by Iceberg Slim
He said, “Angel face, I won’t be free to come immediately. I’ll call you within the hour to let you know when I’ll be free. Pull yourself together, darling. I still love you.”
“Johnny, you’re so precious to reassure me. I’ll be waiting for your call. Thank you, Sky Eyes.” She hung up.
Folks put the receiver on the hook as Speedy said, “Let’s hit the highway for Chicago, man!” He picked up his bags and followed Folks into his apartment.
Speedy yanked Folks’ phone from the wall and said, “I’m gonna pee on myself if that phone rings and we pick up to the captain or a “G” man. Let’s give the impression you’ve split town until I can drag you out.”
Folks sat on the sofa with an intensely thoughtful face.
Speedy stood, with bags in hand, staring at Folks. “It’s some kind of cross. She’s creaming for revenge, pal.”
Folks said irritably, “I thought of that, Speedy. But, what if that chart is off target? What if she’s on the level? Look what I blow!”
Folks stroked the stubble of beard on his chin and got to his feet. “I need a shave,” and he got his leather bound shaving kit from a bag at the door. He went into the bathroom and plugged in his shaver. He frowned at Speedy’s reflection behind him in the doorway as he whittled off his stubble. Speedy followed him, picking up his bags, as he went back to the living room and packed the shaving kit.
Folks picked up his bags and said, “Let’s go.”
Speedy heaved a sigh of relief as he followed Folks down the hallway to the elevators. Going down, Speedy said, “I was worried about you making that call.”
Folks smiled grimly. “Well, don’t stop worrying. I’m going to the castle to check her out without the call. Speedy, you’re forgetting there’s a score of millions at stake.”
Speedy shook his head in helpless exasperation as they reached the main floor. They threw their keys on the counter of the absent manager’s desk and went to the underground garage. Folks pulled the Eldorado to the street, drove through the night and turned off the highway into the castle’s access road.
Caught in the glare of headlights was Trevor, in a silk robe, frantically waving his long arms at the bottom of the Buckmeister hill. He raced down the road to the Eldorado as Folks braked it to a stop, and stuck his wild face through the driver’s window. He panted, “Johnny, you can’t go up there!”
Folks studied Trevor’s face, told himself Trevor’s anxiety was natural for a racist bent on protecting his sister from reconciliation with a nigger.
Folks said, “Why, Trevor? I’ve got an invitation from Christina.”
“Johnny, I’m your friend. Please don’t keep your appointment with Chris. I tried to call you to warn you.”
“About what, Trevor?”
Trevor averted his eyes. “Well, Johnny . . . I’m ashamed to say it . . . but Chris, well, she’s not herself. She’s, uh, she’s out to destroy you!”
“How, Trevor?”
Trevor spilled it out. “The security people, all the servants have been dismissed for the evening. Johnny, the castle is deserted except for Chris and Mother and Captain Ellis, with two detectives!”
Folks exclaimed, “Captain Ellis?”
“Yes, he and the others are hidden in a guest room in Chris’s wing. Johnny, don’t go up there!” Folks studied every plane and angle of Trevor’s distressed face. He decided that Trevor had to be on the square. Or the most accomplished thespian who ever walked the planet.
“You’ve convinced me, friend. Thanks!”
He shook Trevor’s hand, U-turned the Eldorado and drove to the highway for Chicago.
13
ENCORE THE BIG WINDY
Speedy was at the wheel of the Eldorado when Chicago’s skyline carnival of lights popped ablaze like the jewel case of a colossus. Folks was sprawled on the rear seat with his eyes closed against spears of light barraged by car headlamps.
Speedy said, “Look at that night-glow bitch, dap and looking good, winking her neon pussy to greet us V.I.P.s.”
Folks sat up, gazed at the spectacle. He climbed over the seat to drop down beside Speedy. He yawned, “Yeah pally, she’s flashy, a stone tramp with funky armpits, dirty drawers and crabs.”
