Low Road

by Eddie B. Allen, Jr.

  Charles often saw his uncle after he got out of school. The mood he encountered one memorable time was noticeably pensive. He sat across from his uncle, eyeing him curiously. Draped in one of the fine European suits Charles’s dad had sent from abroad, Donnie was the picture of concentration, his fist glued to his chin.

  “What’s wrong?” Charles asked.

  “Shut up!” Donnie snapped. He fidgeted and twisted about in his seat. Someplace in the distance, Charles could hear pounding and muffled noises.

  “What’s that?”

  “Shut up!” his uncle repeated. “You ask too many damn questions!” Donnie returned to his concentration. Shortly thereafter, Myrtle entered the room. Immediately, she detected tension.

  “What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I’m thinkin’!” he sniped again. She left the room. In the background, Charles could still hear the pounding.

  “What is that?” he nagged at his uncle.

  “I told you to shut up!” Donnie paused. “You better keep your damn mouth shut if I tell you this.” Charles listened. “We got this nigger tied up in the trunk…” As soon as Donnie began, it made sense; his uncle was crazy, Charles decided. That’s all. Crazy. No other explanation. Like Joanie before him, Charles had been forced to witness the shooting up, Donnie’s needle-injection demonstration. After several years, he was still watchful, in his perverse way, when it came to the children. Charles had also observed with interest Donnie’s outrageous sky-blue suit and other pimp-wear. Soon-to-be film characters, like the ignorant and buffoonish 1970s pimp “Dolemite,” with his kung fu–kicking prostitutes, were only pretenders to the style and life Donnie actually portrayed on the streets of Detroit. His nephew had witnessed the double-duty shoplifting missions that Donnie took his whores on at local grocery stores. Donnie and his bitches had shocked the sheltered boy as he sat out in the car. His uncle would go into the market wearing oversized coats that held secret compartments sewn into the lining. The girls might put a few items into a grocery basket—it wasn’t exactly the kind of work they’d signed up for, but they took direction—then they’d all get in the checkout line. Standing behind them, Donnie whistled and glanced around as if lost for the moment in his own thoughts. He played the role of casual customer to the hilt. They’d pay for the few items presented to the cashier and walk out innocently to the parking lot. Victoriously, Donnie would open the trunk before snatching out an alarming number of steaks and packages of meat from his coat’s lining. The food had been carefully concealed between the fabric of his outerwear and the shape of his inconspicuous frame.

  “That’s boosting!” he would proudly brag to his nephew. “I could teach you that, but you don’t wanna know nothin’ ’bout it!” Charles had also marveled at Uncle Donnie’s sense of humor. His favorite show was Bewitched. He often sat with Charles and watched the antics of the sitcom’s main character, Samantha, toward her mild-mannered husband Darrin, who was portrayed by eventual Michigan transplant Dick York.

  “He’s a punk!” Donnie would say, almost talking to the television.

  “It’s a TV show,” Charles matter-of-factly explained.

  “Aw man, he’s a punk! He lets her walk all over him! He’s a punk!” The rules of pimpology would probably not have applied to Darrin and Samantha’s marriage anyway, but the mind-set, to Donnie, was all the same.

  Charles reasoned with the macho pimp: “It’s a TV show.” Donnie enjoyed smoking reefer while he watched the program. Joan had a canary, whose cage sat next to Donnie’s favorite chair in the living room. The bird would sing and whistle happily: “Whrr-whrr-whrr, whrr-whrrr.” Donnie got a kick out of blowing reefer smoke into the cage. He’d take a puff, lean toward the bird, then exhale. Charles watched as the cheerful house pet received a contact high. This particular time, Donnie was feeling more devilish than usual.

  “Watch this, Joey,” he told Charles as he grinned at the bird. Donnie began his ritual: puff, lean, blow. He began to focus on the bird during Bewitched commercials. Puff, lean, blow. As if bewildered, now the bird chirped inconsistently.

  “Whrr…”

  After a while, Charles noticed that the bird was silent. He and Donnie got up, looked into the cage and saw it frozen on its perch. Donnie thumped the cage, and the poor thing fell over dead. Obviously, Joanie was at loss for laughter when she returned home from her job. Donnie got an earful like his sister had given him on only rare occasions. He responded in his usual sensitive fashion, saying that it was “just a bird.”

  Yep, crazy, Charles thought. That about summed it up. He listened to his uncle’s dilemma concerning the man trapped outside in the car.

  “I’m tryin’ to decide whether we’re gonna kill ’im or drop ’im off naked beside the road somewhere.” He pondered the options the way a stockbroker would ponder an investment. Charles didn’t bother to seek details about what transgression the poor fool at his uncle’s mercy had committed. The fourteen-year-old reversed roles with his uncle, feeling that Donnie obviously needed a rational voice to help balance his thinking.

  “You don’t wanna kill him,” Charles said, as if he’d made the decision at least a hundred times before. “Don’t kill him.”

  Donnie sighed.

  “Yeah. You’re right. I don’t need no murder case right now.”

