Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

Pretty Boy by Hal Ellson

Man, it was the most. I was flying high — until I did that crazy thing...

I don’t know what happened. I’m high on a bottle of wine and heading for the Pelican’s territory. I’m going to blast the first I see.

I never got there. I ran into Sadie. I snatched that witch and right off she asks me if I’m high again, like she don’t know.

I’m gone already. Me and her went up on the roof. I want some more, I tell her. Since it’s me she don’t care, she says. But up on the roof she gives me the line. I bang her across the face and she has to give.

Next day I’m at her house. The crowd came and we put on records and danced, then cut out to the show.

That’s where I met Zelma. I make Sadie introduce me, and Zelma says, “So you’re Pretty Boy I heard so much about. You’re mighty slim to raise all that hell gang fighting.”

I smiled and felt proud. Sadie’s mad. I let her go and ask Zelma who she go with.

“Nobody,” she says.

“Who you planning on going with?”

“I got somebody in mind right now,” she says, watching me slyly.

“But it can’t be me,” I say, “cause I just met you.”

“Yes, it’s you, but what about Sadie?”

“Don’t worry about her.”

“If I ask you, would you go with me?”

“You go with me to the show next Sunday and I’ll tell you.”

Next Sunday I hit the show, went upstairs and saw her with one of the other cats. If he was one of the Pelicans he’d be dead in his seat. It was one of my own boys. I sat down in front of her. When that other cat went for a drink, I turned and said, “Dig, girl, what you sitting with him for?”

“He made me, I didn’t want to,” she says.

“Yeah, he can’t make you do nothing. Do you or don’t you want to go with me?”

“Yeah, Pretty Boy.”

“Then get up and let’s sit over there.”

After the stage show, I took her out and she went home. Back in my own neighborhood, one of my boys comes up and says, “Did you know Zelma’s coming down here tonight?” I didn’t but I was waiting for her at the subway that evening. When she came up the steps, I asked what she was doing around.

“Coming to see you,” she says.

“You’re a damned liar, cause you wasn’t. You was coming to see Teddy.”

“I was coming to see you. Don’t you believe me?”

I didn’t, but I tell her, “Let’s go for a walk.”

We went to a little place they call a park. Nothing there but a blade of grass, a rock, a tree, a bench, and one light. “Baby,” I say, “It’s too light here for what I want.”

She gave me a funny look, then said, “There’s a whole field of grass behind us.”

Next day she had on a ring from the Five and Ten. She showed it to the girls, saying me and her is engaged. One of the witches asked me about it and that’s when I went looking for Zelma’s skin. I found her with some of her friends and right off I say, “What’s the idea of telling these dogs I gave you a ring?” Damn, she looked ready to cry, and me, I don’t want her to feel bad so I turn to the others. “Yeah, I gave her the ring. What about it?” I said to them.

One girl laughed. “Pretty Boy, you’re sweet but you’re evil,” she tells me.

That night I bought me some reefers. I got crazy high quick and sent Zelma home for my pistol. Then I picked up the rest of the boys, cause we got a “war” on with the Pelicans. We taxied into foreign territory, fired a few wild shots and flew, cause the cops was hot in the streets.

By that time I’m so high they have to drag me from the taxi. I was real goofed and when Zelma met me, she was half goofed and didn’t care where we went, so we went up on her roof.

“I don’t care what happens,” she said. “I hope you can’t ever quit me. I’m going to buy you a coat.”

“Baby, you love me, steal me some good shirts, I’m partial to blue,” I tell her.

“I’ll steal a box of them for you, all with pearly buttons, as long as you love me.”

“Yeah, baby, you’re the only one I ever did love. If I went to jail, what would you do?”

“I’d wait for you.”

I felt in my pockets for money. “I want some more Pete and reefers,” I tell her. “You get the stuff cause I’m shy of the streets tonight.”

Yeah, she bought the wine and reefers for me and we got high.

Late the next afternoon, I went to the poolroom. “Hey Joe, let me go with a couple of sticks,” I said to the man.

