I had already driven to Akron and set the stage for her. I had rented a hotel room in a fair hotel. I contacted a dignified looking old ex-slum hustler down on his luck. He spruced up a wino friend of his for the play.
The whole arrangement: clothes, room, and a bill apiece for the actors, came to a half-grand. The slum hustler was to wait in a pool room nearby for my call.
Rachel got to my apartment at three P.M. We got to Akron around six. I told her one of the bellhops had told the sucker she would be there before seven. He was waiting for her.
I slipped a small vial of mineral oil into her palm. I told her it was Chloral Hydrate. Only two drops would knock the sucker out. I told her I would be waiting in the hotel bar for her.
She stopped at the desk. Sure enough he was expecting her. She went up. She came down within an hour nervous and jumpy. The sucker was out cold. She had searched the room. She couldn’t find the scratch. I went back to the room with her. I went through another search. The wino was lying there motionless. We gave up searching. We moved toward the door. I looked back at the wino.
I said, “Say Baby, he looks bad to me.”
I knelt beside him blocking her view with my back. I wiped my brow and turned my face toward her. My eyes were wide in alarm.
I said, “Baby, he’s dead I think.”
Most women, even whores, are terrified of dead bodies. She stood there paralyzed.
I said, “Don’t get panicky. Shut that door. I’ve got it! I know an underworld croaker here in town. Maybe he can bring him to. I know he will keep his mouth shut for a price, even if …”
She knew we couldn’t leave a murdered man here. She had stopped at the desk first before coming up. She was painfully aware of the big gap between theft and murder. I picked up the phone and got the pool room. I gave the fake doctor the hotel and room number. He came within five minutes carrying his empty bag.
She couldn’t see into it. I had told her to hide in the closet. Too many people had seen her already. He stooped down beside the wino. He fumbled with his pulse, his eyelids.
Finally he stood up and said, “He’s dead. I can’t help him. I’ll have to call the police.”
I could almost hear Rachel’s heart booming in the closet. We haggled for her benefit for ten minutes. Finally we had a deal. For five bills, he would keep his mouth shut. He would also contact a hoodlum who would get the body out of there and dispose of it. He left. Rachel and I got out of there fast.
Driving back to Cleveland, Rachel was in a trance. She squeezed tightly against me. I kept telling her she had nothing to worry about. After all we were together for life and her secret would always be safe with me. She found out about the hoax years later.
Rachel straightened up with that murder pressure on her. Toledo was on fire and in one month my three girls got nine cases between them. I pulled them out into Cleveland. Cleveland was lousy with pimps and whores and boosters from all over the country.
The mob of hustlers set the torch to Cleveland. By nineteen-fifty-three the streets were so hot a whore was lucky to stand up a week between falls. I was a fugitive. For almost a year I never left my apartment. I couldn’t risk arrest and a fingerprint check. I was down to four girls. That year in the apartment was cramping my style.
Mama had hit a romantic and financial jack-pot. She had moved to Los Angeles. She called me every week pleading with me to visit her. She wanted me to meet my new stepfather and stay for a while. I kept stalling her. I had heard that the smack in California was only six percent. The pimps out there were only half serious. This makes for bad pimping conditions.
Several Eastern pimps had gone to the coast in good shape. They had returned torn down. They said the Western whores were lazy and were satisfied with making chump change. The Western pimps had spoiled them.
I gave myself logical arguments against the move to California. Why should I expose my well-trained whores to that dangerous half-ass scene out West? What if I blew my family out there in the hinterlands?
I was thirty-four now. In any square profession I would have been in my prime. As a pimp I was getting elderly. I was stern and strict on my women.
Rachel wired me that a stud with a stable of boosters was in town with a load of wild Lilli Anne suits and Petrocelli vines at twenty percent of retail. She got me his number the next day.
I called him and got an appointment to look his stock over. I only left the apartment for important reasons. I decided I would cop a piece of stuff and a fresh outfit before seeing him.
He was staying at a crummy hotel on the East Side. He let me into a cracker-box three-room apartment. He sounded me down to make sure of my pedigree.
“So, you’re Iceberg, huh? I was in your town not long ago. Philly sure is hot.”
He knew me by reputation and that I was from Chicago.
I said, “Yes, I’m Iceberg from the Windy.”
He said, “Say Jim, how ‘bout old Red Eye? I saw him in New York last month. He’s pimping a zillion. Surely you know him.”
I gave him that look, like I had caught him frenching a sissy.
I said, “Listen carefully, Jack. I don’t have time for bull-shit. I knew Red Eye. You saw him last month, Jack? You better see a head-shrinker. You’re flipping your top. Red Eye caught the big one in Pittsburgh five years ago. He’s doing it all.”
He gave me a grin like he had swallowed a bottle of snot. He got the sizes from me. He said to cool it in his pad. He had to go to his stash across the street to get the merchandise.
I glanced into the tiny bedroom. There was a naked broad lying on the bed.
I said to myself, “I wonder what kind of dog that is.”
I went to the bed and looked down at her. She was drunk, stoned. It looked like the runt. This broad was buxom, almost fat. I knew one way to be sure. I had lashed the blood out of her with that hanger whipping years ago. She would still have the scars. I flipped her over on her belly. They were there.
I stood there looking down at her. I remembered that tough bit in Leavenworth. Here at my mercy was that stinking bitch, Phyllis. Just the sight of her made me crazy.
I grabbed a cologne bottle off the dresser. I jerked the big top off. I got my bag out. I dumped enough of the twenty percent stuff into the top to croak a sick junkie. She was clean.
I spotted a bottle of mixer water on the floor. I filled the top and struck a match. I held it beneath the top. I rammed my gun into it. I drew up her reckoning.
I stabbed the outfit into a vein just back of her knees. Her red blood streaked up into the joint. I was just about to press the pacifier bulb. I looked out the window. I caught a glimpse of the joker darting across the street. He had a steamer trunk headed toward the front door of the hotel.
I froze, jerked the spike out of her. I thrust the loaded outfit inside my shoe underneath my instep. I pinned the bag to my shorts between my legs. I collapsed into the living-room chair just as he came through the door. I was sweating like hell. He was suspicious. He kept looking from the corner of his eye at his broad.
He thought I had been riding her in his absence. I wondered how long he’d had her. He was a wrong-doer. He’d cut her loose when he got hip to what he had. Sooner or later someone would pull his coat. He’d find out the runt had sent me to the joint. I was getting what I wanted from the merchandise. He slipped into the bedroom and checked her cat out.
I left with the dozen items I had bought. I knew I had bought going-to-California clothes. I had quizzed him about his plans. He was going to stay in Cleveland for weeks. I had to leave town. Now.
Phyllis was sure to get the wire from him that I was in town. I knew she wouldn’t hesitate to drop a dime in the phone to the heat. She had to know about the escape. I drove away. I tried to picture the expression on her face when her man cracked to her that Iceberg had been up there alone with her while she was stoned.
I got a flight that night for L.A. It’s fabulous when a pimp’s bottom girl can be trusted to handle his scratch and his whores. She was welded to me by that murder cross. The stable would drive out later in the Hog.
Mama was radiantly happy out there and my stepfather was a wonderful square. They lived in a big house. L.A. was worse than the reports I had gotten. I got around in Mama’s Coupe de Ville. After the second night I went into the whore and pimp stomping grounds.
I stayed around Mama for another week then went up to Seattle. Glass Top’s name wasn’t ringing. In fact he was almost unknown. One stud told me Glass Top had croaked.
I copped a gorgeous hash-slinger up there. I turned her out that week. Lucky I did. I lost a girl back in
