"I'll bet she wet her pants again this time," said Charlie, still grinning as he examined the numbers and x's on the chalkboard which told the track, race, handicap position, and how much to win, place or show. The bettor's identification was written beside the bets. I noticed that K. L. placed one hell of a lot of bets, probably just before Charlie called.
"We're going to squeeze the shit out of her," Charlie whispered. "You think Zoot was shaky, wait'll you hear this broad. A real ding-a-ling."
"Go ahead," Nick was saying to someone on the phone when we came back in the living room. Fuzzy was nodding politely to the landlady and locking her out by closing the broken door and putting a chair in front of it.
"Right. Got it," said Nick, hanging up. A minute later the phone rang again.
"Hello," said Nick. "Right. Go ahead." Every few seconds he mumbled, "Yeah," as he wrote down bets. "Got it." He hung up.
"Nick's taking some bets mainly just to fuck up Scalotta," Charlie explained to me. "Some of these guys might hit, or they might hear Reba got knocked over, and then they'll claim they placed their bet and there'll be no way to prove they didn't, so the book'll have to pay off or lose the customers. That's where we get most of our tips, from disgruntled bettors. It isn't too often a handbook like Zoot Lafferty comes dancing in, anxious to turn his bread and butter."
"Mister Bronski, can I talk to you?" Reba sobbed, as Nick and then Fuzzy answered the phone and took the bets.
"Let's go in the other room," said Charlie, and we followed Reba back into the bedroom where she sat down on the soft, king-sized bed and wiped away the wet mascara.
"I got no time for bullshit, Reba," said Charlie. "You're in no position to make deals. We got you by the curlies."
"I know, Mister Bronski," she said, taking deep breaths. "I ain't gonna bullshit you. I wanna work with you. I swear I'll do anything. But please don't let me get this third case. That Judge Bowers is a bastard. He told me if I violated my probation, he'd put me in. Please, Mister Bronski, you don't know what it's like there. I couldn't do six months. I couldn't even do six days. I'd kill myself."
"You want to work for me? What could you do?"
"Anything. I know a phone number. Two numbers. You could take two other places just like this one. I'll give you the numbers."
"How do you know them?"
"I ain't dumb, Mister Bronski. I listen and I learn things. When they're drunk or high they talk to me, just like all men."
"You mean Red Scalotta and his friends?"
"Please, Mister Bronski, I'll give you the numbers, but you can't take me to jail."
"That's not good enough, Reba," said Charlie, sitting down in a violet-colored satin chair next to a messy dressing table. He lit a cigarette as Reba glanced from Charlie to me, her forehead wrinkled, chewing her lip. "That's not near good enough," said Charlie.
"Whadda you want, Mister Bronski? I'll do anything you say."
"I want the back," said Charlie easily.
"What?"
"I want one of Red's back offices. That's all. Keep your phone spots. If we take too much right away it'll burn you and I want you to keep working for Red. But I want his back office. I think you can help me."
"Oh God, Mister Bronski. Oh Mother of God, I don't know about things like that, I swear. How would I know? I'm just answering phones here. How would I know?"
"You're Red's girlfriend."
"Red has other girlfriends!"
"You're his special girlfriend. And you're smart. You listen."
"I don't know things like that, Mister Bronski. I swear to God and His Mother. I'd tell you if I knew."
"Have a cigarette," said Charlie, and pushed one into Reba's trembling hand. I lit it for her and she glanced up like a trapped little rabbit, choked on the smoke, then took a deep breath, and inhaled down the right pipe. Charlie let her smoke for a few seconds. He had her ready to break, which is what you want, and you shouldn't wait, but she was obviously a ding-a-ling and you had to improvise when your subject is batty. He was letting her unwind, letting her get back a little confidence. Just for a minute.
"You wouldn't protect Red Scalotta if it meant your ass going to jail, would you, Reba?"
"Hell no, Mister Bronski, I wouldn't protect my mother if it meant that."
"Remember when I busted you before? Remember how we talked about those big hairy bull dykes you meet in jail? Remember how scared you were? Did any of them bother you?"