“Ain’t got them with me. I’ll be back in ten minutes,” he says, and I waited.

Good stuff he brought back. “I got fifty more, if you want to push them for me,” he tells me.

“Yeah, what’s the profits, man?” I asked.

“Same as always,” he says. “But dig man, don’t try to cheat me cause I got everything counted. I don’t want to cut you, but I’ll do it if I have to. You got money and sticks for yourself. If the cops bust you, I won’t be there but somebody’ll be there for you.”

“Okay, Joe.”

“Keep a cool head, and don’t talk or you’ll have us all in the slam. See you later, kid.”

A dance was set for the next night. I’m thinking of the Pelicans, if they’ll be there. I hate them punks. Going to get one yet.

I listened to some blues and boogie. Then I took me a bath, dressed, chipped in for a bottle of Five Star and got a little high. We was ready for the dance by that time and somebody called a taxi. When we got to the Hall we swaggered in. Damn, them girls was drunk and dizzy with wine and reefers already.

Pelicans there, too. One of their punks stepped on my shine while I’m dancing. “What you doing?” I say to him.

“Mother-jumper, I’ll step on your throat next. I’ll bang your head and rock your foundations.”

“Yeah, maybe you want a pistol butt for a self-raising eye,” I said, moving my hand inside my jacket.

That ended it. Boys from both sides broke it up, but there was a bad feeling the rest of the evening. Me, I played the field, looking for trouble. We was all looking for trouble. I wandered up to the balcony and made a pass at a man’s wife. The man showed me a knife.

I took a fast walk and found one of my boys and a girl sitting out a slow-drag. They was chewing benzedrine. Me, I don’t chew today to get drunk tomorrow. Benny don’t make you high, it makes you lazy. That’s what I told them.

The girl laughed and I didn’t like that, so I walked. Another like her once tried to grandstand on me. I could hear her voice in my head yet, saying, “You ain’t going to do this, and you ain’t going to do that.” I told her, I don’t want no girl giving me orders. “You jiving turkey, I don’t want no man I can beat,” she said. “I want a man and therefore you ain’t nothing but a flunkie.” That was when I swung and knocked her down the stairs.

The dance was over at two and I’m all reefed up. Got evil thoughts about them Pelicans. One of them is going to die yet.

Me and my boys stood across the street from the Hall with the girls. The Pelicans stood out front. One of their girls threw a can of lye and started the rumble. I’m thinking of my face, so I got under a truck when that lye flew. That fight didn’t last. Somebody yelled cops and we scattered.

Me, I hustled over to Fat-Stuff’s. We all met there and ate fish sandwiches. Coming out, I see a squad car at the curb. Two cops got out and lined us up against the windows. Me and my boys all had blue club hats on.

“What’s all the blue hats for?” one of them cops says, and nobody answered till he picked me out.

“My hat matches my blue wrap and blue suedes,” I tell the flatfoot, and he turned to Big Jim.

“What’s your blue hat for?” he asked.

Big Jim had an answer. Everybody did.

The cop swung back to me. “Where’d you come from?” he asked.

“My girl’s house,” I say. Big Jim tells him the same.

“Next guy tells me that, I’ll beat him till he bleeds from the nose. Next!”

“I was at my girl’s house,” Conky said.

That cop looked disgusted. His eyes moved to Little Jim. “You,” he said, but knew what the answer would be and bashed him. “I’d kill my own mother if she told a lie like that,” the cop said. “Next one that does, I’ll cripple him for life.”

“What are we supposed to have done?” I asked.

“You guys were fighting outside the Hall, that’s what.”

“How do you know it was us?”

“Cause I can smell rats a mile away. Now get the hell out of here!”

He swung on me. A bad cop with a big fist. Yeah, but I set my hat back straight, wiped blood from my lips with my yellow handkerchief. “If it wasn’t for the women, we wouldn’t be in that. I wouldn’t have got that poke,” I said.

“Yeah, they’re all pepperheads. That Rosie is a tough one,” Little Jim said. “Throwing that lye. I want this handsome face yet.”

