“But, Mama, look at his face in the light. He’s in the war again! We oughta go next door to Rachel’s mama’s house and stay all night.”
She said, “Jessie, don’t be scared. He’s gonna come in here and flop down into the land of nod. Jessie, don’t butt in or anything and upset him. Keep quiet and leave him to Mama.”
Sarge burst through the door. He stood weaving at attention with bloodshot eyes.
She said, “Sarge, stop looking at me so mean and I’ll make you some fried chicken.”
Sarge smiled crookedly and said in a quiet voice, “Paymaster, I ain’t got the time. I’m gonna have a steak in Paree with a fine oo-la-la. The transports are loading right now. Don’t fuck me around, Paymaster. Give me all my money before I split your motherfucking head.”
He went several steps to the sewing machine money stash. Immediately, he jerked the drawers out and stomped them to pieces. He shoved the tattered officer’s cap back off his face and stood glaring at her and gritting his teeth.
She tried to smile, but her lips only trembled as she went toward him, her big eyes flashing fear in the Watusi head.
“Please, Sarge, I can’t let you take our food and insurance money to them Playhouse slickers. Come on, Sweetie Daddy, let’s have black coffee together and watch fireworks on the roof with Jessie.”
He leaped at her with vacant eyes. He seized her outstretched arms and spun her, then he locked her in a violent full nelson. She screamed as he hurled her to the floor.
He ground his knees into her spine and shouted in her ear, “Where’s my money? Gimme! Gimme!”
Jessie came off the couch with the pistol held behind his back. He almost touched the ragged shrapnel scar behind Sarge’s right ear and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked, and Sarge stiffened and walled his eyes back at Jessie clicking again behind him.
Sarge whirled off Pearl. She raced toward the kitchen. He vised Jessie’s throat with one hand and snatched the gun with the other. He smashed the butt down on Jessie’s reddening head until his blows snuffed the lights in the boy’s eyes . . .
The police took Jessie to a hospital for scalp stitches and then to a juvenile holding station until a foster home could be found. Within two weeks Rachel’s mother signed the papers to become his foster mother.
For weeks after his mother’s funeral, nightmares woke him up dripping sweat. And he fell into a deep silent depression whenever he thought of her. Three years later, when he was fifteen, he slipped into Rachel’s bedroom and her strait-laced mother caught them petting and giggling on the side of the bed.
Two days after he was thrown out, he came out of an all-night Westside theater. On the sidewalk down the street he saw six tough-looking Italians leap from a jalopy. They had knives and ran to attack a powerfully built young black guy. He drew a switchblade and put his back against a building.
The black guy shouted at Jessie, “Man, you gonna let these dagos waste me?”
Jessie dashed to a sawhorse over a repair hole in the street. He stomped off a leg and gripping the two by four, rushed into the fray. A lean guy with odd yellowish eyes thrust for a heart shot. Instead, he plunged his stiletto into the black guy’s shoulder as he twisted away. Jessie brought the club down and saw the wrist of the hand holding the stiletto pop bone and blood. The lean guy screeched and spun to face Jessie. For an instant, Jessie stared into his eyes, radiant with pain and anger. Jessie felt stinging slashes on his back. The lean guy rocketed a foot at his crotch. Jessie turned and felt toothache pain in his hip.
He stared into Jessie’s eyes and said in a hoarse whisper, “I’ll remember you, and I’ll get you for this, nigger.”
Jessie swung the club at his head. He heard the crunch and saw his jaw drop stupidly as bloody spittle leaked down his chin. He heard bones crack and break as he whirled and swung his club on the others. The gang fled. Jessie’s and the giant’s superficial stab wounds were oozing blood.
The giant said, “Man, I’m Kong.”
Jessie said, “I’m Jessie. Why was they out to waste you?”
Kong answered, “Gang war, man, gang war. C’mon, and let’s get some patching.”
They went to a jalopy, and Kong drove away.
Kong said, “Them dagos is members of the Sicilian Knights. I’m the leader of the Black Devastators. That stringbean dago you busted up was Lupo Collucci, their leader.”
Jessie said, “I guess I’ll need a piece to stay on this side of town.”
Kong grunted. “Jessie, you gonna need to be a Black Devastator. I’ll shoot you right in. Make up your mind, brother. We need bad dudes like you to take over the Westside from Lupo.”
Six months later, Jessie had a steel plate in his skull from a bullet Lupo Collucci fired into his head in an ambush on Devastator turf in Douglas Park.
Kong had become dependent on Jessie’s gems of strategy which gobbled up big chunks of Collucci’s turf. Jessie’s planning of creative burglaries and shakedowns of hustlers and dope pushers and their pads bulged the Devastator treasury.
Kong took a Collucci slug through a lung. When he got back to the turf, all the Devastators wanted Jessie to lead them.
