She nodded. He shouted, “Goddamn you! Say it.”
She said softly, “I’ll bring the bread when I come to work tomorrow.”
He turned on the engine and lights. He backed out of the estate and headed down the hill for Sunset Boulevard. She lit a stick of grass to relieve the mad uproar of her nerve ends. She held the burning match and stared hypnotically at her reflection in the windshield. Aging angles of shadow and light in the flare of the match made her the mirror image of the one person on earth she truly hated. Helga Lindstrom, her mother.
The flame of the match scorched her fingertips. She flung it into the dash ashtray. She thought of Carl, her sweet father. She remembered mean-spirited Helga, the neurotic social climber. She was responsible for Carl’s suicide in prison when Petra was turning sixteen. He had been the treasurer of a New York firm owned by a group of his close friends. He embezzled sums of money over a period of years to satisfy Helga’s ferocious drive to outdo the extravagant Joneses of Long Island, New York.
Petra’s fingernails stabbed into her palms as she remembered Kristina, her younger sister, and the other reason she hated Helga with soul-deep venom. Kristina, the angelic, the adorably good apple of Helga’s heart, could make no mistakes and do no wrong whatsoever. If she did, that was always bad Petra’s fault for not preventing it.
Petra remembered the countless times that she had heard Helga praise Kristina for being wonderful and good. She shuddered now at a vision of herself, recoiling from Helga’s index finger, slashing at her like a stiletto as she condemned Petra as the baddest girl there ever was.
Petra shaped a bitter smile as she thought about the midnight when she fled the family mansion. She was only seventeen, but she was determined to show Helga what bad really was. She’d go to the capital of bad, the Big Apple, and become a gun moll or even a whore. That would give self-righteous Helga a kick in the gut, all right.
Now the station wagon lurched Petra from her painful reverie, when Crane jerked the steering wheel to avoid a gaping pothole on Vine Street.
“Say, man, you owe me for the coke,” Petra said as Crane pulled into Sunset and stopped in a red zone.
Crane reached across her to open the passenger door. “Consider the hundred and forty bucks as a penalty for your double-cross.” He stroked the back of his hand across her bosom. “Don’t plan anything for tomorrow around two p.m. We’ve got a fuck date at the usual motel.”
She slid out to the street and stomped away. Minutes later, she was driving her rented car toward the isolated house in the hills that Shetani and the rest of the family now occupied.
—
Four days before the end of Rucker’s vacation, a phenomenon occurred in Hollywood. Like lice on a bum, black, white, brown, and Asian hookers reinfested the streets, especially Sunset Boulevard. They had apparently gotten the underworld hot wire that the intense heat was off in Hollywood. For Crane, this was a break and a hardship. The break was that the swarm of hookers camouflaged the action of the Shetani girls, who had embarrassed and frustrated the cops on Crane’s special squad. The hardship for Crane was that Lieutenant Bleeson rode him hard, because Bleeson became the target of the rekindled outrage of civic and business groups.
Crane and his squad members busted a hundred hookers in a twenty-four-hour period. But still the gaudy flesh tide flooded Hollywood.
With three days of Rucker’s vacation left, Bleeson decided to call him back to L.A. Bleeson repeatedly called Rucker at his hotel without connecting. The reason was that Rucker and Opal had reconciled, to a degree. They were attending a Broadway show, and after that having a late supper at a fashionable restaurant.
At 3:00 a.m. Apple time, Bleeson called again. Rucker was performing acrobatics between Opal’s voluptuous thighs when his phone rang. He remained inside her and picked up.
“Rucker here,” he said breathlessly.
“Hi, Russ, this is Bleeson. You don’t sound right. You okay?”
Rucker leaned away from Opal. “I’m fine, Lieutenant. I was involved, let’s put it, with a lady.”
Bleeson cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I disturbed you, Russ, but we have a condition red out here. The goddamn hookers have all but taken over. It’s unbelievable! I want you back here no later than tomorrow night.”
Rucker rolled from between Opal’s thighs. “Will do, Lieutenant. See you.”
They hung up. Rucker opened his arms. Opal topped him and eased him back inside her.
