Shetani's Sister

  In a long silence, he scrutinized every plane of her face for a lie tic. Her eyes were wide and unblinking. Compulsively, he thought about Rucker even as he decided he couldn’t bust her.

  She thought, This bastard’s dick rules him like any other trick. “Sweetie, you’re not going to book me?” she said softly.

  “No, I’m gonna fuck you into a coma…Bitch, don’t ever call me sweetie again,” he replied in a voice hoarse with heat.

  He moved the wagon into traffic. Her junkie gut quivered and knotted to remind her that she needed a fix.

  Within fifteen minutes, Crane parked and they entered a motel room. She said, “I have to use the bathroom.”

  He sat on the side of the bed. “All right. We’ll take a shower together when you finish,” he said, as he craned his neck to see that the bathroom window appeared to be too narrow for her escape. He fidgeted. Maybe that window is wide enough.

  Inside the bathroom, she took a cellophane packet from her bosom. It contained a small glassine bag of cocaine and another, nearly empty bag of heroin. She quickly snorted the H and dropped the empty bag behind the radiator. An instant later, Crane’s cop instinct had brought his eye to peer at her through the keyhole.

  She removed her shoes and stuffed the cocaine into the toe of a shoe. He watched her sit down on the stool to pee before he went back to sit on the bed.

  He searched her purse and found a Skye Olsen ID. He was certain that she was a drug user. He’d find out what drug was in the shoe toe. He had absolutely no desire for H addicts, no matter how beautiful. If he found her H dirty, he’d bust her for prostitution and possession of the skag. He could conveniently revise the true scenario with her in court.

  Shortly, she left the bathroom, carrying her shoes. She smiled as she came to sit beside him on the bed. She placed the shoes on the carpet between them. He placed a hand on her thigh and fixed his eyes on her face. “Are you wanted in the U.S. of A. for any capital crime or crimes?” he asked.

  She moved away from his hand. “Shit, no, cop!”

  “Are you a heroin addict?” he said as he leaned to push up the sleeves of her dress past her elbows.

  “No! Fuck this inquisition, man! If you don’t want to have some fun, bust me,” she loudmouthed as she sprang to her feet.

  He stood and pushed her back onto the bed. He glanced at her shoes. He saw alarm in her eyes. He sat down beside her and picked up the shoes. “These are jazzy. Are they lizard?” She nodded. He put an index finger into the stash shoe and pulled out the bag of coke. He opened it to smell the contents. He dumped a line of it onto the back of his hand. He greedily snorted it away. He closed his eyes for a long moment and swayed. “Sweetheart, you’ve just made a friend. This shit is almost pure!” he uttered in an ecstatic whisper.

  She stood, with contempt on her face. “You corrupt bastard! Let’s take that shower so I can get the hell out of here.”

  He watched, with his enemy rigid, as she took off her dress, gartered stockings, and panties. She glided to the bathroom.

  He tore off his clothes and joined her in the shower. After that, he carried her to bed. His rage against himself for his weakness and his violation of Rucker’s trust in him increased after the coke. So he marauded her tender flesh with rough hands and his teeth. Finally, she, the long-term masochist, screamed and leapt from the bed.

  “I’m not taking any more of your animal shit. I’m leaving,” she shouted angrily.

  The swollen head of his enemy thumped his thigh when he jumped from the bed. “C’mon, get back in bed,” he begged, with his arms flung wide open.

  She gazed at his giant enemy and remembered the crack about fucking her into a coma. She pointed a finger and said in a little girl’s voice, “I won’t get in bed unless I can suck that gorgeous thing first. Okay?”

  He nodded his head and they went to bed. She immediately attacked their enemy with ferocious fellatio. Within twenty minutes, she exploded him twice. Then she moaned, “I’m so hot for your dick.”

  He mounted her and tried to stuff his burned-out rod inside her.

  “Come on, fuck me into a coma,” she taunted, as he rolled off her to lie panting on his back.

  She moved to sit on the bedside. She used a rolled bill to snort up almost all of the coke. She watched him snort up the rest as she dressed.

