Trick Baby (20 page)

He also used his influence to help a handful of Chicago defense lawyers in their murder cases. But he was practically powerless in those cases unless both the victim and the murderer were black. He was extremely effective when a white murderer had killed a black victim.

September dusk covered Garfield Boulevard like a gray shroud. The heavy odors of barbecue and deep fried jack salmon rode greasily on the crisp air. Dull neon eyes blinked in the acrid gloom.

We parked in front of the Garfield Hotel on the corner of Prairie Avenue.

Blue said, “Let's walk down to the saloon under the el. The Fixer is probably there.”

I looked up at my Aunt Pearl's white building gleaming in the murk across the boulevard. I wondered if her blubber had strangled her heartbeat since that day I went to her for help.

The Fixer was at the bar. Blue stroked his hand across his cheek as we passed him. We went to the rear of the bar and sat in a booth.

The Fixer came and sat down with us. He was as shiny and black as new boots. A toothpick waggled in the corner of his wide mouth.

He said, “Well I'll be a white whore's bastard baby, if it isn't hot-prick Blue Howard. I haven't seen you since you knocked up that preacher's teenage daughter back in Thirty-three.

“What's your story, morning glory? It costs three grand to fix cradle rape. It's higher if the pussy is less than fifteen years old. If she's white, I can't help you at all. Give me the three grand and the name of the lip that's got your case.”

Blue laughed and said, “Stop the bullshit, Fixer. You'll give my partner, White Folks, here a bad impression of me.

“I'm going to play the drag with him this winter around the state. We want you to handle our beefs.”

Fixer said, “Always keep this horny sonuvabitch in front of you laddie, you're mighty pretty. And never bend over when he's behind you.

“Blue, seriously, I'll handle things for you. I want twenty percent of your clean scores inside Chicago. Twenty-five percent outside Chicago. On partial kickbacks to the mark, I want half of what's left.

“I'll need fifty percent of all the dirty ones. That's when the mark's beef by-passes the police and you get an indictment. Judges and prosecutors want real dough to go along with the fix.

“Stay out of Evanston and Springfield. The goddamn chiefs of police and judges in those towns are square Johns. Ten grand couldn't fix a parking ticket.

“Blue, I can guarantee that you'll never go to the joint when I'm handling things for you. But if you take off scores and I don't get my end, I'll find out about it.

“I won't tip you that I'm wise. But whenever you get a solid beef, I'll whisper in your trial judge's ear, and a Clarence Darrow couldn't keep you out of the penitentiary. Now give me a C-note so I'll remember you.”

Blue gave him a C-note. Fixer gave Blue his home phone number and address. The Fixer went out ahead of us.

When Blue and I stepped out on Garfield, we saw the Fixer's bald head glistening under the street lamps as he walked toward South Parkway.

As the Caddie pulled away from the curb, I put fifty stones in Blue's lap. He gave me a puzzled look.

I said, “You said it's fifty-fifty right down the line, partner.”

On South Parkway near Sixty-first Street, Blue slowed the car quickly.

He said, “There, Folks, there! That's Dot Murray.”

I turned and looked at the front of the Southway Hotel. A lean guy was on the sidewalk. His brown face was splotched with dimesized yellow patches.

He was almost as skinny as Sweeney. As we passed him he moved toward Sixty-first Street. He had an odd walk. He had a kind of totter like a Chinese broad with bound feet.

Blue said, softly, “We have to keep our eyes peeled for that maniac this winter. Pocket told me the Memphis Kid is in county jail doing a yard. He'll never play the smack again or anything else.

“The butt of Dot's thirty-eight smashed some vital nerve centers in the Kid's skull. He's lying in the jail hospital, paralyzed.”

I said, “When are you going to visit your old road buddy?”

He said, “I'm not. I'll send him some dough. But I'm not about to go inside jails and hospitals. They're jinky as hell. Oh! I just remembered. Saint Louis Shorty hasn't sent me that dough I loaned him to get out of town.”

I said, “Maybe he's getting a bad break.”

He said, “Folks, there's nothing worse than a chicken shit grifter who borrows dough from another grifter with the stupid idea that the loan is really a score for him.

