Only the Strong (14 page)

After much deliberation, Goode and his top men determined that the Continental had been tampered with, most likely by the Ike Allen gang. Goode sold the farm, never bought another Continental, and wiped out Ike Allen, his crew, and all of their family members who failed to get in the wind fast enough. Guts's fearlessness and chilling efficiency during the war with Allen won him Goode's favor, along with long-term gainful employment.

As a bonus, Goode treated his crew to a wild night at a large but nondescript house on Washington Avenue. The old mansion's faded glamour matched the weathered allure of the whores who lived and worked inside. Miss Nina, the buxom madam, ordered the girls to line up at the foot of the once-grand staircase. Guts scratched his nose with his index finger and studied them all. Up and down the line he went, each time pausing to stare at the same young thing—obviously the youngest available—a petite beauty with long lashes, an amused expression, and a beauty mark on her left cheek, just above her lip. Like the other girls, she was dressed in next-to-nothing. Unlike the others, she wore a long silken scarf around her neck.

Noticing his young apprentice's fascination, Carmel Green poked him in the side. “What kind of ho wears a scarf around her neck like that?” he asked.

“Good question,” Guts said. “I guess I'm going to find out.”

In her room, “Lucky” removed all of her clothing except the scarf. She relented when he insisted that she get “all the way naked.” The grievous scar across her throat emerged inch by jagged inch as she unwound the scarf. She draped the cloth carefully across the back of a chair. “Now you know how I got my name,” she said. “Because I'm lucky to be alive.”

Guts stared and said nothing. “Can't let the merchandise look too damaged,” she continued. “Of course, by the time I get my clothes off, johns aren't looking at my neck so much. I don't want to talk about it, okay? And if you don't want me anymore, well, it won't be the first time.”

Something about the way she said it made Guts want her all the more, and he told her as much. Even in the beguiling presence of a beautiful, naked woman, he noticed that the scarf on the chair was decorated with the names of cities.

She slid into bed beside him. “They're all in North Carolina,” she said.

“Hmm?” Guts began to nuzzle between her breasts.

“On the scarf. Those cities are all in North Carolina. Know why?”

“Hmm?”

“Because I'm going to live there someday. I know what you're thinking.”

He was taking deep breaths of her, inhaling her scent like a bear nosing honey from a hollow tree. “You're thinking, why would a colored girl want to go back down South? It's because I was born there. And I was happy there.”

Guts barely knew what happiness was, had never considered it something to which he was entitled, and certainly hadn't expected to find it in the arms of a Washington Avenue whore. But he did, and soon became a regular at Miss Nina's house. He discovered that he didn't care about Lucky's scar. He didn't care that her beauty mark often shifted from one side of her face to the other, and that she never stopped talking about saving enough money to return to North Carolina. All he cared about was the way the whole world disappeared every time he slid between her thighs. In a moment of weakness, Guts allowed himself to imagine that under very different circumstances, they could be just a couple of
crazy kids in love. But of course they couldn't. He was a teenage leg-breaker and she was a teenage hooker.

One night Guts showed up early. Miss Nina told him to come back later, but he insisted on waiting in the foyer. Miss Nina's muscle, a tall, building-sized man known as Nightmare, eyed Guts from his nearby perch on a piano bench. “Young fella, don't make me tell you again,” Miss Nina warned.

“I got an appointment,” Guts said. He saw Nightmare but didn't acknowledge him.

“Right now, somebody else has an appointment, and his hour ain't up.”

“Who is it?” Guts asked loudly. He heard the piano bench creak, as if relieved of a burden.

“That's enough, Sugar. You know better than to raise your voice in here. Nightmare.”

The whores' protector took one step forward before both his feet left the ground. He sailed backward and crash-landed on the piano bench. It collapsed into a pile of splinters. Nightmare, who had once been an all-city lineman at Sumner High, struggled to rise. But he couldn't on account of the 14 EEE planted on his chest.

“
Shit
,” Miss Nina said. “Not my piano bench! That was an antique. Listen, fool, you get out of here before I call Ananias on your ass.”

Guts spoke to Miss Nina but never took his eyes off Nightmare. “Tell Lucky I'm tired of this,” he said. “No more sharing.”

Miss Nina sucked her teeth. “Girl took your cherry and now you can't pee straight. Hear me good, you pussy-whipped baby. Only high rollers get exclusive accounts. You ain't even got enough to run a tab. Go on, get your pitiful ass out of here.”

Banned from the house, Guts spent all his spare time sitting outside Miss Nina's or haunting the spots where working girls were known to congregate. He sent Lucky messages that received no reply. After about a month of enduring the amused contempt of the rest of Goode's crew, he gave up. When word of Guts's failed obsession reached Goode's headquarters on Lewis Place, he called the young man in for a stern lecture. “Don't get caught up with a whore, Guts,” he said. “She'll tell you anything as long as you
paying her. Besides, she said she was saving up to go back home, right? Maybe she did. Or whoever gave her that scar came back to finish the job.”

Over time, Guts's awakened appetite overcame his affection for Lucky. He continued to savor the virtues of what Carmel Green called “paid-for pussy.” In between transactions, he'd had brief, fruitless relationships with women who didn't charge for their companionship, like Marnita, the hostess at the Spotlight, and Darlene Moore, a temperamental girl who partied hard on Saturday nights and sang solos at the Church of the Living Rock on Sunday mornings. But mostly he relied on ladies of the night. He liked the convenience of it, the absence of small talk, the eventual comfort found in returning to his own private room, his own spacious bed.

An empty, cold bed that seemed to mock him now that Pearl was gone. He drove past her place and saw that the windows were dark. He drove by again, this time parking in front for a while. With only chirruping crickets for company, he stared at her shuttered blinds. Finally he went home.