Folks lit a bomber of grass. He sucked on it, then passed it to Speedy. Nat “King” Cole’s poignant “Nature Boy” oozed from the radio. An aristocratic-looking blonde in a Porsche drew up beside the Eldorado on Folks’ side at a stoplight on the city’s Outer Drive. She hooded her eyes and smiled wickedly at Folks, shaped “cocksucker” with rosebud lips when he gave her the rectal salute with his middle finger. He thought about Trevor and Christina as Speedy pulled away on the green light. He chuckled.
Speedy said, “Lay that humor on me to cheer me up.”
“I was wondering if Trevor could be, after all, the most accomplished actor on the planet. There’s a long shot that the student conned me.”
Speedy exclaimed, “Man, that ain’t humorous. Please don’t downer me. You scare me, pal.”
“I was shucking and jiving. I’m convinced Trevor laid it out on the square . . . I think. But what if she was playing stink finger up there? Alone?”
They laughed.
Speedy said, “Now, that’s funny, man. Not ha ha funny, but kooky funny. You know, like, ‘Please Warden, hurry and let me sit in that chair. I got a boil on my ass. I can’t stand the pain!’”
The Eldorado whispered down the Drive toward the black southside. Alongside the Drive, Lake Michigan swirled and rippled like an endless ebonic ribbon in the bellows of hooligan winds whose fury seemed to jiggle the stars.
They checked into a clean hotel suite on Martin Luther King Drive on the black mid-southside near Forty-Seventh Street. The fox-faced, skeletal bell captain, an old friend of Folks’ and one of Blue Howard’s former short con partners, embraced Folks at the desk. He waved his underling bellman away from the luggage, put it on a cart and showed them into the fourth floor suite.
Folks said, “Jake, I gotta tell you again, what a pleasure it is to see you again. This is Speedy, my partner.”
The old man grinned and shook Speedy’s hand. “Glad to meet you, Speedy. I know you gotta know you hooked up with the greatest there is and was.”
Speedy screwed up his face doubtfully, then winked at him. “Sure, Jake, maybe he’ll be after he plays with me for awhile.”
They laughed.
Folks said, “Jake, how’s the town?”
“Stinking like a two buck ’ho and hot as jasper pussy. That’s why I moved my game inside this hotel five years ago. I’m too old to psyche up for a bit in the joint.” He leaned in, lowered his voice to whisper. “You remember Theodore, my nephew?”
Folks nodded.
The old man pulled a crisp hundred dollar bill from a pocket of his lavender monkey suit. “It’s the best ‘queer’ I’ve ever gandered,” as he passed it to Folks.
Folks examined it, reversed it, and whistled in amazement at the perfection of the bill as he passed it to Speedy.
Speedy took it to a two hundred watt table lamp, examined it and exclaimed, “Shit, Jake! I’ve pushed some fine ‘queer’ and this tops all I’ve ever handled. There are bank tellers who couldn’t tip to this beauty. The only flaw is an almost microscopic fuzziness in a pinpoint section of the great seal. If you’ve got a bale of this, you can dump it wholesale and take a long, sweet vacation.”
Jake said, “Theodore boosted a suitcase full of C-notes and fifties from the trunk of a car in one of them underground garages in the Loop the week before the rollers wasted him burgling a clothing store last month.” He took the C-note from Speedy and said, “You or Folks know a safe connection that would take it all?”
Speedy said, “What do you want for it?”
“For fast turnover, I’ll take ten cents on the dollar.”
Speedy said, “How patient are you?”
“I think you mean how long I’ll have it in hand. Well, I get my vacation in a few weeks, in Se
ptember. I’m going to look up some people in New Orleans that I’m pretty sure will take it or steer me to a sale.”
Speedy said, “Fine Old Timer, I’ll only need a couple of weeks to sound out some people in the Apple and then in L.A. We’ll talk then.”
Folks said, “Jake, any of the old gang still knocking around?”
“Yeah, a few. Old man One Pocket is still trimming suckers at the old poolroom. Precious Jimmy was on the turn to get rich as cream with a south-side chicken shack. But he got his nose open for craps and blew his joint to a craps magician. Now he’s just a flunky manager of the joint. What’s left of our old gang hang out at the old poolroom.”
Then Folks’ face tightened. “And what about Dot McGee, Jake?”
Jake laughed. “You can relax. Your old enemy is retired from the bunco squad. He’s a private eye, got an office on the westside.” Jake shook hands, turned down Folks’ sawbuck and left the suite.
