No Beast So Fierce (5 page)

Vice here was bargain basement and wore no masks. A whore was liable to grab a sucker through his pants and drag him by his tool into a bust-out hotel. Clots of seedy blacks were on the sidewalks. They viewed themselves as con men and pimps, but with beaver hats, pointed shoes, and zircon rings looked so hip they scared all but the stupidest suckers, which were young servicemen.

But homosexuality was the reigning vice here. Young male prostitutes outnumbered female whores, posturing so masculinely as to be a parody. And the feminine “queens” were everywhere, roaming up and down, alone or in groups, congregated most thickly around certain gay bars, posing and swishing, each fluttering hand gesture or thrown shoulder a caricature of womanhood. Their loud gaiety was defiant, if not hysterical.

Pairs of uniformed police with nightsticks patrolled each block, looking for a cripple—the drunks, brawlers, or those who otherwise disturbed peaceful order. A paddy wagon journeyed constantly between Main Street and the city jail. Plainclothes police also prowled around in search of whatever luck and someone's stupidity might bring them: a fugitive, a dope addict with contraband, an AWOL serviceman.

Everything was familiar. Even the rich stench of frying grease and onions from hot dog stands recalled when I'd been hungry on this street. While on the escape from reform school I'd survived eight months by preying on the street. Gambesi had been my partner. Many nights we'd spent in the twenty-four-hour movie theatres, one napping while the other watched for police. One would buy a ticket, go inside, and open the rear exit for the other. Once Joe was waiting for me to open the door, became impatient, and began knocking. Instead of me (it was why I hadn't opened it) a policeman stepped out, splitting Joe's head open with a nightstick. Because of Joe's youth, the cop was afraid to arrest him. We spent other nights in flop-house hotel lobbies, or in a truck parked behind a bakery. Sometimes Mary Pavan let us into the house after her father had gone to bed. We slept on the floor of her room and crept out into the city's dawn before her father got up for work. Joe sometimes went home to see his mother and get us clean clothes. Mainly, we lived by robbing queers. One of us would entice a homosexual into an isolated spot, or even into their residence, and the other would rush in. We'd beat them up and rob them. The word went around and we were unable to find victims. The interlude ended after a high-speed chase in a stolen automobile. It smashed into the rear of a parked truck. Joe got away in a fusillade of bullets, but the door jammed on my side and I was caught. I'd never hung around Main Street since then, but from time to time, as now, I'd gone there to buy amphetamines. It was the easiest spot in the city to get them; the queens were great consumers because their use stimulated sexual pleasure.

I had no doubt that one of us would see a familiar face—an excon, a Junky, a queen—on this street. But we saw nobody on the sidewalk that we recognized. We parked in a dark lot, threw the matchbox of marijuana near a wheel where it could be retrieved, and began walking along Main Street, stepping into bars and scanning the faces. We both wore business suits and the denizens eyed us with suspicious fear, thinking we were policemen.

One bar was in a cellar and was jammed. Colored lights spun through filters and hurled grotesque silhouettes. Voices challenged the throb and pulse of electrically amplified guitars from the jukebox. My senses had been opened by the marijuana and now I was immersed in the naked heart of sensual chaos. The music penetrated, drowning me. Once such sensuality would have thrilled me. Life had consisted of sensation, of
now
, without moderation or meaning. But after years in the state's monastery it was too rich. I struggled against losing myself in the vortex.

Someone appeared on my right from the crowd. It was a queen I'd seen in prison, but didn't know his name. There he'd worn skin tight pants and plucked eyebrows. Now he was conservative, though the bar was swarming with flaming faggots. He found out what we wanted, took two dollars, and returned ten minutes later with two rolls of pills wrapped in aluminum foil.

Willy wanted to have a drink; he was eyeing a young blonde queen who was expertly frugging with another boy.

“Let's blow,” I said. “I'm not against buggering a boy, but I'll be a dirty motherfucker if it's the first sex I'm gonna have after eight years of nothing but fairies and jacking off.”

