by Iceberg Slim
“Your contact would be disastrously null and void if Nino had a prior lien on that real estate in Mr. Murray’s mind. You simply place the two grand in an envelope. Seal it before Mr. Murray’s alert eyes. Have Mr. Murray address it to himself. Together you drop it in the mailbox on the corner before your watchful eyes. That way nobody worries. It’s perfect.”
Dot’s mouth smugged at the corners. He saw the escape batch in my plan for his double cross of Blue.
Blue barred the hole with rolled steel. He said, “White Folks, it’s going to murder your ego, but I’m going to say your escrow idea is pure stupidity. I may as well give Mr. Murray the two grand now and pray a rosary that he won’t cross me.
“Mr. Murray is a clever man, my disrespectful friend. He’d figure in seconds that he couldn’t lose the payoff once it went into that mailbox. He could tip Nino with glee and meet the mailman at his door in the morning. He knows Uncle Sam’s mail is inviolate. Your plan is worse than Mr. Murray’s. Want to try again, genius?”
I screwed my face into a wounded mask of distress. I closed my eyes and swayed from side to side like a cobra in rapport with a fakir. Then I popped my eyes wide and hammered my fists to the tabletop. Dot flinched away from the thudding. I mimicked Blue.
I said, “Want to try again, genius? I sure do. Mr. Murray won’t cross you. I’ve thought of ironclad insurance. It’s simple and Mr. Murray can’t object if he’s on the square with you.
“Mr. Murray has been a central headquarters detective for years. Instead of sending the two grand to his home, address it to the headquarters instead. Everybody knows him down there. It wouldn’t be a bit odd for a star robbery detective to receive mail.
“It could be a letter from one of his informers tipping him to a robbery caper. Insert a note with the two grand. Let it indicate that the money is Mr. Murray’s end of the Frascati score. There’s one change. Blue, you address it in your handwriting.
“Say Mr. Murray tips Nino before the mail delivery in the morning before you can square Nino. Maybe you fail and you need time to run. Our friend Felix the Fixer would know within an hour from his Rush Street source.
“Say, right after that letter is dropped in the box, Mr. Murray takes us in on a phony rap and then tipped Nino. When we got downtown to the lockup we’d start bellowing for the commissioner.
“Maybe we can’t get him, but it’s a cinch we’ll get brass down there to listen. We’ll put them on the alert for the payoff letter. He’d have a terrible time explaining.
“But his greatest danger in crossing us would be Nino. Nino certainly has ears and eyes in the department. Within an hour he’d know the contents of the letter. Then Mr. Murray would be as hot as you.
“Nino would figure Mr. Murray’s tip was a desperate play to cover his own hand in the matter. That letter would still be a ticking bomb for Mr. Murray if he didn’t arrest us after the letter dropped. First thing you’d call Felix. He’d call the commissioner personally before mail delivery to put the cross on the double-crossing Mr. Murray. That is, if Felix got a flash that the finger was on you.
“Blue, there’s one thing you’re long on, and that’s imagination. You’d find it easy to build an iron frame to support that payoff letter. I’m sure you could get Mr. Murray indicted for something on top of his Nino trouble.
“No, Blue, my plan guarantees Mr. Murray’s integrity. All he has to do is play fair and pluck his two grand out of the mail basket at headquarters in the morning. Now, be direful and don’t crack my spine when you pat me on the back.”
Blue said, “Folks, congratulations! A mouthpiece would envy your plan. It’s fair and airtight.”
I saw Dot’s eyes congeal. Blue had flung die pack of ramped envelopes on the tabletop between them. Dot folded his arms across his chest and leaned back.
He was pounding his feet against the floor again. Blue reached into the pack and pulled out the flued envelope. He casually placed it to the side. He tore a section from one of the others. I handed him my ball point.
He started to scribble the incriminating note. He finished it and pushed it across the table to Dot. Dot, without unfastening his arms, leaned forward and peered intently at it. He grunted agreement to its text. Blue fanned the two grand again and folded it lengthwise down the middle. He placed his glass over the bilk.
