Chicago Hustle

by Odie Hawkins

  Elijah held the ballpoint and contract out to her with complete assurance that she would sign on the dotted line, and she did. “Thank you, very much, Miss … uhhh … Sister Brown. Could you give me the best possible time to … uhhh?”

  “Evenings, after six are the best times for me,” she replied hurriedly and rushed to one of the stalagmites four doors away.

  “We’ll be callin’ you, Sister Brown … tomorrow at the latest.”

  He flipped his attache case open and slid the contract inside. Women were so fuckin’ gullible when they wanted to be, it seemed. Here’s a chick working hard all day who’d sign her fuckin’ life away, maybe … and not even suspect it.

  Toe was right. A good appearance, a hard, clean, steady rap and the possibility … just the possibility of getting something for nothing was apt to make the average woman weak in the head.

  He strolled north on State Street, looking for victims, watching the lunch hour crowds thin out. He allowed two possibles to slip by, feeling well fed and heavy about the ribs with five contracts already signed in his attache case.

  Funny, he thought, walking into Field’s air-conditioned, perfumed atmosphere, funny how even the most intelligent chicks will go for the most mediocre game. And those who won’t go for it. Well, what the fuck! You can’t win ’em all.

  He wandered into the store’s coffee shop for a cool drink. That was one of the drawbacks to the hustle, he felt … in the summertime you could get pretty thirsty. Wonder what the wintertime would be like?

  On his way back out into the streets, he spotted a victim behind the counter in the ladies’ blouses. In a split second he had caught all the signs … in addition to the fact that she had looked at him one second too long with that open expression meaning, “I like …”

  He approached her section from an oblique angle, slid up on her blind side and went into his act.

  Three-fourths of the way through, he became aware that he was being monitored by the sister’s white counterpart in their section … all green eyes and pursed lips.

  Ten lines before the clincher, the sister was called away by an imperialistic-looking old dame in a motheaten fox fur.

  “Excuse me, I’ve got a customer, be right back.”

  Elijah smiled graciously and placed his case on the counter, to re-shuffle his small list of names and addresses into alphabetical order, killing a few minutes.

  He saw her move toward him out of the corner of his eye. “Pardon me, I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with Dot. I could use some cookware myself. Is your offer only limited to black females under twenty-four, and working?”

  Elijah felt himself frowning before he had a chance to control his feelings about her southern accent. It was slight and flavored with something else, but he still didn’t dig it.

  “Is my offer limited to …? Uhhh, no, not really. White women spend a li’l time in their own kitchens too, nowadays, don’t they?” he responded slyly, glancing over at the sister wrangling with the fox fur.

  “I always have,” green eyes answered coolly.

  “Okay, sign here and I’ll bring a complete set to your home, at your convenience, all right?”

  He shoved a dummy contract across the counter, feeling vaguely pissed because his time was being so misused.

  “Don’t I get a sales talk too, you know, your li’l song ’n dance?”

  He refocussed. Where was this cracker bitch comin’ from? He studied her for a hard minute. Green, sea-green eyes, black, black hair, dark, swarthy skin, no tan. Italian? Armenian? Greek? or something. Ripe body, she’ll be fat in five years if she isn’t careful.

  Her direct look mocked him.

  “Are you sure you need a song ’n dance?”

  “Why not?” She laid an expansive gesture on him. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

  The fox fur was joined by a pair of rhinestone spectacles in dumpy slacks and two-toned platform shoes.

  Elijah slid through his speech in a dry monotone, feeling vaguely trapped. At the conclusion, he slid the form back across to her.

  Her smile was pure sarcasm. “My name is Clotille Montgomery and the whole deal sounds like a bummer to me. Not only that, I think I’m going to tell Dot not to get anything from you either.”

  Elijah felt the wildest urge to lean across the counter and crack her one on the jaw. Who in the hell did she think she was?

  He decided to finesse his way through the situation. “You think you’re strong enough to turn my thing around?”

  “Uhh huh,” she answered, her left eyebrow arched, challenging him.

