Chapter 12
LUIS SCALICI:
"I couldn't figure a fool-proof way to get old man Dunker without the mob finding out. He was kicking back to them, and every source was protected. I'd have a hellova lot of explaining to do if I knocked him off.
You couldn't trust the cops to keep their mouths shut, not even Otto. If I gave him information he'd have a hand over me. I didn't dare.
So I didn't like Dunker. But I stopped thinking about him. I had plenty to do otherwise. Keeping all the madams and girls happy was a bit job. You asked me about Maggie Smith:
I had a lot of trouble with her. She was an average whore, not bad looking but no beauty. She didn't have much pride and no taste at all; that's why she never got out of the life. She wasn't smart enough.
Maggie was good enough to be top girl in a house full of bums. Mostly because she was still young and would do anything. She'd take it anywhere a John wanted to stick it.
I think she liked the shows too. She liked to show off. Some dolls got a taste for that. It made 'em feel like they were kin to Hollywood, you know what I mean? Sort of in the same business. Sure, it's stupid, but what the hell, whores are stupid. Right?
Maggie had a couple years of school, that's all. I couldn't break her of the habit of using obscene language most of the time, just like a whore down at the docks. (Most of those words edited out). She might have made it to a better house but for that. She knew that some guys like to hear them words, but she didn't have sense enough to know that not all of them did.
She drank too much too. She liked her booze. One good thing about her was that she didn't keep a pimp. I think it was because she liked dames. She got a boot out of eating pussy, so we let her do it. We gave her a dame named Myra, and one named Linda, and Maggie kept them both happy for a long time. She hit the booze about the time she split with Linda, but it didn't get serious for quite a while.
We gave her a house to run, one of the cheapest houses, and she did OK. I thought she would. All you had to do with Maggie was pat her on the ass and tell her what a great little hustler she was and she purred.
Even after she became a rumdum she ran the house pretty good. She lost her looks and couldn't keep a girl and that made her hard to get along with. None of the young broads wanted to chew on that old rum-soaked pussy. So, when she got to hitting the bottle too hard, we tossed her out on her ass.
There ain't anything as worthless as a no good used-up whore. She was through and still in her thirties.
One of the hot little hustlers from the old neighborhood ended up with Maggie too. Katy. It was the same old story with Katy. Her pimp took her for all her bucks and when she was beginning to have trouble getting clients she suddenly couldn't find him one day.
We talked her into going into a house instead of pounding the sidewalks. I figured she had six or seven years in her yet. It was better for a broad like Katy to be in a house anyway. She got beat up too much on the streets. We could protect her better in a house.
Katy sure didn't look like she used to. She had lost most of her looks in the ten or fifteen years she had been a soiled dove. She didn't have a habit but I heard she hit the grass a lot.
She and Miff, her pimp, had a good racket going and made dough at it-we took a cut of everything, of course-till the cops finally got wise. They were working a taxi routine. Miff drove the cab and picked up hot-pants Johns with Katy in the back seat. Then she got 'em all fizzed up and Miff drove to a quiet spot and they rolled the mark.
Sometimes it was a lot faster than working the bed. Katy would do any goddam thing for a buck. Funny thing too, she wound up with noth-in'.
Nothin'."
KATY FEASTER:
"Like I said, I ran away from home. Not too far though, because I didn't have no fare. I went over to the Pickering, where I knew I could find a room. All I had to do for it was spread. That was easy.
I started making dough. I got a buck a throw, sometimes two bucks. Overnight I got ten and it all went into the mattress. I was saving it. I had plans. Big plans. All I had to do was get some dough together and then I could go to all them places I seen in the magazines. And if I run out; of dough someplace, well open the old knees and more dough comes rolling in.
But it took a lot of screwin' to make it. Charlie, the shit at the Pickering, took half, and the mob came in for a slice. I was working for hardly nothing.
My old man heard I was putting out, so I had to scram. I went to three or four of them little hotels along the westside, but everywhere I went it was shell out, baby. The first year I was hooking I found out that a whore pays everybody and hardly anybody pays her.
Then I met Miff and he changed things. For a while. He showed me how to make more dough, and he got me Johns so I didn't have to waste time going out looking. We got on great for a few years.
Naturally they was set-backs. I got the clap now and then, but Miff took me to a doc and cured it every time. I had some abortions, but all the girls had them.
The best thing Miff ever did for me was to keep me off H. He didn't want no part of it and wouldn't let me try it even when I got loaded and wanted to. I knew better, but I thought it wouldn't get me. Sometimes I went on parties that lasted days. The Johns would take us, me and another broad, or two, up to a house somewhere and we'd party till we all ran out of gas. Or until they ran out.
I made good at them parties. I liked them. Hell, we got fed and there was booze coming out of our ears. On most of the parties I could depend on Miff taking care of me. But one time we got crossed up. I don't know how it happened yet, but I went with these guys and he didn't know where.
The party lasted four or five days, and it got rough at the end. I went with a dame named Audrey who was a dumb little redhead with a face like Little Red Riding Hood. How she ever got to be a hustler with a face like that I'll never know.
Anyhow, these two guys picked me up at the hotel and I left a note for Miff which he never got. They took us to a house across the river and locked all the doors and windows. Both these guys were young, one was dark and one was almost blonde and not bad. You know, for Johns, they were OK. Maybe thirty and not too puffy.
We all had a drink and they undressed me and Audrey right off the bat and screwed both of us. Right now, zingo. Then swapped. Audrey giggled the whole time.
Then I found out the phone didn't work.
They hide our clothes too, so me and her ran around naked the whole time. They had a lot of food in the kitchen, cans and stuff. But about all we did was drink. They'd drink and grab us, bang, bang, bang, and have another drink. They were having a great old time. The blonde guy, Bill, said he was crazy about me. He actually got a little sore when the other guy boffed me.
