Pimp

  “Now this young bitch you git is shitty all right. She knows you ain’t got no other whore. I want you to go back to that hotel. Make that bitch get outta that bed and get in the street. Put your foot in her ass hard. If that don’t work, take a wire coat hanger and twist it into a whip. Ain’t no bitch, freak or not, can stand up to that hanger.

  “Maybe your foot and fist can’t move that young whore anymore. She’s a freak to them. Believe me, Greenie, that coat hanger will blow her or straighten her out. It’s better to have no whore than a piece of whore. Get some cotton and make her pack herself. The show can’t stop when a whore bleeds.

  “I’m gonna lay some pills on you. Give her a couple when you get her outta that bed. Don’t give her anymore reefer. It makes some whores lazy. Don’t worry, kid, if you do like I say and blow her, I’ll give you a whore. Kid, don’t hold that whore to one block. Tell that whore all the streets go. Turn her loose. It’s the only way to pimp. If she blows, whatta you lost. She stands up, you got a whore and some real scratch.

  “You go back and put the coat-hanger pressure on her. If it don’t blow her and she stands up for a week, you ought to have half a grand in a week. Take that scratch and drive to one of the whore towns close around. Go to Western Union. Send that scratch back to yourself at your hotel. Use some broad’s name as the sender.

  “That lazy bitch you got will think she’s got competition. Watch the sparks fly from her ass. She’ll try to top that bitch that doesn’t exist. Greenie, you listen to Sweet Jones. You’ll be a helluva pimp.

  “Never get friendly and confide in your whores. You got twenty whores, don’t forget your thoughts are secret. A good pimp is always really alone. You gotta always be a puzzle, a mystery to them. That’s how you hold a whore. Don’t get sour. Tell them something new and confusing every day. You can hold ’em as long as you can do it.

  “Sweet is hipping you to pimp by the book. I’m the greatest Nigger pimp in the world. Now Greenie, is your skull going to hold everything I told you?”

  I said, “Thirty years from now I’ll still remember every word. Sweet you won’t be sorry you helped me. I’m gonna pimp my black ass off. I’ll make you proud of me. I’ll call you later and hip you to what the runt did under hanger pressure. Oh yeah, don’t forget to give me those pills.”

  He got up. Miss Peaches stretched her legs. She jumped down and followed him. A sharp hooked nail in one of her rear claws snagged out an inch of cloth from my pants knee. I wouldn’t have cared if she had clawed me naked. I was in a thrilled daze. With Sweet Jones on ready tap to pull my coat I was going to set a record on the fast track.

  Sweet came back. He gave me a tiny bottle of small white pills. He put his hands on my shoulders. He looked down at me. His subzero eyes warmed to maybe zero.

  He said, “I love you, Sweetheart! You know kid, I don’t ever think I’m gonna grin in your face. I love you like a son. Any time I grin in a sucker’s face I’m gonna cross him or croak him. Call me any time you need a rundown. Good luck, Greenie.”

  I walked across the pit. I stepped up to the doorway. I glanced back. Sweet had Peaches in his arms. She was purring like a new bride. Sweet was squeezing her in a lover’s embrace. He was covering her laughing face with kisses.

  I checked Mickey when I got in the Ford. It was four P.M. I drove toward the runt. I tromped hard on the gas pedal.

  I thought, “No wonder Sweet is the greatest Nigger pimp in the world. He even knows the history of the black pimp.

  “I ain’t going to spare the runt’s ass. I’m gonna go right in with the pressure. I hope she’s not in the street. Sweet promised me a whore if I blow the runt. Any whore of Sweet’s is already trained to a fine edge. Maybe he’ll give me Mimi.”

  11

  TO LOSE A WHORE

  I pulled the Ford into the curb across the street from the Haven. I didn’t see the runt anywhere in the street. I peeped into the greasy spoon. She wasn’t at the counter. I looked up at our window. I crossed the street and went through the lobby. I took the stairs to the fourth floor. I made three stabs at the lock with the key before I made it. I stepped inside. I was excited. I chain-bolted the door. I walked to the bedroom.

  The runt was propped up in bed smoking a stick of gangster. Lady Day was tar brushing that mean, sweet man again. I stood by the side of the bed, next to the record player. I saw the edge of a paper plate sticking out of the wastebasket. I took it out and put it on the bed.

