Ed Lacy: Shoot It Again

Minutes later she came down the hallway, actually looking fresh and bright. Locking the door, she bent over to kick off her high-heels. I watched the curve of solid hips under the dress. She said, “Now on, it's you and me, Tony.”

“Seems that way.”

“Tomorrow I'll find us a better pad.” She began to undress. “Honey, well make it just fine. I'll hustle us some money, and you have the bag of dreams. Plus, I go for you. Too bad you had to cut off all that swell, curly hair.”

She stood before me, naked and sweaty, symbolic of the farce and cruelty of sex the world over. The male always has to prove himself to the female, and I knew she was waiting—for me to prove Gus had been crazy calling me a swish. But the thought that I wasn't dependent upon her, her habit made her need me, in a sense forced her to prove herself to me... sent desire pounding through my body—my own type of cruel junk.

Throwing her on the bed, I tore off my clothes. Now that I was a murderer, there was little point in worrying about getting sick.

CHAPTER 10

For the next five days Lucille and I settled into a convenient, and not entirely uncomfortable routine. We moved the following morning to another sleazy hotel in Brooklyn, still perfumed with sharp anti-bug odors, but the room was large and light, with a one-plate burner for cooking, and after the rock-and-roll racket of living over the record shop —seemed restfully quiet. Lucille made an arrangement with the lump-faced desk man, who was also the porter, and probably the owner, to turn a “few tricks” per day without having to walk the streets or solicit. As she happily explained, “Tony, all I have to do is knock off two guys a day—one for us and one for him. He'll send the tricks up, keep it quiet. It couldn't be better.”

But the desk man complained to me.; 'What's the matter with your broad? She's built to take it, and I can send her a dozen hot pants a day without attracting too much noise. No sense in her sitting on all that money.”

“She was in an accident, lost a lot of blood, has to rest up,” I told him, resisting the temptation to break his fat jaw.

Lucille seemed positively content. With ease and in a comparative few minutes she earned enough for our food, and a bottle, and of course I had 'stuff' to last her lifetime. Actually, she rarely left our room. Early in the morning I'd go out—never more than a block from the hotel—buy the papers, food, a bottle, and whatever paperback she wanted to read. We'd spend the rest of the day in the room, sleeping a lot, eating, drinking a good deal. At night, or whenever Lucille was with “clients,” I went up on the roof, to shadow-box and exercise —for some unknown reason.

I also worked-out often with Lucille. Being an untidy creature (her bra and panties were in worn shreds) she had this fetish about always being in the nude, ready with her corny, “As the wise man said, have fun: what else is there in life?” It was mostly clinical interest on my part, trying to decide if I really was arousing her, or if she was merely faking her passion. It's so damn much easier for the woman to fake it.

Although she still called me Tony, Lucille knew I was the artist the police were seeking and while she never mentioned it, we had some off-the-wall talks about art. I bought a cheap pad and a soft pencil, made dozens of sketches of every curve of her body, each feature in the wide face. She was a good model, rarely moving, but never very excited about the sketches. Of course I destroyed them the second they were finished. On Sunday, I made a collage with the colored comic pages and her nail polish—cutting out various shapes of colored paper, pasting them on a sheet of brown wrapping paper. I was trying to copy Nolde's Yellow and Red Sunflowers. The collage was a new form for me, a chance to use colors, and it all turned out pretty fair. When I showed it to Lucille she said. “The users call Sunday... death day: hard to get a fix. Tony, you ever exhibit in Washington Square? I went down last September to look at the pictures.”

“No real artist shows there.”

“I thought the pictures were good.”

I suddenly laughed, wondering why I was putting on an act now. “Sure, there's many damn fine artists showing there, along with the week-end dabblers. Tell you the truth, I never thought I was good enough to sell there, so I joined the sneerers.”

“You ever read Lust For Life? I got that as a free bonus when I joined the book club. That's about an artist and... You listening, Tony?”

Sometimes, half drunk, lazing around in bed with Lucille, I had a feeling of retirement: this effortless life would last forever. But whether or not I wanted it to continue, I was well aware of a number of definite reasons why our days were numbered.

Mr. Ping and Shorty certainly were still on their deadly hunt for the three million bucks of 'boy' I was carrying around. For this reason I was glad Lucille never left the hotel: in the efficient business set-up of organized crime it would only be a simple matter of checking minor employees to locate a free-lance prostitute.

Nor was I forgetting the police. Although there wasn't anything in the papers about Gus being found, and even my name and the Al Foster killing had drifted toward the back pages and then vanished... any day now the putrid odor which was Gus might escape the camphor bag tomb. Or in a few weeks the janitor would break in to evict Lucille. Once Gus's remains were found, a police dragnet would bag Lucille in short order.

Plus there was always the chance the police had my description by now, might collar me when I left the hotel for my brief shopping walks.

But there was a more important reason why it couldn't last— I didn't want it to! Being a pimp wasn't my idea of any last stop. Oh, I held no illusions about myself, knew the art world would never miss me, but before I'd fed my ego a number of excuses—half believed them. I was merely 'borrowing' money from women for the sake of my 'art.' Or, seducing a few dollars from a babe was cushioned by the rational that she needed the bed work, I was but giving her therapy. Or, it could be as simple as thinking she could well afford to part with a few hundred.

But now, minus any possible self-delusion, I was a pimp. For Lucille it was a job. Once she told me, “Don't act so damn fussy... Suppose you worked at cleaning cesspools, or collecting garbage—when you finished for the day, the dirty work angle would be forgotten. Think of it like that, Tony.”

The sordid aspect was far too real for me to kid myself. Once, waiting out in the hallway I heard Lucille scream: her 'client' had the perverted idea one of her nipples was a cigarette, was trying to light it. I had to bust in, throw the bed bug out.

I still had hopes of making enough money to return to painting on some clean beach—but faced this contradiction: it wasn't safe for Lucille to leave the hotel, yet she was my only possible contact with any dope ring. The one time she left the place, at my urging to see if she could recognize local users—make a contact... Lucille returned with a package of wheat germ and other crap she'd purchased in a health store. When I accused her of not trying, certain if she had needed a fix, she would have made a connection—somehow—Lucille answered it was impossible without returning to her old “turf,” the hangouts where she knew the pushers, and was known.

While this made sense, I also felt she was stalling —she was stealing from my bag: only a few ounces of the stuff but enough to make 'caps' and 'decks' to last her a long time. Except for the fear of Gus' corpse being found, Lucille had a fine thing going, didn't see any reason to risk ruining it by leaving the hotel.