by Iceberg Slim
“You and your brothers had a real problem all right. But then you remembered a dear old Nigger friend of the family who used to help your old man cook mash for his bootleg still.
“He would drive you to Chicago and be your eyes and protection until you found someone to buy the hot rocks. He has known you since the day you were born. He’s really trustworthy. In fact he’s living in a house that your father gave him thirty years ago. He’s perfect. He’s old man One Pocket. Got it, Folks?”
I said, “I apologize for doubting you. Blue, it’s beautiful. After a sweet tale like that, Buster is going to be at least ninety percent convinced that our stuff is real. Now get your kicks and rundown to me the angle that convinces the sucker a hundred percent and puts him into our pockets.”
Blue said, “Folks, you could be pussy drunk like I said. But you couldn’t be a sucker to figure that old Blue was a black genius with an airtight plug for that ten percent gap.
“When I lug that sucker to you, I’m going to wink at the mark and palm a core sample of those phony rocks as you and Pocket show them to us. This eight carat blue-white wesselton rock on my pinkie is going to be in my pocket. It cost me nine grand.
“Bang Bang and I are going to leave. I’ll let the mark pick a jewelry shop or pawn shop at random for the appraisal. Then his asshole is going to twitch and his feet itch to race back for the rest of those rocks at seven grand.
“He’ll make the deal, and hand me a lousy half a grand as agent fee for steering him to the rocks. No blowoff problem at all. He goes East and I go West and never, I hope, the twain shall meet again.
“Now Folks, hold it! I see another foolish question lighting up your eyes. What about the differences in the phony from my own real rock? When we get our stock from the old Jew on Congress Street tomorrow, I’ll have him mount one of the zircons in a yellow gold gypsy mounting just like the one on my finger.
“I switch in the phony and give it to the mark, right after we walk away from the appraisal.
“Give me that phone. I’ll brief and hire Pocket. Then I’m going to call that croaker at home that beat the draft for you. He should be able to tell me how a two-month-old surgical scar over the frontal lobe should look.”
I took a good hot tub bath, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. I fell asleep and had freakish erotic dreams about the Goddess until six P.M.
I got up and warmed up Swiss steak with macaroni and cheese. Blue was out so I went to the phone to call the Goddess. I walked away from it. It was a sucker play to call her so soon.
I sponged off and went to the closet for a suit. They all looked alike in the dim light from the nightstand. I nicked on the ceiling light.
I was really partial to blue suits. Hanging there were blue shadow stripe, blue plaid, blue pin stripe, robin egg blue and fancy patterned slate blues. Twelve blue suits in all. I dressed in a shadow stripe suit and a white on white shirt with a blue silk tie. I drove to the poolroom to shoot the breeze with Pocket.
Pocket was at the back of the poolroom with an old Jewish peddler of French ticklers, Spanish fly, and jock collars. I walked back to them and watched the peddler demonstrate and pitch the collar to Pocket.
Pocket was excited. He was hanging on to every word. The sure-shot sex merchant put a rubber ring, studded all around the outside with soft rubber nodules, on his middle finger.
He was patting Pocket reassuringly on the back and saying, “To make the top of the nookie love it, you must shove the collar back to your balls on your putz. To drive the nookie crazy with joy inside, you must put the collar near the end of your putz.
“I guarantee that for life, a girl will love you that you made her feel so good. A gag you should take to bed for them. No sleep for the neighbors from the yelling otherwise.
“So many girls will chase you, by appointment only, you’ll be jazzing. It’s the latest thing, Mr. Pocket. It’s greater than Spanish fly and the tickler, which I’m fresh out of today. Two for a buck, and for that price I should call a cop to stop the robbery. For my own brother, I wouldn’t give them cheaper.”
Pocket looked at me sheepishly and shoved a buck at the love salesman. He put the sex machines into his shirt pocket and led me to the benches against the wall. We sat down.
Pocket said, “Folks, I sure hope these goddamn things work. To make sure, I’ll put on both of them, one at the back, and one on the end of my Jim Dandy. Tonight, I got a date to lay a cute hashslinger that works in the greasy spoon around the corner.