Folks said, “Partner, if you were serious with Jake about that bundle of ‘queer,’ count me out.”
Speedy laughed. “Partner, I was serious. If I can make the right connection in the Apple, I’ll dump that load for thirty or forty cents, maybe even fifty cents on the dollar for that great stuff. I don’t mind counting you out of that deal, partner.”
They unpacked their bags, hung their garments in the closets of their bedrooms. They showered, dressed themselves immaculately in blue silk leisure suits, Gucci loafers and snowy sports shirts. They called room service for filets and a Jeroboam of Mumms’ to celebrate their change of cities and to toast the future.
Folks called the Vicksburg Kid at the Apple’s Sherry Netherlands as promised, to report his safe arrival in Chicago. He gave Rita his phone number for the absent Kid.
Folks rose from a living room easy chair, glanced at his watch as he went to a front window overlooking Martin Luther King Drive. He stared down at the heavy Saturday night rush of cars on the wide drive.
“Whatta say, Speedy, to some air to taste a slice of the flavor of the town?”
Speedy got up from the sofa. “Sure, soon as I can brush my teeth and throw on a dash of cologne. I don’t like lugging our bankrolls in the street. Wish we had a good stash.” He went to the bathroom.
Folks smoked a cigarette until he returned, then went to the bathroom mirror to comb his hair and brush his teeth. He noticed a hair-line crack at the top of the mirrored cabinet over the face bowl. He got a beer can opener from the tiny kitchen, then took it to the cabinet and carefully inserted the tip into the crack against the metal edge of the cabinet. He pulled. It moved out from the plaster wall an inch. He put the opener tip to the bottom edge of the cabinet and pulled it out an inch. Then he used his hands to pull the unit from the wall and saw several inches of extra space in the hole. He and Speedy stashed their bankrolls inside, except for a few C-notes. They pressed the cabinet snuggly against the wall and the crack was invisible.
They left the suite and went to the Eldorado parked in front of the hotel.
As Folks pulled into traffic, he said, “We’ll just cruise until things start happening in the clubs.”
“Good idea. Maybe I can get my jones greased when the super foxes ease from cover.”
Folks swooped in the Eldorado like a masochistic homing pigeon to the dilapidated tenement apartment building where he and his mother, Phala, had existed before a gang rape pushed his alcoholic mother into the abyss of gibbering madness. He stared up at the window of their hovel where they had lived when he was a teenager. He remembered the night when he had bloodied his hands smashing the glass case, containing her G-stringed image, on the facade of a ghetto cabaret.
Blindly, he made it to the front of their building. There were exactly twenty-six steps to their door. He had stood there for a long time gazing at the first of those tragic twenty-six. He knew she’d be up there at the mirror. Her greeting would tear at his insides. He’d hear the whiskey slur in her voice. The thickness of that slur was always the measure of the emptiness of the always-present fifth of Old Crow Whiskey. He went slowly up the stairs to the front of the door, twisted his key in the lock and walked into the apartment.
Her eyes were more tragic than ever in the mirror. Her greeting was thick and flat with Old Crow. She said, “Hi babee. How is Mama’s tall, pretty sweetheart?”
The sight of her and his love and pity kept his bitter, angry thoughts from his voice. He held his gashed palms away from her, afraid to let her suspect what violent emotion had exploded inside him down there on the street, and not wanting her to drink any more than she had. He walked to her and kissed her on the crown of her head.
“I’m okay, P.G. How are you doing?”
He moved past her into the bathroom and cleaned out the slivers of glass from the punctures in his palms. His wounded palms tingled as he sat on the couch and watched her put on her dancer’s face.
She turned her head toward the bottle of Old Crow on the dresser top and bent her head down toward the bottle. Her eyes were filmy as she stared at the dapper crow on the paper label.
She said, “Now listen, old black nigger crow. Ain’t no use to roll your wicked eyes at me. I ain’t young and tender any more. But you still ain’t got a chance. You too black. If you white, you right. If you light, stick around. But if you black, get back. Way back.”
Folks got up from the couch, eased the door open and went out carefully. He cried all the way to a chum’s house.
