Chicago Hustle (4 page)

“Y'all fuckin' every chance you git, ainchu?”

Elijah turned his face toward the window, as though he had suddenly seen something. It never paid to be too flip with Leelah. If the shit started smelling, Leelah Dobbs would be the first one to say it stank, and wouldn't stutter over one single word.

Having failed with the defusing, he decided to nutroll. “Baby, we got any more o' that good smoke left?”

Leelah felt tempted to laugh in his face. How many times had he shot her off to another place when she was pressing him? How many different ways?

“Yeahhh, we still got some,” she sighed, on the verge of giving up. She moved to the closet with her usual quick, precise movements, pulled a shoebox out and handed it to Elijah.

“'Lijah, you still didn't answer my question.”

“What question was that, baby?” he asked, smiling up at her innocently.

“You and Dee Dee got a thang goin' on, ainchu?”

Elijah expertly, efficiently rolled one, lit it, toked up and passed it to her as he took off his shirt. Leelah noticed the slight smudge over the left pocket. Mascara.

“We ain't got no bigger thang goin' on than you 'n Zelma,” he replied finally, sprawling back on the bed, the first effects of the dynamite seeping in.

They stared at each other evenly for a few seconds, faces carefully arranged to say nothing or everything, and then, spontaneously, they lapsed into mutual grins and fell into each other's arms.

“Elijah Brookes! What am I gon' do with you?!”

He began to struggle out of his pants. “I already got one thing in mind.”

She stood up and began to disrobe.

Elijah smiled and thought to himself … doubleheaders can wear you out. Oh well … my dick'll rot away one day, may as well use it as much as I can now.

Leelah and Elijah sat at one of their favorite tables in the Tiger Lounge, drinking Afro-gins, waiting for the house group to come back on, feeling good from love and a long, sexual catnap, enjoying their kind of people … stuff players, second story men, petty drifters, fast steppers, dope fiends, ho's 'n pimps.

Leelah nudged Elijah, alerted him to the fierce little dialogue going on between Dot the ho and her man, Precious Percy.

“Now, Dot … I done clocked you! You been sittin' on your ass for the last eighteen minutes, tappin' your foot and drinkin'.”

“I'm waitin' for somebody, Precious,” she replied meekly.

“You go wait for ‘somebody' outside. Now what I'm gon' do is this … I'm goin' to the toilet, to let some water out of this fine hose of mine, and when I come out … I don't wanna see yo' lazy, triflin' ass nowhere in sight. Dig it?”

Dot practically bowed from the waist on the bar stool, losing her balance. “Awright, Precious … awright, baby.”

Precious Percy frowned stiffly at Dot to re-emphasize his point and turned to stroll to the men's room, to refreeze his nose.

“What it is, Precious? What it is?” Elijah spoke out to him as he passed their table.

Precious shrugged and shook his head negatively, showing with every gesture how rough times were.

“You got it, bruh 'Lijah, you got it, man.”

Elijah watched Percy disappear into the men's room at the back of the club. Precious Percy, the pimp, the ladies' good time grinder and weak spot finder. His mind flashed across the pimp's life and decided against it again. And besides, if it wasn't for the fact that pimpin' sisters was becoming more and more unpopular, being thirty years old was a helluva late time to start.

The house group returned to the set. Junkie bassist an ex- with almost everybody from Horace Silver to Stevie Wonder. Drums kicked by an undiscovered Art Blakely, rumored to be a speed freak, and from the way he played, sometimes, it was believable. Piano player hung up on a lost chord, a trumpet player who could've played higher but was dedicated to getting down to those burnt, deep moods that the middle Miles Davis owned. They swirled into action … “ah one ah two, ah one two three …”

They settled back. Leelah draped her arm around the back of Elijah's chair. Her man. She looked at his profile as he nodded in time to the music.

Elijah Brookes was going to be in the big time someday, she knew it in her bones, if she had anything to do with it. How much did they have saved? Thirty-five hundred bucks … a few more grand and they could get into some kind of legitimate business, maybe buy a car, do something.

