Death Wish (11 page)

He rode streetcars to Rachel's house. As he approached the house, he darted a glance at the horror house where Sarge and his mother had died.

Oh, Mama! My sweet mama!

He saw the name “Waters” was still on Rachel's mailbox. He rang the doorbell twice, and the peep slot opened.

Rachel's mother said, “What is it?”

He said, “Mrs. Waters, it's me, Jessie Taylor. I lived with you once . . . My mama Pearl was wasted next door.”

There was a long silence before she swung open the door. He stepped into the living room. On a large table he saw a mountain of ironed laundry she took in for a living.

She looked up at him and said, “My stars, you're twice bigger than when I made you hit the road. Pearl woulda looked at you twice before knowing you.”

He sat on the sofa. She put her hands on her hips and gave him a level look. She said, “Jessie, you just here out of the pen?”

He nodded.

She said, “You can't light here and eat me into the poorhouse.”

He said, “Mrs. Waters, I heard what Ike did to Rachel and all, and I only wanta see her.”

She wearily dropped down beside him and said, “Poor thing is still in the dope hospital down in Kentucky.”

He asked, “When she coming home?”

“I fixed her a big peach cobbler and homemade ice cream two weeks ago and got disappointed. She called this morning and promised me she's coming two weeks from this Sunday coming for certain. But I ain't fixing a crumb ‘til she walks through that door.”

He asked, “You seen Ike riding and sporting in the neighborhood lately?”

Her heavily veined hands made fists in her lap. “No, indeed, and neither the police. They come by here every now and then asking about him. They want him about crippling a girl.”

T. stood and said, “I'll see you, Mrs. Waters.” He walked to the door and opened it.

She followed him and said, “Jessie, you hungry?”

He replied, “No, thanks, I just ate.”

He went to the sidewalk and heard her footsteps behind him. He stopped and faced her. For the first time in months, he smiled and he felt good. He didn't feel lost and puffed with tension anymore. She put her hand on his arm.

A little out of breath, she said, “Jessie, you got a room?”

He said, “Yes, ma'am, and a job on the Southside.”

She squeezed his arm and beamed. “Jessie, you get back over here Sunday after next. I'm taking you and Rachel to join church.”

He said, “We'll see, Mrs. Waters,” then he started to turn away.

She said, “You both need the Lord. Ain't nothing or nobody as powerful as him.”

He said, “No, ma'am.” As he walked away, he said under his breath, “He is, if he's up there, Mrs. Waters. If he's up there.”

He walked to Lake Street and took an El train for the Southside and exchanged winks with Easy Pockets, one of the original Devastators, getting on the train. Easy Pockets sat down beside a sleeping fat guy. The pickpocket unfurled a newspaper and cleaned out Fatso's pockets and his watch behind the paper curtain in just under a minute.

Easy Pockets got off at Sixty-first Street with T. They went into a bar under the El.

After the usual long-time-no-sees, T. said, “Easy Pockets, you know what part of town Dandy Ike is pimping in?”

Easy Pockets tore his eyes away from a wallet peeping from an unbuttoned hip pocket of a mule-faced guy playing stink finger behind a drunk broad leaning over the jukebox.

He said, “T., you're outta luck. He's got twelve hoes and boosters and pimping a zillion in Detroit.”

T. said, “I hope you ain't passing on no unreliable shit, Easy, 'cause I got to hobo there.”

Easy's foxy face screwed up in righteous suffering. “T., I saw him a week ago. He told me he was gonna tag your toe if you showed. We got our noses real dirty in the shithouse of a mack and ho bar in the valley on Saint Antoine.”

T. got off his stool.

Easy said, “T., I know what you got in mind. Please don't go to Detroit and let him cross you outta your all in all. He ain't worth blowing your life. The nigger is rich as cream and farting in police faces. He's got boo koos of the best dope on the street. The hypes will line up a hundred deep to waste you for a small bag of that boss dope. He might oil one of his Hunt Street cops to bury you in Jackson Penitentiary doing it all.”

T. smiled and said, “Easy, I ain't got my nose so wide open for living or the free world. I'm gonna let a enemy slide free, even rich bad Ike, for putting the hurt to Rachel, my forever woman and heart.”