"Yes."
"Did you sleep in jail?"
"No, they bailed me out."
"What about after you get your six months, Reba? Then you have to sleep in jail. Did you see any dildoes in jail?"
"What's that?"
"Phony dicks."
"I hate those things," she shuddered.
"How would you like to wake up in the middle of the night with two big bull dykes working on you? And what's more, how would you feel if you really started liking it? It happens all the time to girls in jail. Pretty soon you're a stone butch, and then you might as well cut off that pretty hair, and strap down those big tits, because you're not a woman anymore. Then you can lay up in those butch pads with a bunch of bull daggers and a pack of smelly house cats and drop pills and shoot junk because you can't stand yourself."
"Why're you doing this to me, Mister Bronski?" said Reba, starting to sob again. She dropped the cigarette on the carpet and I picked it up and snuffed it. "Why do men like to hurt? You all hurt!"
"Does Red hurt you?" asked Charlie calmly, sweating a little as he lit another cigarette with the butt of the last one.
"Yes! He hurts!" she yelled, and Fuzzy stuck his head in the door to see what the shouting was about, but Charlie motioned him away while Reba sobbed.
"Does he make you do terrible things?" asked Charlie, and she was too hysterical to see he was talking to her like she was ten years old.
"Yes, the bastard! The freaky bastard. He hurts me! He likes to hurt! That fucking old freak!"
"I'll bet he makes you do things with bull daggers," said Charlie, glancing at me, and I realized I broke him in right. He wasn't a guy to only stick it in halfway.
"He makes me do it, Mister Bronski," said Reba. "I don't enjoy it, I swear I don't. I hate to do it with a woman. I wasn't raised like that. It's a terrible sin to do those things."
"I'll bet you don't like taking action for him either. You hate sitting on this hot seat answering the phones, don't you?"
"I do hate it, Mister Bronski. I do hate it. He's so goddamn cheap. He just won't give me money for anything. He makes me always work for it. I have to do those things with them two or three nights a week. And I have to sit here in this goddamn room and answer those goddamn phones and every minute I know some cop might be ready to break down the door and take me to jail. Oh, please help me, Mister Bronski."
"Stop protecting him then," said Charlie.
"He'll kill me, Mister Bronski," said Reba, and her pretty violet eyes were wide and round and her nostrils were flared, and you could smell the fear on her.
"He won't kill you, Reba," said Charlie soothingly. "You won't get a jacket. He'll never know you told me. We'll make it look like someone else told."
"No one else knows," she whispered, and her face was dead white.
"We'll work it out, Reba. Stop worrying, we know how to protect people that help us. We'll make it look like someone else set it up. I promise you, he'll never know you told."
"Tell me you swear to God you'll protect me."
"I swear to God I'll protect you."
"Tell me you swear to God I won't go to jail."
"We've got to book you, Reba. But you know Red'll bail you out in an hour. When your case comes up I'll personally go to Judge Bowers and you won't go to jail behind that probation violation."
"Are you a hundred percent sure?"
"I'm almost a hundred percent sure, Reba. Look, I'll talk for you myself. Judges are always ready to give people another chance, you know that."
&nb
sp; "But that Judge Bowers is a bastard!"
"I'm a hundred percent sure, Reba. We can fix it."
"You got another cigarette?"
"Let's talk first. I can't waste any more time."
"If he finds out, I'm dead. My blood'll be on you."
"Where's the back?"
"I only know because I heard Red one night. It was after he'd had his dirty fun with me and a girl named Josie that he brought with him. She was as sick and filthy as Red. And he brought another guy with him, a Jew named Aaron something."
"Bald-headed guy, small, glasses and a gray moustache?"
"Yeah, that's him," said Reba.
"I know of him," said Charlie, and now he was squirming around on the velvet chair, because he had the scent, and I was starting to get it too, even though I didn't know who in the hell Aaron was.
"Anyway, this guy Aaron just watched Josie and me for a while and when Red got in bed with us, he told Aaron to go out in the living room and have a drink. Red was high as a kite that night, but at least he wasn't mean. He didn't hurt me. Can I please have that cigarette, Mister Bronski?"
