Let The Great World Spin: A Novel - By Colum McCann Page 0,98

mine.

They hated the idea of a nigger making money, especially if it’s off a whitey, and it was nearly all whiteys on Forty-ninth Street. That was Chalktown.

Jigsaw had more scratch than God. He bought me a foxtail chain and a string of jade beads. He paid up, cash bonds. He even had a one-up on a Cadillac. He had a Rolls-Royce. Silver. That’s no lie. It was old but it rolled. It had a wooden steering wheel. Sometimes we rode up and down Park Avenue. That’s when being in the life was good. We rolled down the windows outside the Colony Club. We said, “Hi, ladies, anyone want a date?” They were terrified. We drove off, hollering, “Come on, let’s go get ourselves some cucumber sandwiches.”

We drove down to Times Square, howling. “Cut the crusts off ’em, baby!”

—

I got the most beautiful things from Jigsaw. He had an apartment on First and Fifty-eighth. Everything was boosted, even the carpets. Vases all over the place. And mirrors with golden edges. The tricks, they liked coming there. They walked right in and said, Wow. It was like they thought I was a businesswoman.

All the time they was looking for the bed. The thing is, the bed came down out of the wall. It was on electronic control.

That place was flash.

—

The guys who paid a hundred dollars, we called them Champagnes. Susie would say: “Here comes my Champagne,” when a fancy car pulled up on the street.

One night I had one of them football guys from the New York Giants, a linebacker with a neck so big they called him Sequoia. He had a wallet too, like none I ever seen, fat with C-notes. I thought, Here comes ten Champagnes all at once. Here it comes, bubbly, the mighty G.

Turned out he just wanted a freebie, so I got down on the ground, bent down, looked between my legs, said, “HIKE!” and threw him a room-service menu.

Sometimes I just crack myself up.

—

I was calling myself Miss Bliss then, ’cause I was very happy. The men were just bodies moving on me. Bits of color. They didn’t matter none. Sometimes I just felt like a needle in a jukebox. I just fell on that groove and rode in awhile. Then I’d pick the dust off and drop again.

—

The thing I noticed about the homicide cops is that they wore real nice suits. And their shoes were always polished. One of them, he had a three-legged shoeshine box right under his desk. Rags and black polish and all. He was cute. He wasn’t looking for a freebie. He only wanted to know who iced Jigsaw. I knew, but I wasn’t telling. When someone buys it, you keep your mouth shut. That’s the law on the street, zip zip goes your mouth, zip zip not saying a word, zip zip zip zip zip.

—

Jigsaw walked into three neat bullets. I saw him lying there, on the wet ground. He had one in the center of his forehead, where it blew his brains open. And when the paramedics opened up his shirt it was like he had two extra red eyes in his chest.

There was blood spatter on the ground and on the lamp post and on the mailbox too. This guy from the pizza shop came out to clean the passenger-side mirror of his van. He was scrubbing it with his apron, shaking his head and muttering under his breath, like someone had just burned his calzones. As if Jigsaw meant to leave his brains on the guy’s mirror! Like he did it deliberate!

He went back into the shop and the next time we went in the shop for a slice, he was like: “Hey, no hookers in here, get outta here, get your sellin’ asses O-U-T, especially you, you N-I-G-G-E-R.” We said, “Oh, he can spell,” but I swear to God, I wanted to twist his Guinea balls up in his throat and squeeze them into one and call it his Adam’s apple.

Susie said she hated racists, especially Guinea racists. We laughed our heads off and marched right on down to Second Avenue and got us a slice at Ray’s Famous. It was so delicious we didn’t even have to dab the oil off. After that we never went back to the place on Lex.

We weren’t gonna give business to no racist pig.

—

Jigsaw had all that scratch, but he was buried in Potter’s Field. I seen too many funerals. I guess I’m no different than nobody