  Two navy beans were in a puddle of grease on the side of the plate. A pile of sucked, cleaned neck bones were heaped in the center of it. The runt had gone out to the greasy spoon and copped a hearty meal. She sure had a healthy appetite for a sick bitch. Her eyes were wild and big, looking up at me.

  She fingered gently at the hole in my pants knee. I shut the box off. I ripped the record off the turntable. I broke it in half and hurled the pieces into the wastebasket. She kept her eyes on the hole at my knee. She ignored the broken record. She played it cool.

  She said, “You’ll have to get it rewoven, huh? Daddy, I’m feeling better. I felt good enough to go across the street for food. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll feel good enough to go in the street. Baby, I would’ve went out after I ate, but my legs were too weak.”

  I said, “Bitch, I already passed the death sentence on you. It’s good you had your last meal. I’m gonna send your dead ass to your daughter, Gay. Take off that gown and lie on your belly, bitch.”

  I went to the closet. I took down a wire hanger. I straightened it into one long piece. I doubled and braided it. I wrapped a necktie around the handle end. I turned back to the bed. She was still propped in the bed. Her mouth was gaped open. She had both her hands clapped over her chest.

  She was like a broad in a movie. She opens a door and there’s Dr. Jekyll just going into his frightful change. I saw her tongue tremble inside her jib. Her lips made a liquid plopping sound as they mutely pounded together. She rolled across the bed away from me. I raised my right arm up and back. I heard my shoulder socket creak.

  Her gown was hiked up to her waist. Her naked rear end had scrambled to the far edge of the bed. I raced around the foot of the bed. She rolled to the middle. She was on her back. Her arms held her jack-knifed legs against her chest.

  The whites of her eyes glowed like phosphorus. I brought the wire whip down. I heard it swish through the air. It struck her across the shin bones. She cried out like she was celebrating New Year’s Eve.

  She screamed, “Ooh-whee! Ooh-whee!”

  She jerked flat, rigid on the bed then smalled her fists against her temples. She sucked her bottom lip up into her jib. I slashed the air again. It sounded like maybe a dum-dum bullet striking across her gut button.

  She moaned, “Whee-Lordy! Whee-Lordy!”

  She turned over on her belly. I tore the gown from her back. She was naked. She flailed her arms like a holy-roller. The whip whistled a deadly lyric as I brought it down again and again across her back and butt. I saw the awful welts puffing the black velvet skin.

  I stopped and turned her over. The pillow stuck to her face. I snatched it away. There was a ripping sound. I saw feathers sticking to her tear wet face. She had chewed a hole in the pillow. She was thrashing her legs and mumbling.

  Her chest heaved in great sobs. She was staring at me and shaking her skull. Her eyes had that pitiful look of Christ’s on those paintings of the Crucifixion. Her lips were moving. I got on the bed. I stuck my ear near.

  She whispered, “I don’t need any more whipping. I give, Daddy. You’re the boss. I was a dumb bitch. It looks like you got a whore now. Kiss me and help me up.”

  I felt tears roll down my cheeks. Maybe I was crying in joy that I broke her spirit. I felt sorry for her. I wondered if I was falling in love like a sucker. I kissed her hard. I carried her into the bathroom. I placed her tenderly in the tub.

  I turned the water on. A stream burst from the shower nozzle overhead. She squealed. I pushed in the shower bypass on the tub fau
cet. The warm water started filling the tub. I dumped a bottle of rubbing alcohol into the tub.

  She looked up at me. I took the tiny bottle of pills out of my pocket. I shook out two into my palm. I took a glass off the face bowl. I handed her the pills. She put them in her mouth. She washed them down with the glass of water I gave her.

  I said, “Phyllis, why do you make your sweet daddy mean? Daddy’s gonna kill his little bitch if she don’t straighten up and whore like the star she is.

  “Bitch, lie down in that water for a while. Then get in the street and get some real scratch for your man. You don’t have to stay in this block. Just walk and work until you get respectable scratch to bring in. I can raise you if you take a fall. They gotta let you make a phone call. If I go out I’ll check the desk here by phone every hour or so. Bitch, get down and star. You want your man, get him some real scratch.”

