The Deadly Pearl Page 5

  For the first time, Roger showed some feeling. His hand moved weakly toward Sand. “Hey man, she’s my bottom lady, fine woman. Don’t let Pearl … Shit, I’ll … Oh, hell, man, take care of her. Sara. Stays with me, might be back at the pad. Bar near us, Buddy’s. Hey, man, don’t hurt her.”

  “I won’t,” said the Black Samurai. “But I don’t think Pearl will make you the same promise.”

  They drove in silence toward Harlem.

  Chapter 5

  CLOSER

  “VEE-ET-NAM, LITTLE mama. Did my time in hell, but now I’m in heaven ’cause I see your lovely, but sooo lovely face.” He grinned quickly. He was jiving her, and the grin was to let her know it. Chick couldn’t be more than sixteen, seventeen at the most. But he preferred being cool, at least to begin with. Ass-kicking would come later.

  Rochelle Foster held the overcooked hamburger to her mouth and grinned shyly behind it, her eyes shiny with the excitement of New York and new friends.

  Jocko looked at her. Damn, she was fine! “Hey, now, that’s how it’s done. Smile, smile, smile, right D?”

  D was Dorothy, twenty-two, white, with thin blond hair, thin lips, and teeth that needed fixing. The bad teeth came from too many sweets. The craving for sweets was a side effect of four years of heroin addiction.

  D was a prostitute. Jocko, small, thirty, black, with a tiny gold earring in his left ear, was her pimp. He had never been in Vietnam, thanks to a prison record that kept him out of the draft. “I already got me a gun,” he once said, “and it’s hangin’ between my legs.”

  He wore six-inch red-black-and-green platform shoes to boost his five-feet-four. He swung his leg out of the red leather restaurant booth and held up a colored platform shoe where Rochelle could see it. “Honey, I support black power, and it supports me.”

  She laughed, covering her mouth with a hand that had blue rings on each finger. She coughed suddenly, her eyes closing, red showing in her pretty brown face. “Sorry,” she sputtered, reaching for a glass of milk and swallowing a sip. Her hand gently touched her chest. “I’m really sorry, but you’re funny sometimes.”

  “Sometimes? Sometimes? Hey, ol’ D here will tell you I’m funny lotsa times, right, D?”

  D smiled weakly, her thin mouth spreading wide in a pale face dotted with acne and blackheads. She hated the name Dorothy. It always reminded her of her mother, who called her that every time she did something wrong, which according to her rat bastard of a cop father was all the time.

  At eighteen she had left home permanently, and more important, legally. Six months later, after being slapped around by too many men, she had ended up with Jocko, whoring for him and drifting into his dope habit to keep him company.

  Whoring wasn’t hard at all, and dope was nice. Jocko slapped her around once in a while, sure, but nothing real bad, and in a sense, with him she had the only real home she ever had. She was needed. That was important.

  They both had a “Jones,” both hustled to keep living—she on her back, Jocko by pimping. He had two other ho’s, one black, one white, but she was his “bottom lady,” the one he came home to sooner or later. Jocko also made money selling teen-age girls to Pearl’s organization.

  D would help him find them and lure them to some apartment, theirs or usually some place belonging to a guy or chick working closer with Pearl. Two hundred, sometimes three hundred dollars for each teen-age gal. Hell, it paid the rent, and sometimes it let them buy some nickel bags of shit and get high for a couple of days.

  Right now, she didn’t feel anything. Only bad thing about dope. Stopped you from feeling. Sex, fear, guilt. Hell, none of it mattered. Just her and Jocko and day to day.

  This was a pretty gal, this little black chick. Jocko had spotted her walking around earlier tonight, had followed her, then phoned D, who had moved in on her alone, according to plan.

  It had been a good day, and tonight could be good too. D had found four tricks, thirty dollars each, tourists and a black preacher. Now, if they could pull this pretty little thing and sell her to Pearl’s people, they’d have more bread. With what she made today and say three hundred dollars for this gal, they could stay high for two days, three if they got some good strong shit from Nino.

  “Didja know that Jocko got wounded twice over in Nam?” D had a role to play.

  Jocko looked down, shrugged his shoulders, and said softly, “Lot of dudes had it worse. They still over there. Least I got to come back.”

