By the end of the year I had copped a new thirty-nine Hog. I had blown Jo Ann ninety days after I got her. She was too possessive and she didn’t really have the guts for a long stretch in the street.
I didn’t cry when she left. While I had her, Chris kept her humping. I was thousands ahead of her when she slipped away from Chris in the street.
A week later I copped a young whore that was a whiz in the street and was hip to boosting. She went ape over Chris. She’d go downtown and come home with shopping bags loaded with fine dresses and underclothes for herself and her sisters.
Later she hipped Chris to boosting. I let them go down together with a stud who drove for them. They filled my closet with beautiful vines.
Top got five years on a narcotics rap. The federal heat tricked him into a four-piece sale to an undercover agent. I sure missed him. I hung out at Sweet’s more than ever.
My name was ringing. The moniker Top hung on me stuck. Everybody was calling me Iceberg, even Sweet. Only I and the several peddlers I copped from knew that my icy front was really backed by the freezing cocaine I snorted and banged every day.
I pimped strictly by the book for the next three years. I traded in a Hog each year. I never had less than five girls in the family.
I moved out of Top’s building and let the family stay there. I took a suite in a swank midtown hotel. I had the privacy, the jewelry, and all the flash and glamour of a successful pimp.
I had managed to solve the fast track. I was fast becoming one of its legends.
Top had gotten out. He was in Seattle with relatives serving out his short parole paper. Only one of his women stuck with him. The rest got in the wind when he fell.
The runt was still bottom woman. Ophelia was still hung up on her. Chris was proving every day she had the qualities for a bottom woman.
I noticed the runt was acting like she might be wearing thin fast. The other two whores I had had been stable mates. I copped them when their pimp shot an overdose of H.
I was at Sweet’s when Pearl Harbor was bombed. I had stayed all night. I was still in bed.
The friendly brown snake had brought my breakfast. I was just finishing when Sweet walked into the bedroom. He sat down on the side of the bed.
He said, “’Berg, Uncle Sam just got his throat cut. The Slant Eyes just put the torch to Pearl Harbor. Whores gonna make more scratch now than ever before. ’Berg I got a feeling this Second World War is gonna hurt the pimp game in the long run.”
I said, “Sweet, how do you figure that?”
He said, “You know a whore ain’t nothing but a ex-square. A good pimp wears out a lot of whores in his lifetime. If there ain’t no big pool of squares for the pimps to turn out, then stables gotta get smaller.
“The defense plants are gonna claim thousands of young potential whores. Those square bitches are gonna get those pay checks. They’ll get shitty independent. A pimp can’t turn them out.
“The older square broads are going into the plants too. Thousands of them got teenage daughters. They’ll have the scratch to fill the bellies of those young bitches. They’ll put nice clothes on their backs. Why the hell should they whore for a pimp. They can pimp on Mama.
“The worse thing is, those plants are inviting whores with strict pimps to split and square up. If the war lasts a long time, pimps will have to turn pussy to hold a whore.
“’Berg, ain’t but one real Heaven for a pimp. He’s in it when there’s a big pool of raggedy, hungry young bitches.”
The war was raging. The defense plants were grinding out war goods around the clock. Thousands of young and old broads were slaving in them.
As far as I was concerned, the pool was still full of fine fish. I had three original girls and three new cops.
It was December, nineteen-forty-four. Sweet was still pimping good for an old man. He was down to seven women, but this was great pimping for a stud his age. Top had settled out West.
I had held Chris, Ophelia, and the runt a long time. Since thirty-eight I had copped and blown sixty to seventy whores and turnouts.
The turn-over in turnouts was big. Some of them would hump for a month and split. Some a week. Others a couple hours before they cut out. Sweet had been so right years ago. The pimp game was sure “cop and blow.”
I spent Christmas day with Mama. She was really happy to see me. She hadn’t seen me since thirty-eight. She cried as always when I left her.
