Pimp (20 page)

I said, “Thank you, Mr. Jones, for letting me come up with ‘unc.’”

My voice triggered the Roost memory. He stiffened and glared at me. He smashed his hooks together. It sounded like pistol shots. Peaches growled and sneered.

He said, “Ain’t you the little shit ball I chased outta the Roost?”

I said, “Yeah, I’m one and the same. I want to beg your pardon for making you salty that night. Maybe I coulda gotten a pass if I had told you I’m your pal’s nephew. I ain’t got no sense, Mr. Jones. I took after my idiot father.”

Sweet said, “Top, this punk ain’t hopeless. He’s silly as a bitch grinning all the time, but dig how he butters out the con to keep his balls outta the fire. He sure ain’t got no tender dick to turn down my pretty big-ass Mimi. Kid, I love black boys with the urge to pimp. Ain’t no surer way to amount to something. Your uncle ain’t but a good pimp. I’m the greatest in the world. He wired me he’s hoping you’ll fold on this track and split back to the sticks.

“You got one whore he tells me. You could have the makings. This joint is going to be crawling with fast whores in a coupla hours. I’m gonna be pinning you. I’m gonna watch how you handle yourself. Maybe I’m gonna make you my protege. You gotta be icy; understand, Kid, icy, icy? You gotta stop that grinning. Freeze your map and keep it that way. Maybe I’m gonna prove to your half-ass pimp uncle that I can train even a mule to win the Kentucky Derby.”

Top said, “Shit Honey, you didn’t have to tip him. I’m pulling for his split. I love the kid. I just don’t think he can cut the pimp game. The kid raps good. I ain’t denying it. He should be maybe a Murphy
player or even a mitt man. His ticker ain’t icy enough to pimp on this track.”

I thought, “Top’s pad is a pigsty compared to this layout. It looks like I’m in.”

Sweet said, “Sweetheart, let’s go in a bedroom and cap up and bag that stuff for those jokers. I’m gonna have old Patch Eye come up here and deal it off. I ain’t no dope peddler. I’m a pimp. Kid, you can cool it. Have the Filipino bring you a taste. If you want get it yourself from the bar over there.”

They went around a hand-painted gold silk screen through a doorway. Peaches padded behind them. I saw a bronze bell on a table beside the couch. I decided to get my own taste. I walked across the room to a turquoise bar. I went behind it. I took a tall crystal glass off the mirrored shelf on the wall. I mixed creme de menthe and bubbly water.

I took my green, cool drink and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling glass door. I slid it open and stepped up into the patio. I looked up; the April zephyrs were balleting the burnt-orange and pale-green Japanese lanterns. They danced on glowing jade cords strung high above the lime floor.

The ice-cream-yellow moon seemed close enough to lick. I walked to the pearl parapet. I looked out at a brilliant sea of emerald and ruby neon bursting pastel skyrockets toward the cobalt blue sky bejeweled with sapphire stars.

I thought, “Sweet sure has caught lightning in a thimble. He came out of the white man’s cotton fields. He’s pimped himself up to this. He’s living high in the sky like a black God in heaven with the white people. He ain’t no Nigger doctor. He ain’t no hot-sheet Nigger preacher, but he’s here.

“He pimped up his scratch passport. That barbed-wire stockade is a million miles away. I got more education, I’m better looking, and younger than he is. I know I can do it too.”

I remembered Henry and how religious he was. Look what happened to him. I remembered how I used to kneel every night by
the side of the bed to pray. I really believed in God then. I knew he existed. Now I wasn’t so sure. I guess the first prison rap started to hack away at my belief in him.

I often wondered in the cell how, if he existed, he could let the Dummy destroy Oscar who loved him. I told myself at the time, maybe he’s got complicated long-range plans. Maybe even he’s got divine reasons for letting the white folks butcher black people down South.

Maybe some morning about dawn all the black folks will sing Hallelujah! God’s white board of directors will untie the red tape. God will roll up his sleeves. He’ll smash down the invisible stockades. He’ll kill all the rats in the black ghettos. Fill all the black bellies and con all the white folks that Niggers are his children, too.

Now I couldn’t wait. If he were up there or not, I had to go with the odds. I stared into the sky. It was the first time I’d prayed since Steve, the tramp. I know now it was more a fearful alibi than anything else.

I said, “Lord, if you’re up there, you know I’m black and you know my thoughts. Lord, if the Bible is really your divine book then I know it’s a sin to pimp. If you’re up there and listening you know I’m not trying to con you.

