Chicago Hustle (6 page)

He stood off to the side, Benny so close to his right arm that he had to take a step away from him to raise his hand to his mouth.

“Man, how can you be standin' up here eatin', at a time like this?”

Elijah frowned at Benny, gnawed on a chicken bone for a bit, wondering about it himself, and replied, “The main reason I can be standin' up here eatin', at a time like this, is 'cause I'm hungry as a motherfucker.”

A few of the tense lines on Benny's forehead relaxed. “'Lijah, you somethin' else!”

Elijah nodded graciously in Benny's direction, polishing off the food in huge, nervous mouthfuls.

What sense did it make to stay tense? he asked himself, knowing that there was no money in that, no groove, nothing.

He pinpointed three black Earthmothers, each of them with comfortable shelves underneath the mold of their fleshy bottoms, stomping and twisting their bodies to the beat. God! black women sho' have got beautiful asses!

Yeahhh, what sense did it make to be all up tight …? Despite the fact that they were “wanted”… not by some civilized law enforcement agency, but by a bunch of dudes who wanted to give them the kind of ass kickin' that would put them both in the hospital for a while. Or the morgue.

The good flavor of the food suddenly evaporated with the thought. “Benny, you want the rest o' this?”

“Thought you was so hungry?”

“I was, before Miss Lady popped in.”

He handed the plate to Benny and held his arms out to Mabel Stewart. She smiled at his gesture, both of them glad that it was a slow number for their first dance together.

The mingling of perfumes, perspiration, the smoke, music and the flickering light pushed them closer together, established a moment. Elijah slid his hand down to her lower back, testing.

She protested by nibbling on his right earlobe. The music played on. And on … soul sounds to grind by, and ended too soon.

They stood toe to toe at the end of the record, feeling excited about each other. “Feelin' as good as you feel to me, you could tell me your name, to begin with.”

“Mabel. Mabel Stewart, what's yours?”

Elijah quickly ran through all the reasons why he should not give his right name, reasoned out that there was no need to lie. “Uhhh, Elijah Brookes, the first.”

“Tell me somethin', Elijah Brookes, the first?”

“Anything you righteously want to know, baby,” he macked to her.

“Why is your friend over there at the window? peeking out like that. You'd swear somebody was after him or somethin'.”

Elijah looked at her closely, realized that she was trying to tell him something. “'Scuse me a minute.”

He made his way through the people jammed up on the dance floor, waiting for the next record to start.

“Looka here, brotherman …”

Benny almost dropped the plate as he turned away from the window.

“Ohh, 'Lijah … you scared me, man … I thought …”

“Yeah, I know. Dig, I thought I'd hip you to the fact that most of the people here know that the gamblin' joint down the street's been ripped off'… he leaned closer, speaking out of the corner of his mouth, “and it wouldn't take too many more suspicious moves outta your shaky ass to give us away.”

Benny's shaking hand dropped the plate, splattering chicken bones at Elijah's feet.

Elijah looked down disdainfully as he scrambled to put the food back on the plate. What the hell ever made him go out on a sting with Benny? Greed, he answered himself.

Benny stood up, hating the look in Elijah's eyes.

“Look, 'Lijah, I been checkin' out the scene down on the street … these dudes is fo' real, they got regular patrols 'n shit out. How we gon' get outta this?”

“Well, tell you what.” He shot a full smile across the room at Mabel. “The first thing we gon' have to do is split up …”

Benny glanced enviously at Mabel.

“You done got yourself into somethin', huh?”

“Maybe … at any rate, let's split the bread, just in case.”

The music started, blaring out Benny's answer.

Elijah pulled him across the room, thinking, on second thought, that it would be better to go off and take care business in a private place.

“You know how to move faster than a two step?” Mabel asked him as the two men approached her.

“Hey, lady … I was raised up dancin', but lemme take a rain check for this one, where is the li'l room?”

She pointed down the hall, slightly pissed that he wasn't dancing every dance with her.

Benny stood in the center of the toilet, looking pitiful.

“Well. C'mon, man … I don't want to hang out in the shithouse all night.”

