Trick Baby (23 page)

“He ran it down to me. I invest a half a grand in cocaine and H. It's good enough so I can cut it twice with milk sugar and still have the best stuff on Thirty-fifth Street. That measly five bills will get me five grand right outta the box.

“Folks, the stud really likes me. For instance, he's gonna show me how to cut the stuff, how to cap it up and where to sell it. He said there's a junkie bar at Thirty-fifth and State where I can deal out of the shithouse and make a mint.

“Ain't I a bitch, Folks? I'm outta the joint a few weeks and a ton of bread is laying in these streets for Livin' Swell Fats. You're my boon coon, Folks. Let's do this thing together.”

The pitiful slob had let Brown con him. And that mere thought shot new jolts of pain through the nerve core of the cavity. The joy and stupid triumph I saw on his face cancelled out my self-control. I pivoted and glared at him.

I shouted, “Sucker, are you for real? You should see yourself. You look like a stupid, black baboon that's been conned with a stalk of rubber bananas.

“Brown is going to use you like a whore. One thing for sure, you'll be the dumbest whore in his dope stable.”

I saw the muscles lumping and rolling at the back of his jawbone. I heard the grinding scrape of his gritting teeth. I moved my hand toward his shoulder. He hunched his shoulders and moved away.

I said softly, “Livin', when I left you I went to an old hustler and got a rundown on Brown. He's poison. He butchers niggers for the syndicate. If you do business with him, you'll wind up dead or pulling a forty- or fifty-year bit in the penitentiary.

“Livin', we've been pals since we were little kids. Wake up. Don't be a sucker. Livin', you're nutty from that long bit you did. Let your buddy pull your coat.

“Be patient. Stay with con. I'll tell you what. I'll teach you the drag. We can get rich together. It will just take a little longer. Come on now, pal. Tell me you're going to throw Brown and the dope racket out of your mind, and make smart dough. Please, Livin'. I'm worried about you, pal. I hate to say it. But if you're going to deal dope, I'll have to cut you loose.”

He stared at me with his mouth open. I stepped back from the tawny brutes raging in their sockets. He doubled up his powerful hands into black bludgeons and boomed them against his chest. He narrowed his fat lips against his clenched teeth.

He roared, “You jive, half-peckerwood sonuvabitch! If I didn't like you, I'd put my fist through you and stomp you to death. Say I won't! Say I won't!

“Don't call me a sucker and a baboon. You think it makes you great because your nigger mammy let a pecker-wood pop you off in her ass. What the hell were you when I taught you to pick a pocket?

“I'm not a pussy. Why the hell should I be afraid of Brown? I can take my hands and crush him like eggshells. Cut me loose—ain't that a bitch?

“What's great about the con racket? I ain't no freak for walking and sweating my ass off to take two, three bills from some funky mark. I want big bread fast. White Folks, I'm cutting you loose. ‘Livin', I'll have to cut you loose.' You think that's new? Everybody has always cut Livin' loose.

“I'm going to make more bread than you'll ever see in your life. You think your peckerwood blood makes you smarter than me? I'm going to show you like I did when I first met you that I'm slicker than you.”

I couldn't say a word back to him. I realized that I had lost my temper and mismanaged the whole thing. That baboon crack was very stupid.

He stormed past me to his bedroom. I just stood and looked into the mirror and tried to clear my thoughts. I went and lay across my bed. I heard him dialing the phone in the living room.

I heard dresser drawers banging. Then for a moment there was quiet. I heard his feet scrape on the tile floor of the bathroom. He came through to my bedroom. He kept his eyes on the carpet as he stood at the side of the bed. He looked like a coy gorilla.

He raised his eyes and said, “Folks, get up and kick my ass for making that crack about your mama. You know I'm hip that you've been the only real friend I ever had. You can tell from my stupid cracks that I ain't got the sense to play drag con.

“I called a cab. I'm gonna pad down on Thirty-fifth Street. Folks, I know that you gave me that advice about Brown because you're my friend. But I can handle myself. If things get funky, I'll cut loose from Brown.

“I ain't gonna peddle no dope after I get rich. I'll open a big legit business and jump smack dab into Nigger society. I hope you ain't salty with me.”

