He said, “Ah, ’Berg, I hope you haven’t crossed that dizzy bastard. He croaked a stud in Lewisburg. They hung fifty on him. He’s a heist man. You better watch him close. He’s a cinch to make the Rock or loony bin.”
It was a week later just after the cellhouse filed out to the shops. The cellhouse screw had signaled “sick call.” I was standing in the back of the cellhouse on the flag. I was lighting a cigarette to smoke before I started mopping and waxing the flag.
Somewhere above me an excited voice shouted, “Look out, ’Berg.”
I looked up and chilled. A plummeting shadow flashed like black lightning in my eyes. I heard a whooshing whistle as it scraped gently against the cloth of my shirt at the tip of my shoulder. A dozen cymbals clashed as it grenaded against the flagstone at my side. I looked down. A steel mop wringer lay in three pieces. There was a Rorschach crater in the flagstone. Its outline was like a headshrinker’s blot.
I stared at it and idly wondered what the prison head-shrinker could make of it. He was a slick joker. Months ago he had told me, “Pimps have deep mother hatred and severe guilt feelings.”
I looked up. It wouldn’t take a head-shrinker to figure this one. The rat-faced heist man was grinning down at me. He was on his gallery on the fourth tier near the ceiling. He had stayed for “sick call” to bomb my skull off. The crater symbol was easy. Rat-face hated pimps without guilt feelings tied in. That night I took a pack of butts to the con who had screamed out the warning to me.
The nutty bomber went to solitary. Two weeks later he tried to gut a con with a shiv made from a file. They shipped him to the Rock. I was ecstatic to see him go.
During my bit I had read the second cellhouse full of books. I had read mountains of books on psychiatry, psychology, and the psychoneuroses. I couldn’t have done a smarter thing. I’d have to be my own head-shrinker when the white folks entombed me for a year in that steel casket in the future.
I got all my good time. I was released in the early spring of nineteen-forty-seven. I stopped off at Mama’s for a week. Then I went back to the fast track.
I had sixty slats and the joint vine on my back. The clothes I’d bought while on bail were with Chris. Maybe her pullman porter was my size. Anyway, I wasn’t going to do a “Dick Tracy” for a few used vines.
Sweet was still in the penthouse. He had blown down to only three whores. Poison had made a bad pimping blunder. He had turned out a white square and put his foot in her ass. It was the last straw for the downtown brass. They bounced him off the force. He had one whore. He bird-dogged her. He took his scratch off after every trick like a Chili Pimp.
I rented a pad by the week. It was in the same slum district where the flunky had beat me for my roll and clothes. I had no flash and glamour, no pimp front. I was just another pimp down on his luck. I was starving for a whore.
In a pimp’s life, yesterday means nothing. It’s how you are doing today. A pimp’s fame is as fleeting as an icicle under a blow-torch. The young fine whores are wild to hump for a pimp in the chips. A pimp in bad shape can’t get the time of day from them. A pimp’s wardrobe has to be spectacular. His wheels must be expensive and sparkling new. I had to get the gaudy tools to start pimping again.
17. TRYING A NEW GAME
I had three choices. I could cop a piece of stuff on consignment from a contact I had made in the joint. I could peddle it retail and get nine or ten grand in weeks. I could take a dog, a broken-down whore with trillions of mileage on her. Maybe I could keep my foot in her ass and grind up a bankroll.
I decided to take the third out. Do a slick fast hustle. I met a pimp named Red Eye in a junkie joint. He had just finished a state bit the week before. He was whoreless like me and itching to pimp again. We were crying on each other’s shoulder at the bar.
He said, “Ice, ain’t it a bitch? No matter how much pimp a stud is, these dizzy bitches demand he’s got a front. Now we ain’t hustlers, but I got an idea. Ice, you’re a helluva actor and you can rap good as a con man. I know a stud who’s hip to every smack peddler and fence on the West Side. I got a rod and a real copper’s shield.
