by Iceberg Slim
Perhaps he had no father. His mama probably worked in River Forest. I thought how wonderful it would be if he could go with me to the pink house.
He’d sure be happy like I was to get away from the piss stink in the kitchen sink, the roaches, and the hunchback rats that stood on their hind legs and snarled like rabid wolves.
I was glad for him that at least his face was black. He’d be able to play games in the bloodstained hallways and on the puke-streaked stoops. His savage young buddies would never bar him from their games and call him a trick baby.
I caught a jitney cab on South Parkway Boulevard. I got off at Fifty-first Street. I crossed the street and walked into Washington Park.
I found a cool, green, shadowy spot where Phala and I used to lounge together to escape the hot summer sun. I remembered how she used to croon me to sleep on her bosom.
I felt so sad to think that Phala was probably in the sun on that bench near the weeping willow tree. I could almost see her pitiful vacant eyes and smell the sharp odor of the lye soap in the faded blue smock.
I lay there until the orange sun floated off the rim of the earth, and the night sky was ablaze with stars.
I got home at nine P.M. Blue wasn’t home. I read Keats and Shelley until I fell asleep. I went to the bathroom around three in the morning.
I was sitting on the stool when I heard Blue laughing loudly in his bedroom. I washed my hands, and I was getting back into bed when I heard a young girl giggling in Blue’s room. It was the first time he’d had a broad for company.
I turned on the radio. The sweet music of Guy Lombardo lulled me back to sleep.
I awakened to the savory scent of the frying bacon. I was hungry. But I felt wonderful looking out the open window at the tulips and roses, dewy and sparkling in the bright morning sun. I was anxious for my second day of the con.
I was getting out of the bathtub when I heard Blue calling my name. I stuck my head into the bedroom.
Blue was standing in the bedroom doorway. He was wearing lavender pajamas. A small, big-eyed doll about eighteen was snuggled against him.
She was wearing white panties and one of Blue’s t-shirts. She had nice, big legs. I couldn’t tell how she was built upstairs because of the bulky t-shirt.
Blue winked and chortled, “Folks, meet Linda. I’m going to make a Billie Holiday out of her. I heard her singing along with a record last night in Square’s Bar on Thirty-first Street.
“She’s great. I already told her about our plans to open a swank night club in a few weeks. You were wondering who would be our star. Well, stop wondering. It’s Linda.
“Breakfast is ready. So hurry, we’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”
The three of us had breakfast together. She was a dizzy, stagestruck little broad. And, how she was built upstairs!
I had one hell of a time coming off the top of my head with the answers to her excited questions about the night club, its color scheme and so on.
Blue sat there getting his kicks. Finally we all got in the Caddie, heading north. We let Linda off at Thirty-first Street and Indiana Avenue—in a very bad slum section.
She had stars in her eyes when she got out. Blue promised to take her to dinner that night to discuss her wardrobe and the whole plan for her stardom in the mythical night club.
I was really puzzled. I couldn’t figure why Blue would play all that con for young snatch. A sawbuck could lay broads all over the Southside who were younger and finer than Linda.
Blue said, “Folks, we’re going to work the Illinois Central Station this morning, right in the Loop near the Prudential Building. Socking it into that young pussy all night makes me feel lucky and daring. Whoopee!”
I said, “That was sure a lot of con for nothing. She is really going to be disappointed tonight when you don’t show to take her out.”
He threw his head back and laughed. He said, “Christ! I’ve got to hurry and get you out of kindergarten. That con wasn’t for nothing. The thrill I got in conning that young slut was greater than banging her.
“That stupid whore has sold more pussy than Ford has cars. But when I cut into her last night, she got indignant and slick. I offered her a double saw.
“She was looking out of the bar window when I drove up. She saw my clothes. She figured I was a rich sucker that she could play a clean-cut, square role for.
“She’d lay that hot, young pussy on me and I’d go for thousands instead of the double saw. Any broad who dreams she can con Blue Howard is doomed to disappointment.”
