free hand flicked the buttoned pocket open. The index and middle fingers scissored on the wallet and slid it from the pocket. The trick would be excited and hot. He wouldn’t have felt the glowing end of a cigarette on his ass.
With both hands behind his neck, she’d remove the scratch from the hide. She’d up the sexy chatter and the strong grind against his scrotum. She’d roll the bills into a tight suppository shape. She’d slip the wallet back into the pocket. She wouldn’t forget to rebutton the pocket. She was ready to blow the sucker off, get rid of him. She’d crack that she had to pee. Stooping quickly, she’d ram the rolled bills up her cat. She’d sight a passing car. She’d fake alarm.
She would say, “Oh my God. There’s Riley, the vice cop. Listen honey, go to the Park Hotel up the street and register as Mr. and Mrs. Jones. I will be there in ten minutes, Pretty Daddy. I sure want some of your good dick.”
The sucker would pat the reassuring bump of his wallet. It was still there in the buttoned pocket. He’d amble off to the hotel. The thief would make it home. She’d completely change her appearance. She’d go back into the street to sting another sucker.
There was an accident. She got pregnant. I found a croaker who made her one again. The game went down as usual. The bubble burst in a small town in Ohio.
The sky-rocket came crashing down when I ran into an old pal. He was now called New York Joe. I hadn’t seen him since I was fourteen. My mother had taken him in for a few weeks when his widowed-mother died. He got sick and had to go to a hospital. I’d take a bus to see him and bring him tid-bits. I’d sit with him and console him. I liked him. Our friendship was brief. He got out of the hospital and left town.
He was wholesaling cocaine and the sample he gave me was almost pure. I made an appointment to cop a piece. I didn’t know he had learned in New York to cross everybody, even old friends. I found out the stuff he gave me was phony. I rushed back to him figuring he had made a mistake and would square things with me. I said, “Joe, you’ve made a mistake, man.” He took me inside. He said, “What’s the trouble, Jim?”
I said, “Man, this is bullshit. This ain’t the same stuff that I sampled.”
He said, “Well listen, Ronald went out to the stash. That mother-fucker is crossing me.”
He drew his gun from a shoulder holster. At the time I didn’t know it was all con.
He said, “Should I go out there and kill that sonuvabitch? What do you want me to do?”
He started working his eyes. His eyes were bugging and going through all that crazy act.
I said, “No man, just give me my scratch back.”
He said, “I’m so mad I should croak you both.”
I was relatively young. I had never run into this New York stuff before. I was spooked.
I said, “Forget about it.”
He was going through contortions. I was in his town. I had a thief with at least seven beefs on her. I was out the three grand. I might have gotten croaked. Later I knew it was stuff: New York stuff. In later years, I figured it out. He maybe had always hated me because I had more education than he had.
A week later Helen got busted on seven counts. I signed the Hog over to a lip. She got five to ten. I should have wired a bomb to the starter before I turned it over to the lip.
A stud told me Joe had fingered Helen. He almost ruined me. He tapped me out, got my thief busted. He literally ran me out of town broke, and with no whore.
I heard whore-catching was good in Detroit. I took my last tendollar bill and caught a Greyhound. Detroit was the promised land for pimps all right. The town was teeming with young fast whores. The local pimps were soft competition.
I was walking, but I was sharp as a Harlem sissy. Anyway, these whores were a different breed than the ones back in the city. They were gullible, and a fellow didn’t have to play his heart out to cop them.
The first package I copped was a beautiful seventeen-year-old green-eyed version of Pepper. Her name was Rachel. I was to keep her thirteen years.
My next package was a huge, black, dangerous jasper named Serena. In addition to being a whore, she ran a fast sheet setup for a dozen whores. They tricked out of her joint. Within eight weeks after I hit Detroit I was cruising the streets in a sparkling new forty-eight Fleetwood. I had a fat bankroll.
Within ninety days after the Serena cop, I had copped two more young broads. A week later a small-time pimp came to town from Rhode Island. He had a beautiful young whore with him. He was jealous. He followed her in the street. I stalked her. He forgot to follow her. I stole her. I’d had her several months when the town got shaky. The rollers forced Serena out of her joint. I put her in the street.
Then I heard about a small town in Ohio—Lima—that was jumping with good tricks and wide open. I could possibly open up a couple of houses there.
My luck was soaring. With my pad rent and a pad a piece for the girls, I needed a tighter setup to cut down my nut. My skull was whirling as I drove the Hog to pick up my stable in the street. They got in. I tossed their scratch in the glove compartment.
Dawn was breaking as the big Hog scooted through the streets. My five whores were chattering like drunk magpies. I smelled that stink that only a street whore has after a long, busy night. The inside of my nose was raw. It happens when you’re a pig for snorting cocaine.
My nose was on fire. The stink of those whores and the gangster they were smoking seemed like invisible knives scraping to the root of my brain. I was in an evil, dangerous mood despite that pile of scratch crammed into the glove compartment.
“Goddamnit, has one of you bitches shit on herself or something?” I bellowed. I flipped the wing window toward me.
For a long moment there was silence. Then Rachel, my bottom whore, cracked in a pleasing-ass kissing voice, “Daddy Baby, that ain’t no shit you smell. We been turning all night. Ain’t no bathrooms in those tricks’ cars we been flipping out of. Daddy, we sure been humping for you. What you smell is our nasty whore asses.”
I grinned widely, inside of course. The best pimps keep a steel lid on their emotions. I was one of the iciest. The whores went into fits of giggles at Rachel’s shaky witticism. A pimp is happy when his whores giggle. He knows they are still asleep.
I coasted the Hog into the curb outside the hotel where Kim, my newest, prettiest girl, was cribbing. Jesus! I would be glad to drop the last whore off. I could get to my own hotel to nurse my nose with cocaine and be alone. Any good pimp is his own best company. His inner-life is so rich with cunning and scheming to out-think his whores.
As Kim got out I said, “Goodnight Baby, today is Saturday. I want everybody in the street at noon instead of seven tonight. I said noon, not five minutes after or two minutes after. At twelve sharp I want you down, got it Baby?”
She didn’t answer. She did a strange thing. She walked into the street around the Hog to the window on my side. She stood looking at me for a long moment, her beautiful face tense in the dim dawn.
Then in her crisp New England accent she said, “Are you coming back to my pad this morning? You haven’t spent a night with me in a month. So come back, okay?”
A good pimp doesn’t get paid for screwing. He gets his pay-off for always having the right thing to say to a whore right on lightning tap. I knew my four whores were flapping their ears to get my reaction to this beautiful bitch. A pimp with an overly-fine bitch in his stable has to keep his game tight. Whores constantly probe for weakness in a pimp.
I fitted a scary mask on my face and said, in a low, deadly voice, “Bitch, are you insane? No bitch in this family calls any shots or muscles me to do anything. Now take your stinking yellow ass upstairs to a bath and some shut-eye. Get in the street at noon like I told you.”
The bitch just stood there. Her eyes slitted in anger. I could sense she was game to play the string out right there in the street before my whores. If I had been ten-years dumber I would have leaped out of the Hog, broken her jaw, and put my foot in her ass. The joint was too fresh in my mind.
I knew the bitch was trying to booby-trap me when she spat out her invitation. “Come on, kick my ass. What the hell do I need with a man I only see when he comes to get his money? I am sick of it all. I don’t dig stables and never will. I know I’m the new bitch who has to prove herself. Well Goddamnit, I am sick of this shit. I’m cutting out.”
She stopped for air and lit a cigarette. I was going to blast her ass off when she finished. I just sat there staring at her.
