“I got a bar-maid job and met Leroy. He was playing a gig in the spot. I was a sick girl. I fell out twice while serving the bar. The doctor said I needed rest. He said I couldn’t expect to live long unless I rested. Leroy nursed me back to health.
“He was good to me. I needed someone who cared. I married him when I was just four months shy of seventeen. I went with Leroy on a string of one-nighters in the Midwest. The group broke up in Youngstown, Ohio. We were stranded. Leroy got a job in an industrial cleaning plant. The second week a boiler exploded and you’ve seen his face.
“His lawyer says we can expect a ten-thousand dollar settlement any time now. Leroy is driving roe crazy with his jealousy. I don’t mind hustling. I’d be your girl, “Blood. I go for you, Blood. Are things clearer now? What should I do?”
I said, “You’ve had nothing but heartache. I feel so sorry for you, baby. Now I know you’ve got to be my woman. I gotta protect you. I gotta give you affection and understanding. Don’t worry angel, with me life will be smooth as the snow at Sun Valley.
“You’ll be so happy you’ll be out of your mind half the time. With our color combination we could make a sonuvabitching baby together after we get rich. Tell me, does Leroy plan to work the Roost for a while?”
She said, “Oh! I forgot to tell you. Last night was his last night. They want him for another six weeks, but he’s going to drop the Combo. It’s too much headache to get them to show for work sober and on time.
“He’s out now with a booking agent. I think he might go with a big band on an East-Coast tour. I hope he gets it. Band leaders want band members’ wives to stay at home. Daddy, please figure things out fast. I want to be your girl as soon as possible.”
I was sucking her scented cheek. I flogged my skull for a quick plot to tear the yellow gold mine from Scarface. The phone rang. She got out of her nest. I rushed to the phone. It was the excited broad on the desk.
She said, “Forgive me for goofing. Four-twenty-two went up two minutes ago. I was having a hassle with a check out. I saw him come in. It didn’t register until the second that I called you. You better clean house fast.”
I ran into the living room. I snatched her from the chair. I pulled her to the door. I cracked it. We peeped down the hall. Scarface was twenty yards away coming down the hall. He had a big stack of papers, maybe sheet music under his arm. He shifted the bundle to his other arm.
A paper fluttered to the carpet. He stooped to get it. I saw her door ajar. I stepped aside. I slapped her on the rump. She blurred across through her doorway. Scarface was standing with his mouth open staring toward his now locked door.
He was sure he’d seen her. His face was puzzled. I shut my door easy like. I stood with my ear against the door. A bomb of sound shocked my eardrum. Someone was punching his fist against my door. I ran into the bedroom and got my switch-blade. I came back to the door. I held the open blade behind me. I opened the door.
It was Scarface. He looked like Mr. Hyde all right. His orangebrown eyes were spinning counter clockwise. I saw the bundle of papers in a careless heap in front of his door. His right mitt was deep in his coat pocket. I saw the faint outline of maybe a skinny lead pipe, or a gun barrel. I gauged the moves for a heart stab to beat his mitt out of his pocket.
I said, “Yeah Jack, what is it? I’m on the phone with my bondsman. The court just raised my bond on a double-murder beef. I’m in a bad mood. I don’t want to buy anything.”
He just stood there like a scarfaced zombie staring at me. He looked down at the carpet in front of my door. I looked down. A pink butterfly lay there like a silent indictment.
He heaved his chest and took a deep breath. It was like his last one. He stooped and picked it up. The eerie bastard took his other hand out of his pocket. Tears rolled down from his unblinking orange eyes as he stared at me. His scarred cheeks were quivering as he shredded the butterfly into pink lint on the carpet.
He turned and walked away. I shut my door and got a beak load of cocaine. I took the lounging robe off. It was dripping sweat. I showered. I sat in Chris’s chair at the window. Her sweet odor was still rising from it. For an hour I heard a loud sobbing whine across the hall. It was Scarface chewing out Chris. Mickey said midnight. I hadn’t eaten since morning and I wasn’t hungry. Cocaine was a strong con for the belly.
