Chicago Hustle (9 page)

The two men zeroed in on a couple raw street boys at a far table, stroking superior sticks but talking too much shit.

After watching both of them make strategic errors in their game, Elijah and Sidepockets rechanneled their attentions to other tables, other possible challengers.

“Ohh, I … uh … just left Benny at the Tiger. Cat was really poppin', must've got into somethin' nice.”

Elijah instantly reviewed all of the events of their recent venture together.

Yeahhh, he would do some shit like that. At some point during the night, while I was feelin' on Mabel's ass, he went down and cleaned up, got all the dough and stashed the pieces somewhere else. Sneaky, rat-faced son of a bitch! yeahhhh, he would do something like that.

He stared into Sidney's stone face and received all the reaffirmation he needed. Like, hey brother … and I know about the li'l piece of business you all took off on the other night.

Elijah nodded to Sidepockets and, trying to maintain his cool, strolled out of the Stickhall, jaws tighter than a bear trap, heading for the Tiger.

Fifty steps from the Stickhall, he escalated his stroll to a quick walk. Why? why? why? Why was it always necessary to bite chunks out of a dude's ass before you could get fair treatment, or a real understanding?

The closer he came to the Tiger Lounge, the madder he got. Li'l ol' chickenshit holdup man trying to beat me out of my righteously earned dough. Son of a bitch!

If a shadow of doubt remained, it was completely erased by the sight of Benny sitting at the bar between two psuedo-foxy ladies, stylin'.

Elijah eased up behind him and whispered. “Benny, lemme talk to you a minute?”

Benny turned, a trace of fright in his expression, a giveaway to Elijah, and recovered. “Oh! hey, mannn, c'mon have a drink with me 'n my lady friends.”

Elijah looked off to the other end of the bar, trying to hold an even expression, not reveal the grim feelings he felt. “Later, brother,” he replied with fake congeniality, “this won't take but a minute. I got somethin' heavy to lay on you.”

Benny's eyes widened slightly, his greed being given something to feed on. “Somethin' heavy, huh?”

Elijah winked, pulling him in. “Yeahhh, somethin' really heavy. I know you'll go for it.”

Benny signalled to Sly Bob, the bartender. “Keep the ladies happy, Bob … I be right back y'all.”

Elijah walked out ahead of Benny, steaming.

Out front, he looked up and down the street, felt down in his pocket for his knife. Where could he go?

“Yeah, what's happenin'?” Benny asked urgently, anxious to be back with his party.

Elijah walked quickly to an apartment hallway a few doorways away, beckoning for Benny to follow. Benny frowned, but, being this much committed, he followed.

Elijah closed the hall door, pulled his blade out and snatched Benny across the hall by the collar. “Jiveass motherfucker! Did you have the nerve to try and hold out on me!?”

Benny, instantly aware of circumstances, went into his weasel act. “Hold on a minute, 'lijah … lemme explain … lemme …”

The veins in Elijah's temples puffed out. “Nigger! Do you know you coulda got me killed?! for nothin'!”

Benny tried to curl down into a knot. “Wait a minute, brother! I can explain! please!”

Elijah backhanded him across the face and began to whack out at him with his knife, turning Benny's flailing hands and arms to bloody slashes.

After a dozen frenzied slashes with his knife, Elijah bent over Benny, sobbing and bleeding on the steps. “I oughta kill you. You know that, don't you? a lotta dudes would, tryin' to pull some rank shit like that on me!”

Benny held and squeezed his arms to his chest, deathly scared by the sight of the blood gushing out of him.

“Please, man! please! I'm dyin'! don't let me bleed to death, brother! please help me 'Lijah!”

“Pull out your pockets and gimme everything you got.”

Benny dug down into his pockets, crying and getting blood on the roll of bills he pulled out.

Elijah kicked him in the nuts and slowly, methodically leafed through the roll. Twenty-five hundred dollars.

“This all of it?” he asked as Benny curled up on the floor of the hall, alternately holding his groin and squeezing the slashes on his arms to try to stop his bleeding.

“Benny, I asked you, is this all of it?”

“Yeahh! yeahh! that's all of it!” Benny almost screamed. “Help me get a doctor! I'm dyin', man! I'm dyin'!”

