Black Gangster (4 page)

Turning his back on the crowd, Prince said wearily, "I want all the members of the Rulers to meet me at my apartment within the next hour."

He turned abruptly and started through the crowd, followed by some of his more intimate friends. Behind him, a murmur of subdued voices whispered back and forth. It was as though a giant had just left their presence.

PRINCE STOPPED ON the sidewalk, inhaled the fresh evening air, and let his eyes rove over a couple of the young miniskirted girls as they passed by. They flirted with him boldly, switching their firm hips. Prince continued to watch them as they walked down the street. He hoped the short skirts would stay in style for another two or three years.

"I'll be damn glad when Ruby gets out," Prince said sharply. The sight of the girls had aroused his desire more than he wanted to admit.

"They gave her ten days last week for driving without a goddamn license," Shortman replied quickly, not aware that it was about the hundredth time someone had told Prince the same thing that day.

"She should get out Friday, Prince, if she don't go and fuck up some kind of way," Roman added as he came up behind them.

Prince turned and glanced over his shoulder. Most of the members of the Rulers had come out of the club to form a crowd behind him.

"Well, let's get over to my place before we get picked up for loitering," Prince said and laughed pleasantly. Before the words were out of his mouth, young men and women began to pile into cars up and down the street. The elite of the gang scampered for seats in the car with Prince and Roman.

Brute, Fatdaddy, and Apeman used a flying wedge to monopolize the backseat. Danny, a vicious-natured young man in his early twenties, got in under the steering wheel.

Prince squeezed in the front seat between Roman and the driver, then twisted around. "What's been happening, Apeman? You look like you're trying to catch up with Fatdaddy in pounds," Prince said and grinned at the dark-skinned, hairy-armed man. Apeman, huge and brutal, grinned back. On his wide face the grin looked like a sneer, but it wasn't. He had been dedicated to Prince ever since grade school. There was a bond between them that Apeman held dear.

Among the three large men in the backseat of the car there was a constant challenge over which was the roughest. Fatdaddy might have exceeded the other two men by a few pounds, but when it came to viciousness, they were equal.

As the car moved away from the curb, Prince settled back in his seat and fell silent, thinking over some things that Roman had said to him earlier. He had spent four years planning, so Roman's objections were nothing new to him.

Prince spoke his thoughts out loud. "I didn't just start thinking about this thing, Roman. I been kicking your objections around, man, and I can see where you're coming from. I know when things get rough somebody is going to talk, but by the time we get finished with whoever does talk, it will be quite a while before somebody else tries to snitch on us again."

Danny gave a sharp bark that went for a laugh. "Yeah, baby, if there's one thing a nigger fears, it's the thought of someone sticking a blade between his shoulder blades." His harsh laughter sounded again. To people who did not know him, it would have been a chilling sound. But to these men who lived beside him, he was just being himself. They all knew that he was a dangerous man, but they considered themselves just as dangerous, if not more so.

Roman laughed. "What are you going to use to enforce this fear, Prince," he asked sardonically, "the fearsome three sitting in the backseat?"

Brute spoke up. "I don't see what's so goddamn funny about that, Roman. You ain't the big wheel in the show no more, so be cool. Prince might give us the go-ahead and you'll see just how efficient we can be."

"Sweet Jesus!" Danny exclaimed. "I wouldn't mind helping out the fearsome three if that's the case."

Roman frowned at Danny. "You better keep your lip buttoned, punk," he said, "or you might find yourself unable to close it."

With a casual gesture, Danny removed a straight razor from his pocket. "The only reason I've followed you up to now, Roman," he said, "is because I've had my orders from Prince; other than that, boy, I'd have stuck my razor in your ass long ago."

The roar of laughter from the backseat caused Prince to intervene. "Okay, killer," he said coldly, "all of you will get a chance to show your best hands before it's over, so be cool."

The group in the car fell silent. Prince reflected on his closest men as the silence held. Roman was a good man, smart, but he lacked the ruthlessness it took to rule such a gang. When they had been in the city jail waiting to go before the judge, it was Roman who had come up with the idea of flipping a coin to see who would take the weight. Prince lost, so he had pleaded guilty, stating that Roman had accepted a lift not knowing that the stuff in the backseat of the car was stolen.

It had been doubtful whether or not the judge believed him, but they realized that if Prince stuck with his testimony, it would have been impossible to convict Roman, so they released him.

"What's this black power bit, baby?" Danny asked suddenly.

"You should know as well as I do," Prince replied. "With all this black awareness coming to light, we're going to ride to the top of the hill on it. Once we get organized, we'll be able to function smoother and faster. I was in the joint when all that burning and looting jumped off in '67, but I'm here now. With the organization we're fixing to start, we'll be able to sway the people, start fights against the Man. Keep pounding it into the people's faces about police brutality, which there's always plenty of. All we got to do is keep it before the people's faces, and every time the pigs do something to a black man that stinks, we'll be on the case and cash in on it."

Danny hesitated briefly, then said, "I don't like the idea of frontin' our people off, Prince. They catch too much hell already without us stickin' a dick to them."

"We ain't goin' front them off, baby," Prince replied quickly. "If anything, we'll be showing them the way. Today is the year of the black man's revolution. Whenever a revolution jumps off, somebody gains, so why not us during this particular one?"

Danny pulled up and parked in front of a row of apartments that resembled modern motel cabins.

"This joint here," Roman began, "is the best...."

"Knock it off," Prince interrupted. "I don't want no excuses. If this is the pad you copped for me, it's too late now for you to start trying to clean up; you should have thought about it and handled it before I came home."