“She’s fresh in town from Mississippi. She ain’t had a chance to get her coat pulled by these stinking, slick Chicago bitches. She’s tender as gnat liver. I’m sixty years old and tired of sleeping with my old sour broad. I’d try anything to hook a fine young bitch like that.
“I’m healthy and full of ginger. I’d set up housekeeping for her, if I can make her love me. Who knows, I might plant a squealer in her belly. Think of it, Folks, old, ugly-ass Pocket with a pretty young wife and a crumb crusher to brighten his last days.”
I said, “I wish you luck, Pocket. Well, you get a payday with Blue and me tomorrow. How do you feel about it?”
He crossed and uncrossed his legs.
He sucked his bottom lip and said, “Blue promised me a grand for my end. I was overjoyed about that, until a coupla hours ago when Trapeze Willie, a second-story man from New York, gave me a deep rundown on Buster Bang Bang.
“I didn’t tip Trapeze to the play for Buster tomorrow. I cracked about the bad luck that Mule had with Buster to prime Willie for the rundown. Folks, you got to chill Blue for the Buster play.
“Willie told me the man is one of the most feared gorillas in New York. Even the rollers in Harlem are scared shitless of him. He’s crazy suspicious, and he hates white people. He’s been to bat for murder one, three times. He let Mule off with a kick in the ass because Mule is old and comical looking and he was soloing.
“You’re going to be conning him that you’re white. If he latches on to anything shitty in the play, he’ll waste you first, and then blow Blue and me to pieces with the magnum. I just know he will. If you can’t chill Blue, count me out. You tell Blue to get old man Spider or somebody to take my spot.
“Jesus Christ Almighty, look at that clock! Five after seven. My big butt hashslinger got off at seven. See you later, Folks. And don’t forget to tell Blue I’m off the Buster thing.”
I watched him rush through the doorway. I went out to the sidewalk and walked to the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Calumet Avenue. I went into the liquor store for a fifth of rum.
Pocket and a young brown-skinned broad with cow eyes and an astounding rear-end were coming away from the candy counter. Pocket winked at me as the girl stuffed a square of bubble gum into her mouth. She smelled like a rancid frying pan when I passed her.
I drove home and sat in the living room. I sipped rum and waited to give Blue the bad news about the Buster play.
I wouldn’t shed a tear if Blue couldn’t get someone to replace Pocket, and the whole plan for Bang Bang fell through.
At ten P.M. the phone rang.
I picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.”
There was only the muted sound of a band and some broad singing Cole Porter’s Night and Day.
“And this torment won’t be through until you let me spend my life making love to you, night and day. Day and night deep in the heart of me there’s Oh, such a hungry yearning burning—”
Again I said, “Hello.”
Then the line closed. It was probably some drunk chump who dialed the wrong number.
I paced and tore down the Buster play for fatal flaws until I got a headache. I went to the bathroom medicine cabinet for an aspirin.
As I raised the glass of water to wash it down, I saw an old jar of Midge’s cold cream in the cabinet. I saw the words “petal soft” on the label. I walked back to the living room phone and wondered if that screwy call had been romantic horseplay by the Goddess.
I called
the Du Sable Hotel’s cocktail lounge for Blue. He hadn’t been there since seven P.M. At midnight I got into pajamas and went to the kitchen. I broiled a steak and tossed a salad.
I raised the first forkful to my mouth. A terrible thought murdered my appetite. What if Buster really knew diamonds and brought along a jeweler’s glass to examine our stuff?
I shoved the plate away and called the Brass Rail for Blue. He hadn’t been there at all. I sipped the fifth of rum half empty and lay down on the living room sofa.
At four-thirty A.M. Blue shook me awake. I looked up into his grinning face.
He said, “Folks, why the hell are you bedded down on the sofa? You got spikes in your bed?”
I rubbed my eyelids and sat up.
I muttered, “I’m going to get a big kick when I puncture your big cheerful balloon. Bang Bang is a killer. He hates white people and Pocket won’t play. Now, I’ll bet you can’t grin. Go on, try it.”
He fell into a chair and laughed tears down his cheeks. I just sat there for a moment and watched him fall apart. Then I started to laugh with him.
