Airtight Willie & Me (11 page)

“Hi, Mama Lula,” Satin said as she kissed and embraced the old woman.

She sighed. “Bless your darling heart, Etta, you're here. Now Malique can stop walking the house like a ghost with a toothache.”

They all laughed as Pony led Satin from the room into his bedroom. They stood in the blue-lit lair deep tonguing and swaying in each other's arms with Lou Rawl's muted “You'll Never Find” creaming from the record player. They disengaged to remove her coat and boots. She sank down on the side of bed and thought she saw an odd bulge beneath the blue silk shoulder ridge of his robe as he went to the closet. Her eyes widened when he turned, with a shining face, from the closet holding a submachine gun. He tossed it on the bed beside her. She recoiled, stared at it.

He laughed. “Can't bite! Meet my bad backup buddy when I take off Razzle Red.” He snapped his fingers and returned to the closet, brought back Jelly Drop's dope and money wrapped in the square of oilcloth. He dumped it into her lap, bowed grandiloquently before her.

His enormous grey eyes twinkled. “Taxes, my Queen, for our beer
town dream. I collected it from Lord Jelly Drop in the province of Dopeville at Forty-seventh and Calumet Avenue.”

He sat on the bed beside her and unloosened the oilcloth. The mound of “H” gleamed whitely as he plucked off its top the fat stack of greenery. He riffled it before her eyes as he exclaimed, “Five grand! . . . for two minutes of fun. And that smack I'll drop on my man in Gary for another two grand.”

She stared down at the heroin, saw the OD'd child junkie again, and thought of Mimi. Then she heaved a heavy sigh.

He put his palm against her forehead. “Beautiful, you all right? That's a nice dust score!” He nibbled at her ear, her lips.

She turned her head away and slowly rolled up the oilcloth. She kissed him, looked into his eyes. “Pony, the bread is mellow, but the smack goes down the crapper.” Then she stood clutching the oilcloth and walked resolutely toward the bathroom on the other side of the room.

He hollered, “Hey!” as he leapt in pursuit. He grabbed her waist and spun her to face him. His voice was harsh as he gripped her shoulders. “Have you flipped out? I stuck my head up the devil's asshole for that smack. Now come to yourself, doll. Shit!”

She stared implacably into his outraged eyes. “You know I love you, Pony, don't you?”

He nodded.

She bit her lip. “Well, Pony, guess you've got a big decision to make . . . me or this package of poison. We don't want, can't afford, the Karma dues for this shit. Darling, I hope you choose me.”

He was slack-jawed, utterly flabbergasted, trapped in the indecipherable quicksand of her female temperament. He shivered his head. “You serious, baby?”

She whispered, “I'm serious, Pony.”

He released her and shrugged. “I choose you, Witch. I can't make love to that smack.”

She tiptoed and sucked his lips as her tender hand invaded his
pajama fly to caress his weapon. Then she turned and said over her shoulder, “But you gotta do me, you gorgeous knight with the ice cream cone dick. I'll run through the shower.”

He shook his head ruefully as he watched her dump the “H” from the oilcloth into the john and flush it away. After that, she stepped into the shower. He stripped himself nude. His sleek muscles rippled beneath his tawny skin like those of a jungle cat. He stretched his steel wire frame on the bed and snorted a blow of coke, and lit up a stick of gangster. He closed his eyes and drifted into fantasy about Satin and a new caper with his tongue he'd lay on her.

She slid in beside him, took the joint, and sucked on it. He held his gold snorting spoon beneath her nostrils for a heady blow. She caressed his face, his throat with fingertips. He flinched. She sat upright as she touched the bandage on his right shoulder ridge. She flipped on a nightstand light and asked, “How did that happen?”

He grinned. “Jelly Drop stung me lightly. Now don't get uptight; it's just a crease.”

She gravely studied his wounded shoulder, imagined the bullet fatally hitting inches left through his throat, perhaps left and inches higher through the back of his head. She collapsed into his arms. The kiss of death kid, that's me, she told herself. She heard blind Lula flush the toilet in the hall and ground herself close to Pony. She decided she couldn't let Pony go against Red, his killer partner, Frog, and the trio of deadly New York dope dealers. The hotel dream is called off because of love, she thought. Lula and me can't make it without Pony.