Elijah felt her looking at him, smiled out of the corner of his mouth and squeezed her thigh under the table. Uhh huh …

They both laughed at the sight of the bass player being jabbed out of a longer than usual nod by the drummer. The drummer had done it so quick that a lot of the people missed it.

Cleotis Murphy and Homer Jackson slid in as they listened to the bassman run through a deep, involved, bass solo, the mysteries of a junkie's musical dream.

Cleotis Murphy and Homer Jackson. The message was sent and received with one quiet rush … two of the baddest black motherfuckers around, who also happened to be detectives.

The wheelers and dealers in the Tiger didn't stop wheeling and dealing, they just took their swift moving actions to a slower, more cautious place.

Elijah slipped Leelah his piece, a little Italian job that he carried when they went out, just to keep the wolves at bay.

Murphy and Jackson, strolling the length of the log, caught the surreptitious actions being performed because of their appearance. “What you doin', brother Brookes, cleanin' up?”

Elijah smiled easily. “Cleanin' up? Cleanin' up what, Officer Murphy?”

The two detectives exchanged broad smiles with each other, knowing that damned near everybody in the club was dirty in some way, and took seats at the bar for a couple of on duty drinks.

The members, like some kind of game that realizes that the lion in its midst has killed, eaten and is no longer a threat, returned to their various businesses.

At the conclusion of the group's third number, being given a big round of applause for “Filthy McNasty,” Elijah spotted a face peeking through the window beyond the neon, signalling to him.

He looked toward the women's toilet, half a mind on Leelah in the toilet and what she would think when she found him gone and half on what the face signaling to him wanted.

Instinct gave him the answer to his problem … he moved.

“Leavin' so soon, Mr. Brookes,” Murphy signified with him.

“Yeah, you goin'? Don't do anything I wouldn't do,” his partner added.

Elijah smiled indulgently at both of them and kept on steppin'.

“Psssst! pssssst! 'Lijah! over here, man!”

Elijah made a disdainful face. Benny the Bone, Bony Benny, sometimes known as Benny the Bandit, What the hell did he want?

He eased up to Benny in the shadows of a hallway four doors from the lounge.

“Heyyyy, what's happenin', 'Lijah? I called your crib and didn't get no answer, so I figured you'd be down here. I didn't wanna come inside 'cause Murphy 'n Jackson been harassin' me all week.”

“Yeah, I can dig it. Them two crazy motherfuckers just made the scene a few minutes ago. I was gettin' ready to git on myself. What's happenin'?”

Benny, anxious to prolong the suspense, to tighten his game, lit a cigarette and exhaled slowly.

“I got a lead pipe cinch … you game?”

Elijah's voice dripped with skepticism as he asked coolly, “Game? Ooohh, I don't know, run it down to me.”

“Okay, dig this!” Benny talked urgently from the shadows. “I just got word from a buddy who was there, about one o' those heavyweight crap games goin' on, over on the Westside.”

“What you plannin' to do, palm some dice and get your throat cut?”

Benny, not one to be insulted by anyone, responded, “Naw, nawww, not really. But I was just thinkin'. There must be other ways to … uh ruh … get some of that bread, if not all of it. All I need is somebody with some heart to back me up … so, quite naturally, I thought about you.”

Elijah studied Benny's expression for some sign of bullshit, found none, but continued his skeptical probing. “Uhhn huh. All we have to do is just bust in and get our asses kicked”

Not likely, blood … with them on they bellies, with they asses heisted up in the air. Just think man! For five grand or more! My man told me he had blown three bills himself before he cut out.”

“Five grand, huh?”

Benny nodded affirmatively, emphatically.

Elijah pursed his lips, carefully reviewing the dangers connected to robbing a crap game. It was a little bit like winner take all. The loser would have nothing, and there was nothing that they could legally do about it.

The big problem was the big “If” involved with trying to jam fifteen or twenty dudes who did a lot of jamming themselves.

“What kinda heat you got?”

Benny's eyes glittered a little in the shadows as he recited the pieces in his armory. “Sawed-off shotgun, two .45s and a luger.”

“How much did you say was in the game?”

“How much? At least five grand. Probably more by now.”

Elijah spun the whole business around in his skull once more, whipping through the ifs and ands, the buts and wherefors. “I'll take the shotgun,” he announced coldly.

