Pimp

Nine

Max had lived in some shitholes in his time, try eking out a living in a bumfuck cell in Attica. So now, now it was live large.

PIMP was bigger than Max had ever imagined. His “It takes care of you” slogan was catching on, dealers all over the city using it to lure in customers. Max hired the fucks who’d worked for the scumbags he took out in Brooklyn and ran his business like an army. The business blew up faster than fucking Shake Shack. He was the general — you better fookin’ believe it — and he had his colonels, lieutenants, etcetera below him, all the way down to the dealers on the streets. After his bloody rampage in Brooklyn, Max was a freakin’ urban legend. They were calling him “The Red Devil.” The Max had a nickname! Another nickname. Fuck, it was like he was the villain in some comic book, but better, because there was no superhero to catch him.

Max was riding high, but he’d had enough lows in his life to know how things could go from sixty to zero in a hurry. He was cocky, fuck yeah, but he was also as paranoid as that kid in charge of North Korea. Nobody except his most trusted high-ups got any face time with him, and even they didn’t know his true identity.

With PIMP money flooding in, he’d bought a loft-style apartment — get this — across the street from the Manhattan North precinct, where that prick Miscali worked. While in jail, Max had read all the great true crime books and one of his faves was Where the Money Was by Willie Sutton. When Willie was numero uno on the Mas Wanted list, he holed up next door to a police station in Brooklyn. The rush he must’ve felt, saying fuck you to the cops every time they walked right by him! You had to have some cojones to literally bring it to the enemy and Max and Willie were true compadres.

At Attica, Max had made many great contacts, including a queen who once decorated for Bernard Madoff. Out now, and Max had employed him to decorate. The guy had a lisp — not because he was a gay guy trying to blend in, an actual lisp — and a whole shitload of gratitude. He said to Max, “Darling, I am tho indebted.”

Max, thinking “put-on” and tiring of it, had said, “Yeah, whatever, now dazzle me with excess. Exceth. Whatever.”

And dazzle he did.

The loft was ablaze with white light, white leather furnishings, white floors and a huge bay window. That looked down at the precinct. Sometimes for kicks — in between visits from hookers — Max would use high-power binoculars to watch Detective Miscali and his partner going in and out of the precinct. What a total Fuck You, but it wasn’t enough. Sometimes Max, with dark sunglasses on, would take a stroll right past the precinct. A couple times, he walked past Miscali himself, and the dumb prick had no clue.

One evening, Max invited some of his new buyers over to his place for a shindig. One of the crew, an intense black guy with Jay-Z moves said, “The fuck is with all the white, yo?”

Max, like a Tony Soprano, read into this, thought the guy might be implying he wanted to make a move.

Max smiled, showing him some more of the white, and went, “New beginnings, a virginal setting.”

The guy said, “Man, you a crazy mofo living cross five-oh.”

Max didn’t like the crazy jab, showed disrespect, so he had a couple of his lieutenants slit the guy’s throat and dump him in landfill.

Later that evening, Max was chilling with some PIMP and a ho when Slav, one of his colonels, came and said, “Visitor to see you. A woman.”

“You know, no visitors get face time with the Red Devil.”

“She said she knows you from Attica.”

A woman from Attica? The only women who’d visited him in prison had been Angela and Paula Segal, that lesbo writer.

Max, sensing there was more to this, agreed to let her in.

The woman — longish gray hair, a nice body, though no rack there — entered as the hooker exited.

The woman said to the hooker, “May Jesus have mercy on your sinful soul,” and then Max got a good look at her face, thought, Shit.

“How’d you know I was back?” Max asked the nun.

She had ferret eyes, levelled them at him, said, “God told me.”

Uh-huh.

Max, in a robe like Hef, drained his champagne, counted to five, asked, “Did God mention me by name?”

She gave a knowing smile, the one exclusive to zealots and groupies, said, “God has oh-so-special plans for those who mock His Name, and you would do well to remember He knows all.”

Max, not missing a beat, asked, “He knows who’s gonna win the third at Belmont?”

Max joking around with her, trying to loosen the nun up, but knowing he was in some deep shit.

Back in Attica, before Max rose to prominence, came into his own, he’d been shit scared. No idea of how he’d survive at a notorious prison, and especially survive a giant of a black man named Rufus, who on Max’s first day had promised to make Max’s ass his “own sweet booty.”

Sometimes clergy came round to visit — nuns, pastors, rabbis, undercover Scientologists, trying to lure the cons into their respective scams. Usually they got lots of interest as it meant time out from the cell and you could usually hit the pious up for cigs, Hersheys, mags and hey, even some off-color sex talk in the form of confession.

Max had drawn the nun, went by the name of Sister Alison. She’d opened the chat with, “Call me Ally... God’s own wee pally.”

Trace of an Irish lilt hidden amid the bullshit. The Irish seem to have the patent on the whole nun gig, as they knew how to scare the shit out of you better than anyone. Max was terrified for another reason — because yet another Irish person had entered his life, and this always led to some sort of disaster.

But he’d assessed her, then gone ghetto, said, “Babe, you a playa, a crazy bitch, but you got it goin’ on, know what I’m sayin’?”

Stone-faced, she said, “I see from your file you are a very dark sinner.”

Max, knowing the power of repentance, as a tool of holy manipulation — fuck, he’d prayed in the courtroom every day — bowed his head, said, “I wanna be good.” Using the submissive voice he’d been taught by a vibrant dominatrix in the Bronx.

The nun asked, steel amid the piety, “Are you prepared to take the steps to salvation?”

Hmm, Max thought. Said, “I need to be chastitied.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean chastised. I need to be chastised.”

He saw the color rise in her deadly pale face, spread all down her neckline, as she went on, “And will you follow my guidance?” Was that a purr crawling into her voice?

Both of them a little breathy now, he said, “On my worthless knees.”

So was born a very unhealthy dialogue that kept Max in heat until he managed to break the fuck out of the joint.

He hadn’t really given her a whole lot of thought until she turned up at his party. Now she gave him the special nun glare, full of malevolence and viciousness. She asked, “These good folk out there don’t know who you really are, do they?”

Max, flustered, tried to rally. The weight gain and red hair and plastic surgery had worked until now.

He tried, “I think you might be mistaking me for somebody else.”

Didn’t realize he was shouting until the burr of conversation died down around him. He cleared his throat, asked, “Who did you think I was?”

She gave an evil smile, said, “You want to get on your knees, Max?”

Fuck.

He said, “Might I get you a drink?”

She grabbed his arm brutally, hissed, “Cut the horse shite, Max. I’m not going to blow your act if...” and smiled sinfully.

Now he eased up a notch. A deal. Deals were his thing. And they weren’t in freaking Attica now. He asked, “What you want... bitch?”

Let her know he was now The Man.

She stood back, surveyed him. Then, “Looks like you have a heavenly business going here. Half a mil for starters.”

He laughed, said, “That all?”

“For starters, yes.”

Max was still smiling but knew then he’d have to take the cunt out.