It was noon in the Apple. Shetani lay beside Pee Wee, staring at her while she slept. He’d never owned a thief. He’d always wanted to have one. That and Pee Wee’s hatred of white women had driven him to con her that Petra would be dumped. He decided to send her on a stealing tour of several Midwestern states to get her off-scene. Then, too, he thought, the tour would test her and up his income.
He lip-brushed her eyelashes until she opened her eyes. “Good morning, Wee,” he said softly as he watched her eyes sweep the room for a moment to realize where she was.
“Mornin’, She—…uh, Daddy,” she mumbled. She covered a dope-fiend yawn of need with wizard fingers that had burgled pockets from coast to coast.
He looked at his watch. “Wee, let’s get right,” he said as he took his dope kit from beneath a pillow.
“I’ll cheer for that, Master,” she said as she swung her feet to the carpet.
He punched a button on the console of his headboard. Fingers of sunlight sneaked through the half-opened drapes to caress her coffee curves as she went to the bathroom.
He banged a speedball and saved enough in the large syringe for her. She came out of the bathroom and noticed her luggage from airport lockers in a corner of the room.
“Eli picked up your bags this morning,” Shetani said as he watched her go to take a black satin gown from a bag. She slipped into it before she returned to bed.
He said, “Sugar Wee, it’s against my rules to make shit tracks on arms or any spot that’s easy to see. Now, take that mirror off that table, and hit yourself in the fold between your cunt and the low inner side of your ass.”
She rested her knees on her chest. She held the mirror to the side below her buttocks. She tried several times with the spike before the syringe registered a red hit. She emptied it into the line. She lay back on his arm with her eyes closed.
“Master, it sure is a sweet thrill to be your woman…At the git, I backed up, ’cause you’re so fuckin’ fast…and with Big Cat jus’ buried, you know? But, shit, I’m the kinda star bitch that needs a star man…Thank you, Master, for coppin’ me strong and fast.”
He squeezed her close to him for a moment. She moaned as he raked her face from forehead to chin with the edges of his teeth. After they had a breakfast of pastries imported from Paris, he pushed a console button that delivered music. He nearly recoiled when she caressed his penis. But he remembered the thirty-six hundred claiming dollars he had taken from her. He relaxed while she fellated him with uncommon artistry.
“Please, Master, put it inside me,” she implored, with sable eyes dreamy with skag.
He shook his head. “Wee, it’s too soon to hook up my dick with your cunt. Suck on, sweet bitch. I’ll do you off.”
He strummed her clit with an airy finger to the rock beat of Prince’s “Purple Rain.” Shortly, she climaxed with a squeal.
He remembered that Petra had robbed his semen bank just hours before. He lifted Pee Wee’s bobbing head and took her into his arms. She pouted.
“Oh, Master, I wanted to get you off.”
His face hardened for an instant as he got a vision of his slaves sucking him into a coffin. He smiled and touched his head. “Wee, sometimes for me the thrill is bigger here when I don’t come.”
She sighed and snuggled close. “Master, am I gonna work the Apple?” she whispered against his throat.
“No, you’re going to work Iowa, Indiana, and Wisconsin. If you fall, you call Feinstein the bondsman, collect, around the clock. He’ll wire the bail, and yo
u jump it to the next city on the list I’ll give you.”
She said softly, “How about my medicine?”
He rubbed her shoulders. “You’ll get it in a wrapped leather hat box on general delivery at the post office. The return name and address on the package will naturally be phony, like Mary Johnson. Remember that, and claim the packages with the phony ID’s I’ll lay on you before you leave today. By the way, send my money in a hat box special delivery. Is everything clear?”
She said, “Sure, Master. I love it! I’m gonna feel so strong and brave, stinging the suckers.”
In the late afternoon, Pee Wee took a flight to Ohio. Later, in the early evening, Shetani received a pair of dapper visitors.
“Joey! Angelo!” he exclaimed when Eli brought them into the bedroom.
They nodded and managed pleasant smiles on their cold, dark Sicilian faces. Their silk-suited bottoms hissed against the leather couch when they sat down facing Shetani, seated on the bedside. Eli hovered over them until Shetani waved him from the room.
