Urban Renewal Page 4

He slowly got to his feet, casually tossed some bills on the table, and walked out of the club.

  Bruno slid into position behind him. Cross waved him off.

  The tall, slender man strolled past the “Valet Parking” area and kept moving toward the back of the building. A black man about half his height and twice his width stepped out of the shadows.

  “No going around the back, pal.”

  “I’m just—”

  “You ain’t parked back there. Your car’s over in Valet Parking.”

  “That’s right. I just wanted to wait for my girlfriend, make sure she knows I’m here to take her home.”

  “You’re saying she told you to meet her back there?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, she wouldn’t be going out the front, right? These kind of places, sometimes a guy will sit out there, waiting. You know what I mean.”

  “That don’t happen here.”

  “Come on, bro. I know there’s got to be some way …”

  “Like, say, if I never saw you?”

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  “Only shade that turns me blind is green, ‘bro.’ ”

  The slender man handed over a fifty-dollar bill.

  “When I say ‘green,’ I mean a full glass, not a little sip,” the double-wide black man said, crunching the banknote into a ball and tossing it back disdainfully.

  “A full glass is—?”

  “Ten of those little sips.”

  “Five yards?! Just to—”

  “You can’t pay the toll, you don’t get to roll. ‘Bro.’ ”

  The slender man peeled five hundreds off the outside of a wad, reflecting that he couldn’t go back much deeper without hitting the smaller bills at its core. Bitch is gonna pay me for all this! played in his head, like a jukebox with only one selection.

  The toll-taker faded back into wherever he had come from. The man who’d paid the toll slowly walked around to the back of the club.

  The air of supreme confidence that he wore the way another might wear a favorite jacket vanished as he viewed the unlit slab of garage doors. He pulled his cell phone and punched a speed-dial key for at least the twentieth time that night. And once again got the robotic voice of a voice-mail system that told him nothing.

  No way she got here on her own. Maybe she just called a cab …? Maybe the guy on the door …?

  Reluctantly acknowledging that he was running short of bribe money, and not eager to have a conversation with the thug at the door, who had made no effort to conceal his shoulder holster, the slender man glanced at his wafer-thin watch.

  I wasted the whole night on the bitch. Gonna be light, soon. Time to jet. Just wait for her back at my place. Where else she gonna go? Sooner or later, she got to …

  THE CHARCOAL Lexus coupe glided through the West Side, but neither the layered aroma of its rich leather interior nor the muted mixture of Bird and Miles flowing from its sixteen-speaker system soothed the slender man as it usually did. Rap was a lot of things, but no one ever called it “sleek,” and nothing short of that standard ever made his personal playlist. But now …

  Even the knowledge that the car belonged to him was cold comfort against the heat-seeker thoughts moving inside his head.

  Sophistication was his trademark, not flying colors or waving guns around. Those gang boys would never understand that you have to slide your way through this world. He knew how to act if stopped by the cops: “Always let them tell you what they want. Could be license and registration, could be that old ‘busted taillight’ game so they can search your ride, could be the tax for using their streets,” the ancient pimp had schooled him, back when he was still in his early teens.

  “How am I gonna pull any—”

  “You ain’t gonna be pulling no girls, son. That game is lame today. Oh, there’s always gonna be girls working the streets. Looking for a daddy, too. But half of them are poison. Underage. Runaways. You get caught with one of those in your stable, you gonna see the Walls, and be looking at them for a long time. And remember this: a bitch on the pipe never made no man no money, no how. Used to be you could keep that under control: a little Boy-and-Girl, that can still be mellow. But meth is death, young boy. Turn a racehorse into a scaly-leg skank in a month.”

