by Jen Conley
The staunch neighborhood protectors, future police and firemen, the rosary and billy club set, didn't like me, Tony, or our little gang—the way we dressed, the music we listened to. They were a couple of years older. After Tony moved to Oakland, they came for me.
I was coming out of the 7-11 at 32nd and Taraval when a Ford station wagon, somebody's parents' car, pulled up in front of me. All four doors opened and six got out.
Mark McDonough was the leader of the pack. He stepped out of the group and sunk two hundred and thirty seven pounds into my gut. I went down. The South Sunset Boys all gathered around me and began to kick me and spit on me. I curled into a fetal position and put my arms around my head and didn't really didn't feel much. The beating went on for a few seconds, and then one of them poured a can of Schlitz Malt Liquor on me. I could only see their feet from down there, Frisko pants over white sneakers. As they were getting back in the car, someone said, "Nigger-lover!" and they were gone.
A few days after the street fight, I went to Tony's apartment to deliver some coke—which we were all using by then—and I saw Tricia. She gave me a cool stare and didn't say hello. Tony told her to leave the room and we sat down and started talking. Lying in the corner was a pile of blankets with a shock of blonde hair and a hand with four purple fingernails sticking out.
Tony asked me how I got the black eye I was sporting and I told him, "McDonough."
"I got some news for that motherfucker." Tony got up and went over to his stereo rack. He reached behind some 8-track tapes and pulled out a pistol. Black and shiny. He held it lying flat in his hand, not like he was going to use it, but as if he was showing it to someone who wanted to buy it. "You wanna borrow it?" he asked.
"I ain't going to prison, Tony. He'll get what's coming to him, sooner or later."
Right then we heard crashing and banging, stuff being tossed around in the back room. Tony said, "Tricia, come here," and put the pistol back behind the tapes.
The banging stopped but she didn't come out. He yelled at the top of his voice, "Bitch, get your ass in here right fucking now!" The pile of blankets in the corner moved and I heard a groan. Trisha came into the room, over to the couch where we were sitting and Tony got up, launching a backhand slap at her that she narrowly avoided by leaning back. Veins were popping out of Tony's forehead and he started to move around the table.
"Tony, whoa…Tony!"
"Man, this bitch know she outta pocket!"
"Hey man, let's take care of our business. I gotta get back to the city."
I said it in a nonchalant way, no concern for Tricia or judgment about Tony's tactics. Tricia was still standing there with a vacant stare on her face, but her anger had deflated like a balloon. Tony said, "Tricia, get your ass out of here."
Many years later, I was living on Broadway in San Francisco and working as a barker. I stood in front of the Condor Nightclub screaming things like, "Movin' and groovin', slippin' and slidin' humping and grunting, bumpin' and grindin', hog style, dog style, in and out, roundabout, up and down and all around. The biggest! The best! The one that made Broadway famous, Right Here! Right now! It's shooooowtime!"
The trade in North Beach was nothing like Oakland, or even the Tenderloin for that matter. There was a Chinese brothel across the street and several working women who strolled the tourist-crowded streets making themselves unnoticeable except to potential customers.
People thought that because I was a barker for a strip club, I was also a pimp. They were always asking me to get them "a hooker." After a while, I asked a one of the girls if she would kick back something if I corralled customers. Soon I had some extra money coming in. After a couple of weeks, a diseased-looking Chinese in a ratty business suit came over and said that I could send customers to the Sam Wong Hotel across the street. I made $50 a night plus tips for barking and maybe another $50 from tips provided by prostitutes for whom I had set up dates. In the cesspool of strip clubs and single-room occupancy hotels of 1980s Broadway, this made me a millionaire. I reported to the Condor at seven each night, worked my shift there, and then stayed up until sunrise. In the wintertime, when days were short, I never saw the sun at all.
Eventually, I got chosen. Her name was Angie. She worked at the massage parlor across the street, which wasn't a massage parlor at all. I liked Angie. She was a cute, fun-loving Filipina with hair black and shiny like a crow's wing, soft pliant eyes to match, and a small compact body with curves in all the right places.
One night she stopped by my doorway at the Condor and said, "Why don't you come by my job tonight?"
"Okay, I'll do that."
"Come and get my key, then you can just go to my room. I've got food and everything there. You can get yourself something to eat and I'll be there in a few hours."
"Okay."
I was about to go back into my barker routine and she said, "Oh, by the way, take this home for me." She handed me an envelope, which I could feel was full of cash. Not a lot, but she had maybe $400 in there.
So she handed me this money, and I said, "Sure."
After work, at 2 AM, I went to my room, got changed, went down the street to Angie's room at the Golden Eagle Hotel and let myself in. Later, she made it home.
We sat down and started chatting while she got out a couple of balloons, a bent spoon, and some matches. I said to her, "Oh, by the way, I put your money in the nightstand."
"Oh, no. You can keep it. It's for you."
