Chicago Hustle (19 page)

Clotille. The name triggered two separate thoughts in his head … Mabel Stewart from long ago. Last year? three years ago? and the sound of B.B. King's voice singing “The Thrill is Gone.”

He turned around again to check out the lavender, rose and hot pink duo. It was obvious from the way that they were deliberately ignoring him that they were interested.

Nawww, I'd best keep my energy together for tomorrow. Just wait 'til I get a chance to rap to Toni … I'm gon' blow that bitch's ear off!

“How much I owe you, doll?” The bartender lady moved quickly to the space in front of Elijah, doing abacus calculations as he moved. Wonder if I could pad it for a dollar 'n a quarter? he looks fucked up. Might not remember whether or not his partner had a double or a single …

“That'll … be ten dollars even.”

Elijah gave her a nasty, sneering smile and announced in a loud, loud voice, “My tab is eight dollars and seventy-five cents. I had three double Bristols at two fifty a glass and my man had a single shot of Chivas Regal at a dollar 'n a quarter. That comes to eight seventy-five! What the fuck you tryin' to do, cheat me!?”

The bartender lady allowed herself to be humbled by Elijah's tirade. After all, the customer
was
always right. “Sorry, I made a mistake,” she mumbled softly, dropping her eyes slightly, paying dues.

“You motherfuckin' right! you made a mistake!” Elijah played the irate customer all the way home and slammed a twenty down onto the bar.

After she had carefully counted his change out in front of him, half the people in the bar looking on with jaded indulgence, he slid two dollars back across the bar and leaned across to whisper, “Remember, baby … you can't cheat an honest man.”

Elijah carefully recounted the money on the dining room table, keeping his voice to a steady monotone as he came to the final figure again. Two thousand, five hundred dollars.

“That's it, Mrs. Campbell,” he announced in a dry, official tone, “two thousand, five hundred dollars.”

Mrs. Campbell stood with her arms folded across her lank breasts, a vague expression on her face. “That's a lot of money, isn't it? Mr. Adams … I don't think I've ever seen quite so much money at once.”

Elijah's eyes traveled quickly over the short, green stacks of fifty-dollar bills. Damn! only twenty-five hundred! damn!

“We see that much, and a whole lot more, every day, down at the bank, Mrs. Campbell.”

“Ohhh, yes, I'll bet you do! I'll bet you do.” She brightened up slightly as she spoke, thinking of her role in the solution of a crime.

Elijah forced himself to calmly pull out his carefully designed receipt book, an expensive creation by a thug buddy who had majored in printing in Statesville. He scribbled twenty-five hundred, Mrs. H.T. Campbell, dated the receipt and with a flourish, signed, “Donald T. Adams, special investigator, Security Division, First National Bank.”

“Here you are, Mrs. Campbell.” He handed her the receipt, opened his small attache case, a relic from his pots 'n pans day, carefully arranged the money inside, clicked it closed and reached to shake Mrs. Campbell's hand.

He had toyed with the idea of using a diplomatic courier's wrist chain, doing a superdramatic bit of clicking the bracelet on his wrist and locking the other end to the attache case, but decided against it because it might seem too corny.

Mrs. Campbell squeezed his hand tightly with both of hers. “My … uhhh … everything will be all right, won't it, Mr. Adams? I mean …”

He fixed a kind, gentle, warm expression on his face and reassured her. “Your money is absolutely safe with First National, Mrs. Campbell, please be assured of that … your receipt is a double safeguard.”

He moved quickly to the door, hating the pitiful, trusting puppy dog look in her eyes. “Once again, Mrs. Campbell, thank you for your cooperation … I'm sure you'll be very pleased with your bonus interest rates and, I'm not supposed to tell you this …” He opened the door and peeked out theatrically. “Your reward will be two hundred and fifty cash dollars.”

Mrs. Campbell clasped her hands together in delighted surprise, looking, with the gesture, like a TV giveaway prize winner. “Oooooohhhhh!”

Elijah felt a trickle of sweat run down his side. God! the door is open, I'm on my way. “Goodbye, Mrs. Campbell, see you in the newspaper,” he said, and took a step out of the door.