Conky nodded. “A mad witch, that one. Real mad.”

By three o’clock we was scattered, home. The streets was quiet, but soon as I hit the bed and close my eyes I hear a siren. A squad car running wild. I followed the sound with my eyes closed.

Then dreamed I was smoking a reefer in Zelma’s house, dreamed she had gobs of them, and a bottle of gin. I had another dream. Two of them and nothing more.

Morning I got up and hung around the house, playing records. No pep, nothing inside me till I read the invitation that came in the mail. It was brief. “You’re invited to a party. There’ll be lots of fun.” That meant only one thing, a pot party.

I came with a bottle of wine, even if it was a pot party. Somebody eyed me through the peephole and said, “Show your invitation, brother.”

“Punk, open them portals or I’ll kick them down,” I said and the door opened.

“Why it’s Jesse James himself!” a girl screamed when I came in.

And there was Conky. He looked worried. “Where’s your girl? You ain’t getting mine,” he says.

I shove him aside. “All the women in the world is mine,” I said, looking around.

A dim light in the room, shades down, reefers on the table, music, a slow-drag, the Orioles singing A Kiss and a Rose. Couples sitting, the keyhole jammed, weather-stripping at the door cracks, windows closed; that room stunk to hell.

A girl passed me a bomber and said, “This is a high party, handsome man.”

“Dreamboat, light it for me with your torch,” I say. Smoke sucked deep in my lungs. “Yeah, now let’s dance a little, baby.”

Others began to dance; some were digging the record and kissing.

“Damn, fifty characters’ll be laying around dead in the morning,” I told the girl.

“I’m high already, Pretty Boy.”

“How you know my name? You don’t know me.”

“Everybody knows you.”

“Witch, you is high. If the Law comes, you better go through the window or you’ll be in jail. What’s in the kitchen? I heard a noise.”

“There ain’t no blue light in the kitchen.”

I broke away, went in the kitchen. A game of dice, much money on the floor. I went back to the room with dim blue light. Big Jim walked in.

“Dig that trenchcoat!” somebody said from a dark corner. “That boy’d kill his uncle for a slice of ham.”

And there was Zelma.

I grabbed her wrist. “Where you been?”

“In the little girl’s room. I been waiting for you. I’m high, let’s sit. Ain’t that music crazy?”

“Yeah. A cool party too,” I said, reaching for another stick.

We sat down away from the blue light. “Darling, I’m so high I could marry you right now,” Zelma said. “These reefers are so good.”

“Baby, you’re goofed. You’re talking a hole in my head.”

“I don’t care, I’m loving you. Anything you say goes. Anything you want t you can have.”

“Yeah,” I said, and my mind was in a different world. Kissing Zelma, I remembered my first reefer. Like I’m on another planet. Nobody alive but myself. My mouth dry. A crazy idea like I could tear a man apart with my bare hands. That was the night I ran into the Pelicans and got a pistol butt on the head. I think of that and get mad again. Got to fix that up.

“Kiss me, I love you,” I hear Zelma say and before I know it, it’s two o’clock. Others are cruising in and out. Across the room I see another cat spread a handkerchief and break a capsule. Cocaine. Somebody going to be real goofed. I finished my sixth stick and Zelma’s on me again, drowning me with her lips.

A new cat comes in. She sees him and says, “That boy looks like Ace of the Pelicans.”

Damned if he didn’t. And I remember then. That Ace split my head with the gun butt.

I get up goofed, and walk out by myself. It’s all crazy now. I’m Pretty Boy and I’m the strongest stud in the world. That boy Ace split my head. I’m going to split his heart.

I walk downtown. Buildings look like they’re dancing. The lights are all goofed up. Three guys standing on a corner. One looks like Ace. They all look like him. I walk up and start shooting.

When I wake up a cop is next to my bed and got my arm. “Come on, you punk!”

“What did I do, man?” I say to him.

“We know you shot someone. We’re going to put you down for a long time.”

