Like he was trying to make a home Party Time was asking in a hoarse voice over and over, “Beautiful Bitch, is it good? Beautiful Bitch, is it good?”
The white man was an odd, funny sight as he raced around the arena like a demented Caesar, cheering on his merciless black gladiator.
Finally when the show was over and they started to dress, I went to the front and sat on a stoop next door to the joint. I wanted to get a close up of the freaks.
When they got to the sidewalk, in their street clothes, they were disappointingly normal. Just a clean-cut white couple having a parting chat with a grinning, black Negro.
The mixed-up couple went down the sidewalk away from me. Party Time came toward me. He didn’t notice me sitting on the stoop. I was itching with curiosity, so I hit on him when he came abreast. It startled him. His face got stiff.
I said, “Hey Jack, how you doing? That sure is a fine silk girl, huh? You got a square to spare?”
He fished a cigarette from his red shirt pocket, handed it to me and said, “Yeh Kid, she’s fine as a Valentine. Two sights I ain’t never seen and that is a pretty bulldog, and an ugly white woman.”
He was spouting cliches, but to a small town boy he came off witty as Hell. I was in that brain-picking mood so I put the snow machine into high gear to hold him. My eyes bucked in mock awe as I lit the square.
I said, “Thanks Man, for the square. Christ! That’s a sporty vine you got on. I wish I could dress like you. You sure are clean aplenty.”
He took the bait like a rapist in a nudist colony for the blind. He flopped down on the stoop beside me. He poked his chest out, his eyes flashing like a pin-ball machine gone haywire, as he got ready to open up. He hiked the pants legs of his green checked suit to his calves to show his blood red socks.
The huge zircon on his right pinky glittered under the street lamp as he cracked his knuckles and said, “Kid, my name is Party Time. I am the best flat-footed hustler in town. Money loves me and can’t stay away from me. You see that fine silk broad, I got a double saw to lay her. Course that ain’t nothing, it happens all the time. I could be one of the greatest pimps in the country if I was lazy and didn’t have so much good hustler in me.”
I sat there listening to his bullshit until two A.M. He was likable and I was hungry for a pal. He was an orphan and he had just done a two-year bit straight up, his fourth, two months before. He had a head full of wild risky hustles he wanted to try. He needed a partner. He tried all of them on me for size.
I got home at two-twenty. About one minute later I heard Mama’s key in the door. She had served a banquet for her white folks. I just made it into bed with all my clothes on, when she came to look in on me. I was snoring like a drunk with a sick sinus when she kissed me goodnight.
I lay thinking in the darkness until daybreak, putting myself into, and trying to size myself into one of those quick buck schemes that Party had plotted. When the sun came up fat and bright I knew I would give Party’s version of the Murphy a whirl. I didn’t know his version was crude and dangerous, and only a weak imitation of the real Murphy.
Years later I discovered that the Murphy, when played by experts, was a smooth short con game with a slight risk. In any section where Negro whores operate white men will flock to trick with them.
I met Party several times after school at a pool room. He ran my role down to me and the next Friday night we got down with our hustle. Mama was serving a party so I could stay in the streets until at least one A.M.
Around ten that night in an alley in the heart of the vice section, Seventh and Vliet Sts., we unwrapped the package that Party had brought. I rolled up my pants legs beyond my bony knees. I slipped into the twenty-five cent red-cotton dress from the Salvation Army.
I put on the frayed red satin high-heel shoes. I pinned a scraggly piece of hair just inside the front inner band of the faded blue straw bonnet. When I tilted it on my head at a sexy angle, the ringlets of uneven hair hung down over my eyes like bangs.
I stood wide legged, flexed my thigh and hip muscles against the tight red dress, aping the whores stance.
Party looked me over head to toe. I was wondering how I came off as a broad. He shook his head, hunched his shoulders and walked toward the mouth of the alley to catch a sucker.
I got the answer when be reached the sidewalk. He twisted his bead toward me and said, “Listen Man, stay outta the light, okay?”
