by Mary Monroe
“Okay. That wraps up last night’s dealing, anyhow,” Baltimore replied, sitting next to Henry in the back of yet another cab. “Do I have to guess where it is you wanna have something to eat?”
Henry leaned back against the vinyl seat cushion and smiled. “I have heard of this one place where they serves a mean plate of chicken and grits.”
“Well, then, we’d better get over there before Hattie gets off work.” Baltimore snickered lightly. “‘Sides, I always did like grits.” Henry glanced at him from the corner of his eye, wondering who he was trying to fool, knowing full well Baltimore couldn’t stand the sight of grits.
Movement inside the diner was sluggish at best, probably because the time of day landed somewhere between breakfast and lunch. The idea of brunch hadn’t caught on so well with Negros, so the waitresses sat around clowning about the men in their lives and those they wanted out of them. “Nah, don’t put the suitcases down at the door,” Baltimore told Henry as he lowered his cheap travel bag to the floor. “I aim to keep my hands on what’s mine.” Too bad he didn’t hold the same opinion for what belonged to other men.
“Ahhh, there he is!” shouted Hattie, with her hands outstretched, pretending that Henry was too much to touch. “You said you was coming by last night, but you lied. I had put Mama to sleep by nine. The chillums was down and out soon after that.”
“Hattie, now don’t be that way,” Henry pleaded. “I was busy working ’til late. Don’t you know if there was any way for me to get loose, I would have?” When she began to wobble her round head from side to side, like she was mulling over his blatant lie, Henry grinned big and wide. “Yeahhh, that’s it. Ain’t nobody for me but you. Go on back there, and get some fresh coffee for me and my friend.”
“Okay, lover man,” she sang, before fixing her eyes on Baltimore, as if he’d just appeared out of thin air. “Oh, uh-huh, I remember. You’s Ham ’n Eggs from the other day,” added Hattie. “Macy say she remember you from last night, though.” As soon as she sauntered off to the back of the restaurant, Henry moved his luggage aside with his hard-soled shoe in order to lean in closer to Baltimore.
“I thought you were with Frannie ’n ’em last night,” Henry commented, marveling at how proficiently Baltimore seemed to be getting around. “I caught the last act with you and Chick, but when did you have time to work Macy in?”
“I didn’t. Macy was having some trouble with the man who took her to Club De Ville,” Baltimore answered. “He was more than likely her husband, seeing as how they was out in the open scrapping and such.”
“They were fighting at the club?”
“He was doing a large part of the arguing,” Baltimore recounted, “snatching on her at the table. If I had the chance, I’d show her something different altogether.”
Squinting down the long aisle with square tables on either side, Henry smiled to himself. “What if, just sayin’ what if, she was to show up this morning? What would you say to her?”
“Don’t matter. Macy was out later than me, so there ain’t no way she found her way in here this early,” answered Baltimore, unaware that Macy had been at work for hours and was actually heading his way. “But if she had,” he continued, “I’d have to make it known that I planned on making her life a little better after awhile, if she’ll let me.” Baltimore didn’t mind playing this what-if game Henry initiated, because it did give him a chance to talk about Macy as if she could become more than a conquest, if she decided to give in. Baltimore couldn’t understand why a man who couldn’t provide love and affection didn’t up and leave the woman alone, instead of making the situation worse by getting violent.
“Oh, I see. You’d take Macy in your arms and then do what wit’ her?” Henry prodded while Macy filled a sugar bowl behind Baltimore, at the next table.
“One thing, if I wasn’t still bushed from satisfying two women last night, I’d look to giving Macy a run for her money,” Baltimore boasted unwittingly. Henry tried to wave him off after hearing the discussion headed in the wrong direction. “Man, what’s gotten into you?” Baltimore whooped suspiciously. When Henry placed his head in his hands, Baltimore had a good idea what was askew. “Macy’s standing right behind?” Henry nodded assuredly that she was. “And, she just heard me bragging ’bout laying down with more than a fair share of hens?” Again, Henry nodded, glancing up at Macy, who had her hands balled against her hips.
