Trick Baby Read Online Free PDF

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    Blue and Dot were side to side as they went down the aisle toward the door. I followed them. I looked back. The waitress and bartender were radiant with relief to see us go.
    I stepped out to the street. Electric needles pricked inside my stiffened legs. A jolting blast of wind teared my eyes. Overhead, a Jackson Park el punched screeching rivets of sound into my temples as it grated to a stop. The icy sidewalk was a black mirror reflecting the morose starless sky. A pang of guilty pity shot through me for old man Frascati.
    We walked toward the mailbox at Forty-seventh and Calumet. A rotten meaty stench poisoned the fresh, wintry air. My nostrils quivered in panic as a pair of decaying junkies ghosted past me like animated dead.
    I couldn’t help smiling as Blue and Dot in front of me tiptoed across the ice clutching the worthless paper oblong between them. They looked like grotesque children playing a strange game. I looked at my watch. It was a minute to nine P.M . We had been under Dot’s pressure for three hours. How our lives had changed in that brief span of hours.
    Blue and Dot stood at the mailbox. Their heads were rowed down toward the envelope. They were spotlighted for an instant by theheadlights of a turning car. They were like corrupt worshippers penitent before an altar. Then together they pushed the envelope through the door.
    Blue grinned at me as Dot walked away toward South Parkway. He had a funny, mincing, forward stumble slide. It was like each step was a contrived mistake. It was a relief all right to blow him off. But what about Nino?

4
FLIGHT TO JEWTOWN
    W e walked back to my Fleetwood parked in front of the bar. We got in. Blue’s Cadillac was in for transmission adjustment. I gave Blue his prop two grand back. We sat there silently as I warmed up the engine. I pulled away and turned right on Calumet. We were in the heart of the area known as Dopeville, U.S.A.
    Bryson and Sims, probably the most feared and efficient narcotics detectives in Chicago, were frisking a suspect in front of the poolroom on Calumet.
    I saw Midge, Blue’s daughter, in one of the doorways talking to Mose, a dope peddler. She waved. I nodded. She looked a hundred. The sad sight of her tore at my sides. I was glad Blue hadn’t seen her.
    I continued South on Calumet toward Garfield Boulevard. Junkie whores on both sides of Calumet clung to the fetid doorways and rotted stoops like painted lice to a filthy crotch. I was certain our destination had to be Felix the Fixer.
    Blue gave me a puzzled look. “Son, if you’re headed for the Fixer’s, forget it for now. A fin will get a C-note that we’re blazing hot already. Since noon Nino has had the chance to cinch make us. After all, our mark had to bleat our descriptions to Profacci when he found out the rocks were phony. Nino might even remember us from the flat joint days.
    â€œSearch your mind. There isn’t another con team like us in Chicago. How easy could it be for Nino to pressure our names from his spies all over the Southside. They get paid, it’s true, for watching the policy game operators. But what the hell, it wouldn’t make them bawl in sorrow to pick up an extra two bills for fingering us.
    â€œFace the bitter truth, son. I’m the only big, black grifter with white hair teamed with a six-four blond white boot who is a dead ringer for Errol Flynn.
    â€œI knew Dot really had nothing to sell us. That’s why I risked laying the flue for him. Son, we have to get off the Southside fast, and off the street, period! Do you have any ideas?”
    I turned right at Forty-eighth Street. Whirly bits of confused thought stormed my mind. I had planned out of some dangerous situations before. But now my slick, instant machine was crippled. I turned down Michigan Avenue, heading north to the Loop.
    Finally I said, “How about Gary, Indiana? Nobody knows us there. We could get a furnished room in an upright