Easy sat shaking his head as he watched T. walk to the street. That same evening, T. slipped on secondhand coveralls and caught a freight train for Detroit. He ate a supper of cheese and rye bread and slept all the way on straw in an empty banana car.

He got his suit pressed in the Valley and soul food in the Faithful Family Restaurant. After that, he stashed his coveralls in a condemned house and stayed in the Adams Hotel. The second night in town he staked out in a stripped jalopy in a vacant lot. It was across the street from the pimp bar where Easy said Ike hung out.

T. watched a parade of peacocking pimps and their hoes coming and going in new fifty-one Caddies and Lincolns. But Ike didn't show and a curious thing happened. The bar's outside lights went off at two
A.M
., but a loudmouthed crowd stayed inside.

Then he searched Hastings Street all the way to Sonny Wilson's Bar. He stalked John R. Street, and the Black Bottom District, and every other ho haunt looking for Ike.

Steal him and kill him with these hands and feet,
was the roaring litany inside T.'s skull.

The jalopy's rightful tenant had arrived with his bedtime bottle of grape as T. got back to it.

T. said from the sidewalk, “Where the hell is Dandy Ike tonight, brother?”

The derelict squinted and came to the sidewalk. He said, “Ike OD'ed and was deep-sixed today. All the pimps and hoes is holding the wake across the street.”

T. sighed and walked wearily down the sidewalk. The next afternoon he got back to Chicago. He got shaved at a barbershop on Fifty-eighth Street across from Willie Poe's policy check-in station and twenty-four hour craps house in the basement.

An old hustler with a hound-dog face and white stubble on his
face climbed into the chair as T. climbed down and paid his bill. T. took a toothbrush and paste from his jacket on the rack. He waved them at his barber and nodded toward a face bowl. The barber nodded permission.

T. was brushing his teeth when the barber said as he lathered the old hustler, “Decatur, it's a month since I seen you go into Willie's to whale the craps. You finally decided to save a fortune 'stead of win one?”

Decatur said, “Naw, I do all my crap shooting up on Sixty-first Street in Lucky Red's joint. Shit, I ain't for none of that action across the street. Anywhere in these streets they laying ten to five the dagos is gonna blow Willie's joint up and send him to the morgue.”

T. came away from the bowl and was slipping into his coat when the hustler said, “There they are! Bama and Willie, the sweetest con team that ever shit between two pair of shoes.”

T. walked to the window and looked at the Mutt and Jeff pair leaving a new black fifty-one Imperial.

T. said, “Which is Mr. Poe?”

Decatur said, “The black geechie with the wavy moss.”

The barber said, “Yes, indeedy, Willie Poe got his papa's inky skin. He got his French mama's features and silky hair. The combination is got the frails so creamy between the legs they can't walk for running to catch Willie Poe.”

As T. walked toward the door, Decatur said, “O. C, I ain't got no sympathy for Willie.”

The barber stopped straight-razoring Decatur's face to ask, “Why?”

T. stalled half out of the door.

Decatur said, “ 'cause, Bama and him was like foxes in a chicken coop. They been trimming marks since they was pissy punks 'til five years ago. Willie split off for the policy game. Ain't it a bitch that Willie the fox is gonna wind up a mark himself?”

T. stepped to the sidewalk. The street all the way to the El station
a block away had been spooked of people. Nobody apparently wanted to be around when Willie Poe was sprayed with death.

The setting sun sprinkled Bama's shaved head with bloody light as he disappeared behind Willie Poe into the bar and grill front.

T. crossed the street and went into the bar. He stood blindly just inside the door in the murk. He was barely able to see several hunched shapes at a circular bar. He went across a cavern of dark carpet to a stool at the bar.

A harlequin face lunged at him, grinning. He said “Coke” to it and spotted a pair of vague shapes with fiery eye-whites rammed up against a wall in a booth that could have been Bama and Willie Poe.

He gargled his dry mouth with Coke. A flash of the harlequin's crotch-zinging legs reminded him of Rachel's gams. He visualized himself humping between the barmaid's sexy legs, blowing off the five-year pressure in his balls.

He was about to go over to the booth and introduce himself when a door beside the booth opened. He heard a clatter of adding machines. A guy in shirtsleeves and a shoulder-holstered forty-five automatic put a suitcase on the floor beside Willie.

