Trick Baby

  He said, “I hope I never again in my lifetime play for a mark like that. Let’s take in a movie to relax our nerves. We’ll drop off Fixer’s end of the score on our way home.

  “Say, Folks, that crooked sonuvabitching mark wanted to follow you and put the heist on you when you walked away with the poke for your boss’s office right after I caught him. He’s a dishonest motherfucker all right.”

  That Christmas in Nineteen Forty we didn’t set up a tree. It just didn’t seem like Christmas with Midge gone.

  Blue’s birthday was December twenty-ninth, so we celebrated Christmas and his birthday at the Grand Terrace cabaret at Thirty-fifth Street and South Parkway. We were both looped when we got home in the early morning.

  I gave Blue a Knox Forty hat and some shirts for Christmas. He gave me cuff links that were miniature drums with a chip diamond in the center of each. I guess he remembered that day when I acted like a little kid about that big shiny drum in the pawnshop window.

  Maybe he was ribbing me about it with the cuff links. Anyway, I fell in love with those tiny drums. I’d polish the silver trim on their sides. I slept with them in my pajama pocket. He also gave me a cashmere overcoat.

  I sent Lester Gray a sawbuck and paid Phala a visit. Phala’s condition broke my heart. Her hair was white and she was almost bald.

  In January of the new year, Nineteen Forty-one, I ran into Midge. It was a week before my eighteenth birthday on January fifteenth.

  I had just paid my monthly visit to the croaker that was treating my fake heart condition. Each time he would give me a prescription so that the records would show I actually had taken medication.

  He was building ironclad protection for me to get a 4-F draft rating, if and when America entered the War. I never took any of the tiny white pills. I always threw them away.

  I came out of the drug store at Sixty-third and Cottage Grove Avenue with my pills. I was about to fling them in the sewer when an automobile horn blasted in front of me. I looked up. It was Midge driving Celeste’s big, black Cadillac.

  I walked across the street and got in. She pulled away and gunned the Caddie down Sixty-third toward South Parkway.

  She said, “Hi, Johnny. I see you’re still pretty as ever. And you’re as dapper as a pimp. You must be doing all right. How many girls you got working for you?”

  Midge looked a lot older wearing mascara and blue eye shadow.

  I said, “Midge, I wouldn’t be a stupid pimp. I don’t kick broads around. I tell beautiful lies for my dough. Why haven’t we heard from you? You could at least give your father and play brother a jingle some time.”

  She said, “I’ve thought about you a lot. But I wouldn’t call the house. Blue might have answered. I never want to hear his voice again. Say, I forgot to ask if you minded riding with me for a while. I’ve got a trunk load of stuff to deliver.”

  I said, “I’m so glad to see you, Honey. I don’t mind the ride. I’m free all day. Blue and I have stopped working Chicago for a while.

  “We’re going to work in Southern Illinois tomorrow. I’ll be back for my birthday on the fifteenth of January. Blue is throwing a party for me at home. Drop by for a while, will you?”

  She said, “I can’t promise that. But I’ll try. I’m going to give you your birthday present before you split. What’s your suit size?”

  I said, “Forty-four, extra long.”

  She stopped at a dozen hotels and rooming houses delivering hot suits and dresses. I waited in the car for her.

  I hadn’t heard Felix the Fixer say anything about Blue and I having a clause in our fix insurance that covered a bust for helping some friend to lug hot goods to market.

  Finally she drove me home. She saw Blue’s car in the driveway. She drove fifty yards past the house. I kissed her on the cheek and started to get out.

  She fumbled in her bosom and brought out a wrinkled ball of cellophane. She pulled it open and shook a tiny white capsule into her palm. She pushed the palm toward me.

  I said, “What the hell is that?”

  She smiled and said, “It’s girl, square. You snort it up your nose and really find out how beautiful and exciting life can be.

  “Celeste said nothing is too good for a queen. Cocaine, my dear hayseed, is the most expensive high there is. Go on, take it. I’ll get your other present out of the trunk.”

  I took the capsule and dropped it into my overcoat pocket. We got out and went to the rear of the car. She opened the trunk and gave me a fine blue suit.

