Airtight Willie & Me Read Online Free Page A

into my shirt pocket. I was about to tell him what a thoroughbred, stand-up nigger he was when an ebonic money-magnet seized my eyes and struck me mute. She crossed the street and stood on ho point. You know, big exquisite props wide spread. Her crotch humped out to bulge her obese sex nest against her gauzy red dress. Her luminescent skin shone like indigo velour in the neon razzle. She was certified to be a bantam bundle of voluptuous headache for suckers.
    Oh, I knew at first gander she was a cold-blooded magician. I saw it in her arrogant body lingo. I saw it in the wizard choreography of her long, tapered fingers. It was confirmed by her fierce killer falcon eyes.
    I said dreamily, “Phil, I gotta own that slave . . . gimme a rundown on her and her master.”
    Phil curled his lupine lips. He gave me a look like I was that dingbat humpback of Notre Dame. He sneered, “Easy, Massa, since you gotta dream, go to Shitcon City. You could faster and more safely steal Betty Grable, Hedy Lamarr . . . every top mack man fromcoast to coast has a hard-on to cop that package over there. Her old man’s a stone gorilla. He’s shot and stomped a half-dozen niggers about that ho. She’s got his nose open wide enough to shove in a coffin. Catch on, pally? She’s Black Sue. She can pick a chump clean from all pockets and stashes in thirty seconds. Pally, that bitch is a Superfox Hall-of-Famer ho . . . Now gander the sweetness of the ho’s style on that paddy cutting in to her.”
    We watched a brawny white joker in a new Buick honk desperately at the instant that he spotted the pygmy ball lyncher. I’ve seen excited suckers in my time, but that lame has remained without peer in my memory. He just let his chariot drive itself. He coasted through a near-collision cacophony of honking horns as he stretched his neck back and ogled her with phosphorescent eyes.
    She flashed her teeth like a rabid panther. She undulated her flat gut to hook him for the killing floor. She jerked her head toward the yawning vestibule of a condemned fleabag hotel behind her. The sucker was so hot to sock it to her, he couldn’t risk parking or going around the block. His wheels screeched like a cat in an Osterizer when he U-turned. He parked crookedly in front of Phil’s sucker trap. He leapt out and galloped through graveyard traffic to her side of the stem.
    We had seen a gleaming gold watch on his wrist. A dime-sized jeweled stickpin had been shooting pastel fire from his necktie. She stood smiling at him behind the cobwebby glass of the vestibule. Almost immediately we saw their silhouettes merge. It was like they were dancing to the seductive beat of a Top Ten hit parade tune.
    Phil said, “Count the seconds, pally. That voodoo bitch is pure magic.”
    I started counting in my head. I had counted fifty-five seconds when the mark stepped out. He patted his hip pocket as he bullet-assed it down the sidewalk. He went into a hotel at the end of the block. His watch and stickpin were playing hooky. Black Sue peeped out and oozed down the alley across the way.
    Phil said, “That Houdini bitch took them extra seconds to lift his jewelry . . . Ain’t she a motherfucker? She’s sent that mark to check in for fun and games. He ain’t got the five bucks for the room. He’s gonna piss in his pants when he finds the ho has cleaned him out and put his wallet back . . . and rebuttoned his pocket!”
    I said, “That ho is two-and-a-half tons of sweet bread . . . Phil, I gotta steal that fox. I ain’t never gonna be satisfied if I cop a thousand girls. Phil, I deserve that ho, and the ho deserves me. I’m gonna toss the craps for her! Back me up, old buddy!”
    Phil shrugged. “Any and everything, pally. But like I laid it out front, you ain’t got nothing but sucker odds. So if you want to buck the saw and get in the pit with