"Hey, this one's mine," he would say.
The first night they had a little fight over it. Not much, just a couple words, but I could see Bill meant it. He had been bending the elbow real good.
When we went into the can together, I told Audrey we oughta wear 'em both out so's we could get some sleep. She said OK, so we went out and started blowing them. Audrey was a good little whore. She had this dumb little-girl face, but she could suck a cock like a machine. We blew both of 'em silly. They couldn't get 'em up.
But they bounced back the next day.
For a while there wasn't any talk about me being Bill's girl. They chased us around the house, a big joint, and had a lot of fun pronging us whenever they caught us. They were a couple of pretty good joes and a lot of laughs.
Then they started drinking and in the middle of the afternoon the first fight started. The dark guy, Joe, was on top of me and working it in like tomorrow is the end of the world. Bill comes staggering in with Audrey under his arm. When he sees Joe nailing me he gets sore as hell.
"Get the hell offen her!" he yelled.
Joe looks around surprised, then Bill jumped on him and they start trading punches. Holy Christ! Me and little Audrey had a hell of a tough time getting them apart. Then Bill ran me into the next bedroom and gave me hell.
"I don't want you screwin' nobody but me," he yelled, and it didn't help to tell him I am a whore.
But he was drunk then.
The next day he forgot about it for a while. It seemed to come over him once in a while that I was his. "He thinks you're somebody else," Joe said.
I think he must have been right.
But both of them got pretty drunk, and Audrey too. Ordinary stuff wasn't good enough for them. They had to do everything they could trunk of. Like watching Audrey take a crap on a newspaper in the middle of the floor. She giggled like a fool the whole time. They wanted me to do it too, and Joe laid down and I did it on his belly. I guess I was drunk too.
Me and Joe went into the bathroom and stumbled into the shower to wash off-and while we're doing that we hear a scream. When we staggered into the living room, Bill has got Audrey's head in both hands, holding her tight so she can't move, and is pissing in her mouth.
That goddam Bill was a crazy man. He made her gulp it down. Joe knocked him down, but it didn't hurt him any. I took Audrey into the bathroom, but she is giggling again. I don't think she knew what happened.
"He hurt my ears," she said.
Of course the next day the joint is beginning to smell. But they are drunk and don't notice. What they want to do now is ram stuff in her and me. They get a hell of a big charge out of diddling us with handles and whatever is handy. Audrey is glassy-eyed and she thinks it is fun. It made me sober up because they scared me. Both of them held me down and masturbated me with a ketchup bottle. I pretended it really got me worked up. So Bill got on me and finished it.
They got crazy, both of them. They were staggering around, pissing on the walls and on us if they could, and doing any damn thing they could think of. I remember because they scared me so much I stayed sober. Audrey didn't. She was too dumb. Both of them worked her over time after time. They couldn't catch me after while. They threw stuff at me. The house was a wreck.
Now and then they'd cave in. I got food out of the kitchen and spent all my time looking for the clothes they hid. Sometimes I dragged Audrey away from them. They were ramming her from both ends and she didn't know what the hell was happening.
I finally found our clothes in a box. They had stuck it in the attic through a trapdoor in a closet. I pulled Audrey away as soon as they laid off her, and dressed her. She was feeling no pain.
We got out a window and went staggering down to a road and got a ride. That was some damn party. It took me a week to get over it. Jeez, what some guys want to do-I dunno what makes them do it.
While I had Miff, he wouldn't let guys beat me. Plenty of them wanted to. I remember Veda went for that stuff. Veda Scalici. She got the habit, according to Miff. But she liked guys to strap her and beat the fanny off her. That's a tough way to make a buck. Sure, I know I fell down a cesspool, but you don't have to eat shit.
I met Audrey a couple times later. "Hey, we had a lot of fun, huh?" she said. She forgot all about them sad bastards, and what they done to her.
Miff told me Audrey got herself a pimp who taught her to keep her mouth shut-so she wouldn't say dumb things. About the time I went to work for Maggie, Audrey got married to this big shot auto dealer. Now she's wearing mink. Man, don't that turn your stomach?
After Miff ran out on me, I kind of gave up. I couldn't save anything. Boodles talked me into going over with Maggie. I knew her, seen her around. She was a flab-ass hooker, young but puffy around the eyes with alky. How come hookers always lose?
Maggie had a real bum trade. Jesus, all the two buck sports in town. I had got twenty or thirty bucks a throw, and now I was down to peanuts.
"You're lucky," Maggie says to me. "Stand up an' stick your tits out, dearie, I got a classy John for you-"
To her a classy John was a guy with more than two clams to rub together. If it hadn't been for the son-of-a-bitch Miff, I could have got somewhere. Now my looks are shot. I got to powder up good in a poor light and all I do is blow. The older you get the more you got to blow 'em.
And Maggie put on shows all the time. I don't mind fucking in public, but Maggie is a lapper and I never went that route. She is a gash hound.
Some of her shows got wild. They smoked a lot of grass, so did I, and I took on a whole roomful of guys more'n once. You talk about gang-fucks, man, we had 'em. Fifteen or twenty guys taking turns on two of us, and blowing 'em too. While you're high it don't seem like much. The next day, brother!
Sometimes I think back to when I was yelling at Sylvia, my stepmother. Maybe I had it better than I figured. The primrose path has got thorns. But you can't tell that to no kid.
There was a young kid, seventeen or eighteen, trying to boost Maggie for a job. I went in and we laid it on her. You know-get the hell back home and forget it. But it didn't do no good, I know it. She thinks she's got it by the tail and all she's got to do is swing. Brother, swinging is the hardest work there is.
And the poorest pay."