Trick Baby (39 page)

She said softly, “Johnny, please don't do your split to Speedy's pad across the hall routine. I'm all right now. I'm sorry I did my number on you again. Guess I ain't never gonna kick my you-know-what. Sure, I've broken boo-koo promises to stop doubting you . . . myself . . . but I'm trying awful hard, Johnny, awful hard. Don't hate me, or leave me 'cause I'm sometimes too dumb and crazy to remember how you feel about me. How I feel about you. Guess my crazy shit is hereditary. Poor Mama blew Papa and the wheels off her happy wagon with the same sad crap.”

He said, “You're in the tall, sweet clover with me always, Sugarface. Me and you, darling, nigger tough and crazy against the world.”

He went back to bed and held her until her incredibly long and lacy lashes shuttered her eyes in infant slumber. He couldn't sleep. He eased out of bed and soft-shoed to the
chaise longue
on the terrace. Perhaps the lullabies of the southwest Santa Anas would seduce him to sleep. He closed his eyes and listened to the lilting winds. He heard the erotic screech of a nightbird, the bellicose growl of a cougar.

He remembered the humped-back rats that stood on hindlegs, snarling like midget wolves when he was just a little kid back in the cruel Big Windy . . . the cockroach scouts with E.S.P. . . . the bedbug scouts with Ph.D.'s . . . the piss stink in the kitchen sink pipes, and the decayed blood symbols of mayhem and murder in the hallway . . . the stenches of cancer pus and tubercular spittle that impregnated the very pores of the walls . . . the black kids shooting craps for bottle tops on the stoop . . .

“I'm Johnny O'Brien, lemme play!”

“Go 'way, Peckerwood. Go 'way 'fore we kill you, Trick Baby motherfucker!”

“I ain't no peckerwood! I swear and cross my heart! I'm a Nigger!” “
. . . lemme kiss that gorjus little pink prick . . . make you feel so goo-o-o-o-o-ood, darling. Ya round eye gonna wink for some lovin' . . . c'mon, sweetheart, what ya runnin' for? . . . I ain't gonna hurt ya . . . you don't come back here, I'm gonna kill ya next time I ketch ya . . .”

. . . steamy July night . . . streetcar stop, waiting for Phala . . . my mom . . .

“. . . what's a Trick Baby? Am I?”

“. . . no, Johnny Angel . . . I was never a bad woman, a whore . . . married your dad, all legal like . . . worked honest since I was ten . . . 'course he was white . . . your spitting image . . . weak, but he loved us in his own cramped, scared way . . . couldn't stand up to his family trouble and poisons . . . but he loved us, Johnny, don't forget that! Honeybee, this world is really two worlds . . . white first and black last. If your dad had been black, then black kids wouldn't hate you. They'd let you play, 'cause you'd be black like them . . .”

Remembers his mama stopped slaving in white folk's mansions . . . took a flyer in show biz . . . exotic dancer . . . bucket of blood cabaret, Chicago's southside . . . hustling his shoeshine box down Drexel Boulevard one night, there was Mama! Imprisoned inside the cracked glass case on the concrete front of the bucket of blood sucker trap . . . rhinestone G-string and the most pitiful smile and sad eyes anybody ever saw.
A crooked, monstrous dick, in chalk, below the paper image . . . smashed the glass . . . fists bloodied and hurting . . . he tore his mama's picture into confetti . . . Mama drinking herself into madness . . . Mama . . . nuthouse bench . . . wasted, shin bones shiny in the sunshine . . .

“Mama, it's Johnny, your kid. Mama, please remember me! I've missed you so much, Mama!”

Growling in her throat . . . she giggled like a banshee, rolled her belly like a whore . . . grabbed, leering at his crotch . . . whiny, awful voice . . . “Gimme that dick! Cocksucker. Lemme see it, huh? C'mon, lemme suck it, huh?”

Drunk with sorrow, blinded by a billion tears, he had staggered from her sight.

“Mama! Mama, darling!”

He guessed it was the memories that finally pummeled him into ragged sleep. He awakened, still on the
chaise,
with Pearl shaking him. The sun was poking golden fingers into his eyelids.

She said, “You had me worried, Johnny. Are you all right?”

He said, “Sure! I feel great. Let's have breakfast!”

After wolfing down hotcakes and bacon, he felt slightly better. He leaned back at the table waiting for her to finish. He remembered he was going to be tied up with the mark for at least forty-eight hours. Perhaps longer. He'd have to be like the mark's Siamese twin after they took him off, until Trevor could move the score, the mark's money, from his Midwestern bank to the Buckmeister bank.

He said, “Darling, I'll be away for a couple of days. Maybe several.”

She said, “Oh Hell! There was a movie I wanted to see. Guess I'll solo it. You just got back yesterday.”

He said, “I'm sorry, but that's how it goes for a speculator who gets a hot tip on a bargain basement parcel in L.A. Enjoy the flick, baby.”

She gave him an odd look and crinkled her tip-tilted nose. “Johnny, how do you operate, viably in real estate, without a license or an office? You had neither in Canada . . .”

He said, “But Saul did and now has a Nevada brokerage firm.”

She said, as she cleared the table, “But Saul never had an office either. You two are something else!”

She kissed him goodbye and he watched her leave to teach elementary school. Pearl loved kids madly. She was teaching elementary school when he'd started with her in Montreal.

At noon he shaved and showered. He dressed himself impeccably in blue serge Brooks Brothers and ultra fresh linen. He went to the closet and pulled out the two unpacked bags that Stilwell had watched him pack the day before in the downtown suite they had shared for several days. He'd had to take one day away from the worrisome mark for Speedy's party or brainstorm.

Twenty stories down he spotted Speedy, in purple livery, wiping off the rented limo they'd use for the Stilwell play. He called Trevor Buckmeister at his family's bank where he was chief executive. He assured him he'd be ready to be picked up.

The Kid called the instant after he cradled the phone. They had a potentially serious problem. The Stilwell tail had casually mentioned to High Ass Marvel that the mark had a crossed eye. Marvel was spooking rapidly.

He examined his rather haggard face in a mirror. He didn't really feel up to par. But, what the hell, he had no choice except to snort some crystal blow to tango his waltzing energy and leave for his job.

Trick Baby

Copyright © 2011 by Robert Beck estate

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Trade Paperback Edition: September 2011

Book Layout: Peng Olaguera/ISPN

Cover Design: MJCDesign

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Library of Congress Control Number: 67031580

ISBN: 978-1-936-39901-7 pbk

ISBN: 978-1-936-39903-1 ebook

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