“All we need is a Short and a third stud to drive. Neither one of us is well known over there. Besides, there’s a flock of youngsters dealing now who were squares when we left the track. I’m a rollertype stud. With the weight you put on in the joint you’d make a perfect copper.
“Ice, if we only knock over three of ’em, we split maybe ten to fifteen G’s between us. Our finger man is a junkie punk. We give him and the driver peanuts. Ice, those forty-seven Hogs are a pimp’s dream. I gotta have one. Whatta you say? Are you in?”
I said, “Red Eye, I’ll go for it. I sure as hell ain’t going to put a mop in my hand out here. I don’t have wheels, but I’ve got a little scratch. I’ll spring to rent a short. You know someone with one? How about a driver?”
He said, “Ice, lay a double saw on me to cop a short. I know a stud for the driver. Meet me right here in this joint tomorrow night at nine. We can take off our first mark.”
I said, “Don’t crack my name to that driver. Call me Tom, Frank, anything.”
I didn’t get two-hours sleep that night. It worried me to be part of a hustle that required a rod.
I thought, “Maybe I’d better back out. I could maybe find a young hash-slinger in a greasy spoon. I could turn her out in a hurry. She’d be a long shot for stardom. At least she’d make enough scratch for chump expenses.
“You can’t start pimping with a turnout. It never works out. A pimp with no whore and no bankroll is a sucker to try the turnout on a mulish square broad. No, I guess the Red Eye deal is all I got.”
Red Eye got to the joint at ten-thirty. The driver was a huge stud with a rapper like a girl’s. I noticed his big meat-hooks shaking on the steering wheel on our way to the West Side. Red Eye ran down our first mark. His light-maroon eyes were whirling. He had a skull full of H.
He said, “Paul, our first mark is a bird’s nest on the ground. It’s a broad. The finger showed her to me last night. She and her old man got the best smack on the West Side. It’s so good studs from all over town are rushing to cop every night.
“He and the broad deal out of a bar three blocks from their pad. They deal mostly in eights and sixteenths. On a weekend night like this one they take off maybe five G’s. The stud is got a rep as a fast-rod joker. He ain’t got no direct syndicate connections as far as I know.
“We ain’t got to worry about him tonight. He’s in New York copping a supply. The broad will leave the bar around midnight loaded with scratch. She’ll have a few packs of smack on her too for the evidence to shake her. Her real name is Mavis Sims.
“She’s gonna go to her short parked behind the bar. She ain’t afraid of being heisted. Everybody is scared shitless of her old man. She’s got a small rod strapped to her thigh. She ain’t going to pull it on the police though. That’s us, strange rollers from downtown. We gotta move fast on her when she bits that lot behind the bar. She’s a slick bitch. We gotta be real rollers. We can’t wake her up we’re fakes. She’s a strong bitch, I’d have to blow a hole in her if she reached for her rod.
“There will be a pack of hard studs in the bar. They would love to croak us on that lot to please her old man. We gotta move her fast outta the neighborhood to play her outta the scratch. We gotta be careful the rollers don’t join our party. Her old man is doing a lot of greasing in the district.
“Perry is gonna park our short in the street beside the lot. We arrest the broad and you play on her while Perry drives. I ain’t going to rap. Ice, after we cop her it’s up to you for the shake. You got to convince her.”
Perry was really nervous. He pulled into the curb next to the bar lot. His skull was jiggling on his bull neck like he had Parkinson shakes. I was silent.
Red Eye’s rundown had me wondering how it shaped up as a bird’s nest to him. It looked like maybe a bird’s nest for Dillinger. If the mark hadn’t been a broad I’d have split and got on an El train.
I wondered if she’d seen me before I went to the joint. What if she made me right away as Iceberg and plugged me in the skull. Her old man might have outfit friends. If he did we’d be found in an alley with our balls rammed down our throats. We were standing in the shadows ten feet from the broad’s short.
I said, “Red, I better take the rod. When we step out on her, shine the flashlight right in her eyes.”
