Trick Baby (29 page)

Buster counted a fat sheaf of bills to the dresser top. Pocket picked them up and counted them slowly.

He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and said softly, “It ain't right. It just ain't right that eighty grand in rocks should go for a measly seven grand. It just ain't—”

Blue and Buster had gone through the door. We had made the score! I sprang from the bed and danced wildly to the window with Pocket in my arms.

I raised the shade and watched Blue and Buster shake hands and split up on the sidewalk. Just like Blue said, Buster went east on Madison Street toward the Loop. Blue U-turned and went west on Madison.

Pocket gave me the roll of C-notes. I counted fifteen of them into his palm. I pulled my scars off and scrubbed the stitches away with a wet thumb.

We dressed, and in less than ten minutes we were in the Buick. I U-turned and went up Madison to Kedsie, so that accidentally the mark wouldn't be confused by the miracle of a blind Polack driving a car. I took a left turn at Kedsie Avenue and headed south.

At Forty-seventh and State Streets, Pocket said, “Don't drop me at the poolroom. Take me home with you. I want to see Blue.”

Blue's car was in the driveway and the front door was open when
I pulled up to the front of the house. We went into the living room. Blue was sitting on the sofa. There were bottles of bourbon, rum, gin and scotch on the coffee table in front of him. We sat down beside him. I gave Blue a fifty-dollar bill and twenty-seven C-notes.

Blue said, “That mark is going to be in town until next week. Then he's got to go back to New York to his muscle job for his numbers racket boss. He only had a two weeks vacation.

“Folks and I are going to lie low here in the house until he blows. Pocket, I would advise you to do the same somewhere.”

Pocket said, “Blue, I wanted to talk to you about laying around here with you and Folks. That is, if you got room for me.”

Blue patted his shoulder and said, “Sure I got room for you, Pocket. Stay as long as you like. Now I'm going to get on the phone and have three fine young pussies to come out here and stay overnight with us. It's all on me. What do you want? White, yellow, brown or black?”

Pocket said, “I ain't choicy, just so it's young and tender and got a sweet taste.”

I poured four fingers of rum and said, “I pass, Blue. I'm not interested. I'm going to make a short call before you call the broads.”

I took my glass and went to the phone in the kitchen and called the Goddess.

B
lue, Pocket and I stayed off the streets until August. Pocket went back to his pool hustle. Blue and I went back to the smack, the drag, the flue and the rocks.

Two days after we had done our volunteer sentence at home, we were finishing our steaks in the Brass Rail Bar. We had just blown off a rocks mark. He paid a grand for the three hoops that cost us sixty dollars.

I said, “Blue, I was really tense playing for that mark. I thought he would crack something about rocks I wasn't wise to. I can't forget Buster's crack about line on the rocks.

“Blue, I don't understand why I never heard you or the old Jew that we get our slum from crack anything about line. It's a bad feeling to have a mark crack something that I'm not wise to.”

Blue said, “Frankly, I didn't pull your coat to it when I taught you the rocks because I didn't think of it. The old Jew never cracked it when we went to buy stock because you were obviously my partner.

“I got wise to it years ago when I first came to Chicago. Every time I'd go to pawn something, the pawnbrokers would look at my goods and quibble among themselves about the line to let me have.

“I'd, for instance, ask for ten dollars on a suit. Finally, they'd agree
with each other on a ten line loan. I'd walk out the door with five dollars. I woke up to their price code that way.

“Folks, I wouldn't worry if I were you. Crack-wise marks like Bang Bang are few and far between. Besides, I'll lay you odds that the line was the only thing I forgot to tell you about in any of the con games that we play. I wouldn't put you in a trick bag. Say, Folks, why don't you make Joe Hughes's joint with me tonight? It crawls with fine young broads.”

I said, “Maybe next time. I'd doing my playing in the Loop tonight.”

I went to the phone and made a date with the Goddess for nine
P.M
. that night at the Palmer House. It was a plush hotel in the Loop that housed the famous Pump Room bistro. It was a favorite watering spot for top theatrical celebrities and business executives.

I was leading a hectic double life. The Goddess and I did our eating and drinking and sleeping together in the Loop's finest restaurants and hotels.