  I went and sat on the bed. The sheet looked like a red zebra had lain down and his stripes had faded on it. I heard her sloshing the water in the tub. She was humming the record I’d smashed. Sweet’s pills sure weren’t hurting her.

  Whores are strange people all right. She was silent while she combed her hair and fixed her face. She put on a red knit suit. She stood in front of me. She held her hand out. I saw dark stains on her stockings at the shins. Her eyes were bright.

  She said, “Daddy, I don’t have a dime. Give me a coupla dollars, please. Don’t worry, when I come in I’ll have nice scratch.”

  I stood up. I gave her a fin. I walked to the door with her. She turned her face up. I leaned down. I sucked her bottom lip, then bit it hard. She squeezed my arm and gouged her teeth into my cheek. She went down the hall.

  I shut the door and went to the front window. I rubbed my cheek to see if the skin was broken. I saw her cross the street at the corner. She was walking fast. That whipping and those pills had made her well. She looked like a child. She was so tiny and sexy in her red suit. I wondered as she disappeared whether she’d come back. It was seven P.M.

  I thought, “I better stick here in the pad. Whipping a broad with a hanger is not a bit like a foot in the ass. Christ! I’d kill the bastard on the spot if he hit my bare ass with one. Sweet was right. She got outta that bed all right. I wonder if those slavery pimps invented the hanger whip.

  “No, even hangers hadn’t been invented then. I guess Sweet did. I’m gonna wait the runt out. If she tries to slip in here to steal her clothes, I’ll croak her. I wonder why Chris hasn’t gotten in touch? Maybe some fast pimp has already stolen that pretty bitch from Leroy. Maybe Leroy had one of his fits and croaked her.

  “I wonder what the bitch will be like that I get from Sweet if the runt blows? This is a hell of a feeling I got. I don’t know if I got a whore or not. It would be a bitch if Sweet goes back on his word and leaves me whoreless on this fast track. I’m gonna get high. I’d better take the flight with gangster. Cocaine will only sharpen my grief.”

  I took a shower. I stepped out of the tub. I got a towel from the wall rack. I saw splotches of red on the one beside it. I toweled off. I rolled a giant bomber. I put a fresh case on the pillow the runt had gnawed.

  I propped myself against the head of the bed. I sucked the bomber down to a “roach.” The reefer and the sibilant murmuring of tires against the street lulled me into deep sleep.

  I woke up. I was still half-propped against the pillows. It was broad daylight. The runt hadn’t come in. I had blown whoreless with that wire hanger. I lit a cigarette. It was seven A.M. I lay there staring at the entwined lovers on the “Kiss” Statue.

  I thought, “The runt’s got a pair of tits like that broad. Jeez, she was sure a freak. Some pimp is going to have a sweet bitch when he straightens her out. I wonder if that little bitch will miss me? She damn sure can’t forget me.

  “Hell, I can’t worry about the mule going blind. I’ll wait until noon or so. I’ll rip open that whore grab-bag Sweet promised me. Maybe I was hasty to shut the door on Melody and his entasis. At this point I can get hip to anything except work. No one could know I was freaking with a stud.

  “Christ, I wish beautiful Chris would call. What a thrill if she’d tell me she was rushing to me. To get her tight I’d maybe eat everything but the tacks in her shoes. I’m hungry. I’m not going to let my troubles abuse my skull and my belly.”

  I got Silas on the phone. I ordered home fries and sausage. I got up and brushed my teeth. I skull-noted to call Top when he got back in town. Maybe he could find out who booked Leroy. Maybe I’d trace Chris that way. I’d get Preston’s owl-head and take her from Leroy at gunpoint.

  I was listening to “Mood Indigo” and thinking about the runt. I was remembering that day when I left Mama crying at the window.

  I couldn’t wait to get around the corner to the runt. Then I was sure I had a black gold mine sitting in the Ford waiting for me. In this tough pimp game you couldn’t count your scratch until you had it in your mitt. Holding whores was like trying to cinch-grip quicksilver.

  I thought, “Poor Mama. I haven’t called her or anything. I’m gonna call her when things get straight.”

  12

  TO GAIN A STABLE

  I heard Silas knock on the door. I went and opened it. Silas was a strange, beautiful sight. The slick sorcerer-bastard had my breakfast on a tray. He had turned himself into a cute black bitch in a red knit suit. It was the runt. I murdered the grin of relief in its jib womb. I twisted my face into a copy of Sweet’s when he bounced my skull off his John wall.

