Pimp (10 page)

On the sidewalk she handed me the key to her yellow thirty-six Ford. I was lucky. I had been taught to drive the laundry truck back in the joint. The Ford’s motor sang a fine tune. It wasn’t a pimp’s “wheels,” but it sure would make the trip to the city track.

I drove to her pad. On the way she played on me. She was setting me up for the Georgia. That lizard thought my ear was a speedway. It did a hundred laps inside it. I was still green. I shouldn’t have let her touch me.

Her pad was a trap for suckers all right. She had pasted luminous white stars on the hotel room’s blue ceiling. There was one blue light. It glowed sexily from behind a three-foot plaster copy of Rodin’s “The Kiss.”

There was a mirror over the bed. There were mirrors on the walls
flanking the bed. There was a polar-bear rug gleaming whitely in front of a blue chaise lounge.

I sat on the lounge. She flipped on the portable record player. Ellington rippled out “Mood Indigo.”

She slipped into a cell-sized bathroom. Its door was half shut. The peke was digging a washcloth into her armpits and cat. She was nude. She sure was panting to swindle me out of my youth. I wondered if and where she had stashed that roll of scratch.

She came out belly dancing to the “Indigo” sex booster. She was a runt Watusi princess. Her curvy black body had the sheen of seal skin. I had one bitch of a time remembering the dialogue that covered this kind of a situation.

What had the pimps in the joint said: “You gotta back up from them fabulous pussys. You gotta make like you don’t have a swipe. You gotta keep your mind on the scratch.”

“Stay cold and brutal. Cop your scratch first. Don’t let ’em Georgia you. They’ll laugh at you. They’ll cut you loose like a trick after they’ve flim-flammed you. Your scratch cop is the only way to put a hook in their stinking asses.”

She danced toward the head of the bed. She stooped over and raised the edge of the red carpet. Her rear end swayed to the “Indigo.” It was grinning at me. It was theatre in the round for sure.

She danced toward me. She had two thin reefers in her hand. That box at the side of the bed had rejected and “Indigo” was encoring.

She stood between my legs. Even through the trouser cloth I could feel the hot dampness of her outer thighs. The inner surface of my kneecaps tingled under the heat.

She quivered and rolled her jet satin belly under my nose. Her humming of the “Indigo” was low and throaty. She sure qualified as the package the pimps had warned about. My twenty-one month cherry was aching to chunk out.

She took a lighter off the cocktail table. She ran the sticks in and out of her mouth to get an even burn. She lit them and handed me one.

She said, “Daddy, this is light green pot from chili gut country. It will make us mellow. Why don’t you take your clothes off?”

I took a deep pull on the stick of reefer. I looked up into the sultry dreamy eyes.

I parroted, “Bitch, don’t put shit in the game. Business always comes before pleasure in my book. I’ll take my clothes off when I know I’m taking them off with my whore. I don’t sucker for the Georgia. Jar loose from respectable scratch, Bitch.”

I had heard it verbatim in the joint. It worked like a lie detector. The motor in her belly threw a rod. Her eyes had a far away look.

She was busy tailoring the con for me. She collapsed to a yogi squat on the polar bear rug. Her moon was winking at me. Her voice was bullshit sweet.

She warbled, “Sweetheart Daddy, you already shot me down. I’m your sweet bitch. I got a C note coming from a trick with his nose open for me. He’ll spring for it tomorrow night. It’s yours, but you got to wait. Now come on and put your freak baby to bed.”

My system had been clean. The reefer was powerful. She didn’t know how desperately I needed to pimp. She couldn’t know she was the first. I couldn’t let her escape.

I had to have a whore. That reefer was sending currents of anger and hatred through me in time with “Indigo.” My mortal enemy squatted on that white rug.

I thought, “I’m going to murder this runt black bitch if she don’t give me that scratch she had in her bosom.”

Like a brute cop giving a heist man a last chance to confess, I said, “Bitch, give me that scratch you had between your tiddies.”

Her peepers ballooned in surprise and anger.

She gritted, “You’re pimping too hard skinny ass nigger. I have changed my mind. Get your lid and benny and split.”

The “Indigo” was on a torrid upbeat. Like brown-skin lightning I leaped erect from the chaise. I flung my right leg back.

