worse.
It had been two weeks since I saw Top. I decided to call him. Maybe he could hip me to a new spot to work for runt. My bankroll was thin. At ten A.M. I called Top. One of his broads said he was out of town. He wouldn’t be back for a week.
I got a sudden thought. I asked her if she knew Sweet’s phone number. She said she did, but she’d have to call and find out if Sweet wanted me to have it. She called back in ten minutes and gave it to me. I called him. He answered. He was in a good mood.
He said, “Well, whatta you know, if it ain’t grinning Slim. You still got that one whore or have you grinned yourself whoreless?”
I looked over at the runt. She was still asleep. She hadn’t been in the street for three days. Her period had run five days. She claimed she was too weak and sick to go out. I had given her a terrible whipping the night before. I needed advice badly.
I said, “Sweet, my bitch is falling apart. She’s playing dead. If you don’t pull my coat I’m gonna starve to death. You gotta help me Sweet.”
He said, “Nigger, you ain’t cracking to nick me for scratch are you? I don’t loan my scratch to suckers who got whores and can’t pimp on ’em. I ain’t gonna support you and that lazy bitch.”
I said, “No Sweet I don’t want scratch. I want you to run the game through my skull. I got a tiny bit of scratch. I gotta get my coat pulled before I tap out.”
He said, “You got wheels? You know how to get out here? Now remember you get a roust out here, crack my name. Don’t repeat your boner.”
I said, “Yeah, I’m driving. I think I can find you pad. When should I come out there?”
He said, “Quick as you can get here. You get here and grin in my face, I’m gonna throw you over the patio wall.
“Say kid, Peaches and me got a taste for some of that barbecued chicken down there in Hell. Bring one with you when you come.”
He hung up. My ticker was pounding like Chris had walked in the door naked with a million dollars. I shook the runt. She opened her eyes. I stood over her.
I said, “Bitch, you better be in the street when I get back.”
She said, “You can’t do anything but kill me. I’m ready to die. I don’t care what you do to me. I’m sick.”
I said, “All right bitch, just hip me where you want your black stinking ass shipped.”
I got in the Ford. I realized I hadn’t put on a tie. I didn’t have a lid. I looked into the rear-view mirror. I sure looked scroungy. Maybe he’d be alone. Then I remembered the lobby. What the hell did it matter.
I drove for about fifteen minutes before I saw a clean open barbeque joint. A black stud in a tall white cap was stabbing chickens onto a turning spit in the window. I went in. I came out with two birds. Peaches might be really hungry for barbequed chicken. It made solid sense to brown-nose Miss Peaches.
After making several wrong turns I found Sweet’s building. I parked the Ford in almost the same spot at the curb where Satan had sapped me a month ago. A young white stud in a monkey suit was out in front. Crusader Sweet was doing his bit to reverse the social order.
I went to the desk in the lobby. I felt like a tramp as I waited for the pass. I got on the elevator. A different broad was at the controls. The spicy scent of the chicken wiggled her nose. She wasn’t as pretty as the ripe- smelling broad. She sure kept her crotch from advertising. Maybe it was just that she didn’t get heavy action.
I stepped from the cage. The friendly brown snake wasn’t at his station to flop his mop for me. I figured it was his off day. The odds were a hundred to one he was in the sack somewhere with a six-foot blonde.
She was probably a little like the blonde coming up from the pit on her way to the cage. It was Mimi. She flicked her green eyes across my face. They were cold as a frozen French lake. She passed me. She looked like a fancy French pastry in her sable stole. I wondered how I got the stupid courage to turn down her freak off.
I walked to the doorway of the pit. The stone broad was still in her squirting squat. Sweet was sitting on the couch. Miss Peaches beside him saw me first. She bounded across the carpet. I felt her choppers graze my hand. She snatched the bag of chicken. She flung it on the alabaster topped cocktail table in front of Sweet.