Now he gripped the steering wheel, oblivious to Speedy beside him as he remembered the old bar porter who told him of his mother’s gang rape. He had said:
“Johnny, your mama sure had a beautiful angel face. She were that pleasing color of them half-chink gals that got white pappies. I were the bar porter in that cabaret where she danced until I got fired for nipping from the bar bottles. She used to talk about your pa. To the end, she thought he were coming back to her. She were my friend.
“She used to slip me coins for my wine when I couldn’t ketch up to Blue. All them no-account nigger hustlers and winos around Thirty-ninth and Cottage was just aching to fool around with Phala. But she’d put her pretty nose in the air and pass ’em like the dirt they was.
“They knowed she’d married a white man and they hated her proudness. Oh son, I could have saved her from those sinful imps. But I were stinking drunk in the lobby of the flea-bag where they abused her.”
He stopped talking to wipe at his tears with his sleeve. The bar porter had continued, “It’s a awful story. Everybody on them streets know’d what happened to your mama that morning. One of them slick hustlers eased up beside her at the bar just before closing time.
“Phala was drinking and tired. She didn’t see the pill go in her glass. Two of them dirty niggers carried her out to the back door of the flea-bag across the street. They had rented a back room on the alley for the night. They say that cold-hearted nigger what owned the cabaret just grinned when she were carried out. He were glad because she’d never let him have her.
“When them devils finished they rotten fun, they went in them streets for blocks around. They told all the tramps and winos about your beautiful mama laid helpless and naked in that room. They say them dogs went in and out of there until daybreak.
“I were sobering up in a chair near the lobby window. I heard the pitiful screams of a woman. Then your mama came running by. She were naked as the day she were born. Her belly and thighs was caked white with jism. She were cutting herself bloody with her fingernails. I guess she were trying to scrape them niggers’ filth off her. She had woke up and know’d by the stink what had happened.
“I ain’t never going to forget her face. Johnny, her eyes was twice bigger and she tored hunks of hair from out her head. I stumbled to my feet to ketch her. But she were running too quick. The last I seen, she were going down Cottage Grove, screaming her heart out.
“The Lord is surely just, though. The sneaking nigger who put that pill in her glass got his throat cut the week after. Forgiv
e me, son, for not being in shape to save her.”
To break Folks’ trance of misery, Speedy said, “Say man, this spot is so exciting I can’t stand it. Let’s ride some.”
Folks answered, “Partner, drive us to a drink. Please!” as he got out of the car and went to enter on the other side.
Speedy slid beneath the wheel and pulled the car away.
14
TANGO FINGER
They parked and went into a small piano bar two blocks away on Cottage Grove Avenue. They sat at the crowded bar for a half dozen double Scotches apiece, occasionally glancing at a sepia Liberace thumping the keyboard of a battered piano on a dime-sized platform. He glittered in a gangrened silver suit of sequins, lisping obscene ballads with faggy gyrations of his blue-wigged Dracula head.
They left the bar and crisscrossed the car-clogged southside streets until Folks spotted a tall greyhound lean figure, with a ruined yellow cherub face, in a gray and black glen plaid suit standing near the window of a crowded chicken shack punching the cash register. A woman in the window was tonging golden brown chicken parts from large deepfryers as a bevy of uniformed waitresses served diners at a dozen tables along the wall.
Folks said, “Speedy, pull over and park. I think I saw one of the old gang in that chicken joint. Precious Jimmy, a shill buddy from the old carny days with Blue Howard’s flat joints.”
Speedy said, “Thank you, that whiskey is got me ready to destroy some cluck,” as he pulled the Eldorado into the curb.
They walked back down the sidewalk teeming with laughing couples and singles peacocking in their Saturday night finery. PRECIOUS JIMMY’S CREOLE CHICKEN flashed in orange neon above the door they entered.
Precious exploded at the sight of Folks. “White Folks! My Man!” He scooted from behind the cash register and grabbed Folks in an affectionate bear hug. He led the way to a back room equipped with a sofa, table and chairs surrounded by cartons of store supplies.
Folks said, “You sonuvagun, it’s good to see you. Precious, meet Speedy, my partner.”
