Pimp

  I said, “What did I do wrong? All I did was to offer the C just to be sociable. What’s wrong with that?”

  He said, “Sucker, first booty butt, you don’t transport no hard in your stomp, keep it in your mitt so you can down it fast to the turf. Second, you’re on parole. You’re hot! You ain’t got no business sitting dirty in my short. There’s a law, Sucker, that can confiscate a short with stuff in it. You know if the heat had hit on you you would unload in my short. Keep stuff off you. When you stop somewhere down it in the street until you ready to split. It’s better to get beat for the stash than beat by the heat. Now what took your head outta Pepper’s ass long enough for you to look me up?”

  Oh! How this junkie creep bugged me. I sat there beside him trying to think of questions that would bleed him so I could get out of his face fast. He looked exactly like a withered baboon. His breath stunk like he had just eaten a bowl of maggots.

  I said, “Weeping, Pepper hasn’t got my nose open for her. She’s too jazzy and slick for me. I came to you because everybody knows that your game is mellow. I want you to pull my coat so I can pimp some scratch out of her.”

  The baboon liked that banana I threw him. He was ready to talk the pimp game.

  He said, “The suckers in Hell want ice water, but it’s late for them. They ain’t never going to get no ice water. The way you start with a bitch is the way you end with a bitch. You can start pimping hard on a bitch and then sucker out and blow her, but ain’t no way you can turn it around and pimp on Pepper after starting with her like a sucker. Forget her and get down on a fresh bitch.”

  I said, “You mean there is no way to get any scratch out of her?”

  He said, “Now you see I didn’t say that. I said you couldn’t pimp any scratch outta her. A foxy cold-blooded stud can always find an angle to cross a broad outta scratch.”

  I said, “I’m not foxy, but I think I could be cold blooded enough to cross that slick bitch Pepper. Weeping, you are the fox. Lay some game on me and put me to the test. I’ll split any scratch I take off right down the middle with you.”

  I hadn’t noticed it was raining. Now it was raining hard enough so that Weeping had turned to run up the window on his side. He had just raised it and was about to answer my proposition when there was a frantic rapping on his window. It was one of his whores.

  Through the closed window of the locked door she said loudly, “Daddy, open the door! My feet are soaked. Nothing is happening out here tonight, and besides I am hot as Hell. The vice is watching me. It’s Costello. He told me to get off the street or he would bust me. Please open the door.”

  Weeping was a cold gorilla all right. He sat there for a long moment. His monkey face was tight and hard. He casually opened the wind wing as the rain beat down on his whore. She stuck her nose through it.

  Without moving toward the wing, sitting erect in the car seat he hollered, “You bullshit Bitch, make something happen. You a whore, you suppose to be hot. Let Costello bust you. He can’t make a beef stand up unless he ketches you with a trick. You dumb chickenhearted bitch, whatta you think I got this ass pocket full of ‘fall’ scratch for? Now get out there and work. Don’t worry about the rain. Walk between the rain drops, Bitch.”

  He slammed the wing shut.

  Her face was wild and angry through the murky glass. Her doperotted teeth were ragged fangs in the dimness as she pressed her face close to the glass.

  She screamed, “You just lost a girl. You had four, now you got three. I’m cutting you loose, Shorty.”

  Weeping let his window down and stuck his head out into the rain as she walked away. He was all gorilla now.

  He screamed, “Bitch, I give you odds you won’t split. As much of my dope you been shooting, I’m playing ketch up. You rank Bitch, you know if you split I’ll find you and stick my knife in your stinking ass and gut you to your breast bone.”

  I wondered if he had lost her. He read my mind.

  He said, “She ain’t going nowhere, look at this.”

  He turned his car engine on and started the windshield wiper so we could see the street. There she was back out there in the rain whistling and waving at the passing cars.

  He switched the engine off.

  He said, “That bitch knows I ain’t jiving. She’ll make me some scratch this morning. Now Youngblood, about Pepper. You don’t know anything about her. You ain’t long out of the joint. I like you, so my advice is the same I gave you at first. Forget her. Try in another spot.”