  He took stock of things. Yeahhh, she probably could badmouth things so bad that he wouldn’t be able to get over. But there were lots of ways to skin a cat.

  He slowly allowed his hundred-dollar-bill smile to open up on her. “You jivvvve ass …”

  “You dirty, rotten …” she answered with equal strength. They stood toe to toe, a glass counter between them, the sounds of the store suspended, people suddenly far away.

  Simultaneously, their smiles lapsed into grins.

  “What time do you get off?”

  “Five o’clock.”

  “I’ll pick you up. Maybe I can get my black ass hung buyin’ you a drink.”

  “Not unless I scream rape.”

  Elijah took another long, hard look at her, closed his case and eased away, slipping off of Sister Dot’s blind side, knowing what she was going to think of him, what she was going to call him when she realized what he had been about. Or maybe Clotille would tell her.

  He looked back at their section from across the store, camouflaged by a rack of ties in the men’s wear department. She and Clotille had their heads together. What was the white bitch running down to the sister? Clotille Montgomery … with her semi-slick ass!

  He strolled out of the store, the afternoon heat shimmering up from the concrete in hazy patterns, heading for the lakefront, wondering whether or not he should go home and change, or just hang around ’til five.

  The bitch was fine. No doubt about it.

  He began putting his program together as he walked. Make her wait fifteen minutes … or at least ’til the sister split. Stop downtown in one of the more cosmopolitan places for a taste and after that … after that, no telling … hop in a cab and head straight for the killin’ floor or whatever.

  Too bad she’s a white broad, he decided as the first cool breeze from the lake hit him; if she wasn’t, as game as she seems to be, we might be able to get off into something really positive. Really positive …

  Elijah looked up and down the rows of pots and pans in the garage and smiled as he listened to Toe rap.

  “Mannnn, you shoulda seen this honky’s face when I told him, gimme a hundred o’ them ’n a hundred o’ those ’n a hundred o’ these. By the time I finished layin’ out a grand in his joint, he would’ve kissed my ass through a straw if I’d wanted ’im to.”

  Elijah nodded, calculating the number of pots and pans he had sold in the last month. “That’s the way Whitey is, man … he’ll do anything for money.”

  “Niggers will too, blood. Quiet as it’s kept,” Toe replied drily. “Okay, you’ve had close to six weeks at it. What do you think?”

  Elijah started off cautiously. “Well … the dough is beautiful. The set up is made for me, but … hahhhah … I don’t think my ol’ bones is gon’ be able to hold up under all this drippin’ drama it’s put me into.”

  Toe dug his hands down into his pockets and scratched his testicles indulgently. “Fringe benefits we call ’em. We got a dude out west …” He made a sly pause. “You ’member Nickodemus?”

  Elijah answered with a straight face. Yeahhh, asshole, I know about him and Leelah. “Yeah, man, you know I used to hustle with Nick, what’s he doin’?”

  “Awww, we put him into a couple shoppin’ plazas over there, somebody taught him how to say good mornin’ and gimme some, in Spanish … and now we don’t even see the dude but once a week, when
he comes over to give us his delivery sheet.”

  “It’s a choice setup, Toe. Single, workin’ broads under twenty-four … like takin’ candy from a baby. You know I haven’t been home in a week? and I got a thang goin’ on this evenin’.”

  “Hahhh hahhh hahhah … that’s what happened to Nick, with them Puerto Rican chicks out west.”

  Elijah allowed himself a tight little laugh with the Toe. The situation was sweet … legitimately selling cheap sets of cookware to a herd of gullible young chicks for three times the price that they would pay in the store. And with a legitimate contract that said they knew that, and had to pay for what they got, anyway. The really hip thing about it all was that only one out of ten even thought about trying to default after they found out the truth, the rest feeling so sold by the seller that they seemed to feel ashamed to balk. Or maybe they felt honor bound to fulfill an obligation, even a bad one.

  Elijah stepped through the smaller door cut into the garage face behind Toe. “You know, I been meanin’ to ask you, Toe … about the operation. When you be sayin’ we this ’n we that … who is ‘we?’”

  Toe snapped the paddlock on the door and stabbed Elijah with a sour look. “You gettin’ yours, ainchu?”

