She squeezed tightly against me. She was in a trance looking up at me.
She chanted along with me. “From this moment I belong to Blood. I am his whore. I will do everything he tells me. I won’t ever fuck with his scratch. I will hump my heart out every night. I’ve gotta make a bill a night.”
She slept with Chris that night. After the first week I knew she was the perfect partner for Chris.
Sweet was right. Chris and Jo Ann ran Phyllis and Ophelia into a panting lather in the street. I started wanting that fifth whore.
Leroy got a year for the beating he gave Papa Tony.
About six months later Top and I were at the Roost bar. A loudmouth joker beside me was arguing with a stud on his other side. I had my back to him, facing Top.
Top and I had been shooting stuff for several hours in his pad. I was so frosted with cocaine I felt embalmed. It was maybe like I was at the Roost and I really wasn’t. I had raised my glass of Coke to my jib. I was being fascinated by the tiny bubbles popping inside the glass.
I was trying to count them before they all popped away.
I heard an explosion behind me. My skull was numb. It was maybe like the noise behind me happened a year ago on an ice floe in the Arctic somewhere.
I saw a light gray lid that stirred a faint memory. It wobbled across the log and stopped in front of where Top had been.
I thought, “That’s a Knox forty. I had one once that color.”
That crazy joker Top was on the floor between the log and his stool. His eyes were wide in fear. He was looking up at me like he thought I had gone bats and was going to croak him. I laughed at him.
I heard running feet behind me. I looked over my shoulder. The joker who had been arguing with Loud Mouth was running through the door with a rod in his hand.
I looked behind me. Loud Mouth was on his back, out cold. He had a long, red gouge across his temple. Some of the frost melted away in my skull.
The bullet that grazed Loud Mouth had torn my lid off. The joint was still. Top was standing and dusting himself off. The joint had emptied. I reached over and picked my lid off the bar.
I took a casual look at the entrance, exit holes in the top of the crown. I stuck it on my head. Top was staring at me. I tilted my glass and drained it. I turned to Top. Loud Mouth was groaning and coming to on the floor.
I said, “Jack, let’s get outta here before the rollers come. I ain’t got time for a quiz. You know Top, if my skull had been pointed, I’da had a bad break.”
Top followed me out the door. We got into his Hog in front of the Roost. Top was still staring at me. His jib was gaping.
He said, “Kid, I saw it but I don’t believe it. I’ve seen some cool studs in my time, but I ain’t never seen nothing to equal that.
“Kid, you were cold in there, icy; icy, like an iceberg. Kid, I got it. You’re getting to be a good young pimp. All good pimps got monikers. I’m gonna hang one on you.
“Kid you’ve outgrown ‘Young Blood’ as a moniker. How about ‘Iceberg Slim’? Kid, it’s a beautiful fit. ‘Iceberg Slim,’ how about it, and I thought it up. Cocaine sure chills you. I guess you picked the right high for you.”
14. THE MISTAKE
By the end of the year I had copped a new thirty-nine Hog. I had blown Jo Ann ninety days after I got her. She was too possessive and she didn’t really have the guts for a long stretch in the street.
I didn’t cry when she left. While I had her, Chris kept her humping. I was thousands ahead of her when she slipped away from Chris in the street.
A week later I copped a young whore that was a whiz in the street and was hip to boosting. She went ape over Chris. She’d go downtown and come home with shopping bags loaded with fine dresses and underclothes for herself and her sisters.
Later she hipped Chris to boosting. I let them go down together with a stud who drove for them. They filled my closet with beautiful vines.
Top got five years on a narcotics rap. The federal heat tricked him into a four-piece sale to an undercover agent. I sure missed him. I hung out at Sweet’s more than ever.
My name was ringing. The moniker Top hung on me stuck. Everybody was calling me Iceberg, even Sweet. Only I and the several peddlers I copped from knew that my icy front was really backed by the freezing cocaine I snorted and banged every day.
I pimped strictly by the book for the next three years. I traded in a Hog each year. I never had less than five girls in the family.
I moved out of Top’s building and let the family stay there. I took a suite in a swank midtown hotel. I had the privacy, the jewelry, and all the flash and glamour of a successful pimp.
I had managed to solve the fast track. I was fast becoming one of its legends.
Top had gotten out. He was in Seattle with relatives serving out his short parole paper. Only one of his women stuck with him. The rest got in the wind when he fell.
The runt was still bottom woman. Ophelia was still hung up on her. Chris was proving every day she had the qualities for a bottom woman.
I noticed the runt was acting like she might be wearing thin fast. The other two whores I had had been stable mates. I copped them when their pimp shot an overdose of H.
I was at Sweet’s when Pearl Harbor was bombed. I had stayed all night. I was still in bed.
The friendly brown snake had brought my breakfast. I was just finishing when Sweet walked into the bedroom. He sat down on the side of the bed.
He said, “’Berg, Uncle Sam just got his throat cut. The Slant Eyes just put the torch to Pearl Harbor. Whores gonna make more scratch now than ever before. ’Berg I got a feeling this Second World War is gonna hurt the pimp game in the long run.”
I said, “Sweet, how do you figure that?”
He said, “You know a whore ain’t nothing but a ex-square. A good pimp wears out a lot of whores in his lifetime. If there ain’t no big pool of squares for the pimps to turn out, then stables gotta get smaller.
“The defense plants are gonna claim thousands of young potential whores. Those square bitches are gonna get those pay checks. They’ll get shitty independent. A pimp can’t turn them out.
“The older square broads are going into the plants too. Thousands of them got teenage daughters. They’ll have the scratch to fill the bellies of those young bitches. They’ll put nice clothes on their backs. Why the hell should they whore for a pimp. They can pimp on Mama.
“The worse thing is, those plants are inviting whores with strict pimps to split and square up. If the war lasts a long time, pimps will have to turn pussy to hold a whore.
“’Berg, ain’t but one real Heaven for a pimp. He’s in it when there’s a big pool of raggedy, hungry young bitches.”
The war was raging. The defense plants were grinding out war goods around the clock. Thousands of young and old broads were slaving in them.
As far as I was concerned, the pool was still full of fine fish. I had three original girls and three new cops.
It was December, nineteen-forty-four. Sweet was still pimping good for an old man. He was down to seven women, but this was great pimping for a stud his age. Top had settled out West.
I had held Chris, Ophelia, and the runt a long time. Since thirty-eight I had copped and blown sixty to seventy whores and turnouts.
The turn-over in turnouts was big. Some of them would hump for a month and split. Some a week. Others a couple hours before they cut out. Sweet had been so right years ago. The pimp game was sure “cop and
