The nutty bomber went to solitary. Two weeks later he tried to gut a con with a shiv made from a file. They shipped him to the Rock. I was ecstatic to see him go.
During my bit I had read the second cellhouse full of books. I had read mountains of books on psychiatry, psychology, and the psychoneuroses. I couldn’t have done a smarter thing. I’d have to be my own head-shrinker when the white folks entombed me for a year in that steel casket in the future.
I got all my good time. I was released in the early spring of nineteen-forty-seven. I stopped off at Mama’s for a week. Then I went back to the fast track.
I had sixty slats and the joint vine on my back. The clothes I’d bought while on bail were with Chris. Maybe her pullman porter was my size. Anyway, I wasn’t going to do a “Dick Tracy” for a few used vines.
Sweet was still in the penthouse. He had blown down to only three whores. Poison had made a bad pimping blunder. He had turned out a white square and put his foot in her ass. It was the last straw for the downtown brass. They bounced him off the force. He had one whore. He bird-dogged her. He took his scratch off after every trick like a Chili Pimp.
I rented a pad by the week. It was in the same slum district where the flunky had beat me for my roll and clothes. I had no flash and glamour, no pimp front. I was just another pimp down on his luck. I was starving for a whore.
In a pimp’s life, yesterday means nothing. It’s how you are doing today. A pimp’s fame is as fleeting as an icicle under a blow-torch. The young fine whores are wild to hump for a pimp in the chips. A pimp in bad shape can’t get the time of day from them. A pimp’s wardrobe has to be spectacular. His wheels must be expensive and sparkling new. I had to get the gaudy tools to start pimping again.
17
TRYING A NEW GAME
I had three choices. I could cop a piece of stuff on consignment from a contact I had made in the joint. I could peddle it retail and get nine or ten grand in weeks. I could take a dog, a broken-down whore with trillions of mileage on her. Maybe I could keep my foot in her ass and grind up a bankroll.
I decided to take the third out. Do a slick fast hustle. I met a pimp named Red Eye in a junkie joint. He had just finished a state bit the week before. He was whoreless like me and itching to pimp again. We were crying on each other’s shoulder at the bar.
He said, “Ice, ain’t it a bitch? No matter how much pimp a stud is, these dizzy bitches demand he’s got a front. Now we ain’t hustlers, but I got an idea. Ice, you’re a helluva actor and you can rap good as a con man. I know a stud who’s hip to every smack peddler and fence on the West Side. I got a rod and a real copper’s shield.
“All we need is a Short and a third stud to drive. Neither one of us is well known over there. Besides, there’s a flock of youngsters dealing now who were squares when we left the track. I’m a rollertype stud. With the weight you put on in the joint you’d make a perfect copper.
“Ice, if we only knock over three of ’em, we split maybe ten to fifteen G’s between us. Our finger man is a junkie punk. We give him and the driver peanuts. Ice, those forty-seven Hogs are a pimp’s dream. I gotta have one. Whatta you say? Are you in?”
I said, “Red Eye, I’ll go for it. I sure as hell ain’t going to put a mop in my hand out here. I don’t have wheels, but I’ve got a little scratch. I’ll spring to rent a short. You know someone with one? How about a driver?”
He said, “Ice, lay a double saw on me to cop a short. I know a stud for the driver. Meet me right here in this joint tomorrow night at nine. We can take off our first mark.”
I said, “Don’t crack my name to that driver. Call me Tom, Frank, anything.”
I didn’t get two-hours sleep that night. It worried me to be part of a hustle that required a rod.
I thought, “Maybe I’d better back out. I could maybe find a young hash-slinger in a greasy spoon. I could turn her out in a hurry. She’d be a long shot for stardom. At least she’d make enough scratch for chump expenses.
“You can’t start pimping with a turnout. It never works out. A pimp with no whore and no bankroll is a sucker to try the turnout on a mulish square broad. No, I guess the Red Eye deal is all I got.”
Red Eye got to the joint at ten-thirty. The driver was a huge stud with a rapper like a girl’s. I noticed his big meat-hooks shaking on the steering wheel on our way to the West Side. Red Eye ran down our first mark. His light-maroon eyes were whirling. He had a skull full of H.