Elijah wiped the roll of bills and his knife blade off on Benny's hair.

“Die, motherfucker!” he said to him coldly and strolled out of the hall feeling righteous, as though he had corrected an injustice. He felt tempted to pop back into the Tiger, to tell the two women waiting for the rest of Benny's bankroll that he wouldn't be back, but decided to go on back to the Stickhall instead.

Sidepockets still stood near the cue rack, shifting his weight from foot to foot occasionally.

“How 'bout it, my mannnnn?” he called out to Elijah above the clatter of the balls being racked, “shoot one for a fin?”

Elijah smiled and nodded. “Yeah, why not?”

Sidepockets pulled his favorite cue from the rack and thumped on the floor for the rack man.

They flipped coins for first shot, a small knot of hip players gathering coolly to watch two of the Stickhall's best get down. Elijah broke the triangle and stood off to one side as he watched Sidepockets methodically run the table.

“You got some blood on your 'shine, blood,” Sidepockets mumbled out of the corner of his mouth as he took Elijah's money and thumped his stick for the rack man to rack 'em up again.

Elijah glanced at the toe of his shoe and frowned. Just like Benny, he'd even mess you up gettin' his ass kicked.

Elijah watched the young brother's approach. Twenty-two twenty-four years old. Half-ass slick … might go for it.

He stepped out of the doorway into a small flow of downtown shoppers, revved up to sell.

“Hey, looka here, young blood! I got somethin' twice as nice as a mother's advice.”

He quickly matched the young brother's step and flashed, at thigh level, a velvet ring box with two glittering zircons in it. “Gimme twenty bones for both of 'em and take 'em on home!”

Elijah's sudden appearance, the glitter of the cheap rings, the whole effect of things threw the young brother for a momentary loss.

He slackened his stride. “Uhh, I could really dig 'em, brother … but right now my coins is short.”

Elijah pressed in, flashed the stones again, quickly, in the late afternoon sunlight. “I know you got
somethin
', li'l bruh. Here, take a goooood look at these.”

He flashed the glitter closer to the brother's face. In one split second, Elijah knew he had lost the sale. You could never tell. One person who would never think of buying anything in the streets might have a wild moment and buy everything. And on the other hand, some dude who bought anything and everything, habitually … might shy away from buying anything. You could never tell.

“Naw, man … sorry, I can't make it,” the young brother finally decided and picked up his pace.

“Awright, blood … you had yo' chance,” he called after him. And, like a cat licking himself after an insulting encounter, strolled over to a store front to check his image out, straighten the collar tips of his shirt, cock his brim at a more rakish angle.

He saw their reflections sweeping past him. Too good to be true.

“Psssssstt! com'ere a minute, both o' y'all!”

Both of the soldiers turned his way in step.

“Huh? who? me?” the tallest of the two asked.

“Yeahhh! you, man. You! Both of y'all, come over here a minute,” he half asked, half demanded.

As they approached him, he carefully checked them out. Twenty-year-olds. Clean-cut, hayseed types, whistling through on leave, muscle builders. He smiled pleasantly as they practically stood at attention in front of him.

“Yeah, what can we do for you, mister?”

Slight trace of some kind of other accent. Not Southern … he could place that in a second. Maybe semi-New England.

“Y'all can't do nothin' for me, but I can do two or three things for you.”

He made a deliberate point of noticing the insignia on their sleeves. “Heyyy, are you guys in the same outfit my brother is in? Willie Roberts, First Brigade, Second Platoon?”

The two young soldiers, serious about everything, thought about it for a couple seconds. Finally, the shorter one, speaking for the two of them, announced hesitantly, “Nope, I don't b'lieve so. There's five, ten Negro … black guys in my unit and none of 'em is named Willie that I can recollect.”

“Pretty rough, huh?” Elijah asked, pointing to the uniforms and all that it meant.

“We get by,” the taller one said, an impatient tone in his voice. “Uhh, what was it you wanted, buddy? We're in a li'l bit of a hurry.”

“Well,” he started into his pitch coolly, softly. “When I said I could do two or three things for you, I really meant it.”

He dug down into the pocket of his super-lightweight sports coat and pulled out a ring box. He checked the secret mark on it carefully, to make certain that he didn't have the wrong box … and opened it with the tasteful movements of a first-class jeweler. “The first is this,” he swept the ring past their eyes in a tight arch.

