Stilettos and Steel

by Jeri Estes

  The girls would get each john in and out within fifteen minutes. They never booked a young trick. The last thing they wanted was a lover with stamina.

  With my sleeves rolled up and my feet on the coffee table, I took a joint break. We had plans to go out with Chang later tonight. Bunny wanted me to finally meet her favorite sugar daddy. She was excited that I had agreed to go out with him socially. Chang was taking us to dinner and the opera.

  I tripped on the gigolos on television while Bunny turned a date in the bedroom with a john named John. The cads were hysterically funny as they discussed their seduction strategies and, with each hit of my joint, they got funnier. My hilarity was suddenly jolted, however by loud pounding on the door. A deep voice forcefully yelled, “Open up, it’s the police!”

  “Oh shit!” I thought. “You’ve gotta be kidding!” I yelled back.

  I immediately put the roach out in my drink and gulped down the nasty- tasting shit. I yelled over my shoulder as I hurried towards the bedroom, “Just a minute, I’ll be right there!”

  In the bedroom, Bunny was stark raving nude sitting on the john named John’s dick. He sat up as best as he could with a whore on his hard-on. Through his horn-rimmed glasses, his eyes looked terrified. I hurdled over Bunny and the banker as I lunged for the top dresser drawer.

  “It’s the fucking heat!”

  Standing on the end of the mattress, doing a balancing act, I opened a dresser drawer and pulled out the shoebox full of grass. I threw in the Zig Zags and couple of old whites. Tucking the box under my arm, I ran like hell to the bathroom. I avoided stumbling over Bunny and the john as they frantically tried to get dressed. The trick’s glasses were falling off his balding head as he fumbled for his pants to cover his now limp willy.

  Very calm and cool, Bunny said to me, “I’ll handle this,” as she deftly put on her skirt.

  I had no time to listen. I darted through the kitchen like a running back with the shoebox under my arm, determined to make it to safety before the door came crashing in. I could hear the cops trying to break down the heavy wooden door as I flew by. I made a beeline toward the bathroom window to toss the shit out, so it could fall and scatter on the cement below us. Pulling back the shower curtain, I stepped up onto the side of the tub, ready to sling the contents through the open window. I found myself looking right into the barrel of a cocked .45.

  “Drop it, you motherfucking dyke!” yelled Clancy. His toupee bobbed up and down as he repeated, “Drop it, you fucking dyke!”

  I looked directly into the barrel of his gun, the hammer held open by his thumb, ready to blow my brains out.

  “Fuck you!” I yelled and dropped to the floor. The next instant, I was violently jerked from behind, picked up and thrown through the air. I landed on the same couch where I had just been peacefully tripping a few minutes earlier.

  Bunny and the john stood handcuffed in front of me. I looked up from my crash landing at a two hundred and fifty pound pissed off black cop. Then Clancy ran into the living room behind him waving his gun. Red-faced, he yelled at me, “You stupid fucking dyke, I almost blew your motherfucking head off!”

  Like criminals on the eleven o’clock news, we were escorted out of the building in handcuffs. Greeting us was a polished black Town Car, pulling up. I heard Bunny gasp, “Shit, it’s Chang.”

  Three lean Asian killing machines piled out of the car. Like Secret Service agents, they scanned their surroundings. A tall soldier opened the rear door. Out stepped a petite man wearing a brown derby. Chang was the exact same height as Bunny. His handsome features were accented by a graying Vandyke beard. Clenched between his lips was a fat cigar. He held an orchid corsage in his hand.

  Bunny gave Chang a weak smile. His dark eyes softened as he smiled back at her. His gaze then landed on Clancy. Through his slanted glare I saw smoldering fury. Chang and his gang stood silently as we passed. Somebody was going to pay for this outrage.

  The next thing I knew, the three of us were sitting together in the back seat of a squad car. We bounced up and down as Clancy zoomed through the streets toward the station. Slowing on Market Street, he stuck his fist out the window and yelled at a ragged group picketing in front of an army surplus store, “You motherfucking hippies!”

  Poor John, sitting next to me, got whiter and whiter with each bump of the car. Bunny whispered under her breath, “Don’t worry, I have a trick lawyer.” She nudged him to make sure he understood. “Don’t say anything, okay? They’ll separate us.”