She was wealthy, beautiful and lived in River Forest. But she wasn't part of Chicago's top social crust. Her Cicero beginnings were too humble to qualify her. Or perhaps she didn't have enough dough to buy a membership. However, this was an advantage for us. We flitted tipsily like carefree butterflies through the neon and chrome gardens. We didn't hide our affair.

We were together at least twice a week, and many weeks, more often than that. We were really getting to each other. The few nights that we didn't meet were spent on the telephone. I had my own phone put in my bedroom so we could spend hours lying on our beds, sweet-talking to each other.

She had changed so much. Only rarely did she have the cruel, mean moods that I suffered through when we first met. I'd be in a dreamy fog while playing the con with Blue in the street.

I never got her out of my mind for a moment. Her emerald-flecked eyes radiated love for me.

When we met, we'd squeeze ourselves together like we'd been separated for years. At last I knew the racy, mad sorcery of love. Whenever I entered her, I felt the insane excitement that perhaps a gold prospector feels when he discovers a glory hole. We'd lie in fragrant shadows. She'd tell me in her gypsy-violin voice how much she loved me and that one day, she knew, I'd be her husband.

My paralyzed throat would ache to speak the truth that I really was the son of a black woman. I wasn't sure enough of her yet to risk the confession. I couldn't forget the hateful flare-up of disdain in her eyes whenever she talked about coons.

When October came, we had crushed countless dozens of roses. We'd often look wonderingly at each other and remark how strange it was that our few short months together seemed like always.

We drank a lot of champagne and Cutty Sark Scotch. I went to Peacock Jeweler's and bought a beautiful platinum and ruby necklace for her. I was blowing a lot of dough. But what is dough when you've caught a Goddess in your lucky arms?

The first week in November I was alone at the breakfast table. Blue was still asleep. It was about five-thirty
A.M
. I hadn't slept well for weeks.

I laced my coffee with Scotch. I had been doing it for a couple of weeks. I never ate breakfast anymore. I raised the coffee cup for a sip. I glanced at an open magazine on the table.

A big type caption posed a silly question to me. “Are you an alcoholic?”

I started to read the first paragraph. I snickered at the phrases, “morning imbibing, defective sleep patterns, physical dependence and oral compulsion to drink.”

I wasn't hooked on the juice. I didn't have to drink. In fact, I could stop at any time, and never miss it. I read the rest of the article. It wiped the amused grin off my face. The damn piece fitted the alcoholic symptoms to me like a glove.

I got up and dumped the heavily-laced coffee into the sink. I
went to the bathroom and looked at myself critically in the mirror. Was I imagining that the whites of my eyes had an almost invisible pale aqua tint, overcast by a network of tiny red veins?

The slight puffiness of my face made my nose look shorter and smaller. I thrust my face closer to the mirror. Phantom lavender encircled my eye sockets. My palms got gluey with sweat when I remembered the scabby drunks festering on Madison Street's skid row.

I went and sat on the side of the bed in deep thought. I'd prove to myself that I wasn't a sucker for alcohol. I was certain I wasn't an alcoholic. I was too young. I would just turn twenty-three on the fifteenth of January coming.

Only old guys and broads could be alcoholics. But, yes, I was drinking too much. That's why I didn't sleep well and my face had a funny look.

Well I was a grifter, not a weak square John. I'd stop drinking hard stuff from this moment on. Maybe I'd still sip just a little sociable champagne with the Goddess on our dates. Everybody knew champagne was harmless, probably even therapeutic.

I took the fifth of Cutty Sark Scotch off the nightstand and dumped it into the toilet bowl. I put on my robe and went to the Buick. I got three unopened fifths from the trunk.

I dumped them into the toilet and said, “Mr. Trick Bag, you bastard, I'm through with you. Don't think it's been a pleasure. It hasn't.”

I'd show the cocky author of that article that his rundown on chump drunks didn't really fit me after all. For the next two days I didn't take a drop. I slept worse and I had no pep in the street with Blue.

On the third day I got a tonic for pep from the drug store, I finished the bottle that same day. It boosted me from the washed-out feeling. That night I drank half a Jeroboam of champagne with the Goddess.

The fourth day after I had taken the pledge, Blue and I had just blown off a smack mark near the Greyhound Bus Station in the
loop. I had a bottle of the tonic in my topcoat pocket. Blue was on the sidewalk watching me walk east and the mark west, to prove that we weren't partners that had cheated Blue out of his money.