The runt was getting tired and evil. Several of those turnouts she had run away from me. All new turn-outs I was giving to Chris to polish in the street.
I started sending the runt to small towns near army camps. Some of them were out of state. Sometimes Ophelia went with her. A week before I met Carmen, the runt and Ophelia had come back from a weekend in Wisconsin.
The runt and the other five girls were with me when I copped the seventh girl.
She was almost a perfect copy of the runt at eighteen. She had a prettier face than the runt had at eighteen. Her features were more regular. Time and street had bulldogged the once cute Peke face of the runt.
We were at a cabaret. Carmen was behind a twenty-six game table in the barroom. I left my table and went to the John. I passed Carmen on the way. She gave me a strong lick.
On the way back I stopped and tossed a quarter on her table and rolled the dice trying for a score of twenty-six. I hit twenty-six, so I bought us a drink with the score. I stood beside the table and quizzed her. She was from Peoria. She’d been in town a week.
We had old Party Time in common. She had met him up in Peoria where he was still living. He had a whore in a house up there. She had worked in the same house. She had run off from her pimp and she was wide open for a fast cop.
We rapped for fifteen or twenty minutes. I could tell she went for me. She looked at the clock. It was almost closing time. I invited her to have breakfast at the family’s pad.
We’d had breakfast. I was leaving with Carmen. I was going to my place to put her under contract. The runt followed me outside to the hallway. She called me.
I gave Carmen the key to the Hog. She went toward the elevator. I didn’t move toward the runt. I said, “Bitch, you wanna rap to me, come to me.” She had a tight evil look on her face. She walked slowly up to me. Top was right. These bottom broads, when they started to rot, really funked up a stud’s skull.
She said, “You ain’t thinking about bringing that bullshit bitch into this family are you? That phony bitch ain’t shit.”
I said, “What the hell. You mean you’re gonna turn down a chance to Larceny a new bitch away. You stinking bitch, nobody tells me what bitch to have. You got the nerve to crack some bitch is phony. I had to almost croak you to make you real.”
I noticed two of the latest cops were in the open door. They were eyeballing down the hall at our show.
She shouted, “Nigger, you were a raggity nowhere scarecrow until you got me. You didn’t have no wheels. You muscled me for mine. Nigger, I’m the bitch that made you great. Without me, right now you’d go to the bottom fast as shit through a greasy funnel.”
I made a bad mistake. I shoulda maybe used Top’s jellied skull technique to get rid of her. Instead I left-hooked her hard as I could against the jaw. There was a pop like a firecracker going off. She fell to the carpet in a quiet heap. I kicked her big rear end a dozen times. I walked to the elevator. I looked down the hall. I saw Ophelia and Chris dragging her toward the apartment.
The runt got her broken jaw wired up. She split with Ophelia. Chris said she tried to take two of the newer girls with her too. I had made a pimp’s classic blunder. I had blown a tired bottom bitch in the rough.
Carmen was an easy cop. A pimp wants everybody who can hump his pockets fat. He’s in real clover when he cops a fine young whore who wants him. Carmen really wanted me. She was starting with Chris.
Six months later Sweet called me early in the morning. His voice was laced with excitement. I jerked erect in bed.
He said, “’Berg, I got a wire the F.B.I is nosing around some of the broad lock-ups. They’re quizzing whores. Your name has been cracked more than once. It looks like they already got a solid beef to go on. It’s my guess they’re trying to build a five or six count rap against you.”
I said, “Sweet, I bet it’s that stinking runt. Christ! Sweet, I’ve sent her and Ophelia across state lines a dozen times since the war started. They’re trying to ram a white-slave rap into me, Sweet. What would you do?”
He said, “I would give one of those nice sweet jokers on the West Side expense scratch and a ball-peen hammer. I’d tell him as soon as I read they was found in an alley with their skulls caved in he could get a cinch two grand.
“It would be easy to trap ’em. They’re whores. He’d be just another freakish trick wanting to party with two whores.