I said, “Livin', I'll always be your friend. I'll be seeing you around the joints. And we can hoist a few together. Be careful, pal. And if you ever really need me, I'll always do what I can.

“Livin', I'm sorry for my cracks to you in the bathroom. Put my name and address on a slip of paper and keep it on you all the time. Say, do you need dough to make up that five bills for your merchandise?”

He said, “Folks, I'm a coupla' bills short. But, you've did enough for me already. Besides, I can take off a pocket or two and make up the slack. You ain't forgot how good I can pick a pocket have you?

“Well, Folks, I hear the cabby blowing. Don't get up. I ain't got that much to move. Shake, pal? Don't think I ain't gonna miss you.”

I got up and got a fifth of rum from the liquor cabinet. I went to the kitchen table and sat there drinking away my sorrow and loneliness. Finally my misery became wildly hilarious. I laughed until my belly cramped.

I turned on the radio in the living room. A Jolson record was wailing
Swanee
. It gave me a brilliant idea. I went to the fireplace
and put my hand up the flue. I looked into the mirror over the fireplace and patted soot on my face until I was coal black.

I started conning a mythical black father for the hand of his daughter.

I pleaded, “But sir, I'm the Nigger that can make her happy. I love her.”

I answered in a heavy Southern drawl, “Iffen you a Nigger for real, why your hair so yellow and straight?”

“Oh, that. It's dyed with peroxide and straightened with lye and lard. Honest, sir, I'm a bona-fide Nigger.”

“Mabbe, but Ise smell a white rat in de woodpile. I ain't lakin dat long keen nos uv yourn. Whar you git dat? You mus be one uv dem Warusi Niggers, huh?”

“No sir, I wish I had gotten it like that. The truth is my great-great-grandmother had big tits and a nice round ass. She was a pet house nigger for a horny white master of a slavery plantation. He socked a squealer into her and passed down this nose through her to me. Sir, just don't let it worry you. First chance I get, I'll have it flattened. Am I in, father-in-law?”

“Jes a minit, hold on dar. I warn't near 'bout worried 'bout dat nos lak I is 'bout dem funny blue eyes. Black as you is, Ise know you ain't gwine try and mak a star natal fool uv me. Ah ain't gwin heah a wurd you sayin' iffen you claimin' dat white boss-man done passed dem white folks' eyes to you frum way back in dem slavery days.”

“Sir, I'll be proud to have a smart father-in-law like you. I'm glad you raised your question. The guaranteed truth is, a hoodoo woman down in New Orleans put a curse on me. Overnight that evil witch changed my Nigger brown eyes into—”

The weird black face in the mirror wobbled and faded behind the swift dark curtain of oblivion.

I woke up huddled on the carpet in front of the fireplace. The empty rum bottle glittered on the fireplace mantle in a radiant shaft
of morning sun. I felt a thudding inside my ballooning head. Then I heard a faraway pounding at the front door.

I rose dizzily from the floor and walked to the door on legs of shuddery putty. I looked down through the door glass at Helga, our Swedish housekeeper.

Her blue eyes were wide with alarm staring up at me. I remembered the drunken, blackface playlet I'd performed. Helga turned and scurried away across the porch.

I opened the door and said, “Baby, it's Johnny.” She came back. I took her hand and led her to the bedroom. She looked up at my black face with a puzzled look. Then she burst out laughing.

I said, “I had a wild party last night I'm so glad to see you. Don't touch the house today. For some strange reason I need your company this morning in the worst way. Just take off your clothes and get into bed. I'm going to take a bath. When I come back I want to lie in your arms with my head on your bosom and hear you croon your sweetest Swedish lullabies.”

I
was twenty-two years old in the spring of Nineteen Forty-five. It was the year that Blue's princess bubble burst. It shook him up. But I was glad he lost her. It was better for both of us.

It had been pretty lonesome for me while he was on the road with Tanja. I made a lot of bar room buddies at Club Delisa and other night spots. But always when closing time came and the one for the road had been hoisted, I'd walk out alone into the dismal early morning.

Many times I wouldn't go straight home. I'd ride down the outer drive to Lake Michigan. I'd get out of the Buick and walk to the very edge of the crashing water. I'd sit there until daybreak listening to the roar of the furious waves reaching out for me with frothy claws.

