I didn’t close my eyes all night. At midnight I saw the screw counting heads. He was due for a shock soon. I knew that if something went wrong they’d probably beat me to death out there on the yard. I had to go through with it. No con misses his freedom more than a pimp. His senses are addicted to silky living.
I took packs of butts to the coal pile the next day. A yard runner got me a shirt and pants. I put them on over the ones I wore. That night in the cell I made up the dummy. I put it under the kid’s bunk and gave him a pep talk until midnight. I even promised him I’d keep in touch and when he got out I’d teach him to pimp.
I thought the last day on the coal pile would never end. I would be sunk if there was a routine cellhouse shakedown. Finally we lined up. My throat was dry and my knees were wobbly. We were approaching that shed. The screw on the wall walked twenty paces away. Then about faced and walked back facing the coal pile gang.
I’d have to break for the shed when he walked away. I’d have to be in there when he turned if it wasn’t locked. If he didn’t shoot me, the yard screws would beat me to a pulp. The coal-pile screw was ahead of me. He could turn and look back at any moment. No other moment in my life has been so tense, so wildly adventuresome. I didn’t even know if there wasn’t a fink in the line. I tell you it was something. If my ticker had been faulty I’d have passed out.
The screw on the wall was walking away. The shed seemed miles away. I slipped out of line and raced for it. I could hear an excited whispering from the cons behind me. I touched the shed doorhandle. For an instant I hesitated. I was afraid I’d find it locked. My sweat-hot hands pulled it toward me. It was open!
Just before I stepped inside I looked up at the wall. The screw was standing looking in the direction of the shed. I shut the door. Had he seen me? I looked around the shed. There was nothing to hide under or behind. I could hear the cons in the shower room. They were getting ready for supper.
The steel door was half open. That screw would be out at any second to hook the shed door. There was no place to hide. It had been all for nothing. I heard a voice and the scrape of feet at the steel door. The screw was coming out into the shed! I looked up at the shed ceiling. I looked over the steel door.
There was a line of rusty bars a foot long over the door flush against a grimy window. I leaped up and grabbed two of them. I swung my feet and legs up just as the screw walked in to lock the door. I was jack-knifing my legs just six inches from the top of his blue uniform cap. I hung there like a bat. I held my breath. He passed beneath me. I saw flakes of rust fall from the bars onto the top of his cap. It seemed forever to my agonized aching arms and legs.
I heard the steel door crash shut. I started breathing again. I hung up there for another long moment. He might come back for some reason. I swung my paralyzed legs down and released my grip on the bars. I sat on the stone steps fighting for breath. The shed was quiet as a tomb. I could hear my ticker staccato.
The worse wasn’t over. That “all is well” whistle had to blow. If it didn’t blow they’d come looking for me with fists, clubs, and guns. I peeped through a crack in the door. I put my ear to it. The yard was bare. I could hear the clatter of steel plates in the mess hall. Finally all was quiet. The count was going on.
I thought, “Even if the kid goes through with his end, this one night the count screw will poke that dummy to stand up to the cell door. That whistle ain’t gonna blow. It’s been too long already. Those cold-hearted bastards are on the way already. They’ll beat and stomp me crippled.”
The whistle blew! The beautiful sound of it was like a faucet. It flooded my eyes with tears. I did a dusty jig on the shed floor. It was dusk. It wasn’t over. The only way to get over the wall was to scale and climb to the top of a cellhouse in the far corner of the yard.
Lucky for me the cellhouse sat in a deep recess, otherwise its roof would have towered above the wall. It was the only building close to a section of wall. Other buildings stairs stepped almost to the roof of the cellhouse. Maybe I’d been too eager to escape. I’d not put together a rope or hook. I’d have to use hands and feet. It sat six feet away and twenty feet above the wall.
There was only one screw on the wall after the count cleared. He’d be in his cubicle reading the newspaper or a magazine. If he looked up he couldn’t miss seeing me in the glare of the yard lights.
My uniform was dark green, stained black with coal dust. Maybe on the street I’d look like any sooty steel mill or coal worker. I hadn’t done too badly so far with short-term planning.