He said, “Paul, our first mark is a bird’s nest on the ground. It’s a broad. The finger showed her to me last night. She and her old man got the best smack on the West Side. It’s so good studs from all over town are rushing to cop every night.
“He and the broad deal out of a bar three blocks from their pad. They deal mostly in eights and sixteenths. On a weekend night like this one they take off maybe five G’s. The stud is got a rep as a fast-rod joker. He ain’t got no direct syndicate connections as far as I know.
“We ain’t got to worry about him tonight. He’s in New York copping a supply. The broad will leave the bar around midnight loaded with scratch. She’ll have a few packs of smack on her too for the evidence to shake her. Her real name is Mavis Sims.
“She’s gonna go to her short parked behind the bar. She ain’t afraid of being heisted. Everybody is scared shitless of her old man. She’s got a small rod strapped to her thigh. She ain’t going to pull it on the police though. That’s us, strange rollers from downtown. We gotta move fast on her when she bits that lot behind the bar. She’s a slick bitch. We gotta be real rollers. We can’t wake her up we’re fakes. She’s a strong bitch, I’d have to blow a hole in her if she reached for her rod.
“There will be a pack of hard studs in the bar. They would love to croak us on that lot to please her old man. We gotta move her fast outta the neighborhood to play her outta the scratch. We gotta be careful the rollers don’t join our party. Her old man is doing a lot of greasing in the district.
“Perry is gonna park our short in the street beside the lot. We arrest the broad and you play on her while Perry drives. I ain’t going to rap. Ice, after we cop her it’s up to you for the shake. You got to convince her.”
Perry was really nervous. He pulled into the curb next to the bar lot. His skull was jiggling on his bull neck like he had Parkinson shakes. I was silent.
Red Eye’s rundown had me wondering how it shaped up as a bird’s nest to him. It looked like maybe a bird’s nest for Dillinger. If the mark hadn’t been a broad I’d have split and got on an El train.
I wondered if she’d seen me before I went to the joint. What if she made me right away as Iceberg and plugged me in the skull. Her old man might have outfit friends. If he did we’d be found in an alley with our balls rammed down our throats. We were standing in the shadows ten feet from the broad’s short.
I said, “Red, I better take the rod. When we step out on her, shine the flashlight right in her eyes.”
She was walking fast when she came into the lot. Her light blue chiffon dress was billowing in the April breeze. She was walking wide-legged like a whore after a long night in a two-dollar house.
My legs were trembling like a stud dog’s hung up in a bitch. I looked down at the badge pinned to the wallet in my palm. It glittered like molten silver in the moonlight. The thirty-two pistol in my right hand weighed a sweaty ton.
She was twirling a key ring. In the utter silence the clinking sounded like the U.S. Marshal’s handcuffs. She had her hands on the door handle. I stepped out of the shadows. Red Eye was behind me. I wondered if she could hear my ticker hammering. Red Eye put the light in her face. Her yellow forehead wrinkled in surprise. Her sexy jib flapped open. I grabbed her wrist and tried to crush it.
I roared, “Police! What’s your name and why are you sneaking around back here?”
She stammered, “Gloria Jones, and I was coming to my car. I always park it here. Now get out of the way. I’m going home. The captain of this district is a person
al friend of my husband’s.”
Red Eye had turned off the flashlight and moved behind her. She was looking down at the badge. She was trying to yank her wrist free.
I said in a low heavy voice, “You lying dope-peddling bitch. Your real moniker is Mavis Sims. We’re from downtown. Your old man’s no pal of ours. We’re gonna bust you, bitch. I’ll lay odds we’ve caught you dirty. Come on bitch, before we get rough. Anything I hate it’s a stinking smack dealer.”
We hurled her into the back seat of our short. Red got in beside her. I was up front with Perry. I turned facing the rear seat. There was silence as Perry drove out of the district toward central headquarters. Miss Sims was squirming in the seat. Her right hand was out of sight behind her. She was getting very jerky. I remembered that rod she was carrying. I started the shake.
