Pimp (25 page)

I said, “Phyllis, why do you make your sweet daddy mean? Daddy’s gonna kill his little bitch if she don’t straighten up and whore like the star she is.

“Bitch, lie down in that water for a while. Then get in the street and get some real scratch for your man. You don’t have to stay in this block. Just walk and work until you get respectable scratch to bring in. I can raise you if you take a fall. They gotta let you make a phone call. If I go out I’ll check the desk here by phone every hour
or so. Bitch, get down and star. You want your man, get him some real scratch.”

I went and sat on the bed. The sheet looked like a red zebra had lain down and his stripes had faded on it. I heard her sloshing the water in the tub. She was humming the record I’d smashed. Sweet’s pills sure weren’t hurting her.

Whores are strange people all right. She was silent while she combed her hair and fixed her face. She put on a red knit suit. She stood in front of me. She held her hand out. I saw dark stains on her stockings at the shins. Her eyes were bright.

She said, “Daddy, I don’t have a dime. Give me a coupla dollars, please. Don’t worry, when I come in I’ll have nice scratch.”

I stood up. I gave her a fin. I walked to the door with her. She turned her face up. I leaned down. I sucked her bottom lip, then bit it hard. She squeezed my arm and gouged her teeth into my cheek. She went down the hall.

I shut the door and went to the front window. I rubbed my cheek to see if the skin was broken. I saw her cross the street at the corner. She was walking fast. That whipping and those pills had made her well. She looked like a child. She was so tiny and sexy in her red suit. I wondered as she disappeared whether she’d come back. It was seven
P.M
.

I thought, “I better stick here in the pad. Whipping a broad with a hanger is not a bit like a foot in the ass. Christ! I’d kill the bastard on the spot if he hit my bare ass with one. Sweet was right. She got outta that bed all right. I wonder if those slavery pimps invented the hanger whip.

“No, even hangers hadn’t been invented then. I guess Sweet did. I’m gonna wait the runt out. If she tries to slip in here to steal her clothes, I’ll croak her. I wonder why Chris hasn’t gotten in touch? Maybe some fast pimp has already stolen that pretty bitch from Leroy. Maybe Leroy had one of his fits and croaked her.

“I wonder what the bitch will be like that I get from Sweet if the
runt blows? This is a hell of a feeling I got. I don’t know if I got a whore or not. It would be a bitch if Sweet goes back on his word and leaves me whoreless on this fast track. I’m gonna get high. I’d better take the flight with gangster. Cocaine will only sharpen my grief.”

I took a shower. I stepped out of the tub. I got a towel from the wall rack. I saw splotches of red on the one beside it. I toweled off. I rolled a giant bomber. I put a fresh case on the pillow the runt had gnawed.

I propped myself against the head of the bed. I sucked the bomber down to a “roach.” The reefer and the sibilant murmuring of tires against the street lulled me into deep sleep.

I woke up. I was still half-propped against the pillows. It was broad daylight. The runt hadn’t come in. I had blown whoreless with that wire hanger. I lit a cigarette. It was seven
A.M
. I lay there staring at the entwined lovers on the “Kiss” Statue.

I thought, “The runt’s got a pair of tits like that broad. Jeez, she was sure a freak. Some pimp is going to have a sweet bitch when he straightens her out. I wonder if that little bitch will miss me? She damn sure can’t forget me.

“Hell, I can’t worry about the mule going blind. I’ll wait until noon or so. I’ll rip open that whore grab-bag Sweet promised me. Maybe I was hasty to shut the door on Melody and his entasis. At this point I can get hip to anything except work. No one could know I was freaking with a stud.

“Christ, I wish beautiful Chris would call. What a thrill if she’d tell me she was rushing to me. To get her tight I’d maybe eat everything but the tacks in her shoes. I’m hungry. I’m not going to let my troubles abuse my skull and my belly.”

I got Silas on the phone. I ordered home fries and sausage. I got up and brushed my teeth. I skull-noted to call Top when he got back in town. Maybe he could find out who booked Leroy. Maybe I’d trace Chris that way. I’d get Preston’s owl-head and take her from Leroy at gunpoint.

I was listening to “Mood Indigo” and thinking about the runt. I was remembering that day when I left Mama crying at the window.

