Read Online Long White Con: The Biggest Score of His Life by Iceberg Slim - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Iceberg Slim
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wounded mask and stared ahead. “There is no reason to fear me. But I don’t plan to take a polygraph test to convince you of that, Miss Buckmeister.”
She was unsmiling, phosphorescent in her diaphanous white silkdress. She gazed at his sculpted Errol Flynn profile. She was motionless, like a pastel mannequin in the star-lit window of night.
He decided that he could better frustrate her, maim her, get the hook sunk deeply into her psyche up there in her web. He thought, this assassin needs to con me that she’s afraid like Camille did before she slaughtered me. He shaped his heartbreaking little boy smile and took her into his arms. They deep-tongued.
He disengaged and whispered, “Christina, please don’t be afraid. I could never lie to you, darling. You can risk the mountain top.”
He tried vainly to remember the novelist who had propounded the theory that all black men had been driven insane in the throes of the fake great nightmare, American Dream. Was he insane?
She put the car in motion and catapulted the sleek machine up the mountain through caverns of lush spicy forests to its top. She parked before the stately redwood lodge, gleaming richly on the moon-engorged pinnacle. The shimmering neon below was strung about the city’s frame like ropes of rainbow pearls.
She slid from the car, stood like a quizzical Botticelli nymph, to see him look blandly at her, make no effort to follow her lead. She laughed, “Johnny, I can’t believe that you want
me
to carry you past the threshold.”
He smiled, “Come back here to me, darling. Let’s enjoy the view a bit.”
With transient pout, she got in, wiggled herself snugly against him, her cheek against his chest. She goosebumped him with her nails across the blue silk at his kneecap. His fingertip caressed the passion pit beneath her earlobe to stoke her crotch fire as they gazed down at the extravaganza of city lights.
He thought about the walk-up tenement hovels and the zillion meals missed in the Chicago black ghetto. The senseless cuttings and shootings behind the psychotic invisible walls of the ghetto. He remembered how the icy winds had slashed him blue with coldthrough his threadbare garments going to school and his lunches of fatback and turnip greens sandwiches.
He remembered the arrest of the gaunt old man on a street corner, his black face deformed before his pauper audience with revolutionary passion as he shouted, “The rich should be compelled, at gun point, to share their riches with the starving wretched masses. We blacks must force all white offspring of their slavemaster fathers to pay us reparations for the sweat and agony of our slave mothers and fathers.”
Reparations! The concept burst like a thunderbolt inside his head. He was electrified at the realization that he held the palpitating heiress to the Buckmeister millions in his arms. He thought, I must play her for the ultimate stakes. Of course, he told himself, my real, noble purpose must be to lock up this gold-plated bitch. Marry her! Then find the method to use the most of her fortune for reparations, the rest for my personal future and security, before I dump her.
He trembled with excitement at the birth of his master plan for her. He thought about Pearl and the certain complications. He’d structure that aspect later, he decided. In the blinding brilliance of his master plan he wondered if Pearl was indeed indispensable. He thought, I must first discover what Christina is to the bone.
Christina said, “Are you chilled? I felt you shiver, Johnny.”
He said, “No, I’m comfortable.”
He remembered the Vicksburg Kid had told him about how Christina’s late grifter father had built the foundation for the Buckmeister empire in Germany from stock and bond flim flams. And before that the hoary money machine swindle. He’d sound her out, play her, convince her and fleece her as he would any other mark. Poetic justice for the daughter of a con man.
He said, “Tell me
She was unsmiling, phosphorescent in her diaphanous white silkdress. She gazed at his sculpted Errol Flynn profile. She was motionless, like a pastel mannequin in the star-lit window of night.
He decided that he could better frustrate her, maim her, get the hook sunk deeply into her psyche up there in her web. He thought, this assassin needs to con me that she’s afraid like Camille did before she slaughtered me. He shaped his heartbreaking little boy smile and took her into his arms. They deep-tongued.
He disengaged and whispered, “Christina, please don’t be afraid. I could never lie to you, darling. You can risk the mountain top.”
He tried vainly to remember the novelist who had propounded the theory that all black men had been driven insane in the throes of the fake great nightmare, American Dream. Was he insane?
She put the car in motion and catapulted the sleek machine up the mountain through caverns of lush spicy forests to its top. She parked before the stately redwood lodge, gleaming richly on the moon-engorged pinnacle. The shimmering neon below was strung about the city’s frame like ropes of rainbow pearls.
She slid from the car, stood like a quizzical Botticelli nymph, to see him look blandly at her, make no effort to follow her lead. She laughed, “Johnny, I can’t believe that you want
me
to carry you past the threshold.”
He smiled, “Come back here to me, darling. Let’s enjoy the view a bit.”
With transient pout, she got in, wiggled herself snugly against him, her cheek against his chest. She goosebumped him with her nails across the blue silk at his kneecap. His fingertip caressed the passion pit beneath her earlobe to stoke her crotch fire as they gazed down at the extravaganza of city lights.
He thought about the walk-up tenement hovels and the zillion meals missed in the Chicago black ghetto. The senseless cuttings and shootings behind the psychotic invisible walls of the ghetto. He remembered how the icy winds had slashed him blue with coldthrough his threadbare garments going to school and his lunches of fatback and turnip greens sandwiches.
He remembered the arrest of the gaunt old man on a street corner, his black face deformed before his pauper audience with revolutionary passion as he shouted, “The rich should be compelled, at gun point, to share their riches with the starving wretched masses. We blacks must force all white offspring of their slavemaster fathers to pay us reparations for the sweat and agony of our slave mothers and fathers.”
Reparations! The concept burst like a thunderbolt inside his head. He was electrified at the realization that he held the palpitating heiress to the Buckmeister millions in his arms. He thought, I must play her for the ultimate stakes. Of course, he told himself, my real, noble purpose must be to lock up this gold-plated bitch. Marry her! Then find the method to use the most of her fortune for reparations, the rest for my personal future and security, before I dump her.
He trembled with excitement at the birth of his master plan for her. He thought about Pearl and the certain complications. He’d structure that aspect later, he decided. In the blinding brilliance of his master plan he wondered if Pearl was indeed indispensable. He thought, I must first discover what Christina is to the bone.
Christina said, “Are you chilled? I felt you shiver, Johnny.”
He said, “No, I’m comfortable.”
He remembered the Vicksburg Kid had told him about how Christina’s late grifter father had built the foundation for the Buckmeister empire in Germany from stock and bond flim flams. And before that the hoary money machine swindle. He’d sound her out, play her, convince her and fleece her as he would any other mark. Poetic justice for the daughter of a con man.
He said, “Tell me
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