  I could tell from the luxurious feel of the fabric that it had been at least a two-bill item in the store that lost it.

  I looked down at Midge for a long moment. She was like a tiny, dissipated child masquerading in a woman’s clothes. I said, “Thanks, Midge, for the suit. Are you sure that Celeste won’t miss it and raise hell with you?”

  She threw her head back and laughed bitterly.

  She said, “It’s so funny, Johnny, a queen can do no wrong. I’m a queen all right, I’m a queen bitch. Got it? A queen bitch, Johnny.”

  I walked away down the ice-glazed sidewalk. I threw the bottle of ticker pills and the pure white capsule into a dirty snowbank.

  12

  LIVIN’ SWELL FATS

  Blue was right. The Japanese turned Pearl Harbor into a tropical cinder on December seventh, Nineteen Forty-one.

  Blue and I were having a late breakfast when the charming cripple in the White House came on national radio with America’s declaration to fight her second World War.

  Blue said, “You see, Folks? I told you America would be in the bloodbath. But that croaker has built you a cinch pass. I’m glad you’re not one of those young chumps that rush to volunteer when they hear the con of the soldier music and see Old Glory waving in the breeze.”

  Later that night in bed I listened to the news and music of war.

  I thought, “After all, America is my country. Maybe I should have a talk with Blue. Everybody doesn’t get killed in a war.

  “I am young. Maybe I can convince Blue that I should beat the draft board to the punch and enlist. I hear that volunteers get breaks draftees never get.

  “I could go in and do my bit and be out of the army before I knew it. I’m no coward. Besides, with my fast brain, the army would probably make me an officer right away. I can play the con for some hot shot brass and be his stateside buddy.”

  Then I remembered what Blue had told me about the nigger army I’d be in because I had a black mother. No, I’d better stay out. Those black soldiers, many of them from the deep South, would give me perpetual hell because of my white skin. I’d be more lonesome than ever before. Blue had the right slant.

  About six months after Pearl Harbor, Blue and I were at the breakfast table. Blue shoved an open newspaper toward me. My eyes followed his index finger. I read the two paragraphs of the item.

  Blue said, “Can you believe our luck? Horace J. Sweeney has retired from the Chicago Police Department to take a position in private industry.

  “We can go back into the Loop now and rip off suckers to our hearts’ content. If I knew where he lived, I’d send him a case of champagne to honor his resignation.”

  I said, “I wonder where an old guy like that could fit into a business?”

  Blue said, “His brain is still sharp. He’d be a valuable man for any company to have around to keep its employees honest. After all, Sweeney was a bunco cop for almost thirty years. He knows all the angles. Nailing crooked working stiffs would be a lead-pipe cinch for him.”

  The draft board called me in for a pre-induction physical in the spring of Nineteen Forty-two. An hour before the examination I had taken a pill my croaker gave me.

  The army croaker put his stethoscope to my chest. He checked my blood pressure and sadly shook his head. He advised me to strictly follow my family physician’s directions. I had beaten the draft!

  Blue and I played the drag and the smack throughout the State of Illinois. Sweeney had retired, so we r
ipped off smack marks in Chicago’s Loop like we had a license.

  Blue taught me the flue and the rocks con games. By the spring of Nineteen Forty-three, we were playing four alternate con games. I was going great for a twenty-year-old grifter.

  Blue’s nose was wide open for a young, shapely shake dancer. She was billed as Princess Tanja. She didn’t give him any headaches at first. She did her act with a capuchin monkey named Albert. She danced right around the Chicago area. She was crazy about Albert. Blue told me Albert even slept with the princess.

  Then she signed with an eastern agency, Moe Gale’s, I think. Anyway, she started getting a lot of distant bookings on the East and West Coasts.

  She had been gone a week. We were having breakfast coffee in the kitchen. Blue’s brow was ridged in thought. Suddenly he pounded a fist to the table.

  He said, “Folks, I have to do something about that goddamn Albert.”

  I said, “What do you mean?”

  He said, “I mean that little ugly bastard drives me nuts when I make love to Tanja. He stares at me. He hops around on the bed. He jabbers and plays with himself. He’s getting worse all the time.