I often saw Livin' racing on the boulevards in a flashy white Forty-two Cadillac. We'd honk our horns, wave and go our separate ways.

I told Blue about Livin' and Brown. He shrugged and told me I was smart to cut loose from Livin' because Pocket had given me the right rundown on Brown.

Phala had given me several bad scares. Her kidneys got infected over and over again. I wasn't surprised. She had floated them in Old Crow Whiskey for a long time.

I ran into Midge in the Brass Rail Bar on Forty-seventh Street a week before Blue came home to stay. Her eyes were black-rimmed with the fast life. Her face was a puffed, mottled caricature of the smooth, clear yellow perfection that I remembered.

Blue came home from Tanja's kiss-off on May tenth. He looked drawn and tired. He had several scabby gashes on his head. I asked him how he got them. He gave me an ugly look and retreated to his bedroom.

He stayed in his room a lot for a week getting himself together, as he put it. I was really curious to find out what had happened between him and Tanja. I figured that Blue had finally murdered Albert and left clues that woke up Tanja that Blue was the killer.

The day before Blue told me about how he was cuckolded, Helga the Swede called and said she wasn't coming to work anymore. She was going back to Sweden to become the bride of a childhood flame.

Blue was sipping coffee at the breakfast table when he told me about Tanja.

He grinned sheepishly and said, “Folks, is there an honest, faithful bitch on the face of the earth? I trusted Tanja. I went through hell with that goddamn Albert, just for her. I got my skull split because of her. I almost tapped out buying expensive presents, dining her, wining her in the finest places.

“For the first time since Pauline died, I conned myself I'd found a second wife. Now get it straight, Folks. She didn't make a sucker out of me. I did it to myself. Not once did she play any con on me. You know that's impossible even if she had been slick enough to try.

“She was in the third week of a six-weeks stint in a Miami Beach, Florida, hotel night spot. It was a Jim Crow spot, so I couldn't even come in while she performed. I'd always get there in a rented car when the club closed to drive her back to our hotel.

“That last night when I caught her wrong, I had pulled up near
the hotel where she was dancing. I waited and waited until I saw the cabaret's neon go out.

“A nigger flunkey that had seen me with Tanja walked up to me with a sly grin on his face. I asked him if he'd seen Tanja. He said maybe. I gave him a double saw and he pointed toward the beach.

I walked through the sand and wondered why the hell she'd stroll the beach while I waited out front for her. There was a bright full moon lighting the beach. I didn't see her anywhere.

Then I heard a faint jabbering. It seemed to be coming from a cluster of beach cabanas a couple hundred yards away. As I walked closer, I knew it was Albert. I followed his jabber to the front of a cabana. The canvas screen at the door was pushed back.

I stuck my head in the door. Tanja was naked and moaning. She was on her hands and knees on a bench. A tall, naked white guy with long blond hair was standing behind her with his hands locked on her shoulders. He was pushing it into her, hard and fast.

“Albert was dancing a wild jig around them. I walked around the outside of the cabana looking for a club. I found a quart beer bottle. I tipped into the hut. The peckerwood was still banging it into her. Albert saw me and screamed.

“I brought the bottle down on the peckerwood's noggin. Blood spurted like I'd cut his throat. He ran past me, across the beach toward the hotel. I chased him all the way into a rear entrance of the hotel with that jagged broken bottle in my hand.

“He ran screaming down a corridor into the arms of a gang of hotel security police. They beat me senseless with their sticks. I came to in a cell; I thought for sure I'd make the Florida pen.

“I couldn't believe it when they released me at noon the next day. I was lucky. The bastard I slugged was one of Miami Beach's most respected married socialites.

“When I got back to my hotel, Tanja and Albert were gone out of my life. Good riddance, I say. Listen, Folks, we're getting back on the con track full steam this Monday coming.

“I think I'll dress up and go to Forty-seventh Street for a haircut and a good massage. If you're out later stop in the Du Sable Hotel lounge. I'm going to be there conning some fine young broad's pants off.”

The Second World War was over. And Blue and I were back in the con groove as smoothly as ever by the end of May. We beat an elderly white man at State and Lake Streets on the drag for thirty-five hundred.