  The old man stopped to take a long, deep hit from the oxygen tank next to his bed. He knew he didn’t have long, and passing on the wisdom of decades spent in The Life gave him a kind of satisfaction the silver-tongued devil could never put into words. He knew the rules, as they’d been passed on down to him: “You know why they call some parts of town—any town—the ‘Red Light District’? That’s because the Game is only played in the Fast Lane. Which means, sooner or later, you gonna run a red light. That means ‘Stop!’ Right? Thing is, you don’t stop, you gonna get stopped.”

  THE OLD pimp knew his baby sister’s son wasn’t coming by to visit him every few days out of love … or even concern. He hadn’t known the boy even existed until Lucy had told him he was an uncle. “His name’s Lawrence, Samuel. I know what you are. What you did. But you can still get yourself right with the Lord.”

  “I’m too old to be going on Oprah, Luce.”

  “You can just stop your slick-talk, Samuel. You know I don’t mean asking for forgiveness. You probably couldn’t even remember all the women you wronged in your sinful life. But I want you to listen to me now.

  “My youngest, Lawrence, he’s way too pretty, you know? And I take some blame there. I tried, but without no man in the house, a boy is going to run the streets. And I spoiled him, too. Me and Marcella and Jessee Lynn, all of us. We even let his big sisters show him off. Do his hair, spend their own money so he could look fine. Like he was a pet.

  “As if that wasn’t enough, taking him to church didn’t teach him a thing but how to sweet-talk. I don’t mean the Gospel, I mean … Well, that boy could sell salvation to sinners if he wanted, but he says there’s no money in it. Can you imagine?”

  “Boy should take a look at what some of those Revs you like so much have put together for themselves. I don’t know their game as good as my own, but I know even the holiest woman will give up her money to a honey-talking preacher.”

  “Yes, that is exactly how you’d see it. So what else is my boy going to be but a man like you was? You’re out of that world now. And you’re not going back, not with that TB killing you slow. Now, Lawrence, he’s heard your name a thousand times. ‘True Blue.’ He says it like you a … legend or something.”

  “Ain’t no ‘or something’ about it, Sis.”

  “You just can’t get off that train, can you, Samuel? Even when you know it’s taking you straight into hellfire. But you don’t have to die here, not in this dirty place. I could take you home with me. There’s a room we could fix up with all this same stuff. And—”

  “What’s the hook, Luce?”

  “Always got to be a hook, Samuel?”

  “Always,” the old man intoned, as piously as his sister would have thrown a Bible quote at him.

  Minutes of silence passed. Then his sister said, “The ‘hook’ is you save my boy’s life.”

  “How am I gonna do that now? You gonna put me on exhibit, tell him, ‘See what happens when you make the wrong choice? That wasted old man there, he was called True Blue back in the day. You heard his name. You know what he had. Cars, clothes, gold, diamonds. More women than you could count. But look at him now, what do you see?’ ”

  “I don’t mean nothing like that, Samuel. All I want you to do is school him. Tell him the truth. Not just one side of it, the whole thing.”

  “Pimping ain’t the same as it once was.”

  “You be sure to tell him that, too.”

  “No Bible on the bedstand?”

  “For what? It would just be wasted on you, Samuel. But the truth can still set some free. And in the world my boy’s gonna live in, it’s not the Good Book that knows the Word.”

  AND THE old man had to admit that his baby sister—half-sister, really�
�kept her word. His room was always fresh and clean, the food was truly fine, and he even had a little TV of his own. So, every time the boy came around to pump him about the pimping game, True Blue always told him nothing but the truth.

  Some of that truth would have caused his little sister to pull the hose out of his oxygen tank.

  “THE MACK MAN had a role once, son. I don’t mean a role to play. I mean, there was a need … and it was his job to make sure it got filled. But what you got in The Life now is some truly sorry stuff. Mangy dogs, not wolves. Simps, not pimps. They can’t make it, so they fake it.”

  “There’s plenty of them, still.”

  “Of them, maybe. Of us, not even a trace. Listen, now: I’m not saying there wasn’t some gorilla pimps back then. Kind of man who’d beat a woman half to death if she didn’t come back with the money. But how many church girls you think they ever turned out?