  “I was getting a goodbye piece just before Tanja left for San Francisco when I felt what I thought was a blow torch on my rear end. I yelped and almost jumped to the ceiling. Grinning Albert had struck a match and dropped it on me. Tanja laughed till she cried. She thinks the horny little sonuvabitch is the cutest thing.”

  I said, “Why not get him a monkey dame to occupy his mind?”

  Blue said, “Tanja doesn’t need him in the act. I’m going to poison that silly bastard the first chance I get.”

  Blue stayed cool through ten days of her touring. Finally he took a plane to San Francisco to chaperone her. He offered me the use of his car. I told him I was going to buy one. He parked it in the driveway and put a canvas cover over it.

  I guess he couldn’t stand the thought that some sweet-talking guy would hijack some of Tanja’s tang. I tried, but I just couldn’t picture Blue giving the princess proper bed attention with Albert’s jealous eyes glaring at him and jumping around.

  I missed Blue a lot. But I wasn’t exactly sitting around the house in the dark devouring my fingernails in loneliness.

  Our old housekeeper died. I put an ad in the Tribune. I hired a young broad from Sweden. She came in twice a week. Her English was clumsy. But she was agile like Astaire on the bed, kitchen table, sofa, floor. The fifty a week I gave her was a pittance for her all-over services.

  At night I practically lived in the Club Delisa, a Southside cabaret. It was always packed with black and white hustlers and wealthy white socialites on nigger-watching expeditions.

  Blue would come back in town every two weeks or so with the princess. We’d play the smack and the drag together for several days. Then it would be back to the road for Blue and his princess.

  She was a tall, beautiful girl with patrician features and the longest legs I’d ever seen. But the thought of Albert killed any envy of Blue I might have had.

  In the middle of August, I bought a white Forty-one Buick. I paid almost three grand for it. Clean cars cost a lot because the manufacture of cars stopped in Forty-two.

  I pulled into the curb in front of home. I got out and locked the car door. I walked across the sidewalk toward the front door.

  I wondered who the two guys were who were sitting on the porch steps in the dark summer dusk. I walked closer. They stood up. I came closer. It was one guy.

  It was Lester Gray! He bolted to the walk and bear hugged me. I threw my arms around his shoulders.

  I said, “Les, it’s good to see you. I hardly knew you at first. In fact, I thought you were two guys. When did you get out?”

  He stepped back and said, “This morning. I been sitting on these steps since four o’clock. I oughta kiss you, old buddy. Goddamn, you’re tall. Ain’t we something? You grew up and I grew out.

  “If it hadn’t been for that bread you sent me every month, the inmates up at Saint Charles would have called me The ‘Thin Man’ instead of ‘Livin’ Swell Fats’. The chow up there would turn the guts of a starving dog. I traded commissary stuff for steak and whole milk from an inmate who worked in the screw’s kitchen.”

  I said, “I wrote you a letter a long time ago when I first started sending you dough. But the joint sent the letter back to me.”

  He said, “I tried to get you on my mailing list. But that dirty mail-screw wouldn’t go for it. I got your address from the envelopes that you sent the bread in. How is your mama?”

  I said, “Not too well. She’s on a funny farm. A gang of niggers ran a train on her down on Thirty-ninth Street.”

  He said, “Jeez, I’m sorry, Johnny.”

  I took him inside to the living room. We sat on the sofa.

  I said, “I’ve got some roast beef and macaroni and cheese in the box. How about a snack?”

  He yawned and said, “Yeah, I go for that. Geez, Johnny, you must have got to be a bitch of a cannon since we hustled the el trains together. This looks like some rich paddy’s crib.

  “I gotta find a crib. I went to Thirty-seventh Street to find my foster folks, but they’ve moved. Johnny, I’m glad you’ve got a short, maybe you can help me find a crib and a clean two-buck broad.”

  I said, “I haven’t picked a pocket since you took your fall. I stay here with a nice guy that I hustle with. I dropped that square tag, Johnny. I’m known as White Folks now.

  “Blue’s going to call me tonight around nine. He’s heard me talk about you. I’m pretty sure it will be okay with him for you to stay here until you get on your feet.