Sweet looked at me. I tightened my face into a solemn grim mask. I stepped down and walked toward him. He was wearing only a pair of polka-dot shorts. In daylight I noticed a mole on the broad in the picture over the couch.
I said, “Hello Mr. Jones. I hope those birds are still warm.”
He said, “Kid, your map sure looks like that bullshit bitch you got is been shooting you through hot grease. I like that look you got today. Maybe you’re getting hip the pimp game ain’t for grinning jackasses.
“Get over here and sit on this couch. While baby and me eat our barbeque, rundown you and your whore. I wanta know where and how you copped her. Tell me everything you can remember about her and what’s happened since you copped her. Rundown your whole life as far back as you remember. It don’t matter which is first.”
I ran down my life for him. Then I ran down from the night I met the runt until the moment I left the Haven. It took maybe forty-five minutes. I even described the runt in detail.
Sweet and his greedy girl-friend had devoured both birds down to the bare bones. Sweet was wiping Miss Peaches’ whiskers with a paper napkin. She put her head in his lap. She was jammed against my thigh. Sweet leaned back on the couch. He put his bare feet on the top of the cocktail table.
He said, “Sweetheart, you’re black like me. I love you. You got the hate to pimp. You a lucky Nigger to get your coat pulled by me. You flap your horns and remember what I’m gonna spiel to you.
“There are thousands of Niggers in this country who think they’re pimps. The pussy-weak white pimps ain’t worth mentioning. Don’t none of them pimp by the book. They ain’t even heard about it. If they was black, they’d starve stiff.
“There ain’t more than six of ’em who are hip to and pimp by the book. You won’t find it in the square-Nigger or white history books. The truth is that book was written in the skulls of proud slick Niggers freed from slavery. They wasn’t lazy. They was puking sick of picking white man’s cotton and kissing his nasty ass. The slave days stuck in their skulls. They went to the cities. They got hip fast.
“The conning bastard white man hadn’t freed the Niggers. The cities was like the plantations down South. Jeffing Uncle Toms still did all the white man’s hard and filthy work.
“Those slick Nigger heroes bawled like crumb crushers. They saw the white man just like on the plantations still ramming it into the finest black broads.
“The broads were stupid squares. They still freaked for free with the white man. They wasn’t hip to the scratch in their hot black asses.
“Those first Nigger pimps started hipping the dumb bitches to the gold mines between their legs. They hipped them to stick their mitts out for the white man’s scratch. The first Nigger pimps and sure-shot gamblers was the only Nigger big shots in the country.
“They wore fine threads and had blooded horses. Those pimps was black geniuses. They wrote that skull book on pimping. Even now if it wasn’t for that frantic army of white tricks, Nigger pimps would starve to death.
“Greenie, the white man has been pig-greedy for Nigger broads ever since his first whiff of black pussy. Black whores con themselves the only reason he sniffs his way to ’em is white broads ain’t got what it takes to please him.
“I’m hip he’s got two other secret sick reasons. White women ain’t hip to his secret reasons. The dumb white broads ain’t even hip to why he locks all Niggers inside tight stockades. He’d love it if the Nigger broads wasn’t locked in there. The white man is scared shitless. He don’t want them humping bucks coming out there in the white world rubbing their bellies against those soft white bellies.
“That’s the real reason for keeping all the Niggers locked up. To show you how sick in the head he is, he thinks black broads are dirt beneath his feet. His balls will bust if he don’t sneak through that stockade, to those half-savage, less than human, black broads.
“You know, Greenie, why he’s gotta come to ’em? The silly sick bastard is like a whore that needs and loves punishment. He’s a joke with scratch in his mitt. As great as he thinks he is, he can’t keep his beak and swipe outta the stink of a black ass.
“He wallows and stains himself. The poor freak’s joy is in his suffering. The chump believes he’s done something dirty to himself. He slips back into his white world. He goes on conning himself he’s God and Niggers are