Blue addressed the trick envelope. Then slipped the note inside it. He picked it up. Held it in his left hand with the addressed side square in Dot’s view. His thumb and index finger grasped it at bottom center. The slit in its bottom crease was an inch or so above the fleshy web between Blue’s thumb and index finger.
Blue pulled the folded money from beneath the glass with his right hand and held it under Dot’s eyes for a moment. The money magnetized Dot’s head. He was half out of his seat as Blue started to thrust the bills into the envelope.
Dot’s eyes were no more than six inches from the front of it. Blue’s hands were steady as he threaded the bills past the wad of paper down the flue. Only the cavorting vein at the side of his hand leading to that web betrayed his terrible tension.
I thanked the saints I wasn’t laying that flue for Dot. I saw the money peep through the slit. Then ride down to the cup of the web. I dropped my right hand to my lap. I had to retrieve the money from Blue.
Blue tightened the web around it. The envelope almost touched Dot’s face, blocking his view. Blue’s left hand, web and money, blurred to his lap. He casually licked the flap of the envelope now in his right hand. His empty left hand had streaked back to the tabletop. The blur and streak had been one.
With both hands he tightly pressed the moistened flap against the envelope lying on top of the others. I had reached to the side of Blue’s thigh when Dot screamed. My hand was paralyzed holding the bills beneath the table.
“Hold it now, you slick bastard! Don’t move your hands!”
He wasn’t screaming at me. He had vised his hands around Blue’s wrists. Now he turned to me. I was really nervous now. Maybe he was wise to the flue. He still held Blue’s wrists.
He said, “Now you, Trick Baby, riffle those envelopes apart. If there’s a twin to the one with my payoff in that pile you slick sonsuvbitches will never play the switch again.”
I was ecstatic! Dot had suspected that we’d pulled the ancient switch-game on him. He hadn’t been wise to the flue.
My right hand left the two grand temporarily. I speared the pile of envelopes apart with my index finger. They were all blank and clean. Dot freed Blue’s wrists. They both grabbed at the dummy envelope at the same time. Each had a firm grip on each end of it. They both stood holding it between them. Blue put his hat on.
He said, “Do we have to go to the mailbox in this ridiculous manner, Mr. Murray?”
Dot tightened his grip on the fake payoff.
He said, “Blue, I’ll die and go to the bottomless pits of hell before I let you flimflam me out of my two grand. We’ll drop it in the box together.”
I palmed the two grand off the seat. I stood up and released it into my overcoat pocket. I took a sawbuck from my trouser pocket and dropped it on the table. I picked up my battered hat from the floor, straightened the crown and put it on.
Blue and Dot were side to side as they went down the aisle toward the door. I followed them. I looked back. The waitress and bartender were radiant with relief to see us go.
I stepped out to the street. Electric needles pricked inside my stiffened legs. A jolting blast of wind teared my eyes. Overhead, a Jackson Park el punched screeching rivets of sound into my temples as it grated to a stop. The icy sidewalk was a black mirror reflecting the morose starless sky. A pang of guilty pity shot through me for old man Frascati.
We walked toward the mailbox at Forty-seventh and Calumet. A rotten meaty stench poisoned the fresh, wintry air. My nostrils quivered in panic as a pair of decaying junkies ghosted past me like animated dead.
I couldn’t help smiling as Blue and Dot in front of me tiptoed across the ice clu
tching the worthless paper oblong between them. They looked like grotesque children playing a strange game. I looked at my watch. It was a minute to nine P.M. We had been under Dot’s pressure for three hours. How our lives had changed in that brief span of hours.
Blue and Dot stood at the mailbox. Their heads were rowed down toward the envelope. They were spotlighted for an instant by the headlights of a turning car. They were like corrupt worshippers penitent before an altar. Then together they pushed the envelope through the door.
Blue grinned at me as Dot walked away toward South Parkway. He had a funny, mincing, forward stumble slide. It was like each step was a contrived mistake. It was a relief all right to blow him off. But what about Nino?
