The Legend of Johnny Hustle: Crown Me King (3 page)

Her shopping ended with my orgasm, and we headed back to the hotel with a grand worth of clothes.  I answered with her pleas to let her sell her flesh, knowing deep in my heart I didn’t want to do it.

The following morning, Roxy went to work on the Ave.  She bought seven boxes of condoms and stuffed them into her purse.  I didn’t want her to go, and told her so, but I was acting like a lame.  I accepted to the truth: I was dealing with a hustler that wasn’t much different than me.

$$$

Good Morning America
was on the tube when a knock came at my door.  I didn’t enjoy surprises ever since the police came my way, so I took my time to reach the peephole.  When I looked through the small optical piece, the sight of Gloria calmed my nerves.

She stepped in with a food cart and looked all over.

“You looking for somebody?”  I asked, while following her eyes.

“I wanted to make sure you were alone before I said what I had to say,” Gloria stated, after walking past me and peeking into the bathroom.

“So speak.”

“You mind if I use your bathroom first?”

I shrugged my shoulders and checked the food while Gloria went to the bathroom.  An order of bacon, eggs, toast, orange juice, and fruit cocktail sat on the cart.  My eyes left the food and a new appetite awakened.  Gloria came out of the bathroom without any clothes on.  Her hair was in a short ponytail.  Her body was in decent shape, but I could tell by the little pouch under her belly button that she had at least two children.

“What’s this all about?”  I asked as my erection bulged.

She patted the bed. “Let’s talk after we’re done.”

I was tempted, but I had enough sense to know that business and pleasure didn’t mix.  In my head, the theme music from
The Mack
started playing.

“It doesn’t work that way.  You want to talk, or you want to screw?  When you walked through the door, you was saying something about talking.”

She sat on the bed, crossed her naked leg and began bouncing it. “This hotel is wide open.  No one from the streets has claimed it yet.”

“What you mean by ‘claimed it yet?’”

“I mean, down here in Times Square, all the major hustlers claim a hotel like it’s their home.  They call the shots just like the man of a house would.”

“So why you telling me this?”

“Word on the square is that you were the best protég
é
Yoda ever had.  Brave Dave did what he had to do, but he wasn’t a sure ‘nuff hustler like you.  He was a good man, don’t get me wrong, but he was a pocket thief.  They don’t really last that long.  He was important to us in this hotel, but he never really milked it for what it’s worth.”

“Milked it how?” I asked with serious interest on my face.

“It’s simple,” she said, the back of one hand hitting into the palm of the other for emphasis.  “You have more than three hundred employees that all feel they underpaid in here.  No matter how much money they make, a worker always gonna feel like they under paid when they counting the boss’s money.  So what happens is, a group of us that had influence over the rest,
we
know that if
we
get what we can on the side, then we don’t have to worry about the executives of the Marriott Corporation.”

“So where do I fit in?”  I naively asked.

“All right, that’s what I’m talking about,” she said with new enthusiasm.  “You would be like our credit union, our security, and our go-to man.  Guys in the basement like to gamble with dice.  One of them can’t tell his wife that he’s broke, so you lend him the money until something comes along.”

I totally related to that one, but I still didn’t understand the whole angle.

“Alright, alright, how about this?  Take the maitre‘d for instance.  A whole lot of guests like to buy cocaine, but they can’t get to it.  If he had some start up money, he could have it on stash and make some money on the side.  He also likes to provide pretty women for certain out of town businessmen.  There’s always some kind of liability involved with that unless the right man is in charge of the women.

“All the employees, and I mean
all
of them, want to know that they can get a loan.  You give a slight interest, and get paid on payday.  Then the last thing is, instead of paying your bill for food and lodging, we can bounce you to different rooms, send you two meals a day, and you pay us two hundred a day instead of what you paying for this place.  There are fifty-eight different suites in here.  The boss can’t detect if a room the computer says is empty really has you in it.  We can hook you up.  That money you give us takes care of the cooks, security, and the maitre‘d, because he’s the one that really run’s this place day and night.  All you have to do is be there for us, and we’ll be there for you.”

She unfolded her legs, brought her D-cup breast to her mouth, licked her nipple and said, “As for me?  I get horny and I like to know a man can take care of that without all the headaches involved in a relationship.  I guess you can call me a female trick or John.  If you take care of me, I’ll take care of you.  It’s as simple as that.”

I partially liked what I heard, so I asked, “So who will be my go between for all the employees?”

“You looking at her.”

My wheels started turning.  There was a lot of potential there, but I just didn’t know how to figure it out.

“Alright, you take care of me for a week, and I’ll give you a grand if you bring me some new opportunities.  In the meantime, get dressed and hit the door.”

“I love a man that knows how to take charge,” she said while putting on her uniform.

$$$

The water from the shower soothed my skin as I thought about the different opportunities coming my way.  I was a good hustler, maybe a natural like everyone said, but I didn’t know as much as people made me out to know.  Another knock came to my door.

I snatched my robe and walked over to the door.  I pulled it open thinking Gloria was on the other side of it, but I was wrong.  A short, red-faced Black man wearing a bowtie and suit was standing there.  He looked me up and down, and I did the same to him.  It was obvious the man knew his clothes.  I guess I must have been approved by his once over.  He asked, “You Johnny Hustle?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Wow,” he said while shaking his head in pity.  “Yoda sent me to you.  I’m the original PeeWee from uptown.  Yoda said you too cooped up and slacking on your hustle, so get dressed in a suit and let’s make it quick.”

The man barged in the room, sat in the lounge area, and then folded his legs so that he could read a copy of
Cigar
magazine.