It was funny to me because I figured he was overplaying my bet. And he was covering up his disappointment over the souring of the Buster play with his charade of hilarity, but I was wrong.
He caught some breath and said, “Folks, you should stop abusing your pump with groundless worry. At three P.M. last afternoon, the world’s slickest and most charm-tog nigger grifter cut into the ugliest mark in the world. It happened in the lobby of the Grand Hotel. We laughed, drank, ate and laid white whores together until two A.M. He may hate white people, but he’s crazy about young white pussy.
“I told him the tale around midnight. He wanted to go to Madison Street right then to look the stuff over. At two P.M. tomorrow he’s going to tail me in his Chrysler to your hotel.
“I left him at the Greek’s greasy spoon at Thirty-first and Indiana Avenue. I drove down South Parkway. Who did I spy coming out of a fast sheet joint at Forty-sixth Street? One Pocket with a young broad from big foot country.
“I picked them up and dropped her off at home. He was scared stiff of the Buster play. But when I ran down the tight beauty of it all he started getting weak for a piece of the action.
“It took close to two hours and an extra five bills from the score tomorrow to bring the leery old bastard back into the play. So now you can stop worrying and get a few hours of solid sleep. You’ll need it because we’ll have to be very sharp today when we separate that gorilla from his seven grand. We could tap him out for the almost-eight grand he’s got. But we don’t want him stranded in Chicago.
16
ROCKS FOR A GORILLA
I got up from the sofa and went to my bed. But I didn’t sleep. I lay there mentally practicing my role as a blind hoodlum. Then I’d get up and go to the bathroom mirror and practice the vacant unfocused stare of the sightless.
At eight-thirty A.M., Blue and I had dressed and had coffee. I was edgy when I tailed Blue to Forty-seventh Street to pick up Pocket. We parked our cars in front of the poolroom.
It was nine A.M. and he wasn’t in the poolroom. I was wondering if he had chickened out again, when he came down the sidewalk and got in the Buick beside me. We took Michigan Avenue to the slum dealer’s shop on Wabash Avenue in the Loop.
Pocket was silent the whole way. Blue and I went in and got our stock. It was beautiful slum for only five bills. The price for the ten rings was so low because the mountings were gold-filled instead of solid gold.
The old Jew stamped fourteen carat on the inner side of each band. He assured us that only an acid test could foul us up. We drove through the Loop.
The three of us got out on the sidewalk in front of a skid-row hotel on Madison Street. We followed Blue into a drug store beneath the hotel. Blue bought a two-hundred watt light bulb, a box of children’s crayons, glue, and a small box of colored birthday-cake candles.
Blue went to the side of his car. Pocket and I went up the stairs and rented a third-floor room facing Madison Street.
The wino desk clerk gave us a rheumy wink when he handed me the key. He probably thought I was a white queer about to receive a groovy transport to fairy heaven from One Pocket.
We walked into the dingy, smelly room. It stank worse than the old apartment back on Thirty-ninth Street. I raised the window and showed Blue three fingers and then ten. I went over and unlatched the door for Blue.
We waited fifteen minutes for him. I went to the window a half-dozen times. His Caddie was still parked at the curb. I started to worry when Blue came through the door with a large, stinking paper sack in his hand.
I said, “What the hell is that?”
He chuckled and said, “I went to the alley and got some atmosphere for the mark. I’m not planning to miss that seven grand. You hoodlum Detroit bastards have been doing a lot of sweating, farting, drinking and smoking in this funky sewer for more than a week.
“You know there is more to good con than what is dumped into a mark’s ears. His eyes and nose should also take the con treatment.”
I watched as Blue opened the dirty bag of garbage. He filled the ashtrays about the room with crushed out cigarette butts. He put whiskey and wine bottles on the rickety dresser and at the sides of the bed.
He shoved a stack of greasy paper plates and crumpled paper napkins into the wastebasket near the door. He washed his hands in the face bowl across the room.
Pocket said, “Blue, did you bring a rod just in case the crazy mark wakes up?”