We drove toward Chinatown and stopped for coffee to wash down the pills, and hasten their effect. Back in the car the stimulant spread through me, eradicating a sense of depression. It was great to merely ride the decrepit car through empty streets. I was free.

“Let's go check L&L Red,” Willy said. “He should be at his pad now. It ain't very far.”

“So he finally moved away from his folks, huh?”

“They died about three years ago, a month apart. He sold the pad and was broke in two months. Horses, whores, and getting high. All he's got left is a M.G. roadster that's falling apart.”

“You should've seen the old fool with twenty grand,” Willy continued. “Every night he had a hooker or two on his arm and his chest stuck out. I'll say one thing, he enjoyed himself while it lasted. He'd have killed himself in a couple more months if he hadn't run out of bread.”

“What's he doing for a living now?”

“Same shit. Works until he's eligible for unemployment, then he folds. He still smokes pot, drops pills, and drinks tokay wine, and his mind is still on his prick.” Willy kept talking about Red's spree, which was really an extension of the spree he'd been on for a dozen years that I'd known him, and a dozen more before that. He seemed to thrive on self-abuse. Still large and powerful, he'd once been handsome. Too afraid of jail to steal, his constant cut-rate bacchanalia brought him in contact with many persons who straddled the line into the underworld—scrap dealers, bartenders, bar owners. He also knew many thieves. The straddlers were willing to purchase bargains even if they were stolen. Red wasn't actually a “fence”, but he acted as middle man when opportunity presented itself. I'd once noticed a meat truck with a driver who habitually left it unguarded while he stopped for coffee. I knew where to sell cigarettes, liquor, television and sound equipment, business machines, cameras, furs, jewelry in small amounts, clothes, and even spark plugs. Three tons of raw meat was something else. Red knew a man who owned three restaurants and who liked the price we offered. I stole the truck before the driver had stirred the cream in his coffee.

Red also served as thief's guide for celebrations after a successful score. Some thieves have been imprisoned so much that they don't know where to go or what to do even when they have a pocketful of money. Red knew and adored showing others.

While I thought of Red, Willy had been driving through the streets of a rundown, hilly neighborhood. It was within sight of the downtown area. He turned into a narrow road that turned to dirt as we began ascending a hill. The automobile bounced, its headlights spraying over bare earth and clumps of dry weeds. This part of the city had been built up when flatland was still cheap and the builders had bypassed the hills to avoid construction costs. The buildings at the bottoms were now falling apart and the hills were still bare, while bulldozers erased orange groves fifty miles away.

On the hilltop I saw a clapboard cabin's lights through holes in a window shade. I recalled another of Red's quirks: he never prepared for bed. He slept on sofas, chairs, the floor, whatever was available and appeared most comfortable when he was fully dressed. He undressed and got under the sheets only for sex. Sleep was a waste of precious life as far as he was concerned.

L&L Red heard the car and came outside. He stood framed in the doorway with a half gallon wine jug dangling beside his hip.

“Hey, Big Red, what's to it, baby?” Willy said.

“Nothin' happenin'. Who's that with you?”

“Come check for yourself.”

Red leaned his huge head through the driver's window and peered into the gloom. “I'll be a mother—! Max Dembo!”

“What's to it?”

“When did you spring?”

“Just this morning.”

“Glad to see you. Ain't many like you left anymore.” I couldn't see Red's face, but in the hot night I could smell him, the sour stench of the elderly.

“Come on inside,” he said.

On the way indoors, he shook hands, and immediately began raving about his recent sexual conquests. “Same old shit. You know me … chasin' cunt, stayin' high, havin' a ball.”

“That sure is you,” Willy said.

The cabin was three rooms connected by doorless arches. Only the small bathroom had a door. Bare wood could be seen through worn linoleum. The furniture was junk except for a portable color television on a chair. A cardboard trash box was in the corner, but empty wine bottles and such had spilled over. Half of one wall was covered with photographs of naked women with their legs spread open. It was both sad and ludicrous.

“Red's washed up,” Willy said, taking the wine jug from Red's hand and flopping on the sofa. “He can't even buy pussy no more.”

“I can still get it up,” Red said. “You stick that shit in your arm and your dick won't get hard.”