“Ham ’n Eggs,” Macy said, stepping into Baltimore’s view while trying not to laugh. “I seen you last night at the De Ville, but with only that high-yellow thing hanging from your zipper. I’m surprised she let you tip out later on, unless you had ’em both at the same time.”
“Nah, they was…separate,” Baltimore admitted, slightly nonrepentant. “They live at the same house, though.”
Somewhat mystified, Macy shrugged her shoulders and begun fiddling with her apron strings. “Is that where you live at?” she asked. “With the two of them women?” Despite Henry’s disbelief, Macy appeared turned on at the thought of Baltimore getting more than his fair share of feminine affection.
“Nah-uh,” Baltimore uttered. Slowly, he came to the understanding that Macy was the type of woman who was very interested in a man who could pull off such a feat and didn’t think twice about bouncing back for a third. “I don’t have a place to lay my head,” he informed her honestly. “Got my luggage right here.”
“Slow down, Ham ’n Eggs,” she teased. “I’ll be off work in another hour. We can see what you got to say about it then.”
After Macy disappeared to the far end of the diner, Henry stared at Baltimore endlessly, worshiping and despising him simultaneously. “Baltimo’, I done seen you pull off a lot of thangs, but for this here occasion, I ain’t even got the words for it.”
CHAPTER 9
WHAT THEY CALL YOU?
Macy yelled for the taxi driver to pull over when he rounded the turn at Euclid and East Seventh Street. “Stop here. This is it!” she shouted from deep in the backseat, with Baltimore’s fingers dancing beneath her waitress uniform. “Go on now, Ham ’n Eggs,” she chuckled, stepping out of the long blue Oldsmobile in front of the Euclid Terrace Hotel. “We’s just getting around to knowing each other. Don’t start to acting like this is gonna be a regular thing.”
Baltimore’s smile gleamed brightly. He pulled his thin suitcase from the floor of the taxi and then whispered in Macy’s ear. “All I need is today.” Macy stared at him. A nervous glint flashed in her eyes. She must have believed every word, because she ran flat out of objections. In fact, she didn’t have anything else to say until her uniform was thrown across the cloth-covered chair in room number six, at the end of the hall.
Her heart pounded with anticipation as she watched him unlatch the pull-down style Murphy bed from the wall. “I don’t know what you think of me, but I ain’t in the habit of cattin’ off with men to strange hotels,” Macy said eventually, in a way that told Baltimore she was being truthful. “I’m a married woman, but things with my husband are not like they need to be, is all.” When Macy tried to explain her situation at home and justify stripping down to her slip and brassiere, Baltimore quieted her with a warm embrace and heated kisses.
“See, Macy, I don’t have to know why you decided to come here with me,” he uttered passionately, running his wet tongue along her neckline. “It just means I get a chance to show you how happy I am that you did.” Baltimore wanted to sweat the sheets with Macy for two reasons. He figured she needed a kind hand on her body instead of one bent on bruising it. He also figured she deserved it. Again, Macy thought well enough to keep her mouth closed, as best she could with a chorus of enthusiastic shrieks and screams pouring out of it. Macy’s displays of blissful intimacy, resulting in a myriad of high-pitched moans, continued to seep through the walls of room number six during a good part of the afternoon. During a much-needed intermission from the devilment scattered about, Baltimore washed his face in the small sink next to the kitchenette. “Macy, w
hat do you say to me running down to the corner store for a coupla bottles of pop, or something stronger, maybe?”
“Uh-uh,” she objected. “I ain’t gonna let you outta my sight until I can’t stand no more of that good stuff you been pleasuring me with. No, suh, I was sorry in the beginning for messin’ around, but you done changed my mind about that but good.”
Baltimore looked over his shoulder at Macy, wrapped in moist sheets. For the time being, she didn’t have a care in the world. “I’m happy to oblige,” he reminded her. “Told you that from the jump.”
“Yeah, you did.” Macy blushed, lighting up a store-bought cigarette. “You was right, too. I feel like a million. Tell me one thing, though, and I’ll shut up again for about another hour. I think I can’t stand at least that much more.”
