Trick Baby

  My favorite food was still steak with macaroni and cheese. I had a slight paunch to prove it. All things considered, we were a pair of fairly well-preserved grifters for our ages.

  24

  WEDDING BELLS FOR A SLICK SUCKER

  In April of Nineteen Fifty-nine, Blue started hanging around Thirty-first Street and Indiana Avenue at night. He was sniffing around the mob of young tramp broads that twisted their butts in and out of Square’s Bar on the corner and the Harmonia Hotel at Thirtieth Street and Indiana Avenue.

  Everybody down there got to know him. Including Butcher Knife Brown. In the month of April he brought home no less than ten of the half-hungry little urchins.

  Next morning the house would be stinking with ripe body odor and dime-store perfume. He had always been weak for young, classy pussy. But now he was digging at the bottom of the barrel.

  The first week in May, he brought home a curvy, yellow girl from Thirty-first Street. She was cute all right, with a doll face and long, shiny black hair. She was a striking combination of Filipino and Negro.

  She was eighteen, from a broken home. Her name was Cleo and she had found a home. She didn’t have to move her clothes. She was wearing them.

  She had stayed three days when Blue came into my bedroom early in the morning. His eyes were flashing and he jumped excitedly around the side of the bed.

  He almost whispered, “Folks, Cleo and I are getting married. I’m having this dingy house freshened up with new carpets and new paint. Say something. I’ll bet you’re surprised.”

  I mumbled, “Congratulations. When is the wedding?”

  I heard her syrupy voice calling him, “Blue, babee, I’m lonesome.”

  He jumped to his feet, and on the way out he said, over his shoulder, “We’re getting married up in Michigan tomorrow. We’ll honeymoon at a resort in Idlewilde. Whoopee!”

  I listened to a hysterical pillow fight between them for twenty minutes. Then I heard the bed springs creaking. I wondered if Blue would die a glorious death like Pocket. At ten A.M. I heard them laughing like grammar-school sweethearts on their way out the front door.

  I got up and made coffee. I sat at the kitchen table. I thought, that little tramp has that slick sucker’s nose wide open. She’s a cinch to bump his head. But who am I to criticize? She can’t do him as bad as the Goddess did me.

  At one P.M. I was eating lunch when they came back. It took Blue six trips to his car to get the bride’s trousseau into the house. While Blue was on his last trip, Cleo wiggled into the kitchen and leaned a big tit against my cheek as she plucked a napkin from the holder on the table. She stepped back and blotted her lipstick. She gave me a wicked smile and wiggled away.

  They left for Michigan that evening. At nine P.M. I got in my Caddie and went to Lula’s cat house to bang Roxie. I got back home at two A.M.

  There was a note stuck in the door. I went to my bedroom and read it. There was a phone number at the bottom.

  It said, “Please call this number. L.S.”

  I rang the number. Livin’ Swell picked up on the first ring.

  He blurted, “Folks, is that you?”

  I said, “Yes, how are you doing, Livin’?”

  His heavy breathing was rasping through the line.

  He said, “I ain’t doing no good. Ain’t you heard?”

  I said, “No, what happened?”

  He shouted, “It’s the dagos! The outfit! Butcher Knife Brown has bullshitted Nino that I’m stooling to a secret grand jury on narcotics. Sure I got a wholesaling beef pending, but I swear, Folks, I’d do fifty years before I’d rat on the syndicate.

  “I hid in your backyard until that old white bitch next door to you kept running out to the back peeping at me. I was afraid she’d call the rollers.”

  I said, “Where are you?”

  He said, “At Barn’s poolroom on Sixty-third Street. But it’s closing.”

  I said, “Drive over here. Maybe I can put an angle together for you. At least you won’t be in the street.”

  He wailed, “Folks, can’t you understand? The dagos are looking for me to kill me. I can’t drive my wheels. It’s on the street down on Lake Park where I crib.”

  I said, “Stay in front of the poolroom. I’ll be right down to pick you up.”

  He shouted, “I can’t stand around in the street. They’re after me! I got to keep moving. Let me think.” There was a long silence.

  Finally he said, “I used to live at the Pershing Hotel. The fire door to the roof is always open. I’ll be there looking out for you. You park across the street on Cottage Grove Avenue so I can’t miss you.”