I couldn’t wait to get around the corner to the runt. Then I was sure I had a black gold mine sitting in the Ford waiting for me. In this tough pimp game you couldn’t count your scratch until you had it in your mitt. Holding whores was like trying to cinch-grip quicksilver.

I thought, “Poor Mama. I haven’t called her or anything. I’m gonna call her when things get straight.”

I
heard Silas knock on the door. I went and opened it. Silas was a strange, beautiful sight. The slick sorcerer-bastard had my breakfast on a tray. He had turned himself into a cute black bitch in a red knit suit. It was the runt. I murdered the grin of relief in its jib womb. I twisted my face into a copy of Sweet’s when he bounced my skull off his John wall.

I said, “Bitch, I’m gonna croak you. Since three o’clock I been calling all the hospitals and jails in town. I even called the morgue. Speak up bitch, what’s your story?”

She looked up at me. She was smiling. She walked past me into the bedroom. I followed her. She sat the tray on the dresser. She ran her fingers deep into her bosom. She brought out a damp wad of bills. She gave it to me.

She said, “Daddy, my last trick was a fifty slat, all night trick. I caught him at two this morning. Baby, I gave you a hundred and twenty eight slats.

“Silas had your breakfast on the elevator on my way up. With the two slats I gave him, I made a hundred and thirty.

“Oh, Daddy, I’ve found some good streets to work a coupla miles from here. It’s in the neighborhood of a joint called the Roost. You were a sweet daddy to be worried about your baby. Oh! I almost
forgot. Keep your fingers crossed. I may bring you a girl one of these mornings. She’s wild about me. Her old man ain’t nothing. He’s a burglar.”

I said, “Phyllis, there’s more than one note in a song. You gotta string together a thousand nights like last night. Now take a bath. I’m gonna treat those scratches. Remember I don’t want any junkie bitch. Make sure she’s clean before you cop.”

I forgot about my breakfast. I went out and got into the Ford. I drove to the drugstore and got ointments and salves.

I called Sweet and told him the runt stood up. He reminded me to send that scratch to myself as soon as possible. I went back to the Haven. I sent Silas for hot food. I dressed her wounds. They sure looked bad.

Those “go” pills she had taken died. She fell asleep while I was doctoring her back. I ate and took a nap. By the end of the week, I felt like a pimp. I had an eight-bill bankroll not counting the porker silver.

One night about nine I got into the Ford. I drove less than a hundred miles to Terre Haute a small whore-town. I sent five bills to myself at the Haven. I used Christine as the broad’s name.

Top was back in town so I stopped on the way home and copped cocaine, yellows, and bennies. The runt came in that morning around four. She had a hundred-and-five slats. She was on her way to stardom. We were in bed when I cracked on her.

I said, “Baby, I think our luck is changing all around. I’m pretty sure Daddy’s copped another whore. I met her in a bar about a week ago.

“It’s a small world all right. She said she just moved out of this joint not long ago. She went wild over me. She’s a fine young bitch. She begged me to go to Terre Haute with her. She’s working a fast house up there. I told her I’d run up there after she sent her first week’s scratch. She gave me her phone number up there. I gave her my address.

“Tonight I called up there. I asked her about my scratch. She told me five bills were on the way. Baby, if she’s jiving we ain’t hurt. If she sends it and it’s respectable scratch your daddy’s got a small stable.”

She said, “Is she a white bitch? What does the bitch look like?”

I said, “Bitch, don’t get shitty now. What’s wrong with a white broad helping two spades? She’s a boot. She looks like what she is. A scratch-getting fine bitch in love with your man at first sight.”

It was a little after noon when the messenger brought the scratch notice. The runt went to the door and brought him into the bedroom.

I opened it. The office was a half-mile away. I asked the runt if she’d like some air. She was eager to go.

It was a good thing I had gotten that driver’s license. I had to go through a long routine. They even made me crack the amount I was expecting. I got the cash.

The runt was silent on the way home. Sweet sure knew the angles to put pressure on a whore’s skull. In the next month I made two more trips to Terre Haute. Twice I went across town and stayed in a hotel over night until around noon. I was conning the runt I was visiting her stable mate.

The runt was really humping. She was averaging no less than a bill a night. Two months after the hanger whipping I took a furnished three-bedroom vacancy in Top’s building. It was a gold-andred dream after the Haven. The runt really freaked this pad off. I guess she felt at home at last. It was on the sixth floor.