4
FLIGHT TO JEWTOWN
We walked back to my Fleetwood parked in front of the bar. We got in. Blue’s Cadillac was in for transmission adjustment. I gave Blue his prop two grand back. We sat there silently as I warmed up the engine. I pulled away and turned right on Calumet. We were in the heart of the area known as Dopeville, U.S.A.
Bryson and Sims, probably the most feared and efficient narcotics detectives in Chicago, were frisking a suspect in front of the poolroom on Calumet.
I saw Midge, Blue’s daughter, in one of the doorways talking to Mose, a dope peddler. She waved. I nodded. She looked a hundred. The sad sight of her tore at my sides. I was glad Blue hadn’t seen her.
I continued South on Calumet toward Garfield Boulevard. Junkie whores on both sides of Calumet clung to the fetid doorways and rotted stoops like painted lice to a filthy crotch. I was certain our destination had to be Felix the Fixer.
Blue gave me a puzzled look. “Son, if you’re headed for the Fixer’s, forget it for now. A fin will get a C-note that we’re blazing hot already. Since noon Nino has had the chance to cinch make us. After all, our mark had to bleat our descriptions to Profacci when he found out the rocks were phony. Nino might even remember us from the flat joint days.
“Search your mind. There isn’t another con team like us in Chicago. How easy could it be for Nino to pressure our names from his spies all over the Southside. They get paid, it’s true, for watching the policy game operators. But what the hell, it wouldn’t make them bawl in sorrow to pick up an extra two bills for fingering us.
“Face the bitter truth, son. I’m the only big, black grifter with white hair teamed with a six-four blond white boot who is a dead ringer for Errol Flynn.
“I knew Dot really had nothing to sell us. That’s why I risked laying the flue for him. Son, we have to get off the Southside fast, and off the street, period! Do you have any ideas?”
I turned right at Forty-eighth Street. Whirly bits of confused thought stormed my mind. I had planned out of some dangerous situations before. But now my slick, instant machine was crippled. I turned down Michigan Avenue, heading north to the Loop.
Finally I said, “How about Gary, Indiana? Nobody knows us there. We could get a furnished room in an upright neighborhood for a couple of days. It would be enough time to plan out of this thing.”
Blue jumped like he had been scalded. He said, “My God, no! Have you forgotten how Hutch, the policy banker, was shotgunned to ribbons there on a busy street in broad daylight? The killers loaded ball bearings in the shells.
“The outfit has a full nelson on the town. Besides, it’s too small. Son, you’ve got to realize we’ve hit the bad-luck jackpot. The F.B.I. and Pinkertons, by comparison, are kindly amateurs.
“The torturers of the outfit have almost a one hundred percent find-and-murder average. White Folks, the damn sad thing is that I am responsible for all of this happening to you.”
I said, “Now, Blue, you know better than that. Sure the play for the old man was your idea. But I know damn well you didn’t know he was tied to Nino. We both know it’s never a good idea to play for a home guard. It was a worse mistake not to research him.
“I wasn’t tricked or pressured into playing for Frascati, you know. I don’t understand how and why you can take the blame for a blunder we made together. Blue, we can’t afford to confuse each other.
“Blue, I owe you my life. I can’t forget how you stood by me when the Goddess put me into that crazy drunken tailspin. Nothing can change that or the sincere affection I feel for you. We’re not going to die. Like always, we’ll come up with the perfect con to escape the trap.”
It was pure bravado. Blue didn’t answer. I had desolate death-tinged thoughts as we passed the gleaming row of Michigan Avenue’s luxury shops.
Finally Blue broke the morbid spell. He said, “Folks, turn left at Lake. We’ll go to Jewtown. I’ve got an idea.”
I turned and drove westward. I was puzzled. I wondered why Blue wanted to go to Jewtown. It was a tragic Westside slum inhabited by poverty-mauled blacks.
Jewish merchants operated the countless shops and bazaars by day. At nightfall the thronging bargain hunters from all over the city deserted it. Few, if any, of the Jewish merchants lived there.
I just couldn’t figure Blue’s angle. Blue had ignored my question of his lone guilt for our desperate plight. I was at the point of reopening the matter when Blue coupled onto my train of thought. He almost whispered.