I thought, “I hope that jealous chump doesn’t croak her. It would be like making a big bonfire out of hundred dollar bills. If she wasn’t his wife and I had a rod, I’d go over there and claim her.”
The phone rang. It was Silas.
He said, “What happened, kid? Was she a whiz in the sack? Did the joker catch her? I been busy. I ain’t had a chance to check with you until now. I was worried about you, kid. The broad told me she was late with the wire. I stalled him in the cage.”
I said, “It was very close, Silas. I’m a pimp, I didn’t stick her. I’ll take care of you and the broad this weekend when I pay my rent. Silas, if you get any news on the broad or Scarface wire me fast.”
He said, “Yeah, Kid, you know me. I stay hip to what goes on around here. I’ll keep you plugged in, Kid. Good night. I’m going home.”
I hung up and lay across the bed. I wondered if Max and Blondie had the runt hemmed up in an alley again. I smoked a reefer. I fell asleep. The phone woke me up. It was the runt.
She said, “Daddy, it’s your baby. It’s after two, can I come home?” I said, “Bitch, what kinda lines you got?”
She said, “I got thirty slats. I’m beat, Daddy. My tricks have been spades. You know how cheap and hard they are to turn. Can I come in?”
I said, “Come on in. Take a bath. Watch your jib, bitch. Don’t irritate me. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
She’d been working more than twelve hours. She was beat all right. Within a half hour after her bath she was snoring beside me. I was dozing when the phone rang. I switched on the light. I picked up.
I said, “Hello.”
Chris whispered, “Daddy, I can’t talk long. Leroy’s asleep. He found a butterfly that fell off my negligee. He’s been raving like a crazy man. He knows I was over there. I got bad news for us. The band spot is out. He called and turned it down. He’s going to keep the combo and go through Ohio.
“His agent has a slew of one-nighters booked for him. He’s taking me with him. Daddy, I won’t forget us. I’ll keep in touch. Maybe he’ll go out before we leave tomorrow afternoon. I may get a chance to kiss you goodbye. I love you, Blood. I’m going to dream about Mr. Thriller until I—”
I heard the drowsy whine of Leroy’s voice calling her name the instant before she hung up. I turned and looked at the runt. Her big mouth was wide open. Frothy slobber ran down her chin. Her sour hair had started to kink at the edges. She needed to go to the beauty shop downstairs.
I thought, “What kinda breaks am I getting? I’m sinfully good looking. I’m lying here with a lather-mouth dog. The ugliest joker in the world is across the hall. He’s in the sack with a pretty bitch whose nose is wide open for me. Something’s gotta be done. Maybe after I cop Chris, I’ll have the brass ring in my mitt.”
I didn’t sleep at all after Chris called. The runt woke up at noon. She went across the street and got our lunch. At two in the afternoon she was in the street.
Silas called. He told me Chris was checking out. I saw Chris and Scarface put their stuff in the car and drive away.
The runt came in at two A.M. with only twenty slats. She was shying away from white tricks. She was leery of Max and Blondie. I couldn’t shake her out of it. She would rather turn spades for three or five dollars. She was afraid Max would catch her with a white trick.
10
THE UNWRITTEN BOOK
A week after Chris left I copped another bag of cocaine from Top. It was almost gone. The runt was only making expenses. I had one lonely C note and a double saw plus the porker silver. The weather was getting balmy. I needed fresh clothes. I was going to the bottom fast.
In the th
ree weeks after Chris left I kicked the runt’s ass a halfdozen times. I only left the hotel twice in almost a month. I was expecting Chris to call me and say she was on her way to me. Things were getting worse.
It had been two weeks since I saw Top. I decided to call him. Maybe he could hip me to a new spot to work for runt. My bankroll was thin. At ten A.M. I called Top. One of his broads said he was out of town. He wouldn’t be back for a week.
I got a sudden thought. I asked her if she knew Sweet’s phone number. She said she did, but she’d have to call and find out if Sweet wanted me to have it. She called back in ten minutes and gave it to me. I called him. He answered. He was in a good mood.
He said, “Well, whatta you know, if it ain’t grinning Slim. You still got that one whore or have you grinned yourself whoreless?”