“You guys from outta town?” he asked, posing a superficial question to ease their feelings along.

“Yeah, how'd you guess?” the tall one asked sarcastically.

“Ohh, just thinkin', just thinkin'. I figure you'd be able to get good money for this outta town. Anywhere outta town. My brother sent it to me, got it off some gook in Laos or Thailand or one o' those places … sent it to me and I can't even pawn it. Gimme fifty dollars for it and it's all yours. Either one of you.” He allowed the late sun to strike the heart of the red glass again.

The taller one exchanged a sly glance with his friend. “How much is it worth?”

Elijah pinned him closely, the eternal mark trying to be nickel slick. “Oooooohhh … three hundred, at least. I'd keep it if I wasn't down on my luck. I bet your girl back home would really trip out on somethin' like this.”

He paused and did a quick study of how their eyes lit up, just enough to let him know that he had struck a chord. “Sayyyy, talkin' 'bout girls, not that I'm tryin' to take you away from your
true
loves or nothin' like that, but I know a broad …” He stopped his rapid-fire monologue to trace a Coca Cola bottle shape in mid-air. He knew he had them, in one fashion or another. Sometimes it was hard to tell which hook, which angle the sucker would hang himself on. For white men, black women were a very powerful hook, especially being recommended by a black dude. “And if that ain't enough,” he continued, “she's got a friend.”

The short soldier looked closely at Elijah and started to ask, “Uhhh … is she … uhh?”

“Both black as lumps o' coal!” he stated emphatically, “but let's deal with that after we get this other thang out of the way.”

The three men edged over to the inside of the sidewalk to allow the five o'clock types free passage.

“How much did you say?”

“Fifty bucks!” Elijah shot back at him.

“Fifty dollars?! Heyyyy, that's kinda steep for my pocket,” the short one announced and looked up to his tall buddy.

Elijah, feeling the hook slip, quickly rebaited it. “Hell! who am I to quibble 'round with a couple groovy young soldiers. Gimme forty-five and I'll buy us a beer to clinch the deal, whaddaya say?”

The two soldiers exchanged shrugs and well-we-don't-know-about-that-shit looks.

“Tell ya what,” the tall started off, ruminating on his effort to be slick. “Why don't we … why don't we knock off five more bucks and skip the beer?”

Elijah looked off into the gutter for a few seconds, a pained expression on his face. “Mannnnnn, you must've been a fuckin' horse trader before you and Uncle Sam got hooked up.”

“Nope, never traded any, but I busted my share of 'em, up in Stray Bear, Montana.” The tall soldier subconsciously puffed his chest out.

Elijah winked at the short guy, a fake, jive, hip, conspiratorial wink, and conceded, “Awwwright, shit! gimme forty lousy ass dollars! damn! What in the world are you young dudes learnin' these days?!”

The two men, partners in many mirror league transactions in the past, pulled out twenty dollars apiece and handed it to him.

He opened the ring box to take one more look at his “reluctantly” sold gem. “You dudes don't have to bullshit me, I know the first thing you gon' do, when you get back to camp, is re-sell this stone for a hundred, at least … you knew how much it was worth when I opened the box up.”

The three of them openly exchanged smiles all around for the first time.

Elijah glanced from one smiling young, weatherbeaten face to the other. Surprising, he thought, how easy it is to rip a chump off and then boost his ego sky-high by making him believe that he had done the ripping.

He looked down at the ring box and had a wild urge to let them take one last look and then palm it. But, what the hell! why add insult to injury?

He dropped the box into the short soldier's hand. Both of them stared at the ring box and then into his face, seemingly reluctant to dissolve such an exotic relationship.

Elijah started easing off into the afternoon traffic, his streetologist's sense of theatre telling him, now is the time for the exit.

“Uhhh, hey buddy!” the tall one called and beckoned with a crooked finger at him.

For a split second Elijah was tempted to run. Could these dudes be the police? Nawwwww, intuition told him they just couldn't be. “Yeah, what now? y'all got my life's blood now, what else do you want?” he funned at them, hoping he wouldn't sound too cold. He placed himself at an oblique angle, ready to hat up, just in case.