  He hung up. In less than five minutes after he hung up, I had driven the several blocks to Sixty-fourth Street and Cottage Grove Avenue.

  I got out of the car and looked up toward the roof. I crossed the street and went into the lobby. I went to the elevator and rode to the top floor. I went through a fire door to the roof.

  Nobody was up there except two sissies smoking reefer. I thought they’d jump off the roof when they saw me. I went back to the car.

  I went up and down Sixty-third and all the streets around. Then I went up and down all the alleys. Livin’ was not to be found. It was dawn before I stopped trying. I went home and stayed awake until noon expecting Livin’ to turn up. I fell asleep with my clothes on.

  Blue and Cleo got back from their honeymoon on the fifteenth of May. The bride was radiant in a silk shantung suit from Marshall Fields.

  On the eighteenth of May a crew of painters and carpet layers freshened up the house. I checked every source I knew to get a line on Livin’ Swell. It was like he never was. He had disappeared from the face of the earth.

  There was a strong possibility that he was at the bottom of Lake Michigan or the Chicago River. Maybe he was weighted with his belly split open so his corpse wouldn’t float to the surface. Many nights I lay in the darkness and thought about him and remembered the old days when we were kids together down on Thirty-ninth street.

  In November of Nineteen Fifty-nine, Blue and I bought new Cadillacs with the exaggerated rear fins. Blue also bought Cleo a new purple Thunderbird. He was hooked and happy. So I never cracked to him that I had seen Cleo riding around with several different young punks in her Thunderbird.

  Eight days before Christmas, Blue got a call from a small-time con man on the Westside of Chicago. He drove over there. When he got back he was excited.

  He said, “Folks, have I got a sweetheart of a rocks mark. He’s even sweeter than Buster Bang Bang. He’s an old dago fence with a used-clothing shop front.

  “He doesn’t know a diamond from a seashell. I’ve already cut into him and told him the tale. We use the standard rocks play. For this bird we don’t need anything fancy.

  “You turn your head and cough when we’re looking at the stuff so I can palm the rock for the appraisal. I’ll switch in my own rock as usual. He and I will be partners. There’s no blowoff problem. I’ll let him hold the stuff until it cools.

  “He’ll pay ten grand. We play for him tomorrow afternoon. I’ve already rented a room at Kedsie Avenue and West Thirty-first Street to play him in. Well, how does it sound?”

  I said, “The dough sounds wonderful. But we’re sure to get a beef from a hometown mark for a score that big.”

  Blue laughed and said, “What the hell you think we got Felix for? He can fix a rocks beef easier than a drag beef. What are you backing up for? You stop liking dough?”

  I said, “So we take him off tomorrow.”

  He said, “Oh, I almost forgot. We’ll go to the Cadillac people tomorrow and drop my car off. The transmission is slipping. I’ll take a cab to the mark for the lug back to you.”

  Blue and I got out of the house the next morning around eleven-thirty A.M. We went to our slum connection on Wabash Avenue in the Loop. We picked up twenty choice zircons mounted in gold plate.

  Blue left his Caddie at the dealers for the transmission adjustment. We ate lunch downtow
n and chatted and killed time over coffee until two P.M.

  I drove Blue to the corner of Kedsie Avenue and Roosevelt Road. I saw him get in a cab as I drove away to the room.

  Blue had been right about Frascati. He was a real cream puff. He didn’t give us an anxious moment all during the play. He gave me ten grand. I gave them the glass-filled bag when Blue gave me a boodle that looked like ten grand.

  They walked away grinning at the way they had rooked the hot, white hoodlum out of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in rocks for a measly twenty grand.

  At five P.M., Blue was getting out of a Yellow Cab at Forty-seventh and Halsted Streets as I pulled up to pick him up.

  He got in and said, “I feel like a good steak, Folks. How about you?”

  I gave him his boodle and five grand of the score. I pulled the Caddie into traffic and said, “It’s a great idea. Let’s go to the Brass Rail.”

  Moments later, I pulled to the curb on Forty-seventh Street in front of the Rail. We got out and went through the door to the front booth. We ordered our steaks and sat there looking out the panoramic front window at the poor chumps buffeted by the violent December winds.