I had until midnight to get over the wall and out of the city. I had no scratch. I’d passed out a small fortune in tips to hotel maids, bellhops, and bartenders. Now all of them were rich compared to me. I knew several I could go to and get a few dollars. They could be found at their places of work.
There had been all the show-ups the month before and after my conviction. My face would be remembered by the rollers in those neighborhoods. I thought about Sweet. I remembered his crack at the hideout to set me up for the cop of my stable. I threw him out of my skull.
I couldn’t trust any of the pimps I knew. I’d always been a threat to them. Iceberg was really on his own. I’d have to make it to one of Mama’s sisters, thirty miles away in Indiana.
It was now pitch black inside the shed. I raised the hook and pushed the door open. I looked out into the yard. I stepped through the door into the yard. All was quiet. I pushed the door shut. I heard a dull metallic noise. I pulled it toward me. The hook had fallen into its loop. The shed door had hooked from the inside.
I thought, “That freak accident would confound the investigators for sure.”
I raced to the side of the mess hall. I’d have to get on its flat roof. I took hold of some window bars and pulled up to a standing position on the sill, I reached over and grabbed the drain pipe. I swung over and shinnied up to the roof.
I looked to my left. I could see the silhouetted figure of the wall screw in his cubicle. I looked across and up at the cellhouse roof abutting the wall. It was a long way. I walked across the roof toward the next building. I was near the far edge of the roof. I looked back at the wall cubicle. The screw was out walking the wall. He had that deadly rifle cradled in his arms.
I flung myself flat on my back on the black roof. I hoped I was invisible to him. I lay there panting. I wondered what a screw’s manual said about an escaping con target. If he saw me would he scope for a skull, heart, or gut shot?
Finally he went back into the cubicle. Lucky for me the mess-hall roof was connected to the chapel building. The connection was a concrete ledge. It was less than a foot wide and about twelve feet long. My heavy prison brogans seemed as wide as the ledge. They slipped on the glazed ledge. The wild late April winds made the walk as secure as a stroll across a teeter-totter two stories above the ground.
I stood at the end of the ledge and looked up. I stretched my right arm up and stood on tip-toes. The chapel roof was two feet above my fingertips. I’d have to go back a few feet on that glassy ledge. I’d have to get up enough speed coming back to make a twofeet leap. I’d have to grab the outside rim of the roof’s drain gutter. I wondered if it could stand my weight.
I carefully backed up six feet. I stood there trembling looking up at the rim. I looked back. The screw wasn’t on the wall. I had to forget how narrow the ledge was. I threw a leg out. I whipped the other toward it. I pumped them over the gritty glaze. I heard the whispering hiss of the leather soles tromping the ledge. My arms were outstretched to the black sky. My eyes were riveted upward to the gutter rim.
I leaped upward. I felt my feet soar off the ledge. I taloned the rim. I hung from it dangling in space. My fingernails sent red-hot needles of pain through the tortured flesh at their roots. I chinned up and hurled a leg across the roof top. I rolled onto it. I lay there gasping as I watched the rifleman walk his beat. He went in.
I struggled up the steep sloping roof to the top. The edge of the cellhouse roof was three feet
away. I leaped straight ahead. I flopped on my belly. The tips of my brogans were in the drain gutter. The cellhouse roof was even steeper. It was coated with squares of slippery shale. I looked up toward the top. It seemed a city block away. I started bellying up it. I dug my brogan tips into the small cracks between the shale squares.
I finally inched to the top. My chest was flaming. I lay astraddle the six-inch top of a double precipice. The two sides of the roof formed a steep pyramid. I was on top of it. The six-inch top seemed as thin as a wire. Through a dizzy haze I saw the lights of the city winking in an ocean of blackness.
I got to my feet. I started walking the tight wire like a circus performer. The winds were savage up here. They kicked and punched me. I teetered and swayed on the wire. I looked down over the right precipice to the street far below. Through a fuzzy blur I saw auto headlights darting through the night like tiny fireflies. My skull almost blacked out. I jerked my skull away and glued my eyes to the wire.