Easing back onto the bed, his naked body lying next to hers, Baltimore caressed Macy’s shoulders with his strong hands. “Okay, shoot.”
She flicked cigarette ashes on the hardwood floor next to the bed. “I’ve been clowning around and calling you Ham ’n Eggs so’s I wouldn’t get too personal. I does that with customers down at the diner. It also helps me to recollect what they like to eat, if they come in again, you understand.”
“Sure, I do,” answered Baltimore. He wondered where she was headed with this discussion, but he didn’t want to rush her to the point. Conversely, he decided on meeting her whenever she arrived there on her own. “That sounds like a smart way to go about things.”
“I guess so,” Macy said plainly, with her mind plainly on something else. “Well,” she sighed, with her fingers fondling the back of Baltimore’s thigh. “Huh, I stepped in quicksand the moment you showed up this morning, and I’ve been sinking ever since.”
“So?” Baltimore said, waiting on the important part of her comment. “Some would say, ‘That’s a good way to go’,” he joked.
Macy’s full breasts shook as her laughter spilled out unbridled. “And, I’d be one of ’em, too, but the problem is, I don’t even know your name, and you’ve spent the better part of the afternoon driving me wild.”
Sitting up on his elbow, Baltimore wrinkled his brow as he considered the possible ramifications of Macy’s epiphany, until he reasoned there weren’t any. “You know they call me Baltimore, or did you forget?”
Macy turned her head toward him and sighed again, although this time hesitation stood behind it. “Naw, I haven’t forgotten. I guess I’d feel better knowing who they were and why they do. I don’t mean to pry, but what kinda name is Baltimore for a man like you? I dare say your mama calls you by the same.”
“What’s all of this talk about what’s in a name?” he replied, annoyed with Macy’s interest in something that didn’t concern her. “Ain’t no need for nobody to bother with that, except the undertaker and the woman who’s crying over me when they’s lowering my bones into the ground.”
“I see,” answered Macy, with the wind taken out of her sails. Before putting her cigarette out on a flat tin ashtray she’d placed on the floor beside the bedpost, she tried to calm the unexpected burst of emotion causing knots to develop in the pit of her stomach. “I’d better get going, you know. I’d hate to overstay my welcome.”
“If you leave right now, you’re gonna under stay it,” Baltimore submitted, in the best way he knew how to ask a woman who wasn’t his to hang around.
“A little while longer,” Macy agreed silently seconds before she was back to shouting. This go-around, “Baltimore,” was the only thing she wanted to say, in about a hundred different ways at that. From slow and mellow moans to bold and bawdy hoots and hollers, she traded in her marriage vows that day when calling his name like no others. Unfortunately, that would be her undoing.
Not long after Macy woke up from a catnap, collected her clothing, and dashed off for home, Baltimore was in the hotel lobby, on the telephone. He’d made several calls, including the ones to get a line on Henry. Eventually, Baltimore caught up to him at Franchetta’s, where she had been steadily grilling him for information purposely being withheld from her. It was a good thing the phone rang when it did because Henry was wearing thin under the intense interrogation tactics Franchetta administered. There were several ways to make a man sing like a sparrow; questioning him while wearing nothing beneath a sheer negligee was a good one. When Baltimore arrived at her front door, he didn’t have to wonder why his pal sounded all shook up on the line, stammering timidly.
“Why’d you bring your big, thick head back over here if you didn’t want Franchetta attemptin’ to waggle some news out of you?” Baltimore fussed, dragging Henry out of the house, with his pants down around his ankles.
“A few more minutes and I’da had him talking, Baltimore,” Franchetta yelled from the front porch, her negligee swaying in the winter wind.
“If I wanted you to know what I was up to, I’d have told you myself,” Baltimore hollered back in her direction. A colored mail carrier on his route stopped dead in his tracks on the sidewalk when his eyes discovered what he thought to be a practically nude white woman jawing with a smooth-looking black man. “You ought to be shame, Franchetta!” Baltimore scolded her playfully. “I told you Henry’s got a weak constitution for pretty girls.”