I said, “Al, this suspect is acting peculiarly. Perhaps you’d better pull over. She might have concealed some evidence behind the seat.”
He pulled over. Red moved toward her. She slid to the window on the other side.
She said, “Officers, I’m clean. It’s worth fifty apiece to cut me loose. If you bust me, I’ll be out in an hour. Take me back to the bar. I can get the hundred and fifty from the bar owner.”
I said, “No dice, sister. We got specific orders to bring you in. Now don’t make him slap a broad around. He’s gonna frisk you. He don’t have to wait for a matron to do it downtown. It’s proper if he thinks you’re armed and we’re in danger.”
He patted the inside of her thighs. It was there, a twenty-two automatic jammed under the top of her stocking. He took it out and shoved it in his pocket, searched her bosom, purse, shoes, and hair. She was sure clean except for the rod.
I felt like a real chump. All this trouble for nothing. He was scratching his chin. The junkie punk had put a bum finger on the broad.
I was at the point of shoving her out. Then it struck me. Where did my street whores hide their scratch? In the cat! In the cat, where else? The clincher was this broad’s wide-legged walk. I had noticed it on the lot. She was leaning forward staring at Perry’s face.
I said, “Joe, it’s gotta be up her cat. Bitch, stretch out and put your legs across his lap.”
She said, “The hell I will. You phony Niggers ain’t rollers. That big one at the wheel used to bounce at Mario’s.”
She was wise. The double saw I gave Red Eye had tapped me out. We had to know if she had treasure up her cat.
I wondered how he’d handle it. I didn’t wonder long. He turned brute. He punched her hard in the nose. It was like he had cut her throat. Blood splattered over the front of her dress. I felt a light spray on my face.
She opened her mouth to scream. He smothered it with a terrible slam to the gut. She went limp. He pulled her across him. He darted his paw between her legs.
When he brought his mitt out it made a kissing sound. He had a long shiny plastic tube between his index and middle fingers. It stank like rotten fish.
The broad was moaning and holding both hands to her nose. He unwrapped the package. The pouch was bursting with scratch. In the center of the roll I saw the cellophane edges of packaged dope.
He got out and opened the door on the broad’s side. He dragged her out to the sidewalk. He got in the front seat. Perry gunned away. I kept a sharp eye on Red Eye as he counted the scratch in his lap.
Red Eye and I netted two grand apiece. Red Eye took the packages of H. The broad dealer had forty-four hundred in the pouch. Perry and the junkie finger man got two bills apiece.
It was a week before we tried for the second mark. We shouldn’t have. He was a reefer peddler and fence. We thought he had big scratch on him. We didn’t have a driver. We had the mark in the short. Red Eye was driving.
We were playing the peel off. The mark was in the back seat. I was in the front seat. I asked for his identification. He handed me his hide. I saw it had only a few slats in it.
We were pulling to the curb to search him. A two-man squad car passed. The mark saw them and started screaming. They stopped and dragged Red Eye and me out to the street. They kicked and beat hell out of us. They took us down.
The mark was slick. Right there on the street he cracked. We took a C note from him. If he’d known about our roll, he could have beefed for four G’s.
The rollers saw our rolls and tried to pin every stick-up on the books against us. We went on every show-up for a week. We didn’t get a finger. They booked us for armed robbery of the mark.
18
JAILBREAK
An agent for a fixer came to the lockup. He assured us we could avoid five to ten for armed robbery. We could get the charge reduced to a workhouse bit for a price.
We tapped out and got a year apiece in the workhouse. It was like a prison, only tougher. A joint is always rough when there’s graft and corruption. Only cons with scratch are treated and fed like human beings. The walls were just as high. Most of the inmates were serving short thirty and ninety-day bits.
The joint was filthy. The food was unbelievable. The officials had an unfunny habit of putting pimps on the coal pile. I did a week on it. I was ready to make a blind rush at the wall. Maybe I could claw up the thirty feet before I got shot. I was really desperate.