I could feel the tendons at my hip socket straining. My eyes
sighted for a heart shot. My needle-toed eleven triple-A shoe rocketed toward her.

The lucky runt turned a fraction of a second in time. The leather bomb exploded into her left shoulder blade. It knocked her flat on her belly. She lay there groaning.

Then like in the dreams in the joint, I kicked her rear end until my leg cramped. Through it all she just moaned and sobbed. I was soaked in sweat. Panting, I lay on the bear-skin beside her. I thrust my mouth against her ear.

In an icy whisper I said, “Bitch, do I have to kill you to make you my whore? Get up and give me that scratch.”

She turned her head and looked into my eyes. There was no anger in them now, only fear and strange passion. Her tremulous mouth opened to speak. For a long moment nothing came out.

Then she whispered, “You got a whore Blood. Please don’t kick me any more. I’m your little dog. I’ll do anything you say. I love you, Pretty Daddy.”

Her talons stabbed into the back of my neck as she tried to suck my tongue from its roots. I could taste her salty tears.

She wobbled to the record player. She lifted a corner of it. She slid that wad of scratch from beneath it. She rejected “Indigo.” She put another platter on the turntable.

“Lady Day” was singing a sad lament. “My man don’t love me, treats me awful mean. He’s the meanest man that I ever seen.”

I was standing on the bear skin. She came toward me with the scratch in her hand. She laid it in my palm. I riffled it in a fast count. It was respectable. It had to be over two bills. I was ready to let that cherry pop.

I scooped the ninty-pound runt up into my arms. I bit her hard on the tip of her chin. I carried her to the side of the bed. I hurled her onto it. She bounced and lay there on her back. She was breathing hard. Her legs were a wide pyramid.

I got out of my clothes fast. I snatched the top sheet off. I ripped
it into four narrow strips. I tied her hands to the bed posts. I spread eagled her legs. With the longer strips, I tied her legs to the top of the springs at the sides of the bed.

She lay there a prisoner. I put her through the nerve shredding routines Pepper had taught me. She blacked out four times. She couldn’t pull back from the thrilling, awful torture.

Finally, I took a straight ride home. On the way I tried to smash the track. I reached my destination. The blast of hate was big enough to spawn a million embryo black pimps.

I untied her. We lay there in the dim blueness. The fake white stars glowed down on us. “Lady Day” still moaned her troubles.

I said, “Bitch, I want you to hump like Hell in these streets for a week. We’re going to the big track in the city. Oh yes, this week we got to get that title to the Ford changed. I don’t drive no bitch’s wheels. It’s got to be in my name, understand?”

She said, “Yes, Daddy, anything you say. Daddy, don’t get angry, but I was bullshitting about that C note trick.”

I said, “Bitch, I knew that. Don’t ever try to con me again.”

I got up and put my clothes on. I peeled a fin off the scratch and put it on the dresser.

I said, “I want you in the street at six tonight. Stay out of the bars. Work the area around Seventh and Apple.”

“I’ll come through sometime tonight. You be there when I show. If you get busted your name is Mary Jones. If you forget it I can’t raise you fast. Have some scratch whenever I show.”

I went down to the street. I got into my Ford. It roared to life. I drove toward Mama’s. I felt good. I wasn’t doing bad for a black boy just out of the joint.

I shuddered when I thought, what if I hadn’t kept my ears flapping back there in the joint? I would be a boot black or porter for the rest of my life in the high walled white world. My black whore was a cinch to get piles of white scratch from that forbidden white world.

Mama was pressing a young customer’s hair. She saw me get out
of the Ford in front of the shop. She called me inside with a waggle of the pressing comb.

She said, “I have been worried. Where have you been all night? Where did you get the pretty little car? Did you find a job?”

I said, “A friend of mine let me borrow it. Maybe he’ll sell it to me. I stayed with him all night. He’s got a hundred-and-three fever. I’ll try to find a job tomorrow.”

She said, “There’s a roast in the oven. Shut the gas off and eat. I hope, Son, you haven’t been with Pepper.”

I looked down at the nut brown, shapely girl getting her hair pressed.

I said, “Pepper? She’s too old for me. I like young pretty brownskin girls. Pepper’s too yellow for me.”

The young broad flashed her eyes up at me. She smiled. I winked and ran my tongue over my lips. She dug it. She blushed. I put her on file.