“Oh, Mr. Adams, won't you need my bankbook?”

It seemed, for a moment, that time was suspended and that Mrs. Campbell's right hand was floating into her apron pocket and pulling out her bankbook in slow motion. The whole thing! she was giving him the whole thing!

He stared at the little blue book and did some electronic thinking. The bankbook? Today is Thursday, nobody around that I trust at the moment … by Friday, anybody walking in for the other half might get hassled and busted, leading to me … and by Monday it would definitely be unsafe.

He took a step back into the apartment. “No, Mrs. Campbell, your bankbook won't be necessary. I thought I explained … I will re-deposit your money, or Mrs. MacElroy, one of our administrative assistants, will … and it will be automatically credited to your account by way of our computer coding process.”

Mrs. Campbell shook her head in wonder at all the marvelous, sophisticated ways of the world and pushed her bankbook back down into her pocket. “You people think of everything, don't you, Mr. Adams?”

“We try to, m'am.” Elijah smiled easily and waved as he started down the stairs. Home free! if the F.B.I. wasn't waiting in front of the apartment. Home free!

He squared his shoulders and marched out of the court-way, knowing that Mrs. Campbell was digging him from her front window. He turned the corner of the apartment building and felt like running to his car, but decided to be cool and walk … it would never do, to twist an ankle or something, with two and a half grand to be spent … never.

CHAPTER 10

Elijah sprawled out in his favorite easy chair, music on his box, a stick of high-grade grass in the corner of his mouth, slowly roving his eyes around his new apartment. Furnished with all the necessities, ultra delooxe, two hundred and seventy-five a month.

He sucked a bit of smoke into his lungs. Two hundred and seventy-five bucks per month, plus all the other b.s., but it was boss. Yeahhh, outta sight. But this is the way I been wanting it for a long time. Pockets pumped full of stolen coin, a groovy crib, a nice ride, what else do I need?

Without giving it very much serious thought, he reached over and dialed Toni Mathews' number, the exchange memorized now. After four rings he was about to hang up, to forget all about it, when Toni's voice came through, heavy from sleep.

“Hellooooooo?” She stifled a giant yawn. All of his rehearsed rhetoric, all of the violent language he had planned to release in her ear, whenever he caught her on the phone, skidded out into left field. He settled back in his chair to rap, opened up with as mellow a tone as his voice could manage. “Heyyyy there, Miss Lady … this is brother Elijah.”

“Who?” she asked.

His body stiffened slightly. She had to be jivin'… behind all the messages he had left.

“Me, baby …
Mr
. Elijah Brookes, the First,” he answered coldly, falling back slightly into his groove.

“Ooooohhh, hi ya doin', luv?” she responded warmly, all trace of sleep and b.s. gone from her voice. “Say, look, I know you've been tryin' to reach me …”

“For weeks, almost.”

“Yeah, I can dig it; I've just been so tied up with one thing and another. Look, could I ask you to please call me back a li'l later? Say, a couple hours from now? I've got some business that I absolutely must take care of, within the next half-hour, if I don't, my name will be mud junior.”

Elijah took a deep hit on the joint, his head throbbing suddenly with a frustrated headache. “Yeah, I can do that. Are you definitely sure you want me to?”

For a few seconds it seemed that her connection had died in his ear, or that she had covered up the receiver. “You know I do,” she finally answered, her voice firm and honest.

“Awright, later then.”

He slowly replaced the receiver, feeling elated and depressed at the same time. What is it the old people used to say?… “the melon that you've waited the longest to steal usually tastes the sweetest.”

He laid his head back on the headrest and pulled hard on the joint. Was she worth it? Up to this point he had been so involved with the pursuit part that he had never really considered any other section. Is she worth it?

He blew a small jet stream of smoke up to the ceiling, floating into the lived-in voice of Billie Holiday singing “Sophisticated Lady.”

The softly clanging chimes startled him. Who could it be? Only three people, aside from the telephone company, knew where he lived.

He eased over to the fisheye peephole in the front door. Two white dudes. Who could they be? and how could they have gotten in without buzzing? And they told me that this fuckin' place was well-guarded.

One of the dudes rang again. And again. And again. Elijah felt paranoia creeping up the back of his skull. Pigs? Yeah! pigs!

