Airtight Willie & Me (3 page)

I thought, Houdini, with four-foot arms, couldn't have plucked that score from beneath my seat at that range. Anyway, I bent over and probed until my fingertips touched it. He slammed the door shut. I felt a twinge of guilt, watching the wind flap his overcoat tails, that he was trusting me with the score.

In a couple of minutes, I heard the thunder of the Lake Street El Train pulling into the station down the street. I looked up at it passing on the way to the Loop. Was that Willie wrapped in his blue plaid benny grinning down at me from a window in the last car?

I tore open the bandana! It was a dummy loaded with
funny-money. I dug beneath the seat like a pooch for a buried bone. Nothing! I raced around the car and pawed beneath the driver's seat. Something sharp gouged blood from my thumb tip. It was a fishhook tied to a length of twine that was tied to an anchor post beneath the seat.

The cunning sonovabitch had probably choreographed the rip-off while we were in the cell. With vivid hindsight, I knew why he pretended he needed the sawbuck from the bandana. He wanted to get the fishhook into it when he put it back. Then he could reel it in with his left hand when he leaned into the car for his benny. The dummy bandana was preplanted to “blow me off” smoothly just in case I got suspicious, as I did, before he hit the wind.

I leapt behind the wheel. Maybe I could catch him in the Loop, or at one of the El stops along the way. The gas gauge was on “E,” and I didn't have a cent.

I got out and inhaled deeply. I felt my belly jitterbug in the greasy clouds of soul-food aroma floating from the rib joint. I straightened my tie in a gum machine's fractured mirror, then I psyched up the mirrored mack-man staring back. “You a bad, sugar-rapping ho-stealing motherfucker . . . ain't you? Ain't nothing can stop a ho stalking stepped like you . . . Ain't that right?” Frantically I nodded yes and turned away.

I was lucky! It was black ghetto Christmas. Saturday Night! Easy to cop a ho! I'd guerilla my Watusi ass into a chrome-and-leather ho den and gattle-gun my pimp-dream shit into some mud-kicker's frosty car.

I pimp-pranced toward a ho jungle of neon blossoms a half mile away. Some ass-kicker was a cinch to be a ho short when the joints folded in the
A.M
.

I
t was late summer back in the nineteen forties. The weeks before, I had graduated from a federal prison. I was stalking ho runs in an Ohio burg. It was my birthday. I was ho-less, without a sou in my raise. I was decked out in a gold silk vine and accessories an old pal junkie ho had boosted the day before in Chicago.

Around twilight I stopped by Pretty Phil's, a pimp pal's juke saloon and two-story trick hotel. We embraced. He wiggled his lips against my ear lobe as we disengaged. I thought about the rumors that he now dug stud tours of his sphincter cave.

I cracked it was my birthday. He got on the phone and ordered a monster cake and several cases of Mums.

We sat down and snorted white lady until two A.M. and gazed through the Venetian blinds of his front window. A cavalcade of tricks, flat-backers, stuff players, and thieves paraded past. I shifted uneasily when I caught Phil's assassin Harlequin Great Dane eyeballing me enigmatically. Phil stroked her muzzle. She sighed and nested her head in his lap.

Phil gave me a rundown on every qualified, stealable ho that passed. His rundowns were boss. Sure, I appreciated the crystal blow and his plans to celebrate my birthday. But had he forgotten what a blue-ribbon pal I had been back in Cleveland several years before? He had blown into town with no ho. And worse, no wheels and frozen fireworks exploding off his dukes, necessary to cop a star ho.

I had loaned him my total flash. He had gone on to pimp a zillion. I had too much player pride to smooch his rear end to nudge his sense of all-out reciprocity. I seriously mulled the odds that Phil would test out as a chicken poo-poo amnesiac.

I stared thoughtfully at Phil's yellow bitch face. Like my scarlet doubt was a tennis ball, Phil bombed back the serve when he cracked, “Slim, honey, you hip, I know, that you got my personal pad upstairs and the use of my new wheels and ice to catch you a ho. And, pally, since you my size, play your ass off in any and all of them sixty ho catchers hanging in my closet.”

He dropped a key into my shirt pocket, then he picked up a phone and called upstairs to have the linen changed. I would've kissed the gaudy mother if I hadn't been leery of inviting his tongue up my jib. Phil eased out a portly bankroll. He peeled off several “C” notes and scooted them across the tabletop.

