was startled from my counting of the gold satin ruffles on the bed’s canopy by the jangle of the telephone on the nightstand. I froze and stared at the phone for a long moment. Three a.m.! Was it Phyl, my one and only mud-kicker calling from the slams? Had some mugger on Sixty-third Street slugged and robbed her? Had some trick maimed her?
I picked up with vast relief to friend Gold Streak’s frog-in-a-log voice. ‘How ya doing, Slim?’ he shouted above a background of honky-tonk pandemonium.
‘Great, Streak,’ I said. ‘You must be balling at Small’s Paradise, or maybe at the Cotton Club?’
He laughed, ‘Your ass, Buddy. I’m back in Chi! Stole the finest three-way silk bitch in the Apple. I’m celebrating my birthday at Wimpy’s, then Tracy’s for a taste. C’mon!’
I said, ‘I’m waiting for Phyl. Want me to pick you up in your wheels later?’
He said, ‘No, Jim, I got the cabby with me that drove me from the Apple.’ He hung up.
I went to the bathroom to freshen up for my lady due to check in. I was just a nineteen-year-old pimp novice. I wasn’t scoring a big buck from the streets with one flat-backer. I wasn’t really the suite’s tenant. I had agreed to hawk-eye (from my modest pad down the hall) and occupy the suite during prime burglar time. Streak had a fear that some scuffler would shim his pad and cop his five dozen pairs of stomps, hundred vines and assorted personal treasures. Streak had been on business in the Apple for a week. Dope business.
I brushed my teeth and felt pangs of worry and fear for Streak. The nasal sludge in his voice was the tip-off that he had strung himself out on his merchandise. Worse for Streak was the street scam that he was long past due in payment for supplies of dream shit from you know who.
I went to a bedroom window. I idly glanced down a street. I saw a group of white couples and a pair of sharply dressed Mutt and Jeff Italian dudes alight from cars in front of the hotel. Apparently they were catching the Nat ‘King’ Cole Trio’s last show in the hotel cabaret.
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