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.
