“Lady Day” was singing a sad lament. “My man don’t love me, treats me awful mean. He’s the meanest man that I ever seen.”
I was standing on the bear skin. She came toward me with the scratch in her hand. She laid it in my palm. I riffled it in a fast count. It was respectable. It had to be over two bills. I was ready to let that cherry pop.
I scooped the ninty-pound runt up into my arms. I bit her hard on the tip of her chin. I carried her to the side of the bed. I hurled her onto it. She bounced and lay there on her back. She was breathing hard. Her legs were a wide pyramid.
I got out of my clothes fast. I snatched the top sheet off. I ripped it into four narrow strips. I tied her hands to the bed posts. I spread eagled her legs. With the longer strips, I tied her legs to the top of the springs at the sides of the bed.
She lay there a prisoner. I put her through the nerve shredding routines Pepper had taught me. She blacked out four times. She couldn’t pull back from the thrilling, awful torture.
Finally, I took a straight ride home. On the way I tried to smash the track. I reached my destination. The blast of hate was big enough to spawn a million embryo black pimps.
I untied her. We lay there in the dim blueness. The fake white stars glowed down on us. “Lady Day” still moaned her troubles.
I said, “Bitch, I want you to hump like Hell in these streets for a week. We’re going to the big track in the city. Oh yes, this week we got to get that title to the Ford changed. I don’t drive no bitch’s wheels. It’s got to be in my name, understand?”
She said, “Yes, Daddy, anything you say. Daddy, don’t get angry, but I was bullshitting about that C note trick.”
I said, “Bitch, I knew that. Don’t ever try to con me again.”
I got up and put my clothes on. I peeled a fin off the scratch and put it on the dresser.
I said, “I want you in the street at six tonight. Stay out of the bars. Work the area around Seventh and Apple.”
“I’ll come through sometime tonight. You be there when I show. If you get busted your name is Mary Jones. If you forget it I can’t raise you fast. Have some scratch whenever I show.”
I went down to the street. I got into my Ford. It roared to life. I drove toward Mama’s. I felt good. I wasn’t doing bad for a black boy just out of the joint.
I shuddered when I thought, what if I hadn’t kept my ears flapping back there in the joint? I would be a boot black or porter for the rest of my life in the high walled white world. My black whore was a cinch to get piles of white scratch from that forbidden white world.
Mama was pressing a young customer’s hair. She saw me get out of the Ford in front of the shop. She called me inside with a waggle of the pressing comb.
She said, “I have been worried. Where have you been all night? Where did you get the pretty little car? Did you find a job?”
I said, “A friend of mine let me borrow it. Maybe he’ll sell it to me. I stayed with him all night. He’s got a hundred-and-three fever. I’ll try to find a job tomorrow.”
She said, “There’s a roast in the oven. Shut the gas off and eat. I hope, Son, you haven’t been with Pepper.”
I looked down at the nut brown, shapely girl getting her hair pressed.
I said, “Pepper? She’s too old for me. I like young pretty brownskin girls. Pepper’s too yellow for me.”
The young broad flashed her eyes up at me. She smiled. I winked and ran my tongue over my lips. She dug it. She blushed. I put her on file.
I turned and walked to the sidewalk. I went upstairs and attacked the roast.
I took a long nap. At five-thirty P.M. I went down and got into the Ford. I drove to Seventh and Apple. I parked.
At five minutes to six I saw Phyllis coming toward me. She was a block away. I fired the engine and pulled away.
It sure looked like I had copped a whore. I went back at midnight. She looked mussed up and tired. She got into the car.
I said, “Well, how goes it Baby?”
She dug in her bosom and handed me a damp wad of bills. I counted it. It was a fin over half a C.
She said, “I’m tired and nasty, and my shoulder and ass ache. Can I stop now, Daddy? I would like a pastrami and coffee and a bath. You know how you kicked me last night”
I said, “Bitch, the track closes at two. I’ll take you to the sandwich and coffee. The bath will have to wait until the two o’clock breakdown. You needed your ass kicked.”
She sighed and said, “All right Daddy, anything you say.”