Within five minutes he gave me the office that some action was coming down the street. I watched Party giving the pitch to a short elderly white man. I wondered if I had enough voltage as a broad to come through with my end of the deal.
He officed my flash cue an instant before the white man peeked up the alley at me. I jerked my skinny ass in a series of bumps and grinds and hopefully waved him toward me.
That skinny black bitch he saw must have lit a fire in him all right. He fumbled his hide from his hip pocket and handed a bill to Party.
The chump started up the alley at a helluva pace for an old bastard. He had paid his money and he was red hot to take his chance to stick that hot Nigger bitch waiting for him in the shadows.
He had no chance, but in a way he was lucky. Lucky that his hide had not been fat with green backs. If he had been loaded, when I evaporated through that gang way, Party instead of fading away would have come into the dark alley behind the sucker and robbed him with brute force.
My heart was pounding in excitement as I galloped through the alleys toward our next prearranged duck blind. I took a new station several blocks away. Party Time came moments later, looked up the alley and hooked the tips of his thumb and index fingers into an “all is well” O.
We beat several other suckers. None had the fare for the strong arm. We worked until twelve-thirty, then unlike Cinderella, I stashed my mildewed costume, got my half of the seventy-dollar take and raced home. Mama came in a half hour after I did.
As in all other things there are many Murphy’s. Real Murphy players use great finesse to separate a mark from his scratch. The most adept of them prefer that a trick hit on them. It puts the Murphy player in a position to force the sucker to “qualify” himself and to trim the mark not only for all of his scratch, but his jewelry as well.
When approached and quizzed by a mark as to, where a girl can be found, the Murphy Man will say, “Look Buddy, I know a fabulous house not more than two blocks away. Brother, you ain’t never seen more beautiful, freakier broads than are in that house. One of them, the prettiest one, can do more with a swipe than a monkey can with a banana. She’s like a rubber doll, she can take a hundred positions.”
At this point the sucker is wild to get to this house of pure joy. He entreats the con player to take him there, not just direct him to it.
The Murphy player will prat him to enhance his desire. He will say, “Man, don’t be offended, but Aunt Kate, that runs the house don’t have nothing but high-class white men coming to her place. No Niggers or poor white trash. You know, doctors, lawyers, bigshot politicians. You look like a clean-cut white man, but you ain’t in that league are you?”
At this pricking of his ego the mark is ready for the hook. He will protest his worth as a person and his right to go where any other son-of-a-bitch can go. Hell for a high class lay a double saw wouldn’t faze him. Few can resist the charm of exclusivity in its myriad forms.
The con player still hedging, shoring up firmly the convincer will then say, “Man, I believe you and everything you say is true as gospel. In fact, I like you Pal, but try to see my side of it. First to show you I trust you, I’ll tell you a secret. I been working for Aunt Kate’s house for many years now as her outside man, you know, making sure only nice dates went up there. Aunt Kate and I got an air tight system. Friend, I know you will help me keep Aunt Kate’s roles, so let’s go. I am taking you to the thrill of your life.”
While keeping up an inflaming description of the whores and sexual delights to be found only at Aunt Kate’s, the Murphy player ha
d steered the sucker to a pre-chosen neat, attractive apartment building. In the foyer, in a subtle but compelling manner, the con player nudged the mark into a fast meeting of minds, the question agreed on. As hot as he was, he couldn’t go up before he checked in all valuables. It was Aunt Kate’s unshakeable rule.
Aunt Kate was rock right never to tempt or trust a whore. Only fools trusted whores, right? The mark wasn’t a fool, right? Right!
The con player produced a sturdy brown envelope. The sucker counted all the scratch in his pocket into the hand of Aunt Kate’s “outside” business manager. The efficient affable manager shoved it into the envelope, licked it, sealed it, and stuck it in his pocket for safe keeping from the possible larceny in the hearts of the gorgeous dolls upstairs, third floor, first apartment to the left, number nine to be specific.