  I said, “Bitch, I’m gonna croak you. Since three o’clock I been calling all the hospitals and jails in town. I even called the morgue. Speak up bitch, what’s your story?”

  She looked up at me. She was smiling. She walked past me into the bedroom. I followed her. She sat the tray on the dresser. She ran her fingers deep into her bosom. She brought out a damp wad of bills. She gave it to me.

  She said, “Daddy, my last trick was a fifty slat, all night trick. I caught him at two this morning. Baby, I gave you a hundred and twenty eight slats.

  “Silas had your breakfast on the elevator on my way up. With the two slats I gave him, I made a hundred and thirty.

  “Oh, Daddy, I’ve found some good streets to work a coupla miles from here. It’s in the neighborhood of a joint called the Roost. You were a sweet daddy to be worried about your baby. Oh! I almost forgot. Keep your fingers crossed. I may bring you a girl one of these mornings. She’s wild about me. Her old man ain’t nothing. He’s a burglar.”

  I said, “Phyllis, there’s more than one note in a song. You gotta string together a thousand nights like last night. Now take a bath. I’m gonna treat those scratches. Remember I don’t want any junkie bitch. Make sure she’s clean before you cop.”

  I forgot about my breakfast. I went out and got into the Ford. I drove to the drugstore and got ointments and salves.

  I called Sweet and told him the runt stood up. He reminded me to send that scratch to myself as soon as possible. I went back to the Haven. I sent Silas for hot food. I dressed her wounds. They sure looked bad.

  Those “go” pills she had taken died. She fell asleep while I was doctoring her back. I ate and took a nap. By the end of the week, I felt like a pimp. I had an eight-bill bankroll not counting the porker silver.

  One night about nine I got into the Ford. I drove less than a hundred miles to Terre Haute a small whore-town. I sent five bills to myself at the Haven. I used Christine as the broad’s name.

  Top was back in town so I stopped on the way home and copped cocaine, yellows, and bennies. The runt came in that morning around four. She had a hundred-and-five slats. She was on her way to stardom. We were in bed when I cracked on her.

  I said, “Baby, I think our luck is changing all around. I’m pretty sure Daddy’s copped another whore. I met her in a bar about a week ago.

  “It’s a small world all right. She said she just moved out of this joint not long ago. She went wild over me. She’s a fine young bitch.
She begged me to go to Terre Haute with her. She’s working a fast house up there. I told her I’d run up there after she sent her first week’s scratch. She gave me her phone number up there. I gave her my address.

  “Tonight I called up there. I asked her about my scratch. She told me five bills were on the way. Baby, if she’s jiving we ain’t hurt. If she sends it and it’s respectable scratch your daddy’s got a small stable.”

  She said, “Is she a white bitch? What does the bitch look like?”

  I said, “Bitch, don’t get shitty now. What’s wrong with a white broad helping two spades? She’s a boot. She looks like what she is. A scratch-getting fine bitch in love with your man at first sight.”

  It was a little after noon when the messenger brought the scratch notice. The runt went to the door and brought him into the bedroom.

  I opened it. The office was a half-mile away. I asked the runt if she’d like some air. She was eager to go.

  It was a good thing I had gotten that driver’s license. I had to go through a long routine. They even made me crack the amount I was expecting. I got the cash.

  The runt was silent on the way home. Sweet sure knew the angles to put pressure on a whore’s skull. In the next month I made two more trips to Terre Haute. Twice I went across town and stayed in a hotel over night until around noon. I was conning the runt I was visiting her stable mate.

  The runt was really humping. She was averaging no less than a bill a night. Two months after the hanger whipping I took a furnished three-bedroom vacancy in Top’s building. It was a gold-andred dream after the Haven. The runt really freaked this pad off. I guess she felt at home at last. It was on the sixth floor.

  I copped six two-hundred-dollar vines at sixty slats a piece. The booster lived on the second floor beneath me. The same week Top cut me into a stud who had a black LaSalle car in mint condition.

  He was out on an appeal bond and his lip wired him he was joint bound. I gave the stud four bills in his mitt. I paid off the last two notes on the wheels.