  “A broad is easy. I’ll take you to Forty-seventh Street after I get the call. Come on, Livin’ Swell, I’ll show you where you can wash up. I’ll have supper warmed up in five minutes.”

  Blue called from Seattle, Washington, about an hour after we’d eaten. I knew he wouldn’t let me down. He was glad that I’d have Livin’ around for company until he could persuade Tanja to give up show business and Albert. I told him to give Albert my best wishes. He shouted that I should do something that was very difficult to do to myself. Then he hung up.

  I took Livin’ into Midge’s bedroom. He just stood there with his mouth open. He was a happy jailbird. Like me, he had never lived in anything but a roach and rat nest.

  He looked like a king-sized eight ball wrapped with burlap in the dress-out prison suit. I tried to find something in my closet that he could put on for the trip to Forty-seventh Street. I had nothing that could fit a guy with a forty-eight inch waist.

  We got into the Buick and went to Forty-seventh Street. I parked in front of the poolroom on Calumet Avenue. We got out and walked toward the corner at Forty-seventh Street.

  Two mangy junkie whores passed us. Livin’s bullet head swiveled around on his almost neckless shoulders like Grable and Harlow had paraded by in the nude.

  His strange tawny eyes were flaming in their deep sockets. He vised my arm in an iron paw.

  He said, “Geez, that tall one is got a groovy butt on her. And her pussy is so fat it pokes out the front of her skirt. White Folks, give me the price and let me go and talk to her.”

  I took his wrist and steered him toward the corner.

  I said, “Livin’, I understand that you’ve done a long, hard bit. But that broad is a junkie and old enough to be your mother.

  “Be patient. We’ll find some young cute broad on Forty-seventh. You know, one that’s got enough life left in her to bullshit you that it’s good to her too.”

  We turned the corner. Livin’ rammed into something. It was old man One Pocket, the flat-joint outside man for Blue.

  Pocket was gasping for breath from the collision. Then he saw me behind Livin’.

  He grinned and said, “White Folks, is this tank with you?”

  I said, “Pocket, meet a hustler pal of mine, Livin’ Swell.”

  Pocket said, “I didn’t know his name. But I knew damn well he was
a hustler when we bumped. He put his arm to the elbow in my pocket.”

  Livin’ said, “I wouldn’t have shot on you if I had been hip you knew White Folks. I’m rusty. That’s why you felt me in your raise. I just got out of the joint.”

  Pocket said, “I knew that from the vine you’re wearing.”

  I said, “Pocket, Livin’s looking for a nice, hot, young broad. He’s got a six-year-old cherry to bust.”

  Pocket sucked his front choppers. He shook his head.

  He said, “There are a flock of hot broads around this corner. But they’re so hot a sucker’s Jim Dandy might rot off after he’s layed one. Why don’t you take your buddy to a cathouse? The broads there are certified clean.”

  I said, “I don’t know where to find one.”

  Pocket laughed and said, “You’ve got to be ribbing me. You’re Blue’s road buddy and you don’t know where to find a cathouse?”

  I said. “Pocket, I’m serious.”

  He said, “You got Blue’s car?”

  I said, “I’ve got my own.”

  He said, “All right, give me your pen and that card in your shirt pocket. I’ll give you an address in Indiana Harbor. It’s only a dozen miles or so from Chicago.

  “The joint is run by an old broad I used to sweetheart around with when I was a young buck. She’s got some young fancy pussy over there. They call her Aunt Lula. Tell her Pocket sent you and everything will be all right.”

  Livin’ and I pulled up in front of Aunt Lula’s at ten-thirty. I gave Livin’ a double saw. We got out of the car and went up the walk to the front door of the red frame house.

  We could hear the muted madness of a Jimmy Lunceford record. All the shades were down and there wasn’t a glimmer of light from the inside. I pushed the doorbell. I heard faint chimes. In a moment I heard the peephole open in the door.

  A broad’s gravelly voice said, “Who are you? What do you want?”

  I lowered my mouth toward the peephole.

  I answered, “We’re friends of Pocket’s, White Folks and Livin’ Swell. He sent us to see Aunt Lula.”