  What he said about my not knowing her made me curious.

  I said, “Look Weeping, I know you like me, and if you do, run Pepper down for me.”

  “Did you know that peckerwood of Pepper’s is the bankroll behind the biggest policy wheel in town?”

  I said, “No, but if the old man is flush isn’t that good. Why give Pepper up because she’s in shape. If you gave me an angle I could get some of that policy scratch.”

  “Look Blood, brace yourself. Here is the rest of the rundown. Pepper is a rotten freak broad. You ain’t the only stud she freaks off with. I could name a half dozen who ride her. The dangerous one is Dalanski the detective. He is in a bad way over Pepper. If he ever found out you were freaking off with her, Blood, shame on your ass.”

  I was shaken by the rundown. Like a sucker I believed that I was the whole show in her love life. I was thinking like the young punk I was.

  I said, “Are you sure there are that many studs laying her?”

  He said, “Maybe more.”

  I had a bellyache and a worse headache. I felt lousy.

  I mumbled, “Thanks for the advice and the run down, ‘Weeping.’” I got out of the Buick and walked home in the rain. When I got there it was three thirty and Mama was angry, worried and raving. She was right of course. I was violating my parole to be out after eleven P.M.

  I was coming out of the drug store to make a delivery when I bumped into him on the sidewalk. It was old “Party Time.”

  While doing his year for our caper he had copped a lonely-hearts broad through the mails.

  She went his train fare. He finished the bit and went to visit her and made a home.

  She had died and the home went to relatives who threw him out. After five bits he was still full of crooked inspiration. I liked him, but not enough to join him again in a hustle. I had only been out four and a half months. I cooled it and avoided him in a smooth way.

  I hadn’t touched Pepper in a week. She had called the drug store twice just before closing. She had made licking and sucking sounds to get me out to her place. I made excuses and put her off. I wondered at the time why I was so important when she was a douche bag for that mob that was laying it into her.

  The day before Weeping brought me a proposition, Dalanski, the roller, came into the drug store for cigarettes and gave me a thoughtful look.

  I was walking home. It was my day off. It was Saturday night around nine. I had been to see a prison movie. It was a grim drama. A young green punk tried a double cross. He was criss-crossed into the joint. He made deadly enemies while doing his long bit.

  When he got out, a long black short pulled up and riddled him with a tommy gun.

  A big black car was pulling to the curb toward me. There was something familiar about that small pinhead driver. It was Weeping.

  He jerked his head and opened the car door. I went over and got in. He was excited. At first I thought because his car was clean.

  He told me, “Blood, put a smile on your face. Old Shorty’s got good news for you. How would you like a half a G in your slide?”

  I said, “All right, give me the poison and take me to the baby.”

  He said, “I ain’t shucking. It’s cream-puff work. In fact Tender Dick, it’s what you like to do best. Want the run down?”

  “If you are going to tell me some broad is going to lay out fivehundred frog skins to get her rocks off, say it. I would lay a syphillis patient that died a week ago for that kind of scratch.”

/>   Then he said, “Pepper is the broad. All you have to do is take her to bed and go through a full circus with her, that’s all. Are you game?”

  “Yes, if I get a rake off from the bleacher seats, I said, “and you tell me who wants the show on.”

  His eyebrows jitterbugged. He was a slick joker. I should have run from him.

  He said, “No, I can’t tell you who. Don’t worry about the scratch, it’s guaranteed. Are you in?”

  I said, “Yes, but I want to know more. Like why?”

  The tale he told me went like this. A fast hustler from New York who specialized in pressure rackets saw a chance to trim Pepper’s old man out of a bundle.

  The hustler knew that Pepper was a dog and a freak. He also knew that Pepper’s old man was hung up on her.

  Even though he had met her in a whorehouse and squared her up, he was dangerously jealous of her and unpredictable if he caught her wrong.

