She was walking fast when she came into the lot. Her light blue chiffon dress was billowing in the April breeze. She was walking wide-legged like a whore after a long night in a two-dollar house.
My legs were trembling like a stud dog’s hung up in a bitch. I looked down at the badge pinned to the wallet in my palm. It glittered like molten silver in the moonlight. The thirty-two pistol in my right hand weighed a sweaty ton.
She was twirling a key ring. In the utter silence the clinking sounded like the U.S. Marshal’s handcuffs. She had her hands on the door handle. I stepped out of the shadows. Red Eye was behind me. I wondered if she could hear my ticker hammering. Red Eye put the light in her face. Her yellow forehead wrinkled in surprise. Her sexy jib flapped open. I grabbed her wrist and tried to crush it.
I roared, “Police! What’s your name and why are you sneaking around back here?”
She stammered, “Gloria Jones, and I was coming to my car. I always park it here. Now get out of the way. I’m going home. The captain of this district is a personal friend of my husband’s.”
Red Eye had turned off the flashlight and moved behind her. She was looking down at the badge. She was trying to yank her wrist free.
I said in a low heavy voice, “You lying dope-peddling bitch. Your real moniker is Mavis Sims. We’re from downtown. Your old man’s no pal of ours. We’re gonna bust you, bitch. I’ll lay odds we’ve caught you dirty. Come on bitch, before we get rough. Anything I hate it’s a stinking smack dealer.”
We hurled her into the back seat of our short. Red got in beside her. I was up front with Perry. I turned facing the rear seat. There was silence as Perry drove out of the district toward central headquarters. Miss Sims was squirming in the seat. Her right hand was out of sight behind her. She was getting very jerky. I remembered that rod she was carrying. I started the shake.
I said, “Al, this suspect is acting peculiarly. Perhaps you’d better pull over. She might have concealed some evidence behind the seat.”
He pulled over. Red moved toward her. She slid to the window on the other side.
She said, “Officers, I’m clean. It’s worth fifty apiece to cut me loose. If you bust me, I’ll be out in an hour. Take me back to the bar. I can get the hundred and fifty from the bar owner.”
I said, “No dice, sister. We got specific orders to bring you in. Now don’t make him slap a broad around. He’s gonna frisk you. He don’t have to wait for a matron to do it downtown. It’s proper if he thinks you’re armed and we’re in danger.”
He patted the inside of her thighs. It was there, a twenty-two automatic jammed under the top of her stocking. He took it out and shoved it in his pocket, searched her bosom, purse, shoes, and hair. She was sure clean except for the rod.
I felt like a real chump. All this trouble for nothing. He was scratching his chin. The junkie punk had put a bum finger on the broad.
I was at the point of shoving her out. Then it struck me. Where did my street whores hide their scratch? In the cat! In the cat, where else? The clincher was this broad’s wide-legged walk. I had noticed it on the lot. She was leaning forward staring at Perry’s face.
I said, “Joe, it’s gotta be up her cat. Bitch, stretch out and put your legs across his lap.”
She said, “The hell I will. You phony Niggers ain’t rollers. That big one at the wheel used to bounce at Mario’s.”
She was wise. The double saw I gave Red Eye had tapped me out. We had to know if she had treasure up her cat.
I wondered how he’d handle it. I didn’t wonder long. He turned brute. He punched her hard in the nose. It was like he had cut her throat. Blood splattered over the front of her dress. I felt a light spray on my face.
She opened her mouth to scream. He smothered it with a terrible slam to the gut. She went limp. He pulled her across him. He darted his paw between her legs.
When he brought his mitt out it made a kissing sound. He had a long shiny plastic tube between his index and middle fingers. It stank like rotten fish.
The broad was moaning and holding both hands to her nose. He unwrapped the package. The pouch was bursting with scratch. In the center of the roll I saw the cellophane edges of packaged dope.
He got out and opened the door on the broad’s side. He dragged her out to the sidewalk. He got in the front seat. Perry gunned away. I kept a sharp eye on Red Eye as he counted the scratch in his lap.
Red Eye and I netted two grand apiece. Red Eye took the packages of H. The broad dealer had forty-four hundred in the pouch. Perry and the junkie finger man got two bills apiece.
It was a week before we tried for the second mark. We shouldn’t have. He was a reefer peddler and fence. We thought he had big scratch on him. We didn’t have a driver. We had the mark in the short. Red Eye was driving.
We were playing the peel off. The mark was in the back seat. I was in the front seat. I asked for his identification. He handed me his hide. I saw it had only a few slats in it.
We were pulling to the curb to search him. A two-man squad car passed. The mark saw them and started screaming. They stopped and dragged Red Eye and me out to the street. They kicked and beat hell out of us. They took us down.
The mark was slick. Right there on the street he cracked. We took a C note from him. If he’d known about our roll, he could have beefed for four G’s.
The rollers saw our rolls and tried to pin every stick-up on the books against us. We went on every show-up for a week. We didn’t get a finger. They booked us for armed robbery of the mark.
18. JAILBREAK
An agent for a fixer came to the lockup. He assured us we could avoid five to ten for armed robbery. We could get the charge reduced to a workhouse bit for a price.
We tapped out and got a year apiece in the workhouse. It was like a prison, only tougher. A joint is always rough when there’s graft and corruption. Only cons with scratch are treated and fed like human beings. The walls were just as high. Most of the inmates were serving short thirty and ninety-day bits.
The joint was filthy. The food was unbelievable. The officials had an unfunny habit of putting pimps on the coal pile. I did a week on it. I was ready to make a blind rush at the wall. Maybe I could claw up the thirty feet before I got shot. I was really desperate.
After the first week I came out of shock. I started thinking about a sensible way to escape. I just couldn’t get my skull in shape for another bit. It was too soon after the last one. By the middle of the second week I’d had a dozen ideas. None of them stood up under second thoughts.
I shared a tiny cell with a young con. He was only eighteen. He idolized me. He’d heard about me in the streets. I slept on the top of a double bunk. There were three counts. One in the morning, one after night lockup, the third at midnight.
One night I missed standing up for count at the cell door. I was so beat from heaving coal I’d collapsed on my bunk. I woke up an hour after the count. It gave me an idea. I kicked it around in my skull. Like all good ideas it kept growing, crying out for my attention.
I thought, “I wonder how much and what of me that screw saw when he counted me?” I tested him three nights in a row. I’d lie on the bunk when he came through to count. Each time I’d lie so he saw less of me. The last time he counted me there was only my back, rear end, and legs visible to him.
I got excited. I knew it would be easy to get extra pants and a shirt. I could stuff them into a passable dummy. I knew my first problem was to find a way to get out of line when filing from the coal pile.
My second problem was I couldn’t leave a dummy in position in the cell during the day. Cellhouse cons and screws would pass on the gallery and discover it. I decided to solve my outside problem first.
At the end of the day a screw would line us up at the coal pile to be counted. We would then file two-hundred yards into the mess hall for supper. After supper we would file through hallways to the cell house for count.