I became the pimp who couldn't shoot straight. Angie started living in my room, which was a little better equipped than hers was. Every night she came home with some money and gave it to me. I knew the Game but I just couldn't play it. I didn't care if she brought home $100 or $500. I spent it all on heroin and dinners in Chinatown and North Beach restaurants. The money felt somehow dirty to me and I got rid of it as quickly as I could.
This went on for about a month. My dope habit became an oil burner. One day, I was sleeping, Angie was gone, and this black guy showed up at my door. I had seen him around. He was a street-corner skel; an alcoholic. This bum said to me, "Look here, man, let me talk to you for a minute."
"What?"
"Look, man. Angie, she re-chose. She's choosing me. She want to be with me now. I hope you don't have no problem with none of this. I just wanted to come to you man to man and let you know what time it is."
As dignified as he was trying to be, and with my understanding of the Game, I knew I should have said to him, "Fine. That's fine. She can go." But I was so strung out and disgusted by that time, I said, "You want Angie's shit? Fuck you, motherfucker. Why don't you try to take it," I grabbed a butter knife that we used in the room and held it out in front of me.
"You got to respect the Game, man."
"Fuck that shit."
He just stood there with a look of mock-pity in his eyes, and then he turned and started back down the hallway. As he was walking away he said, "The Game will come back and bite you in the ass…it always does"
I took a deep breath, put the knife down, stepped back, and said, "Okay, here. Come and get this shit." He came back in and started putting her stuff into a plastic garbage bag that he pulled out of his pocket. In went black panties, halter-tops, skin cream, Top Ramen noodles, used syringes, and the only book she owned, the Holy Bible. As he was leaving I said, "Hey man, do you know a guy named Tony King? A pimp?"
"No, I don't know no Tony King. And this ain't no pimp thing. Me and Angie got a love relationship."
"Okay…I understand."
Twenty years later I wasn't the same person I had been on Broadway or back on Forty-Third Avenue. I had a job as an English teacher in the county jail. After I went back to school, working in the jail seemed like a logical path. The people who ran the program there thought I would make a good role model for inmate students. But being there made me sad. Every morning I checked my class roster to see if there was someone I knew from the streets, but it rarely happened. Being in the jail made me think about Tony King, what
had become of him, if he had gone straight, died of AIDS, went to prison, it haunted me.
Mark McDonough was working there. The last of a dying breed. He was a lieutenant, a veteran of hundreds of cell extractions and elevator ass-kickings—now in the new, politically correct monster factory, surrounded by gay, lesbian, Filipino, and Chinese deputies, sitting at a desk with absolutely nothing to do but wait for retirement. We had seen each other there and both pretended we didn't know. His office was right next to the elevator I took every day as I came and left the jail. One day, after class, I stood in the doorway.
"McDonough."
He looked up from his desk and squinted. He didn't seem surprised to see me. Or happy.
"That's 'Lieutenant McDonough' to you, if you want to keep working here."
I stood silent.
"How was class today," he said. Did your students learn their ABCs?"
On his face was the same cruel smile he had worn before he jumped me in the 7-11 parking lot thirty years before. I still didn't respond. Finally, McDonough got up. His eyes had the hooded gaze and I noticed that his face, like many Gaelic heavy hitters, had taken on the characteristics of a woman's nipple. "What do you want," he sneered.
"Lieutenant, can you look someone up for me?"
"What?"
"I need some information on a former inmate."
"Write your congressman."
"Tony King."
He snorted and his shanty-Irish mug curled into a look of disgust. He sat back down and clicked some keys on the computer in front of him. Then he turned the screen around so I could see it.
The last mug shot was from 1997 and Tony looked like a cadaver. Same piercing green eyes, now tinged with sadness, his Natural now an oily mess of Jheri curls, as was the fashion at that time. His face was gaunt, sickly, lined with age. He was wearing a sweat-stained t-shirt that looked like a rag draped over his shoulders. At the bottom of his mug shot was "Section 11350" which referred to the Health and Safety Code for possession of a controlled substance.
"Your buddy, the great pimp, Antoine King. Did you know his name was Antoine?"
"Thanks, Lieutenant." I turned to leave, walked two steps to the elevator and pressed the button. From his office I heard, "He was a disgrace to the neighborhood and so are you."
"So are you, McDonough."
Just then the elevator door opened and I walked in. I heard McDonough's chair move and then his fat freckled hand appeared in the little sliver of elevator doorway. He pried the door open, took a step inside the elevator. I looked up at the camera that was above our heads. I thought he was going to throw me on the floor and claim that I had attacked him, but he just leaned against the wall. When the door opened, he took one last look then ambled off. I walked out to the parking lot thinking I had somehow betrayed my schoolyard friend, my crime partner, Tony King.
Tony, if you're still alive, if you're out there somewhere and you read this…I remember the person you were. You went to Catholic school and you were good at math. You played on the basketball team. Your father owned an electrical contracting company. You taught me how to dance like I was black, Tony, and people have always respected me for it.