Blue pushed his palms toward Pocket and said softly, “Pocket, I swear on my sainted mama’s grave that the gorilla can’t wake up. Our merchandise is top quality, and the best nigger con man in the country has told him the tale.
“Now you and Folks take off your clothes, down to your shorts, and hang them in the closet. Folks, then you lie down on the bed. I’m going to put that surgical scar on your noggin.”
I came back from the closet in my shorts and lay on the bed. Blue was at the dresser with his back to me. Finally he came and sat on the side of the bed.
He closed his pocketknife and dropped it into his shirt pocket. He had a ragged two-inch sliver of a deep pink candle in his palm. It was shades darker than my skin. He had pocked the top side of it so that it looked like a slice of mangled skin.
I saw the underside glistening with glue as he pasted it on my forehead. He screwed the point of a dark purple crayon into my forehead and up and down both sides of the wax scar for the healed stitches.
He went back to the dresser and brought a dime-sized uneven blob of pink wax and glued it to the side of my right calf. He dotted in deep purple stitch marks. He stood back and looked at his fake surgery.
He said, “It will look real to him. You’re not going to stand up at all. So he’ll never get close enough to see they’re phonies.
“Make sure you turn that bullet wound so he ganders it. It will make him remember the part of the tale when your brother shot you in the leg to con the rollers that you were a stick-up victim.
“Now Pocket, you and Folks get upset when the mark cracks that ‘the stuff looks real, but can’t you go with us and get a jeweler’s glass put on it.’ That will give us a chance to blow for the appraisal of the ring I palmed.
“At the instant that I palm the ring from your display, Pocket, you scoop up the stuff and put it back in this canvas bag. You’re mad and irritated that the mark and I are too stupid to know real rocks when we see them.
“This makes it logical to the mark that you didn’t miss the rock that I filched. Folks, you have the bag under your pillow when I bring the mark in. Pocket, display on the dresser beneath that two-hundred watt bulb in the dresser lamp.
“I’m picking the mark up at two this afternoon. No later than three P.M., I’ll be rapping three times on that door. “Pocket, when you open the door look suspiciously up and down the hall before you let us in. Let’s give the gorilla a tight play right down the line. All right, that’s it
. Any intelligent questions?”
Pocket said, “Yeah, I got a good one. Ain’t it going to be kinda bullshitty all around when the mark comes back to buy the stuff, and everybody is wise that a piece of the stuff is missing? Ain’t I suppose to miss it even when we make the deal? It could pull his coat that we’re in cahoots to trim him.”
Blue opened the door and said, That’s a stupid sucker’s question, Pocket. I’ll play the intelligent answer out for you when I lug the mark in. Just give a natural response when I play it to you.”
Blue shut the door. I got up and looked in the dresser mirror. The bogus scar really looked like a croaker had been fiddling around inside my dome. I went to the open window and watched Blue pull the Caddie away from the curb.
I looked at my watch. It was noon. Two tattered Mutt and Jeff winos with scarlet faces were tussling feebly in the gutter across the street.
A tilted wine bottle glittered like rare crystal in the fierce stare of August sun. Jeff stiff-armed Mutt away and sucked the amber treasure down his gullet.
I glanced down at my Buick parked in front of the hotel. A withered Madison Street siren in a vomit-stained white satin ball gown teetered her bony bottom on a front fender.
I heard a faint melody of Stairway to the Stars through the screech and hum of traffic. I banged the window shut and pulled the shade down. I turned away. It was Phala’s favorite tune. I sat on the side of the bed and watched Pocket nervously picking his nose.
I said, “Pocket, the guy you’re rolling those pills for died yesterday. Stop worrying. Like Blue told us, the mark won’t wake up.”
He jerked his finger out of his nostril and said, “I’m not worried about the mark I was thinking about Clara Sue, my young broad. She’s kinda’ salty with me. Her thing was too tender for them goddamn collars. They rubbed her sweet pussy raw.
“I got ’em soaking in castor oil to soften ’em up. I was sitting here trying to work out the con to play on her so I can use ’em again on her. Folks, I’m thirsty. I’m gonna slip on my clothes and go get a pint of Gordon’s Gin. You want some rum?”