  Charles never heard any more. Once he saw that Donnie agreed with his recommendation there was little left to say. But safest wagers would have had it that a naked man somewhere was left to find his way home after sundown. Donnie knew he could accomplish plenty on reputation alone. If he was respected as the bad ass he portrayed himself to be, there would be little need for him to work at supporting the image. Conserving energy and maximizing resources were just as important in the streets as anywhere. Advertising took on a slightly different form, though. Word of mouth could be more effective than any business card. Even so, Donnie never set out in search of trouble. He attempted to make it known, though, that any motherfucker who chose to test him would have a challenge on his or her hands. A little intimidation could go a long way.

  At some point, Donnie decided he would take his pimp show on the road. With girls in tow, he left Detroit for the first time since his return from the air force. Donnie traveled out of state, heading westward in search of new trick money in places where he felt there’d be a demand. As personal experience had taught him, military personnel in need could be reliable customers. Donnie learned about a base in Kansas, where there would likely be men who were willing to part with their money for a piece of quality ass. He set up in the area for a while, until he drew the attention of local authorities. Not only that, but he managed to gain notice from the FBI, which opened a file on Donnie for what was peculiarly called “white slavery,” that is, transporting prostitutes across state lines. The last thing he needed was a federal charge, which could mess up not only his game, but his prospects for running it. Fucking with a stiff federal sentence would obviously prohibit the money-making empire he envisioned himself in the process of building. Aware of the risks, when things heated up and his prospects changed, he went back in the direction of home. In Flint, about ninety minutes north of Detroit, he set up again. But it wasn’t long before the movements of the stranger in town caught up with him once more. Cops didn’t leave Donnie much room to breathe. No later than 1959, he was on Detroit soil once more. Now, however, Donnie was prepared to explore new ways to make a gain. There were surely quicker and simpler ways to get paid, without having to keep track of women. The money he spent on overhead, such as clothing and places to stay, could be direct-deposited into his pockets. Donnie’s next major move would be designed to produce quicker and simpler dividends.

  Numbers had a legacy and complexity that separated it from every other hustle in the ghetto. Its presence among the masses was far-reaching in both appeal and scope. Even many of the otherwise law-abiding citizens of black communities would occasionally “play the numbers” in hopes that their wagers
would put them ahead enough to buy a new piece of furniture or maybe get ahead on the coming month’s rent. Called “policy” around certain parts, like Chicago, the numbers game was the most carefully organized lottery system ever established by non-state, self-appointed authorities. It was said to have been brought over from the Caribbean by Afro-West Indians, who took and placed bets in barbershops and other small establishments that served as front stations for the lottery. Cities like Harlem, which attracted large numbers of immigrants, incorporated numbers into their subcultures as the newcomers learned of the affordability and simplicity of participating. Policy houses, where bets were taken and where the winners collected, were located on numerous blocks of northern cities. The winning numbers were chosen through various methods. New York used an already-established form of gambling as the source of its underground wage making: horse races. The numbers of the top three horses for each day served as the winning combination for bettors in Harlem. During another stage of the racket’s evolution, the last three digits of the New York Stock Exchange’s total trade volume was used to determine payout. Chicago had The Wheel, a roulette-style device that functioned as the proverbial magic lamp for numbers participants. Each day, players and policy organizers gathered at the selected location, perhaps a basement apartment or similar discreet place, and the wheel was spun before an anxious, enthusiastic—and usually packed—house. Though farther away in proximity from Harlem, Detroit numbers also went the way of the horse races in determining winners and losers.

  What every city had in common was a basic structure, from bottom to top, of the players, ticket takers, operators, and financers involved with policy operation. Ticket takers, called “numbers runners,” made their rounds to homes, street corners, shoeshine stands, soda shops, anyplace in the neighborhood where black folks gathered. The runners represented the first phase of monetary exchange, accepting bets that ranged from pennies to considerably larger amounts. Not uncommonly, these were teenagers who proved themselves responsible in keeping the dictates of the code. They began the process of recycling the healthy cash pool that constantly flowed from the pockets and purses of lower-income hopefuls into the hands of bank-rolling gangsters or benevolent hustlers—who were sometimes one and the same—and then back into the ghetto again. Tickets took the form of small betting slips that were carried back to policy collectors. In certain areas, the slips took three-by-five-inch dimensions and were yellow in color, with carbon paper in between each for transference. The players kept the originals; delivery staff retained the copies. Other runners, called “pencils,” avoided the use of tickets altogether, preferring to write bets on their arms to carry them back to stations. If cops suspected them of the illegal courier work they conducted, with one lick of a fingertip and a smudging of the lead, the evidence was destroyed. A brilliant, select few were even more cautious: They memorized the numbers they took from dozens of customers to collectors in waiting. The collectors supervised daily management of the games. Employing the collectors as their management staff were the bankers, who financed the games.

