Trick Baby (19 page)

I was gazing at it. I felt Blue tugging at my sleeve. I turned slowly and looked at him.

He said, “Can you drum?”

I said, “No, but I'd like to have that one. It's beautiful. I think I'll buy it.”

He said, “Folks, it takes a long time to become a musician and most of them are starving. I thought you were going to be a grifter.”

I said, “I wouldn't want to play the drum. I'd just like to keep it. But I guess you're right. What would I do with a drum? I don't even paint anymore.”

We went into Powers and had lunch. Blue was quiet. It worried me. I wished that I hadn't acted like a stupid kid about that drum in the window. I didn't want Blue to get the idea I was just a young punk not really ready to play the con with him.

I said, “Blue, I wasn't serious about buying that silly drum. I was just clowning around.”

He said, “Sure, Folks, I understand. Forget it.”

We had stepped from the restaurant to the sidewalk when a breathless little guy rushed up to Blue. There was a bloody patch
of kinky hair glistening in the top of his head. He was excitedly waving his scrawny black arms. Sweat glued his white shirt to his skinny chest.

He blurted, “Oh, Blue! He tried to waste us. He ain't human. Shorty's gotta get outta Chicago. He showed while we was blowing the mark off at Sixty-third and Stony.

“He just grinned like a crazy hyena. Poor Memphis' head is busted wide-open by the butt of his pistol. He even crushed the mark's beak. He's looking for me, Blue. I know it. Please lay a double saw on me so I can go back to Saint Louis. Please Blue. I'll wire it back to you. I gotta get away from that crazy roller.”

Blue said, “Sure, Shorty, I'll spring for the double saw. But who the hell is the roller?”

Shorty shouted, “I don't know. He's a brown-skin, speckled sonuvabitch—real lanky, with a funny walk like a broad. I know one thing, he's the screwiest roller these eyes have saw.”

Blue gave him a twenty-dollar bill.

Blue said, “Shorty, you and the Memphis Kid had the worst kind of luck. That was Dot Murray. He'd swim across Lake Michigan in January to nail a grifter. That gash in your noggin looks bad. Here's another saw buck. See a croaker, Shorty.”

Shorty was already on his way back to Saint Louis. He shouted over his shoulder, “Blue, thanks for the dough and advice. But Shorty's going to give this sawbuck to a Saint Louis croaker.”

We watched Shorty turn into the el station. Blue said, “Folks, I'll have to point out Dot to you as soon as possible.”

I said, “Why is he called Dot?”

Blue said, “He's got a disorder in the pigment of his skin. Ten years ago he was smooth brownskin. Now he's dotted with dirty yellow spots. We don't worry about him. We'll never let him catch us playing for a mark. Let's go pick up the car.”

I said, “Blue, if we're not going to work anymore today I think I'll get a haircut across the street and walk around a little.”

He shrugged his wide shoulders and said, “No, we won't work anymore today. If we hadn't run into Sweeney the Snake, we'd play the stations this evening.

“We'll start in the morning, early. Be careful, Folks. Don't get foxed out of your bankroll. The con is made for everybody, you know.”

I went across the street to the barber shop. It was crowded with old guys arguing about the war in Europe and how soon before America would be in it.

One old guy cracked up the shop.

He said, “If Turkey were attacked in the rear, don't you think Greece would help?”

I finally got a haircut. Forty-seventh Street was lousy with young, big-butt broads. But I was too wrapped up in thoughts of the past to chase any of them.

I walked east on Forty-seventh Street. I saw the Regal Theater at South Parkway and remembered the curvy little doll that caused me to miss waiting for Phala outside the cabaret that night.

I walked to Cottage Grove Avenue. I walked down Cottage Grove all the way to my old neighborhood at Thirty-ninth Street.

I stood and looked up at the shabby apartment building where Phala and I once lived. I thought about the pretty pink house I was living in. I felt like a millionaire as I watched slouched, familiar figures passing me on the sidewalk.

As I walked away toward South Parkway I glanced up at the window of our old apartment. I saw the lonely face of a little black kid staring down at me. He was about the age I was when I first lived there.