  “As for girls that got pulled, they was already on the game. You pulled some, some got pulled from you. Never meant a thing, and you never took it personal. You miss one train, there’s always another one coming.

  “But snatching children and raping them? Making them work in some hot-sheet house, turning dime tricks? Calling themselves ‘players’ on that stupid Internet thing you showed me? That’s not pimping. They should get shot just for calling themselves that name.”

  He never even took a hit off his oxygen tank, the young man marveled. The emaciated pimp’s voice seemed to recapture strength as he went on.

  “And why did it go that way? ’Cause, for the punks who could only talk with their hands, there wasn’t no other way. And the top-drawer girls, they go into business for themselves now. Advertise on that same Internet, only for real. No more out-front working girls—they all ‘escorts’ now.”

  “Even those girls—”

  “Got pimps, you’re gonna say? Nah, they got ‘managers.’ And most of those are women themselves, how’s that? It’s about the money, sure. But this business of turning what you earned over at the end of the night, that’s dead. The only cash they ever see comes in tips—and even that’s no sure bet, no matter how good they are.

  “It’s all credit cards. Money transfers. Stuff like that. Fools—and all johns are suckers, boy; never forget that—leave a clearer trail to follow than if they was paying off in orange money.”

  “What’s orange money?”

  “Boy, sometimes I worry about you. When some fool robs a bank, the teller hands over banded stacks of bills. Idea is that some of those stacks, they got little bombs in them. Not enough to hurt no one, but they shoot this orange dye all over the money. You supposed to burn those bills, but …

  “Anyway, just listen, all right? You just interrupting to prove you don’t know nothing. Now, those ‘escort’ girls, they fine, sure enough. But every one of them is stone treacherous. You think a street girl got her a little black book? You still that dumb, you probably think those escort girls don’t.

  “What you got on the street today is nothing but trouble. I mean serious trouble. In my day, a mack man could drive a Rolls with mink upholstery, be draped in diamonds. And his women, they’d be proud to see their man showing so fine.

  “But what you got out there now? You don’t be seeing a player riding around, checking on his string, making sure they working. He probably don’t have the gas money for some half-ass ride he most likely don’t even own.”

  “But if a woman wants to give you her money …?”

  “What money, son? Those sorry skanks couldn’t bring you a yard a night. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be for long. Think you could really protect them if that kind of talk wasn’t just game? There’s other cars trolling those strolls. Every night, they’re out there. A girl gets in one of those cars, she’s not coming back. And ain’t nobody gonna come looking for her, either.”

  “I drive a Lincoln. Brand-new.”

  “And not paid for. You don’t own it, so you can’t … personalize it, understand? Somebody spots you behind the wheel of that Lincoln, you know what they see? Another nigger limo driver. Ain’t that special? You got a girl, works in some hair place, makes the payments, right?”

  The old man paused just long enough to glance at his nephew’s face.

  “Yeah, I thought so. Same for your fancy phone. You didn’t pull that woman, boy—she pulled you.”

  “But if I had—”

  “You ain’t never gonna have enough legit women to put you where you want to be, boy. They don’t sell steak in no fish store.”

  “So how could a man do it? Do it right, I mean.”

  “You already passed the first step, boy. The young man who think he know it all shows he don’t know nothing. But you sitting there, paying attention like you was in school. And you know I earned heavy back in the day. I got paid. So I’m worth listening to, and you already done that math in your head.

  “Okay. First, you don’t even think about cutting into one of those escort girls. They all got connects. Some of them got brands on them, too. Mess with one of those girls the Russians own, you gonna have yourself a real bad accident—like if you fell into a chainsaw, face-first. No. Where you go is the clubs.”

  “I go all the time. I’m even known in some of them.”

  “Known for what? You’re not in the dope game, and you’re not a shooter. You’re known because you throw money around. That’s gonna bring some girls close, and you can stand that kind of inspection—you a pretty thing, sure enough.