We were lucky right after we got to the station. A black businessman between trains went for four bills on the smack. We beat a young white guy at the Greyhound Terminal for a bill and a half. We were safely out of the Loop by noon.
We listened to a news broadcast on the car’s radio as we drove back to the Southside. It was all about the war in Europe. The fabulous cripple in the White House was quoted several times.
Blue shut off the radio. He had a serious look on his face.
He said, “White Folks, America has to go to war. There’s going to be a white man’s world war to retain white wealth and power.
“You’ll be eighteen years old your next birthday. America, the model of democracy and equality, has two armies. A black one and a white one.
“Folks, there isn’t anything more precious than your life. I’m your friend. If I let them, they’re going to draft you into their nigger army.
“I’m not going to let you die a sucker in a Jim Crow army. The black soldiers from the South would hate your guts. Folks, I’m taking you right now to a croaker.
“You’re going to start treatment for a chronic heart condition. If and when they call you in for a physical, you’ll have a history of heart trouble. The croaker we’re going to can give you drugs that will make your ticker correspond to the proper disease picture whenever they call you. Don’t worry. Leave everything to Blue.”
Time flew swiftly by on the smooth slick wings of the con. Blue had been right about our play together becoming a tricky ballet. We could almost read each other’s mind. We’d take our cues with split-second precision.
By August, Nineteen Forty, I had lost count of the marks we had rooked at the bus and train stations in the Loop.
I spent most of my take on expensive clothes from Marshall Field’s. Blue and I went fifty-fifty on food and house expenses. I blew a lot in cabarets on weekends. I had a lot of fun with the dolls I picked up in them.
Toward the end of August, Sweeney the Snake gave us a scare. We were playing the smack on a young white mark about twenty-five years old.
The coins had been flipped for the last time in the foyer of a building about a block from the La Salle Street Station. Blue and the mark had lost the tap-out flip to me.
Blue had walked away to the street. I started to split with the mark. Blue came back and interrupted for the blowoff. The three of us stepped to the sidewalk. Blue was telling us to go in opposite directions to prove we weren’t crooks splitting his losses.
I looked right into the steely-blue eyes of Sweeney passing in an unmarked black sedan. The mark was already on his way down Harrison Street to meet me around the block for the split.
The black sedan stopped about thirty yards away. Sweeney got out and rushed to the sidewalk. He ignored the curses and honkings of the drivers in the cars behind the stopped sedan.
He didn’t take his eyes off Blue and me as he grabbed the mark’s arm going past him on the sidewalk. They struggled weakly until Sweeney took a wallet from his hip pocket and passed the inner side of it across the mark’s eyes.
They started toward us down the crowded sidewalk. Blue and I melted into the crowd. We made it to State Street. We were lucky. A streetcar was just pulling out going south.
We swung aboard. We looked at each other and shook our heads when the streetcar passed Central Police headquarters at Eleventh and State Streets.
Blue said, “I got a hunch. Let’s get off at Eighteenth and S
tate. We’ll get some of Mexican Joe’s chili. A little later we have to go back and get the car off Polk Street anyway. No use going any farther South.
The Mexican was just setting steaming bowls of chili mac in front of us when Blue’s hunch reared by. It was Sweeney and the mark in the black sedan racing in hot pursuit of the southbound streetcar.
Sweeney was a sharp roller all right. But Blue’s con-educated intuition had out-smarted him. I took a cab home. Blue took a cab back to get his car.
I was worried about Blue. I almost leaped from my skin when the phone rang. It was Blue.
He said, “Folks, everything is lovey-dovey. I’m at the Du Sable Hotel. I’m in the bed with the finest young fox in Chicago.
“Christ, you should see the tits on her. They’ve got to be size forty at least. Yummy. Think of it, Folks, equipment like that on a seventeen-year-old doll. Stay cool. I’ll be home one of these days. Whoopee.”
I heard the musical laugh of the young broad. Blue hung up. I took a bath and went to the bookcase. I dozed off with Aristotle in my hands.
A month after our narrow escape from Sweeney, Blue decided that we’d pay a visit to Felix the Fixer. It was a good idea because that winter we planned to play the drag throughout Illinois.