  The enraged captain turned around, spitting as he screamed, “Shut up, you fucking lezzies!” Clancy was apparently furious with me for refusing to be his mistress. Either that or he was putting on a show to impress his partner.

  We pulled up behind the station and violently jerked to a stop. The john’s glasses fell off again and the black cop turned around and compassionately put them back on his sweating, bald head. He helped the old banker and Bunny out of the car.

  Clancy turned around from the front seat and said to me enticingly, “You know I can make all these charges disappear.”

  I had nothing to say. I was not amused by my treatment. He got out of the car and yanked me out of the back seat.

  Once we were inside the station, we were treated like VIPs. Bunny and I went directly to booking and were told we would be held in the felony tank. They charged me with pimping and pandering. It’s amazing how much more attention you receive when you get busted for a felony instead of a misdemeanor.

  We were turned over to a massive matron who politely introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Deto. I’m going to have to strip-search you ladies.”

  Pale and wide-eyed, I asked Bunny, “Is there any way you can get us out of this?”

  Bunny replied in a foreign-sounding voice, four octaves higher than usual, “I don’t think so.”

  Reassuringly, Deto said, “It will be over in just a few minutes. Relax. I’ve seen it all before. You may want to keep your eyes closed, however, when they spray you for lice.” Deto was obviously a veteran servant of the state.

  A few minutes later, as Bunny and I left the search room, thanking the polite matron for such a pleasurable and harmless humiliating experience, we were separated. Deto had informed me that I would be going to the “Daddy Tank,” in Cell Block 5000 down in the basement. Bunny would be housed with the general prison population.

  I had my own personal escort, Lakesha, a young hip gum-smacking Afro-headed hot black mama, who sashayed through the corridors with an air of complete indifference.

  “Welcome to the Daddy Tank,” she said. “If I was you—as pretty and young as you are—I’d sleep with one eye open tonight.”

  When we got to my cell, she turned the key, opened the door and I stepped in. As she walked away, leaving me alone, I heard the dreaded sound of my cell door slamming shut behind me. Before she left the cell block, Lakesha called back, “Good night, daddy.”

  The cell door slamming was like the jaws of a trap snapping on its prey. Feeling hopeless, I became aware of how completely alone I was. There was a small solitary bed at the rear of the cell. Its gray coarse wool blanket was tightly tucked under the thin single mattress. It looked like a monk’s bunk.

  I took a deep breath. “I’m definitely not at the Hilton. There’s no little chocolate mint on my pillow tonight,” I thought. Instead, laid out neatly on the dirty beige, frayed pillowcase was a pair of folded dark green jailhouse pajamas. They were hideous. I wondered, “Whatever happened to basic-black jailhouse stripes like Elvis wore in Jailhouse Rock?”

  On the bed was a small bar of soap, a rough white cotton towel and a single black comb. In the center of my cell, against the back wall, a low coverless porcelain toilet protruded from the floor. It stood in plain view of the guards and inmates. Nearby, a graffiti-etched, battered steel mirror hung above a matching sink.

  I studied myself in the mirror and was shocked at my reflection. I looked ridiculous in the low-cut, boxy green rag. My head stuck out like a
fat eraser on a thin pencil. My short boyish haircut now looked completely out of place.

  There was an old street saying, “You can do easy time or hard time.” I lay on my bunk and tried to do easy time.

  My lighter was doing time in the property room along with my Saint Christopher medal and roughly three grand in cash. I lit up a smoke with a wooden matchstick from the box Lakesha had given me. I realized that I was lucky I hadn’t been shot earlier, but my pimping and pandering charges carried a fifteen-year minimum. That wasn’t exactly chump change.

  Tears welled up in my eyes, but I was determined to never appear weak. I quieted the panic. The months I had practiced acting like a badass were beginning to pay off. I put on my game face, acted cool, and convinced myself not to worry.

  After the remark Lakesha had made about sleeping with one eye open, I was grateful that the other inmates were all asleep. I was in a cell block full of hardass horndogs. Not a safe place for a pretty baby butch. Some bubba-dyke might try to make me her punk. “Good luck!” I muttered under my breath.

