Chicago Hustle

by Odie Hawkins

  “How you like it, home?”

  “You on your job, Home … on your job,” Elijah reaffirmed the barber’s pride in his craft and tipped him a dollar.

  “Awright, next man! ooooops! sorry ’bout that. Next brother, I forgot, we into a stone natural bag now.”

  “Right on, Home!” the customer, a two hundred and twenty-pound steel-workin’ man, replied.

  Elijah dipped over to the manicurist. “Pearl, I want you to do my nails up so good that folks’ll be tryin’ to reach out in the dark to sniff the tip ends.”

  Pearl, in tune, smiled sweetly and countered, “If they ain’t already doin’ that, baby … there ain’t a manicure in the world that’s gon’ make it happen.”

  “Right on, sister woman,” Elijah agreed and sat down opposite her without any other attempts at levity.

  He felt a cold chill sweep up the back of his neck, despite the heat of the afternoon, as he spotted the car ease up behind him at the curb. The voice chilled him even more.

  “Heyyy, ’Lijah baby … wha’s happenin’?”

  He turned slowly, feeling almost cold with mean vibes. Of all the people.

  He inclined his upper body slightly, trying not to give away too much ground. Murphy and Jackson watched his movements closely.

  “Good afternoon, Detective Murphy … Detective Jackson,” he replied formally, trying not to look too closely at either one of them.

  “Been hearin’ brave things about you, brother … brave things.” Jackson ignored his greeting for a dig.

  “Get in, blood … let’s cut up a few minutes.”

  Elijah straightened his back. “I’m in a hurry, that is, ’less y’all makin’ me get in?”

  The two detectives exchanged snide looks. Murphy appointed himself spokesman for the two. “Nawwww, ahhh nawwww, nothin’ like that, ’Lijah. We just wanted to rap with you for a bit. No hard feelin’s, huh?”

  Elijah tried, but couldn’t prevent himself from scowling. “Would it matter if I had hard feelin’s?”

  “Not really,” Jackson snapped at him.

  “If that’s the case, then why don’t we leave it that way?”

  “Awright with me, brother. That okay with you, bruh’ Murphy?”

  “Yeahhh, fine with me. I don’t give a damn if he don’t wanna be my friend. But I tell you what, if you gon’ be like that, make sure your shit is smellin’ super good when it spills out.”

  He was afraid to let the curse out before they eased off down the street, afraid that they would really hassle him. Bastards! Thought somebody told me that they had been sent ’way out into the boondocks, for messing with somebody? Guess they must be using an off day to get in on some of this good ol’ black Saturday night corruption ’n graft. Bastards!

  He doubled his movement to the Afro Lounge, determined not to have anything foul up his preparations for the evening.

  As usual, a few of the regulars sat at the tables in the back, champin’ at the bit, waiting for Saturday night to really get on. Elijah slid onto a bar stool.

  The lady bartender, recognizing Elijah’s affluence, from rumor and fact, swiveled over to him. “What’ll it be, Mr. Brookes?”

  “You, baby, you,” he responded automatically.

  “I’m expensive, how about a drink?”

  “Mix me somethin’ strange ’n wonderful.”

  “How ’bout a Haitian voodoo?”

  “That sounds groovy. Chink been through?” She checked her watch as though she were timing something.

  “Not yet, should be comin’ through in a few minutes. A few other people back there are waitin’ on him too.”

  He sat, sipping his voodoo, watching the bartender tend bar, winking at her from time to time.

  She came over to light his cigarette, in between customers. “You know somethin’, Elijah …?”

  “What’s that, baby?”

  “If I thought you weren’t just jivin’, I might see my way clear to give you some of my time.”

  “If I thought you wasn’t just jivin’, I’d let you do that.”

  They exchanged understanding smiles. Players.

  She hustled away to deal with a trio of afternoon stragglers. Chink made his entrance, a small, yellow, slit-eyed fox of a man … cynical smile on his thin lips.

  “What’s happenin’, Elijah? us po’ folks don’t see too much of you these days.”

  “I’m in and out. How’s the business?”

