The Legend of Johnny Hustle: Crown Me King (8 page)

“Had stars in my eyes in Texas and wanted to make it on Broadway after graduating in dramatic theater with honors.  Came out here to get an acting gig, but it didn’t work.  I was afraid to call home for help, didn’t wanna look like a failure, so I stayed down here and fended for myself.  I became a thief.  Since my parents are wealthy, I knew what to steal.  Then I realized that I was a better thief than an actress.  When I pulled a few long cons, my acting made it easier, and then I became an adventure addict.”

“What’s that about?”

“You know, I stole for the risk and adventure instead of the payoff.  I started doing everything from boosting to body-bagging.”  After a brief pause, she asked, “What’s your objective?”

“Wow, can’t say I ever really gave it any thought.  If I had to answer, I’d have to say it’s to get paid so I’ll never be broke again.  Maybe one day have a family.  What’s yours?”

“Mine, was to survive through each day.  Now, I guess I have to figure it out when the time is right?”

“So what are you doing in my bed?”

“I fell for you hard the moment you put me in front of that mirror.  You can’t exactly have a valuable relationship in midtown, and it’s been a very long time since I made love to a man.  Down here, we live by our own rules, and you look like you almost mastered the game.”

“Almost, huh?  I have you on top of me now, and that’s better than coming off with a major sting.”

“See, you got a lot to learn, but you can melt a woman’s heart with your words without knowing it.  I guess that’s why Roxy believes in you?”

“How?  By whoring in the streets?”

“Johnny Hustle, these girls don’t have employment skills, education, or a bit of self-esteem.  So don’t start preaching.  Wake up, because a whore is going to be a whore.  The question is, if she gonna hustle for you so she can have a nice nest egg whenever the end comes?  Or is she going to work for some lame-chili pimp who abuses her on the avenue?  Just take care of her and do the right thing.”

“So what about us?” I said, feeling dumb once the words left my mouth.

“We had sex, it was good, and the next time will be better.  Roxy knows how I feel about you, and we’re a different breed of women.  We can share a man without feeling insecure.  We know he’s there to satisfy
our
needs, and satisfying a grounded man’s needs is easy to do.  So since you’re grounded, we’ll do the satisfying,” she said, ending it with a kiss.

Red was a different kind of lover than Roxy.  One wanted to give, and the other wanted to give, and then receive.  Red had just started giving more.  So well, that my eyes were closed until I heard a sound.  I looked up and saw Roxy standing in the doorway holding her swollen face.  I jumped up thinking I was busted.  When Red came from under the covers, we both looked at Roxy’s face, and asked simultaneously, “What happened?”

She sat between us.  While Red held her, she looked at me. “Baby, this pimp named Lucifer in front of the Holland Hotel tried to gorilla me.  He was dissing me, and we got into a beef.  He tried to force me to hustle for him.”

“Go get her some ice,” I said to Red while rushing to get dressed.

“Baby, wait!”  Roxy said with a smile on her face.  “We jumped him.”

“We?” I asked in shock.

“We who?” Red asked.

“I got a surprise for you,” Roxy said while skipping out of the room

A few seconds later, a big boned, triple-D-top-heavy, blonde haired White girl stepped into the room smiling.  She looked like she weighed two hundred and twenty pounds.  Roxy walked up to me, kissed me on the lips, and said, “This my new partner.”

I looked at the rambunctious girl to see if she was serious.  Scanning the room she extended her plump hand.  “Howdy, my name is Joy.” She looked down at the bed.  “Wow!  This is where you guys live?  I’d be willing to sleep on the floor if Lucifer would have put me up in a place like this.”

Red looked at my face and saw that I was annoyed.  She looked at Joy and asked nicely, “How can we help you.  Is there something you want?”

