Pimp (28 page)

I said, “Sweet, I bet it’s that stinking runt. Christ! Sweet, I’ve sent her and Ophelia across state lines a dozen times since the war started. They’re trying to ram a white-slave rap into me, Sweet. What would you do?”

He said, “I would give one of those nice sweet jokers on the West Side expense scratch and a ball-peen hammer. I’d tell him as soon as I read they was found in an alley with their skulls caved in he could get a cinch two grand.

“It would be easy to trap ’em. They’re whores. He’d be just another freakish trick wanting to party with two whores.

“Tell you what, ’Berg get them whores outta that crib over there fast. Move outta your pad today. Go groundhog. Switch your whores to new stomping grounds. Stay outta the street after you move. Call me when you get outta there.”

He hung up. I thought, “I’m a sucker. I shoulda destroyed the runt Top’s way.”

I had moved the stable and myself to new pads by seven that night. Chris, my new bottom woman, was the only one in the family who knew the reason for the move.

I took the Hog and put it in a garage I rented from an old widower. The garage was behind his house in a respectable neighborhood.

I got a cab to one of my stuff connections. I was going underground. I had to have at least a piece of stuff. I had copped and was walking down the street looking for a cab.

I passed a barber shop. I got a glimpse of the white-spatted dogs of a joker in the barber’s chair, next to the window.

I thought, “Geez, that square joker is pitiful. He ain’t hip spats went out with high-button shoes.”

I was walking fast. I had the sizzle on me. I needed a cab in the worse way. I was almost a half block from the barber shop. I thought I heard some joker yelling, “Run! Run!”

I looked back over my shoulder. A tall skinny stud in a barber’s apron was on the sidewalk. His white spats flashed on his feet. He was screaming and flailing his arms like a minstrel clown singing “Mammy.”

He was loping down the sidewalk. The out-of-fashion bastard was
yelping,” Son! Son!” He galloped by the neon lights toward me. His wrinkled brown-skin face changed colors like a chameleon.

He ran into me and clutched me like I was a winning sweepstakes ticket. He was panting and sweating like a whore on soldier’s payday. I could smell witch hazel and the stink of emotion sweat. I saw white specks of barber’s talc on the bald crown of his head. I couldn’t see his face. He had it buried in my chest.

He was blubbering, “Oh son, precious son. Sweet Jesus answered an old man’s prayer. He’s let me see and hold my one and only son before I got to my heavenly rest.”

I had the damnedest thought while he made love to me. I wondered if my skull had chipped any paint off that wall he threw me against when I was six-months old.

I stiff-armed him away. I stared coldly into his face. I saw a weak blaze of anger light his dull brown eyes.

He said, “God don’t like ugly, son. You saw your father back there. You ignored me, didn’t you?”

I said, “Shit no I didn’t see you. I thought you had croaked. Look Jack, I’m happy to see you, but I’m in an awful hurry. See you around.”

He said, “I did my part to bring you into this world. You ain’t gonna treat me like a dog. Where do you live? You look prosperous. What’s your line? Are you with some big company? Are you married to some nice girl? Do I have any grandchildren, son?”

I said, “You haven’t heard about Iceberg Slim? He’s famous.”

He said, “You don’t associate with black filth like that I hope.”

I said, “Look Jack, I am Iceberg. Ain’t you proud of me? I’m the greatest Nigger that ever came outta our family. I got five whores humping sparks outta their asses.”

I thought he was going to have a heart attack. The apron was quivering over his ticker. He was supporting himself against a lamp post. His face was gray in shock under the streetlight. I jerked my shirt and coat sleeves up past spike hollow. I stuck the needle-scarred arm under his nose. He drew back from it.

I said, “Goddamnit Jack, what’s the matter? Shit, I shoot more scratch into that arm a day than you make in a week. I’ve come a long way since you bounced my skull off that wall. Stick your chest out in pride, Jack. I been in two prisons already. Shit, Jack, I’m on my way to the third any day now. You ain’t hip I’m important? Maybe one of these days I’ll really make you a proud father. I’ll croak a whore and make the Chair.”

I walked away from him. I caught a cab at the corner. The cabbie u-turned. I looked at my old man. He was sitting on the curb beside the lamp post. His white spats gleamed starkly in the gutter. He had his head on his knees. I saw his back jerking up and down. The poor joker was bawling his ass off.

