Death Wish

  Slippery Air-Tight Willie, on the bunk above me had slid into mind reading sure as he was rotten.

  I saw his mongoose face peek down at me as he said in his molasses drawl. “Slim, I ain’t complimented nobody, no time before. But I gotta say you ain’t nothing but a foxy dude to stop playing for skunk bitches like them over there and deciding to play the con with me in them streets.”

  I said sleepily, “Yeah, Willie . . . A ’ho ain’t worth a thimble of poo-poo.’”

  Willie, needing a partner to play the con, had given me a six weeks crash course in how to stop and qualify (any money to play for? . . . ever been flimflammed before?) a mark, put him on the send (he goes to get his money), and how to rip him off with cross-fire dialogue between us.

  I sure needed to play Willie’s game. At least until I got the bread to lay down on a far-out ride, (maybe a vintage Rolls, fur trimmed) B.R. (flash cash) and threads to dazzle and lure whores to within stealing or “turn-out” copping range.

  A match flared in a cell across the way illuminating two broads sixty-nining while a third broad, wearing a crude dildo fashioned from a toilet brush, humped dog-fashion behind one.

  An excited chump, on the tier above us, apparently was baring his stiff problem to the trio. He screamed through the open windows into the unusually warm January night. “You long cunt bitches gander this big, black pretty I’m holding and eat your freakish hearts out!”

  A shrill voice broad lopped off his fake balls, “Dave Jones, this is Cora Brown. You old snaggle tooth fag. You know I know, that thing you flashing wasn’t nothing in them streets but a handle for dudes to flip you over with.

  I thought about some of the harrowing disadvantages in playing con. A felony bust if caught. A morgue slab if a cut-throat mark woke up before he was “blowed off.” And most unpleasant of all was the epidemic scuttle butt that grifters often got bone tired and foot sore searching for a qualifiable mark.

  Willie, validated his monicker, and soft shoed onto my wave length again. He crooned, “Slim, I got a lot of confidence in you. I’m gonna angle my ass off as soon as I get in the wind this morning scoring for transportation and other nit shit we gonna need. Howzit sound, Pal-of-mine?”

  I barely heard him because I was trying to pluck out, from the din across the way, a line on a cafe-au-lait fox. She was fingering into the crimson slash in her jet brush to drool the voyeur chumps upstairs. She was boasting how she’d cut her old man loose during visiting hours that very day.

  I said, “It sounds sweet, Willie . . . and sweeter is when we start taking off those big stings! . . .”

  As I fell asleep, I heard young joker hollering he was a helluva pimp.

  The ball-lopper across the way shrilled, “Joe Thomas, bullshit everybody but Cora Brown. I heard you ate everything except the nails in Little Bit’s shoes all night last summer. At the time, she told me, she was holding enough bread to burn up a herd of wet cattle. She gave you a buck for grits and greens. No playing chump! Dummy up!”

  The icy morning of my release, my teeth chattered in the sleazy thin benny belonging to some slight of hand bastard in property. He had switched me out of my stable-trimmed, leather-whore catcher. I was a hundred yards down California Ave. when the sudden blast of a horn behind me almost tinkled me. I got in the snow-dappled heap. Willie grinned and passed me a half-full, half-pint of gin.

  He said, “Kill it.”

  He looked me up and down.

  He said, “We gotta go and score for decent bennys and bread to make up a playing boodle.”

  He briefed me how, on the way to a medium size department store on State Street. We went in through different entrances. I dug Willie in position to score. My arm swept perfume bottles off a counter with a great clatter as I collapsed myself to the stone floor. I performed an attention grabbing, flop tongued epileptic seizure that sucked men’s wear empty of personnel.

  Some compassionate soul rammed a metal glasses case into my mouth. I peeked through the forest of legs a: Willie. He had liberated two bennys off hangers and mat nonchalantly till tapping (rifling a cash register) men’s-wear bread. He blurred through a side door. I recovered, mouthing baroque gratitude. I walked my eyes heavenward. I profusely thanked J.C. and the mob surrounding me (as per Willie’s instructions) as I oozed away to the sidewalk.

  Our bennys were good fits. But the scratch from the till was too thin to make-up a viable boodle. On Clark Street Willie pulled to the curb and leaped from the car. I got under the wheel.