  “Could be better. What can I do for you?”

  Elijah pantomimed a television-headache commercial. “I could use something for this headache in my nose.”

  Chink looked disdainfully at the anxious collection of dope fiends at the rear of the bar. “Meet me in my office, soon as I take care of these brothers, okay?”

  Elijah nodded and turned back to his drink, everything cool now, knowing that the Chink had taken his order and would deliver, the minute he got to the men’s room. He nonchalantly checked out the rush-hour movement that developed behind Chink. For the umpteenth time he considered the dope trade, meaning heroin, how much it would take to get into it, how much you could get out of it, and rejected the idea once again. He felt no moral repulsion, no ill will toward the dealer, it just wasn’t his stick.

  He counted twelve anxious bodies going into the men’s, and twelve anxious faces coming out.

  He slipped off the stool and strolled to the back, no dope fiend, no anxiety about his movement.

  Chink leaned against the rear wall of the toilet, his body tense, alert.

  “How much?” he asked without preliminaries, all business with the business.

  Elijah held out a fifty. Chink took it, looked at it closely, smiled his foxy little smile and spoke out of the barred window. “One spoon,” he said.

  A mysterious hand held up an aluminum foil after a few seconds. Chink took it and passed it to Elijah.

  “How is it?” Elijah asked.

  “The best,” Chink answered, not one to play around with many words.

  Elijah took a deep breath and eased out, he was ready now. The Chink really has a neat li’l setup, he thought, passing through the bar, home bound … all of the weight is on the man outside, if the narcs should bust in on him, he’s clean.

  Wonder who the mule outside the window is?

  Elijah, a towel saronged around his waist, stroked his freshly shaven chin and stared down at the party garments he had laid out on the bed. It was the chartreuse three-piece pinstripe, with the French ruffles in the split on the bell-bottoms that caused him double thought. What kind of people are she gon’ have at her set? He turned away from his sartorial dilemma to roll up a crisp fifty-dollar bill, leaned over his dresser to snort two more lines of the twelve he had laid out on its polished glass top.

  Snuffling, he turned around and decided, the cocaine suffusing his nasal membranes, to wear the chartreuse. What the fuck do I care, anyway, about who’s gon’ be there? I’m gon’be there!

  He sat on the side of his bed, a cold burn in his nostrils. Yeahhh, Chink said it was the best … wowwww …

  Feeling powerful, he leaned back on his elbows and looked up at the ceiling.

  How will I handle this bitch? so far it’s been a Chinese standoff, with her almost winning. He reviewed possible methods of attack. Can’t drive on her. I tried that.

  He straightened up slowly. “Momma’s on her bad days.” I’ll bet she was connin’ me. Yeahhh, I’ll bet she was connin’ me.

  Pulling his paisley jockey shorts up over a semi-troublesome erection, he flashed on a sexual conquest. Maybe I could fuck her into my corner. He patted the bulge in his shorts and rejected that approach. Fuckin’ a bitch into your corner ain’t too hip, the minute you decide that you too tired, or got too much else on your mind, or you just don’t feel like it, everything goes right out the window.

  He bent over gracefully to snort two more lines, loving the feel of silk and nylon on his body. Straightening up slowly from the coke, he stared at himself in the
mirror.

  Maybe I could make her fall in love with me? The image in the mirror frowned and seemed to ask, how do I do that? He turned away from the frowning figure in the mirror after a full minute, certain that the answer to the question of how he could make Toni Mathews fall in love with him was to … fall in love with her.

  He pulled on his pants, snuffling and snorting the dry phlegm down his throat, loving and hating the alkaloid aftertaste. Praise be to the Chink, who giveth us Almighty Coke!

  Laughing aloud at the thought, he slid his arms into an off-lemon-colored shirt. Elijah Brookes, in love!? That sho’ ’nuff is a laugh.

  Buttoning his shirt up, he turned super serious. But do I love her? The weight of the thought pushed him down into a slumped, sitting position on the side of the bed.