  Rochelle stopped eating, her eyes on his face, her voice serious. “I’m really sorry about that. Really. Does it bother you now, I mean, where the bullets hit you?”

  I got her, thought Jocko. I got her. He smiled, triumphant and sure of his prey. “Hey, I don’t wanna talk ’bout that, it’s the kind of thing a dude likes to forget, you know? Hey, D and me been invited to a party not far from here. I was on my way over when I spotted you and her sitting here talkin’ like you two known each other for a zillion years. Hey, D, I think it’s all right to bring her. I mean, she’s good people and all, right?”

  Rochelle smiled, feeling better than she had for the past two days. So what if she had only eight dollars in her small purse and she couldn’t afford the cheap hotel room that had taken most of her money for the last two nights.

  She had met two friendly people, and tonight she had been invited to a party. She bit into the greasy hamburger and reached for the small glass of milk.

  “Tony he walkin’ bowlegged for the next few days. Dude kicked him square in the balls, but Billy got it worse. Man stomped on his leg, messed up his knee somethin’ awful, then busted his jaw. I mean, the bone’s broke and they got to put wires around his mouth and shit. George ain’t bad. Got punched out, but he can still cut it. Tony and Billy, man, they’re hurtin’ bad. Whoever this cat is, he ain’t shittin’ around. He come to play ball.”

  “Question is, why,” said Pearl, rubbing his hands together. He was in his penthouse talking to three of his men. He was bare-chested, wearing tight gray pants and no shoes or socks. His brown body was lean, with cuts in the stomach from one hundred sit-ups daily. “Player needs his body in business,” said Pearl. “Got to be pretty for my ladies.”

  He held his hands up for admiring comments. He wore gloves designed especially for him. They were made of gray pigskin, with twenty small white pearls encrusted on the back of each glove. Three pearls were on the back of each finger, while five pearls were arranged at the points of a stitched silver star.

  “Dig it,” said Chink. “Bad, Jim, really bad.” Chink, 250 pounds of muscle and meanness, was smart enough to compliment the boss when it was called for. Right now was as good a time as any.

  “Tough,” said Bubba. “Man, that’s a tough set you got there.”

  Pearl smiled, both hands held up in front of his face, fingers spread wide. “Three thousand dollars. Just for a pair of gloves.” Pimp flash. You had to have it. It was part of being in command, something your women expected from you. The men, too. Lose it, and you lose respect.

  A pimp without respect was out of business. And speaking of business …

  “The question is why,” said Pearl. “They weren’t cops, ’cause none of my people reported the heat comin’ down on them. At least, not yet. And they weren’t friends of Roger’s, ’cause he ain’t got the money for any little helpers. Bubba, I want you to check around on the street. See if you can hear anything ’bout people movin’ in, tryin’ to take over. I doubt it, ’cause grabbin’ one gal at a time ain’t the way to do it. No, Jack, that ain’t how it’s done.”

  Bubba, quiet, balding at thirty, with a knife scar running under his left eye almost to his ear, listened carefully. Along with Sly, he was Pearl’s second-in-command. He and Sly handled the business, dealing with pimps, ho’s, and making sure the money got to Pearl and that Pearl’s orders got to the people concerned.

  Sly, thin, thirty-four, with a huge gray-tinged afro the color of his moustache and beard, also did some killing. He enjoyed it. I
t was his responsibility, along with Bubba, to see to the teen-age girls who needed to be killed. There were places up in the mountains where bodies could be hidden. There was the Hudson River, the East River, and there were places where old cars were crushed into steel squares the size of a tiny suitcase.

  A body in the trunk of a car like that before it went through the crusher would never be found. Sly had gotten that one from the Mafia. Whitey had his uses.

  Sly usually spoke while looking at the ground. Everybody was used to that. Chink always asked him, “Ain’t you tired of looking at your cock, Sly?” Sly always ignored the joke, saying nothing.

  “No word on Roger yet, but he can’t go far. Wallet was still in the pad, and we tryin’ to get hold of his old lady now.”

  Pearl’s eyes were on the pearl-encrusted gloves. “Who’s she?”

  “Sara.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Now, I know the bitch. Turns tricks down in the East Village, weekend stuff mostly. Tourists. Thirty a throw, and she’ll take less if she’s hungry.”