"Here," said Charlie, and his hand wasn't quite as steady, which is okay, because that showed that good information could still excite him.
"Tastes good," said Reba, dragging hard on the cigarette. "Afterwards, Red called a cab for Josie and sent her home, and him and Aaron started talking and I stayed in the bedroom. I was supposed to be asleep, but like I say, I'm not dumb, Mister Bronski, and I always listen and try to learn things.
"Aaron kept talking about the `laundry,' and at first I didn't get it even though I knew that Red was getting ready to move one of his back offices. And even though I never saw it, or any other back office, I knew about them from talking to bookie agents and people in the business. Aaron was worrying about the door to the laundry and I figured there was something about the office door being too close to the laundry door, and Aaron tried to argue Red into putting another door in the back near an alley, but Red thought it would be too suspicious.
"That was all I heard, and then one day, when Red was taking me to his club for dinner, he said he had to stop by to pick up some cleaning and he parks by this place near Sixth and Kenmore, and he goes in a side door and comes out after a few minutes and says his suits weren't ready. Then I noticed the sign on the window. It was a Chinese laundry." Reba took two huge drags, blowing one through her nose as she drew on the second one.
"You're a smart girl, Reba," said Charlie.
"I ain't guaranteeing this is the right laundry, Mister Bronski. In fact, I ain't even sure the laundry they were talking about had anything to do with the back office. I just think it did."
"I think you're right," said Charlie.
"You got to protect me, Mister Bronski. I got to live with him, and if he knows, I'll die. I'll die in a bad way, a real bad way, Mister Bronski. He told me once what he did to a girl that finked on him. It was thirty years ago, and he talked about it like it was yesterday, how she screamed and screamed. It was so awful it made me cry. You got to protect me!"
"I will, Reba. I promise. Do you know the address of the laundry?"
"I know," she nodded. "There were some offices or something on the second floor, maybe like some business offices, and there was a third floor but nothing on the windows in the third floor."
"Good girl, Reba," Charlie said, taking out his pad and pencil for the first time, now that he didn't have to worry about his writing breaking the flow of the interrogation.
"Charlie, give me your keys," I said. "I better get back on patrol."
"Okay, Bumper, glad you could come." Charlie nipped me the keys. "Leave them under the visor. You know where we park?"
"Yeah, I'll see you later."
"I'll let you know what happens, Bumper."
"See you, Charlie. So long, kid," I said to Reba.
"Bye," she said, wiggling her fingers at me like a little girl.
Chapter ELEVEN
IT WAS OKAY driving back to the Glass House in the vice car because of the air conditioning. Some of the new black-and-whites had it, but I hadn't seen any yet. I turned on the radio and switched to a quiet music station and lit a cigar. I saw the temperature on the sign at a bank and it said eighty-two degrees. It felt hotter than that. It seemed awfully muggy.
After I crossed the Harbor Freeway I passed a large real estate office and smiled as I remembered how I cleaned them out of business machines one time. I had a snitch tell me that someone in the office bought several office machines from some burglar, but the snitch didn't know who bought them or even who the burglar was. I strolled in the office one day during their lunch hour when almost everyone was out and told them I was making security checks for a burglary prevention program the police department was sponsoring. A cute little office girl with a snappy fanny took me all around the place and I checked their doors and windows and she helped me write down the serial number of every machine in the place so that the police department would have a record if they were ever stolen. Then as soon as I got back to the station, I phoned Sacramento and gave them the numbers and found that thirteen of the nineteen machines had been stolen in various burglaries around the greater Los Angeles area. I went back with the burglary dicks and impounded them along with the office manager. IBM electric typewriters are just about the hottest thing going right now. Most of the machines are sold by the thieves to "legitimate" businessmen who, like everyone else, can't pass up a good buy.