He raced away from the front door, snatched his wallet from the dresser, grabbed his leather jacket from the closet and made tracks to the back door.

Damn!

He stopped dead in front of the back door, his hand reaching out for the knob. If it was the pigs, they probably had twice times the number of people at the back door as they had at the front. He flung his jacket down on the kitchen table in disgust, tears swelling up in his eyes. Goddamn it to hell!

He shuffled back through the apartment, the chimes clanging in his ears like doom bells, arrogantly lit a half-smoked joint and strolled to the door. What the fuck! why not go out with style?

“Yeah! who could it be?” he asked sarcastically.

“Police!” a bass voice rumbled back at him.

He opened the door and graciously waved the two swarthy, tallish, well-built men into the apartment, insolently blowing smoke into their faces as they passed by him.

“Uhh, may I see some I.D., officers? Do y'all have a search warrant? Are you sure you're in the light place? Lots o' mistakes been happenin' these days, you know?”

The shortest of the two, the six-footer, playfully punched Elijah on the shoulder.

“Relax, relax, Elijah. We ain't the cops.” The other man strolled in, looking around carefully, sat in Elijah's easy chair, pulled out a German luger and laid it in his lap, his face a mask.

Without asking, he knew who they were now. His shoulders slumped a little. Were they going to throw him out of the window? the way they had done Duke “Dice” Manson, a few years back? or break his thumbs, the way they had done the Jewish call girl a few weeks ago? The newspapers had printed a lot of bullshit, all of the In people knew what had gone down.

Or were they just going to kill him?

“What can I do for you guys?” he asked in a shaky voice, measuring the distance he'd have to cover to the door, dodging luger shells.

The luger man reached into his inside breast pocket and passed his partner a sheet of paper.

The man standing in front of him spoke with a cold smile on his lips. “Browney, your friend, sent us over to remind you that you owe him, as of today, exactly one thousand, two hundred bucks and ten cents interest, plus two hundred bucks. You wanna pay all or part of it now?”

Elijah looked at him as though he were speaking a lost language. “How much?” He finally worked the question out.

“One thousand, two hundred and ten cents plus two hundred. Which comes to one thousand, four hundred 'n ten cents. You hard o' hearin'?”

The luger man's face creased in an animal grimace that was meant to be mistaken for a smile.

Elijah's shoulders slumped a little more.

“Uhh, nawww, hah hah hah … I, uhhh … I just hadn't realized it was that much.”

“That's how much it is,” the man in the chair spoke for the first time. “How much do you wanna give us? the whole pie or just a piece?”

Elijah could feel the nervous tic creep up his cheek and felt powerless to prevent it. “Dig, fellas … I'm a li'l low right in through here, I got a deal that's about to go down.”

“How much, man?” the luger man cut in.

“Well, I can give you a couple bills now … and then, when my … uhhh … deal comes through …”

“Fuck the con, Elijah, we want the dough.”

Elijah dug down into his wallet and pulled out four fifties from the rest of the bills in the wallet.

The man in the easy chair slid out of it, his piece in Elijah's face, as his partner snatched his wallet out of his hands and pulled the rest of the bills from it. He fanned the bills out like cards, three hundred dollars' worth, divided the money with his partner and said, “That's it, huh? two hundred on your account.”

“Not unless you gon' add that other three!?” Elijah shot in, his anger at being robbed overcoming his fear.

Both of the men laughed. “Nawww, we don't include that. Let's just call that a gift from you to us.”

“A gift?!”

“Yeah,” the luger man added, “a gift for not breakin' your fuckin' head.”

Elijah looked down slightly, not wanting to give any provocation at this point.

The two men moved, in step, to the door. “We don't make but two visits, Elijah … remember that.” The taller of the two held up one finger to indicate that they had made one already, and slammed out.

Elijah stood in the center of the room, shaking with fear and rage. Dirty, rotten, cold-blooded motherfuckers! Dirty rotten …

He stumbled to his chair, feeling wasted. Son-bitches! opened his wallet to stare at the empty space left by the removal of his money. Oh well, I guess if you play with the bull you got to get a li'l horn sometimes.