They entered the dinky apartment single file. Prince glanced around at the cheap furniture. The end tables were burned from cigarettes left carelessly around.

"Roman," Prince said softly, "do you really think all the members can fit into this death trap?"

Roman laughed self-consciously. "Yeah, man. They can all get in here. I would have gotten something bigger but, man, I just didn't have that kind of bread."

Cars began to pull up in front of the house, and the first group to arrive called back and forth to friends in other cars. The few girls mixed in the arriving crowds squealed loudly as they came in the door. Brute, standing beside the door, was giving everyone in a skirt a pinch on the rear.

The room quickly filled with whispering, laughing teenagers. Prince slowly raised his hand for silence. Immediately, the room became as quiet as a tomb.

Roman, watching, fought back his anger. After being the leader of this gang for over four years, he still couldn't command that kind of respect.

Prince pulled up a chair and propped his foot on it. "All right," he said quietly, "let's get down to business. I've already split up the districts that each of you will collect from. If any of you should run into any trouble trying to collect any money, contact Roman, Danny, or Chinaman."

"Collect the money from who?" Shortman asked, dumbfounded.

Prince glanced around the room, noticing the puzzlement on the faces staring at him. "Each of you will collect your money from the people that attended the meeting tonight at the club. They in turn will collect theirs from all the business places in their districts."

"That sounds like the old extortion bit, Prince. Ain't that just about been wore out?" one of the members asked.

"Yeah, it's been used time and time again, but not the way we are going to do it. There ain't enough pigs on the police force to handle all the trouble we goin' send their way. Sometime tomorrow, Brute, Apeman, Fatdaddy, and a few more of you will pay a surprise visit to most of the business places in the inner city. It don't make no difference if it's owned by black or white, they all get the same treatment."

Prince pulled a cigarette from his pack and tossed the empty package on the floor. "After you begin tearing the place up," he continued, "I'll send the gang from the neighborhood around to stop you. Now, if the storekeepers don't get the message, we'll just put his or her John Henry in our little black book and when we pay our next visit, they'll never forget it, 'cause we'll be playing for keeps."

"Damn, Prince," one of the members said, "they'll have so many policemen there when we go back, you won't be able to see past the goddamn uniforms."

"Don't worry about the cops," Prince replied. "They won't be able to stay there forever, and we got all the time in the world to wait. I got one of the best young lawyers in the country, so we won't have to worry about any bullshit arrests. As long as we got plenty money on hand bond won't be any problem. In case someone should take a fall, though, they won't have any worries. We'll take care of their people for them as long as they're away, plus put up a large nest-egg for them so that when they get out they'll have some nice money waiting."

Prince waited until he thought his words had sunk in before continuing. "Our largest income will come from dope and corn whiskey. I've already picked out which of you will be my collectors on the drugs being sold in this city. After tomorrow not a drop of horse, dexies, or reefer will be sold in this town without us getting some part of the money. All the dealers will have to pay protection to operate."

Again he waited to see the effect of his words. "I know a lot of you don't know anything about corn whiskey," he said as he removed a small notebook from his back pocket, "but it's big business." He flipped open a page. "Last year alone, in Detroit, there was over five million dollars made off of homemade whiskey."

It was a staggering sum to most of the young people in the room. They whispered back and forth until Prince interrupted. "That's right, five million, and here in this city, it's a black man's racket. Now, what we're going to do is monopolize the whiskey business. In three months, if we can get big enough, not a drop of whiskey will be sold unless we make it."

Roman stepped up beside Prince, a small notebook in his hand. "So far, we got eight whiskey stills ready to be put up, plus all the corn and sugar we'll need." He ran his finger down the page. "We got six houses rented, with the stills inside the house, waiting for operators. As far as customers go, we got fifty customers who'll take from twenty gallons down to five gallons from us at a time."

Prince nodded his head, pleased. "Homemade whiskey brings ten dollars a gallon, or if the customer buys over twenty gallons at a time, we'll let it go for eight dollars a gallon." Prince read from his notebook. "Shortman will be in charge of the operation. He will have four of you as his lieutenants. Each one of you will have a district. Your job will be to see that the members of whatever gangs are assigned to you produce enough whiskey to keep your side of the city up until we can get more stills in operation." Prince stopped and flipped a page. "Each still should be able to produce at least thirty gallons of whiskey a day. In seven days your quota will be no less than two hundred and ten gallons. At ten dollars a jug, you can add it up yourself and see how much money we'll be making."

Prince's plan had left the people in the apartment stunned. At first, his ideas had been unbelievable to most of them, but the longer he talked, the more the magnetism of his personality won them over.

"Tess," Prince said, speaking to a tall brown-skinned girl wearing a high natural, "I want you to take over absolute control of all the debs until Ruby is released. Your main job will be to see that most of the girls take at least two tricks a night someplace where the boys can roll them without too much trouble. Danny will be working right beside you, so you won't have too much to worry about. The main thing is that, as soon as your girls lead a trick off, you make damn sure that girl gets the hell out of that neighborhood."

"That," Danny said, "don't seem like too much of a job to me, just taking off some drunk chasing his hard around."

Prince laughed harshly. "Don't worry," he said, "there's more to it than that. We're going to need as many stolen cars as we can get for various jobs. Sometimes when we have a large job on hand, you'll have to detain some poor trick while the boys borrow his papers to go along with his car."

Danny laughed. His admiration for Prince was obvious. "Yeah, man, I can dig it now. Just keep the trick under wraps until after the sting goes off."