Pimp: The Story of My Life

by Iceberg Slim

“I’m going to take you in. I’m going to check your story. If you’re telling the truth, I’ll let you go. If not, you’ll get a jail sentence.”

We got back to the city early that morning. I knew when my fingerprints got to Washington the F.B.I. would rush back the news I was a fugitive. I had to get out of town.

The chief must have flown my fingerprints to Washington. The city rollers, with a captain of guards from the joint busted Stacy and me. I was held for the escape. Stacy for harboring me.

At my first hearing I told the judge I hadn’t escaped. I told him one night before midnight a screw unlocked the cell and took me to the front gate and released me. I had a friend who had supplied the scratch for the underground release.

Mama came from California to visit me. She was sick and old. In fact she was dying.

Forgive me not writing regular and stuff like that. I love you Mama, I love you. Please don’t die. I couldn’t take it while I’m locked up. I’ll take care of you when I get out. I swear it Mama. Just don’t die. Please!”

“Well, well, so you’re that slick blackbird who flew the coop. Cheer up, you only owe us eleven months. You’re lucky you escaped before the new law. There’s one on the books now. It penalizes escapees with up to an extra year.

Don’t give them any lip if they ever come by and needle you. They’ll beat hell out of you. Then take all your clothes off and put you in a stripped cell. That’s one with nothing in it, just the cold concrete floor.

I had a screw who would take letters directly to the girls. He would get his pay-off from them. He would bring me cash from them. I got a letter from Mama. I could hardly read the shaky writing. She sent me religious tracts inside it. I was really worried about her. The tight cell and the fear of a year in it was getting to me. The little sleep I got was crowded with nightmares. I was eating good at high prices. I still lost weight.

I got a letter from Stacy. Bet had been found dead on his toilet stool at home. It really shook me. He had been a real friend. I got a very short note from Rachel. She was in Cleveland. It said, “I ran into an old doctor friend of yours the other night. He was looped. He bought me a drink. Lucky for me the bartender asked how you were doing. The doctor spilled his guts. He told me about a dead patient of his who came back to life. My worst wishes. P.S. Please drop dead. I’ll keep the Hog.”

It was Stacy. She was pregnant and living with an old hustler. Her eyes told me how bad I looked. Her letters dropped off to one a month with no scratch.

At the end of the fourth month my skull was shaking on my shoulders like I had palsy.

I looked up into a pair of strange almost orange eyes sunk into an old horribly scarred face. It was Leroy. I had stolen Chris from him many years ago.

“Officer, I heard a voice. I thought someone was working back there.” He said, “Oh, you poor bastard. You won’t pull this bit. You’re going nuts ‘Slim.’

My screw came to see me at noon. He told me how Leroy had enlisted the crap-bombers. Leroy told them I had put the finger on him years ago when he got the bit for the Papa Tony beating. My screw dropped the truth around the cell house. All the bombers were down on Leroy. They dared him to bother me again. I was safe from Leroy.

A friend of Mama’s sent me a telegram. Mama had been stricken. The hospital doctors had given her up. Then she bounced back. She was very sick now, but still alive.

He told me Party had copped the beautiful girlfriend of a dope dealer when he got a bit. Party turned her out. The dope dealer did his bit. The broad tried to cut Party loose to go back to a life of ease. Party went gorilla on her. He broke her arm. Two months later Party copped some H. He didn’t know his connection was a pal of the dealer who got the bit. It was H all right mixed with flakes of battery acid.

I was through with pimping and drugs. I got insight that perhaps I could never have hoped to get outside. I couldn’t have awakened if I had been serving a normal bit.

Mama’s condition and my guilty conscience had a lot to do with my decision. Perhaps my age and loss of youth played their parts. I had found out that pimping is for young men, the stupid kind.

A good pimp has to use great pressure. It’s always in the cards that one day that pressure will backfire. Then he will be the victim.

Mama might die in California at any time. I had to get to her before she died. I had to convince her I loved her, that I appreciated her as a mother. That she and not whore-catching was more important to me. I had to get there as much for myself as for her.

“In the spirit of fair play, I’m going to be brutally frank. If I am not released the day after tomorrow, a certain agent of mine here in the city is going to set in motion a process that will not only free me, but will possibly in addition throw a revealing spotlight on certain not too legal, not too pleasant activities carried on daily behind these walls.

I didn’t sleep that night. The next day I got a discharge notice. I would be released on legal schedule.

I had amazed cons and guards alike, I had survived it. I was getting out in twenty-four hours. I was almost forty-three sitting in a cell.

She clutched life for an added six months. I never left the house for those six months. We would lie side by side on twin beds and talk far into the night. She made me promise that I would use the rest of my life in a good way. She told me I should get married and have children.

These stinking whores would have gotten a huge charge if they could have seen old Iceberg out there wailing like a sucker because his old lady was dead.

By all the odds, I should have ended a broken, diseased shell, or died in a lonely prison cell.”

Catherine, my beautiful wife, is wonderful and courageous. She’s a perfect mother to our adorable two-year-old girl, and our sturdy, handsome three-year-old boy.

Catherine always said the right things and gave me her love and understanding.

She explained and pointed out to me the mental phases I was passing through. She gave me insight to fight the battle. To her I shall always be grateful.

How about it, an Iceberg with a warm heart?