loved me. I knew that if I had gone back Serena would have driven a butcher knife through my heart in my sleep.
20. STABLE MOVES
It had been a sucker move to come to Mama. Fortunately she had moved from over the beauty shop. She now lived in an almost all-white neighborhood. Here I was with four idle whores in a closed town where I had fallen three times. It was the point of origin for the white slave rap that the copper-hearted runt had crossed me with. There were a couple of sneak ten-dollar houses in town.
I stayed inside the house at Mama’s. Every joker in town knew me. They all had diarrhea of the mouth. I couldn’t put my action in the street in this hot town. They’d had an easy go in Ohio. They were soft. I could put them down only in a town where I had a fix. I knew that none of them, if busted, could stand up under the clever grilling of the F.B.I.
I had a ten G bankroll. I was housing and feeding four whores in an expensive hotel. I was a pig for banging speedballs. No fresh scratch was coming in. With only a ten G stick I knew I would soon be in trouble. I had to make a move fast. It was bad for morale of the stable to keep them on their asses.
After a week of confinement at Mama’s house, I slipped out of town to cop H and C for myself, and gangster for the girls. While in the city I looked up Sweet. I was careful because all the heat in the neighborhood knew me.
Sweet insisted I give him all the details of my escape. He shook his skull in awe when he heard them. Miss Peaches had died of old age. His eyes were sad when he told me about it. Glass Top was still out West in Seattle. Patch Eye did a little bookie business for him. Sweet had lost his glory. He looked a hundred years old. His backbone was the old white broad who owned the building.
Sweet had just beat a murder rap. He had killed some pretty jerk from St. Louis who had insulted him in the Roost. The poor chump had called Sweet an ugly, gray-ass bastard. Sweet had drawn his pistol on him. He prodded him into an alley. He made him kneel and then he pissed on him. This was too much to take, so the kid lost his temper. Sweet shot him through the top of the head.
Sweet was laughing, in a good mood as he told me about it. It had cost him five grand to beat it. He told me he got a wire that Red Eye got life for croaking a whore in Pittsburgh.
Sweet had a complete answer to my problem. He said that since Serena hadn’t beefed I should go back into Ohio. No state was better at the time for house or street. Before I left I went to his John. The door had a padlock on the outside.
He looked at me, grinned, and said, “Pal, my crapper is out of order.”
I went downstairs to the John in the bookie joint. On the way out I asked Patch Eye why Sweet didn’t get his toilet fixed.
The old ex-pimp, without looking up answered, “Shit, ain’t nothing wrong with the crapper. That cold bastard has his two whores locked in there for fucking with his scratch. They been in there three days.”
I walked toward my car. I wondered how long Sweet would keep them there and how long the whores could live with just water.
I got back from the city. I stopped downtown at Rachel’s suite. I stayed for the night. I outlined the move. The next morning I was looking out the window down on the street. There was a stooped white-haired joker dumping barrels of hotel garbage into a huge truck. It was Steve. I’d know him in hell!
A hot-flash shot through me. I don’t know what happened after that. Rachel told me I snatched my thirty-two from my coat pocket in the closet. I ran to the service elevator in my pajamas. She followed me all the way to the street. I didn’t say a word. The truck had pulled away when we reached the sidewalk.
She got me back upstairs. It had been a sucker play for a fugitive. Lucky for me no rollers showed on the scene. I dressed and told Rachel I’d be back later and I wanted the rest of the stable in her joint.
I stopped at a leather-goods shop and bought a small valise. It was about the size that a doctor carries. I stopped at several banks and cracked some of my big bills into enough singles to fill the bag. I went to Mama’s to prepare the flash. I filled it almost to the brim with singles. I put the remaining big bills on top. I was getting ready to ship my stable. With my plan I could ship them without a strong fix. Even new whores think twice before leaving a rich pimp.
That afternoon they were all in Rachel’s plush suite. She was the boss bitch. They had twenty-five dollar a day, neat rooms on the same floor. I walked in. They were smoking gangster and eager for my speech.
They were anxious to get back on the track. I had loosened the catch on the bag. I casually hurled it onto the table before them. A bale of hundred-dollar bills jumped from the bag. Reefer enhances what you see. I saw on those whores’ faces that they were seeing every dollar of the mountain of greenbacks they had given me for the years I had been their man.
Confidence flooded their eyes. I finished my briefing and my instructions. I had built my shining castles in the air. Brother, I could have sent those whores to Siberia, in bikinis, in the wintertime. Keeping her wife-in-laws and my scratch straight up there in Toledo was the first acid test for Rachel as a bottom woman.
I stayed around Mama’s for a week. She was bugging me to embrace the Holy Ghost and the Fire. She begged me to square up and repent my sins. No, it was a little late for that. I moved onto Ohio again.
Cleveland was only a short hop to Toledo. I set up a mad apartment in the larger city. Cleveland was jumping. I was ready for the best pimping of my career. Kim ran off with a wealthy white trick but I didn’t miss her. Both towns were crawling with young fine whores. The name of the game was still “cop and blow.”
Within four mouths I had the three girls in Toledo and five in Cleveland. I was pimping good. I had a connection for staff. All was perfect except for one thing. Rachel’s name was ringing. Every pimp, con man and rich dope-peddler was shooting for her. They offered soft, irresistible propositions.
Her head was getting as big as a pumpkin. I didn’t want to lose her. I had another more serious reason for wanting to hold her. If I blew her, she might pull a runt on me and go to the F.B.I. I got it through the wire that a slick con-man out of New York was using his beautiful Jasper white girl as bait to cop Rachel. The same wire said that Rachel was getting weak for the broad.
I went to Toledo one early morning to Rachel’s. Sure enough there they were, the three of them in Rachel’s bed. Believe me they hadn’t gotten in there to recite bedtime stories. I was cool, icy as always. I let her con me that it was a party, all business of course. That wire had described that bastard con player and his freak woman.
I was in trouble. If it had been any other bitch in the stable except Rachel it wouldn’t have been worth a fleeting thought. I couldn’t lose Rachel, my bottom woman, in this shitty fashion to some ass-hole con player.
It could kill my career as a pimp. The news would flash in a dozen states. No, I couldn’t afford to lose her. I still had that expensive friend riding with me, that monkey on my back. Sweet would have had the solution to this tough problem right off the top of his head. Sweet, the week before, had shot himself in the temple. He left a bitter note, “Good-bye squares! Kiss my pimping ass!”
I felt nothing when I got the wire. I left her apartment and drove out into the country. I spun the wheels in my skull. I got the key to the riddle. It was cruel but perfect. If it worked I’d never have to worry that she’d blow or cross me with the F.B.I.
Rachel called me the next day. She told me she had just sent me three bills. She got them for the party I had crashed. When she cracked I knew I had to go through with the cross. The three bills she was sending had to be scratch she had been holding out. That con bastard was too pretty and slick to spend three fat-ones with a whore. I had to make an honest whore of her from now on.
I faked excitement when I told her about a sucker who was visiting Akron. It’s a small town, thirty miles from Cleveland. I told her I got a wire that the sucker had hit the numbers for twenty G’s. He had it all with him in his hotel room.
I sold her that she could take it off smooth and easy. She said she would be down the next day to get briefed in detail.
