Flood No. 13: The Mark

 Eldorado Lounge, Baltimore Street, 1994

 

H

e was getting somewhat long in the tooth, but still liked to impress the young ladies, and more than that liked their tender company.  The girls at the Old Eldorado Lounge on Baltimore Streetn, before it moved out to Lombard Street in Highlandtown, had the finest little dancers in town, all of them part black, part Asian and part something special—like they was built in a factory that had his particular taste in mind.  They were pale like white women, but round like black women and had those soft features halfway between the two.  He just always thought a white woman looked like a wicked witch in the face.  So this Asian-Negro mixing seemed to be the one case were miscegenation made some kind of sense, in breeding strippers.  He supposed it was some hard-working GIs that had done it overseas…

As he walked past Tito, the heavyweight boxer who did not frisk him—he now being an elder statesman of sorts—he looked over the seated thugs in their athletic wear and gold chains, past Jeremy the barkeep in his tuxedo and into the mirror and saw… well it could have been worse: Rosie Greer dressed up like Richard Roundtree for a TV movie about Shaft trying to lose weight while he solves crimes…

While he didn’t look like a creature any of these fine girls would want as a boyfriend—and he didn’t pay for no pussy, no-siree—he did at least look like a dude that chumps would not trifle with.  He was feeling his age at 51, just maintaining his properties and working on the night crew for that smart old Hebrew, having left Mister Baines about a decade ago on good terms in need of some union insurance benefits.

He sure hoped that all the violent challenges of the past were behind him.  He just wanted some work, some money, some loving and a warm home… and he had all of it—just wanted to keep what he had earned.  But he knew in his heart, that that’s when The Rotten Snooping World could smell you, when its hunger to bring a man down started gurgling in the belly of misfortune…

The night was grand, the girls crowding each other out for a spot on his lap on this Thursday night.  But the night had to end and it came time for him to leave, having drunk a little too much.  Tito helped him get his long leather coat back on and fixed on his head that lucky leather slick hat won in battle some three decades gone, set it on his old head just right.  As he did so, the lightest skinned girl, with the biggest ass—how could you go wrong there—pranced up to him and placed a napkin with her phone number and an impression of her lips in purple lipstick, folded neatly in the chest pocket of his silk button shirt.

Tito grinned, “Big Izz hasn’t lost it.  You be careful out there, big brother.  There’s been some bad shit goin’ down.”

“You got it, Tank,” he said to the impressive heavyweight boxer, and headed on out the door with a wave to Jeremy.

He made a left down the sidewalk past the various knots of young hoppers, everyone there seemingly half his age or less.

He just had to make the left, turn up the way and, there they were, two tall strong bucks of about thirty years, both his height and no doubt quicker by a lighting strike.  The lighter-skinned one stepped out towards the curb as the darker one stayed center and said, “Oh, its’ Mista knot roll a cash.”

He stopped, realizing that these guys were completely sober and put up his hands and said, “Look, fellas, I don’t want no trouble.”

The dark-skinned one sneered, “A course yo ole ass don’ wan no—”

People were disappearing and Tito was—oh thank God!

“Kooorack!” sounded the fist of the bouncer, whose head slid up behind and past him—and the big eyes of the dark-skinned bruiser rolled back in their coconut husk head and then that head bounced off of the concrete and split all open into a red mess in the cold February night.

The light-skinned mugger was now darting across the street, beating feet, with fearful looks over his shoulder at Tito, who lumbered after him in a fashion that authoritatively assured the onlookers that Tito never had an athletic option other than boxing.

And, as Israel stood in just-been-saved amazement at Tito lumbering after the fleet-footed fiend, he saw a plan in action, saw that the bouncers on the street were working together as the skeevy white doorman from the Club Pussy Cat—who wore light slacks and Hawaiian shirts even in winter time and the wicked little Porto Rican from the Titty bar where the skinny white bitches with plastic tits danced, converged on his would-be mugger.

“Oooo!” screamed a bitch-made man next to him.

“Awe, fuck!” shouted the more masculine fellow to his left, “this is like a martial arts movie where only the bad guys know kung fu and the director decided to make it into a zombie flick!”

“Oh, Yo is fucked!” exclaimed another one of the upstanding onlookers.

Israel was a little drunk and did not understand half the shit that the two evil little bouncers did to the light-skinned criminal in the black leather jacket before Tito got to him—but that shit he understood—Koooo-rack!  And another body decorated Baltimore Street for the cops to come clean up.

Israel looked down at a soft hand that had appeared on his shoulder and saw it was the girl who had put her number in his pocket.  Somehow she had gotten a hold of his keys—“Oh, whatever ole fool gave you da keys to ma conversion van, Baby?”  he heard an old man drawl as she pulled him by the hand around the corner, past the stretched out mugger with blood pooling around his head, as two slicksters in bright athletic attire and gold chains around their neck stood over him and the smart one wondered, “Is dis nigga dead?” and the genius of the two answered, “Oh, he jus’ knocked da fuck out!”  

And her little hands were as soft as all get out.