Bama and Willie got up and came past T. He stood, started to speak. He took a step toward Willie, walking behind Bama who was carrying the money.

The barmaid leaned and seized his arm and said, “Are you crazy? Nobody touches Mr. Poe or approaches his back.”

T. turned away and went rapidly through the front door to the middle of the sidewalk and stopped. Willie was just closing the door on the passenger side. Bama was sliding under the wheel.

Willie stared impassively at T. as he said to Bama out of the side of his mouth, “You think he'll try for the scratch?”

Bama said, “Willie, you got glaucoma? Look at his eyes and give him an autograph. Or better still, interview him for this fucking chauffeur's gig. You know I'd like to team up with Bulldog Slim and play the East Coast for a month or so.”

T. raised his voice without moving. “Mr. Poe, can I speak with you?”

Willie crooked an index finger. T. came to the side of the car as Bama unracked a machine gun from under the dash and placed it on the seat.

Willie said, “Say it fast, youngblood.”

T. said, “I heard in the joint you having a big headache, dago-wise, and ain't got no troops. I'm Tit For Tat Taylor. I was the leader of five hundred Devastators on the Westside before I got busted.”

T. patted his jacket. “Can I go to my raise and show you my proof?”

Willie stone-eyed him for a long moment before he nodded. T. reached into his inside jacket pocket. He handed Willie a packet of articles and several headline items about the bloody wars between T.'s Devastators and Lupo Collucci's Sicilian Knights. Among the clippings were shots of Lupo Collucci, T., and Kong. Willie shuffled through them.

He gave them back and said, “Your publicity is great. But I got trouble kids can't handle.”

T. said, “Excuse me, Mr. Poe, but I've outgrown kid gangs. I need a job and thought maybe you needed a bodyguard.”

Willie said, “Nobody can bodyguard Willie Poe like Willie Poe.”

Bama gunned the engine and put the Imperial in gear.

Willie said as they pulled away, “Taylor, I'll try to think of a gig for you. Meet me on this spot at ten in the morning.”

T. grinned broadly and ran down the street alongside the car. He said, “Thank you, Mr. Poe. I hope you think of something.”

Willie lit a cigar and put the machine gun on his lap. His sable eyes flickered into every passing car and every possible niche and hole of concealment for assassins as Bama rolled at a fast clip through the lavender light.

After a long silence, Willie said, “Well, goddamnit, Bama, what do you think of him?”

Bama smiled mischievously. “Who?”

Willie said, “He's a lot like Junior was.”

Bama said, “Yeah . . . I know.”

Willie said wistfully, “He's two, three years . . . older . . . maybe an inch or so taller . . . but same treacherous black leopard body lingo. He's even got Junior's little-boy-lost vibes, like Junior, a sentimental sucker beneath that layer of brute avenger . . . so tough . . . so stubborn. Now, tell me, what do you think, Bama?”

Bama's cave-dweller's face was serious. He said gently, “Willie, friend, you didn't finish. Taylor is vulnerable . . . and like Junior, so easy for the Mafia to trap and kill.”

Willie nodded slowly in agreement. He said, “You're right. Taylor's forgotten. We'll find a driver somewhere soon so you and Slim can go east.”

Bama said, “You don't have to forget him, Willie. Hire him to drive us to find the location of that fabulous cabaret we want together. Willie, walk away from this war with the Mafia that you can't win. We got no roots, Willie. After twenty-five years of chasing suckers, and roustings into a hundred and fifty jails, I'm wondering, Willie, aren't we the suckers after all?

“The excitement of the con, the fat scores and glossy cunts struck us out Willie with our wives. Who the hell knows, but that better life the suckers are always bleating about might have some kind of valuable substance and meaning, and even a happy day now and then. Maybe the life we've been pissing on we should've been getting.”

Willie sat deep in thought until Bama reached their home on Michigan Avenue. Then Bama drove around the block several times to foil and spot any Mafia ambushers before driving into the garage adjoining the house.

They took a bath and got into their robes for a nightcap in the den. Bama frowned and shook his head but said nothing as he watched Willie place a record on the hi-fi turntable. Billie Holiday's “Gloomy Sunday” boomed out.