“Shot who? You got to have some proof.”

“We got it. Now dress and make it damned fast,” the cop said, and they took me downtown in a squad car.

“Just give us the gun and we’ll break it and tell nobody,” they said in the office.

“I don’t know nothing about it,” I told them, and somebody almost knocked my head off. But I wouldn’t talk till Zelma came.

“Pretty Boy, tell them and they’ll stop torturing you,” she begged.

That’s when I broke. I told them I was fooling around and the gun went off accidentally.

“You’re a damned liar. We’ve got enough to hang you,” they told me. Yeah, they took me to the station house and let me sleep it off in the cellar.

At seven somebody kicked me. The wagon was waiting outside. They took me away, put me in a chair, pinned a number on me. Yeah, I got mugged.

Upstairs I had to stand on a platform. “Look up into the lights,” somebody said. They’re blinding. I can barely see. I hear a voice say: “This is Joseph Nagel, alias Pretty Boy.”

I was scared, but I thought, I’m a big-timer now.

After that, they took me in a car back to the alley where I told them I threw the pistol. They didn’t find it. Handcuffs on, they brought me back to my house and people stared. I felt ashamed cause of my mother. No pistol in the house, so they took me back. Next, I met the judge. Everything was crazy. I didn’t hear nothing at all till he says, “Bee Street Jail.”

I was still handcuffed when they put me in the wagon. I hear the others talking. A wife-beater, a pickpocket, a bum. Listening to them men, I felt like a bigshot. Yeah, I shot a man, I told myself.

In the jail a guard stopped by my cell. “I don’t want no hollering and no throwing water out,” he warned, “or I’ll give you the hose.”

I wanted to spit in his face. I didn’t. I turned away. Solid walls on both sides. Bars in back. I got a sick kind of feeling. Then I hear a voice: “Hey, number eight, what are you here for?”

Number eight is me, my cell. I turned to the little opening in the door. “None of your business,” I yelled. Then I hit the mattress but I can’t sleep. The damned stoolies are talking up above.

Next morning at five a guard rapped the bars with his keys. “Get up, you punk! If you don’t, you ain’t going to eat.”

Later he comes back. “So you’re Pretty Boy,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Well, you may be pretty to the girls and baby to your mother, but you’re only another rat to me. Now get that sandsoap and rag and wash them walls down!”

The cell door slammed, footsteps went down the corridor. I looked across at the other cell, at a guy with a face like Christ’s.

“My name’s Isky. What’s yours?” he says.

I tell him and ask him what they got him on.

“I like to make fires and watch the flames.”

Yeah, that guy was gone. He set the fire and told the cops he did it.

Later, I was reading the Thirty-Seventh Psalm when I hear steps in the corridor again. My eyes ran over the words... “For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.” And them footsteps grew louder till the words meant nothing. The guard opened the cell of a prisoner who bought from the commissary man and didn’t pay. I listened. Everybody did till the guard was finished and the cell door slammed shut again. Then somebody said, “He beat a hundred dollars worth of milk and sandwiches out of that poor guy.”

Everyone laughed but the man in number six.

We went for exercise in the yard. Me, I didn’t want none. I looked around the yard, then up at the tower where the guard was watching. “Hey, Bunko,” I said, “I got to write me a letter. You got a pencil?”

Bunko handed me a bitten stub. “Who you going to writer” he asked.

“My best pal,” I told him. Then I wrote the letter and handed it to him.

Bunko read it out loud and passed it back. “You can’t send this stuff out,” he said. “They’re going to read it and beat you blue-black.”

So I tore it to pieces. “Got no stamp anyhow,” I told him. “The hell with it, the hell with everybody. I got a feeling I’m not going home for a long, long time cause I shot a man.”

A whistle sounded and I looked at the grey walls and the guard in the tower. “Wish I had wings,” I said.

“Wish I had a tommy-gun and I’d blast that no-good turkey off his roost.”

“Yeah,” said Bunko, sad-faced. “I only knifed a man. I wonder when I get out?”