Perhaps he had no father. His mama probably worked in River Forest. I thought how wonderful it would be if he could go with me to the pink house.

He'd sure be happy like I was to get away from the piss stink in the kitchen sink, the roaches, and the hunchback rats that stood on their hind legs and snarled like rabid wolves.

I was glad for him that at least his face was black. He'd be able to play games in the bloodstained hallways and on the puke-streaked stoops. His savage young buddies would never bar him from their games and call him a trick baby.

I caught a jitney cab on South Parkway Boulevard. I got off at Fifty-first Street. I crossed the street and walked into Washington Park.

I found a cool, green, shadowy spot where Phala and I used to lounge together to escape the hot summer sun. I remembered how she used to croon me to sleep on her bosom.

I felt so sad to think that Phala was probably in the sun on that bench near the weeping willow tree. I could almost see her pitiful vacant eyes and smell the sharp odor of the lye soap in the faded blue smock.

I lay there until the orange sun floated off the rim of the earth, and the night sky was ablaze with stars.

I got home at nine
P.M
. Blue wasn't home. I read Keats and Shelley until I fell asleep. I went to the bathroom around three in the morning.

I was sitting on the stool when I heard Blue laughing loudly in his bedroom. I washed my hands, and I was getting back into bed when I heard a young girl giggling in Blue's room. It was the first time he'd had a broad for company.

I turned on the radio. The sweet music of Guy Lombardo lulled me back to sleep.

I awakened to the savory scent of the frying bacon. I was hungry. But I felt wonderful looking out the open window at the tulips and roses, dewy and sparkling in the bright morning sun. I was anxious for my second day of the con.

I was getting out of the bathtub when I heard Blue calling my name. I stuck my head into the bedroom.

Blue was standing in the bedroom doorway. He was wearing lavender pajamas. A small, big-eyed doll about eighteen was snuggled against him.

She was wearing white panties and one of Blue's t-shirts. She had nice, big legs. I couldn't tell how she was built upstairs because of the bulky t-shirt.

Blue winked and chortled, “Folks, meet Linda. I'm going to make a Billie Holiday out of her. I heard her singing along with a record last night in Square's Bar on Thirty-first Street.

“She's great. I already told her about our plans to open a swank night club in a few weeks. You were wondering who would be our star. Well, stop wondering. It's Linda.

“Breakfast is ready. So hurry, we've got a busy day ahead of us.”

The three of us had breakfast together. She was a dizzy, stagestruck little broad. And, how she was built upstairs!

I had one hell of a time coming off the top of my head with the answers to her excited questions about the night club, its color scheme and so on.

Blue sat there getting his kicks. Finally we all got in the Caddie, heading north. We let Linda off at Thirty-first Street and Indiana Avenue—in a very bad slum section.

She had stars in her eyes when she got out. Blue promised to take her to dinner that night to discuss her wardrobe and the whole plan for her stardom in the mythical night club.

I was really puzzled. I couldn't figure why Blue would play all that con for young snatch. A sawbuck could lay broads all over the Southside who were younger and finer than Linda.

Blue said, “Folks, we're going to work the Illinois Central Station this morning, right in the Loop near the Prudential Building. Socking it into that young pussy all night makes me feel lucky and daring. Whoopee!”

I said, “That was sure a lot of con for nothing. She is really going to be disappointed tonight when you don't show to take her out.”

He threw his head back and laughed. He said, “Christ! I've got to hurry and get you out of kindergarten. That con wasn't for nothing. The thrill I got in conning that young slut was greater than banging her.

“That stupid whore has sold more pussy than Ford has cars. But when I cut into her last night, she got indignant and slick. I offered her a double saw.

“She was looking out of the bar window when I drove up. She saw my clothes. She figured I was a rich sucker that she could play a clean-cut, square role for.

“She'd lay that hot, young pussy on me and I'd go for thousands instead of the double saw. Any broad who dreams she can con Blue Howard is doomed to disappointment.”

We were lucky right after we got to the station. A black businessman between trains went for four bills on the smack. We beat a young white guy at the Greyhound Terminal for a bill and a half. We were safely out of the Loop by noon.