  Willie walked, with head down, toward a florid fatso, in ritzy togs, coming down the sidewalk, bent against the hooligan wind. Two feet from the target, Willie spat a gob of spit into the wind and fouled the front of the dude’s impeccable benny. I watched Willie rush to him, with jaws flapping apology. He feverishly wiped the dude clean of spittle and his billfold from the well (inside breast pocket).

  As I was driving toward the Southside, Willie stopped arranging a wad of play money to say, “We got five hundred frog skins to makeup boodle that will give the suckers blues with a toothache . . . Say, we better blow some of the pressure in our balls into some jazzy fox to loosen up for the marks.”

  I said, “Man, I don’t dig no bought snatch and I’m too noble to beg for it.”

  He busted out laughing, “Slim, I’m gonna hip you how to bang the choicest pros with no pay, no bed!”

  We parked a half hour while he ran down his poontang swindle. In the Seventies on Cottage Grove Ave., he told me to pull over and park in front of the MOON GLO BAR. I did, and dug on the vision he had dug. He caressed his tinted fly.

  She hustled her Pet-Of-The-Year type curves toward us. Her face was copper satin, pure electric like those ball-blasting Aztec broads on the calendars printed in Spanish.

  He opened the car door and said hoarsely, “Ain’t no way we can do better than her. Don’t forget the cues we rehearsed, and remember, you’re stone deaf and dumb. You’re a champ chump from the Big Foot Country (deep South) and you’re creaming to get laid.”

  I enjoyed an interior smirk. Remember? A few con items? Willie, the rectum, was apparently unhip I had memorized an arsenal of howitzer motivators I’d kept on instant alert inside my skull. I’d barraged them daily for three years to persuade a ten ’ho stable to hump my pockets obese.

  Willie suddenly hammered his fist down on my hat crown. I glanced into the rear-view mirror. My lid was telescoped into a pork-pie, cocked stupidly on the side of my longhead.

  He said, “Now you look the part, Pardner.”

  He sprang to the sidewalk, whipping off his hat. His face was booby-trapped with pearly con as he rapped his opener. She darted a glance in my direction. He had cracked comedic shit on her to set me up as flim-flamee and her as fuckee. She giggled her epic ass off.

  She scooted across the seat close to me as Willie boxed her in and shut the car door. I yo-yoed my Adams Apple as I imagined a mute bumpkin would, if pressed against her pulse-sprinting heat.

  Willie said, “Sharlene Hill, this is Amos . . . did you say yur last name was Johnson, Buddy?”

  I nodded and wiped my brow with the back of my hand.

  She giggled and said, “Hi, Bootie, Cootie.”

  Willie leaned across her and said, “She boss cute enough for that hundred dollars you want to spend?”

  Slack jawed, I nodded vigorously. Then I frowned and got pencil and pad, rubber banded to the sun visor. She watched me laboriously scribble, “You go first” and pass the message to Willie.

  He chuckled and said, “Amos, we don’t have to do it that way. I’ve known Sharlene since she was a baby. I’m ready to take the oath before the Supreme Court, she ain’t got no bad disease like they told you down home most all the fast ladies up here is suppose to have.”

  I put my handkerchief across my mouth and turned my head away to cough so he could wink at her and say, “Course, if you just gotta test my confidence in her cleanness, you have to give her two hundred in advance.”

  I swe
pt my eyes hungrily over her awesome thighs, exposed by the hiked up pink suede mini-skirt. I nodded furiously. She took my hand and glued it against her throbby vulva as she rolled her belly.

  Willie said, “You gonna pay her from the money in your shoe, or should I pay her from this money I’m safe keeping for you?”

  I pointed toward him. He reached into his overcoat pocket and removed a blue bandana wrapped wad holding five hundred in fifties, tens and a hundred-dollar bill. She stopped her belly motor. She freed my hand and watched him untie the knots and count out two hundred.

  It was my cue to get a severe fit of coughing and spitting. I turned away and stuck my head out the window.

  Willie tied up all the cash again before her eyes. Then he leaned toward her ear, blocking sight of the money for a mini-instant. The index and middle fingers of his right hand shoved the cash down the left sleeve of his overcoat. With magician speed he simultaneously grabbed and palmed the bandana with play money, stashed in the same sleeve.