The sucker was in a bubbly mood as he took the stairs three at a time. He liked that Nigger down there who was protecting his money. What had he told him, when he gave him the shiny goldcolored metal check? “Harry, Pal, this one is on me, just go up and hand it to Aunt Kate. Everything is going to be all right. If you want you can buy me a drink when you come down.”
The two strikes that had whiffed across the white man’s mental plate and had set him up for the kill, the third strike was first his desperate need to relieve himself into a black body, the second was his complete inability to conceive that the “black boy” before him was intelligent enough to fool him, to fashion the Murphy dialogue.
Party and his rawboned lure, after three weekends of fair success with the Murphy, ran head on into a round brick balloon. It was only five feet tall, but it weighed close to three-hundred pounds.
It was a Saturday night around ten. The vice section was overrun with Johns. It seemed that every white man in town was out there, scratch in one hand and rod in the other, ripping and running after the black whores with the widest, blackest asses.
Party and I set up a blind on the fringe of the section, because with all that mad action in the center it would be a hectic cat-and-mouse game with the cruising, rousting vice squad. I would have gotten something less than pure kicks to get busted making like a broad.
Party hadn’t strong armed since his last bit. The only reason he hadn’t was simply that none of the Johns we had fleeced was carrying a wad.
We were fishing in a sand pile. All the hungry suckers were swimming in center stream.
From my Murphy station in the alley, I watched Party eagerly for the office for action. Around eleven-thirty, I was standing on one leg and then the other like a bored crane with a twenty-five cent dress on.
About five minutes later the office came through. Was it a man? A machine? No, it was a walking, living, round balloon with a fat poke and a flaming itch for black Cush. It stood there fascinated by my furious bumps and grinds.
I felt prickly feet of excitement stomping along my spine when the balloon took his hide out. Party jerked rigid at the sight of its contents. Even as the balloon bounced toward me, I inched toward my point of evaporation. I knew the strong-arm lust had exploded inside Party and sure as Hell he was going to come up that alley and smash the air out of the balloon.
I quit the scene and poked my head into the alley farther up. I could hear guttural grunting. The kind of sound a heart case makes when he’s riding hard to convince a nympho that he’s a raging tiger. It was the balloon that was grunting as he held Party in a crushing strangle hold. My heart-beat back fired and melted the starch in my props. I collapsed onto a garbage can. The balloon was also a weight lifter. Poor Party was hanging high over the head of the monster and then flung to the alley floor with a shattering “whoomp” where he lay like a rag doll. The balloon hollered as he leaped into the air and then fell like a ton of concrete on moaning Party. I was almost puking in pity for Party. But I just couldn’t find the strength to get off that garbage can and join the fray. Anyway it wouldn’t have been lady like.
The derrick scooped Party from the alley and flung him across his back. I watched Party’s rubber neck bumping against the balloon’s rear end as he was carried to the sidewalk.
I jetted out of there and went to the roof of my building. I watched for the rollers I was sure were coming to bust me, but they never came. Old Party had had the funky luck to try the strong arm on a professional wrestler called the Blimp.
Party went back to the joint for a yard after he got out of City Hospital. One thing about Party he wasn’t copper hearted. He never tipped my name to the heat.
When he got older, and lost his nerve to hustle, he got a crazy desire to pimp. He wasn’t the type, but he kept trying until he ran the Gorilla game on a dope dealer’s broad and was set up for a hot shot. Party tried his fists and muscle until the pimp game croaked him. The pimp game is like the watchmaker’s art, it’s tough. Party went through his life struggling to make a watch while wearing boxing gloves. Party’s bad break sobered me, and I started hearing what was going on in day classes at school.
At fifteen, amazingly, I graduated from high school with a ninetyeight point four average. There was a sizeable alumni of Tuskegee, a Southern Negro college, who insisted upon Mama letting them underwrite all expenses for my education at their Alma Mater. Mama leaped at the chance.
The alumni went into debt and sent me down to their hallowed school with a sparkling wardrobe. They didn’t know I had started to rot inside from street poisoning.
