frowned and said with great annoyance, ‘Where the hell is Mr Ellis’ share?’
I shrugged and said, ‘Mr Gilbranski said every tub must sit on its own foundation and make its own strong bond good faith. Aunt Lula . . . I mean Mr Ellis ain’t showed his good faith in the right way.’
Willie said huffily, ‘Since Mr Ellis’ share ain’t here, take it all back! It ain’t right to have mine and he don’t have his.’
I said, ‘I didn’t say Mr Ellis couldn’t get his share. All he’s got to do is satisfy the boss he’s a solid citizen like you did.’
The mark’s eyes were spewing gray fire as he flung back his overcoat to reveal what could only be the handle of a handaxe protruding from his benny’s inside pocket.
He blurted out, ‘Mr Jackson sure spoke the truth. I’ve already decided none of us is getting a share unless I get mine . . . I’ll be back in two minutes, so stay here on the bench!’
Willie and I looked at each other. At this most delicate juncture, Willie was supposed to go with the mark to get his cash bond.
As we watched the mark unlock the trunk of a new Buick across the street, I said, ‘Willie, we oughtta cut this one loose!’
Willie said, ‘Shit, I got a feeling he’s gonna be sweet as bee pussy. I’d play for the motherfucking devil today!’
I feverishly tried to tie the mark to some celebrated axe murder in Ohio long ago. The mark returned and counted out a stack of ‘C’ notes. As I was stuffing the entire three grand score into my overcoat pocket, the mark vised my shoulders and balefully stared into my eyes.
He said, ‘Please! Mr Franklin, don’t take my money to that peckerwood if you ain’t damn sure he’s on the dead level!’
I said, ‘He’s famous for shooting straight in business and everywhere.’
He released me and giggled, ‘So am I famous . . . for shooting straight!’
I felt a bowel-gasket about to pop. As I turned away on Jello-legs, I suddenly remembered all of the mark’s grisly infamy. He’d been a construction worker, who around twelve years before had riddled two men at a poker table for cheating.
For a week, the Cleveland police put his mug shots in all the newspapers and cautions on all radio stations. A hundred police trapped him in a tenement. He critically wounded two detectives before his capture and was committed as hopelessly insane to a state hospital. Now, escaped or released, he would be waiting for me!
I drank another cup of greasy spoon coffee before I started back to blow him off (get free of him). I stopped and waved two hundred yards away, so Willie could point me out to the mark. They looked at me. Willie stabbed his index-finger toward his chest. I waggled my head ‘no’. Willie stabbed his finger toward the mark. I waggled ‘yes’.
I was drenched and stinking of fearsweat as the mark’s long legs pumped toward me in great athletic strides. When he was midway, I saw Willie fading away fast behind the mark. Just before I ducked around the corner, the mark glanced back at Willie. He howled piercingly, and streaked toward me with the grace and speed of a gazelle.
I pistoned south on Indiana Ave. Before I turned at Fifty-Sixty, to double back to our jalopy parked under the Garfield Boulevard El, I glanced back. The joker had been ultra positively a second Jessie Owens in his youth. He was so close, I could see the gleam of his bared choppers and the glitter of the hatchet.
I couldn’t have run another foot when I fell through the jalopy’s open door and collapsed beside Willie at the wheel. Willie’s face was poxed with sweat as he ground the starter furiously. We stared at the mark growing to the size of King Kong and heard his number thirteens grenading against the sidewalk. I got the window up just as he reached us.
I said, ‘Oh Mama!’ over and over at the awful sound of the hatchet as he ran around the car smashing glass. His frothy mouth was quivering with madness as he chopped a confetti of glass into the car. He was reaching through the shattered window to unlock the door when the starter caught and Willie bombed the heap away.
At that instant I made an obvious vow that I’ve kept to this moment!
We got a pint of tranquilizer on the far Westside and sloshed the first hits down our chins.
Willie suddenly laid out a bandana on the seat between us. He pulled out his boodle-wallet, slipped out of his overcoat and said, ‘Pal-of-mine, we oughtta separate the boodle from the thirty-five hundred frogskins so we can split right down the middle.’
I stiffened at the thought he might try to switch me out of my end in the murk of fallen dusk. I placed all I held on the seat. And I was determined to challenge any suspect moves he made with the money before I had my end safely in hand.
With his overcoat off, I wasn’t really worried that he was slick enough to burn me in his sweater sleeves. He shook his head as he looked at the score. He straightened out the bills. Then he made a flat package of the money. He tied it up in the wide bandana.
He glanced at a passing police car and said, ‘Shit, Slim, we could get busted counting the score. Here shove it under your seat until after we cop some ribs and a motel room for the split.’
I x-rayed his hands as he passed the bandana. I pushed it under the seat. He pulled away and parked behind a rib-and-burger joint on Lake Street.
He sat there for a long time before he said, ‘Slim, you gonna cop the pecks?’
I was racked with closet laughter. Did he believe I was sucker enough to leave him tending the score?’
I said, ‘Cop for yourself, Willie . . . I ain’t hungry.’
He said, ‘I ain’t got a “sou” to cop with,’ and leaned down and pulled out the bandana.
He untied it on the seat and removed a ten dollar bill. He put our score back under the seat and his mitt was clean coming out, except for the sawbuck.
I hawk-eyed him as he got out and shut the door. He shivered elaborately and opened the car door. He leaned into the car and reached for his benny, draped across the back of the front seat. For only a mini-instant was his overcoat a curtain blocking him from view, as he lifted it off the seat.
I thought, Houdini, with four-foot arms, couldn’t have plucked that score from beneath my seat at that range. Anyway, I bent over and probed until my finger tips touched it. He slammed the door shut, I felt a twinge of guilt, watching the wind flap his overcoat tails, that he was trusting me with the score.
In a couple of minutes, I heard the thunder of the Lake Street El Train pulling into the station down the street. I looked up at it passing on the way to the Loop. Was that Willie wrapped in his blue plaid benny grinning down at me from a window in the last car?
I tore open the bandana! It was a dummy loaded with funny-money. I dug beneath the seat like a pooch for a buried bone. Nothing! I raced around the car and pawed beneath the driver’s seat. Something sharp gouged blood from my thumb tip. It was a fish-hook tied to a length of twine that was tied to an anchor post beneath the seat.
The cunning sonofabitch had probably choreographed the rip-off while we were in the cell. With vivid hindsight, I knew why he pretended he needed the sawbuck from the bandana. He wanted to get the fish hook