I got home. I called Sweet. I banged a load of cocaine. It was the best I’d copped since Glass Top went to the joint.

A
fter I had called Sweet and banged the cocaine, I had chilling thoughts.

“I’ve got five whores just like poor Preston had when Sweet crossed and destroyed him. I wonder if Sweet will dream up a cross to steal my whores from me? He knows where I’m padding. It would be as easy as lifting a telephone receiver. Sweet swears he loves me like I’m his son.

“These seven years on this fast track have hipped me to one solid truth. To a pimp there’s nothing more important than copping whores. While I’m holed up, I’ll keep my stable headaches a secret, I won’t give him a cue to volunteer his help. It would be a bitch to have him handling my stable. I’m sure glad Chris is a boss bottom bitch.

“Oh! This pressure is really screwing my skull around. Sweet wouldn’t cross me. I gotta stop mistrusting the only friend I got. I mean more to Sweet as his friend than any whore.

“Maybe I should make a run for it and set up shop in some other city. Christ! Why do I have to be red hot with federal heat? Why couldn’t it be city or state heat? On this fast track I’ve only been busted and mugged once. A dozen other times I paid off on the street.

“That F.B.I. is a sonuvabitching genius. No, I’d better keep my hot ass in town right here in this cruddy pig sty.

“The runt’s a whore. Maybe her new pimp or a trick will croak her. Then I could walk into the F.B.I. office and stick my black ass out to be kissed. They’d have no case without the runt as a witness.”

“The runt took Ophelia on all those out-of-state trips. I gave the runt instructions and expense money. I ain’t never told Ophelia to cross a state line. The runt was screwing Ophelia. That was really the runt’s bitch.”

“It’s a good thing I holed up in this rat’s nest. The F.B.I. would never look for a good pimp in a sewer.”

It was December, nineteen-forty-five. The war was over. The world was licking its bloody wounds. Drugs and the pimp game had hardened away my baby face. My hair was thinning. I was turning twenty-eight but I looked forty.

For seven years I had devoted myself to getting hip to that pimp’s book. I had labored with the zeal of a Catholic Brother agonizing for the Priesthood. I had thought and acted like a black God.

I was now trapped in my dingy one-room kitchenette. It was in a very old two-story building. I was on the first floor in the rear in number ten. Down the hall at night, rats would come scampering and squealing from the alley. They came under the back door which hung crookedly on its hinges.

I had a vague disturbing doubt in my skull. Was it possible I wasn’t even a poor imitation of a God? Maybe I was just a sucker black pimp on his way to a third bit in the joint.

Chris was the only one of the stable that visited me. We’d bang cocaine together. I wouldn’t let her know how worried I was. God couldn’t have skull aches.

I couldn’t let the others see me in a crummy setting. After all, how could a God live like a square chump? Chris knew all the reasons why. To her God’s farts still had the fragrant odor of roses. I
worked out with Chris a smooth system. Even the best pimp has to keep some personal contact with his whores.

The system was simple and for a while effective. Chris and I would go out into the hall to the phone on the wall. She could call the stable at their pad. It would always be three or four o’clock in the morning.

One of the girls would pick up. Chris would pretend to be a long-distance operator. It was rare luck that Chris had a talent for mimicry. They didn’t get hip to it. It would always be a person-toperson call from me to one of them. Chris and I conned them the calls came from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

I would get on the line and talk to all four of them. There were extensions in all four bedrooms. I could con and tighten my game on all of them at the same time.

The first call we made was supposed to be from New York. It took maybe a minute for me to have all their horns to receivers.

I said, “Well girls, I know you’ve missed Daddy. You’ve all probably wondered, when in the hell is Daddy coming back to town? Jesus Christ! Has he forgotten a whore needs to see her man some time? Sure we’re in his corner. We prove that when we hump our asses off in the street. We check our scratch into Chris to send to him.

“Goddamnit, what could be so important that he neglects his whores? Well girls, I’m gonna show the kinda confidence Daddy’s got in you. I’m gonna hip you to a million-dollar secret. I know all of you will keep your jibs buttoned.”