Benny, looking more pitiful every second, dug down in his pockets and pulled out a bunch of one-dollar bills. “I … uhh … I … this is all I got on me.”

“Fuck, you mean, this is all you got on you, where's the rest?”

Benny pressed his chin down to his chest, looking, for all the world like a five-year-old caught with his hand in the jam pot. “I stuffed it in my coat pockets, all the rest of it, it's down on the porch.”

Elijah turned a cold, hard, mean look on him, half a beat away from sticking boot to him. “Okay, let's divide what we got here and go downstairs.”

Benny carefully divided the forty-six dollars he had.

Elijah looked at the money as though it had funky mold on it. Twenty-three fuckin' dollars for risking his life.

He grabbed Benny by the collar. “Is this all?”

“That's it, bruh … I mighta dropped a li'l taste, jumpin' over fences 'n stuff, but this is it.”

“What possessed you to leave the bread in your goddamned coat pocket?” Elijah asked, more in anguish than anger.

“You told me to leave my coat, man! You told me! remember?!”

“I didn't tell you to leave the dough in it! C'mon on! Let's go git it!”

He ignored the curious stares of the two women waiting to get into the toilet. No time for any off-brand bullshit.

Mable stared at the backs of the two men, making their way, super-casually, it seemed at first glance, back to the kitchen. She followed at a discreet distance, determined not to lose Elijah, no matter what. Not this Saturday night, at any rate.

Benny and Elijah stood on the back porch, smoking cigarettes and looking up and down the dark alley below, trying to conceal their anxiety.

Mabel offered the sister selling food a hand, surreptitiously checking out the two men framed in the light spilling out onto the porch.

She wandered out onto the porch as they slipped down the porch steps. Was he trying to sneak off? Wowwww … I must really be losing my touch.

Elijah and Benny crouched in the darkness at the bend of the porch steps, halted by the sight of a couple slumped down on the sofa, cooing and caressing each other.

Elijah felt like spitting with disgust. Benny simply stared, intensely interested at the sight of the woman's hand inside the man's fly, and his hand under her dress.

Mable quickly returned to the kitchen as they quietly trudged back up the stairs.

“Well, it's all safe for a while, I guess,” Elijah whispered, mad
and
disgusted, “unless they decide to push every goddamned thing off the sofa.”

“Nawww, they won't do that, be more likely that they would be layin' up on stuff.”

“I hope you right, Benny. I sure hope you're right, for your sake.”

Mabel met Elijah as they re-entered the kitchen with a drink, ignoring Benny. “Here, here's one on the house. What's the problem? You look like somebody just stole your last dime.”

Elijah cut a mean look at Benny. “Somebody did, in a way.”

“Well, hey, let's not let bad vibes spoil a good party.”

Elijah took a long sip on the water glass and smiled at Mabel, in spite of his mood.

“Where you from, Mabel?”

“I'm from Chittlin' Switch, Miss'ssippi, honey, and we don't be jivin' when it comes to havin' a good time.”

She grabbed Elijah's hand and gently tugged him back through the hall, to the dance floor, her sense of power restored.

CHAPTER 3

Elijah was startled to see the streaks of daylight filter in through the front window. He looked over Mabel's shoulder at the dregs of a party, people slopped over chairs, beer cans everywhere, stale cigarette smoke in the air, the music down into a mellow jazz groove now, James Brown and Aretha played out. Benny sound asleep on an overstuffed chair.

He released his grip on Mabel's waist and held her back from him, to check her out in the morning light … the acid test.

She leaned back against the wall, completely aware of what he was doing. “Thirty-eight, thirty-eight, twenty-five, thirty-eight,” she recited in a detached voice, “and the circles are from stayin' up with you all night.”

They both laughed, in tune with each other, and fell back into each other's arms.

“Like I told you, baby, earlier, I'm a Cancer man and we like to be sure that the feelin' is there before we give ourselves away.”

“Well, is it there?” she asked seriously.

“Uhh huh,” he answered without hesitation, and then suddenly remembered. “'Scuse me a minute, baby.”

He went over and shook Benny awake. “Benny! Benny! Wake up! Benny!”