  Ain’t this a bitch! I’m in love. In love with a bitch that I ain’t never done nothin’ with but kiss, and she was the one that did that. We ain’t fucked, ain’t had no kind o’ dealin’s at all, and I’m in love. What kind o’ fucked-up trip is this?

  Could Toni love me? Does she know as little about the whole thing as I do?

  He whipped a beaver-tailed tie around his neck, took it off, wrapped it around again and finally decided to leave it off altogether. Niggers should never wear neckties, considerin’ how many of our necks’ve been stretched.

  He bent over to snort up the last two lines, his whole being cocaine light, his thoughts sweeping from place to place in supersonic fashion.

  It’s true, I don’t know a goddamned thing about it, about what the squares call love.

  He slurred the word disdainfully through his mind. Love … what the fuck was it, really?

  I guess it’s this, he said to himself in ultra-sober fashion, making final adjustments on himself in the mirror.

  “Mirror, mirror on the wall, please don’t tell all, but is not Elijah the fairest nigger of them all?”

  Laughing at his own ego trip, he gently patted a palmful of Canoe on both cheeks and strode out of his apartment as though he were cake-walking past a brigade of inspecting generals.

  CHAPTER 11

  Despite the fact that there were at least fifty people making up the immediate background, he could see only one.

  She leaned against the door frame, a cocoa-colored vision in a long, split up to the thighs skirt, capped by a brocaded bolero jacket, barely shielding a wisp of a bra.

  He felt his eyes being pulled toward her by the ruby stuck in her navel. Wowwww … and I thought my chartreuse pinstripe was gon’ be radical!

  She stepped out of the door frame and greeted him with a kiss. “I didn’t think you were comin’,” she said quietly and led him into the apartment.

  “You really know how to turn folks on and off, don’t you?”

  “I’m in no position to take chances with strays,” she spoke in the same quiet voice.

  Elijah bristled up slightly, the cocaine feeding him little jolts of ego. “If I look like a stray to you, you don’t know a pedigreed nigger when you see one! what kinda jazz is this you be tryin’ to pull …?”

  She linked her arm through his and tapped her forefinger across his lips. “No bad vibes tonight, okay? I feel too groovy for bad vibes.”

  He smiled sheepishly, cooled out, and let himself be guided through the crowd to one of the three bars positioned around the huge room.

  “Is your man here?” he whispered to her as they approached the bar.

  “My men are everywhere,” she answered with an arrogant turn of her head. “What would you like?”

  “I been hornin’ coke all evenin’, I’d hate to mess that up with anything else.”

  Without another word, she led him across the room, to the bar at the opposite side of the room, whispered into the bartender’s ear, below the plush sounds of East Indian ragas and down-home blues. The bartender placed two miniature spoons of cocaine, styled like miniature popcorn-makers, in front of them. They snorted in unison.

  “You really know how to take care business,” he said, impressed.

  Elijah felt slightly self-conscious horning cocaine in a room full of people, and she sensed it.

  “Heyyyy, it’s cool to do anything you want to do, up in here, this is Momma Mathews’ turf.”

  They did the coke and sat back, side by side, checking out the party scene, sharing telepathic feelings.

  A tall, well-built sister, obviously a dancer, began to move to the music, to give her rhythmic version of what she thought of things.

  “Does she do that often?” Elijah asked, admiring her fluidity.

  “Only when she doesn’t feel like talkin’,” Toni answered, clapping her hands together lightly, in tune with Olatunji. He leaned back on the bar, stylin’, and checked the scene out completely.

  A room full of people, people, wall to wall. A quintuplet of black fags doing a hora, passing the pipe around to members of their circle, obviously an In In group. A lush black lady, really lush, in the way that black women can be, posing against a vanilla-shaded wall, her darkness contrasting starkly with the wall, as half a dozen camera persons snapped and flashed their cameras on her young-Earth-Mother-figure. A David Bowie, white artist-freak-type dude, tailored by Savile Row, rapping with a black p.r. man … a deal? And a collection, beyond that, of poisoned pen holders, musicians, New World Africanists, psuedo counts ’n contessas, blackjack dealers, telephone starlets, slumming dishwashers, haiku salesmen and professional pickpockets.

