Ed Mcbain: Mischief

Jeeb remembered his grandfather telling him they used to use the word “shine” to describe people of color back in the old days, though he didn’t know where the word had come from, maybe it had something to do with black folks’s skin looking shiny, was what his grandpa told him. Anyway, it was an expression in common use back then, shine. Jeeb figured it’d be good to throw that word right back in Whitey’s face—shine, huh?—but attach the word spit to it so it came out spit shine, like a black man snarling and spitting, which is what their music was all about, anyway. The girls thought the new name was terrific. Silver thought it sucked. Silver thought it was cool somebody came up to you, ast you what the name of this crew was, you tole him, “Four-Q.” Silver thought that was real cool, man. Jeeb told him it would put off a record producer, he’d think you were tellin him to go fuck himself. Silver said that was ex actly the attitude they should be tryin’a project here, man, you don’t like what we’re tellin you, then Four-Q, man.

The girls said they were embarrassed to tell they mamas Four-Q. Grass, especially, who was only fourteen back then when they were rapping for nickels and dimes on street corners, she was ashamed to say the name of the band out loud, her mother’d hit her one upside the head if’n she did. Grass was the only virgin Jeeb knew at the time. He respected her opinion because he felt there was something pure about her. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t mind rapping the word fuck but was ashamed of saying Four-Q, he couldn’t understand that at all. He knew in his heart, though, that Spit Shine was a better name than the one they had, and he also knew it wouldn’t pay to get all huffy with Silver, tell him Hey, man, I’m the leader of this crew, so you know what you can do, man, don’t you? That wouldn’t work with Silver, who had more pride than anyone Jeeb knew. So he just took him aside one day and reasoned with him and then told him it’d be great could Silver write a new song for them called “Spit Shine,” spellin it all out for anybody out there wasn’t gettin the message. Silver liked that idea. He wrote the best lyrics of any rapper in the business, wasn’t anything he liked better than writing. He took that name Spit Shine and turned it into a rap that shook thunder from the sky.

Shine what you call me,

Shine what I am,

Spit in your eye, man,

Shine that I am…

Was Spit Shine the song that flew off their first album and right onto the singles chart. Was Spit Shine the song that made a household name of Spit Shine the crew . Silver never let Jeeb forget it was him who’d written that song. Silver never let anybody forget anything . Only thing he was willing to forget was the name he was born with, Sylvester. Sylvester Cummings. Hated that name like poison, said it made him sound like some pansy served dinner and helped you get dressed. The girls told him Sylvester Stallone wasn’t no pansy, and Silver said Stallone didn’t call himself Sylvester , you might’ve noticed, he called himself Sly . So whyn’t you call your self Sly, Sophie asked him, and he said, Whyn’t you call your self Slit , which was a reference to the fact that Sophie had been a hooker before she’d joined the crew.

That was four years ago.

Sophie was now twenty-two years old, and Grass (whose real name was Grace) was now eighteen and no longer a virgin thanks to Jeeb, whose real name was James Edward Beeson, which he’d shortened to Jeeb, and Spit Shine was now famous enough to do a free concert in Grover Park, sponsored by a chain of citywide banks that now called itself FirstBank although its original name was First National City Bank.

Sophie was still Sophie.

“I agree with Jeeb,” she said. “The bank gets a free ride and tons of publicity but so far the gig’s almost here and there’s still nothing but a trickle about us performing.”

“Other crews gettin all the splash,” Silver said.

He was twenty-three years old, the senior member in the crew, lanky and handsome, with eyes as dark as river mud, a nose like a Roman centurion’s, and dreadlocks that could scare away a witch. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with the name of the crew in neon yellow across the front of it,SPIT SHINE .

Actually, he didn’t have his mind completely on what they were talking about here. He’d recently come across an album of calypso songs written by a singer who’d been murdered some years back, and one of the songs had stuck in his mind as a good example of early rap, though it was set to a calypso beat. He’d rapped the song for Sophie, skipped the tune entirely, just rapped out Chadderton’s lyrics—that was the singer’s name, George Chadderton, he used to bill himself as King George. The songs had been discovered in a notebook he’d kept before he got killed and a singer who did a pretty good Belafonte imitation had recorded them for an obscure label in L.A.

Sophie hadn’t much liked the song, which was titled “Sister Woman,” but that was because the song was about hookers and she thought Silver was tryin’a dis her about the days when she’d earned her money walking the streets. As she argued back and forth with Jeeb now about ways they could get more publicity out of their forthcoming concert, Silver went over the Chadderton lyrics in his mind one more time:

Sister woman, black woman, sister woman mine,

Why she wearin them clothes showin half her behine?

Why she walking the street, why she working the line?

Do the white man dollar make her feel that fine?

Ain’t she got no brains, ain’t she got no pride,

Letting white man dollar turn her cheap inside?

Takin white man dollar, lettinheinside?

Sister woman, black woman, why she do this way?

On her back, on her knees, for the white man pay?

She a slave, sister woman, she a slave this way,

On her knees, on her back, for the white man pay.

On her knees, sister woman, is the time to pray,

Never mind what the white manhegot to say,

Let thewhitegirl do what the white man say.

Sister woman, black woman, on her knees give head

To a man like he like to see her dead

Can’t she see, don’t she see, can’t she read in his head?

She a slave to his will, and the man want her dead.

She a nigger for sure, she a slave still in chains,

And the white man’ll whip her ankeepher in chains.

Sister woman, black woman, won’t she hear my song?

What she doin this way surely got to be wrong.

Lift her head, raise her eyes, sing the words out strong,

Sister woman, black woman…

“What do you think, Sil?”

Jeeb’s voice, cutting through the lyrics that were sliggeding through Silver’s head. Good hip-hop, for sure. The album sleeve had credited copyright to Chloe Productions, Inc. He wondered who the hell that was.

“Silver? You with us.”

“I say we call FirstBank an’ tell ’em we’re outta this thing entirely ’less they take a big ad headlinin us.”

Grass, who had been silent until now, very softly said, “That’s the onliest way, Silver, the man dissin us like that.”

And smiled at him.

Jeeb all at once wondered if something was going on between these two.