  “Best believe it,” said Chink. “Saw her ass other day. Says she’s twenty-five, but she damn sure don’t look it. Looks thirty-five.”

  “Ho gets old fast,” said Pearl. “That’s where my money comes from, the craze for youth. Fresh meat ain’t about to go out of style. Got to check out these fightin’ brothers that put the hurt on my men. Can’t let anybody get away with that. First thing people gonna say is I should change my name to ‘Miss Pearl’ and grow tits. …”

  The telephone rang, and Bubba moved swiftly to answer it. His back was to Pearl, but when he hung up, he turned to face him. Bubba was smiling. “Cookin’. We cookin’ now. Them mystery niggers done turned up. Two cats that wasted our men. …”

  Pearl’s face was hard, unsmiling. He held two tight fists in front of his bare chest, his muscles straining hard. One tiny white pearl snapped from the left glove and fell silently to the carpet.

  Pearl didn’t take his face from Bubba. “Where are they?”

  “Buddy’s,” said the Black Samurai.

  “Why?” said Foster.

  “First, Roger said his bottom lady might turn up there. She’s got to look for him sooner or later, especially after she sees that apartment. Second, it’s a pimp hangout, again according to Roger, and if Rochelle’s anywhere near Pearl or his people, it’s as good a place as any.”

  “Think we’ll get lucky?”

  Sand stared straight ahead in the darkness. They’d stopped at a red light. Roger had been dropped off at the hospital ten minutes ago. “Stop thinking about luck. We make our own luck. We’ve got a place to start with, and there’s no sense waiting until tomorrow. By tomorrow somebody will know we’re looking for them. Word’s going to get around.”

  “Think it’s gonna get hairy?”

  “Yes.”

  “What makes you say that? I mean, you’re probably right but—”

  “Look at it this way. Pearl, whoever he is, is a superpimp planning some kind of shipment involving teen-age girls. He needs at least one black girl, maybe more, and he needs her bad enough to try to kill Roger. That means Pearl’s a hard-ass. And so far, no one’s been able to even slow him down.”

  Foster let out a deep breath, hands steady on the wheel. He shook his head from side to side slowly. “Been in law enforcement all my life, and I learned one thing. You gotta be lucky as well as good. I don’t know which one’s more important.”

  Sand grinned. “Napoleon said he preferred a man who was lucky to a man who was good.”

  “Right now, I want ’em both,” said Foster.

  Chapter 6

  AMBUSH

  SARA QUATRO WAS A loser and showed it. Robert Sand watched her spill Scotch on her cheap black leather jumpsuit, then take a hand tipped with dirty, torn fingernails, and smear the alcohol into long, wet streaks on her thigh.

  In one greedy gulp she drained half the glass, then lowered it to her chin, smiling at Sand and Foster. “Playin’ with dynamite and gasoline. Tonight … boom!” She laughed, head flopping back, throwing her arms wide and spilling the rest of the Scotch on the stained white apron of a passing waiter.

  That was her comment on what had happened to Roger less than two hours ago.

  The waiter never stopped moving. At Buddy’s he knew this kind of shit went on all the time, and she was just a drunken white whore who would always be drunk, white, and a whore. While he, the black waiter, once taught school in Washington, D.C., before a security guard caught him naked with a little boy in the school gymnasium. The waiter had more to worry about than some white trash.

  A loser. Sand’s keen eyes caught the rip in the jumpsuit under her right armpit and the small gold safety pin holding the strap together on her scuffed yellow platform shoes. She was drinking too much, too fast. But as long as she kept on talking, she could keep on drinking.

  “You two don’t look like players. You sure Roger said to look me up here?”

  Her long brown hair hung across her face, and she snapped her head back to clear her vision. Roger was her pimp and lover, the man who controlled her—mind, body, and soul. She hated him and she loved him. When she was sober, she needed him. At the moment she wasn’t that sober.

  She sat in Buddy’s, a small soul-food restaurant on East Sixth Street, swallowing amphetamines and Scotch.

  Buddy’s soul food. Good food, and cheap. A small place with a long bar on the left, a loud jukebox on the right, and behind both, huge mural paintings of black athletes and performers. Farther back, two small steps leading up to the restaurant itself. Twelve tables.