It was like an age before I reached the end of the cellhouse. If the screw came out now I’d be in full view. Even from the inside he could spot me. I stood shivering. I looked down twenty feet to the top of the three-foot wide wall. I couldn’t turn back. I couldn’t just stand there. It was a cinch I couldn’t expect to keep balance if I hit the wall feet first.
I dropped, legs opened wide. I heard my trousers rip. The inside concrete edge of the wall top gouged into my inner thigh. My rear end crashed against the concrete. My skull reeled in pain as I sat in the cold saddle. I swung my gouged left leg from the inner side of the wall. I scooted back on my belly to my fingertips.
I hung there for a moment. I felt blood running down my left leg into my shoe. I let go. I struck feet first. My butt and back took the rest of the shock. I lay there on my back in a drunken fog of exhaustion, pain and breathless joy.
It was at least ten minutes before I could stand. I limped away for a hundred yards. I turned and looked back at the joint.
I thought, “Those dirty white folks are gonna pace the floor. Their assholes are gonna twitch. They’re gonna call me a million black-Nigger bastards and sonuvabitches. One thing they can’t deny in their cruel secret hearts. I outsmarted them. It’s gonna hurt ’em to the rotten quick that a Nigger did a black Houdini outta here. No screws’ skulls busted and no bars sawed.
“They’re gonna foul their chances to catch me after the midnight count. They’ll search the yard and joint for a week. Their asses will turn blue. Their skulls won’t let ’em believe a Nigger was clever enough to ghost outta here.”
I turned and hobbled toward the State of Indiana.
19
THE ICE PICK
I was lucky. I caught five rides to get to my Aunt. It was five minutes to midnight when she opened the door. At first she didn’t recognize me. She made me welcome.
In a week my leg had healed and I felt strong. Her husband was my size. He gave me an outfit and fifty dollars. I went to the whore section of town. A bunch of New Orleans pimps were in town. They had their thieving whores with them. Three days later I stole one.
Her name was No Thumbs Helen. She was at that time one of the slickest “from the person” thieves in the country. We got about in a forty-seven Hog. She was a magician. For almost a year she left a trail of empty wallets across five states.
We were in Iowa when Helen stung a rich sod-buster for seventy-two hundred. I was in bed when she threw it on the bed. Excited? Sure I was. My heart boomed like bombs going off. She didn’t know it. I was icy cool. I casually scooped it up and counted it. I had a poker face.
I said, “Now listen, bitch. Run this sting down. I gotta know how hot this scratch is. Did you get all the sucker had? I’ll be a salty sonuvabitch to read in the papers that you missed a bundle.”
Her rundown told me it was best to split. We got in the Hog and went to Minneapolis. The second day I copped a young whore. She wanted to be a thief. I took her to Helen at our hotel. Helen chilled when she saw the pretty bitch.
She blew her top. She drew her knife. The young whore fled. I disarmed Helen and punched her around. Helen went to work. I fell asleep. I woke up fast. Helen was jabbing her knife into me. I rolled away. She had stabbed me in the forearm and the side of an elbow. I took a golf club and knocked her out.
I never tried to stable her after that. I didn’t feel like a real pimp with one whore. I decided to steal the technique of stealing from Helen. I could use it to train other whores when I cut her loose. Finally I picked her skull. The technique went as follows.
She would lurk in some shadowy doorway or alley entrance. When a trick came by she’d go into a con act. She’d stand wide-legged and bend her knees to an almost squatting stance. She’d whip up the front bottom of her dress. She’d expose the gaping, hairy magnet to the bugging eyes of the sucker. The pull was magnified by her stroking her cat.
She’d say to the sucker, “Please pretty sweetie, I am so hot this pussy is burning up. I ain’t had no dick in six months. Come here and do something to it.”
He’d step into the doorway already blind hot to sock it in for free. His instinctive weariness blackjacked to sleep by the raw event. She’d bombard the sucker with a flow of sweetly passionate sexy bullshit as she tightly embraced him.
She had located his wallet, usually in a rear trouser pocket, with the sensitive tips of her fingers. She’d dry grind her belly against his scrotum. She’d complain that his belt buckle was hurting her. She would be panting in phony passion as she unbuckled it. It would release the tension on his pants pockets. She’d caress the head of his swipe with her fingers.