In what sounded like a public protest, Joy’s velvet voice asked, “What I want?  What do
I want
?”  She pointed at me and said, “It’s what
he
wants.”  She fumbled through her patent-leather purse.  She pulled out a wad of money, reached in her bra, and removed another small roll of bills.  She pushed the crumpled stack to me.  “I reckon you ought to be my manager.  Whatever you got going on for Roxy, I want in.  You can help me that way.  I won’t cause no harm.  I ain’t gone start no trouble either, I just…”

“All right stop, stop.  Wait outside and I’ll be right there,” I said

Joy and Roxy talked while walking out of the room.  I pulled Red to the side. “Please get this girl out of here.”

In a whisper and in slight protest, she asked, “Why me?  You’re the one that let her come in.”  She smirked and left me in the room alone.

I closed my eyes and evaluated where my life had turned, and where I wanted to go.  I thought of the three women talking in the living room.  The conclusion I reached was that everyone needed someone.  All of us in that suite had no one that we considered family.  All we had was each other.

Roxy walked back into the quiet room, kissed me and said, “You are so good to me.  Thank you for having my back.”  She placed $2,753 on the bed and said, “That’s from me and Joy.  She say’s she want’s to stay.”

I got up from the bed, determined to put an end to the catastrophe before it started.  I walked into the living room with the intentions of telling Joy that she was leaving, but Red sat across from her, holding her hand while Joy spoke.  “All right, she’s staying,” announced Red as I looked at her like she was crazy.

Joy picked up on my mood and started her campaign.  “Mr. Hustle, just give me a few minutes to explain.  I'm from Missouri…Kansas City?  I grew up dirt poor and I never liked it, not one bit.  I got a deep hatred for the poor way we lived out in a trailer with nothing, so I ran away from home when I was knee high to a grasshopper.”  She held her palm up to stop me from interrupting and got down on her knees.  While moving the strands of dirty blonde hair out of her face, she started her proposal again, sounding like she was losing her breath.

“At first I was a floater, meaning I would run away only to go back. Then my dang cuzin and her huzzband used to take off my clothes and do things.  Really evil things to my body.  I hated myself, so to find some adventure, I became a splitter and traveled all around for months.  I was only four—teen when I sold my body for money.  That’s when I hit the hard road and came to the Big Apple.  I ain’t got nothing.  I haven’t got anybody.  And you gots to care ‘bout Roxy to take care of her like this.  I just want somebody to care ‘bout me like that, and I’ll give you every red cent I make.  Please be my pimp, Mr. Hustle?”

“Girl, I ain’t no damn pimp.” I almost choked

“I’m sorry, daddy; it’s just that life ain’t no fun no more.  I’m out here in these filthy streets and I’m still poe.  But if you like—had my back, then I could save, get me a big ‘ole bank account, and do somethun with my life.”

I walked away shaking my head.  I went back in the bedroom and lay back down on the bed.  Red walked in.  “Why you walk out on that girl like that?  People been walking out on her, her whole life.”

I thought of Yoda. “Red, this ain’t the department of social services, and I ain’t no pimp.  It’s bad enough Roxy out there, and look what happened?  Now you want me to have to worry about somebody else?  My mama was turning tricks, Red; I had enough of that shit.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Well, if your mama was turning tricks, then you have the common decency to make a change in this girl’s life like you did for Roxy.  You shouldn’t want them out there alone with no man, because with or without you, they gonna turn tricks.  And you and I are going to rob people, so you are not any better than them,” she slammed the door with her departure.

My endurance was shot and I had enough.  I took off my clothes, wanting to soak peacefully in the Jacuzzi, but that didn’t work out.  Roxy walked into the bathroom with Joy behind her.

The big woman said, “Daddy, let me take care of that for you.”

I was in shock.  My eyes popped out of my head.  Joy was almost bigger than I was.  Her massive hands grabbed the bar of soap and washed my entire body.  Roxy laughed at the way Joy pushed me around.

“That whore, Antoinette, one day she’s gonna get hers,” Joy said while scrubbing my back.

“Who’s Antoinette?”  I asked.

“Oh, that’s the chick that tried to help her pimp when we jumped him,” Roxy said, while cleaning her face.  Red was leaning against the doorframe with a smirk on her face.