  The clientele was special. Pimps. Flashy and loud, dressed in purples, greens, reds, and yellows, and calling themselves players.

  And their whores, whom they called “ho’s.” White, black, young, and not so young women. Dependent and subservient, quiet, and speaking only when spoken to. You couldn’t work for a pimp and be independent.

  Some musicians thought it hip to eat there. A few actors did too. Occasionally an undercover cop hung around, was spotted within minutes and ignored. And dope dealers silently making connections with those wanting cocaine, heroin, pills. Outsiders were never stopped from entering. They just weren’t encouraged.

  “Roger told us you were his bottom lady,” said Foster, wrinkling his nose as he looked at her. At twenty-five, Sara looked older. Two years of whoring and drugs on her own, plus four years of both with Roger, were squeezing her dry.

  She grinned. “Roger says that when he wants something. You know, I had a year of Vassar. One year in that classy, tight-assed college, and look at me now. No place to go. They trashed my pad, and I can’t even get to the hospital to see Roger until tomorrow morning.”

  She shrugged her shoulders, eyes on the empty glass she now rolled back and forth between the palms of her hands. Her voice was small. “Nino. He’s always after me. Maybe I can stay with him.”

  Sand looked quickly at Foster, signaling him with a slight head movement to be quiet. When the Black Samurai spoke, his voice gave no sign that he recognized the name Nino. “We’ve got a car. Can we drop you off?”

  She kept her eyes on the empty glass. “Mmmmmm, thanks, but he lives kinda near, over in the West Village, that new joint, the Carlton. I feel like walking.”

  “Maybe he’ll drop by here,” said Sand.

  “Maybe. Depends on who he’s got business with. He’s more into fucking than he is anything else. He only deals with players because they turn him on to new chicks. It’s true what they say about Spanish guys, you know? Nino never stops in bed.”

  Sand gestured to the waiter, then pointed to Sara’s empty glass. The waiter nodded in understanding.

  “Cool Papa,” said the Black Samurai. “He been in lately?”

  “Oh, him!” She made a face and stuck out her tongue like a little child insulting a friend. “I feel you’re a cool dude, and your friend too, so I can say this. Some niggers are worse than niggers, if you know what I mean. Cool Papa is one of th
e worst. He thinks he’s hot shit just because he goes around collecting money from whores and pimps and turns it in to Pearl. And those awful cigars, ecch!”

  The waiter placed the drink down in front of her, scooping up the empty glass in one motion, then spun on his heel like a ballerina and glided away. Sand looked at him, then turned back to Sara Quatro.

  “Roger thinks Cool Papa got Pearl to come down on him,” he said.

  Sara stopped her motion of bringing the glass to her mouth, then looked at the ceiling. “Bet it was about that fifteen-year old black chick. Roger and Wesley wanted to go into business for themselves, their own stable, right? Stupid, fucking stupid. Word’s around that Pearl’s got a big deal going down, and he needs fresh girls by the end of this week.” She stuck her tongue in the Scotch, feeling its coolness; then she licked her own lips.

  Foster stared at her as though she were from another world. She was.

  Sand said nothing. He waited until she drained off half the Scotch; then he smiled at her. The liquor relaxed her, made her feel warm and calm. Her fear of loneliness made her smile back at him.

  Liquor was the best way to get her talking. And the Black Samurai was smart enough to phrase his questions as close to the target as possible without using specific words that might trigger her into backing off.

  He had used names like Nino and Cool Papa and Roger, without once exactly mentioning what each man did. She assumed he knew, and because of that assumption, she was more talkative. Now he had a big question. “Think Pearl’s doing business out of the country?” She hesitated, and Foster leaned forward, his teeth gnawing at his bottom lip, his eyes riveted on her.

  She shrugged, then grinned. “Why not? Yeah, could be. What’s so special about anyplace else? He’s got shit goin’ for him in other ci-cities like, ah, Boshton, Phila-Philadelfeeya, Wash, Wash, Wash, D.C. I think you are right on, dude. I mean, Pearl has let people working for him know that they got to get on the sch-sch-schtick and get him the gals. Roger knew that, but he wanted to be a big, big, big man. Ha!”