Jessie’s habit of taking prompt and reckless vengeance against any odds earned him the “Tit For Tat” moniker.
T. and Kong remained tight buddies. They and Kong’s cousin, Buncha Grief, were ambushed one midnight on Sicilian Knights’ turf. They were gunned down by Lupo Collucci and his constant shadow and right hand, Angelo Serelli. Buncha Grief left the scene with a grazed skull.
After T.’s and Kong’s wounds healed in the prison ward of county hospital, two crooked detectives put T. and Kong on show-up. Two of their shakedown victims had reported fake armed robberies. They fingered sixteen-year-old T. and Kong into Pontiac Reformatory until they were twenty-one years old.
They were put to work in the kitchen of the crowded prison and lived in a four-man cell. T. and Kong soon became the most feared cons in the tough joint.
• • •
Thirty days before T.’s release, Skinny Man Blake, a Devastator member, came in from the street. A half-dozen Devastators serving bits, including T. and Kong, led Blake to an uncrowded corner of the yard to get a rundown on recent street happenings in the free world.
They stripped off their shirts and lay on the grass in a semicircle around Blake. Beneath the lush June sun they shimmered like seals lolling on a jade beach.
Blake said, “I guess you all hip to the trouble the Devastators was in when we lost T. and Kong. The club died a year ago from members OD’ing, bits in these joints, square-ups with wives and squealers, and the rest Lupo Collucci’s Sicilians crippled or wasted.”
T. said, “I’m gonna chase Lupo back up his mammy’s ass when I hit the bricks next month.”
Blake took a puff of his cigarette. “T., lemme pull your coat to the fact Collucci is poison you don’t wanta take.” He walled his eyes fearfully and almost whispered, “The dude is a Mafia man.”
Kong said, “Ain’t that a bitch, T.?”
T. said, “Yeah, we been standing still in a cage while the free world is speeding.”
Blake said, “No shit, T., like when you and Kong got busted, there was maybe a dozen hustlers making a big buck. But now, on the Westside and the Southside, boo koo niggers, poor as Lazrus a coupla years ago, is living like kings.”
Kong said, “How?”
“Offa dealing dope. Mafia dope,” Blake said. “All of ’em got new Lincolns and hogs. Their customers is everywhere, thick as bedbugs in a flop joint. They stealing and nodding and dying.”
Blake paused while the captain of the yard, with brass buttons a-dazzle, passed swinging a leaded cane and beaming his sweet psychotic smile.
Blake continued. “Remember all the fat gut niggers that usta own the numbers and policy banks? Well, all of them, except one, is got a new partner taking sixty percent off the top, and the bankers gotta meet the nut outta their ends.”
T. said, “When did the M
afia muscle in?”
Blake said, “Amos Lightfoot got a bit in Leavenworth for income tax a coupla years ago. Amos got diarrhea of the jib and woke up a dago hood from the Windy about the gold mine behind the nickel-and-dime policy game.”
One of the original Devastators said, “Who is the policy dude shaking his dick at the Mafia?”
Blake said, “Willie Poe, outta the Apple. When the Mafia first moved in they killed Poe’s son and dumped a banker into an alley with a mouth fulla balls. Willie Poe tried to organize the bankers. But they was all on their knees with shit for blood.
“Coupla months ago, Poe shot and stomped two Mafia runners to death. Willie Poe is the only nigger in the history of the world that ever stuck his black ass out and told the Mafia to kiss it. He’s the greatest and the baddest on the planet.”
The whistle screamed that the yard period was over. T. lagged back with Blake as the cons moved off the yard into the cell houses.
T. said, “Blake, I ain’t got my nose open and nothing like that. Understand me, for real, but about Rachel, she ain’t answered my kites for six months. She died or what?”
Blake said, “T., you know I love you and I know you. Forget about her.”
T. knifed his fingernails into Blake’s arm and said, “Nigger, I’ll tear your arm off if you dangle me about my woman.”
Blake said, “You had to know. Well, a week after she copped the Miss Black Chicago beauty title, Dandy Ike taught her hoss is boss. He turned her out on the ‘boost.’ They say she was like a magician stealing furs and C-note dresses from Marshall Fields and other ritzy Loop stores. They say she got busted, and the judge sent her to Lex Hospital to kick the thing.”
T. couldn’t sleep for days. Until his release he murdered Dandy Ike dozens of way in bloody day fantasies and night dreams. They released him with a bus ticket to the Windy, a sawbuck, and a roughly cut suit that hollered, “Penitentiary!”
He got off the Greyhound in Chicago’s Loop and went to the street. He blinked in the sunlight. He was shaken by the exploding bomb of traffic and the insane stampede of well-dressed people with white blank faces. T. felt filthy, inferior, and lost. A shabby alien covered with jail rot.
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.