  When I thought about it, fucking bull dykes were the least of my problems. I knew Bunny must be pissed at me. She was probably blaming me for getting us busted. She had expressed her irritation regarding Clancy often: “Jesse honey, he’s beginning to interfere with our business. Our girls are getting arrested more frequently. Just sleep with him once in a while. He’ll calm down.” Now Bunny had missed her date with big bucks Chang.

  I unfolded the property slip that the cop had given me and read it. Typed clearly on the yellow blue-lined paper was a large dollar sign next to 3,041 dollars and thirty-one cents. I refolded it and stuck it in the toe of my black shoe, relieved at knowing the money would buy me protection.

  I rested my head on the flat hard pillow, stared at the bars in front of me and said my prayers. The occasional cough and rhythmic sound of snoring coming from adjacent cells gradually put me to sleep.

  I must have been exhausted, because I was jolted violently out of my slumber by loud clanking and a coarse deep woman’s voice yelling, “Rise and shine ladies, roll call!”

  I fumbled out of bed in my bare ass, having been unwilling to sleep in the tacky pajamas or the gross green dress. The floor was cold under my bare feet as I threw on the dumb green smock and stumbled out of my cell.

  Immediately after roll call, the matron ordered, “Okay, ladies, hit the showers.”

  Panic hit me like a body blow. “Oh God,” I thought, “I have to take my clothes off again, and this time I’m going to have company.”

  I marched toward the showers following a lanky Afro-headed, six-foot-tall black dyke. I cautiously turned around to see what was trailing me. A powerful-looking ugly Mexican woman was huffing, puffing and snorting directly behind me. I felt like a walking red cape in a bullring of bull dykes. I said a silent prayer to the Virgin Mary.

  First thing I did was a few pull-ups from the shower bar, showing off my strength. I didn’t want any misunderstandings with my cellmates. It was a relief to be dismissed from the showers and go into the day room for breakfast.

  Finding a seat on a bench, I put down my tray. I sat near a white girl who looked familiar. Looking at my plain oatmeal in the cheap cereal bowl, I took a bite of the dry white toast and washed it down with the bitter coffee, careful not to burn my fingers on the hot tin mug.

  Politely, I said, “Good morning” to the blond stocky girl sitting across the table.

  I was pleasantly surprised by her exuberant reply.

  “I know you. You’re Bunny’s pimp!” she exclaimed. “I’ve seen you at Chuckker’s. Respect, man!”

  My notoriety along with this girl’s friendly tone of voice made me feel better immediately. I replied, “Yeah, Bunny’s my old lady.”

  “Far-fucking out, I’ve heard about your operation,” said the friendly inmate.

  “My name’s Jesse Rawlson,” I said, extending my hand.

  I shook hands with the stranger.

  “I’m Little Bastard. Pleased to meet you,” said the tough dyke.

  “Likewise, man.”

  Little Bastard pointed her thumb over her shoulder at a dark-haired woman who looked like a gentle giant, “Jesse, this is my running partner, Rascal.”

  As she introduced me to three hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle sitting on the bench, I noticed that Little Bastard appeared perfectly comfortable next to this gigantic life form. With a demeanor similar to that of an older brother, Little Bastard had a protective attitude toward the woman who was three times her size. I tried not to stare at Rascal’s enormous arms, which reminded me of Paul Bunyan’s.

  The titanic Rascal ate her breakfast in a dainty, lady-like fashion. She had a very pretty face with sharp features that were softened by her kind brown eyes. She looked up from her oatmeal for a second, smiled, and exposed deep dimples in her fleshy olive cheeks. I could see that she was even taller than the big fat Mexican who had followed me into the showers. Little Bastard ordered her, “Say hi to Jesse.”

  I was taken aback as Rascal spoke in a squeaky, high-pitched voice that sounded like Minnie Mouse. “Hi, Jesse.”

  Of course, I answered her most respectfully, “Hi, Rascal.” She wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but at her size, she really didn’t need to be.

  Smiling at my new friends, I felt safe for the first time and took a bite of my stale toast. Just then, a big black hand grabbed the side of my tray. My eyes slowly followed the large arm inch by inch up to a face. Much to my dismay, the face belonged to the lanky, six-foot black girl from the showers. She had my breakfast tray in one of her hands and a large pointed black Afro pick in the other. She definitely got my attention, since the comb looked like a weapon to me.

