Long White Con: The Biggest Score of His Life (15 page)

Folks turned away for a few steps, came back. He said, “Captain, you’re wrong about my intentions. We love each other . . . we’re engaged. Does that mean anything to you?”

The captain’s wife left the porch and stood anxiously watching them.

“Haw! Haw! Not a goddamn thing! Forget your pipe dream, boy. Last night I sent Miss Buckmeister, by special messenger, a copy of the F.B.I. dossier on you. Now, blow before I arrest you and throw you in the shit house where you belong!”

Folks stared hypnotically at a sharp, gleaming hoe at his feet. His hands twitched wildly with the powerful urge to sink the blade into the back of the captain’s neck. But he tore himself from the scene and jerkily, like a somnambulist, staggered to the car in a crimson haze of murder lust.

Shortly after he got home his rage and misery were compounded by the arrival of a messenger from Christina with his ring. Without even a note of severance.

F
olks sat snorting coke on a couch in the living room of his furnished apartment at six in the evening after his visit to Captain Ellis’ home. His packed bags were stacked at the front door. He and Speedy had decided to team up and play the short con together until Kid could find a city to fix for the long con.

He stared at a pair of Pearl’s blue-furred house slippers abandoned beneath a chair. Loneliness and a bleak sense of loss tore at him. Christina had done him in, all right, he thought. Then he smiled ruefully as he realized that he had set the trap for himself with his reparations plot for Christina.

He had overcome, he thought, the compulsive urge to force a confrontation with Christina to make her tell it like it was face to face. He was irritated and frustrated that he had permitted her to sever their affair in such a coldly impersonal way, by chippie long distance really. After all, he bitterly thought, he hadn’t blown her and his dream because she had tipped to the truth that he despised her. She had simply discovered that he was a nigger. That galled him.

The chimes sounded and he let Speedy in. They went to sit on the couch.

Speedy said, “Well, I sold the Datsun for what I paid for it. Guess I’ll finish packing so we can split the trap.”

“Yeah, I’ll take the first shift under the wheel.”

Speedy snorted a blow of coke and left for his apartment. Folks slipped out of his robe and pajamas and into a comfortable leisure suit for the highway. He packed the robe and pajamas into a bag and walked across the hall into Speedy’s apartment, sat on the side of the bed as Speedy wound up his packing. They were leaving the apartment when the living room phone rang. They stared at it for five rings before Speedy picked up.

His jaw dropped as he gave Folks a look. He said, “Hello Miss Buckmeister. Just a moment, I’ll go across the hall to see if he’s in.”

Folks’ heart jumped rhythm at the possibility that he still had a shot at her.

Speedy put his hand over the receiver and shook his head as he whispered, “You want to talk to her? I got bad vibes.”

Folks said, “I’m curious to hear the tale,” as he took the receiver and said calmly, “Hello Christina, how are you?”

She said, “Utterly miserable! Can you forgive me?”

“For what?”

“Johnny, you’re bitter and it’s my fault. I found out about your true background. Everything! It was a terrible shock as you must understand. I was angry because you had lied again, deceived me again. I’m sorry, so sorry I reacted like a provincial bumpkin. I don’t deserve it, but please Johnny, forgive me! I’m still mad about you. Oh God, how I’ve missed you. Please come to me immediately so I can apologize and really explain how I feel. And I want your ring back. I’ve even arranged to lift your floater.”

He struggled past his hoodlum ego to let his con man paranoia suspect her pitch. He was a fanatical student of human nature and there was a glaring gap in her pitch that disturbed him. It had not contained even a mild bit of female recrimination, despite the fact of her admitted shock and injury.

He said, “Angel face, I won’t be free to come immediately. I’ll call
you within the hour to let you know when I’ll be free. Pull yourself together, darling. I still love you.”

“Johnny, you’re so precious to reassure me. I’ll be waiting for your call. Thank you, Sky Eyes.” She hung up.

Folks put the receiver on the hook as Speedy said, “Let’s hit the highway for Chicago, man!” He picked up his bags and followed Folks into his apartment.

Speedy yanked Folks’ phone from the wall and said, “I’m gonna pee on myself if that phone rings and we pick up to the captain or a “G” man. Let’s give the impression you’ve split town until I can drag you out.”

Folks sat on the sofa with an intensely thoughtful face.

Speedy stood, with bags in hand, staring at Folks. “It’s some kind of cross. She’s creaming for revenge, pal.”