I slid them into my shirt pocket. I was about to tell him what a thoroughbred, stand-up nigger he was when an ebonic money-magnet seized my eyes and struck me mute. She crossed the street and stood on ho point. You know, big exquisite props wide spread. Her crotch humped out to bulge her obese sex nest against her gauzy red dress. Her luminescent skin shone like indigo velour in the neon razzle. She was certified to be a bantam bundle of voluptuous headache for suckers.

Oh, I knew at first gander she was a cold-blooded magician. I saw it in her arrogant body lingo. I saw it in the wizard choreography of her long, tapered fingers. It was confirmed by her fierce killer falcon eyes.

I said dreamily, “Phil, I gotta own that slave . . . gimme a rundown on her and her master.”

Phil curled his lupine lips. He gave me a look like I was that dingbat humpback of Notre Dame. He sneered, “Easy, Massa, since you gotta dream, go to Shitcon City. You could faster and more safely steal Betty Grable, Hedy Lamarr . . . every top mack man from
coast to coast has a hard-on to cop that package over there. Her old man's a stone gorilla. He's shot and stomped a half-dozen niggers about that ho. She's got his nose open wide enough to shove in a coffin. Catch on, pally? She's Black Sue. She can pick a chump clean from all pockets and stashes in thirty seconds. Pally, that bitch is a Superfox Hall-of-Famer ho . . . Now gander the sweetness of the ho's style on that paddy cutting in to her.”

We watched a brawny white joker in a new Buick honk desperately at the instant that he spotted the pygmy ball lyncher. I've seen excited suckers in my time, but that lame has remained without peer in my memory. He just let his chariot drive itself. He coasted through a near-collision cacophony of honking horns as he stretched his neck back and ogled her with phosphorescent eyes.

She flashed her teeth like a rabid panther. She undulated her flat gut to hook him for the killing floor. She jerked her head toward the yawning vestibule of a condemned fleabag hotel behind her. The sucker was so hot to sock it to her, he couldn't risk parking or going around the block. His wheels screeched like a cat in an Osterizer when he U-turned. He parked crookedly in front of Phil's sucker trap. He leapt out and galloped through graveyard traffic to her side of the stem.

We had seen a gleaming gold watch on his wrist. A dime-sized jeweled stickpin had been shooting pastel fire from his necktie. She stood smiling at him behind the cobwebby glass of the vestibule. Almost immediately we saw their silhouettes merge. It was like they were dancing to the seductive beat of a Top Ten hit parade tune.

Phil said, “Count the seconds, pally. That voodoo bitch is pure magic.”

I started counting in my head. I had counted fifty-five seconds when the mark stepped out. He patted his hip pocket as he bullet-assed it down the sidewalk. He went into a hotel at the end of the block. His watch and stickpin were playing hooky. Black Sue peeped out and oozed down the alley across the way.

Phil said, “That Houdini bitch took them extra seconds to lift his jewelry . . . Ain't she a motherfucker? She's sent that mark to check in for fun and games. He ain't got the five bucks for the room. He's gonna piss in his pants when he finds the ho has cleaned him out and put his wallet back . . . and rebuttoned his pocket!”

I said, “That ho is two-and-a-half tons of sweet bread . . . Phil, I gotta steal that fox. I ain't never gonna be satisfied if I cop a thousand girls. Phil, I deserve that ho, and the ho deserves me. I'm gonna toss the craps for her! Back me up, old buddy!”

Phil shrugged. “Any and everything, pally. But like I laid it out front, you ain't got nothing but sucker odds. So if you want to buck the saw and get in the pit with her gorilla . . . He don't allow the ho to even rap with nothing but suckers . . . and don't forget he lugged her from New Orleans. Them pimps and hoes off'a Rampart Street got their own understanding of one another's crazy shit and savvy of their thing together. One more time, Slim, let the ho be! Darling, I don't want to cry like a cunt at your funeral.”

Then Phil sighed. “Good luck, pally . . . Promise to bury you in a blue silk vine with a three-day wake.”

We watched the stricken sucker stumble out to the sidewalk. He streaked back to the vestibule killing floor, where he kicked out the door glass panels. He scooted up and down the block, peeping into every joint and cranny. He was cavorting and hurting like his balls had been blow-torched. Finally, he sad-sacked into his Buick. He stomped the horses and blasted off to shake down the ghetto catacombs.

Phil's main ho, dwarfish Bitsy Red, and several hoes of his stable came in to set up the joint for the after-hours action and my birthday party. You know, stringing bunting and glitter crap around the mirrored joint.