  “Right on, bruh … right on! but I was just wonderin’, you know? who this ‘we’ was, that you …?”

  Toe pulled at the lock again, to make certain that it was securely in place. “I’m surprised at you, blood. You know who ’we’ is, the same fuckin’ ’we’ that it’s always been. You want a lift somewhere?”

  Elijah nodded yes and followed Toe to his alley-long Fleetwood … reminding himself to be cool and not create waves, not for a while, anyway.

  Elijah jumped out of the cab and walked slowly under the awning leading to the foyer of Clotille’s apartment building.

  The doorman of the building, a medium-sized, middle-aged black man with upturned Irish features, looked at him reproachfully. After a few visits, he knew who Elijah was going to see and his whole attitude showed jealous disapproval.

  Elijah stood in front of the door that was customarily opened for the white tenants and their white visitors. So far as anyone knew, no obviously black person lived there.

  “Well, I guess you ain’t gon’ open the door for me, huh?”

  “Open your own goddamned doors!” the doorman snapped at him and glared off into the distance.

  Elijah laid a mercilessly evil grin on him, opened the door as though it weighed three thousand pounds, walked over to the intercom setup and prepared to announce himself.

  “Hey, you ain’t supposed to be usin’ that!” the doorman said to him, following him.

  “I know, man, but if you ain’t gon’ do your job just because …”

  The doorman snatched the intercom telephone off its hook and buzzed Clotille’s apartment. “There’s a man down here to see you, Mizz Montgomery.”

  “Tell ’er it’s the nigger she loves,” Elijah egged the scene on. The doorman, a black snob’s snob from ’way back, snapped his head around and glared at Elijah. “What’s your name, fella?”

  “E. Phillip Dobson the First, Mr. Phillip Dobson the First.” He spoke in a louder voice than necessary, teasing the man.

  “Man named Dobson, Mizz Montgomery … uhh … yes, m’am.”

  Elijah sneered … “Yes m’am”… woww, talk about Stone Age types!

  The doorman took his own sweet time opening up the door to the lobby. Elijah looked at the side of the man’s face on his way in and, for a split second, felt pity and then hate.

  As the heavy door slowly resettled itself, Elijah spoke quickly. “If it wasn’t for Unca’ Tom ass dudes like you, niggers wouldn’t be havin’ such a tough time tryin’ to get over today!”

  The doorman hurriedly reopened the door and shouted across the expensively carpeted lobby. “If it wasn’t for Uncle Tom ass dudes like me, niggers like you wouldn’t be havin’ a chance to eat all the chalk pussy you want, or nothin’ else, for that matter!”

  Elijah felt like running back across the lobby and thump-in’ the old dude’s ass, but for what? and besides it would be a total waste of good cocaine feeling.

  He stood in front of the elevator, steaming. Talk about bad vibes … wowww! He stared at the doorman’s back as the elevator slid from the twelfth floor. Yeahhh, I can dig where you comin’ from, ol’ dude. Been doin’ the best you know how, for as long as you can remember, and all of a sudden, just when it seems to be settling into some kind of groove, along comes one of these slick ass, upstart motherfuckers to steal all of the pussy from you, even the smell … after all these years of Yes M’amin’ ’n No Suhhin’, prayin’ that somebody would leave you a few grand or so in they wills. Or at least give you a feel. He stepped into the carpeted elevator, feeling good about having figured it all out, and kept his cool.

  Clotille leaned against the wall outside her apartment, a drink in one hand, a joint in the other hand, half high and half drunk.

  Elijah frowned, glancing at the other apartment doors as he walked to her, trying not to look anxious. Damn! this is all I need … a fucked up white bitch outside in the hall with a joint, in a building way out here on the Other side, where even the nigger doorman hates niggers.

  “Well, Mr. Phillip Dobson the First, I see you finally made it, only an hour and a half late this time.”

  Her Southern-proper-lady voice, mounted by a boozy slur, grated in his ears. “I had some business to take care of, baby … you know how it be.”