We listened to a news broadcast on the car's radio as we drove back to the Southside. It was all about the war in Europe. The fabulous cripple in the White House was quoted several times.

Blue shut off the radio. He had a serious look on his face.

He said, “White Folks, America has to go to war. There's going to be a white man's world war to retain white wealth and power.

“You'll be eighteen years old your next birthday. America, the model of democracy and equality, has two armies. A black one and a white one.

“Folks, there isn't anything more precious than your life. I'm your friend. If I let them, they're going to draft you into their nigger army.

“I'm not going to let you die a sucker in a Jim Crow army. The black soldiers from the South would hate your guts. Folks, I'm taking you right now to a croaker.

“You're going to start treatment for a chronic heart condition. If and when they call you in for a physical, you'll have a history of heart trouble. The croaker we're going to can give you drugs that will make your ticker correspond to the proper disease picture whenever they call you. Don't worry. Leave everything to Blue.”

Time flew swiftly by on the smooth slick wings of the con. Blue
had been right about our play together becoming a tricky ballet. We could almost read each other's mind. We'd take our cues with split-second precision.

By August, Nineteen Forty, I had lost count of the marks we had rooked at the bus and train stations in the Loop.

I spent most of my take on expensive clothes from Marshall Field's. Blue and I went fifty-fifty on food and house expenses. I blew a lot in cabarets on weekends. I had a lot of fun with the dolls I picked up in them.

Toward the end of August, Sweeney the Snake gave us a scare. We were playing the smack on a young white mark about twenty-five years old.

The coins had been flipped for the last time in the foyer of a building about a block from the La Salle Street Station. Blue and the mark had lost the tap-out flip to me.

Blue had walked away to the street. I started to split with the mark. Blue came back and interrupted for the blowoff. The three of us stepped to the sidewalk. Blue was telling us to go in opposite directions to prove we weren't crooks splitting his losses.

I looked right into the steely-blue eyes of Sweeney passing in an unmarked black sedan. The mark was already on his way down Harrison Street to meet me around the block for the split.

The black sedan stopped about thirty yards away. Sweeney got out and rushed to the sidewalk. He ignored the curses and honkings of the drivers in the cars behind the stopped sedan.

He didn't take his eyes off Blue and me as he grabbed the mark's arm going past him on the sidewalk. They struggled weakly until Sweeney took a wallet from his hip pocket and passed the inner side of it across the mark's eyes.

They started toward us down the crowded sidewalk. Blue and I melted into the crowd. We made it to State Street. We were lucky. A streetcar was just pulling out going south.

We swung aboard. We looked at each other and shook our heads
when the streetcar passed Central Police headquarters at Eleventh and State Streets.

Blue said, “I got a hunch. Let's get off at Eighteenth and State. We'll get some of Mexican Joe's chili. A little later we have to go back and get the car off Polk Street anyway. No use going any farther South.

The Mexican was just setting steaming bowls of chili mac in front of us when Blue's hunch reared by. It was Sweeney and the mark in the black sedan racing in hot pursuit of the southbound streetcar.

Sweeney was a sharp roller all right. But Blue's con-educated intuition had out-smarted him. I took a cab home. Blue took a cab back to get his car.

I was worried about Blue. I almost leaped from my skin when the phone rang. It was Blue.

He said, “Folks, everything is lovey-dovey. I'm at the Du Sable Hotel. I'm in the bed with the finest young fox in Chicago.

“Christ, you should see the tits on her. They've got to be size forty at least. Yummy. Think of it, Folks, equipment like that on a seventeen-year-old doll. Stay cool. I'll be home one of these days. Whoopee.”

I heard the musical laugh of the young broad. Blue hung up. I took a bath and went to the bookcase. I dozed off with Aristotle in my hands.

A month after our narrow escape from Sweeney, Blue decided that we'd pay a visit to Felix the Fixer. It was a good idea because that winter we planned to play the drag throughout Illinois.

The drag was a felony con game. Blue told me that Felix had high police and political contacts across the State. He also did business for burglars, heist men, whorehouses and gamblers.