The drag was a felony con game. Blue told me that Felix had high police and political contacts across the State. He also did business for burglars, heist men, whorehouses and gamblers.
He also used his influence to help a handful of Chicago defense lawyers in their murder cases. But he was practically powerless in those cases unless both the victim and the murderer were black. He was extremely effective when a white murderer had killed a black victim.
September dusk covered Garfield Boulevard like a gray shroud. The heavy odors of barbecue and deep fried jack salmon rode greasily on the crisp air. Dull neon eyes blinked in the acrid gloom.
We parked in front of the Garfield Hotel on the corner of Prairie Avenue.
Blue said, “Let’s walk down to the saloon under the el. The Fixer is probably there.”
I looked up at my Aunt Pearl’s white building gleaming in the murk across the boulevard. I wondered if her blubber had strangled her heartbeat since that day I went to her for help.
The Fixer was at the bar. Blue stroked his hand across his cheek as we passed him. We went to the rear of the bar and sat in a booth.
The Fixer came and sat down with us. He was as shiny and black as new boots. A toothpick waggled in the corner of his wide mouth.
He said, “Well I’ll be a white whore’s bastard baby, if it isn’t hot-prick Blue Howard. I haven’t seen you since you knocked up that preacher’s teenage daughter back in Thirty-three.
“What’s your story, morning glory? It costs three grand to fix cradle rape. It’s higher if the pussy is less than fifteen years old. If she’s white, I can’t help you at all. Give me the three grand and the name of the lip that’s got your case.”
Blue laughed and said, “Stop the bullshit, Fixer. You’ll give my partner, White Folks, here a bad impression of me.
“I’m going to play the drag with him this winter around the state. We want you to handle our beefs.”
Fixer said, “Always keep this horny sonuvabitch in front of you laddie, you’re mighty pretty. And never bend over when he’s behind you.
“Blue, seriously, I’ll handle things for you. I want twenty percent of your clean scores inside Chicago. Twenty-five percent outside Chicago. On partial kickbacks to the mark, I want half of what’s left.
“I’ll need fifty percent of all the dirty ones. That’s when the mark’s beef by-passes the police and you get an indictment. Judges and prosecutors want real dough to go along with the fix.
“Stay out of Evanston and Springfield. The goddamn chiefs of police and judges in those towns are square Johns. Ten grand couldn’t fix a parking ticket.
“Blue, I can guarantee that you’ll never go to the joint when I’m handling things for you. But if you take off scores and I don’t get my end, I’ll find out about it.
“I won’t tip you that I’m wise. But whenever you get a solid beef, I’ll whisper in your trial judge’s ear, and a Clarence Darrow couldn’t keep you out of the penitentiary. Now give me a C-note so I’ll remember you.”
Blue gave him a C-note. Fixer gave Blue his home phone number and address. The Fixer went out ahead of us.
When Blue and I stepped out on Garfield, we saw the Fixer’s bald head glistening under the street lamps as he walked toward South Parkway.
As the Caddie pulled away from the curb, I put fifty stones in Blue’s lap. He gave me a puzzled look.
I said, “You said it’s fifty-fifty right down the line, partner.”
On South Parkway near Sixty-first Street, Blue slowed the car quickly.
He said, “There, Folks, there! That’s Dot Murray.”
I turned and looked at the front of the Southway Hotel. A lean guy was on the sidewalk. His brown face was splotched with dimesized yellow patches.
He was almost as skinny as Sweeney. As we passed him he moved toward Sixty-first Street. He had an odd walk. He had a kind of totter like a Chinese broad with bound feet.
Blue said, softly, “We have to keep our eyes peeled for that maniac this winter. Pocket told me the Memphis Kid is in county jail doing a yard. He’ll never play the smack again or anything else.
“The butt of Dot’s thirty-eight smashed some vital nerve centers in the Kid’s skull. He’s lying in the jail hospital, paralyzed.”
I said, “When are you going to visit your old road buddy?”