Suddenly, I and the milling crowd and the cars were sucked into a black, booming, nauseous whirlpool. My tongue staggered across my desert-dry lips. I tasted the brine streaming down my inflamed face.

My rubbery legs started telescoping down toward the pavement. I stumbled to a light pole, and turned and looked back at Blue. A pair of wide eyes starkly white, bobbed in a choppy sea of people.

He was staring at me with his mouth open. He glanced back over his shoulder. The mark wasn't out of sight. As sick as I was, I realized how sticky the blowoff would be if the mark saw me leaning weakly against the pole.

He'd know I wasn't on my way to meet him around the block to get his money back, and half of what we'd taken from Blue. He'd come back and loiter around to protect his dough. A bunco cop could make the scene and get wise.

Then I thought of the tonic in my top coat pocket. I struggled the bottle to my mouth and drained it in front of the curious stares of passers-by. It was like a small transfusion of pure energy.

Within a minute and a half, I felt strong enough to release my grip on the light pole. It was a long, long two blocks to the Caddie.

Blue had been following me. He helped me into the car. He pulled the Caddie away from the curb and said, “Folks, you're sick. I'm taking you to a croaker.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back in the seat.

I said, “Forget the croaker. Let's go to the Brass Rail. I need a stiff jolt of Scotch.”

That night at home I lay in bed and framed a slick drinking plan. No drinking at all until noon. Then I'd take no more than a pint by shots or bottle before bedtime.

After a week or so I'd made it no more than a half pint. Then after that less and less, until I didn't take any. I knew it would work.
Perhaps I'd even stop drinking harmless champagne with the Goddess in time.

Too bad I'd switched from rum to the Goddess's scotch. Perhaps rum wouldn't have poisoned my system completely. Mr. Trick Bag had won a mere skirmish. I was sure I could win the war.

I fell into jagged sleep. The next morning I awoke to the whirr of a vacuum cleaner. Our old cleaning woman was hard at work in the hall.

Blue came to the side of the bed and said, “How are you doing?”

I said, “I don't feel like I could touch the sky. But I'm not sick.”

Blue said, “Maybe you ought to see a croaker and get checked. You looked awful yesterday hugging that lamp post. Anyway, we'll take the day off. Should I have the old lady bring you some breakfast?”

I shook my head and said, “No, I'm not hungry. I'll get up later and eat some cereal.”

I dozed off. The clinking of cologne bottles on the dresser opened my eyes.

Sister Franklin was dusting and softly humming an old black people's spiritual,
Give Me That Old Time Religion
. Her tiny hunched body and white hair reminded me of Grandma Annie.

I propped myself up in the bed. The mattress springs creaked. Sister's dull brown eyes met mine in the dresser mirror. A toothless smile cheerfully creased her black face.

She turned and said, “Good mawnin', Mistah Johnny.”

I said, “Good morning, Sister Franklin.”

She said, “Ah warn't aimin' tu break yuh res'. Mistah Blue perticulah tole me not tu du no cleanin' en heah atall. But ah caint stan no devlish filt'. Ah jes hed tu dus' en heah.

“Mistah Johnny, yuh ain' got thet spry roostah look. Yuh 'pear porely. Ain' nuthun' tu beat thet gud book en truble time. Ah ain' nevah seed thet book en dis hous. Is yuh evah redd it in yurh born days?”

I said, “No, I haven't, Sister Franklin. I've been too busy for most
of my life trying to keep from starving. I've heard it's a good book. One of these days, I'll look into it.”

Her mouth popped open in shocked awe. The dust cloth fluttered to the carpet. With perhaps divine agility she flung herself on her knees beside the bed.

She shut her eyes and started to pray. Her moaning plea to God to show me the holy light and to save my soul gave me an uncomfortable, trapped feeling. The pitiful old lady was so sincerely caught up in the nonsense, I had to go along.

I noticed Blue standing in the doorway shaking his head with an amused smile on his face. Finally she started pressing her fingertips against my head and then across my chest and sides. She was trying mighty hard to heal me back to that spry rooster stance. But my head still felt like I had thousand-pound dumbbells strapped to it, and her gnarled fingers tickled me silly.