clean before you cop.”
I forgot about my breakfast. I went out and got into the Ford. I drove to the drugstore and got ointments and salves.
I called Sweet and told him the runt stood up. He reminded me to send that scratch to myself as soon as possible. I went back to the Haven. I sent Silas for hot food. I dressed her wounds. They sure looked bad.
Those “go” pills she had taken died. She fell asleep while I was doctoring her back. I ate and took a nap. By the end of the week, I felt like a pimp. I had an eight-bill bankroll not counting the porker silver.
One night about nine I got into the Ford. I drove less than a hundred miles to Terre Haute a small whore- town. I sent five bills to myself at the Haven. I used Christine as the broad’s name.
Top was back in town so I stopped on the way home and copped cocaine, yellows, and bennies. The runt came in that morning around four. She had a hundred-and-five slats. She was on her way to stardom. We were in bed when I cracked on her.
I said, “Baby, I think our luck is changing all around. I’m pretty sure Daddy’s copped another whore. I met her in a bar about a week ago.
“It’s a small world all right. She said she just moved out of this joint not long ago. She went wild over me. She’s a fine young bitch. She begged me to go to Terre Haute with her. She’s working a fast house up there. I told her I’d run up there after she sent her first week’s scratch. She gave me her phone number up there. I gave her my address.
“Tonight I called up there. I asked her about my scratch. She told me five bills were on the way. Baby, if she’s jiving we ain’t hurt. If she sends it and it’s respectable scratch your daddy’s got a small stable.”
She said, “Is she a white bitch? What does the bitch look like?”
I said, “Bitch, don’t get shitty now. What’s wrong with a white broad helping two spades? She’s a boot. She looks like what she is. A scratch-getting fine bitch in love with your man at first sight.”
It was a little after noon when the messenger brought the scratch notice. The runt went to the door and brought him into the bedroom.
I opened it. The office was a half-mile away. I asked the runt if she’d like some air. She was eager to go.
It was a good thing I had gotten that driver’s license. I had to go through a long routine. They even made me crack the amount I was expecting. I got the cash.
The runt was silent on the way home. Sweet sure knew the angles to put pressure on a whore’s skull. In the next month I made two more trips to Terre Haute. Twice I went across town and stayed in a hotel over night until around noon. I was conning the runt I was visiting her stable mate.
The runt was really humping. She was averaging no less than a bill a night. Two months after the hanger whipping I took a furnished three-bedroom vacancy in Top’s building. It was a gold-andred dream after the Haven. The runt really freaked this pad off. I guess she felt at home at last. It was on the sixth floor.
I copped six two-hundred-dollar vines at sixty slats a piece. The booster lived on the second floor beneath me. The same week Top cut me into a stud who had a black LaSalle car in mint condition.
He was out on an appeal bond and his lip wired him he was joint bound. I gave the stud four bills in his mitt. I paid off the last two notes on the wheels.
I had two cars. I gave the runt her Ford back. She could cover and get down in a wider area.
I started hanging around out at Sweet’s pad, sucking up the pimp game. I got home from Sweet’s one morning around five. I heard the runt rapping to someone in one of the bedrooms. I pushed the door open. The runt was in bed with a tall, pretty brown-skin broad. She looked fifteen. They were naked. They stopped kissing and looked at me.
The runt said, “Daddy this is Ophelia. I told you about her in the Haven. Her old man got one-to-three in the joint for burglary. She wants to join our family. Can she?”
I said, “Ophelia, if you’re not full of shit and you obey my rules you’re welcome. Have you bitches been in the streets working tonight? I hope you just got in that bed to freak off. Phyllis, get outta that bed and get my double- action scratch.”
The runt went into the closet and brought me a roll of bills.
She said, “A bill of this I made.”
I fast counted a yard and seventy-five slats. I took off my clothes and got between them. I spent an hour quizzing Ophelia and running down my rules. She was eighteen. The circus started. I was circus master. I had become too much pimp to freak off with a new package. They were the performers. She had put only six bits in my pocket. How cheaply did she get me if she blew tomorrow.
It was the night before my twentieth birthday in August. I had gone to the West Side to cop some dresses for Phyllis and Ophelia. I had left the booster’s pad. I was loading the dozen or so pieces in the trunk of the LaSalle. I slammed the trunk lid shut and locked it.
I heard screaming and smashing sounds coming from a cabaret just down the street. I saw a hatless, gray- haired man come staggering to the sidewalk. He was holding his head. The side of his head looked shiny. I walked down the sidewalk toward him.
He was bleeding from a deep cut in his head. He was moaning and trying to stop the flow of blood with his hands. A dark thin joker ran out behind the old man. I saw something gleam in his hand as he raised his arm again and again.
I moved closer. The thin joker was savagely pistol whipping the old stud. He was beaten to his knees. He looked like someone had painted his face red.
The thin joker turned his face. The light coming from the open door of the cabaret shone on it. It was Chris’ Leroy beating the old man. Twenty customers had come out. They formed a circle around the massacre. I moved to the outside of the circle.
Then I saw Chris standing on the other side of the circle. She was screaming and tugging at Leroy’s pistol arm. Leroy had gone insane.
I moved around the circle closer to Chris. I stood behind her. I saw greasy stains on the back of her dress collar. Her hair looked frowsy and dull. Scarface was sure taking her to the dogs. I heard the screech of brakes. I saw two huge white rollers muscle through the crowd. Leroy was astraddle the unconscious figure, still pounding his pistol against it.
They shoved Chris backward. One of them put an armlock on Leroy’s gun arm and took the pistol. The other vised his neck in a strangle hold. They dragged him to the prowl car and threw him into the back seat.
A short middle-aged white broad stepped to the side of the fallen figure. She was wringing her hands. She was wearing a bar apron. She stooped and stroked the figure’s brow.
One of them got on the front seat. He turned sideways guarding Leroy. He put a microphone to his lips. He was calling an ambulance, no doubt. The other roller came back and stopped beside the white woman.
He said, “Anybody you know?”
She sobbed. “Yes, he’s my father-in-law.”
He said, “What happened?”
She said, “Everybody knows Papa Tony loves to kid around the girls. He’s got a heart as big as New York. Everybody loves and understands him. Papa Tony came in the bar. He started kissing the cheek of all the girls at the bar.
“He kissed that one behind you. That maniac man of hers stopped singing. He leaped off the stage. He started to beat poor Papa Tony with his pistol. It’s the first night the maniac has worked for my husband. If my husband, Vince, had been here that jerk’s brains would splatter the sidewalk.”
The roller looked back at Chris. He started making notes in a small book. I knew he’d quiz her after he got the full picture. I touched Chris lightly on the shoulder. She turned and looked up at me. She got weak in the knees. She slumped against me. I took her arm and steered her down the sidewalk. I heard the distant whine of an ambulance siren.
I said, “Chris, you had better split. That’s a white man Leroy beat up. The white folks are going to cross you into it. After all you’re the reason he nipped.”
We got into the La Salle. I moved it down the street toward the prowl car. I put on the brakes. A couple came from in front of the prowl car. They crossed the street in front of me. I had stopped beside the prowl car. Chris could have reached out and touched it.