Chris cut in crisply and said, “Three minutes are up, Sir. Please signal when through.”

I continued, “You are the luckiest whores alive. Your man’s got a genius white engraver for his pal. He used to be an engraver for the government. We’ve got some plates he’s just finished. We’ve turned out three-hundred of the prettiest hundred-slat bills the human eye has ever seen. They’re perfect. Even the government couldn’t get hip to a difference from real scratch. There ain’t any.

“We got one problem we’re gonna solve if it takes a year. We’ve run outta the special paper the government prints its scratch on. My white genius pal even knows how to make the paper. We are playing it cool and traveling and copping inks and other stuff we need. It’s tough to cop some of it, but for millions who’s going to give up? As soon as we get the paper made up we’re gonna run off a couplamillion or so slats.

“I’m gonna breeze back into town the only millionaire pimp in the world. I’m gonna buy a beach and a mansion in Hawaii for my stable. If we run outta scratch, we’ll just run off another bale.

“So stay cool and keep humping. Oh yeah, Chris got a cab to the airport an hour ago. She should be getting home in a coupla hours or so. She’s bringing each of you a piece of that beautiful lettuce. Spend it on anything you want. Take it anywhere, even a bank. Believe me, it’s perfect.”

I hung up. I had electrified them with the story. I could hear the excited thrill in their voices when they chorused goodbye. I told Chris to crack the genius had a way to make all the serial numbers on the bills different. I already knew what my story would be whenever I got the heat off me.

I could stall them a lifetime. I could say the genius got busted on another beef. I had to wait until he got out. He wouldn’t tell me where the plates were hidden. He could even croak while doing his bit.

Chris called the next day. The whores were walking on air. They rapped all night about that perfect “queer.” I was sure I had found the way to hold my stable. I felt like a genius myself.

Each time I talked to the stable after that, the genius and I had just copped another vital item we needed. It wouldn’t be long now I assured them. Sweet had dropped the word in the street that I was on the West Coast taking off long scratch from a rich square broad.

It was getting almost impossible to sleep. I would almost jump
from my skin when a tenant would knock. I would think it was the heat. The tenant would be calling me to the phone in the hall. When I did fall off into fitful sleep I’d have nightmares. Those dreams about Mama would hog-tie me on a sweaty rack of misery. I had an awful fear of another jolt in the joint. The guilty daydreams on the heels of the nightmares were torturing my skull.

I stopped banging cocaine. It only magnified my terror and worry. I remembered how serene Top used to look after a bang of H. He’d sit and coast like he was in a beautiful peaceful dream. Maybe he’d been right. Maybe sable H came after mink cocaine.

Chris came on Christmas Eve. She stayed until Christmas Day afternoon. She brought me pajamas, cologne and robes from herself and the girls. She had given them scratch from me.

My one-room kitchenette hideout was crammed wall to wall with trunks and suitcases. I had all those fine threads and no place to go. I was a lonely pimp bastard!

Sweet came to see me at midnight in January, the tenth I think. He took off his velvet-collared Melton benny. He hung it in the tiny closet. It had been ten-below-zero or colder for a week.

It was a brand new year, nineteen-forty-six. The new Hogs were out for the first time in several years. The garage rent was paid for a year for my old Hog. Chris had gone out several times to run its engine for awhile.

I thought “Christ it would be a kick to trade off and flash through the fresh air in a new Hog.”

It was the first time Sweet had visited me. He was getting white around his temples. There was less fiery voltage in his gray eyes. That H and the fast track had him looking terrible. He was getting old all right. He sat down on a suitcase at the head of the bed. I was lying down. Miss Peaches was an old lady, but still gorgeous in her mink coat and fur bootees. He slipped off her coat and shoes. He put them on the dresser. She sat on the floor looking up at me.

He said, “’Berg got bad news for you. The street wire says city rollers are carrying a mug shot of you around. You’re really hot now. I gotta wire that pimping Poison is nosing around your girls in the street. If you ain’t got Chris tight, he’ll steal her. She’s gonna hip him where you’re hiding.

“Maybe you oughta get outta this joint tonight. Take another hide out. Don’t let Chris or any whore you got know where you are. I’m your bosom buddy, sweetheart, and I love you. I’ll keep the stable in line for you.