I had two cars. I gave the runt her Ford back. She could cover and get down in a wider area.
I started hanging around out at Sweet’s pad, sucking up the pimp game. I got home from Sweet’s one morning around five. I heard the runt rapping to someone in one of the bedrooms. I pushed the door open. The runt was in bed with a tall, pretty brown-skin broad. She looked fifteen. They were naked. They stopped kissing and looked at me.
The runt said, “Daddy this is Ophelia. I told you about her in the Haven. Her old man got one-to-three in the joint for burglary. She wants to join our family. Can she?”
I said, “Ophelia, if you’re not full of shit and you obey my rules you’re welcome. Have you bitches been in the streets working tonight? I hope you just got in that bed to freak off. Phyllis, get outta that bed and get my double-action scratch.”
The runt went into the closet and brought me a roll of bills.
She said, “A bill of this I made.”
I fast counted a yard and seventy-five slats. I took off my clothes and got between them. I spent an hour quizzing Ophelia and running down my rules. She was eighteen. The circus started. I was circus master. I had become too much pimp to freak off with a new package. They were the performers. She had put only six bits in my pocket. How cheaply did she get me if she blew tomorrow.
It was the night before my twentieth birthday in August. I had gone to the West Side to cop some dresses for Phyllis and Ophelia. I had left the booster’s pad. I was loading the dozen or so pieces in the trunk of the LaSalle. I slammed the trunk lid shut and locked it.
I heard screaming and smashing sounds coming from a cabaret just down the street. I saw a hatless, gray-haired man come staggering to the sidewalk. He was holding his head. The side of his head looked shiny. I walked down the sidewalk toward him.
He was bleeding from a deep cut in his head. He was moaning and trying to stop the flow of blood with his hands. A dark thin joker ran out behind the old man. I saw something gleam in his hand as he raised his arm again and again.
I moved closer. The thin joker was savagely pistol whipping the old stud. He was beaten to his knees. He looked like someone had painted his face red.
The thin joker turned his face. The light coming from the open door of the cabaret shone on it. It was Chris’ Leroy beating the old man. Twenty customers had come out. They formed a circle around the massacre. I moved to the outside of the circle.
Then I saw Chris standing on the other side of the circle. She was screaming and tugging at Leroy’s pistol arm. Leroy had gone insane.
I moved around the circle closer to Chris. I stood behind her. I saw greasy stains on the back of her dress collar. Her hair looked frowsy and dull. Scarface was sure taking her to the dogs. I heard the screech of brakes. I saw two huge white rollers muscle through the crowd. Leroy was astraddle the unconscious figure, still pounding his pistol against it.
They shoved Chris backward. One of them put an armlock on Leroy’s gun arm and took the pistol. The other vised his neck in a strangle hold. They dragged him to the prowl car and threw him into the back seat.
A short middle-aged white broad stepped to the side of the fallen figure. She was wringing her hands. She was wearing a bar apron. She stooped and stroked the figure’s brow.
One of them got on the front seat. He turned sideways guarding Leroy. He put a microphone to his lips. He was calling an ambulance, no doubt. The other roller came back and stopped beside the white woman.
He said, “Anybody you know?”
She sobbed. “Yes, he’s my father-in-law.”
He said, “What happened?”
She said, “Everybody knows Papa Tony loves to kid around the girls. He’s got a heart as big as New York. Everybody loves and understands him. Papa Tony came in the bar. He started kissing the cheek of all the girls at the bar.
“He kissed that one behind you. That maniac man of hers stopped singing. He leaped off the stage. He started to beat poor Papa Tony with his pistol. It’s the first night the maniac has worked for my husband. If my husband, Vince, had been here that jerk’s brains would splatter the sidewalk.”
The roller looked back at Chris. He started making notes in a small book. I knew he’d quiz her after he got the full picture. I touched Chris lightly on the shoulder. She turned and looked up at me. She got weak in the knees. She slumped against me. I took her arm and steered her down the sidewalk. I heard the distant whine of an ambulance siren.
I said, “Chris, you had better split. That’s a white man Leroy beat up. The white folks are going to cross you into it. After all you’re the reason he nipped.”
