Airtight Willie and Me. Iceberg Slim

walked, with head down, toward a florid fatso, in ritzy togs, coming down the sidewalk, bent against the hooligan wind. Two feet from the target, Willie spat a gob of spit into the wind and fouled the front of the dude’s impeccable benny. I watched Willie rush to him, with jaws flapping apology. He feverishly wiped the dude clean of spittle and his billfold from the well (inside breast pocket).

      As I was driving toward the Southside, Willie stopped arranging a wad of play money to say, ‘We got five hundred frogskins to make up boodle that will give the suckers blues with a toothache . . . Say, we better blow some of the pressure in our balls into some jazzy fox to loosen up for the marks.’

      I said, ‘Man, I don’t dig no bought snatch and I’m too noble to beg for it.’

      He busted out laughing, ‘Slim, I’m gonna hip you how to bang the choicest pros with no pay, no bed!’

      We parked a half-hour while he ran down his poontang swindle. In the Seventies on Cottage Grove Ave., he told me to pull over and park in front of the Moon Glo Bar. I did, and dug on the vision he had dug. He caressed his tinted fly.

      She hustled her Pet-Of-The-Year type curves toward us. Her face was copper satin, pure electric like those ball-blasting Aztec broads on the calendars printed in Spanish.

      He opened the car door and said hoarsely, ‘Ain’t no way we can do better than her. Don’t forget the cues we rehearsed, and remember, you’re stone deaf and dumb. You’re a champ chump from the Big Foot Country (deep South) and you’re creaming to get laid.’

      I enjoyed an interior smirk. Remember? A few con items? Willie, the rectum, was apparently unhip I had memorized an arsenal of howitzer motivators I’d kept on instant alert inside my skull. I’d barraged them daily for three years to persuade a ten ’ho stable to hump my pockets obese.

      Willie suddenly hammered his fist down on my hat crown. I glanced into the rear-view mirror. My lid was telescoped into a pork-pie, cocked stupidly on the side of my long head.

      He said, ‘Now you look the part, Pardner.’

      He sprang to the sidewalk, whipping off his hat. His face was booby-trapped with pearly con as he rapped his opener. She darted a glance in my direction. He had cracked comedic shit on her to set me up as flim-flamee and her as fuckee. She giggled her epic ass off.

      She scooted across the seat close to me as Willie boxed her in and shut the car door. I yo-yoed my Adam’s Apple as I imagined a mute bumpkin would, if pressed against her pulse-sprinting heat.

      Willie said, ‘Sharlene Hill, this is Amos . . . did you say your last name was Johnson, Buddy?’

      I nodded and wiped my brow with the back of my hand.

      She giggled and said, ‘Hi, Bootie, Cootie.’

      Willie leaned across her and said, ‘She boss cute enough for that hundred dollars you want to spend?’

      Slack-jawed, I nodded vigorously. Then I frowned and got pencil and pad, rubber-banded to the sun visor. She watched me laboriously scribble, ‘You go first’ and pass the message to Willie.

      He chuckled and said, ‘Amos, we don’t have to do it that way. I’ve known Sharlene since she was a baby. I’m ready to take the oath before the Supreme Court, she ain’t got no bad disease like they told you down home most all the fast ladies up here is suppose to have.’

      I put my handkerchief across my mouth and turned my head away to cough so he could wink at her and say, ‘Course, if you just gotta test my confidence in her cleanness, you have to give her two hundred in advance.’

      I swept my eyes hungrily over her awesome thighs, exposed by the hiked up pink suede mini-skirt. I nodded furiously. She took my hand and glued it against her throbby vulva as she rolled her belly.

      Willie said, ‘You gonna pay her from the money in your shoe, or should I pay her from this money I’m safe-keeping for you?’

      I pointed toward him. He reached into his overcoat pocket and removed a blue bandana wrapped wad holding five hundred in fifties, tens and a hundred dollar bill. She stopped her belly motor. She freed my hand and watched him untie the knots and count out two hundred.

      It was my cue to get a severe fit of coughing and spitting. I turned away and stuck my head out the window.

      Willie tied up all the cash again before her eyes. Then he leaned toward her ear, blocking sight of the money for a mini-instant. The index and middle fingers of his right hand shoved the cash down the left sleeve of his overcoat. With magician speed he simultaneously grabbed and palmed the bandana with play money, stashed in the same sleeve.

      He pressed the dummy into her hands as he whispered, ‘Beautiful, let’s rip this chump off. Put this whole grand in your bosom right next to your boss lollipops. Meet me right there in the Moon Glo in ten minutes after we cut you loose . . . for the split.’

      Her green neons were sparkling excitement when I took my head out of the window. Willie was airtight all right. He wouldn’t even spring for the motel fin to rip her with some kind of class.

      I drove around the desolate southern perimeter of the city while Willie muledicked her and blew off his jail cherry with the exclamation, ‘Oheeeeee! Slim! I’m gonna nominate her box for the hall of fame!’

      But there was something about the cloying stink of their juice stew, and the sloppy kissy sound his slab meat made withdrawing that turned me off.

      He climbed over the seat and said, ‘Pull over and let me take the wheel.’

      I started to pass her up. But the expression on Willie’s face was pulling my coat she’d wake up if I didn’t do a number with her. While Willie drove us around, I opted for her far out skull extravaganza.

      We let her go in front of the Moon Glo. She went in the front door. We cruised around the block and caught a glimpse of her cannon-assing it down the alley in back of the bar. Her pimp was going to foam at the jib when she checked in that load of play money.

      The banks and postal savings offices would soon be closing, so we dirtied plates and copped pads. Next morning, at ten, we were working both sides of Garfield Boulevard on the Southside. Both of us had struck out several times at the qualifying stage with marks we had stopped.

      At two thirty, Willie stopped a powerfully built older guy. I watched Willie’s two grand choppers flashing as he pitched the ‘cut in’ and ‘sound out’ con to qualify the mark.

      I had memorized both ends of our game’s dialogue so I knew Willie was saying, ‘Forgive me, Sir. My mama taught me, in her lap, it’s bad manners and not Christian to disrespect a stranger’s privacy. But I’m upset! I’m in need of advice from some intelligent and wise-looking colored gentleman like yourself?’

      I saw the mark move, with Willie, from the middle of the sidewalk to stand near the curb to hear Willie’s problem. ‘I just got here from Mississippi. I’m carrying a lot of money from the sale of my farm. I’m confused and afraid because a friendly white man on the train from Vicksburg, warned me about flim-flambers . . . or something. Worse, the white man told me that banks up here give white folks five percent interest on savings and only three percent to colored people. Please, tell me, kind sir, what are flim-flappers? And does your experience with these banks make that white man tell me a lie or the truth?’

      Shortly, Willie stroked an index finger across his left cheek. My cue to drop and pick up the wallet, fat with the boodle, near any big expensive car parked on the street.

      Willie touched the mark’s sleeve and dipped his head toward me. At this point, Willie would be saying, ‘Ain’t it a pity that colored man over there is so honest he’s paralyzed with guilt and fear. He was lucky enough to pick up a wallet a rich-looking white man lost when he got out of that new Lincoln. I think we oughtta put his mind at ease.’

      Willie and the mark waved me to them. Up close, the mark’s face and vibes jangled an alarm bell inside my skull.

      I shakily said,