  The girl said to me in a mean, cocky voice, “You don’t want your fuckin’ breakfast, do you, bitch? I think I’ll take it off your hands.”

  I hesitated for a second, not knowing how to reply. I didn’t have to because Little Bastard said, “She’s hungry! Get your fuckin’ hands off her tray!”

  The tall bully jerked my tray up. She looked down at the short butch and said, “You’ve got to be fuckin’ kidding me.”

  Little Bastard grinned harshly and nodded her head. “Rascal.”

  In an instant, the ton of muscle jumped off the bench. Rascal’s fist, the size of a bowling ball, slugged the tall black girl in the chest, knocking the wind out of her. As she gasped and sputtered, Rascal grabbed the bitch’s Afro and slammed her head down on the table. Twisting her arm behind her back, Rascal picked her up by the hair and threw all six feet of her into the wall like a rag doll.

  My oatmeal, coffee and toast spattered all over the wall and linoleum floor next to the unconscious Afro-head. Rascal calmly sat down next to Little Bastard, picked up her spoon and resumed eating her cereal, as if nothing had happened.

  The black girl slowly got up off the floor, mumbling under her breath, “Just fuck it, fuck it, I wasn’t that hungry anyhow.”

  Grinning at Little Bastard, who hadn’t moved through this entire explosion, I said, “Thanks, I really appreciate it. You know what? I happen to have a little cash on me. I would be honored to buy you both anything you like. Candy bars, cigarettes, sandwiches, Coca-Colas—you name it and you got it.”

  Rascal smiled in delight. She replied in her squeaky voice, “Cool, man.”

  I asked Little Bastard, “What are you in here for?”

  “Armed robbery,” she said, bored. “The fuzz caught me and Rascal leaving a jewelry store. We threw the merchandise into a gutter just before they busted our asses, though, and they can’t prove shit. How ‘bout you?”

  “Felony, pimping and pandering and they caught my ass with some grass and a few Bennies too.”

  A light went on in her head. “You guys must have an ace lawyer, right?” she asked enthusiastically. “I would do anything to have decent representation. I got some sap public defender.”

  I studied Little Bastard and her partner Rascal. They b
oth would come in mighty handy. After my run-in with the Fillmore boys, I needed more bodyguards.

  “I might be able to help get you out of here. How would you guys like to work for me?” I offered.

  “For real, Jesse?” Little Bastard inquired.

  “Yeah, I got a good feeling about you.”

  She looked like salvation had arrived. “Rascal and I would be honored to be on your crew.”

  “You’re both officially on my payroll, starting now,” I told them.

  “Thanks, Jesse,” Little Bastard said. “This robbing shit isn’t a steady gig.”

  “Cool,” Rascal squeaked.

  I shook Rascal’s hand and, to my dismay, felt my fingers crushed.

  The approaching matron yelled at us, “Get your sorry asses back to your cells. Breakfast is over!”

  Back in my cell, I saw an opened, censored telegram on my bed from some guy named “George.” On my bunk, I read the message. “Jesse, I love you. I’ll see you at arraignment. I’m out and have paid for your attorney fees. I’ll see you in Chinatown. Don’t worry. Love, George.”

  “Who the fuck is George?” I wondered.

  I read the Chinatown part again and realized that it was Bunny. I knew she couldn’t take a chance at the letter reading gay or I would have never gotten it. “What a smart girl,” I thought.

  Hearing the snack cart rolling through the cell block, I got up to buy myself some cigarettes. Rascal was leaving the cart with an armful of candy bars, Twinkies, Coca-Colas and cigarettes. I was happy to see my new employee taking advantage of the company’s fringe benefits. I bought myself a pack of cigarettes and said hi to a very attractive, slick-looking young black woman standing near the snack cart.

  As she flashed me a broad smile, I was instantly impressed with her style. The woman’s gold, diamond-studded front tooth sparkled like her mischievous brown eyes. In a thick New Orleans drawl, she said, “I’m Lovey Lupree. My skin looks like coffee and cream, smooth as my name, and pimpin’s my game.”