After the first week I came out of shock. I started thinking about a sensible way to escape. I just couldn’t get my skull in shape for another bit. It was too soon after the last one. By the middle of the second week I’d had a dozen ideas. None of them stood up under second thoughts.
I shared a tiny cell with a young con. He was only eighteen. He idolized me. He’d heard about me in the streets. I slept on the top of a double bunk. There were three counts. One in the morning, one after night lockup, the third at midnight.
One night I missed standing up for count at the cell door. I was so beat from heaving coal I’d collapsed on my bunk. I woke up an hour after the count. It gave me an idea. I kicked it around in my skull. Like all good ideas it kept growing, crying out for my attention.
I thought, “I wonder how much and what of me that screw saw when he counted me?” I tested him three nights in a row. I’d lie on the bunk when he came through to count. Each time I’d lie so he saw less of me. The last time he counted me there was only my back, rear end, and legs visible to him.
I got excited. I knew it would be easy to get extra pants and a shirt. I could stuff them into a passable dummy. I knew my first problem was to find a way to get out of line when filing from the coal pile.
My second problem was I couldn’t leave a dummy in position in the cell during the day. Cellhouse cons and screws would pass on the gallery and discover it. I decided to solve my outside problem first.
At the end of the day a screw would line us up at the coal pile to be counted. We would then file two-hundred yards into the mess hall for supper. After supper we would file through hallways to the cell house for count.
There were several cellhouses. All of the cellhouses phoned in their tallies to the office. If all the tallies equaled that number of cons in the entire joint then the count was right. A loud whistle blew and the day screws could go home.
There was no cover between the coal pile and the mess hall. A screw with a scoped, high-powered rifle manned a wall that ran parallel to our line of march. It looked impossible. I lost hope. On my twenty-eighth day in the joint I noticed something.
I had been on an official pass-out of some kind. It was very near supper time. I passed the dress-in station and shower room. The front door was open. I glanced in. In the rear of it a screw was hooklocking a wooden door.
I stopped and pretended to tie my shoe. He then walked up two or three stairs and swung a steel door shut inside the shower room. He started lining up his cons for the march to the dining room.
I had noticed the shed before on the marches to the dining room. It was maybe thirty feet from the line of march. The door had always been shut. I had thought it stayed locked all the time. I couldn’t have checked it with that ri
fleman on the wall and a screw marching with me.
In the cell that night I was as excited as a crumb crusher at Christmas time.
I thought, “Maybe that shower screw sometimes forgets to lock that shed door. Maybe he’s even later locking it than today. I couldn’t see what the hell was in the shed. I know there’s gotta be old clothing or something. I can hide under when he comes to hook that slammer. I gotta get outta this joint. I can’t pull my bit here.
“If the kid will handle the dummy end, I’ll take a chance. I’m gonna talk to my cellmate about that dummy. If he’ll help me, I can escape like a shadow.”
I looked down over the rim of my bunk at him. I had written several bullshit letters for him to his girlfriend. So far they had kept her writing and sending him candy and cigarette money. He was a good kid. I didn’t think he’d rat.
I said, “Shorty, what if I told you I could beat this joint?”
He said, “Iceberg, you’re jiving. You can’t make it out of here. There are five steel gates between this cell and the streets. How’re you planning to do it?”
I said, “Kid, as beautiful as it is I can’t do it without your help. Now here it is.”
I ran it down to him. At first he was leery. I told him to take the dummy from the floor under his bunk. Put it on mine. As soon as the whistle blew, unstuff the shirt and pants. Put the blanket stuffing back on my bunk. Sometime during the night before the midnight count, throw the pants and shirt over the gallery to the flagstone.
When the midnight hell broke loose he’d be clean. No one could prove or even suspect he had dismantled the dummy. I asked him to give me the name of a relative for record. I told him I would send him a C note from the first whore scratch I got.
I got his promise to handle the cell end of the plan. An hour later I gave a cellhouse orderly two packs of butts for an extra blanket. I had the stuffing. I took off my shirt and pants and stuffed them for rehearsal. He sat at the cell door with a mirror watching the gallery both ways. In twenty minutes he had the position and the rest of it down pat.