  How could we know that Dot Murray, the roller, would bring us the bad news about Nino? And we would begin a run for our lives. . . .

  25

  STATE STREET MURDER CROSS

  I had dozed off when Blue shook me awake. For a moment I wasn’t sure where I was. Then I heard Reverend Josephus’ Bertha Mae’s snoring, I realized that we were in Jewtown, and we were waiting for that messenger of death. . . .

  Blue said, “I called the house again. Cleo still isn’t home. I called the Fixer. He said he saw her Thunderbird parked in front of Square’s Bar on Thirty-first at one-thirty this morning. It’s after three now. We’d better get out of here. It’ll be daylight in a couple of hours.”

  I jumped from the bunk and pulled the light string.

  I said, “But Blue, the Southside is a big place. We can’t find Cleo before daybreak.”

  He said sharply, “Folks, she’s not just anywhere on the Southside. She’s at one of those after-hours joints around Thirty-first Street. I know them all.

  “She’s down there slumming, flashing her fine clothes and letting her old pals see how she’s come up in the world. I’ll be able to find her before four A.M. You don’t have to go. I’m going to get Joe’s key to the truck.”

  He walked down the hall. I put on my shoes and suit coat. He came back with the key. We put on our overcoats and went to the old truck packed in front of the house. Blue got behind the wheel.

  It wouldn’t start. Blue hit the starter every minute or so for ten minutes. Finally, the starter made only a faint growl. Blue turned his sweat-shiny face and looked at me helplessly.

  I pushed the door open and said, “Well, Blue, it looks like we’ll have to make the trip in the Caddie.”

  We went to the shed in the backyard. I backed the Caddie out and headed for the Southside.

  I stopped for a stoplight at Thirty-first and Halsted Streets. I was thinking what a sucker play it was to stick our necks out for a tramp like Cleo when Blue said, “Folks, I’ll never forget the way you’re going along with things. You’re a real pal.

  “Don’t worry. When we get to the Thirty-first Street neighborhood, we’ll only have to cruise a couple of streets. It will be a cinch to spot Cleo’s purple Thunder-bird parked near one of the after-hours joints. Like I told you, I know them all down there.

  “I know it’s Butcher Knife Brown’s stomping grounds but we’re not going to be around long. Besides, I’ve given out a lot of handouts down there. The broke Niggers I passed out that dough to like me.

  “Butcher Knife isn’t sucker enough to make a murder play in front of witnesses. He’s a sneaky little bastard who grins in your face and tricks you into a dark, lonely place, like an alley or hallway, for his butchering.

  “Hell, the cunning sonuvabitch will never get that near us. Say that he or one of his young punk runners spotted us and wired Nino. We’d be back on the Westside before Nino could get down there to knock us off. Go to Thirty-second Street and Prairie Avenue for a starter.”

  I drove down almost deserted Thirty-first Street, past Indiana Avenue to the corner of Prairie Avenue and Thirty-second Street. We didn’t see Cleo’s car.

  Blue bit his bottom lip and said, “Folks, try the block on Michigan Avenue between Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets. She’s probably at Leona’s joint. Most of her old pals hang out there.”

  I drove south on Michigan Avenue.

  Blue pounded my thigh and shouted, “Folks, I told you! There’s the bird!”

  I pulled up behind it near the corner of Thirty-fourth Street on Michigan.

  Blue opened the door and said, “Keep your motor running. I’ll be right back with her.”

  I saw a tall, thin, black guy in a white overcoat with hat to match standing on the sidewalk sucking on a reefer. He threw an arm around Blue’s shoulder. I watched them go through the dim foyer of a dingy brownstone apartment building.

  They turned to the left on the first floor. I heard loud laughter and the blare of gut-bucket blues from the apartment. He came out in less than two minutes without Cleo.

  He got in the car and said, “Folks, Cleo left twenty minutes ago with Bootsie in her car. Leona doesn’t know where they went. But Jabbo, that chump in the white overcoat that you saw, thinks he knows where Bootsie and Cleo are. He’s making a call now.

  “Folks, before I married Cleo, Bootsie was Cleo’s best friend. I don’t want Cleo running around with her. The last time I saw Bootsie, she looked like she was hooked on H.