“Lord, I’m not asking you to bless my pimping. I ain’t that stupid. Lord, I know you ain’t black. Surely you know, if you’re up there, what it’s like to be black down here. These white folks are doing all the fine living and sucking up all the gravy. I gotta have some of that living and some of that gravy.

“I don’t wanta be a stickup man or a dope peddler. I sure as hell won’t be a porter or dishwasher. I just wanta pimp that’s all. It’s not too bad, because whores are rotten. Besides I ain’t going to croak them or drive them crazy. I’m just going to pimp some real whitetype living out of them.

“So Lord, if you’re up there listening, do one thing for me. Please don’t let me croak before I live some and get to be somebody down here in the white man’s world. I don’t care what happens after that.”

I looked down over the parapet. I wondered if the undertaker had
been born yet who was slick enough to paste a sucker’s ass together after a Brodie fifteen-stories down. I heard “Tuxedo Junction” pulsing behind me. I had pitched my pipes dry. I upended my drink.

I turned and walked toward the glass door. I saw the Japanese lanterns splashing color on the polished alabaster-topped tables. The Filipino had sure been busy flopping his mop. I slid the door open to a chorus of profanity. The whore scent flared my nostrils. There must have been thirty yapping pimps and whores lounging around the spacious pit.

I stepped down and slid the door shut. An ebony satin-skinned pimp was sprawled in the blue velour chair. A tawny tan tigress was kneeling before him between his legs. She had her chin rammed into his crotch. She clutched him around the waist like a humping twodollar trick in an alley.

Her dreamy maroon eyes rolled toward the top of her long skull. She was staring at his fat blue lips. It was maybe she expected him to whistle the “Lost Chord.” The rock on his finger exploded blue-white, frozen fireworks. He raised his glass to curse all square bitches. He was con-toasting all whores. The room got silent. Somebody had strangled the gold phonograph in the corner.

He toasted:

“Before I’d touch a square bitch’s slit,

I’d suck a thousand clappy pricks and swim through liquid shit.

They got green puke between their rotten toes and snot runs from their funky noses.

I hope all square bitches become syphilitic wrecks. I hope they fall through their own ass-holes and break their mother-fucking necks.”

It was the first time I’d heard it. It was the first time for the crowd, too. They roared and begged him to do it again. He looked toward the hand-painted Chinese screen.

All eyes turned to Top and Sweet coming into the room. An old black stud wearing a white silk patch over his right eye trailed behind them. Peaches followed him. He looked like a vulture decked out in a gray mohair vine. Peaches stood before the white velour couch and bared her fangs.

The three pimps sitting on it scattered off it like quail under a double-barreled shotgun. They thumped their rear ends to the carpet. Sweet, Top, and Peaches sat on the couch.

I sat on a satin pillow in the corner near the glass door. I watched the show. I saw Patch Eye go and sit behind the bar. Everybody was in a big half-circle around the couch. It was like the couch was a stage, and Sweet the star.

Sweet said, “Well how did you silly bastards like the fight? Did the Nigger murder that peckerwood or did his black ass turn shit yellow?”

A Southern white whore with a wide face and a sultry voice like Bankhead’s drawled, “Mistah Jones, Ahm happy to repoat thet the Niggah run the white stud back intu his mammy’s ass in thu fust round.”

Everybody laughed except Sweet. He was crashing together his mitts. I wondered what madness bubbled in his skull as he stared at her. A high-ass yellow broad flicked life back into the phonograph. “Gloomy Sunday,” the suicide’s favorite, dirged through the room. She stared at me as she came away.

Sweet said, “All right you freakish pigs. Patch Eye’s got outfits and bags of poison. You got the go sign to croak yourselves.”

They started rising from the satin pillows and velour ottomans. They clustered around Patch Eye at the bar.

The high-ass yellow broad came to me. She stooped in front of me. I saw black tracks on her inner thighs. The inside of her gaping cat was beef-steak red. She had a shiv slash on the right side of her face. It was a livid gully from her cheekbone to the corner of her twisted mouth. Smallpox craters covered her face. I caught the glint
of a pearl-handled switch-blade in her bosom. Her gray eyes were whirling in her skull. She was high.

I was careful. I grinned. Sweet was digging us. He was shaking his head in disgust. I wondered if he thought I oughta slug her in the jib and maybe take that shiv in the gut.