  The hustler felt that Pepper would be in a sweet state for pressure if solid evidence could be gotten showing Pepper as the dog she was.

  The hustler was sure he could force her to help him in his scheme to trim the old man. He needed clear unfaked photographs.

  His plan would be simple. Once he got the club over Pepper’s head, he would force her to sneak in phony “hit” slips against the policy wheel.

  The hustler had discovered that for Pepper, from her inside position in the wheel, it would be very simple.

  The hustler would pay me five bills after I had brought Pepper to a prearranged set up.

  I was all for the scratch, and eager to give Pepper some grief for the way she had used me, and outslicked me.

  Weeping told me the trap was set. I was to wait until Pepper itched enough to call me. I was not to call her.

  Whenever she called I was to tell her to meet me in the bathroom of an old, but still elegant hotel on the fringe of the arcade and shooting gallery section of town.

  I was then to call him. I was to make sure that at least two hours passed between her call and when I went to the desk and asked for the key to apartment two-fourteen. My name would be Barksdale. That name I’ll never forget if I live to get a hundred.

  On the third day after I had gotten the rundown on the trap, Pepper called the store. It was eight fifty-five P.M., five minutes before closing. I answered the phone. She was burning blisters for one of our parties.

  She invited me to her place as usual. I told her that I had to tidy up the store and also mail an important package at the downtown post office for my boss.

  I asked her if she could get dressed and meet me by ten-thirty in the bar room of the hotel. It would be more convenient that way. She agreed.

  I called Weeping. He told me to maneuver Pepper’s face toward the head of the bed as much as possible when we got into the act.

  I went to the bar room and drank rum and coke until she got there.

  I almost felt sorry for her when I saw her coming through the door. She looked so innocent and clean, not at all like the cruddy filly that humped up a funky lather beneath a mob of jockeys.

  We took a booth so I could watch the clock. She was Jacqueline the Ripper with a fly, but she had a great gentle touch inside if you know what I mean.

  She was a space buff all right. She was checking out my readiness for entry into inner space.

  At eleven sharp Mr. and Mrs. Barksdale picked up the key to their pad. We walked onto the stage.

  Wyatt Earp would have gone ape over the pad.

  It was overstuffed horse-hair living room. Gleaming brass bed, giant cherubs on the wall, Gideon Bible on the marble top bedroom table. Midget, efficiency kitchen cubicle. So what, we hadn’t come to cook.

  High on the wall over the bed were the two gold colored cherubs. Their eyes were holes, their mouths popped wide holding the light fixtures.

  When we got into the brass bed we got the show on the road.

  I was almost sure some steamed up joker in the adjoining room had his gizmo focused on the carnival through a drilled hole peeking from a cherub’s empty eye socket.

  Pepper let me out of her Hog at one-thirty in the A.M. just two blocks from Weeping’s whore stand. I felt good. I was going to collect five fat ones for my pleasant night’s work. It was like having a license to steal.

  I spotted Weeping’s pin-head in his Buick. As I walked toward him, I couldn’t stop thinking about that Eastern blackmailer. I thought about that green rain that would fall when Pepper started rolling those phony hits in. I thought about how I could catch a few palms full.

  Smooth as silk the pay-off came off. When Weeping handed me my scratch he gave me a funny look.

  He said, “Take it easy Blood, take it easy.”

  The next day I went downtown and got clean.

  It was the early years for the Nat “King” Cole Trio. They were playing for a two-buck dance that night at Liberty Hall. Party and I were in the balcony at a table overlooking the crowded dance floor. We were slaving like sand hogs trying to tunnel into the flashy high yellows on our laps. They were almost stoned. Ready for the killing floor.

  Party saw him first coming in the front door of the auditorium. He knifed me in the side with his elbow.

  Then con style, from the side of his mouth, he whispered, “Dalanski, the heat.”

  The bastard’s head was on a swivel. He was looking everywhere at once. I felt mad butterflies with stingers ricocheting in my belly when his eyes spotted me and locked on me. I froze, his eyes were still riveted to me as he walked up the stairway straight for me.