Mabel looked at the two of them curiously as Elijah whispered urgently into Benny's ear. “You been back downstairs?”

Benny yawned and blinked, trying to get himself together. “Downstairs? downstairs? what downstairs? Oohh, nawww, I ain't been …”

Elijah resisted the urge to crack him in the jaw, moved quickly through the hall, to the back door and down the steps to the sofa. “Well, I'll be a sonovabitch!” he cursed aloud, staring at the sofa, cleared now of the rags that had been there, of their coats, guns, and the money. “Well, I'll be a sonovabitch!”

“What's wrong? You lose somethin' down there?” Mabel asked from the top of the stairs, Benny hanging back behind her sheepishly.

He jammed both hands into his pockets to keep from strangling Benny and mumbled, “Nawww, not really … not really.”

Mabel decided not to press the matter, knowing that he was not about to give her the straight of things at this point. “Uhh, Elijah, did you say you were goin' to give me a lift home?”

Elijah glared fiercely at Benny, answering Mabel. “Yeah, baby … we're takin' you home. You got the keys to the car, Benny?”

Benny dug down into his pocket and pulled his keys out. “I always carry 'em in my pants pocket.”

Mabel looked from Benny's petulant, sheepish-li'l-boy-done-wrong expression to Elijah's scowl and put it all together.

“Hold on a second, you guys … I got to say somethin' to Stella before I split.”

The two men stood at the front door waiting for Mabel to say a few parting words to her girlfriend.

“'Lijah, I'm really sorry, man … really I am.”

Elijah studied Benny's contrite expression, decided to forgive him, a little bit. “Yeahhh, well, that's the way it goes down sometimes.”

Down on the early Sunday morning streets, Mabel linked her arms through theirs and asked, just as they were walking past the gambling joint on rubber legs, “Y'all held up the gamblin' joint last night, didn't you?”

Benny's arm stiffened.

“Uhh huh,” Elijah answered, “and then we got robbed by the robbers … I guess.”

Benny fumbled with the keys trying to open the car door. “Where we goin'?” he asked slyly, as they positioned themselves in the car … single man driving, the couple being chauffeured.

Elijah and Mabel exchanged warm looks in the back seat.

“Four-three-seven-nine Warren Boulevard,” she answered after a slight, polite, pregnant pause.

Benny sheeled through the Sunday morning streets, glancing from Elijah and Mabel kissing in the rear-view mirror to sedate groups of churchgoers, off to seek salvation.

He slid into a space almost in front of Mabel's address, a canopied, third-rate, third-class, rundown hotel tenement.

“Awright folks, here we be.”

He waited, diplomatically, to see whether or not Elijah was going to go in with his new-found friend. When it was obvious that he was going to, he asked, “Whatchu want me to do, man … pick you up later?”

Mabel, on firm ground now, having caught, called out across the pavement, “What's this ‘later' shit? You can pick 'im up in the mornin'… if he wants you to.”

“Uhh … yeah, man … why don't you pick me up in the mornin'?”

Benny shrugged behind the wheel. “That's cool with me, what time?”

“I go to work at eight,” she answered promptly.

“I hear ya, baby … I hear ya!” Benny sang out as he screeched away from the curb, happy to have survived the night.

Elijah and Mabel shuffled up the dim, smelly steps to the third floor, each of them quietly excited by the idea of what was about to happen, old pros at it, but still enthusiastic.

He stood close behind her as she unlocked the door, curious as to how they would pull it off, how they would get it on.

She strolled into the apartment, made a sweeping gesture that said, “Well, here it is,” and pointed to the toilet.

“You can use that blue toothbrush, it's never been used before,” she said to him, implications dangling in several directions.

Elijah brushed his teeth and impulsively decided to shower. He stood under the warm jet, trying to make something out of what was about to happen, but couldn't. It was simply another piece of ass. Another piece of ass. Another piece of ass.

He stared down at the slow, throbbing erection the hot water had given him, wishing, in a way that he were at home, in his own place, with Leelah.

“You constipated, baby?” Mabel called through the door, a laugh in her voice.