He said, “I’m not. I’ll send him some dough. But I’m not about to go inside jails and hospitals. They’re jinky as hell. Oh! I just remembered. Saint Louis Shorty hasn’t sent me that dough I loaned him to get out of town.”
I said, “Maybe he’s getting a bad break.”
He said, “Folks, there’s nothing worse than a chicken shit grifter who borrows dough from another grifter with the stupid idea that the loan is really a score for him.
“The little sucker will never amount to a goddamn thing. Hell, if I had been him, I would have pawned my clothes as soon as I got back to Saint Louis. I would have rushed to Western Union to send the lousy thirty bucks back to him.
“The dumb sonuvabitch doesn’t realize that one day he might need thirty hundred to keep his petty ass out of the penitentiary.
“Folks, never forget that a grifter’s word has to be like a gold bond to his associates. I’m going to spread the word on him. The little tear-off bastard won’t be able to borrow a nickel to make a phone call to a doctor.”
On December fifteenth we played for my first drag mark. He was a small, wiry black guy about forty years old. He operated a soul food joint in Sterling, Illinois. He was in Chicago to cabaret and to sniff after big city broads for a couple of days.
Blue caught him around eleven A.M. on Forty-third Street near Michigan Avenue. I was blue with cold when I got the signal to pick up the poke for the mark.
I followed the script and gave the pitch about my boss and his office at Forty-third and State Streets. The mark was creepy. He giggled and jumped around all during the first stage of the play. Blue told me later that his name was Percy Ridgeway.
I was tied up with the mark when Blue went to my boss’s office to make the arrangements for both of them to share in my good fortune.
The mark said, “I don’t like that big stud. To be a white boy, you seem to be a fairly nice stud. I’ve been thinking. Why do we have to split with him? I got the equalizer stuck in my belt for those big muscles he’s got.
“When he gets his share I could walk him up that alley and plug him through both hips. Then you and me could split his share between us.
“Don’t worry. I know what to do with a heater. When I was young, I made a living with one.”
I said, “Maybe, but where is your black brotherhood?”
He said, “Fuck black brotherhood. Greenback brotherhood is
where it’s at. How about it, white boy?”
I was glad the weather was bitterly cold. He couldn’t know the real reason for my trembles and chattering teeth. I thought fast.
I said, “Friend, isn’t it strange that I don’t like him either. I’ll give your idea some thought. Our big problem now is to get my boss to agree to changing those big bills for us so we can get our share.”
Blue came back with the lyrical account of my boss’s virtues and love for me. I left for the office to bring back Blue’s share for the convincer.
I got back to Blue and Percy. I thought sure that Percy was going to heist us for the fake fortune in stage money, sandwiched between a few real bills. Blue naturally refused his share until the mark got his.
We were all in the hallway of a building at this stage of the game. The mark ripped a fat money belt from his middle. Sure enough he had a big black forty-five automatic stuck in his waistband.
I guess Percy figured he’d wait until I got back from the office with all our shares and take it all. He gave me two grand from the money belt as evidence for my boss that he was a solid citizen used to money. And he wouldn’t get my boss into political hot water by attracting police attention with wild spending of his share.
I heard Percy in a fit of giggling as I walked away to the office.
I went to a greasy spoon at Forty-third and State Streets and stalled off fifteen minutes with a cup of coffee. I walked back to Forty-third and Wabash Avenue a block and a half from Blue and the mark.
I stood there on the corner waiting for them to see me so we could work the blowoff on Percy. With an ordinary mark, I would have come a half a block closer but I didn’t know the range of that forty-five.
Finally Blue pointed me out. I waved. Blue poked a finger into his own chest. I waggled my head, no. Blue jerked a thumb toward the mark. I waggled, yes.
Percy started out for me. I started easing off the corner for the fadeaway. I saw Blue fading fast behind the mark toward Indiana Avenue. Just as I scooted from the mark’s sight down Wabash Avenue, I heard the flat popping snarl of the forty-five echo in the wintry air.
I ran to the Caddie parked at Forty-first and State Streets. Blue was just getting out of a cab. We got in the Caddie. Blue drove north down State toward the Loop.