  I pretended to ignore him. He walked up behind me and stood there for a long moment. Then he dropped a hand like an anvil on my shoulder.

  He said, “Get up! I want to talk to you.”

  My legs were shuddery as I stood in a small alcove with him.

  He said, “Where were you around ten and after last night?”

  Relief and courage flooded me. That was easy; I hedged.

  “Why?”

  He said, “Look punk, don’t get cute. Where were you? Don’t answer. I know where you were. You were out on Crystal Road in the nighttime burglarizing the home of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ibbetts. Night-time burglary is five to ten.”

  My courage and relief swiftly drained out. Frank Ibbetts was Pepper’s old man. He was roughly frisking me now. He ran his hands into my side pockets. With one hand he brought out the three hundred dollars left from my pay-off, plus twenty clean dollars. The other came out with a strange brass door key.

  He said, “Jeez, for a flunky in a drug store you got a helluva bankroll. Where did you get it and where and what does this key fit?”

  I said, “Officer, that’s crap-game money. I have never seen that key before.”

  He grabbed me firmly like he had captured Sutton and walked me through the dancers out the door to his short.

  He took me down and booked me on suspicion of Grand Theft burglary. He also booked the scratch and key as evidence.

  Mama came down bright and early the next morning. She was in a near fainting dither. She was clutching her chest over her heart.

  She said, “Bobby, you are going to kill your mama. You haven’t been out six months and now you are back in trouble. What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy? You need prayer. Get down on your knees and pray to the good Lord.”

  I said, “I don’t need to pray. Mama, believe me there is nothing to worry about. I didn’t steal anything from Pepper’s house. I am not nuts. Pepper will tell them the truth. Mama, I was with her.”

  I got my first nightmare inkling of the cork-screw criss-cross when Mama broke into tears. She rolled her eyes to heaven.

  She blubbered, “Bobby, there’s no hope for you. You are going to spend your young life in prisons. Don’t you know Son, your mama loves you? You don’t have to lie to me.”

  “I went out to see her early this morning,” she said. “She told me she hasn’t seen you in a week. Mr. Dalanski has brought Pepper’s spare key down here. That key in yo
ur pocket was one you stole when you made a delivery out there.”

  Finally, she went down the corridor. Her shoulders were jerking in her sobbing.

  It was an iron cross. My public defender went to that hotel to get corroboration for my alibi. The joint had been too crowded, too hectic. None of the employees remembered Pepper and me. At least they said they didn’t.

  The desk man on that night had been a substitute and wasn’t now available. My signature wasn’t on the register anyway.

  I went into court again with the dirty end of the stick. I was a parolee arrested at one A.M. with a bottle of whiskey in front of me in a public place.

  Pepper looked like a prospect for a convent. She had stripped herself of paint and gee-gaws. She testified that the key found in my slide was her’s, and that yes, it was possible that I had stolen it while making deliveries to her home. No, she had not seen me for a week before my arrest.

  My defender had gotten a change of venue. I was afraid to go before the judge who had sent me to the reformatory.

  I got two years in state prison for grand theft, the amount, fivehundred dollars. My parole was to run concurrently with the new sentence.

  Pepper’s old man was with her in court. They bought the cross. I couldn’t figure who had sold it to them.

  Was Dalanski the joker that Weeping worked for? Or had Dalanski heard that I had a wad, and without knowing anything about the hotel affair sold it to Pepper?

  For what reason had the old man bought it? Had those hotel employees been bribed or threatened? If Dalanski was the brain, did he want me out of the way for a reason other than Pepper?

  Maybe some day I’ll find out what really happened. I know if I had had lots of scratch Miss Justice would have smiled on me. She favors the bird with the scratch.

  The Waupun State Prison was tough, but in a different way than the reformatory. Here the cons were older. Many of them were murderer’s serving life sentences.

  These cons would never put up with the kind of petty tyranny that was practiced in the reformatory. Here the food was much better. There were industries here. A con could learn a trade if he wanted to.