“Tell you what, ’Berg get them whores outta that crib over there fast. Move outta your pad today. Go groundhog. Switch your whores to new stomping grounds. Stay outta the street after you move. Call me when you get outta there.”
He hung up. I thought, “I’m a sucker. I shoulda destroyed the runt Top’s way.”
I had moved the stable and myself to new pads by seven that night. Chris, my new bottom woman, was the only one in the family who knew the reason for the move.
I took the Hog and put it in a garage I rented from an old widower. The garage was behind his house in a respectable neighborhood.
I got a cab to one of my stuff connections. I was going underground. I had to have at least a piece of stuff. I had copped and was walking down the street looking for a cab.
I passed a barber shop. I got a glimpse of the white-spatted dogs of a joker in the barber’s chair, next to the window.
I thought, “Geez, that square joker is pitiful. He ain’t hip spats went out with high-button shoes.”
I was walking fast. I had the sizzle on me. I needed a cab in the worse way. I was almost a half block from the barber shop. I thought I heard some joker yelling, “Run! Run!”
I looked back over my shoulder. A tall skinny stud in a barber’s apron was on the sidewalk. His white spats flashed on his feet. He was screaming and flailing his arms like a minstrel clown singing “Mammy.”
He was loping down the sidewalk. The out-of-fashion bastard was yelping,” Son! Son!” He galloped by the neon lights toward me. His wrinkled brown-skin face changed colors like a chameleon.
He ran into me and clutched me like I was a winning sweepstakes ticket. He was panting and sweating like a whore on soldier’s payday. I could smell witch hazel and the stink of emotion sweat. I saw white specks of barber’s talc on the bald crown of his head. I couldn’t see his face. He had it buried in my chest.
He was blubbering, “Oh son, precious son. Sweet Jesus answered an old man’s prayer. He’s let me see and hold my one and only son before I got to my heavenly rest.”
I had the damnedest thought while he made love to me. I wondered if my skull had chipped any paint off that wall he threw me against when I was six-months old.
I stiff-armed him away. I stared coldly into his face. I saw a weak blaze of anger light his dull brown eyes.
He said, “God don’t like ugly, son. You saw your father back there. You ignored me, didn’t you?”
I said, “Shit no I didn’t see you. I thought you had croaked. Look Jack, I’m happy to see you, but I’m in an awful hurry. See you around.”
He said, “I did my part to bring you into this world. You ain’t gonna treat me like a dog. Where do you live? You look prosperous. What’s your line? Are you with some big company? Are you married to some nice girl? Do I have any grandchildren, son?”
I said, “You haven’t heard about Iceberg Slim? He’s famous.”
He said, “You don’t associate with black filth like that I hope.”
I said, “Look Jack, I am Iceberg. Ain’t you proud of me? I’m the greatest Nigger that ever came outta our family. I got five whores humping sparks outta their asses.”
I thought he was going to have a heart attack. The apron was quivering over his ticker. He was supporting himself against a lamp post. His face was gray in shock under the streetlight. I jerked my shirt and coat sleeves up past spike hollow. I stuck the needle-scarred arm under his nose. He drew back from it.
I said, “Goddamnit Jack, what’s the matter? Shit, I shoot more scratch into that arm a day than you make in a week. I’ve come a long way since you bounced my skull off that wall. Stick your chest out in pride, Jack. I been in two prisons already. Shit, Jack, I’m on my way to the third any day now. You ain’t hip I’m important? Maybe one of these days I’ll really make you a proud father. I’ll croak a whore and make the Chair.”
I walked away from him. I caught a cab at the corner. The cabbie u-turned. I looked at my old man. He was sitting on the curb beside the lamp post. His white spats gleamed starkly in the gutter. He had his head on his knees. I saw his back jerking up and down. The poor joker was bawling his ass off.
I got home. I called Sweet. I banged a load of cocaine. It was the best I’d copped since Glass Top went to the joint.