I was with you, Tony…
I was with you when you rolled high at the Player's Ball and I was with you when your girls started reporting to drug dealers instead of respecting the Game. I was with you when your ankle-length leather coat got old and musty and you started wearing Oakland Raiders gear, when you put down your coke spoon and picked up a crack pipe. I was with you when you did a thousand pushups a day on the Old Folsom yard, Tony, and I was with you at night when you cried alone in your eight-by-twelve. I saw the "crack-ho" and the "toss-up" being born while the Pimp died an embarrassing and unceremonious death…
…and I always hoped it would somehow pass you over.
I was there the night Tony King became a pimp. I wish I could have been there when the Game started to devour him.
AUTHOR BIOS
JEN CONLEY has been published in Beat to a Pulp, Plots with Guns, Shotgun Honey, Needle, Yellow Mama, Literary Orphans, among others. She was recently shortlisted for Best American Mystery Stories 2013.
ROB W. HART is the associate publisher at MysteriousPress.com, the class director at LitReactor, and co-host of LitReactor's podcast, Unprintable. Rob is the author of The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella, and his short stories have appeared in Shotgun Honey, Crime Factory, Thuglit, Needle, Reloaded, and Kwik Krimes. He lives in New York City with his wife and two cats, one of whom he suspects is a Cylon.
RICHARD J. MARTIN, Jr.'s stories, poems, and journalism have appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, anthologies, and literary publications. His book Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys (Soft Skull, 2009) was favorably reviewed in the cover of the New York Times Book Review, which led to a sequel, Johns, Marks, Tricks, and Chickenhawks in 2013. He currently works as a grant writer and is a graduate of City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University.
ADAM MCFARLANE is an active member of the Private Eye Writers of America, and served on the 2006 Shamus Award for Short Story committee. His most recent publication was a short story in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #10. His next story will appear in issue #11. Currently, he is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.
EDDIE MCNAMARA is a Brooklyn native living in Manhattan where he writes recipes and crime fiction. His work has been published in Penthouse, All Due Respect, and Danse Macabre. Follow his writing at eddiemcnamara.tumblr.com and his cooking at tossyourownsalad.tumblr.com.
MAX SHERIDAN Max Sheridan lives and writes in Nicosia, Cyprus. He wrote features for the Cyprus Mail for a few years, until he was forced to challenge the film critic, a notorious windbag, to a duel. His short stories have appeared in DIAGRAM Magazine, the Atticus Review and the Writing Disorder. His latest novel, Dillo, is looking for a home. When he isn't writing, he teaches at European University Cyprus. You can find him here: maxsheridanlit.com.
HARRY ST. JOHN is a Kiwi who thinks New Zealand literature needs a good kick up the arse. His new crime novel, Leave Her Hanging, is available at Amazon. Visit his site at: harrystjohn.com
STUART SMITH was a private investigator before becoming a Probation Officer in Camden, a position he held for eight years. For the last 14 years, he has been an Officer with the New Jersey Intensive Supervision Program, supervising felons on the streets of the country's most dangerous city, Camden NJ. A lifelong hockey fan, Stuart had a memorable career as the slow skating, shot blocking Captain of his roller hockey team, the Jaguars. A defenseman and emergency goalie, he made up in charisma what he lacked in skill, and soon the Jaguars led the league in post-game beer drinking. STEPHEN ZIPPILLI is the guy at a cocktail party who you politely get away from as soon as you can, because you just know there has to be someone more interesting in attendance. Stephen has been a corporate grunt for longer than he is going to admit here. But suffice to say he is now considered used-up, a malcontent, and too expensive to maintain.
TODD ROBINSON (Editor) is the creator and Chief Editor of Thuglit. His writing has appeared in Blood & Tacos, Plots With Guns, Needle Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Strange, Weird, and Wonderful, Out of the Gutter, Pulp Pusher, Grift, Demolition Magazine, CrimeFactory, All Due Respect, and the anthologies Lost Children: Protectors, and Danger City. He has been nominated three times for the Derringer Award, short-listed for Best American Mystery Stories, selected for Writers Digest's Year's Best Writing 2003, lost the Anthony Award in 2013, won the inaugural Bullet Award in June 2011. The first collection of his short stories, Dirty Words is now available and his debut novel The Hard Bounce is available from Tyrus Books.
ALLISON GLASGOW (Editor) drove a Cadillac through the gates of Hell and returned with a fistful of dollars.
JULIE MCCARRON (Editor) is a celebrity ghostwriter with three New York Times bestsellers to her credit. Her books have appeared on every major entertainment and television talk show; they have been
featured in Publishers Weekly and excerpted in numerous magazines including People. Prior to collaborating on celebrity bios, Julie was a book editor for many years. Julie started her career writing press releases and worked in the motion picture publicity department of Paramount Pictures and for Chasen & Company in Los Angeles. She also worked at General Publishing Group in Santa Monica and for the Dijkstra Literary Agency in Del Mar before turning to editing/writing full-time. She lives in Southern California.
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