She’d stroke the tip of his ear with her tongue. The very tips of the airy light index finger and thumb of the free hand flicked the buttoned pocket open. The index and middle fingers scissored on the wallet and slid it from the pocket. The trick would be excited and hot. He wouldn’t have felt the glowing end of a cigarette on his ass.
With both hands behind his neck, she’d remove the scratch from the hide. She’d up the sexy chatter and the strong grind against his scrotum. She’d roll the bills into a tight suppository shape. She’d slip the wallet back into the pocket. She wouldn’t forget to rebutton the pocket. She was ready to blow the sucker off, get rid of him. She’d crack that she had to pee. Stooping quickly, she’d ram the rolled bills up her cat. She’d sight a passing car. She’d fake alarm.
She would say, “Oh my God. There’s Riley, the vice cop. Listen honey, go to the Park Hotel up the street and register as Mr. and Mrs. Jones. I will be there in ten minutes, Pretty Daddy. I sure want some of your good dick.”
The sucker would pat the reassuring bump of his wallet. It was still there in the buttoned pocket. He’d amble off to the hotel. The thief would make it home. She’d completely change her appearance. She’d go back into the street to sting another sucker.
There was an accident. She got pregnant. I found a croaker who made her one again. The game went down as usual. The bubble burst in a small town in Ohio.
The sky-rocket came crashing down when I ran into an old pal. He was now called New York Joe. I hadn’t seen him since I was fourteen. My mother had taken him in for a few weeks when his widowed-mother died. He got sick and had to go to a hospital. I’d take a bus to see him and bring him tid-bits. I’d sit with him and console him. I liked him. Our friendship was brief. He got out of the hospital and left town.
He was wholesaling cocaine and the sample he gave me was almost pure. I made an appointment to cop a piece. I didn’t know he had learned in New York to cross everybody, even old friends. I found out the stuff he gave me was phony. I rushed back to him figuring he had made a mistake and would square things with me. I said, “Joe, you’ve made a mistake, man.” He took me inside. He said, “What’s the trouble, Jim?”
I said, “Man, this is bullshit. This ain’t the same stuff that I sampled.”
He said, “Well listen, Ronald went out to the stash. That mother-fucker is crossing me.”
He
drew his gun from a shoulder holster. At the time I didn’t know it was all con.
He said, “Should I go out there and kill that sonuvabitch? What do you want me to do?”
He started working his eyes. His eyes were bugging and going through all that crazy act.
I said, “No man, just give me my scratch back.”
He said, “I’m so mad I should croak you both.”
I was relatively young. I had never run into this New York stuff before. I was spooked.
I said, “Forget about it.”
He was going through contortions. I was in his town. I had a thief with at least seven beefs on her. I was out the three grand. I might have gotten croaked. Later I knew it was stuff: New York stuff. In later years, I figured it out. He maybe had always hated me because I had more education than he had.
A week later Helen got busted on seven counts. I signed the Hog over to a lip. She got five to ten. I should have wired a bomb to the starter before I turned it over to the lip.
A stud told me Joe had fingered Helen. He almost ruined me. He tapped me out, got my thief busted. He literally ran me out of town broke, and with no whore.
I heard whore-catching was good in Detroit. I took my last tendollar bill and caught a Greyhound. Detroit was the promised land for pimps all right. The town was teeming with young fast whores. The local pimps were soft competition.
I was walking, but I was sharp as a Harlem sissy. Anyway, these whores were a different breed than the ones back in the city. They were gullible, and a fellow didn’t have to play his heart out to cop them.
The first package I copped was a beautiful seventeen-year-old green-eyed version of Pepper. Her name was Rachel. I was to keep her thirteen years.
My next package was a huge, black, dangerous jasper named Serena. In addition to being a whore, she ran a fast sheet setup for a dozen whores. They tricked out of her joint. Within eight weeks after I hit Detroit I was cruising the streets in a sparkling new forty-eight Fleetwood. I had a fat bankroll.