  He pressed the dummy into her hands as he whispered, “Beautiful, let’s rip this chump off. Put this whole grand in your bosom right next to your boss lollipops. Meet me right there in the Moon Glo in ten minutes after we cut you loose . . . for the split.”

  Her green neons were sparkling excitement when I took my head out of the window. Willie was airtight all right. He wouldn’t even spring for the motel fin to rip her with some kind of class.

  I drove around the desolate southern perimeter of the city while Willie mule-dicked her and blew off his jail cherry with the exclamation, “Oheeeeee! Slim! I’m gonna nominate her box for the hall of fame!”

  But there was something about the cloying stink of their juice stew, and the sloppy kissy sound his slab meat made withdrawing that turned me off.

  He climbed over the seat and said, “Pull over and let me take the wheel.”

  I started to pass her up. But the expression on Willie’s face was pulling my coat she’d wake up if I didn’t do a number with her. While Willie drove us around, I opted for her far out skull extravaganza.

  We let her go in front of the MOON GLO. She went in the front door. We cruised around the block and caught a glimpse of her cannon assing it down the alley in back of the bar. Her pimp was going to foam at the jib when she checked in that load of play money.

  The banks and postal savings offices would soon be closing, so we dirtied plates and copped pads. Next morning, at ten, we were working both sides of Garfield Boulevard on the Southside. Both of us had struck out several times at the qualifying stage with marks we had stopped.

  At two thirty, Willie stopped a powerfully built older guy. I watched Willie’s two grand choppers flashing as he pitched the “cut in” and “sound out” con to qualify the mark.

  I had memorized both ends of our game’s dialogue so I knew Willie was saying, “Forgive me, Sir. My mama taught me, in her lap, it’s bad manners and not Christian to disrespect a stranger’s privacy. But I’m upset! I’m in need of advice from some intelligent and wise looking colored gentleman like yourself?”

  I saw the mark move, with Willie, from the middle of the sidewalk to stand near the curb to hear Willie’s problem. “I just got here from Mississippi. I’m carrying a lot of money from the sale of my farm. I’m confused and afraid because a friendly white man on the train from Vicksburg, warned me about flim-flambers . . . or something. Worse, the white man told me that banks up here give white folks five percent interest on savings and only three percent to colored people. Please, tell me, kind sir, what are flim-flappers? And does your experience with these banks make that white man tell me a lie or the truth?”

  Shortly, Willie stroked an index finger across his left cheek. My cue to drop and pick up the wallet, fat with the boodle, near any big expensive car parked on the street.

  Willie touched the mark’s sleeve and dipped his head toward me. At this point, Willie would be saying, “Ain’t it a pity that colored man over there is so honest he’s paralyzed with guilt and fear. He was lucky enough to pick up a wallet a rich looking white man lost when he got out of that new Lincoln. I think we oughtta put his mind at ease.”

  Willie and the mark waved me to them. Up close, the mark’s face and vibes jangled an alarm bell inside my skull.

  I shakily said, “You gentlemen won’t call the law, will you?”

  Willie said, “We will not! Finding a wallet belonging to a rich white man sure don’t make a colored man a thief in our book. The Lord has gave you a lucky day. Ain’t that the truth, Mr. Ellis?”

  The mark stared luminous gray eyes at me and nodded. Could he be the vengeance hungry father of some long ago doll I’d “turned out” and he was trying to place me?

  I glanced around us suspiciously, and with a sigh of relief, I said to Willie, “Mr. Ell . . .”

  Willie cut me off and said, “I’m Mr. Jackson.”

  I said, “Joe Franklin is pleased to make both your acquaintances. I’m happy, happy, two colored gentlemen, with mother-wit, saw me instead of two mean white folks. I been knowing all my life, good advice comes from good people, and should be rewarded . . .”

  Willie cut in, “Hold on there, Franklin! We didn’t advise you to share in your good luck . . . did we, Mr. Ellis?”

  The mark’s heavy blue lips pulled back in a twisted little smile. Disgust at Willie’s remark wrinkled his ebonic browl. In a high pitched voice, eeirily issuing from his six-six, two-hundred fifty pound frame, he squealed, “We surely didn’t . . .”

  I said, “Hush up, Mr. Ellis! I won’t let you talk me out of it. Friends, we gonna share equally fifteen bucks or fifteen thousand bucks.”