I didn’t know if Yoda really sent the man.  Since I didn’t tell Yoda where I was staying, and he knew, I figured I was leaving with him one way or the other.

I dressed in a dark blue suit with a white buttoned down shirt and a pair of Lorenzo Banfi shoes.

“Nice shoes,” the stranger said as we stepped out the door.

“So where we off to?”  I asked when we reached the elevator bank.

The elevator arrived with two other businessmen in the car.  We stepped in and stood behind the men.  PeeWee leaned to the side to look at the back pocket of the man in front of him while I watched.  He removed the man’s wallet, looked at me and said, “I’ma take you to the other side of the world.”

While looking through and seeing a wallet full of cash, he threw the wallet on the floor, tapped the man on the shoulder, and said, “Pardon me, sir; you seemed to have dropped your case.”

The businessman was astonished when he saw his wallet on the floor.  He picked it up, thanked PeeWee, and then slipped it back into the same pocket it so called fell from.  When the elevator stopped, and the door chimed, the two men in front of us exited the elevator.  PeeWee lifted the man’s wallet again, removed the cash, and left it on the elevator floor before we walked out of the hotel.

“So what was the sense in that?”  I asked as the cold air hit us like a ton of bricks.

PeeWee shrugged his shoulder. “Practice.  Plus he’s gonna swear that it was his fault that it dropped again, and you and I will never cross his mind as being the perps.  It was only five bills involved anyway, but it can pay for the toll that I need to pay.”

“Toll?  What toll?  What type of hustle you into anyway?”  I asked.

He ignored my question and rubbed his hands on his arms. “Damn.  You cold?  I’m cold.”

As the neon lights and the car horns of Times Square lit our path and announced our existence, PeeWee reached into the right pocket of his suit jacket. “Here, hold this,” he told me.

While crossing over to Broadway, he handed me a red plastic card with the Bloomindales logo on it.  We stopped into an Ace Hardware store, where he picked up a pair of wire cutters and asked, “You cold?  Damn, I’m cold.”

The plastic and cardboard case for the wire cutter was pulled off.  He slipped the cutters into his pocket.  He picked up a miniature screwdriver, put that in his pocket, and headed out the door.  I followed.

Once we were on Broadway, we caught a taxi.  I wondered if there was a gift to catching a cab in New York. The cabbies stopped for everyone else, but never stopped for me when I needed one.  Our ride came to an end at 59
th
Street on Lexington Avenue at Bloomindales.

Lines of tractor-trailers were loading from the side doors of the department store.  As we walked closer to the side entrance, Pee Wee was busy folding $300.  He slipped on a red plastic card like the one he handed me earlier.  He bopped while leading me onto the loading dock of the store.  I followed him and slipped the metal chain that held the tag around my neck.  Seeing PeeWee grab a clipboard off of the loading dock, I did the same.  There was a giant guard standing at the only entrance and exit.  PeeWee handed him the cash and continued walking.

After making a few turns in the basement of the store, we stopped at an area that had racks of clothes that needed to be tailored.  PeeWee pulled the Armani suits off of the racks and put them against his body.  He picked three that fit.  I didn’t stand there watching.  I sized out two Gucci, and one Calvin Klein suit by the time I was done.

When our selections were made, PeeWee threw all of the items in a service cart and walked around like he was making an inspection.  When I spotted employees looking at me strangely, I looked them in the face and pretended to write something on the clipboard.  They all kept their distance from me after that.

After walking into another storage area, PeeWee selected button down shirts by Bill Blass, Hugo Boss, and Izod Lacoste.  A few ties were thrown in to make the suits complete.  On the other side of the basement he went through hundreds of boxes of shoes that were sealed in bulk.  He picked up pairs of Kenneth Cole, Bally, and Stacey Adams for the two of us.

“You all set?” he asked while looking like we were supervisors removing irregular clothes.

“Sure man, you lead the way,” I replied, still confused about our next step.

“Okay, you follow me.  No matter how crazy it seems, I need you to just follow my lead.  Even if security got cuffs on us, you got to follow my lead.”

I nodded and he was off like someone high off speed.  PeeWee was focused.  He walked ahead of me and stopped at a tall Black security guard.  He pointed to a door that read
For Authorized Personnel Only
.  “I need you to open that door.”

In a Jamaican accent, the tall man said, “Look, boss; me nuh know if me suppose to open dem dey locks fe you, cause I never see you before.”

“What’s your name?  Well, never mind.  How do you think I know you have the keys?  And since my colleague and I are district managers from Central Office, don’t you think we know who has the authorization to be in this room or not?  I’m the one who made sure that sign was put up, so hurry because I don’t have all day.  Go upstairs and bring your supervisor back with you.  I refuse to be questioned when I’m in
my
store.  Hurry up.”

The man almost broke his fingers rushing to open the door.

“I expect you back in three minutes, I don’t like waiting,” PeeWee stated.

“Boss, I can’t mek it to the six floors and back in tree minutes.”

“Then I guess if you leave now you can, huh?”

The guard left.  As soon as he was out of sight, PeeWee said, “Let’s go.”

He stepped in the door, closed it fast, and lodged a piece a paper on it to prevent the one way lock from locking us in.  I looked around the poorly lit room.  It had racks of new clothes.  PeeWee ran down a long hall filled with boxes, and then turned a corner.  I was right behind him.  Frantically, I ran and stopped when he did.  A steel cord and a Master lock secured another door.  Quickly, PeeWee used the wire cutters.  He opened the door, revealing a small-refrigerated room.  When he stepped in, he removed a black thick plastic that covered an entire rack.  Dangling in front of us was a rack of Maximilian mink coats.  Each coat was on a separate prong of the rack, and through the sleeves of each coat was a steel wire that ran through to another lock.