I drove her to an open-air kosher joint. She kept squirming on the hard wooden bench. Her butt must have been giving her fits. She was silent until she finished the sandwich and coffee.
Then she said, “Daddy, please don’t misunderstand me. I like a little slapping around before my man does it to me. Please don’t be as cruel as you were last night. You might kill me.”
I said, “Baby, never horse around with my scratch or try to play con on me. You blew my stack last night. You don’t have to worry so long as you never violate my rules. I will never hurt you more than to turn you on.”
I drove her back to the track. She got out of the car. As soon as she hit the sidewalk, two white tricks almost had a wreck pulling to the curb for her. She was a black money-tree all right.
The next day I took her to a notary. In ten minutes we walked out. She gave me the three bills back that I had paid her for the Ford.
It was legal now. She wasn’t beefing. Her bruises were healing and she was ripe for another “prisoner of love” scene. She finished the week in great humping style. I had a seven-bill bankroll.
Sunday evening I packed the runt’s bearskin and other things into the trunk of the Ford.
I parked around the corner from Mama’s. I went up to get my things together. Mama caught me packing. Tears flooded her eyes. She grabbed me and held me tightly against her. Her sobbing was strangling her.
She sobbed, “Son, don’t you love your Mama anymore? Where are you going? Why do you want to leave the nice home I fixed for you? I just know if you leave I’ll never see you again. We don’t have anybody but each other. Please don’t leave me. Don’t break my heart, Son.”
I heard her words. I was too far gone for her grief to register. I kept thinking about that freak, black money-tree in the Ford. I was eager to get to that fast pimp track in the city.
I said, “Mama, you know I love you. I got a fine clerk’s job in a men’s store in the city. Everybody in this town knows I’m an excon. I have to leave. I love you for making a home for me. You have been an angel to stick by me through those prison bits. You’ll see me again. I’ll be back to visit you. Honest, Mama, I will.”
I had to wrestle out of her arms. I picked up my bags and hit the stairs. When I reached the sidewalk, I looked up at the front window. Mama was gnawing her knuckles and crying her heart out. My shirt front was wet with her tears.
5
THE JUNGLE FAUNA
The yellow Ford ran like an escaped con. We got to Chicago in two hours. We checked into a hotel in a slum neighborhood, around 29th and State Streets. We took our stuff out of the Ford’s trunk.
It was ten P.M. I threw some water on my face. I told the runt to cool it. I went out and cruised around to case the city.
I turned the wipers on. A late March snowfall was starting. About a mile from the hotel I saw whores working the streets.
I parked and went into a bar in the heart of the action. It stank like a son-of-a-bitch. It was a junkie joint. I sat sipping on a bottle of suds; I couldn’t trust the glasses.
A cannon with a tired horse face took the vacant stool in my right. His stall took the one on the left. The stall had a yellow fox face. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him pinning me. He snapped his fingers. I jerked my head toward him.
He said, “Brother, you are lucky as a shit-house rat. What size benny and vine you wear? I’m Dress ’em up Red. Stand up brother so I can dig your size. I got a pile of crazy vi
nes dirt cheap.”
I stood up facing him. He ran his eyes up and down me. He unbuttoned my top coat. He pulled my vine’s lapels. He shoved me back toward Horseface. I stumbled, half turned to apologize to Horseface. There was a streaking blur behind me. It was so fast I couldn’t have sworn I had seen it. I found out later what it had been.
Horseface showed his choppers, got off the stool and trotted through the slammer. I faced the stall.
I said, “Jim, you got my size? Do you have any black mohairs?”
The stall smiled crookedly at me. He straightened my tie.
He said, “Slim, I got blue and black mohair, I can fit you like Saville Row in London. You want the blue too? The bite is two for fifty slats.”
I said, “Man, let’s go. I am ready to cop.”
His brow telescoped like I was going to open a door and catch his mother crapping in my hat. He started oozing toward the slammer.
He said, “Brother, I don’t know you well enough to trust you. I got to protect my stash. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if you went with me and copped? What if you came back later and beat me?”
“No, Slim, cool it. I’ll be back in twenty minutes with the vines. Here’s a slat. Get a taste on Dress ’em up Red.”