We got into the La Salle. I moved it down the street toward the prowl car. I put on the brakes. A couple came from in front of the prowl car. They crossed the street in front of me. I had stopped beside the prowl car. Chris could have reached out and touched it.
I turned my head and looked into the rear seat of the prowl car. Leroy was staring at Chris. His eyes shifted to me. He leaped toward the front seat. The roller backhanded him. I saw Leroy’s head dip out of sight as I pulled away.
I made from that frantic leap of his that he remembered me. The LaSalle moved quickly away from the West Side. Chris was crying. I stayed silent until I hit the fringe of the South Side.
Then I said, “All right, Chris, I got you away from the heat. Tell me where you live and I’ll take you home. Don’t cry. You can bail him out when they book him.”
She sobbed, “All right, you want to take me home? Turn around and take me to Leroy’s jalopy. It’s parked behind the bar where he blew his silly top.
“We got in town broke this afternoon. He didn’t get the settlement. Maybe he’ll never get it. I’m so disgusted. He was to get paid nightly for the gig. He does a blues singing bit now.”
I said, “Bitch, you look like a bum. You conned me you’d keep in touch. You were gonna be my whore, remember? I shoulda left you back there to go to jail with your sucker-man.”
I realized I had a solid chance to cop her now. All I had to do was stay strong and bluff her.
Leroy was a cinch to get a bit. He couldn’t make bail. Chris had no out but me. She sure looked like my third whore.
I coasted into the curb. I left the engine running. We were parked in front of a fleabag hotel. I had maybe a twenty-five-hundred-slat roll in my pocket I flashed for her. I peeled off a saw buck. I held it toward her. She ignored it.
She said, “Blood, it wasn’t that I didn’t think about you. I wanted to call you. I wanted to keep my word. Leroy never let me out of his sight. He would even follow me to the toilet. You don’t know how much I hate him. I hope he gets life. Don’t cut me loose, Blood. I’ll keep my promises. I’m free now. I’m yours, baby. Tell me to jump in the river. I’ll do it.”
I said, “No Chris, I’m afraid of you. I think Leroy has made a tramp jive-bitch outta you. I’m pimping too good to bring a headache into the stable. I’ll always be your friend, Chris. My ticker is bleeding for you, baby. I gotta think of number one.
“My whores are humping sixteen hours a day in the street. They love it. I don’t figure you got the guts and heart for the street track.
“Chris, for the rest of my life I’ll be sad when I think of you. I’ll have a lump in my throat when I think of what might have been. Take this saw buck, baby, and the best of luck always. Goodbye, Chris. Please split before I get weak and let you be my whore.”
I reached across her and opened the car door. My skull was hitting on all hundred-and-seventy-five cylinders. I was cinching her.
I remembered her name, Christine, on those Terre Haute money orders I’d been sending myself. She was the runt’s ghost gadfly come to life.
She pulled the door shut. She hurled herself against me. She held on to me and wailed like maybe I was her dead mama on the way back to the grave after a brief visit.
She blubbered, “Blood, please don’t cut me loose. I’m not a lazy bitch. Give me a chance. I want to amount to something.
Please take me with you. I won’t let you down. I can hold my own against any bitch.”
I pulled out. I was headed home. I was a fox with a rare, pretty hen in my jib. I knew the runt and Ophelia were in the street. In the trunk I had six dresses I’d copped for Ophelia. I was sure they’d fit Chris.
I said, “Bitch, I’m gonna gamble on you. I’m taking you to your new pad. You gotta understand one thing. You can’t bring in scratch under a bill a night. You do, I may light my cigarettes with it or use it to wipe my ass.
“You’re gonna meet and work in the street tonight with your sisters. I’m gonna give you a rundown. Flap your horns and remember it. It will bring you into the family with some stardust on your tail.
“Chris, you’re lucky. A whore of mine croaked in Terre Haute just a week ago. Her heart stopped while she was turning a trick. She was a martyr. Her name was Christine. I went up there and blew a coupla grand on her funeral.
“I guess I felt guilty about blowing all that scratch on a broad I’d had for only a coupla months or so. I didn’t tell the stable about her death. Maybe I went all out on her funeral because she had your name.