Folks said irritably, “I thought of that, Speedy. But, what if that chart is off target? What if she’s on the level? Look what I blow!”

Folks stroked the stubble of beard on his chin and got to his feet. “I need a shave,” and he got his leather bound shaving kit from a bag at the door. He went into the bathroom and plugged in his shaver. He frowned at Speedy’s reflection behind him in the doorway as he whittled off his stubble. Speedy followed him, picking up his bags, as he went back to the living room and packed the shaving kit.

Folks picked up his bags and said, “Let’s go.”

Speedy heaved a sigh of relief as he followed Folks down the hallway to the elevators. Going down, Speedy said, “I was worried about you making that call.”

Folks smiled grimly. “Well, don’t stop worrying. I’m going to the castle to check her out without the call. Speedy, you’re forgetting there’s a score of millions at stake.”

Speedy shook his head in helpless exasperation as they reached the main floor. They threw their keys on the counter of the absent manager’s desk and went to the underground garage. Folks pulled
the Eldorado to the street, drove through the night and turned off the highway into the castle’s access road.

Caught in the glare of headlights was Trevor, in a silk robe, frantically waving his long arms at the bottom of the Buckmeister hill. He raced down the road to the Eldorado as Folks braked it to a stop, and stuck his wild face through the driver’s window. He panted, “Johnny, you can’t go up there!”

Folks studied Trevor’s face, told himself Trevor’s anxiety was natural for a racist bent on protecting his sister from reconciliation with a nigger.

Folks said, “Why, Trevor? I’ve got an invitation from Christina.”

“Johnny, I’m your friend. Please don’t keep your appointment with Chris. I tried to call you to warn you.”

“About what, Trevor?”

Trevor averted his eyes. “Well, Johnny . . . I’m ashamed to say it . . . but Chris, well, she’s not herself. She’s, uh, she’s out to destroy you!”

“How, Trevor?”

Trevor spilled it out. “The security people, all the servants have been dismissed for the evening. Johnny, the castle is deserted except for Chris and Mother and Captain Ellis, with two detectives!”

Folks exclaimed, “Captain Ellis?”

“Yes, he and the others are hidden in a guest room in Chris’s wing. Johnny, don’t go up there!” Folks studied every plane and angle of Trevor’s distressed face. He decided that Trevor had to be on the square. Or the most accomplished thespian who ever walked the planet.

“You’ve convinced me, friend. Thanks!”

He shook Trevor’s hand, U-turned the Eldorado and drove to the highway for Chicago.

S
peedy was at the wheel of the Eldorado when Chicago’s skyline carnival of lights popped ablaze like the jewel case of a colossus. Folks was sprawled on the rear seat with his eyes closed against spears of light barraged by car headlamps.

Speedy said, “Look at that night-glow bitch, dap and looking good, winking her neon pussy to greet us V.I.P.s.”

Folks sat up, gazed at the spectacle. He climbed over the seat to drop down beside Speedy. He yawned, “Yeah pally, she’s flashy, a stone tramp with funky armpits, dirty drawers and crabs.”

Folks lit a bomber of grass. He sucked on it, then passed it to Speedy. Nat “King” Cole’s poignant “Nature Boy” oozed from the radio. An aristocratic-looking blonde in a Porsche drew up beside the Eldorado on Folks’ side at a stoplight on the city’s Outer Drive. She hooded her eyes and smiled wickedly at Folks, shaped “cocksucker” with rosebud lips when he gave her the rectal salute with his middle finger. He thought about Trevor and Christina as Speedy pulled away on the green light. He chuckled.

Speedy said, “Lay that humor on me to cheer me up.”

“I was wondering if Trevor could be, after all, the most accomplished actor on the planet. There’s a long shot that the student conned me.”

Speedy exclaimed, “Man, that ain’t humorous. Please don’t downer me. You scare me, pal.”

“I was shucking and jiving. I’m convinced Trevor laid it out on the square . . . I think. But what if she was playing stink finger up there? Alone?”

They laughed.

Speedy said, “Now, that’s funny, man. Not ha ha funny, but kooky funny. You know, like, ‘Please Warden, hurry and let me sit in that chair. I got a boil on my ass. I can’t stand the pain!’”

The Eldorado whispered down the Drive toward the black southside. Alongside the Drive, Lake Michigan swirled and rippled like an endless ebonic ribbon in the bellows of hooligan winds whose fury seemed to jiggle the stars.

