if you gave us forty G’s. I just remembered you were in that spotlight back there. One of those downtown men could have made you. Sorry brother, but what the hell? Federal joints ain’t bad to pull a bit in. Thanks for popping up like you did. You make a great pinch for us.”

T
hey locked me up in central jail. At dawn a jail trusty brought a basket of bologna sandwiches down the line of cells. A moment later another trusty brought a gigantic kettle of black stinking chicory. I passed up the delicacies.

The tiny cell was too small for two men. Eight of us were in it. I was lying on the concrete floor. I was using my rolled up benny as a pillow. My lid shielded my eyes from the bright bare bulb in the corridor.

My cellmates were bums and junkies. Two of them were getting sick. They were puking all over. The bums were stinking almost as bad as the junkies. A drunk lying beside me dug his fingernails into his scalp and crotch over and over. He scratched his back against the floor. He had to be lousy. It was rough going for a pimp all right.

I thought, “If someone had told me a year ago I’d be back in a shit-house I’d have thought he was nuts. Christ! I hope nothing happens to Chris. She’s the only link to the outside I can trust to get my clothes and scratch.

“I know after she calls and can’t get me at the pad she’ll check out all the shit-houses. It’s a good thing I’m not in the federal lockup at county jail. Here she can grease a mitt and see me. I hope she makes it before the U. S. Marshal shows to move me.”