“I just don’t know. Anyway, the stable never met her. They sure have a lot of respect for that long scratch she sent me every week from the whorehouse.
“Chris, you’re that great humping bitch reborn. A week before she croaked she begged me to turn her loose here in the street. I turned her down because I knew she had a screwy ticker.
“So, Chris, I know you’ll prove to the stable you are just as great in the street as you were in the house in Terre Haute. I’m taking you home to get pretty for the trick people, baby-bitch.”
13
THE ICEBERG
When she saw the pad she flipped. A pink silk dress from the trunk fitted her perfectly. After a bath and a shampoo she was again the gorgeous Chris I’d met at the Haven.
I gave her two “go” pills and took her to the street for the cut into Phyllis and Ophelia. It was midnight when I curbed in the block where they were working. They were walking together across the street. They looked over at the LaSalle.
I blinked my headlights. They crossed the street and came toward me. The runt stuck her head through the window on Chris’s side. Ophelia was stooping down, pinning Chris.
I said, “Both of you get in.”
They got into the back seat. In the rear-view mirror I saw them look at each other, then at the back of Chris’ head.
I said, “Phyllis, Ophelia, meet Christine. She’s gonna work the street with you. She’s tired of giving up fifty percent of her scratch.
“She wants Daddy to have all she makes. I pulled her outta the whorehouse. What the hell, the whole family should be together anyway.
“Phyllis, I’ve told Christine a hundred times how great you are in the street. She’s hip you know all the rollers and all the angles. I want you to take her under your wing out here for a week or so. I know there ain’t a bitch out here that could pull her coat like you can. Now get outta the car and starve these other joker’s whores to death.”
I watched them walk away chattering and laughing. It was like they were real sisters. I looked at my diamond-studded Longines. It was ten-after-twelve. How about it? I was twenty years old. I was living in a six-bill a month pad. I had three young fine mud kickers. I was a pimp at last.
I tilted down the rear-view mirror. I powdered my face. I sat there gazing at myself. Finally I pulled off. I was going to Sweet’s to report my progress. I didn’t get much of a chance to rap to him.
Two rollers from Sweet’s precinct were drinking and horsing around with two of Sweet’s yellow whores. Sweet told them I was his son.
It tickled them witless when Sweet told them what Satan and his Demon had done to me. They told me not to worry. They would remember me and would wire the other precinct rollers not to roust me.
The rollers finally got crocked. The whores took them around the Chinese screen into bedrooms.
Then I said, “Sweet, I copped a beautiful yellow bitch tonight. I got her humping on the track with my girls. Sweet, the bitch is crazy about me. I know I’ll hold her for years.”
He said, “Slim, a pretty Nigger bitch and a white whore are just alike. They both will get in a stable to wreck it. They’ll leave the pimp on his ass with no whore. You gotta make ’em hump hard and fast. Stick ’em for long scratch quick. Slim, pimping ain’t no game of love. Prat ’em and keep your swipe outta ’em. Any sucker who believes a whore loves him shouldn’t a fell outta his mammy’s ass.
“Slim, I hope you ain’t sexed that pretty bitch yet. Believe me, Slim, a pimp is really a whore who’s reversed the game on whores. Slim, be as sweet as the scratch. Don’t be no sweeter. Always stick a whore for a bundle before you sex her. A whore ain’t nothing but a trick to a pimp. Don’t let ’em Georgia you. Always get your money in front just like a whore.
“Whores in a stable are like working chumps in the white man’s factory. They know in their sucker tickers they’re chumping. They both gotta have horns to blow their beefs into. They gotta have someone to listen while they bad mouth that Goddamn boss.
“A good pimp is like a slick white boss. He don’t ever pair two of a kind for long. He don’t ever pair two new bitches. He ain’t stuck ’em for no long scratch. A pair of new bitches got too much in common. They’ll beef to each other and pool their skull, plots, and split to the wind together.
“The real glue that holds any bitch to a pimp is the long scratch she’s hip she’s stuck for. A good pimp could cut his swipe off and still pimp his ass off. Pimping ain’t no sex game. It’s a skull game.