“Yeah, I know!” she screamed, pretending to be stomping mad. “That’s what I was counting on.”
When it didn’t appear the wide-eyed mailman was interested in vacating his spot on the cold concrete, Baltimore stared him down. “Something up on that porch belong to you?” he asked harshly.
“Huh, oh naw, suh,” said the mailman as he backpedaled, cradling his bag. He didn’t know exactly what was going on, but Baltimore’s tone suggested he forget about it and get on about his business. Before Pudge’s taxi stormed off down the residential street, the postal worker was long gone, and so was any chance of Franchetta learning what she’d almost pulled out of Henry: information about the heist.
After Baltimore retrieved Henry, he had Pudge drive him back over to the Marquette Hotel to meet with Ash Can Corvine, the reluctant bellhop. The taxi rested against the curb on the Holmes Street side of the hotel, where there would be fewer interruptions. The message left at Uncle Chunk’s suggested that the big news Baltimore had been waiting for had finally come through. “Ash Can!” Baltimore hailed gleefully as the apprehensive older man stepped out of the side door, with a cigarette trembling from his lips.
“Hey ya, fellows. I sho’ wanted to thank you for putting some extra money in my pocket,” Ash Can said, as a matter of record. “Been a long time since I had enough money to blow some of it. I’m just saying, much obliged. Those white men are crazy for the girls you been sending over.”
“Don’t mention it, Ash,” Baltimore responded, watching the unlit cigarette bounce up and down as the man rattled on. “What I want to hear about is the word you left at Chunk’s concerning a sporting event set to go down.”
“Oh yeah, that. Well, you said before there was some pay tied to the privilege of knowing if I happened to hear something.” There was a pregnant pause, which annoyed Baltimore. He pursed his lips over the deliberate ploy to stall for a payoff on the front end. Ash Can struck a match, but he was far too nervous to light up what he’d whipped out to smoke. “Okay, I can see you’re a man of your word. I’ll just come out with it then.”
“You’d be wise to do that,” Baltimore agreed, growing more impatient by the second.
Leaning in, the bellhop shared what he’d overheard some men discussing about putting the hospitality suite to good use. Ash Can went on to explain that several smaller stakes games had cropped up, but this was by far the most promising, because Mr. Houston Olds, heir to the Oldsmobile fortune, would be one of the participants. Now that the bellhop had Baltimore’s full attention, he dropped the bomb. “The on-liest thing you might have to worry about is a city cop who likes to pal around with these stuck-up rich boys. He won’t be able to sit at the same table with them, but he’s liable to come and watch a spell.”
“I done already started working on forgetting about knowing you,” Ash Can replied before thinking. “I mean, I-I-I’ll do-do that, Mistah Baltimo’,” he added, flicking the dampened unlit cigarette into the gutter. “This here be the end betwixt us?”
“Yeah, this is where we part company,” answered Baltimore from his seat on the front passenger side wheel fender. “Thanks for calling me, and only me, about this.” He threw in that last comment to dissuade the aging bellhop from thinking of selling the same information to anyone else. That kind of mistake was a killing offense, and Baltimore needed to make sure the man understood that. A square deal was a square deal, even in the midst of planning a high-profile robbery. There was such a thing as honor among thieves, after all.
Speaking of thieves, Baltimore called an immediate meeting in Uncle Chunk’s back room. Immediate meant some time later that same day because it took Pudge a few hours to round up the boys. Dank Battles, the ex-prize fighter was found at his sister’s house, busting up a chord of wood in the backyard. Rot Mayfield had gotten himself thrown in jail overnight on a public disorderly charge, which he swore was an absolute misunderstanding between him and the barmaid who refused his drunken advances. Louis Strong had lit his slow fuse and was perfectly contented to snuggle up next to her until Pudge came banging at his door. Louis had no qualms about tearing himself from a hot woman and the comforts of a warm bed, especially when the rent was due. He’d agreed to go in with the moneymaking scheme, believing that he shouldn’t have to work too hard to pull it off. It was easy money as far as he was concerned, although he’d done enough wrong to know that keeping it was often another story entirely.