  He watched her, with his mind in riot. He thought about how desperately he needed access to the purest cocaine he’d ever had. He felt the staccato of his heartbeat in the witchery of her presence. And his crotch, still atingle from her incomparable head, was the convincer that he would need her again and again. He knew the slickest hooker there ever was couldn’t work the streets of Hollywood for long without getting busted repetitively by the super-clever cops on his special squad. She was certain to disappear after it hit her that Hollywood was too hot to work.

  She sat on the bed to put on her shoes. She stood and moved toward the door. “I guess I’ll be forced to see you around,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Give me a moment to dress and I’ll drop you off wherever,” he said gently.

  She paused, with her hand on the door knob. “Thanks, but I’d rather take a cab from the stand across the street.” She opened the door. He glanced at his watch. It was after midnight, and the sharpest cops on the squad had gone on-shift. The door was closing behind her.

  “Skye!” he said loudly.

  She stepped back into the room with raised eyebrows.

  “Are you going back to work?” he asked.

  “Why would I do that after a zero night in the fucking sack with a cop?” she said icily.

  He propped himself up against pillows. “I wouldn’t bet that your kid-brother story was true. But I’d lay a sawbuck to a nickel that you will take a fall if you work Hollywood tonight.”

  She drew herself erect like a midnight soldier. “I can take care of myself.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe you can, in ordinary heat…Why don’t you knock off now? Let’s have lunch together tomorrow. You had to see the turf had almost no hookers. I can help you with info to protect you.” He jiggled his hands helplessly in air. “But I need time to think out certain things…to come to a decision.”

  She opened the door. “Say, man, I don’t have time to unravel your riddles. I’m not a heist broad. I’ve got the bust bread for hooking. If the turf gets too hot, I’ll just get in the wind. Bye-bye.”

  She turned to go out the door. He sprang from the bed and seized her around the waist.

  “Let me go, you crazy sonuvabitch!” she hollered.

  He kicked the door shut and pulled her back to the bed. He pulled her down to sit beside him on the bed. His hands vised her wrists as he moved his face close to hers. “Listen, you uninformed bitch. I’m acting leader of the special squad that cleaned up Hollywood. We’re famous.”

  She shrugged. “Congratulations. So what does that mean for me?”

  He said, “I hope I haven’t decided to help a dummy. You need license-plate numbers and descriptions of the cops driving the undercover cars to work Hollywood.” He released her wrists. She smiled and reached into her purse to extract notebook and pen.

  “I’m ready, baby. Lay it on me,” she cooed as she scooted close to him.

  “Your ass I will, just like that. I want two things from you. Cut me into your coke connection. I won’t bust anybody. I just want to cop.”

  She moved away from him. Her pale face reddened for an instant. “No. You insulting creep. You think hookers don’t have principles?”

  He grinned. “All right, then, cop for me.”

  She nodded. “It will cost you a hundred and forty a gram. What else do you want?”

  He eye-swept her body. “You! I want your ass in bed with me at least once a week. Agreed?”

  She smiled and nodded.

  He went on. “I’ll meet you nightly, between nine-thirty and ten p.m., in the parking lot of that drugstore on Sunset where I first saw you. At those times, I will gi
ve you any changes of license plates and descriptions of new cops. I could get angry enough to kill you if you share the info with anyone. Understand?”

  She leaned to stroke the nape of his neck. “Of course I do…What should I call you?”

  He removed her hand from his neck to kiss the back of it. “Call me Jerry. Now, take down this info carefully,” he said, as he moved to prop himself up in the bed with his hands clasped behind his head.

  It was 3:00 a.m. in the Apple. Shetani’s phone awakened him. He picked up to the voice of Pee Wee Smith. She was known from coast to coast as one of the best thieving hookers ever to hit the track. Pee Wee’s voice broke as she told him about Big Cat’s death.

  Shetani pounded his bed with his fists. The Cat, his best friend since they were teenage hustlers in Harlem, had been iced by a pig in L.A.!