When it was time for me to dry off, Joy wouldn’t let anyone near me.  She used two towels all over my body, rubbed lotion on me, and tucked me under the covers.  Thereafter, Red went into the shower, and Roxy went to the streets to ‘pick up some things.’

Roxy returned and found Red hugged up on me in the bed.  Joy was at the foot of the bed while we watched
In Living Color
together.  Roxy came into our room and handed Joy a bag with a sweat suit and a pair of gym shoes.  She dropped a small cosmetic kit and a raw steak on the nightstand next to me.  I didn’t know if she had issues about Red and me.  When she came out of the bathroom naked, my question was answered.  Roxy got under the covers and put the steak over her face.  She eased her rear on my crotch, and the two bodies made a sandwich out of me.

$$$

“Johnny, I need to talk to you,” Red said with seriousness the following day.  The suite was empty with the exception of us two.  The other women went out to work.  I was sitting in the living room. “I want to thank you for everything you did for me, but I have a few problems that I can’t believe myself.  I think my time has come.”

She pulled the ottoman closer. “I don’t believe in freeloading or being a liability.  I think I got over that Crack thing.  Lord knows I never want to go backwards like that again.  Getting high took away my confidence, but it also allowed me to pick up a new habit.  After smoking through a hundred thousand-dollar stash, I’m now down to zero.  I have a job that once guaranteed a nest egg, but it’s very dangerous, and the information I have is a year old.  It’s a in-and-out, but I need you to front me fifteen grand."

How in the world could someone blow that much money getting high was beyond belief.  I didn’t know if Red was setting me up for a con, or if she was running game to get high.

“What’s the job?  What’s the new habit, and when do you expect it to go down?”

Red smirked like she was embarrassed to ask for help.  “I can’t tell you the job.  I don’t work like that, because I don’t jinx myself.  It goes down tomorrow night.  Since this is Thanksgiving week, it’s what sparked me to want to do the job. The opportunity only comes around once a year.” 

After a brief pause she smiled. “Ohhh yeah, my new habit is—you.  Boy, you do know how to put on some loving.  I like when you last longer, but that’s another story.  The other thing is this; when we made love, you told me about having a family.  I took a real good look at Roxy, where you are in life and your objective, and I want to know if you will let me in?”

“Let you in what, Red?” I asked confused.

“Your family.  You, Roxy, and me?  Same objective, different people.  Coming together as one.  We could never go wrong.”

My memory banks were going over the seven elements of a con, and Red went through at least six of them with her proposal.  If it was up to me, she could have kept herself right in that suite with me all year long.  But that would be against the hustler’s code.

“Okay, I want in, and you show your appreciation with the cut.  Since I’m paying the nut, let me pay for all the things you need.  If you want to stay with Roxy and me, talk to her when she comes in.  It’s cool with me as long you remember who makes the decisions.”

“Thank you,” she said after kissing me.  “Listen, Johnny, it’s a simple sting. 
But
, if we get caught, we’ll be in C.I.A territory, and sleeping in the Feds.  Thanks for letting me in, but do you want to jeopardize everything just for one job?”

There was no way I was going to allow her to have my money without me being involved. “I’m in and that’s final.”

Red sighed.  When she stood, she clapped her hands. “Okay, have it your way, mister.  As soon as you have the cash we can go.”

“Wait right there.”

I went into the hall closet and reached into my coat pocket.  I walked into the bedroom and returned with a few bundles of cash.  After counting, I was $500 short, and then the light bulb blinked in my head.

I sent for Gloria.  I didn’t like the way she was running her side of the business.  When she walked through the door I went out on a limb.  I told her to report to me every morning, and to have a break down of where the money and hustles were going.  She handed me $1,700.

After putting the cash into the plastic bag that Roxy had brought with her cosmetics, I folded the bundles into my mink coat, and Red took it from there.

$$$

I watched Red grab the phone and place a call.  “Concord Limousine?  I need Jerry to meet Red at the Marriott Marquise.  Ten minutes?  Fine.”