It was like the poor chumps had entered a poisoned horse in the Kentucky Derby and were certain they had a cinch winner. They couldn’t know they had bet their hearts and blood money on a born loser.
A rich bonanza was at stake. The success of my very life itself. The rescue of Mama from her awesome guilt. The trust and confidence of those big-hearted alumni.
My mental eyes had been stabbed blind by the street. I was like a freakish joker who had gotten clap in his eyes from a mangy street whore.
On campus, I was like a fox in a chicken coop. Within ninety days after I got down there I had slit the maidenhead on a halfdozen curvy coeds.
Somehow I managed to get through the Freshman year, but my notoriety was getting awful. The campus finks were envious, and it was too dangerous to continue to impale coeds on my stake.
In my Sophomore year, I started going into the hills near the campus to juke joints. With my slick Northern dress and manner, I was prince charming in spades to the pungent, hot-ass maidens in the hills.
A round butt, bare foot, beauty—fifteen years old—fell hard for me. One night I failed to meet her in our favorite clump of bushes. I had stuck her up to keep a date in another clump of bushes with a bigger, hotter, rounder ass than hers.
Through the hill grape vine she got the wire of my double cross. It was high noon on campus the next day when I saw her. I had just walked out of the cafeteria onto the main drag. The street was lousy with students and teachers.
She stood out like a Pope in a cat house. Her potato-sack dress was grimy and dirty as Hell from the long trip from the hills. Her bare feet and legs were rusty and dusty. She saw me a wild heart-beat after I saw her.
She battle-cried like an Apache Warrior, and before I could get the wax out of my props, she had raced close enough toward me so that I could see the insane fury in her eyes.
Beads of sweat clung to the kinky hair in the pit of her arm that was upraised, gripping like a dagger a broken Coca Cola bottle, the jagged edges were glinting in the sun.
The screaming teachers and students fled like terrified sheep in the wake of a panther. I don’t remember what athlete was reputed to be the fastest human in the world that year, but for those few seconds after I got the wax out of my legs, I was.
When I finally looked back through the cloud of dust, I saw the crazy broad as a speck in the distance behind me.
Mine had been a carpet offense and I was on it in the office of the school President.
I stood before him, seated behind his gleaming mahogany desk. He cleared his pipes and gave me a lo
ok like I had jacked off before the student body. He held his head high. His nose reaching for the ceiling like I was crap on his top lip.
In a sneaky Southern drawl he said, “Boy, yu ah a disgrace to oauh fine institushun. Ah’m shocked thet sech has occurred. Yo mothah has bin infaumed of yo bad conduck. Oauh bord is considurin yo dismissul. En thu meantime, keep yo nos clean, Boy. Yo ah not to leave campus for eny resun.”
I could have saved my worry over dismissal. That alumni had powerful pull all right. I got a break and got the chance to stay until mid-term of the Sophomore year when I went for the “okey doke.” I took a bootlegging rap for a pal. “What goes around comes around” old hustlers had said. Party had taken our beef without spilling.
Anything with a buzz in it was in great demand on campus. A pint of rot gut whiskey brought from seven and a half to ten dollars depending on supply. My roommate had scratch and a Fagin disposition. He was a sharpy from a number-racket family in New York.
We made a deal. He would bank roll our venture if I copped the merchandise and sold it. He got my promise that I would keep his part in it a secret. He was a fox for sure.
He gave me the scratch and I slipped up into the hills to contact a moonshiner who would supply me. Perhaps I don’t have to say that I carefully avoided any contact with that broad who pushed me to that track record.
I scored for a connection and the markup on campus was fourhundred percent.
Everything was beautiful. The merchandise was moving like crazy. I was sure that when I got back home for the summer I would have enough scratch to turn everybody green with envy.
I recruited a coed I had layed to distribute for me in her dorm. It was the beginning of the end.
There were two jasper coeds in her dorm who were fierce rivals for the love of a coffee-colored, curvaceous doll from a country town in Oklahoma. The doll was really dumb. She bad no idea of the lesbian kick, so naturally she couldn’t know she was a target.