I said, “Phil, how long has that ho been down in this burg?”

He said, “A week or so . . . Why?”

I said, “A ho with her voltage is about due to hit the wind any
time . . . You know, with the heat and all . . . I better get in the streets now to make some kinda contact with the ho. How about laying some more fast rundown on me . . . like has her old man got any chump shortcomings. . . craps, hard shit, or what not?”

Phil grinned. “Like every nigger mack fresh outta big-foot country, he's sizzling for young white ho pussy . . . He's sported his dick twice at Aunt Lula's joint out at the lip of town . . . He's a half a ‘C' note trick . . . cons himself he can steal one with his jib and dick. You ain't got to hit the stem to take your shot at that ho . . . Every pimp and ho in town will ease in here before daybreak. Please, pally! . . . Be cool and don't make Jabbo Ross, that's the gorilla's moniker, waste you in here and sour my roller fix for my joint.”

I said, “I'll be cool, brother . . . Does Bitsy know the ho?”

Phil's Persian cat eyes ballooned with righteous indignation. Bubbles, the Dane, jerked her two hundred pounds to an ominous crouch.

Phil's contralto rap box quavered. “Slim, darling, you my main man, and I love ya. Ain't no doubt you hip. I'd cut off my right wing and my swipe for you. But I ain't gonna let you throw my bottom ho, Bitsy, in no cross with that crazy nigger Jabbo and that girl. Nigger, you got a chump yen for the morgue! You ain't taking Bitsy on that trip!”

I leaned to pat his shoulder. Bubbles issued a doomsday snarl. Phil whispered harshly, “Ho, everything is cool. Lay your bad ass down somewhere.”

Bubbles sighed. She crashed down behind his chair and stared at me with malevolent eyes.

I said, “Baby, you read me wrong. I don't want Bitsy to cut into the ho with no messenger cupid bit. Maybe Bitsy is got some inside info on the ho. You know, personal scam that only a ho would be hip to.”

Phil turned toward the bar and snapped his fingers. Bitsy looked up from dumping silver into the cash register. Phil's head waggled
her to our table. She sat down. I had met her in Cleveland. She smiled.

Phil said, “Give my homeboy a rundown on Black Sue.”

Bitsy said in a squeaky voice, “We did a lot of rapping 'fore Ross cut us loose . . . She's twenty-two or -three . . . I think. Got a crumb crusher, a daughter, in a state foster home back in New Orleans. Her old man, Ross, ain't had Sue but a year. The crumb crusher's daddy was wasted in a card game . . . cotch, I think. Ross ain't got Sue really tight. He's too strict. Don't see why he ain't blowed her 'fore now . . . 'cept maybe she done got freakish to his foot in her ass. She's been an orphan since twelve . . . Saw her daddy waste her mama with a butcher knife. That's it, Slim. Oh yeah . . . Happy birthday!”

Bitsy got to her feet. She laughed scornfully. “That dizzy ho is aching to be a lady ho . . . wants to cop lots of book learning . . . cop nice proper speech and all that phony shit. Ain't that a bitch?”

I said, “Ain't it! Thanks, l'il sis.”

She scurried back to the cash register.

Phil said, “You ain't gonna get the chance to play for Sue the airtight way Ross bird-dogs her. He'll shoot or stomp a mud hole in your ass.”

I said, “Phil, I gotta figure an angle to make her hit on me. You know, give me the first lick. How about laying a rod on me . . . to back me up?”

Phil shrugged. “Not now, pally. I got to think about it, nigger. It's gonna take more than my flash and your bedroom eyes to make that ho give you that lick. Guest of Honor, you better just handle the licks you gonna get here in the joint before daybreak . . . Lots of qualified black and white hoes gonna be here letting their hair down.”

The joint's band drifted in and started tootling and blowing a few practice riffs on a bandstand beside the bar.

Single mud-kickers, black players and their interracial stables,
started to park far-out pimpmobiles up and down the block. They peacocked into Pretty Phil's all decked out in psychedelic threads.

Phil introduced me to the strangers. Many of the players I knew. The inside of my mitts were flaming from the palms I slapped. It was phantasmagoria. They wantonly danced to the funky band's erotic pound. In the red-lit murk, there was the counterpoint bedlam of profane ribaldry as they loaded their skulls with cocaine and the bubbly. The mirrored globes revolving in the ceiling speckled their faces with flashing light. The meld of their perfumes was a near suffocating cloud. It was like Dante's Inferno updated.