can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train. ... Young, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising exec type fruit holds the door back for me. am evidently his idea of a character. You know the type comes on with bartenders and cab drivers, talking about right hooks and the Dodgers, call the counter man in Nedick's by his first name. A real asshole. right on time this narcotics dick in a white trench coat (imagine tailing somebody in a white trench coat. Trying to pass as a fag guess) hit the platform. can hear the way he would say it holding my outfit in his left hand, right hand on his piece: I think you dropped something, fella. But the subway is moving. long flatfoot! yell, giving the fruit his B production. look into the fruit's eyes, take in the white teeth, the Florida tan, the two hundred dollar sharkskin suit, the button down Brook's Brother shirt and carrying News as a prop. Only thing read is Little Abner. A square wants to come on hip.... Talks about pod and smoke it now and then, and keeps some around to offer the fast Hollywood types. Thanks, kid, say, I can see you're one of our own. His face lights up like a pinball machine, with stupid, pink effect. Grassed on me he did, said morosely. (Footnote: Grass is English thief slang for inform.) drew closer and laid my dirty junky fingers on his sharkskin sleeve. And us blood brothers in the same dirty needle. can tell you in confidence he is due for a hot shot. (Footnote: This is a cap of poison junk sold to addict for liquidation purposes. Often given to informers. Usually the hot shot is strychnine since it tastes and looks like junk.) Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. look in his eyes when it hit. Kid, it was tasty.... Recollect when am traveling with the Vigilante, best Shake Man in the industry. Out in Chi... We is working the fags in Lincoln Park. So one night the Vigilante turns up for work in cowboy boots and a black vest with a hunka tin on it and a lariat slung over his shoulder. says: `What's with you? You wig already?' He just looks at me and says: `Fill your hand stranger,' and hauls out an old rusty six shooter and take off across Lincoln Park, bullets cutting all around me. he hangs three fags before the fuzz nail him. mean the Vigilante earned his moniker.... Ever notice how many expressions carry over from queers to con men? Like 'raise', letting someone know you are in the same line? `Get her!' `Get the Paregoric Kid giving that mark the build up!' `Eager Beaver wooing him much too fast.' The Shoe Store Kid (he got that moniker shaking down fetishists in shoe stores) say: `Give it to a mark with K.Y. and he will come back moaning for more.' when the Kid spots a mark he begin to breathe heavy. His face swells and his lips turn purple like an Eskimo in heat. Then slow, slow he comes on the mark, feeling for him, palpating him with fingers of rotten ectoplasm. The Rube has a sincere little boy look burns through him like blue neon. That one stepped right off a Saturday Evening Post cover with a string of bullheads, and preserved himself in junk. His marks never beef and the Bunko people are really carrying a needle for the Rube. One day Little Boy Blue starts to slip, and what crawls out would make an ambulance attendant puke. Rube flips in the end, running through empty automats and subway stations, screaming: `Come back, kid! …
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Jun 1, 1987
Jesse Schonier 
Open Access