Angelo, the older, taller of the two Mafiosi, opened his briefcase. He leaned to place two plastic-wrapped kilos of heroin on Shetani’s lap. Shetani jabbed a diamond stick pin into each package to taste the contents on a fingertip.
Joey’s potbelly jiggled in mirthless laughter. “Al, it’s really great to feel trusted after ten years of doing business together.”
Shetani pointed to the dope on the bed. “Man, don’t get upset because I checked the merchandise. I’d check it if you were the fucking Pope.”
Joey grunted and lit a cigarette. Peacemaker Angelo grinned at Shetani and hunched his shoulders.
Shetani took two bundles of large bills from his robe pockets. He placed the cash in Angelo’s hands and said, “Count it square, and sixty grand will be there.”
After the pair did a fast count, Angelo peeled off bills before he put the purchase money into the briefcase.
“Here’s a ten-grand rebate from the boss…He wants your twins to take care of some business for him.” He extended the money in his palm.
Shetani frowned and ignored the money. “What kind of business?”
Angelo smiled and dropped the money on the bed. “Same business like a coupla years ago.”
Shetani’s eyes narrowed. “Are we talking about another VIP white man for a chickenshit ten grand?”
Joey piped up, “Jesus, Al, you’re touchy today. The target is a big black dude called Tree. He’s been heisting our retailers in Harlem.”
Angelo laughed, “Yeah, the boss wants him chopped down on Friday. It’s his birthday. Eh?”
Shetani picked up the cash. The pair stood. Joey took a slip of paper from his suit-coat pocket. “Here’s Tree’s address, hangouts, and other stuff on him.”
Shetani took the paper and glanced at it. They studied him for a moment with hooded eyes before they turned away. He walked them to the door and shook hands with them. He stood and watched them move down the hallway. They muttered in Sicilian to each other. Angelo turned and walked back to him. He stood close to Shetani. His long neck stretched to push his bright cobra eyes very close to Shetani’s wary face.
“The boss has been good to you, selling you almost pure stuff at discount prices, eh?”
Shetani nodded. “Sure, and I appreciate it.” He paused to throw his head back toward the bedroom. “I can stomp on that shit three, four times and still keep my ho’s well and happy with the best medicine out there.”
Angelo patted Shetani’s shoulder. “You’re a wise man to appreciate your friends…The boss will be disturbed if your twins fail to complete your end of our deal tomorrow before midnight.”
Shetani stepped back and said harshly, “Say, Angelo, you’re rapping to maybe the baddest motherfucker in New York, if not the world. I’m a stone responsible man. I don’t need no fucking pressure to keep an agreement. Eh?”
Angelo’s eyes glinted murder for an instant before he smiled stingily and turned away to join Joey.
Shetani went into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him. He collapsed across the bed, dripping sweat. His macho performance for the Mafia soldiers had been desperate bravado to cover his soul-deep terror. He was aware of the Mafia’s contempt for the lack of balls in most black and even powerful white men to demand respect. He hated the organization to the full degree of his fear.
He sat up on the bedside and stared at himself in the dresser mirror. He hurt inside and shook with rage at the realization that he, the whoremaster, was himself just a Mafia whore. He was a slave to their dope, and he was trapped into murder for them.
To stop his raging head from exploding, he quickly shot a heavy load of skag. He fell back on the bed in a rapturous trance. He smiled, ecstatic that a dope panic had driven Pee Wee into his stable. He remembered how, five years before, a dope panic had driven Petra to him. He had spotted the teenage beauty leaving an apartment building on Park Avenue that housed a colony of call girls. He had tailed her to Times Square, where she copped H from a black dealer he knew with a costume-jewelry storefront. He found out from the dealer that Petra had a heavy habit, and a white gigolo boyfriend she wanted to dump.
In the next three weeks, in his spare time, he stalked her as she made the bars and restaurants where she recruited her call tricks. A week before the dope panic came that he had expected, he saw Petra’s drunk boyfriend beating her in a gangway between two buildings. He double-parked and rushed to the fray. He punched out the punk and carried her to his car.