  She went on tearfully with details. The shock, for a moment, blocked out his pimp lust to cop a hooker with such superstar credentials. What? She was calling from a Times Square restaurant? He’d send his car for her. He’d blot out her grief with the best dope in New York. He was so kind to care, she blubbered.

  He hung up and pushed a button on a panel on the bed’s headboard. Within two minutes, Eli stormed into the bedroom.

  “Pee Wee just called to tell me a pig wasted the Cat in L.A.,” Shetani said sadly. “Eli, take my ride and pick up Pee Wee at the Thompson Restaurant in Times Square,” Shetani ordered.

  Eli spun and left the room. Shetani immediately went into action to set the copping stage for Pee Wee. He took his blazing arsenal of jewelry from the nightstand and arranged it on his person. He flipped on a spotlight above the bed’s headboard. It illuminated a giant portrait of just his green cat eyes aglow against a background of pitch-blackness. The spotlight would also set his rubies and diamonds afire. His coat of arms, a hypodermic spike crossed by a wire coat-hanger whip, was painted in flame red at the bottom of the portrait.

  He gazed at it for a moment and remembered that the Cat had cracked that he used the whip on Pee Wee and her stablemates when they broke his rules. Had Pee Wee begun to like the fiery sting of the whip? If not, he knew how to teach any ho to adore it. He knew his insensate hatred of women would drive him to insanity, to murder, if he didn’t relieve his deadly tension through the whip.

  He felt the horse kick him into dull rapture. He needed to be sharp upstairs to play his best game. He took his dope kit to the bathroom. He shut the door behind him as he checked his watch. Pee Wee should be arriving at any moment. He put down the toilet top and sat down. He injected a powerful shot of top-quality cocaine to clear his head of the heroin’s dreamy cobwebs.

  Shortly, he heard Eli’s bass voice, and he knew the prize had arrived. He’d wait and let her absorb the splendor of his bedroom. Perhaps she’d feel her hooker heart rock when his mystical orbs in the portrait trapped her eyes. He had detected an emergency tone of junkie need in her voice. She had probably come directly to Times Square from the airport to cop her medicine. The federal and city narcs had combined to sweep up a dozen pushers and to terrorize the others off the street the week before. He felt that Pee Wee couldn’t risk buying the dope in Harlem, which was now being cut with everything from quinine to strychnine.

  Shetani smiled. Pee Wee had run into a dope panic. She knew he kept dope for his girls. So she had looked up Albert Spires’s phone number and called him, he reasoned.

  Eli had seated Pee Wee in the chair at the foot of the bed. The jazzy bedroom and the hypnotic eyes in the portrait had indeed caught her attention. But now she got to her feet and went to the mantel above the fireplace. She studied the fifteen Polaroid shots of girls: white, black, and a pair of Asians. In the center of the pack was a larger picture of Petra.

  Pee Wee frowned at the radiance of the Caucasian beauty. She was very pretty in her own Afro way. But she had an unconscious hatred of her blackness, and she was strongly opposed to black players’ having a white main or bottom woman.

  She felt a tremor in her legs as she turned and went back to seat herself in the chair. She stared at the portrait’s cold but, for her, alluring eyes. She was uncomfortable in her position of extreme vulnerability. After all, she was street cream, a superstar. But here she was, in the bedroom of a player famed as master of the fast cop. She didn’t want to be anybody’s slave again for a while. She certainly couldn’t see herself in a sixteen-girl stable with a white sexpot as the bottom woman.

  She got to her feet. She’d leave and try to cop her medicine in Greenwich Village. She fell heavily back into the chair. She remembered that she’d been told in Times Square that the Village was suffering a dope panic of its own.

  She sighed deeply. She comforted herself a little with the thought that the sad news of Cat’s death had been at least flimsy cover for her raging need for a fix.

  Shetani opened the bathroom door and stepped into the bedroom with disarming cool. He extended his arms. “Hi, lil sting queen!” he sang in a voice just above a whisper.

  She said, “Hi, Shetani.”

  His face hardened almost imperceptibly when she stiffened and hesitated for an instant before coming into his arms for a hug. He disengaged and flung a palm out toward the side of the bed. She sat down.