  “Yeahhh, yeahhh, I know how it be! That’s the same routine you’ve given me about ten times in the last two weeks.”

  Cooling it, he strolled past her into the apartment, headed straight for the bamboo bar across the room, mixed himself a gin ’n tonic. Fuck mint juleps tonight! and sprawled on the sofa, a Danish job splattered with wild semen shots.

  Clotille straggled in after him, trying to contain her anger, and got about the business of mixing herself another one. She came over to stand in front of him, alternately sucking on the joint and sipping her drink.

  “Clo’…?”

  “I was goin’ to try to fix you some kind of dinner,” she interrupted him, her green eyes reddened, “but when I finally got around to tryin’ to cook in some of my ‘stainless’ Astro cookware, the damned paint started peeling off the bottom of the pot.”

  Elijah almost choked on his drink, laughing.

  “What the hell’s so funny, damn it!”

  He straightened up, the cocaine he had snorted in the cab freezing his nose in little ripples. “You are, baby-sweets … you are. I woulda waited for ice water in hell just to see the look on your face after you’d found out that your would-be-slick-ass had been rooked.”

  Clotille slid down onto the sofa beside him, flashing a bare knee and thigh through the slit in her robe. “You’re a devil, you know that?”

  “I been called worse.”

  “Well, at any rate, I want my money back.”

  “What fuckin’ money back?! Shit! you signed a contract, a no-money-back guarantee. If you don’t believe me, check your contract out. And besides, what’s two hundred to you?”

  Clotille slopped half her drink onto the coffee table in front of them and placed the half-smoked roach in an ashtray. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Elijah retrieved the joint from the ashtray and took a couple deep hits before answering. “Heyyyy, what do I look like to you? Some new kind o’ fool!? Do you think I could believe for a minute that you could live in a joint like this, wear the kind o’ garments you wear and drive the kind o’ ride you got, on a salesgirl’s pay? huh?”

  An ugly smile slid onto Clotille’s mouth. “What else do you think you know about me?”

  “What else do you want me to tell you? About how you decided to come down out of your ivory tower and see how the other half was livin’?”

  “You really think you know every damned thing, don’t you? Well, let me tell you a thing or two, Mr. Dobson!”
>
  Elijah watched her closely as she swayed up from the sofa and staggered over to the bar to fix herself a fresh drink. He shook his head sadly, thinking … funny about white folks, lots of ’em … they got everything they need, ain’t hurtin’ for nothing, lots of ’em, and yet they wind up being more fucked up than people who ain’t got shit and ain’t never had shit.

  Especially the women. Look at this bitch up in here … a three hundred ’n fifty-dollar-a-month apartment, at least … money from a trust fund set up by a cotton plantation daddy. Cotton plantation! The whole concept of her money coming from a cotton plantation had almost blown him away.

  He had gotten her into a drunken stupor one night and pumped her … and after that, and a dumb, animal, drunken-two-people orgy, he had searched through enough papers to find out the whole business of her life. Family albums and captions were a dead giveaway.

  “Phillip, are you listenin’ to me!?” she screamed across the room.

  “Yeah, I’m listenin’ to you,” he replied absently.

  “Yes, it’s true, about what you’re sayin’, about me havin’ money. But about my daddy havin’ money … money! moneyyy!”

  He watched her carefully, recognizing the fact that she had reached the fucked-up point, and that beyond that would be no sense … or worse.

  “Yeah, sure, he had, has money … and I could continue to be a parasite if I wanted to. Are you trying to see how the other half is living by being a parasite?”

  The way she said it made him angry enough to leave, or kick her ass. He placed his glass on the table and stood up to leave.

  “Where’re you goin’?” she asked him, her voice almost caricaturing a black dialect.

  “You think I wanna sit here ’n listen to all this bullshit?” he blustered back at her, not really sure of why he wanted to split, feeling a little fucked up himself, behind the girl, the drink and the smoke.

  “Yeahhhh, you think I’m gon’ sit here … what the hell do you think I care ’bout how hard you had it, you knew you didn’t have to … not after you realized you was free, white and yo’ da da was gonna wipe your ass whenever it needed it.”