I ordered another beer. I was trying to stall that twenty minutes out. I sure needed those vines.
After an hour I figured Dress ’em up Red got busted or something.
I asked the fat broad tending bar where the swank joints were. She named a few, and gave me directions. My bill was eighty cents. I left a twenty-cent tip and walked to the Ford.
The wind wing on the street side gaped open. It had been jimmied. The car door had been unlocked through it.
I got in. I remembered the runt’s costume jewelry had been locked in the glove compartment. I unlocked it. Some slick bastard had slit the cardboard bottom from underneath. There wasn’t even an earring left.
I started the motor and turned the lights on. The snow had stopped falling. My headlights beamed on a squatting junkie whore with a Dracula face peeing in the gutter. She grinned toothlessly into the glare like maybe she was a starlet taking bows at a movie premiere.
I thundered the motor. She stood up wide legged. Her cat was a mangy red slash. She was holding up the bottom front of her dress with her rusty elbows. Her long black fingers were pulling her snare wide open to stop me.
As I shot by her, she shouted, “Come back here Nigger! It ain’t but a buck.”
I drove through the snow-slushed streets. The streetlights were dim halos in the murk.
I thought, “I can’t put the runt down in a spot like back there. I have to find somebody to give me a rundown.”
I drove a hundred blocks. Suddenly a huge red neon sign glittered through the gloom. It read “Devil’s Roost.” It was one of the joints the fat broad at the hype bar had told me about.
Gaudy Hogs and Lincolns were bumper to bumper. They pigged the parking spaces on the Roost’s side of the street. I parked across the street. I got out of the Ford and crossed the street.
I started walking down the sidewalk toward the Roost. “The Bird,” Eckstein and Sarah sent a crazy medley of soul sounds from the rib and chicken joint’s loudspeakers. The street was as busy as a black anthill. Studs and broads in sharp clothes paraded the block.
The hickory-smoked chicken and rib odors watered my mouth. I was at the point of stepping into one for a fast feast. The sign said “Creole Fat’s Rib Heaven.” I didn’t make it.
A long, stooped shadow stood in my way. He was chanting at me like a voodoo doctor. He pointed toward a storefront. Its window was blacked out with blue paint.
He sang, “Shootin’ ’em up inside, heavy and good. Scratch piled up like cords of wood. Geez you look lucky, Jack. Seven, eleven point right back. That’s sure you, Jack. Go in fast. Come out quicker. Lady Luck is a bitch but you can stick her.”
His topcoat was a threadbare green-checked antique. The tops of his shabby black shoes had criss-cross holes snipped out. His bulging corns were humps pressing through the vents. He stank like a bootlegger’s garbage. There was something ghostly familiar in the banana yellow, Basset-Hound face.
I said, “Jim, I’m not in the mood to whale the craps. Say, don’t I know you?”
His transient eyes jerked their bags. They moved over my shoulder, searching down the sidewalk for a fresh prospect. His bald head glistened like a tiny yellow lake under the street lamp.
He said, “Jack, I can’t put a pistol on you. I can’t force you to go inside and collect your scratch. Kid, you too young to know me. You might a heard of me. I’m Pretty Preston. I gave the whores blues in the night when I was pimping at my peak. Who are you?”
His name triggered my clear memory of him. He had driven a gleaming black La Salle car. I had shined his shoes back in the pressing shop days.
Then he had been sleek and handsome like a yellow Valentino. I remembered his diamonds. They had winked and sparkled brightly on his fingers, in his shirt cuffs, even on his shirt front.
I thought, “Could this really be the same dandy? What had happened to him?”
I said, “Preston, I know you. I’m the kid who used to shine your Stacy’s back on Main Street. Remember me? I’m pimping myself now. You sure pimped up a storm when I was a kid. What happened? Why are you steering for this craps joint?”
He had a dreamy, far-away look in his dull brown eyes. He was probably remembering his long ago flashy pimp days. He sighed and put his arms around my shoulders. I walked with him through the door of the craps trap.