  Elijah was startled out of his dope reverie to discover that the man at his right side was embracing his woman, his … woman?!

  Toni turned to Elijah with a coy expression on her face. “Elijah, this is Marcel Suchan, Marcel, this is … this is my good friend, Elijah Brookes, the First.”

  Elijah felt something weird happening when Marcel shook his hand, but couldn’t really place where the feeling was coming from. “Enchante, M’sieur, and ’ow are you dewing?” the Frenchman asked, bowing slightly.

  “Mellow here,” Elijah responded, on guard.

  Toni patted Marcel on the cheek and said playfully, “Give it all back … mind your manners, Marcel.”

  Elijah stared at the hand holding out his watch and wallet to him. A pickpocket! a super pickpocket!

  “Pardon, Toni … Elijah … I was only … ’ow you say, practesein’? he seemed to be such a gud subject.”

  Elijah put his watch back on, smiling at Marcel. What the fuck else could you do but smile at a professional?

  Marcel bowed grandly and eased back off into the crowd.

  Elijah and Toni stared meaningfully at each other for a few seconds. So this is what your friends are like, huh?

  She allowed him ten full minutes of taking it all in, waving or nodding to a friend from time to time, the number of people preventing any real hostessing from being done … a freeform set.

  “Let’s go somewhere a li’l quieter?” she suggested. Elijah nodded, not feeling the need for words.

  She threaded her arm through his and made their way through the people stacked up in the room.

  The couple on the bed turned toward the slit of light widening on them with impatience.

  “Sorry ’bout that,” Toni mumbled, closed the door with the air of a naughty little girl, and led Elijah down a long hall to another room. She pulled a trio of small keys out of her bolero jacket pocket. “If there’s somebody in here, they’re in trouble.”

  She unlocked the door to her combination library-office and flicked on an old-fashioned desk lamp.

  Elijah strolled in, his hands clasped behind his back, his thoughts triphammering. Who was the real Toni Mathews? What did she do? What was she into? Where was she coming from? What? How did she put all this together?

  She sat on a long Danish modern sofa and watched him strolling around the room, his eyes darting from one book title to another.

  “I don’t have anything to taste on in here, if you want …?”

  “I’m cool. You got a lot o’ books.”


  “A lot of them belonged to my husband.”

  “Your husband?” Now we gettin’ somewhere.

  “I was married, once upon a time.”

  Elijah sat comfortably close to light her cigarette and his, a question mark in both eyes.

  Toni eyed him coolly, party sounds drifting in on them, not giving an inch more than she felt like giving.

  Elijah, realizing that she was not going to be pumped about her past, slid off in another direction.

  “You know, there’s somethin’ I been dyin’ to ask you ever since we first met.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What were you doin’ at that square ass party?”

  “Someone asked me to go with him, so I went.”

  “I didn’t see you with anyone.”

  “He’d gone to get me a drink.”

  “Oh wowwww! that must’ve been a cold shot for him when he got back and found you gone.”

  “Your friend must’ve been a li’l put out too, when she looked around and couldn’t find you.”

  They stared at each other for a minute, their senses of what was absurd and ridiculous polished by the cocaine, and then smiled, slyly … birds of a feather.

  Elijah moved closer, casually draped his arm around her shoulder and stroked the side of her face.

  “You knew I wanted to be your man the minute you laid eyes on me, didn’t you?”

  “Is that a question or a declaration?”

  “Both.”

  She kissed his fingers … was the manicure working?… and undraped his arm.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for me? I’m built on a different scale than your girlfriend. What was her name?”

  His frontal lobes throbbing from the effect of the drug, his sense of macho being taken on a trip, made Elijah flare up. “Hey! fuck her! we didn’t come in here to talk about her, we came in here to talk about us.”

  “I travel in pretty fast company,” Toni said quietly, ignoring his static.

  “Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Is it all illegal?”

  “Nope, none of it is,” she replied in the same quiet voice. “I’m strictly on the up ’n up. What I’m concerned about is the dude in my life who’s just tryin’ to keep up, my man has to be out front.”