“The little sucker will never amount to a goddamn thing. Hell, if I had been him, I would have pawned my clothes as soon as I got back to Saint Louis. I would have rushed to Western Union to send the lousy thirty bucks back to him.

“The dumb sonuvabitch doesn't realize that one day he might need thirty hundred to keep his petty ass out of the penitentiary.

“Folks, never forget that a grifter's word has to be like a gold bond to his associates. I'm going to spread the word on him. The little tear-off bastard won't be able to borrow a nickel to make a phone call to a doctor.”

On December fifteenth we played for my first drag mark. He was a small, wiry black guy about forty years old. He operated a soul food joint in Sterling, Illinois. He was in Chicago to cabaret and to sniff after big city broads for a couple of days.

Blue caught him around eleven
A.M
. on Forty-third Street near Michigan Avenue. I was blue with cold when I got the signal to pick up the poke for the mark.

I followed the script and gave the pitch about my boss and his office at Forty-third and State Streets. The mark was creepy. He giggled and jumped around all during the first stage of the play. Blue told me later that his name was Percy Ridgeway.

I was tied up with the mark when Blue went to my boss's office to make the arrangements for both of them to share in my good fortune.

The mark said, “I don't like that big stud. To be a white boy, you
seem to be a fairly nice stud. I've been thinking. Why do we have to split with him? I got the equalizer stuck in my belt for those big muscles he's got.

“When he gets his share I could walk him up that alley and plug him through both hips. Then you and me could split his share between us.

“Don't worry. I know what to do with a heater. When I was young, I made a living with one.”

I said, “Maybe, but where is your black brotherhood?”

He said, “Fuck black brotherhood. Greenback brotherhood is where it's at. How about it, white boy?”

I was glad the weather was bitterly cold. He couldn't know the real reason for my trembles and chattering teeth. I thought fast.

I said, “Friend, isn't it strange that I don't like him either. I'll give your idea some thought. Our big problem now is to get my boss to agree to changing those big bills for us so we can get our share.”

Blue came back with the lyrical account of my boss's virtues and love for me. I left for the office to bring back Blue's share for the convincer.

I got back to Blue and Percy. I thought sure that Percy was going to heist us for the fake fortune in stage money, sandwiched between a few real bills. Blue naturally refused his share until the mark got his.

We were all in the hallway of a building at this stage of the game. The mark ripped a fat money belt from his middle. Sure enough he had a big black forty-five automatic stuck in his waistband.

I guess Percy figured he'd wait until I got back from the office with all our shares and take it all. He gave me two grand from the money belt as evidence for my boss that he was a solid citizen used to money. And he wouldn't get my boss into political hot water by attracting police attention with wild spending of his share.

I heard Percy in a fit of giggling as I walked away to the office.

I went to a greasy spoon at Forty-third and State Streets and
stalled off fifteen minutes with a cup of coffee. I walked back to Forty-third and Wabash Avenue a block and a half from Blue and the mark.

I stood there on the corner waiting for them to see me so we could work the blowoff on Percy. With an ordinary mark, I would have come a half a block closer but I didn't know the range of that forty-five.

Finally Blue pointed me out. I waved. Blue poked a finger into his own chest. I waggled my head, no. Blue jerked a thumb toward the mark. I waggled, yes.

Percy started out for me. I started easing off the corner for the fadeaway. I saw Blue fading fast behind the mark toward Indiana Avenue. Just as I scooted from the mark's sight down Wabash Avenue, I heard the flat popping snarl of the forty-five echo in the wintry air.

I ran to the Caddie parked at Forty-first and State Streets. Blue was just getting out of a cab. We got in the Caddie. Blue drove north down State toward the Loop.

He said, “I hope I never again in my lifetime play for a mark like that. Let's take in a movie to relax our nerves. We'll drop off Fixer's end of the score on our way home.

“Say, Folks, that crooked sonuvabitching mark wanted to follow you and put the heist on you when you walked away with the poke for your boss's office right after I caught him. He's a dishonest motherfucker all right.”

That Christmas in Nineteen Forty we didn't set up a tree. It just didn't seem like Christmas with Midge gone.