  I gave them a flash of apparent long green stuff inside the bulgy hide.

  Willie said, “You’ve hit the jack-pot! Let’s move! The white man is positively gonna miss that load of cash!”

  We steered the mark to a bench on the strip of grass that ran down the center of the boulevard. I started to examine the wallet’s contents. I let excitement make me drop it. Willie scooped it up and turned away from the nark’s ravenous eyes.

  I started at the mark’s flat, brutish profile. I recognized him! . . . from somewhere long ago!

  The big vein on the mark’s neck ballooned when he saw Willie let fall and retrieve our lone “C” note before he handed the wallet back to me. Willie exclaimed, “This damn thing is packed with hundred dollar bills!”

  Willie gave me an evil eye because I was a split instant tardy delivering the next line. My mind was at the brink of recalling the where-and-when about the mark.

  I said, “That white man is a big time something.”

  Willie said, “He could be a crooked high roller.”

  I said, “Maybe the money is stolen, or even counterfeit . . . What we gonna do?”

  Willie said, “The money’s real, but we need the help of some big shot colored man or understanding white one. Now about you, Mr. Ellis, you know some big shot we can trust?”

  Before the mark answered, I snapped my fingers and said, “I got somebody! My boss, Mr. Gilbranski. We can trust him because he loves colored folks for sure. He’s been married to one for twenty years. He’s got a fine suite of offices two blocks around the corner in the Milford Building. My stars, I just remember I was on an errand for Mr. Gilbranski when we had our good luck. You good people wait right here. My boss will solve our problem so we can split safe and fair.”

  After I left, Willie would say, “Mr. Ellis, I think we’ve found a pure-in-heart man and a small fortune. If he’s not pure and doesn’t show back here, we can’t lose what we never had.”

  I drank greasy spoon coffee for fifteen minutes before I came back to the mark’s wide grin. The mark’s relaxed face jibbled a bit of the puzzle into place! OHIO! DEATH!

  I pumped their hands and said, “Good People, I knew my boss is a sweetheart! The wallet belonged to a racist politician he despises. He’s ready to give us equal shares of the eighteen thousand in small bills.”

  I p
aused and chuckled, “So, he couldn’t have no reason what-so-ever not to help us, I fibbed and told him two kin folks was in on my good luck. He knows I’ve only got two kin in the world, my Uncle Otis and Aunt Lula, both he’s never seen . . . He ain’t gonna hassle us. He just wants to meet you and find out you’re people with mother-wit, and won’t go crazy with the money and get him in a squeeze for coming to our rescue.”

  Then I said, “He’s awaiting on the ninth floor of the Milford Building.”

  Willie touched the mark’s arm and they started to walk away.

  I said loudly, “What you gentlemen gonna do, make me out a liar and fix it so my boss won’t help us? I told you he knows all the kin I got is Uncle Otis and Aunt Lula. Mr. Ellis ain’t no woman.”

  Willie shook the mark’s hand and said, “Mr. Ellis, rest easy! The same arrangements I make for me, I’ll make for you!”

  I said, “Don’t you think you oughtta tell the boss the excitement is got old Aunt Lula feeling poorly, so she went home to rest?”

  While Wille was gone, I brought the mythical office and boss to life for the mark with detailed description. Willie returned breathlessly reinforcing my wonderful boss and his luxuriously office.

  Willie said, “Mr. Gilbranski liked me, and loves you! He was sold on my levelheadedness when I was able to put up the four thousand dollars from the sale of my farm as proof I’m used to big money. He’s satisfied I wouldn’t cause him no scandal. He told me he’d trust you with his life. He said tell you, he takes care of business inside the office and you take care of me and Aunt Lula . . . I mean Mr. Ellis, outside the office.

  I left to bring back Willie’s and the mark’s shares. At least, the mark was expecting his. When I got back, I gave Willie a manila envelope, fat with greenbacks rolled around the boodle of play money.

  Willie frowned and said with great annoyance, “Where the hell is Mr. Ellis’ share?”

  I shrugged and said, “Mr. Gilbranski said every tub must sit on it’s own foundation and make it’s own strong bond good faith. Aunt Lula . . . I mean Mr. Ellis ain’t showed his good faith in the right way.”