She said, “Let me see that pretty dick, handsome.”

I said, “I don’t show my swipe to strange bitches. I got a whore to pamper my swipe.”

She said, “Nigger, you ain’t heard of me? I’m Red Cora” from Detroit. That red is for blood. You ain’t hip I’m a thieving bitch that croaked two studs? Now I said show that dick. Call me Cora, little bullshit Nigger. Ain’t you a bitch with one whore? You gonna starve to death, Nigger, if she’s a chump flat-backer. Nigger, you better get hip and cop a thief.”

A big husky broad with a spike in one hand and pack of stuff in the other took me off the hook. She kneed Cora’s spine.

She said, “Bitch, I’m gonna shoot this dope. You want some? You can Georgia this skinny Nigger later.”

I watched Cora’s rear end twist away from me. She and the husky broad went to the bar and got a spoon and a glass of water. I looked at Sweet. He was giving me a cold stare.

I thought, “This track is too fast I can’t protect myself. With young soft bitches like the runt I’m a champ. These old, hard bitches, I gotta solve. I gotta be careful and not blow Sweet. If I sucker out anymore tonight he’ll freeze and boot me.”

I sat in the corner bug-eyed for two hours. My ears flapped to the super-slick dialogue. I was excited by the fast-paced, smooth byplay between these wizards of pimpdom.

Red Cora kept me edgy. She went to the patio several times. She was Hed out of her skull. Each time she passed she cracked on me. She was sure panting to view my swipe.

Several of Sweet’s whores came in. None of them had been at the Roost with him that first time I saw him. All of them were fine with
low mileage. One of them was yellow and beautiful. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

There was a giant black pimp from the Apple. He had three of his whores with him. He had been boasting about how he had his swipe trained. He was one of the three at the party that didn’t bang stuff. I had watched him snort girl and down a few mixed drinks. He had a glass in his hand standing over Sweet and Top on the couch.

He said, “Sweet, ain’t a bitch living can pop me off unless I want her to. I don’t care if she’s got velvet suction cups in her cat. Her jib can have a college degree, she ain’t gonna make me pop against my will. I got the toughest swipe in the world. I got a C note to back my crack.”

Sweet said, “Sucker, I got a young bitch I turned out six months ago that could blow that tender sucker swipe of yours in five minutes. I ain’t going to teach you no lesson for a measly C note. If that C note ain’t all you got, put five bills in Top’s mitt and you got a bet.”

The big joker snatched a roll from his side pocket. He plunked five C notes into Top’s palm. Sweet eased a bale of C notes from the pocket of his smoking jacket. He covered the bet in Top’s hand.

Sweet snapped his fingers. The beautiful yellow broad kneeled before the standing giant. She started to perform before the cheering audience. Within less than three minutes she had won the bet for Sweet.

The big joker stood there for a long moment with his eyes closed. He had a goofy grin on his face. One of his whores snickered. He slapped her hard against the jaw. He went to the bar.

I thought, “She sure has a head for business. Pepper was great, but she couldn’t hold this broad’s douche bag.”

I got up and went behind the Chinese screen through the door. I went down a long hall. I passed three way-out bedrooms. I went into a mirrored john. It was as big as a bedroom. I pushed the door shut. I should have locked it.

I walked to the stool. I raised the lid. That tough bitch Red Cora darted in. She was licking out her red tongue. Her gray eyes were voodooing in her skull. She was hot as hell for my relative innocence and youth. She was a double murderess with a skull load of H and a hot jib.

I stood there before the deadly bitch. I searched the thin catalogue in my skull. I didn’t know the right crack for a situation like this. I mumbled a plaintive pitch.

I said, “Now listen girl, you haven’t given me a nickel. I’m not your man.”

It was like trying to stand off a starving leopard with a broom straw. She snaked that shiv out of her bosom and popped the gleaming blade open. She clawed my fly open with the other hand. I heard buttons bounce on the tile floor. My ticker was doing a fox trot.

She said, “You jiving pretty sonuvabitch. You ain’t no pimp. I’m gonna eat your sweat ass up or chop off your dick.”

I backed up to the wall beside the stool. I could feel the wet throbbing tips of my fingers against the cool tile. She was grabbing inside when Sweet bulled in. He seized a fistful of her long hair. She squealed in pain. He jerked her away from me toward the door. He cussed her as he drove his needle-toed shoe into her wide caboose several times.