Blue's birthday was December twenty-ninth, so we celebrated Christmas and his birthday at the Grand Terrace cabaret at Thirty-fifth Street and South Parkway. We were both looped when we got home in the early morning.

I gave Blue a Knox Forty hat and some shirts for Christmas. He gave me cuff links that were miniature drums with a chip
diamond in the center of each. I guess he remembered that day when I acted like a little kid about that big shiny drum in the pawnshop window.

Maybe he was ribbing me about it with the cuff links. Anyway, I fell in love with those tiny drums. I'd polish the silver trim on their sides. I slept with them in my pajama pocket. He also gave me a cashmere overcoat.

I sent Lester Gray a sawbuck and paid Phala a visit. Phala's condition broke my heart. Her hair was white and she was almost bald.

In January of the new year, Nineteen Forty-one, I ran into Midge. It was a week before my eighteenth birthday on January fifteenth.

I had just paid my monthly visit to the croaker that was treating my fake heart condition. Each time he would give me a prescription so that the records would show I actually had taken medication.

He was building ironclad protection for me to get a 4-F draft rating, if and when America entered the War. I never took any of the tiny white pills. I always threw them away.

I came out of the drug store at Sixty-third and Cottage Grove Avenue with my pills. I was about to fling them in the sewer when an automobile horn blasted in front of me. I looked up. It was Midge driving Celeste's big, black Cadillac.

I walked across the street and got in. She pulled away and gunned the Caddie down Sixty-third toward South Parkway.

She said, “Hi, Johnny. I see you're still pretty as ever. And you're as dapper as a pimp. You must be doing all right. How many girls you got working for you?”

Midge looked a lot older wearing mascara and blue eye shadow.

I said, “Midge, I wouldn't be a stupid pimp. I don't kick broads around. I tell beautiful lies for my dough. Why haven't we heard from you? You could at least give your father and play brother a jingle some time.”

She said, “I've thought about you a lot. But I wouldn't call the house. Blue might have answered. I never want to hear his voice
again. Say, I forgot to ask if you minded riding with me for a while. I've got a trunk load of stuff to deliver.”

I said, “I'm so glad to see you, Honey. I don't mind the ride. I'm free all day. Blue and I have stopped working Chicago for a while.

“We're going to work in Southern Illinois tomorrow. I'll be back for my birthday on the fifteenth of January. Blue is throwing a party for me at home. Drop by for a while, will you?”

She said, “I can't promise that. But I'll try. I'm going to give you your birthday present before you split. What's your suit size?”

I said, “Forty-four, extra long.”

She stopped at a dozen hotels and rooming houses delivering hot suits and dresses. I waited in the car for her.

I hadn't heard Felix the Fixer say anything about Blue and I having a clause in our fix insurance that covered a bust for helping some friend to lug hot goods to market.

Finally she drove me home. She saw Blue's car in the driveway. She drove fifty yards past the house. I kissed her on the cheek and started to get out.

She fumbled in her bosom and brought out a wrinkled ball of cellophane. She pulled it open and shook a tiny white capsule into her palm. She pushed the palm toward me.

I said, “What the hell is that?”

She smiled and said, “It's girl, square. You snort it up your nose and really find out how beautiful and exciting life can be.

“Celeste said nothing is too good for a queen. Cocaine, my dear hayseed, is the most expensive high there is. Go on, take it. I'll get your other present out of the trunk.”

I took the capsule and dropped it into my overcoat pocket. We got out and went to the rear of the car. She opened the trunk and gave me a fine blue suit.

I could tell from the luxurious feel of the fabric that it had been at least a two-bill item in the store that lost it.

I looked down at Midge for a long moment. She was like a tiny,
dissipated child masquerading in a woman's clothes. I said, “Thanks, Midge, for the suit. Are you sure that Celeste won't miss it and raise hell with you?”

She threw her head back and laughed bitterly.

She said, “It's so funny, Johnny, a queen can do no wrong. I'm a queen all right, I'm a queen bitch. Got it? A queen bitch, Johnny.”

I walked away down the ice-glazed sidewalk. I threw the bottle of ticker pills and the pure white capsule into a dirty snowbank.