Shetani remembered her torn clothes, and how she thanked him again and again when he drove her home to Park Avenue. She gave him her phone number, but she was too upset for him to make a copping play.
The second day into the panic, he tailed her while she tried to score. He noticed how feeble and haggard she was when she got out of a cab at her apartment building. He waited for a half-hour before he called her. He told her he was in the neighborhood and hoped she was well. He also confessed that he was a user and had just copped some pure China white. Would she like a taste?
“What a beautiful coincidence, and what an angel you are to call. I am a user, too, and against the wall of a current panic.” She paused to laugh nervously. “I’ll expect you quickly, Albert.”
An hour after he fixed her, he copped her. Within the hour after that, the twins had moved her belongings into his domain on the top floor of his Regal Hotel.
—
Now, several days after he had ordered the twins to hit Tree for the Mafia, Shetani stepped out of the shower. He toweled off and donned peach satin pajamas. He was snorting coke on the side of the bed when he said, “Come in,” to a knock on the door.
The grinning twins burst into the room. Eli threw a local Harlem paper onto Shetani’s lap. He studied a photograph of the dapper Tree on the front page. He smiled as he read the account of how Tree had been shot to death while apparently watering his marijuana garden in his backyard.
Shetani gave the twins a five-bill bonus each.
“Thanks, Cap!” they chorused as they left the room.
Shetani stared at a row of books on reincarnation in a bookcase across the room. He thought of Tuta, his sister. He shook his head at the miracle of her reunion with him as the newly recruited Maxine. His face was mean as he thought about the young pimp who was spotted in Times Square, apparently searching for Maxine.
Shetani furiously rifled through his mind for a plan to punish and get him off the scene quickly. In a moment, he grinned. He pushed the headboard button that brought the Brooks twins into his bedroom within several minutes. They seated themselves on the sofa and watched him exercise, in a long silence broken only by the squeak of pulleys on the platform on which he lay.
Shetani paused and lay panting for a long moment. Twilight sparkled the beads of sweat on his chest and brow as he cat-leapt to his feet. He sat on the bedside, facing the twins, as he towel-blotted himself dry. He dipped his head toward the window, flooded with deep-purple light.
 
; “It’s almost time for you to take the girls to the street…but don’t put Tuta down. Ride her around the Square until she points out that chump she ran away from.”
Eli opened his mouth to speak. Shetani’s deadly monotone cut him off.
“Then put Tuta out and kidnap the motherfucker. Hold him and call me. Got it?”
The twins nodded and got to their feet. Eli said, as he followed Cazo from the room, “Cap, we’ll bag the bastard if he’s out there.”
Shetani lay back on the bed to do a hundred leg raises. As he did, he pondered the most complicated problem he had ever faced in his entire pimp career. How could he, the acclaimed King of Pimps, rescue Tuta from the danger and ruin of the street life without destroying his rep and losing Petra, and even the rest of the stable? He shuddered at the prospect of kicking his monstrous dope habit and having to work to eat. He lay rigidly and stared at the gold-leafed ceiling.
He could cut her loose, drop her from his life and sight, he thought. But he winced at that thought, for he knew she’d simply go on selling her ass somewhere else, for some new slave-master. He couldn’t bear that. He loved her. He had to protect her. He sat up and groaned as he massaged his throbbing temples.
Two hours later, Cazo phoned to tell him that Tuta’s ex-boss was bagged. Shetani slipped on a pink satin robe over matching pajamas and raced to rendezvous with the huge blue van.
It was parked in a deserted lot behind a fire-gutted tenement in Harlem. He eased his gold-on-lavender Continental to a stop beside the van. He slid from the car to the trash-littered lot. Eerie shadows haunted the ghostly carcasses of deceased jalopies strewn about the lot. In the starglow, Shetani’s strange eyes fired bright-jade murder.
The piercing squeal of a bitch rat scampering across his instep startled him. An instant later, he spotted her suitor in hot pursuit and shattered the spine of the rodent Romeo with a savage stomp of his boot heel.
The twins opened the side door of the van and flung the bound and gagged victim to Shetani’s feet, on his knees. His straight blond hair was matted with terror sweat. He piteously walled his blue eyes up at Shetani.