He said, “John Patrick O’Brien, you will be thirty-six years old January fifteenth. That means that for the last twenty years my grifting way of life in this cold world has been yours. Inside you feel and think black like me. Outside you’re lily white. It’s a damn sad combination.
“The black Southside taught you that bitter lesson for all of your life. You’re a whiz at the grift. Don’t say it, I’ll say it. Yes, I taught you all the con you know. It was easy, because you had a natural feel for the con. You feel close to me, indebted to me.
“Some blacks have hated you because they believed you were really white. Some have despised you even though they knew you were Phala’s child. As a white child born of a brown mother they had to hate you. For them you are the symbol of your white father’s sexual violation of a black woman.
“Son, in your mind I have been some kind of sympathetic unselfish stepfather. I’ve been a constant buffer for you against the black haters. And, yes, it’s true, I possibly saved your life when that nigger-hating white broad almost cracked you up. But that life I saved was one I had selfishly molded to danger.
“Son, I’m old and weary now, and I care about you too much to con you. Folks, the time has come to give you the complete, from-the-heart truth.
“Sure I took you in off those brutal streets. I took the risk and sheltered you from the juvenile authorities who wanted to make you a ward of the court, after those filthy black dogs drove Phala to madness.
“You probably thought at the time that I had a pure golden heart as big as Chicago. Well, son, you conned yourself. I used you across the board.
“I saw Midge turning into a goddamned lesbian. A father should spend some time with his child. It was my fault. The grift kept me on the go. After her mother died, Midge had only the freakish street tramps for company. Midge was all I had left. It was the worst kind of setup for a precocious fifteen-year-old girl.
“Son, then you came along, tall and spectacularly handsome. I couldn’t see how any dame could say no to you. I figured I would throw you two together. It was a cold-blooded stud bitch idea. I hoped you’d knocked her up and slow her down. I was that desperate.
“Perhaps she’d fall for you and you would rod that hellish yen for girls out of her. My plan was too late to save her.
“Instead, you two loved each other like real sister and brother. You started getting to me, too. But still I had to use you. I had long-range plans. I’d start you out as a belly-stick for my flat joint. Later, I’d develop you into my full-fledged grifting partner.
“To a black grifter you were a rare gift from heaven. I’d be able to give a fine convincing play to fat, white suckers with a partner who looked white. I knew ten years ago you had the grifting sense to play with a big-time white con mob.
“But I was too selfish, perhaps even afraid the student would outshine his teacher. I know that I loved you as a son in my twisted grifter’s way. But I envied your white skin.
“You’ve heard me brag that I had once been with the big con. I lied to you, son. I never roped or played the inside. I was never even a shill. I was with it, all right. I was a mere stagehand, a flunky who set up the props and then tore them down after a sucker had been played in a big store.
“Just a clean-up man, that’s all. I can’t blame the Vicksburg Kid for that lowly spot. In fact I owe him everything for taking me out of the South. It wasn’t his fault that a black grifter couldn’t play rich white suckers in a big store.
“Oh sure, I got wise to all the principles of big con. I was a smart black lackey who eyeballed and stayed on the earie. You met the Vicksburg Kid when he came through Chicago that summer.
“He cracked to me then I should let you come to Montreal to his big store. He said you were smooth. He felt a talented white boy like you was wasted on the smack and drag. I never told him you were really black.
“He said you were smooth with great personality and mark appeal. He gave me his personal telephone number and address in Montreal. The way you impressed him, it was a cinch he’d have let you start as a shill for his store. With your natural flair for the con, in months he’d have honed you to razor sharpness as a roper.
“Now, son, can you understand why I said I am responsible for all of this latest trouble happening to you? I’m just a narrow-minded, dumb bastard. I couldn’t let you leave me. I couldn’t stand to see you get cut in to that long green. I knew up there you’d learn the truth about me.
“So old flunky Blue, your fake friend, held on and never tipped you that the big con was wide open to you. So, son, go on and hate me. I can’t blame you. But at least I’ve come clean with you at last. Pull up to that phone booth. I’ll check with Fixer.”