They checked into a clean hotel suite on Martin Luther King Drive on the black mid-southside near Forty-Seventh Street. The fox-faced, skeletal bell captain, an old friend of Folks’ and one of Blue Howard’s former short con partners, embraced Folks at the desk. He waved his underling bellman away from the luggage, put it on a cart and showed them into the fourth floor suite.

Folks said, “Jake, I gotta tell you again, what a pleasure it is to see you again. This is Speedy, my partner.”

The old man grinned and shook Speedy’s hand. “Glad to meet you, Speedy. I know you gotta know you hooked up with the greatest there is and was.”

Speedy screwed up his face doubtfully, then winked at him. “Sure, Jake, maybe he’ll be after he plays with me for awhile.”

They laughed.

Folks said, “Jake, how’s the town?”

“Stinking like a two buck ’ho and hot as jasper pussy. That’s why I moved my game inside this hotel five years ago. I’m too old to psyche up for a bit in the joint.” He leaned in, lowered his voice to whisper. “You remember Theodore, my nephew?”

Folks nodded.

The old man pulled a crisp hundred dollar bill from a pocket of his lavender monkey suit. “It’s the best ‘queer’ I’ve ever gandered,” as he passed it to Folks.

Folks examined it, reversed it, and whistled in amazement at the perfection of the bill as he passed it to Speedy.

Speedy took it to a two hundred watt table lamp, examined it and exclaimed, “Shit, Jake! I’ve pushed some fine ‘queer’ and this tops all I’ve ever handled. There are bank tellers who couldn’t tip to this beauty. The only flaw is an almost microscopic fuzziness in a pinpoint section of the great seal. If you’ve got a bale of this, you can dump it wholesale and take a long, sweet vacation.”

Jake said, “Theodore boosted a suitcase full of C-notes and fifties from the trunk of a car in one of them underground garages in the Loop the week before the rollers wasted him burgling a clothing store last month.” He took the C-note from Speedy and said, “You or Folks know a safe connection that would take it all?”

Speedy said, “What do you want for it?”

“For fast turnover, I’ll take ten cents on the dollar.”

Speedy said, “How patient are you?”

“I think you mean how long I’ll have it in hand. Well, I get my vacation in a few weeks, in September. I’m going to look up some people in New Orleans that I’m pretty sure will take it or steer me to a sale.”

Speedy said, “Fine Old Timer, I’ll only need a couple of weeks to sound out some people in the Apple and then in L.A. We’ll talk then.”

Folks said, “Jake, any of the old gang still knocking around?”

“Yeah, a few. Old man One Pocket is still trimming suckers at the old poolroom. Precious Jimmy was on the turn to get rich as cream with a south-side chicken shack. But he got his nose open for craps and blew his joint to a craps magician. Now he’s just a flunky manager of the joint. What’s left of our old gang hang out at the old poolroom.”

Then Folks’ face tightened. “And what about Dot McGee, Jake?”

Jake laughed. “You can relax. Your old enemy is retired from the bunco squad. He’s a private eye, got an office on the westside.” Jake shook hands, turned down Folks’ sawbuck and left the suite.

Folks said, “Partner, if you were serious with Jake about that bundle of ‘queer,’ count me out.”

Speedy laughed. “Partner, I was serious. If I can make the right connection in the Apple, I’ll dump that load for thirty or forty cents, maybe even fifty cents on the dollar for that great stuff. I don’t mind counting you out of that deal, partner.”

They unpacked their bags, hung their garments in the closets of their bedrooms. They showered, dressed themselves immaculately in blue silk leisure suits, Gucci loafers and snowy sports shirts. They called room service for filets and a Jeroboam of Mumms’ to celebrate their change of cities and to toast the future.

Folks called the Vicksburg Kid at the Apple’s Sherry Netherlands as promised, to report his safe arrival in Chicago. He gave Rita his phone number for the absent Kid.

Folks rose from a living room easy chair, glanced at his watch as he went to a front window overlooking Martin Luther King Drive. He stared down at the heavy Saturday night rush of cars on the wide drive.

“Whatta say, Speedy, to some air to taste a slice of the flavor of the town?”

Speedy got up from the sofa. “Sure, soon as I can brush my teeth and throw on a dash of cologne. I don’t like lugging our bankrolls in the street. Wish we had a good stash.” He went to the bathroom.