The raw stink of gamblers’ sweat punched up into my nose. We sat on a battered sofa in the almost dark front of the joint. Through a partition I could hear the tinkle of silver coins. I heard the flat cackle of the bone dice laughing at the cursing shooters begging for a natural.
He said, “Sure, Kid, I remember you. Christ, you got tall. I gotta be getting old. What’s your name? Kid, I been getting funky breaks since I came to this raggedy city twelve years ago. I’m just steering for a pal who runs the joint.
“Hell he needs me more than I need him. I’m gonna catch a hot number, or a wild daily double. Old Preston’s name will ring again. How many girls you got?”
I said, “Slim Lancaster, but they call me Young Blood. Blood for short. I only got one now, but with all the whores here I’ll have bookoos in a month. I just got in town tonight. I want to put my girl to work. Give me a rundown on some streets after I dash next door for a slab of ribs. I haven’t dirtied a plate since noon. Anything I can get you?”
He said, “Blood, if you must do something, get me a half-pint of Old Taylor at the corner liquor store. I’ll rundown for you, but you ain’t going to like my tail-end rundown at all.”
It felt good to step out into the fresh, chilly air. I stopped in the rib joint and put my order in. I saw the front of the Roost on my way to the corner.
I tiptoed and peeked through the bottom of the window blind. The joint was jumping. Pimps, whores, and white men crowded the circular bar.
Some skinny joker with scald burns on his face was fronting a combo. He tried to ape the Birds phrasing and tone. His tan face had turned black. He was choking on his horn.
Mixed couples danced to “Stomping at the Savoy” on a carpetsized dance floor in the rear. Silk broads itching for forbidden fruit sat in booths lining the walls.
Their faces glowed starkly in the red dimness. Their long hair flopped around their shoulders as they threw their heads back. They laughed drunkenly with their black lovers.
I took my peepers out of the slot. I walked toward the corner to cop the bottle for Preston. I made a skull note to pop into the Roost after Preston’s rundown.
I was fifty feet from the corner when I saw him. He was in the center of a small crowd. His high crown white hat was bobbing a foot above it. He was a nut brown giant.
As I drew closer I could see his snow white teeth. His heavy lips were drawn back in a snarl. His wide shoulders j
iggled. He was stomping on something. It was like maybe he was a sharply togged fire dancer or maybe a dapper grape crusher from Sicily.
I squeezed through the crowd for a ringside view. He was grunting. His labor was yanking the sweat out of him. The crowd stood tittering and excited like a Salem mob watching the execution of a witch.
The witch was black. She had the slant eyes and doll features of a Geisha girl.
The chill breeze whipped back the bottom of his benny. The giant’s thigh muscles rippled inside the pants leg of his two-hundred-dollar vine.
Again and again he slammed his size-thirteen shoe down on the witch’s belly and chest. She was out cold. Her jaw hinge was awry and red frothy bubbles bunched at the corners of her crooked mouth.
At last he scooped her from the pavement. She looked like an infant in his arms. His eyes were strangely damp. He wedged through the crowd to a purple Hog at the curb. He looked down into her unconscious face.
He muttered, “Baby, why, why do you make me do you like this? Why don’t you hump and stop lushing and bullshitting with the tricks?”
Still holding her tenderly, he stooped and opened the front door of the Hog. He placed her on the front seat. He shut the door and walked around the Hog to the driver’s side. He got in and the Hog roared away into the night.
The crowd was scattering. I turned to a fellow about my age. His eyes were glazed. He was sucking a stick of gangster.
I said, “That stud would have gotten busted sure as Hell if the heat had made the scene.”
He stepped back and looked at me like I was fresh in town from a monastery in Tibet.
He said, “You must be that square, Rip Van Winkle, I heard about. He’s heat. He’s vice heat. They call him Poison. He’s got nine whores. He’s a pimp. That broad is one of ’em. She got drunk with a trick.”
I went into the liquor store. It was five-after-twelve. I ordered the half pint. The clerk put it on the counter. I swung my topcoat away to get my hide in my hip pocket. I had two hundred in fives and tens in it. I had five C notes pinned to my shorts in a tobacco sack between my legs.