I looked over at the runt. She was still asleep. She hadn’t been in the street for three days. Her period had run five days. She claimed she was too weak and sick to go out. I had given her a terrible whipping the night before. I needed advice badly.
I said, “Sweet, my bitch is falling apart. She’s playing dead. If you don’t pull my coat I’m gonna starve to death. You gotta help me Sweet.”
He said, “Nigger, you ain’t cracking to nick me for scratch are you? I don’t loan my scratch to suckers who got whores and can’t pimp on ’em. I ain’t gonna support you and that lazy bitch.”
I said, “No Sweet I don’t want scratch. I want you to run the game through my skull. I got a tiny bit of scratch. I gotta get my coat pulled before I tap out.”
He said, “You got wheels? You know how to get out here? Now remember you get a roust out here, crack my name. Don’t repeat your boner.”
I said, “Yeah, I’m driving. I think I can find you pad. When should I come out there?”
He said, “Quick as you can get here. You get here and grin in my face, I’m gonna throw you over the patio wall.
“Say kid, Peaches and me got a taste for some of that barbecued chicken down there in Hell. Bring one with you when you come.”
He hung up. My ticker was pounding like Chris had walked in the door naked with a million dollars. I shook the runt. She opened her eyes. I stood over her.
I said, “Bitch, you better be in the street when I get back.”
She said, “You can’t do anything but kill me. I’m ready to die. I don’t care what you do to me. I’m sick.”
I said, “All right bitch, just hip me where you want your black stinking ass shipped.”
I got in the Ford. I realized I hadn’t put on a tie. I didn’t have a lid. I looked into the rear-view mirror. I sure looked scroungy. Maybe he’d be alone. Then I remembered the lobby. What the hell did it matter.
I drove for about fifteen minutes before I saw a clean open barbeque joint. A black stud in a tall white cap was stabbing chickens onto a turning spit in the window. I went in. I came out with two birds. Peaches might be really hungry for barbequed chicken. It made solid sense to brown-nose Miss Peaches.
After making several wrong turns I found Sweet’s building. I parked the Ford in almost the same spot at the curb where Satan had sapped me a month ago. A young white stud in a monkey suit was out in front. Crusader Sweet was doing his bit to reverse the social order.
I went to the desk in the lobby. I felt like a tramp as I waited for the pass. I got on the elevator. A different broad was at the controls. The spicy scent of the chicken wiggled her nose. She wasn’t as pretty as the ripe-smelling broad. She sure kept her crotch from advertising. Maybe it was just that she didn’t get heavy action.
I stepped from the cage. The friendly brown snake wasn’t at his station to flop his mop for me. I figured it was his off day. The odds were a hundred to one he was in the sack somewhere with a six-foot blonde.
She was probably a little like the blonde coming up from the pit on her way to the cage. It was Mimi. She flicked her green eyes across my face. They were cold as a frozen French lake. She passed me. She looked like a fancy French pastry in her sable stole. I wondered how I got the stupid courage to turn down her freak off.
I walked to the doorway of the pit. The stone broad was still in her squirting squat. Sweet was sitting on the couch. Miss Peaches beside him saw me first. She bounded across the carpet. I felt her choppers graze my hand. She snatched the bag of chicken. She flung it on the alabaster topped cocktail table in front of Sweet.
Sweet looked at me. I tightened my face into a solemn grim mask. I stepped down and walked toward him. He was wearing only a pair of polka-dot shorts. In daylight I noticed a mole on the broad in the picture over the couch.
I said, “Hello Mr. Jones. I hope those birds are still warm.”
He said, “Kid, your map sure looks like that bullshit bitch you got is been shooting you through hot grease. I like that look you got today. Maybe you’re getting hip the pimp game ain’t for grinning jackasses.
“Get over here and sit on this couch. While baby and me eat our barbeque, rundown you and your whore. I wanta know where and how you copped her. Tell me everything you can remember about her and what’s happened since you copped her. Rundown your whole life as far back as you remember. It don’t matter which is first.”
I ran down my life for him. Then I ran down from the night I met the runt until the moment I left the Haven. It took maybe forty-five minutes. I even described the runt in detail.
