Chicago Hustle (20 page)

Feeling a bit steadier after a few minutes of serious thinking, he eased into his bedroom and lifted the mattress … six hundred dollars' worth of fifty-dollar bills stared back at him.

How much have I paid that leech? Seven, eight hundred bucks? and it still goes on. How much did the muscle say I owed? A grand-four hundred.

He picked up two of the fifty-dollar bills and stuffed them into his pocket. One thousand and four hundred bucks … not really too much, really.

All I got to do is make another big score and I can pay the whole business off for good. The mistake I been makin', he rationalized, is tryin' to pay it off in bits 'n pieces.

Leaning closer to stare at his bloodshot eyes in his dresser mirror, he smiled cutely at his image. Things weren't really too bad … just a momentary scare, a mirror hassle that could be squared away. Anything that could be squared away with money was a minor hassle, no more, no less.

Feeling braver, he grazed his right hand across his chin. Think I'll do myself a close shave and get out into these terrible streets, see what I can catch … I need a li'l relaxation.

Elijah stood at the long bar, a tall, fancy drink in front of him, squeaky clean, staring at Toni Mathews. Caesars. Yeah, Caesars
would
we the kind of place she'd go to … half-ass plush, filled to the brim with upper-crust slicksters.

He took a short sip of his drink, to wet his lips, stiffened his back as he made his way through the tables to her table.

He approached her at an oblique angle, just as she and the five other people stood up to leave. Three men and three women. Which one of the men was her man?

The angle of their exit placed him behind them … he moved a little quicker. Ain't no way I'm gon' let you get away.

He eased up behind her in the velveteen-draped foyer. “Well, well … if it ain't Mizz Toni, herself.”

She turned to him with a seductive curl to her mouth. “Hi you doin', Elijah …! I saw you at the bar and I was goin' to come over to you but I could see that you were comin' to me. I thought you were goin' to call back this afternoon?”

Elijah cocked his head to one side. After all the times he had tried to reach her, and finally did, she would manage to snag him on a technicality. He noticed her friends moving a discreet distance away, evidently they were all just friends and nothing more. “Uhhh, well, somethin' came up that sort of tuned everything out, including the return call. Say, look, why don't we stop this Mickey Mouse bullshit …?”

“Toni!?” one of the men called to her.

“Be right with you, Bob,” she signalled to him.

“Tell me,” Elijah rushed on, “either you have some time for me or you don't. Now which is it gon' be?”

She patted him on the cheek and he didn't know whether or not he dug it. “You're a pretty direct type dude, aren't you?”

“Gotta be, baby … life is too short for a bunch o' jive.”

They stared into each other's eyes for a few hot seconds, a nice visual suggestion being created.

She dug down into her purse …

“Oh oh, here we go again,” he cracked.

“Nope, not really,” she said and scribbled her address on the back of one of her cards. “Look, I gotta run now. I'm havin' a few people over tomorrow night. Can you make it? We can sit off in a corner somewhere and rap.”

Elijah gave the card an elaborately shaped kiss. “I'll be there with bells on.”

“Beautiful! see you,” she sang out and glided away.

He watched her join her circle of people, joining and leading, he noticed. She sho' is a bad bitch. He stood rooted to the spot like a love-struck mark, smelling the subtle scent she had trailed behind her, her way of talking, the thing she had with her hands, her … her … her her-ness, he finally decided after struggling for a complete description of what she was in his eyes.

He became conscious of several dudes standing off to one side, checking him out with cynical, cold smiles on their faces. He pocketed the card and turned away abruptly … I better be cool, people'll be thinkin' that I got my nose open.

“Man can't never tell what he gon' do 'til he gets in that situation.”

Elijah patiently mumbled, “Right on,” to Home's soliloquy, his mind miles away. At any other time he might have dug the barber's constant, lightweight folktalking, but for now, he felt himself going up and down. Why couldn't he just go on and cut hair?

“And to top it off,” Home swept grandly from one section of his spirit life to another, “would you b'lieve this chick comes to the door after I done sat out front on the steps, drinkin' moonshine 'n cryin'… she comes to the door and says, ‘Home, whatchu doin' out here? why didn't you knock so I could let you in? You gonna catch yo' death o' cold, or get the piles sittin' out there! come on in, baby!'”

“What did you do, Home? kick her teeth down her throat?” Elijah asked, feeling obligated to snake some sort of moral comment.

“Nawww, nawww … if I'da lissened to my first mind, that's what I woulda done, but the minute she put them steamin' hot arms 'round my neck I just melted. And I ain't jivin' when I say I had actually felt my knees buckle when I passed the bedroom window and seen Joe Gales' ol rusty black ass doin' the rooty tooty.”

The customers sitting along the wall, waiting their turn, cracked up. The bursts of laughter jacked Elijah's spirits up a bit, taking his mind away from the blues.

“So, don't tell me what a man won't do, 'specially when it come to a woman.”

Home flashed his big kidney-shaped mirror in front of Elijah's face for his approval.

Elijah carefully studied the contoured lines of his natural. No doubt about it, Home was a helluva barber, worth driving halfway across the city for.

“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.