  More than a few names became legendary as both heroes and villains in numbers lore. Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, for example, rose in status from bodyguard to esteemed king of Harlem when he stood his ground against a white organized-crime invasion led by thug Dutch Schultz, who attempted to move in on the numbers racket overseen by Johnson’s boss, Stephanie St. Clair. At the height of the Martinique native’s 1930s reign before she was jailed, St. Clair shoveled in as much as $50,000 a week. The vast appeal of the numbers that made the game so lucrative was the fact that its penny and nickel bets could be turned into hundreds. Lower-level managers generally took about 10 percent on winnings, while the bankers took about 25 percent. Apart from its employment of runners and managers throughout various urban centers, the racket was largely supported by the black community because of the reciprocal role its organizers played in building institutions. Philanthropic gestures by policy makers provided supplemental income to the businesses that fronted for numbers stations. Additionally, hospitals, social organizations, and other well-regarded establishments received assistance in keeping their doors open and making their services to the public available. Policy organizers were seen as men and women of the people.

  The people themselves—as in the players of the game—were a study in techniques. A number of them paid regular visits to the neighborhood fortune-teller. They saw the investment in a card reading or similar “psychic” interpretation as worth the potential in gaining an edge against the thousands and thousands of other competitors. Many times they learned their own supposed lucky numbers but with the convenient disclaimer that was less certain to determine when their particular combination would come up on The Wheel or in the harness results. Also popular was the use of “dream books” as a policy betting method. Available at the local newsstand, the publications assigned specified numerals to words and images, which allowed the players to translate their thoughts and experiences, as well as what they could recollect from psychological activities during sleep, into bets. Among the male gamblers, it was not uncommon that digits the books represented with specific sex acts or erotic associations were favored, particularly when attractive women took their bets. A brown-skinned, wide-smiling sister with firm, round breasts might be appealing on more levels than one. Others simply guessed at the winning three numbers, while there were those who preferred to take a variety of other sources as their bettors cue. Suggestions from children. Significant dates denoting births, deaths, marriages and other events. License plates from wrecked vehicles. Hymn boards in churches. Not even the preacher’s Sunday-morning sermon was too sacred for a player with a hunch or premonition about the real meaning behind chapter 3, verse 14 from the book of Proverbs in its reference to the virtues of wisdom: “For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.”

  Ever watchful in the black community, police officers were, nonetheless, subject to bribery. Now and then there might be a raid of a policy station for the sake of appearances, to show the mayor and taxpayers that they were earning their salaries. Then, in keeping with the well-orchestrated routine, as well as keeping their sources of pocket-liner available to make police work a bit more rewarding, law enforcers made sure the arrested parties bonded out. The law, however, wasn’t the only element for which there was a need to be on the watch. Any number of street predators would lie in waiting for the chance to catch a runner slipping in his diligence, maybe stopping for a soda or taking a shortcut through a dimly lit area. A female runner without male protection would be considered an easy mark. Likewise, a manager spotted fucking up a security measure at a policy house could expect to face a pistol or maybe get a lump on the head. Particularly for a frustrated bettor, the temptation loomed to wade more deeply in the waters of the underground. Or for a predator to knock off any sucker wearing a target.

  Court records would later tell the story of January 25, 1961, when Donnie hooked up with two acquaintances, Donald Hawkins and Marion Higgins. Hawkins and Higgins lived in the same neighborhood on East Canfield. The three men had set their sights on a numbers house not far away. Katherine Peek was minding the money when Donnie and his accomplices made their way into the place. Donnie was carrying the gun. The men made their intentions clear. As their robbery got underway, they heard the sounds of a child coming from another room. Fearing what might become of her as the victim of a crime, Peek quickly got an idea. She asked if the men would allow her to excuse herself, just so she could stop the baby from crying. Feeling momentarily vulnerable to his true humanity and probably confident that she was frightened by the sight of the weapon he held, Donnie gave her permission. In the brief moment that Peek disappeared from sight, she called the police. A month later, Donnie, Hawkins, and Higgins were in Recorder’s Court. Donnie pled guilty of assault with attempt to rob while armed. He and Hawkins were sentenced to two to twenty years at the state prison in Jackson. Wit
h its imposing gun towers, Jackson was the largest walled prison in the country at the time. Higgins was given three to four years at the lockup for a lesser charge of felonious assault. Donnie would be released on parole in 1962.

  But the relatively brief incarceration did little to affect his penchant for get-rich-quick schemes. Robbery simply wasn’t his forte. In another episode, Donnie found himself stopped cold and looking every bit of a damned fool. The same type of shortsighted judgment led him to his only arrest by an authority worse than any policeman. Donnie liked to hit the racetrack now and then, and on this day he blew all his shit. He seemed to pick any horse but the winner. So, dejected and desperate to get a fix, he left. Then, packing two pistols, he decided on what should have been an easy mark for a stickup job. Myrtle made it her practice to attend weekly bingo. It was one of her pastimes and ways of getting out of the house. She was first shocked and then furious when, as she and others were assembled for their evening game, a young man busted into the hall demanding money. It was Donnie. As he gripped his weapons, he may not have realized his mistake until she was already upon him. Maybe he was too strung out to see her approaching.