“A pimp with a shaky-bottom woman is like a sucker with a lit firecracker stuck in his ass. When his boss bitch turns sour and blows, all the other bitches in the stable flee to the wind behind her.
“There ain’t more than three or four good bottom women promised a pimp in his lifetime. I don’t care if he cops three hundred whores before he croaks.
“A good pimp has gotta have like a farm system for bottom women. He’s gotta know what bitch in the family could be the bottom bitch when mama bitch goes sour.
“He’s gotta keep his game tighter on his bottom bitch than on any bitch in the stable. He’s gotta peep around her ass while she’s taking a crap. He’s gotta know if it’s got the same stink and color it had yesterday.
“Slim, you’re in trouble until you cop the fourth whore. A stable is sets of teams playing against each other to stuff the pimp’s pockets with scratch. You got a odd bitch. You ain’t got but a team and a hall.
“A young pimp like you is gotta learn not to cop blind. Your fourth bitch is gotta be right to pair with the third whore.
“She can’t be no ugly bitch unless she likes pussy. She can’t be smarter than the pretty bitch. She can be younger, even prettier, but she’s gotta be dumber.
“Slim, all whores have one thing in common just like the chumps humping for the white boss. It thrills ’em when the pimp makes mistakes. They watch and wait for his downfall.
“A pimp is the loneliest bastard on Earth. He’s gotta know his whores. He can’t let them know him. He’s gotta be God all the way.
“The poor sonuvabitch has joined a hate club he can’t quit. He can’t do a turn around and be a whore himself in the white boss’s stable unless he was never a pimp in the first place.
“So, Kid, rest and dress and pimp till you croak. I ain’t had no rest in a coupla days. I think I’ll try to get some doss. Kid, these skull aches are getting bad. Good luck, Kid. Call me tomorrow, late.
“Oh yeah, happy birthday, Kid. That rundown was a birthday present.”
My skull was reeling from his rundown on the way home. It was five A.M. when I got there. The runt and Ophelia were asleep. They were locked together like Siamese twins.
I picked up my scratch off the dresser. It was two and a quarter bills.
I went and looked in on Chris. She was in bed reading a book. She looked up and put
the book across her belly. She reached under the pillow. She gave me a roll of bills.
I checked it. There was six bits. It wasn’t bad for a new bitch who got to the track late. She held out her arms. She was naked. I had to cop her some sleep wear. To avoid her arms I lit a cigarette.
She said, “Daddy, did I do all right?”
I said, “Chris, you made a start. It’s like the first buck of that million you’re gonna make. I oughta frame it like a sucker who’s opened a new hot-dog stand. I want you to put that book down. Get some doss. I want you to take a fin to Leroy tomorrow. Hip him I’m your man now.
“The family is gonna Cabaret tonight. It’s my birthday today. I’ll get a rundown of your first night when I wake up. I’m gonna cop you a partner for the street real soon, baby. Good night, Chris.”
When I woke up, it was one P.M. I turned on my side. Two big brown eyes were looking at me. It was Ophelia. She started kissing my eyelids.
She said, “Daddy, you’re so pretty. You got eyelashes just like a bitch’s. Phyllis took Chris to visit that sucker in the shit-house. Daddy, can I kiss my candy?”
I said, “Christ in Heaven, ain’t I got a whore in this family without a hot jib. Go on bitch. Then get your kit and trim my toenails and paint ’em. We’re all going to get pretty for my birthday party tonight.”
She said, “How old are you, Daddy? I bet you’re nineteen.”
I said, “Bitch, I’m a hundred-and-nineteen. I just got a pretty baby face.”
Chris and the runt got back from Leroy around three P.M. Chris had a serious look on her face.
I said, “Well how did he take the news? Did he hang himself from the bars before your eyes?”
She said, “Daddy, he fell apart. He would have killed me if he could have reached me. He cried like his heart was broken. He said he was going to kill you wherever he saw you. I feel bad, Daddy. He really upset me. I’m going to lie down.
I thought, “That square chump is sure a whingding. I’m gonna put the hurt to him fast if I run into him.”
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