It was getting close to lunch time and I parked the vice car at the police building and picked up my black-and-white, trying to decide where to have lunch. Olvera Street was out, because I'd had Mexican food with Cruz and Socorro last night. I thought about Chinatown, but I'd been there Tuesday, and I was just about ready to go to a good hamburger joint I know of when I thought about Odell Bacon. I hadn't had any bar-b-que for a while, so I headed south on Central Avenue to the Newton Street area and the more I thought about some bar-b-que the better it sounded and I started salivating.
I saw a Negro woman get off a bus and walk down a residential block from Central Avenue and I turned on that street for no reason, to get over to Avalon. Then I saw a black guy on the porch of a whitewashed frame house. He was watching the woman and almost got up from where he was sitting until he saw the black-and-white. Then he pretended to be looking at the sky and sat back, a little too cool, and I passed by and made a casual turn at the next block and then stomped down and gave her hell until I got to the first street north. Then I turned east again, south on Central, and finally made the whole block, deciding to come up the same street again. It was an old scam around here for purse snatchers to find a house where no one was home and sit on the stoop of the house near a bus stop, like they lived at the pad, and when a broad walked by, to run out, grab the purse, and then cut through the yard to the next street where a car would be stashed. Most black women around here don't carry purses. They carry their money in their bras out of necessity, so you don't see that scam used too much anymore, but I would've bet this guy was using it now. And this woman had a big brown leather purse. You just don't get suspicious of a guy when he approaches you from the porch of a house in your own neighborhood.
I saw the woman in mid-block and I saw the guy walking behind her pretty fast, I got overanxious and pushed a little too hard on the accelerator, instead of gliding along the curb, and the guy turned around, saw me, and cut to his right through some houses. I knew there'd be no sense going after him. He hadn't done anything yet, and besides, he'd lay up in some backyard like these guys always do and I'd never find him. I just went on to Odell Bacon's Bar-b-que, and when I passed the woman I glanced over and smiled, and she smiled back at me, a pleasant-looking old ewe. There were white sheep and black sheep and there were wild dogs and a few Pretty Good Shepherds. There'd be one sheep herder less after tomorrow, I thought.
I could smell the smoky meat a hundred yards away. They cooked it in three huge old-fashioned brick ovens. Odell and
his brother Nate were both behind the counter when I walked in. They wore sparkling white cook's uniforms and hats and aprons even though they served the counter and watched the register and didn't have to do the cooking anymore. The place hadn't started to fill up for lunch yet. Only a few white people ate there, because they're afraid to come down here into what is considered the ghetto, and right now there were only a couple customers in the place and I was the only paddy. Everyone in South L. A. knew about Bacon's bar-b-que though. It was the best soul food and bar-b-que restaurant in town.
"Hey, Bumper," said Nate, spotting me first. "What's happening man?" He was the youngest, about forty, coffee brown. He had well-muscled arms from working construction for years before he came in as Odell's partner.
"Nothin to it, Nate," I grinned. "Hi, Odell."
"Aw right, Bumper," said Odell, and smiled big. He was a round-faced fat man. "I'm aw right. Where you been? Ain't seen you lately."
"Slowing down," I said. "Don't get around much these days."
"That'll be the day," Nate laughed. "When ol' Bumper can't git it on, it ain't worth gittin."
"Some gumbo today, Bumper?" asked Odell.
"No, think I'll have me some ribs," I said, thinking the gumbo did sound good, but the generous way these guys made it, stuffed full of chicken and crab, it might spoil me for the bar-b-que and my system was braced for the tangy down-home sauce that was their specialty, the like of which I'd never had anywhere else.
"Guess who I saw yestiday, Bumper?" said Odell, as he boxed up some chicken and a hot plate of beef, french fries, and okra for a takeout customer.
"Who's that?"
"That ponk you tossed in jail that time, 'member? That guy that went upside ol' Nate's head over a argument about paying his bill, and you was just comin' through the door and you rattled his bones but good. 'Member?"
"Oh yeah, I remember. Sneed was his name. Smelled like dogshit."
"That's the one," Nate nodded. "Didn't want him as a customer no how. Dirty clothes, dirty body, dirty mouf."
"Lucky you didn't get gangrene when that prick hit you, Nate," I said.
the Blue Knight (1972) Page 16