I copped six two-hundred-dollar vines at sixty slats a piece. The booster lived on the second floor beneath me. The same week Top cut me into a stud who had a black LaSalle car in mint condition.

He was out on an appeal bond and his lip wired him he was joint bound. I gave the stud four bills in his mitt. I paid off the last two notes on the wheels.

I had two cars. I gave the runt her Ford back. She could cover and get down in a wider area.

I started hanging around out at Sweet’s pad, sucking up the pimp game. I got home from Sweet’s one morning around five. I heard the runt rapping to someone in one of the bedrooms. I pushed the door open. The runt was in bed with a tall, pretty brown-skin broad. She looked fifteen. They were naked. They stopped kissing and looked at me.

The runt said, “Daddy this is Ophelia. I told you about her in the Haven. Her old man got one-to-three in the joint for burglary. She wants to join our family. Can she?”

I said, “Ophelia, if you’re not full of shit and you obey my rules you’re welcome. Have you bitches been in the streets working tonight? I hope you just got in that bed to freak off. Phyllis, get outta that bed and get my double-action scratch.”

The runt went into the closet and brought me a roll of bills.

She said, “A bill of this I made.”

I fast counted a yard and seventy-five slats. I took off my clothes and got between them. I spent an hour quizzing Ophelia and running down my rules. She was eighteen. The circus started. I was circus master. I had become too much pimp to freak off with a new package. They were the performers. She had put only six bits in my pocket. How cheaply did she get me if she blew tomorrow.

It was the night before my twentieth birthday in August. I had gone to the West Side to cop some dresses for Phyllis and Ophelia. I had left the booster’s pad. I was loading the dozen or so pieces in the trunk of the LaSalle. I slammed the trunk lid shut and locked it.

I heard screaming and smashing sounds coming from a cabaret just down the street. I saw a hatless, gray-haired man come staggering to the sidewalk. He was holding his head. The side of his head looked shiny. I walked down the sidewalk toward him.

He was bleeding from a deep cut in his head. He was moaning and trying to stop the flow of blood with his hands. A dark thin
joker ran out behind the old man. I saw something gleam in his hand as he raised his arm again and again.

I moved closer. The thin joker was savagely pistol whipping the old stud. He was beaten to his knees. He looked like someone had painted his face red.

The thin joker turned his face. The light coming from the open door of the cabaret shone on it. It was Chris’ Leroy beating the old man. Twenty customers had come out. They formed a circle around the massacre. I moved to the outside of the circle.

Then I saw Chris standing on the other side of the circle. She was screaming and tugging at Leroy’s pistol arm. Leroy had gone insane.

I moved around the circle closer to Chris. I stood behind her. I saw greasy stains on the back of her dress collar. Her hair looked frowsy and dull. Scarface was sure taking her to the dogs. I heard the screech of brakes. I saw two huge white rollers muscle through the crowd. Leroy was astraddle the unconscious figure, still pounding his pistol against it.

They shoved Chris backward. One of them put an armlock on Leroy’s gun arm and took the pistol. The other vised his neck in a strangle hold. They dragged him to the prowl car and threw him into the back seat.

A short middle-aged white broad stepped to the side of the fallen figure. She was wringing her hands. She was wearing a bar apron. She stooped and stroked the figure’s brow.

One of them got on the front seat. He turned sideways guarding Leroy. He put a microphone to his lips. He was calling an ambulance, no doubt. The other roller came back and stopped beside the white woman.

He said, “Anybody you know?”

She sobbed. “Yes, he’s my father-in-law.”

He said, “What happened?”

She said, “Everybody knows Papa Tony loves to kid around the
girls. He’s got a heart as big as New York. Everybody loves and understands him. Papa Tony came in the bar. He started kissing the cheek of all the girls at the bar.

“He kissed that one behind you. That maniac man of hers stopped singing. He leaped off the stage. He started to beat poor Papa Tony with his pistol. It’s the first night the maniac has worked for my husband. If my husband, Vince, had been here that jerk’s brains would splatter the sidewalk.”

The roller looked back at Chris. He started making notes in a small book. I knew he’d quiz her after he got the full picture. I touched Chris lightly on the shoulder. She turned and looked up at me. She got weak in the knees. She slumped against me. I took her arm and steered her down the sidewalk. I heard the distant whine of an ambulance siren.