  “Folks, I’ve got to keep Cleo away from down here. It’s a dirty shame the poor little thing had to grow up down here. Folks, why don’t you park the Caddie around the corner and we’ll wait in Leona’s joint for Cleo?”

  I thought about it for a long moment.

  Then I said, “I’ve got a better idea. It’s four-ten. Dawn is only a couple of hours away. There’s no point in both of us waiting for Cleo. Besides, I’m not in the mood for a lot of drunken chumps.

  “I’m going to slip out to the house and get some of our clothes and personal things. Then after you take care of your affairs, Monday morning we can all drive directly to New York.”

  Blue got out and I pulled away. I parked the Caddie at Sixty-third and Cottage Grove Avenue and took a cab. I had the cabbie cruise up and down the block past the pink house.

  I had to be sure that it wasn’t staked out. The cab took me back to my car. Within a half hour I had filled the spacious trunk and rear seat of the car with Cleo’s, Blue’s and my things. I was feeling pretty good as I drove toward Leona’s place. I had seventy-five hundred dollars in my pocket with the twenty-five hundred I got from under the rug in my bedroom.

  I pulled up behind the Thunderbird. Twenty minutes passed. I got out and locked the car. I went to the door on the left ground floor. I rang the bell. An eye glistened at a peephole in the door.

  A muffled broad’s voice said, “Whatta’ you want?”

  I said, “I’m a friend of Blue Howard. I’ve been waiting outside for him. Will you have him come to the door?”

  The eye said, “Goddamn, you nosey. You a roller? Twenty-ninth and State Street.”

  I said, “Is Cleo inside?”

  The eye said, “Goddamn you nosey. You a roller?”

  I said, “I’m a friend of theirs. I told you, I’ve been waiting for Blue. I drove him here.”

  The eye blew a gust of rot-gut whiskey through the hole and said, “Jabbo took Blue down there where Cleo is at.”

  I said, “Where at Twenty-ninth and State? Can’t you give me an address?”

  The peephole banged shut. I U-turned the Caddie and went down Michigan Avenue toward Twenty-ninth Street.

  At Thirty-first Street, I heard the distant wail of a police meat wagon. I turned left on Thirty-first Street and drove toward State.

  I
got a strange, tense feeling driving down State Street. That wail was loud as hell straight ahead. I saw a crowd on the sidewalk a couple of hundred yards from the corner of Twenty-ninth Street.

  A police ambulance was sitting in the street at the same distance. My hands were trembling on the steering wheel. I double-parked fifty feet behind the meat wagon. I leaped from the car and trotted toward the crowd. I saw two uniformed coppers lifting a stretcher into the back of the wagon. Somebody tugged at my arm. I looked down. It was an old pool hustler pal of Pocket’s from Forty-seventh Street.

  He shook his head and said, “Folks, it’s too bad. It’s too bad.”

  I leaned weakly against the side of a car and blurted, “What happened? Who was that?”

  He lowered his eyes and said softly, “Folks, that was your pal Blue. He got crossed out of his life. A thirty-eight slug blasted through his right eye.”

  I grabbed his coat front and shouted, “Who did it? Did they catch the sonuvabitch?”

  My chest was a boiling cauldron of grief and shock. My hoarse sobby voice was a stranger’s, far away.

  He jerked his thumb. I looked. The wagon was pulling away down the street. Two plainclothes white rollers were putting Cleo and a black, scrawny broad into a car. Then in the light that flashed on inside the car, I saw the thin guy with the white overcoat and hat sitting on the back seat. The police car pulled away.

  I said, “That’s Cleo! Who is the guy with the white coat? Who is that other broad? Did the guy in the white coat kill Blue? Are you sure that he’s dead?”

  He said, “The stud in the white coat is Jabbo. He’s the killer, but he won’t go to the joint. He’s Butcher Knife Brown’s ace runner and hatchet man since Brown has got elderly and half-blind. Poor Blue musta’ wasn’t hip to that. Jabbo is been fucking Cleo off and on since she was twelve years old. That skinny broad is Bootsie, a hype. She deals H for Brown. I’m cribbing across the street. I rushed out here when I heard the shot.