I turned and walked to the sidewalk. I went upstairs and attacked the roast.

I took a long nap. At five-thirty
P.M
. I went down and got into the Ford. I drove to Seventh and Apple. I parked.

At five minutes to six I saw Phyllis coming toward me. She was a block away. I fired the engine and pulled away.

It sure looked like I had copped a whore. I went back at midnight. She looked mussed up and tired. She got into the car.

I said, “Well, how goes it Baby?”

She dug in her bosom and handed me a damp wad of bills. I counted it. It was a fin over half a C.

She said, “I’m tired and nasty, and my shoulder and ass ache. Can I stop now, Daddy? I would like a pastrami and coffee and a bath. You know how you kicked me last night”

I said, “Bitch, the track closes at two. I’ll take you to the sandwich and coffee. The bath will have to wait until the two o’clock breakdown. You needed your ass kicked.”

She sighed and said, “All right Daddy, anything you say.”

I drove her to an open-air kosher joint. She kept squirming on the hard wooden bench. Her butt must have been giving her fits. She was silent until she finished the sandwich and coffee.

Then she said, “Daddy, please don’t misunderstand me. I like a little slapping around before my man does it to me. Please don’t be as cruel as you were last night. You might kill me.”

I said, “Baby, never horse around with my scratch or try to play con on me. You blew my stack last night. You don’t have to worry so long as you never violate my rules. I will never hurt you more than to turn you on.”

I drove her back to the track. She got out of the car. As soon as she hit the sidewalk, two white tricks almost had a wreck pulling to the curb for her. She was a black money-tree all right.

The next day I took her to a notary. In ten minutes we walked out. She gave me the three bills back that I had paid her for the Ford.

It was legal now. She wasn’t beefing. Her bruises were healing and she was ripe for another “prisoner of love” scene. She finished the week in great humping style. I had a seven-bill bankroll.

Sunday evening I packed the runt’s bearskin and other things into the trunk of the Ford.

I parked around the corner from Mama’s. I went up to get my things together. Mama caught me packing. Tears flooded her eyes. She grabbed me and held me tightly against her. Her sobbing was strangling her.

She sobbed, “Son, don’t you love your Mama anymore? Where are you going? Why do you want to leave the nice home I fixed for you? I just know if you leave I’ll never see you again. We don’t have anybody but each other. Please don’t leave me. Don’t break my heart, Son.”

I heard her words. I was too far gone for her grief to register. I kept thinking about that freak, black money-tree in the Ford. I was eager to get to that fast pimp track in the city.

I said, “Mama, you know I love you. I got a fine clerk’s job in a men’s store in the city. Everybody in this town knows I’m an excon. I have to leave. I love you for making a home for me. You have been an angel to stick by me through those prison bits. You’ll see me again. I’ll be back to visit you. Honest, Mama, I will.”

I had to wrestle out of her arms. I picked up my bags and hit the stairs. When I reached the sidewalk, I looked up at the front window. Mama was gnawing her knuckles and crying her heart out. My shirt front was wet with her tears.

T
he yellow Ford ran like an escaped con. We got to Chicago in two hours. We checked into a hotel in a slum neighborhood, around 29th and State Streets. We took our stuff out of the Ford’s trunk.

It was ten
P.M
. I threw some water on my face. I told the runt to cool it. I went out and cruised around to case the city.

I turned the wipers on. A late March snowfall was starting. About a mile from the hotel I saw whores working the streets.

I parked and went into a bar in the heart of the action. It stank like a son-of-a-bitch. It was a junkie joint. I sat sipping on a bottle of suds; I couldn’t trust the glasses.

A cannon with a tired horse face took the vacant stool in my right. His stall took the one on the left. The stall had a yellow fox face. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him pinning me. He snapped his fingers. I jerked my head toward him.

He said, “Brother, you are lucky as a shit-house rat. What size benny and vine you wear? I’m Dress ’em up Red. Stand up brother so I can dig your size. I got a pile of crazy vines dirt cheap.”

I stood up facing him. He ran his eyes up and down me. He unbuttoned my top coat. He pulled my vine’s lapels. He shoved me back toward Horseface. I stumbled, half turned to apologize to
Horseface. There was a streaking blur behind me. It was so fast I couldn’t have sworn I had seen it. I found out later what it had been.