Airtight Willie & Me Read Online Free PDF

know, dazzled her witless. At least I’d have to fake a bankroll. I wrapped Phil’s welfare handout of “C” notes around a wad of play money.
    I was forced to take my shot at the Superfox’s soft underbelly. I’d have to be like a mirror reflecting her secret needs and dreams. She’d have to see me as the means to these gratifications. It was a long shot and dangerous all right since Ross, the gorilla, was her boss.
    The dynamite package had seated herself beside the redhead Phil had fingered. I sipped rum and spied the bar through my booth’s wall mirror.
    Phil stood near Bubbles at the door. He hawk-eyed me and Miss Superfox with a salty look on his girlish face. The perspiring band blazed out raunchy toe-tappers. The dancers whirled and boogied as if energized by demons.
    The redhead, Lucille Ball’s look-alike, rocked on her stool to the music. The tipsy flat-backer turned her back to the bar. She zeroed in on me with hooded blue eyes. Her dress was hiked nearly to her moon, and aimed at me.
    The Superfox got off her stool and wafted Chanel No. 5 up my nose on her way to the john. I saw Phil peer out the front Venetian blinds. He spun and frantically winked his eye. A moment later, a brute-faced colossus, togged to the teeth in a shocking pink ensemble, stopped his six eight or nine feet of bulgy muscles past the top of the front door.
    Despair descended. It had to be Ross, and my stealing dream was lost. He strode the length of the joint with his Neanderthal skull swiveling as he shook down the joint. He was two booths from me when he stopped. He leaned into a booth. Moments before, a pint-sized loser in a tattered vine had slid into that booth beside abrunette silk girl. Phil had introduced her to me as one of the girls employed at Aunt Lula’s cathouse.
    The loser copped a heel in terror. The alabaster beauty fled the joint like Ross had goosed her with an ice pick. Ross went out behind her.
    The front door was still closing when Superfox came past me from the crapper. I suffered the thought of what a miserable break it was that she didn’t dig him leaving with the white girl.
    I was sitting there regretting that she didn’t have to just pee when a loud-mouthed ho called Miss Bowlegs eased out of a booth ahead. She went to the bar grinning. She whispered into Sue’s ear. She swirled on her stool like she was making a country break for the door. Instead, she frowned and hailed a barmaid like she was settling in for some sho ’nuff tippling. The fire-and-brimstone patron saint of pimps was in my corner all right.
    Black Sue was tossing double shots of scotch down her gullet as fast as the harried barmaid could lug them. She had a lulu lump under her right eye. The sight of it shot a thrill my way. Had the gorilla’s right cross and the wire from Miss Bowlegs put him in the cross to blow the fox to me?
    After a band break, Phil went to the bandstand and rapped with the leader. A barkeep unveiled my birthday cake and hors d’oeuvres on a table set up on a corner of the bandstand.
    Lanky Phil adjusted the mike up to his jib and shouted, “Pal-lies, damper the rapping! My main man, Candy Slim from the Big Windy, is gonna cut his cake and rap a taste.”
    I rose and moved out to applause. As I passed the redhead, she grabbed my arm and slurred, “Candy, as a pair we’d be dandy. Huh?”
    Sue leaned in close, with bright racist eyes, to dig my response to the symbol of black women’s pain and mortal enemy. I nearly swooned with joy to play my opening card.
    I batted the alabaster hand away and cracked icily, “Look, you jive flat-backing zero bitch, stay out of my face! Don’t fuck with me, huh!”
    The redhead, moist-eyed and humiliated, sagged and about-faced to the bar. Sue’s eyes glowed with admiration as I boogied away to the bandstand. The band struck up a raucous “Happy Birthday.” I polished the next card