After another week of just getting by at work, followed by drinking, overeating, and sleeping late behind drawn shades, Guts stumbled into the sunlight and found the world as he'd left it. Nobody on the street had anything to report about Fish's murder. Similarly, making the elusive Nifty run in place for a half-hour shed no light on the whereabouts of the ring. Guts fiddled with paperwork at the cabstand with his office door open, half-listening to Oliver's latest rant. A newspaper article about new schools being constructed on the North Side had, to no one's surprise, gotten him worked up.

“Seems like you'd be happy,” Shadrach said. “You always talking about how they're trying to tear our neighborhoods down and now you're raising a ruckus when they try to build something up.”

“Yeah,” Cherry chimed in. “You can't have it both ways.”

Oliver sighed, took out a handkerchief, and wiped his glasses. “Brothers, brothers, brothers,” he said. “Those so-called branch schools they got going up? Those are remedial schools. It says right here all classes will be limited to 15 or 20 students.”

“That sounds good,” Shadrach said. “My granddaughter goes to Farragut Elementary. They got 41 kids in her class.”

“It's the remedial part that doesn't sit right with me,” Oliver said. “You trying to tell me we got so many kids struggling in class that they got to build new schools just to hold them all? Next they'll be steering our kids onto the short buses, saying they got all kinds of learning disorders, discipline problems. Who they fooling? They're not preparing our kids for careers. They're preparing them for prison. Prisons are idiot factories.”

Shadrach cleared his throat in warning. Oliver, catching the hint, looked up and saw Guts filling the doorway. Both Guts and Cherry had more than a passing familiarity with the penal system. “What the fuck that supposed to mean?” Cherry asked.

“Um, no offense. That's not what I meant.”

Cherry didn't want to let it go. “What
did
you mean? Say it slow so that we idiots can figure it out.”

“Forget it, Cherry,” Guts said. “The man has already apologized.”

Before things could get any more awkward, Playfair breezed in.

Grateful for the interruption, Oliver greeted him warmly. “What say, Play?”

Playfair ignored Oliver, strutted straight to the poster of Nichelle Nichols, and performed his usual devotions. “First things first, gents,” he said. “Anybody want to talk to me about some Florsheims? Got a whole men's department in my trunk. Guts, I might even have some size 14s.”

“Is that right?” Guts asked. He had begun to enjoy feeling sorry for himself, but he couldn't help smiling.

“That's what it is, baby. I can let you have them today for half of what I'll charge tomorrow. Got a minute for me? Let's negotiate.” They entered Guts's office, Playfair closing the door behind them.

“No 14s,” he said as soon as they had sat down. “But I do have a bit of information. It's sketchy and I ain't totally confident in it but I thought I'd pass it along. You can judge for yourself.”

“All right, let's hear it.”

“I think Rip Crenshaw's goodtime girls may have gotten locked up in Chicago.”

Guts scratched his nose. “That would explain why nobody's seen 'em. What for?”

Playfair shrugged. “Might've been a humble. You know, soliciting or something. Or it could've been something stupid, like trying to roll an undercover cop. I'm not saying that's what happened. Just saying they might be back in a minute or gone for a good while. Could be they got that ring stashed away somewhere and can't get to it just yet.”

Guts nodded. “If they do get out, things are likely to be tight for them. They'll be more than ready to unload whatever they got stashed.”

“And they're likely to turn to me. Don't worry, I'll come see you first thing.”

“Don't wait that long. Call me and I'll come to where you are.”

“Right on,” Playfair said. He gave Guts a Black Power salute and let himself out.

Guts's phone rang. “Gateway Cab. Tolliver speaking.”

“Problem Solver, what it is?”

“Crenshaw? It's been a while. I was just getting used to the peace and quiet.”

“Talk tough, brother, that's all right. I know you missed me. Been on the road again. West Coast swing. Dodgers, Giants. Me versus McCovey, battle of the first basemen.”

“How'd that turn out?”

“Damn, Guts, you really should check out a newspaper every now and then. We got our asses handed to us. But I did okay. Forget about the sports pages. I'm on the cover of
Jet
, baby. Listen to this. ‘Rip Crenshaw's difficulty with major league authorities has our readers wondering: Is baseball bad for blacks?'”

Guts knew about the magazine article. Mr. Logan had shared the details over a lunch of roasted sweet potatoes. The baseball commissioner was up in arms because Crenshaw had paid a visit to a Bay Area breakfast program sponsored by the Black Panther Party. The photos included a shot of Crenshaw with a child on his lap, holding her bowl while she ate cereal.

“I read it,” Guts said. “Or, I should say, it was read to me.”

“Your lady friend reads to you in bed, huh? I hope she does more than that.”

“I'm talking about Mr. Logan. He's one of your biggest fans.”

Crenshaw laughed. “I dig Cephus, for real. But isn't he around a hundred years old?”

Guts sighed. “Not quite. What's your point?”

“I thought it might be healthy for you to hang out with a hip young fellow every once in a while.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Know any?”

“Ah, that Guts Tolliver sense of humor. Nothing like it. For real, though, I got something for you. A token of my esteem.”

“Hmm. Now you got me curious. Want me to stop by the Park Plaza?”

“I'm too tired today, just got in.”

“All right, come by Fairgrounds Park in the morning. You know where it is.”

“Damn straight. Thanks to you and Cephus, I know where everything on the North Side is. Hell, I could drive one of your cabs.”

“Tomorrow around seven thirty,” he said. “At the duck pond.”

“Why can't I come by your pad? Afraid your lady friend might trade you for an All-Star?”

“You know I can't let you know where I live.”

“Why not?”

“Because then I'd have to kill you.”