Sweet and his greedy girl-friend had devoured both birds down to the bare bones. Sweet was wiping Miss Peaches’ whiskers with a paper napkin. She put her head in his lap. She was jammed against my thigh. Sweet leaned back on the couch. He put his bare feet on the top of the cocktail table.
He said, “Sweetheart, you’re black like me. I love you. You got the hate to pimp. You a lucky Nigger to get your coat pulled by me. You flap your horns and remember what I’m gonna spiel to you.
“There are thousands of Niggers in this country who think they’re pimps. The pussy-weak white pimps ain’t worth mentioning. Don’t none of them pimp by the book. They ain’t even heard about it. If they was black, they’d starve stiff.
“There ain’t more than six of ’em who are hip to and pimp by the book. You won’t find it in the square-Nigger or white history books. The truth is that book was written in the skulls of proud slick Niggers freed from slavery. They wasn’t lazy. They was puking sick of picking white man’s cotton and kissing his nasty ass. The slave days stuck in their skulls. They went to the cities. They got hip fast.
“The conning bastard white man hadn’t freed the Niggers. The cities was like the plantations down South. Jeffing Uncle Toms still did all the white man’s hard and filthy work.
“Those slick Nigger heroes bawled like crumb crushers. They saw the white man just like on the plantations still ramming it into the finest black broads.
“The broads were stupid squares. They still freaked for free with the white man. They wasn’t hip to the scratch in their hot black asses.
“Those first Nigger pimps started hipping the dumb bitches to the gold mines between their legs. They hipped them to stick their mitts out for the white man’s scratch. The first Nigger pimps and sure-shot gamblers was the only Nigger big shots in the country.
“They wore fine threads and had blooded horses. Those pimps was black geniuses. They wrote that skull book on pimping. Even now if it wasn’t for that frantic army of white tricks, Nigger pimps would starve to death.
“Greenie, the white man has been pig-greedy for Nigger broads ever since his first whiff of black pussy. Black whores con themselves the only reason he sniffs his way to ’em is white broads ain’t got what it takes to please him.
“I’m hip he’s got two other secret sick reasons. White women ain’t hip to his secret reasons. The dumb white broads ain’t even hip to why he locks all Niggers inside tight stockades. He’d love it if the Nigger broads wasn’t locked in there. The white man is scared shitless. He don’t want them humping bucks coming out there in the white world rubbing their bel
lies against those soft white bellies.
“That’s the real reason for keeping all the Niggers locked up. To show you how sick in the head he is, he thinks black broads are dirt beneath his feet. His balls will bust if he don’t sneak through that stockade, to those half-savage, less than human, black broads.
“You know, Greenie, why he’s gotta come to ’em? The silly sick bastard is like a whore that needs and loves punishment. He’s a joke with scratch in his mitt. As great as he thinks he is, he can’t keep his beak and swipe outta the stink of a black ass.
“He wallows and stains himself. The poor freak’s joy is in his suffering. The chump believes he’s done something dirty to himself. He slips back into his white world. He goes on conning himself he’s God and Niggers are wild filthy animals he has to keep in the stockades.
“The sad thing is, he don’t even know he’s sick in the skull. Greenie, I’m pulling your coat from the bottom to the top. That rundown on the first Nigger pimps will make you proud to be a pimp.
“Square-ass Niggers will try to put shame inside you. Ain’t one of ’em wouldn’t suck a mule’s ass to pimp. They can’t because a square ain’t nothing but a pussy. He lets a square bitch pimp on him. You gotta pimp by the rules of that pimp book those noble studs wrote a hundred years ago. When you look in a mirror you gotta know that cold-hearted bastard looking at you is real.
“Now that young bitch you got is gone lazy. She’s stuffing on you. That bitch ain’t sick. I ain’t never seen a bitch under twenty that could get sick. Your whore is bullshitting. A whore’s scratch ain’t never longer than a pimp’s cold game. You gotta have strict rules for a whore. She’s gotta respect you to hump her heart out in the street.
“One whore ain’t got but one pussy and one jib. You got to get what there is in her fast as you can. You gotta get sixteen hours a day outta her. There ain’t no guarantee you going to keep any bitch for long. The name of the pimp game is ‘Cop and Blow.’