  He arranged himself against the bed’s headboard so that the portrait’s spotlight could ignite the fireworks of his jewels. He felt her ambivalence. He decided to talk shit and let her monkey kick her ass before he gave her a fix.

  “I’ve been thinking you could sue the L.A. police for the wrongful death of the Cat,” he said in a whispery voice that forced her to lean toward him to hear.

  She placed a palm across a yawn. She shook her curly head. “No chance. White square asses on both sides of the street saw Cat charge the pig with a butcher knife. Besides, I jumped grand-theft bail.”

  He gnawed his bottom lip. “How much was the bond?”

  Her fingers nervously toyed with a gold chain around her throat. “Ten G’s.”

  He grinned. “Who got fucked?”

  She said impatiently, “A square nigger barber. He put up his house. The week before, I was waiting for Cat in an after-hours joint when he cut into me with his card and a hard-on.” She shrugged and lit a cigarette from her lizard purse.

  He took a crystal ashtray off the nightstand and placed it on the bed between them. He shook his head when she extended the pack of Camels. “Shit, girl, cigarettes are bad for your health.” They laughed flatly together.

  “What happened to Cat’s bankroll?”

  She moistened her sensuous lips with a sharply pointed tongue. “It disappeared along the line. The police, ambulance dudes, or somebody at the hospital could have beat him.”

  During a long silence, he played his Mona Lisa bit.

  “What you smiling about?” she asked.

  He floated a bejeweled hand in the air. “I remembered some shucking and jiving I did with the Cat a few months ago.”

  She wiped sudden springlets of perspiration off her brow with the back of her hand. “Like what?” she said in a feeble voice.

  “I cracked that I wanted to buy you. He cracked back that he wouldn’t take all the bread I could raise and all the ho’s I had for you. Then he cracked seriously: ‘Pal, if anything happens to me, I’ll rest happy in hell if the two of you hook up. You’re the only player there is who could take care of her good as me.’ ”

  She dabbed a powder puff at her feverish brow. “Daddy Cat had a lot of respect for you, all right. He told me stories about capers in Harlem that went down when you two were kids…about how you and him heisted drug dealers. By the way, baby, didn’t you mention on the phone about some China white you had?”

  He waved her to him. “I sure did. Put your bare ass up here between my legs. I’ll do you where I hit all my ho’s.”

  Again, she hesitated at a crucial point. His fierce eyes burned through her. “Bitch, you having some kind of problem with our new friendship?” he said harshly.

  She waggled
her head and crawled across the bed. She got into position. She hiked up her red silk skirt. He pulled down her black lace panties to bare her round ass.

  “Please, don’t hurt me,” she moaned, with her face buried in the bedspread.

  With a spike, a match, and a spoon from his dope kit, he prepared a medium fix of the potent dope. As always, he shot the dope into a spot between her vulva and high inner thigh. He felt her quiver between his legs when the dope slammed her.

  Within twenty seconds, she collapsed to lie on her right side. “Ooee! Baby, your shit is so goood!” she cried out ecstatically. Her enormous honey-colored eyes were dope-clouded slits gazing at her reflection in the ceiling mirror. His snowy teeth shone in a wolfish smile as he studied her.

  “Naturally, you motherfucking bitch. This is a sacred happening. You just received your first blessing from Master Shetani, the ho’s god.”

  She switched her slits to his fearsome face. He said solemnly, “I forgot to mention that I promised the Cat that I would take care of you if he died. Bitch, I intend to keep that promise to the dearest friend I ever had.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t be your woman just like that. I gotta have time…Besides, I don’t dig players with a silk bottom woman.”

  He threw his head back and belly-laughed. Then he said quietly, “Can you keep a secret?”

  She lit a cigarette. “Sure can.”

  He braided his fingers together over his heart. “Petra is on the way out. I’m gonna fire her in a few months, when the statute of limitations runs out on a trip to Pennsylvania. It was supposed to be just a pleasure trip for her and several other girls. I drove them across a state line and made the mistake of working them in Pennsylvania. You gonna be my secret bottom woman for a short time.”