Childishly she visualized Mister Sims's hotel flapping mammoth wings over the horizon like the winged greenbacks and sacks of loot in newspaper comic strips and cartoons. She whispered against his chest, “Pony, the big score is cancelled. I can't let you take the risk. We'll have to forget our Milwaukee dream.”

He pushed her away, frowned as he stared into her face incredulously. “Satin, what the fuck is happening with you?”

She said, “I love you,” as she swung her legs off the bed to sit on the side of it. She got cigarettes and the broker's letter from her purse on the floor. She lit two cigarettes, stuck one in Pony's mouth, and gave him the letter. She drew deeply on her cigarette.

As he read the letter, she said, “We'll have to be patient. We'll find another spot in Milwaukee to make the scum jibs swallow their poison. You won't come back against five streetwise niggers, even with a machine gun.”

Pony flung the letter into her lap. He leapt from the bed, stalked the carpet before her as he furiously puffed the cigarette. Then he savagely ground it out in a nightstand ashtray. He knelt between her legs and vised her face between his palms.

Their eyes were locked as he brutally intoned, “You doubt me. You don't love me. You don't believe I'm clever enough or tough enough to take those niggers off. You maybe think Red is more man than me because he's got a bunch of bulgy muscles.”

He seized her shoulders and shook her violently. “Say it! Run it down, baby! Say it! Say you think I'll freeze like a pussy and let those gorillas blow me away. Now you got a choice. Get me the dup twister to the joint where the deal goes down. We've waited three months for Red to make a deal this big. It was your idea. You got me high on it. We've got to take it off. You can't junk it, baby! I don't want you for my woman, Etta, if you don't love me enough to have confidence in me.”

She understood his twisted macho reasoning as she studied his face, realized he meant it. Trapped, she burst into tears. Triumphant, he covered her face, her breasts, and thighs with kisses. Conquered, she set the alarm clock on the nightstand. She sank back on the bed. She moaned as he mounted her and stroked into her with amazing grace and equine power for an hour. He banged her womb-gate until their last mutual orgasm. Delicious fatigue dropped them into slumber. He slept between her thighs with his vanquished monster jailed inside her lubricious cave.

The jangle of the clock's alarm awakened them at dawn. They kissed and hugged. She sponged off and dressed as he watched her from the bed. She sat on the side of the bed and ran her fingers through his hair.

She said, “I'll get the meet motel key duplicated. I'll get it to you tomorrow.” She lit a cigarette. She continued softly, “I think it looks great for this week. Red always rents his meet room a week before. He's checked in, as always, with luggage like a traveling salesman. So I should, within the next three days, know when Red and Frog get the call from the New York dealers, unless they call to reset the meet. It can happen. If it does, our dream is down the drain by default. Stay close and keep your phone open the rest of the week. Pony, I'm so excited. I'm going to be a wreck, darling, until it's over. I hope it comes off this week and nothing happens to you.”

He said, “Nothing can. I've never made a Karma debt. I've never put the heist on or hurt an honest man.”

They kissed. She stood and gazed at him for a long moment. He followed her to the front door.

He said, “Beautiful, nothing will happen to me. But I been worrying about Red and Frog hunting us down. Shouldn't I . . . ?”

She shook her head. “They don't trust each other. Frog is paranoid; he trusts nobody. It shouldn't be hard to come up with a plan to make Frog eliminate Red for us. You know how I hate Red, but it's better for us that Frog hits him. We'll worry about Frog later.”

He said, “I'll pass up the smack when I take 'em off.”

She said, “Oh no, you don't. Take it so we can put it out of circulation.”

He groaned. “A hundred gees worth of smack down the crapper.”

They laughed and kissed good-bye. He watched her pull away and disappear behind a lazy curtain of snowflakes. Twenty minutes later, she turned into the driveway through the open steel gates of Red's high-walled estate on the extreme Southside. She pressed the button on the Genie garage door opener as she drove down the long
driveway into the four-car garage. When she shut off the motor, she noticed Frog's Buick, and saw that Red's Continental was missing. She stepped from the car to the driveway and pressed a button beside the garage door. It swung shut.