“Yeahhh, cool! that's cool with me!” Benny moved completely out of the shadows, grinning with his rat-pointed teeth.

“We split the take right down the middle, right?”

“Right on! blood! right on!”

“And if I get robbed tomorrow,” Elijah added, knowing Benny's ways, “by anybody … anybody. I'm comin' for your ass.”

Benny tried to look shocked, but failed. He shrugged nonchalantly instead. “Right on!”

His mind made up, Elijah prepared to move. “Wait here a minute, lemme go back 'n tell Leelah I'm makin' a run.”

He took a few steps in the direction of the club and suddenly reversed his field, Murphy and Jackson on his mind.

“Fuck it! She'll know I'm gone when she misses me. Let's git on!”

“Come on, I'm parked 'round the corner here.”

They loped off to Benny's ride, Elijah pumping him for as much information as possible.

Leelah sat at their table, her jaws becoming tighter with each passing minute. Finally, completely bugged, she approached one of the regulars.

“Danny baby, would you go into the men's toilet and see if Elijah is constipated or somethin'?”

Danny looked past Leelah's head sheepishly, wishing she had asked someone else, knowing her bad temper. “Uhh, he ain't in the … uhh …”

“Well, where in the fuck is he then?” she asked loudly.

“He split, baby,” Detective Murphy answered, half turning on his stool.

She gritted her teeth and signalled to the waitress for another drink, muttering savagely to herself the whole while. “Dirty rotten black ass motherfucker … can't even go out for a minute without showing his ass!”

Benny drove extra carefully, feeling proud to have a bonafide player on his j.o.b. with him.

“Heyyy man, I got some dynamite smoke with me, can you handle it?”

Elijah stared at Benny's profile for a long moment, almost hating him. Could he handle it? shit!

“I'm a thoroughbred, motherfucker. What do you mean, can I handle it?”

Benny glanced at Elijah's hard expression to make certain he hadn't stirred up any bad, bad vibes and smiled a conciliatory smile.

“I hear ya, I hear ya, bruh.”

He pulled two finger-sized joints out of his breast pocket, handed Elijah one.

“It'll be a cinch, man. All we have to do is put some cover over our faces, walk in, push these fools down on the floor, rip 'em off 'n git in the wind.”

Elijah sucked home a couple times before responding to Benny's oversimplified con.

“Sounds like a winner to me. I just hope we don't have happen to us what happened to Juneboy last year.”

Benny released a high-pitched giggle, loaded already. “What happened?”

Elijah smiled out at the lights of the city sweeping past him, the warm summer air brushing his face. High again.

“Uhh, what happened, man?”

Elijah pulled back from his personal thoughts and went to entertainment for Benny's sake, knowing that he needed some kind of fun session to cool him out, build up his shaky morale.

“June broke in on some cold-blooded dudes with no bullets in his piece. One of the dudes called his bluff, took his piece, what little money he had, stuffed boot in his ass and pushed him back out on the streets with nothin' but his socks 'n shorts on … and it was two degrees colder than a well digger's asshole.”

Benny's nervousness made his high-pitched sniffling sound almost hysterical. “Yeahhh, that sho' was cold!”

Elijah allowed himself a self-indulgent chuckle before settling back to the business at hand. A gambling house robbery could be a super tricky proposition if it wasn't handled right.

“Uhh, lemme check the piece that I'm gon' use out.”

“Look in the back seat, wrapped up in that towel. Box o' shells in the glove compartment.”

Elijah broke the piece down and checked it out carefully, hesitated to load it for a second, but then decided to. No telling what kind of response a bunch of gambling house tough nuts would make, best be ready.

Benny wrestled the car into a parking space.

“You all right, man?” Elijah asked him.

Benny nodded. “How 'bout yourself?”

“I'm cool. That really is some bad smoke though.”

“I told you.”

They sat in the car, reviewing the steps to be taken.

“Now dig, Benny … I'm tellin' you out front … don't even
think
about firin' on nobody unless they try to grab you. Okay?”

“Hey, bruh … I hear ya. I don't need no murder rap on me neither. I hear ya.”