Willy laughed. “I'm just jivin' you, Big Red. You're the greatest freak of all.”

I looked at Red's vice-ravaged face, the sallow complexion, the once powerful body sagging in wrinkles. He sat on a chair, belly sagging over the unbuttoned top of his pants. I felt disdain, yet I also compared us and knew that on a scale balancing good and evil, I was worse than Red. He was harmless, for all his depravity. He'd never harmed anyone, except those with sexual inhibitions, whereas I'd beaten and maimed and stolen from everyone. And one thing could be said for him: he lived fully according to his desires, and there might be something to be said for someone whose interests were sex and staying high.

We smoked the last three joints, L&L Red sucking so greedily that one would have thought that he had been away from it for eight years. He gobbled half a dozen benny tablets, too. Soon he was recounting episodes of the spree that Willy had mentioned earlier. As Red recited, an entranced glassiness came to his eyes. Drool ran from his mouth. His voice was an impassioned liturgical song. The memory of those few months was obviously his most precious possession, and he polished the stories and lived them over and over. He finally ran down, tilted the wine jug, and his Adam's apple bobbed as he swigged the last drop. “We'll have to party together,” he said to me. “I know some new spots you haven't seen. I know where it's at, don't I, Willy?”

“Damn sure do,” Willy said.

Red suddenly jumped to his feet and began popping his fingers. I thought he'd gone crazy. “Jesus, Max, oh Jesus. I just remembered. Goddam you're lucky!”

“What're you talking about?”

“A caper … a boss caper. A guy's been hittin'on me to find a good heist man. You're here. It's a fuckin' miracle … and it's bread, man, like fifteen or twenty grand. It's beautiful for you, beautiful.”

“What is it?” I asked the question without thinking, but as my words hung in the air I wanted to bite off my tongue.

“A crap game—old Wops and Armenians.”

I told him to forget it and refused any further explanation. I felt ridiculous, as I had with Willy earlier, to be in a position where it seemed necessary to explain why I wasn't going to commit a crime. Men used volumes to justify their evil, but I was faced with justifying not doing evil. Red stared at me in disbelief.

“It's a cinch,” Red said. “Why, they won't even call the heat.”

“Then why don't you take it off? You can use twenty grand.”

Red's mouth worked like a guppy's. Fear was what held him back, but he wouldn't admit it. “Some of the players know me,” he said. “Man, let me tell you about it. It's beautiful.”

“I don't want to hear it.”

“Just listen.”

It was easier to let him talk and ignore him than make him be quiet. “Go ahead … but remember I'm not interested.”

“You will be. I shouldn't mention names, but I know you're both solid. When you know who's fingering the score you'll know I'm not bull-shitting about how good it is. Johnny Taormina is the guy. He's dead broke, flat on his ass and in debt. He needs bread.”

“He's supposed to be a mafioso,” Willy said. “What happened?”

The question mirrored my own. “Big Johnny T” was a name I'd heard since I was fifteen years old. He was supposed to be a Mafia, Cosa Nostra, Syndicate (whatever it's called this week) semi big shot. He'd controlled the bookmaking and loan sharking in the Lincoln Heights District, and it was said that he'd made a couple of hundred thousand dollars in the black market during World War II. It was a shocking surprise to learn that he was soliciting armed robbers to rip his associates.

“He blew everything gambling,” Red said. “Half a million scoots in five years. He ain't got a dime, but he still knows things … a dozen soft scores, crap games like this one, layoff bookies that carry big bankrolls, money drops.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and after three get heisted they'll figure out who's the finger man and string him up by his nuts.”

“That's no sweat off your balls.”

“I don't give a fuck about the Mafia anyway … but fuck it. I don't want any of the action.”

Red blinked. “Man, they didn't break you, did they?”

My face reddened. “Call it what you like—but like you told Willy, it's better to be a has been than a never was. And fuck Big Johnny T. He's probably a stool pigeon like the rest of those racketeers.”

Willy said: “You could use the bread to get on your feet, Man, I know what you think now, but I know you. You've been a criminal since you were born.”