She glanced up at the five-bedroom apartment atop the garage where Red's stable of five whores lived. She walked to the back door of the two-story white brick mansion that was cleaned and maintained by Red's whores. She let herself into the service porch, then through the door into the gleaming spacious kitchen. She went through the lavish Chippendale dining room to the spiral staircase leading to the master bedroom.

She reached the second-floor landing, paused outside Frog's room at what she thought was the sound of her own voice. It was her voice, she realized, as she heard tinny segments of a telephone conversation she had with her shop's perfume supplier two days before. She hastened away to examine her phone, then heard Frog's door open behind her.

She halted, turned, and said frostily, “Good morning, Frog.”

A frown hedge rowed his brow for an instant before he said, “Hi, Miss Fine. Didn't expect you until tonight,” as he walked toward her looking like a huge black, wet frog with his protrusive eyes glittery in his blunt face, shining greasily.

She said, “Frog, the plans of mice and et cetera . . .”

He walked to her and towered over her with his heavy lips pulled back in a gold-toothed smile. “My sympathy for your mother's passing.”

She said, “Thank you, Frog,” as she turned away.

He grabbed her wrist. She faced him with narrowed eyes staring down at his grip on her arm. He leaned into her face with his ugly face twisted with grotesque ardor. His squeaky voice quavered. “I missed you, L'il Fox, more than Red, you can bet. Give me a break, huh? I can keep a secret.”

He dropped his mouth toward hers. She jerked her face out of
range and twisted her wrist from his grasp as she backed down the hallway.

He pursued and pleaded, “Gimme a break! I don't want something for nothing.” He snatched a roll of “C” notes from his pocket. They littered the hallway when he threw them at her retreating feet.

She backed into her bedroom, slammed, and locked the door. Frog muttered obscenities as he got on his hands and knees to retrieve the “C” notes from the carpet. Satin hung her coat on the doorknob over the keyhole. She used a nail file to unscrew the base of the telephone. Just as she had suspected, she saw a tiny concealed transmitter bug. She replaced the screws and nervously chain-smoked at the window overlooking the backyard.

She wondered if Frog's bug was in two weeks ago; that day, the only time, she had called Pony from the house in months. And only then because she had a bad cold and didn't go into the shop for a whole day. She tried to remember the texture and text of the call. Just light chitchat she thought.

She watched Frog, in coveralls, open the garage door. He lifted the hood of his antique '38 Buick Limited, then opened a toolbox and tinkered under the hood. She left the room to check out the phones in the adjoining guest rooms. Bugged. She stopped at Frog's door, twisted the doorknob. Locked. She checked out the three phones downstairs. Bugged.

She returned to the bedroom window. She saw Red's Continental pull into the garage. He got out with his stable of wilted young whores that he had picked up off the street and from second-rate hotels in the Loop. He pecked their cheeks in turn as they went up the stairs to their pad over the garage.

Satin went into the bedroom. She stripped nude and examined her haggard face in the bathroom mirror. She heard him enter the bedroom, saw his muscular image come to stand in the doorway behind her.

He grinned crookedly as he said, “Damn, girl, you look tore down, like you been turning a slew of two-buck Spic berry pickers.”

Her face was stony as she looked into his hooded green eyes in the mirror. His processed red mop glinted in the light.

“My mama had a funeral, Red. I gotta be uptight if I'm human.”

He stepped in close and rubbed his crotch against her buttocks. “Aw! C'mon now, baby, with that shuck. We got in common we hate our old ladies. Right?”

She moved to brush her teeth at the side of the washbasin. “Wrong, Red! I just hated Mama's strictness, fool that I was, but I loved Mama. She didn't dump me in an alley as yours did when I was born. She wanted me, took care of me, Ora, and my pa dying of cancer. She was a saint, Red. An old church doxie cracked I was cursed for killing Mama. But she was mistaken.”

She cringed away from his hands reaching for her shoulder. He laughed. “They say a trick killed my old lady. But shit, you're in serious trouble, sugar, for sure, wasting a saint.”

Her dark eyes were killer panther orbs as she indicted him. “You mean you're in trouble, bad trouble, Red. You're the louse that pulled me away to break her heart with your con air castles. You murdered my sweet saint, Red! Don't you want to change the subject?”