  “But you need a lot more than that to close the trap. Unless you want to live off some heifer—maybe even a couple, three, four of them—you need a ride that’s worthy. And you need a place to park it.”

  “I told you—”

  “Yeah. You told me. That rented Lincoln. And I told you that’s not gonna get it. I know you got a whole closet-full of threads. How I know that? ’Cause you still living in your mama’s basement, boy.”

  “Well, I got plans.”

  “No, you don’t, boy. What you got is dreams. You wanna make them come true, you got to listen to Mr. Blue. Those clubs, you looking for the kind of girl that wouldn’t get near anybody without real coin. What you want is a stripper, son. Sure, she’s making money on that stage, but she looks around every night. And you know what she sees? Younger stuff than her already coming up. How many years you think a girl can work that pole?

  “If she’s an independent, what she’s looking for is some stockbroker, some politician, some fool with a credit card. And a wife. She don’t want no wannabe rapper, no man-sized baby, no horse that can’t run on the fast track. She wants to be a rich man’s pet.”

  “A rich man? How am I going to come across like that?”

  “You already all that. A born-pure con man. A hustler. That don’t mean a gambler—that’s not professional. A hustler don’t play with dice. He don’t work for nobody; he works the marks.

  “So you need a racket where you got to have a lot of pure, sweet smooth to get over. If a girl believes you working on some million-dollar score, she’ll wait, you with me? And while she’s waiting, she’s earning. Earning and turning, okay? She’s gonna understand how a for-real, don’t-have-to-work-no-more score can take a long time to put together. She’s gonna understand how you got partners she never gets to meet. And she’s gonna understand how, some nights when she comes home, you ain’t gonna be there.

  “Start her off like you training a dog. She gets home by six in the morning, you not there. But a couple of hours later, just when she’s starting to get thinking you gone for good, you roll in. So she never knows.

  “Got to give a girl one night off. Take her someplace nice. Throw some money around. But no more than that one night. And you make sure it’s not the same night every week. Make it so she can count on you coming back, but not on when, understand?”

  “So she’s off balance?”

  “No, boy. So she’s confident. You and her, you’re in it for the long haul. Together. Soon as this big score you’
re working on comes through, you can’t be hanging around—some very bad people be looking for you. You not gonna put your own woman in the crosshairs, not the woman you love.

  “She’s gotta understand that. Accept it. Believe you’re gonna send for her when you get settled in … I don’t know, place like Cleveland. Not out of the country, but not next door, neither.”

  “But with just the one girl, I’m always on the bounce.”

  “First of all, I never said nothing about one girl, did I? That’s why you make sure the girl can’t count on any particular day of the week. You can run two of them like that. Not no more. Two is the max, understand?

  “And you play it real, real careful. You need three phones. One for each girl—they gonna play detective on you, go through your phone while you sleep. And what do they find? Their number. Their picture. Load up the phone with anything else, don’t matter. But only one girl on each.”

  “You said no more than two—”

  “Two girls, not two phones. That third phone, that’s for new stuff. You got to always be scouting.”

  “Ah.”

  “All right. If you play this correctly, you won’t even need your own place. You tell them, ain’t safe for them to come around where you live. Not ’cause of the neighborhood, ’cause of your partners. They can’t have no woman in the picture. Bad men, these guys. They see a face they don’t know, they might get suspicious. You got to sell it: girl wouldn’t want those kinda guys getting suspicious about her.”

  “Because of this big score I’ve been scouting out?”

  “Oh, yes! But, remember, the ride, that has got to be righteous.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “That’s right, you can’t. Way you’re going, you getting older, not smarter.”

  “If I was smarter, what would I be doing?”

  “Listening.”

  “I’m listening. I been listening. But—”

  “How bad you want it, son?” the old man cut him off.

  “How bad? If I had something that kept on making bank, I’d do … hell, damn near anything.”