smoothly just in case I got suspicious, as I did, before he hit the wind.
I leapt behind the wheel. Maybe I could catch him in the Loop, or at one of the El stops along the way. The gas gauge was on ‘E’, and I didn’t have a cent.
I got out. I inhaled. I felt my belly jitterbug in the greasy clouds of soul-food aroma floating from the rib joint. I straightened my tie in a gum machine’s fractured mirror. I psyched up the mirrored mack-man staring back. ‘You a bad, sugar rapping ’ho stealing mother-fucker . . . ain’t you? Ain’t nothing can stop a ’ho stalking stepped like you . . . Ain’t that right?’ Frantically I nodded ‘yes’ and turned away.
I was lucky! It was black ghetto Christmas. Saturday Night! Easy to cop a ’ho! I’d guerilla my Watusi ass into a chrome-and-leather ’ho den and gattle-gun my pimp-dream shit into some mud-kicker’s frosty car.
I pimp-pranced toward a ’ho jungle of neon blossoms a half mile away. Some ass-kicker was a cinch to be a ’ho short when the joints folded in the a.m.
It was late summer back in the Nineteen Forties. The weeks before, I had graduated from a Federal prison. I was stalking ’ho runs in an Ohio burg. It was my birthday. I was ’holess, without a sou in my raise. I was decked out in a gold silk vine and accessories an old pal junkie ’ho had boosted the day before in Chicago.
Around twilight I stopped by Pretty Phil’s, a pimp pal’s juke saloon and two-storey trick hotel. We embraced. He wiggled his lips against my ear lobe as we disengaged. I thought about the rumors that he now dug stud tours of his sphincter cave.
I cracked it was my birthday. He got on the phone and ordered a monster cake and several cases of Mumms.
We sat down and snorted white lady until two a.m. We gazed through the venetian blinds of his front window. A cavalcade of tricks, flat-backers, stuff players and thieves paraded past. I shifted uneasily when I caught Phil’s assassin Harlequin Great Dane eyeballing me enigmatically. Phil stroked her muzzle. She sighed and nested her head in his lap.
Phil gave me a rundown on every qualified, stealable ’ho that passed. His rundowns were boss. Sure, I appreciated the crystal blow and his plans to celebrate my birthday. But had he forgotten what a blue ribbon pal I had been back in Cleveland several years before? He had blown into town with no ’ho. And worse, no wheels and frozen fireworks exploding off his dukes, necessary to cop a star ’ho.
I had loaned him my total flash. He had gone on to pimp a zillion. I had too much player pride to smooch his rearend to nudge his sense of all out reciprocity. I seriously mulled the odds that Phil would test out as a chicken-poo poo amnesiac.
I stared thoughtfully at Phil’s yellow bitch face. Like my scarlet doubt was a tennis ball, Phil bombed back the serve when he cracked, ‘Slim, honey, you hip, I know, that you got my personal pad upstairs and the use of my new wheels and ice to catch you a ’ho. And Pally, since you my size, play your ass off in any and all of them sixty ’ho catchers hanging in my closet.’
He dropped a key into my shirt pocket. He picked up a phone and called upstairs to have the linen changed. I would’ve kissed the gaudy mother if I hadn’t been leery of inviting his tongue up my jib. Phil eased out a portly bankroll. He peeled off several ‘C’ notes and scooted them across the table top.
I slid them into my shirt pocket. I was about to tell him what a thoroughbred, stand-up Nigger he was when an ebonic money magnet seized my eyes and struck me mute. She crossed the street and stood on ’ho point. You know, big exquisite props wide spread. Her crotch humped out to bulge her obese sex nest against her gauzy red dress. Her luminescent skin shone like indigo velour in the neon razzle. She was certified to be a bantam bundle of voluptuous headache for suckers.
Oh, I knew at first gander she was a cold-blooded magician. I saw it in her arrogant body lingo. I saw it in the wizard choreography of her long tapered fingers. It was confirmed by her fierce killer-falcon eyes.
I said dreamily, ‘Phil, I gotta own that slave . . . gimme a rundown on her and her master.’
Phil curled his lupine lips. He gave me a look like I was that dingbat humpback of Notre Dame. He sneered, ‘Easy Massa, since you gotta dream, go to Shitcon City. You could faster and more safely steal Betty Grable, Hedy Lamarr . . . every top mack man from coast to coast has a hard-on to cop that package over there. Her old man’s a stone gorilla. He’s shot and stomped a half-dozen niggers about that ’ho. She’s got his nose open wide enough to shove in a coffin. Catch on, Pally? She’s Black Sue. She can pick a chump clean from all pockets and stashes in thirty seconds. Pally, that bitch is a superfox hall of famer ’ho . . . now gander the sweetness of the ’ho’s style on that paddy cutting in to her.’
We watched a brawny white joker in a new Buick honk desperately at the instant that he spotted the pygmy ball lyncher. I’ve seen excited suckers in my time, but that lame has remained without peer in my memory. He just let his chariot drive itself. He coasted through a near-collision cacophony of honking horns as he stretched his neck back and ogled her with phosphorescent eyes.
She flashed her teeth like a rabid panther. She undulated her flat gut to hook him for the killing floor. She jerked her head toward the yawning vestibule of a condemned flea bag hotel behind her. The sucker was so hot to sock it to her, he couldn’t risk parking or going around the block. His wheels screeched like a cat in an osterizer when he U-turned. He parked crookedly in front of Phil’s sucker trap. He leapt out and galloped through graveyard traffic to her side of the stem.
We had seen a gleaming gold watch on his wrist. A dime-sized jeweled stick-pin had been shooting pastel fire from his necktie. She stood smiling at him behind the cobwebby glass of the vestibule. Almost immediately we saw their silhouettes merge. It was like they were dancing to the seductive beat of a top ten hit parade tune.
Phil said, ‘Count the seconds, Pally. That voodoo bitch is pure magic.’
I started counting in my head. I had counted fifty-five seconds when the mark stepped out. He patted his hip pocket as he bullet-assed it down the sidewalk. He went into a hotel at the end of the block. His watch and stick-pin were playing hooky. Black Sue peeped out and oozed down the alley across the way.
Phil said, ‘That Houdini bitch took them extra seconds to lift his jewelry . . . ain’t she a motherfucker? She’s sent that mark to check in for fun and games. He ain’t got the five bucks for the room. He’s gonna piss in his pants when he finds the ’ho has cleaned him out and put his wallet back . . . and rebuttoned his pocket!’
I said, ‘That ’ho is two and a half tons of sweet bread . . . Phil, I gotta steal that fox. I ain’t never gonna be satisfied if I cop a thousand girls. Phil, I deserve that ’ho and the ’ho deserves me. I’m gonna toss the craps for her! Back me up, old Buddy!’
Phil shrugged, ‘Any and everything, Pally. But like I laid it out front, you ain’t got nothing but sucker odds. So if you want to buck the saw and get in the pit with her gorilla . . . He don’t allow the ’ho to even rap with nothing but suckers . . . and don’t forget he lugged her from New Orleans. Them pimps and ’hos offa Rampart Street got their own understanding of one another’s crazy shit and savvy of their thing together. One more time, Slim! Let the ’ho be! Darling I don’t want to cry like a cunt at your funeral.’
Then Phil sighed, ‘Good luck, Pally . . . promise to bury you in a blue silk vine with a three-day wake.’
We watched the stricken sucker stumble out to the sidewalk. He streaked back to the vestibule killing floor. He kicked out
