Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

37

I WAS BACK OUT IN the Lotus and on my way back to Cambridge before I really thought about what I was doing. And even when I did start thinking, it was only about one thing: John, and the shit I was going to knock out of him. I hadn’t been able to understand, on the way to Logan, why he’d sent Sukie back; but now I didn’t care. He was alone when I found him in the room, and he didn’t even look up when I came in. He was tearing the place apart. The radio was on, giving the weather report. John was pulling out dresser drawers, removing the bricks that were taped to the back.

I just stared at him.

“Well,” he said, “let’s get it on.”

“Get what on, half-ass?”

John stopped and looked at me. “You’re alone, right? So the chick’s busted, right? So let’s get it on and get this place cleaned up, so we can get out of here.”

I froze. “You bastard. This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t sent—”

“This wouldn’t have happened, Peter, if your chick hadn’t already given the pigs her name, her Berkeley address, and our Cambridge telephone number before she thought to call me up and ask what she should do about her ‘lost bag.’ So I told her to go back. What the hell, why not? It didn’t make any difference at that point.”

“She gave them our phone number?”

“Yeah,” John said. “That’s a smart little pussy you’ve got. She really set us up—you with your record—your recent record—and me holding.”

“She didn’t know…”

“And you didn’t tell her, did you? That’s why she didn’t know. You didn’t tell her the first goddamn thing about it.”

“I didn’t know she’d have to check a bag—”

“The fuck you didn’t. You sent her a check for ten thousand. That’s forty bricks. You just overlooked it, you were in such a ball-crushing rush—”

“Now listen, brother, you talk like that, you’re gonna have to pay some dues. I sent her the check, yeah, but I didn’t know—”

“Help me clean this place out,” John said in a voice that was final. He was throwing the bricks onto the center of the floor.

I still couldn’t get very excited about John’s problems. “Listen, man, you don’t seem to be digging what’s happened to the chick. She’s in jail, for Chrissake, and—”

“And we won’t be any good to her,” John said, taking out the jars and bottles from the medicine cabinet, “if we’re in there with her. Now come on.”

We cleaned the place out. All together, we found sixteen bricks of good smoking dope, a hundred caps of synthetic mescaline, five hundred and fifty caps of psilocybin, thirteen peyote buttons in cellophane, four ounces of hash, and some Thorazine. John got one of his friends to drive it out in a couple of suitcases to John’s uncle’s house in Lexington.

When that was done we both had a big belt of his Scotch. The room was disordered; John kicked some clothes off the couch and sat down. “If Murphy busted her, you’d better do what I’m doing,” he said. “Take off for a day or two, at least stay away from this room. It’s not going to be too cool for a while.”

I didn’t give a shit how cool it was, I had other things on my mind. “Look,” I said, “we’ve got to get her out of jail as fast as we can. She won’t know what to say, and she’ll fuck herself over in a matter of hours without some advice. If we can’t get her out and talk to her before the arraignment on Monday, she won’t know enough to plead guilty. And if that happens, the case’ll go up through the courts, dig?”

“Yeah,” said John. He was digging it. He was digging the fact that if that went down, we’d never be able to buy her off, no matter what lawyer we eventually got for her. And she’d take the full rap for the bust, probably even do some time. I waited for John to say something, to figure something out. There was a very long pause, and then he just said, “Yeah.”

“Yeah, what?”

John looked pained, really pained, for the first time since I’d walked in the door. “Peter,” he said. “The pigs have overvalued the bust, as usual. They’ve announced that they picked up fifteen-thousand-dollars’ worth of dope. So that means it’ll cost us at least three thousand to get her off. Plus her bail, which as you have noticed is essential. Now. I don’t know if her bail’s been set yet, but you can bet your ass it’ll be at least ten thousand. So that’s another grand we need right there—”

“So?”

“So this is Saturday,” John said.

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“The market’s closed.”

“Now wait a minute. Are you trying to tell me you’re broke? You?”

“I’m saying I won’t have a nickel until Monday.” John paused, then added, “After ten o’clock.”

I couldn’t believe he’d said that. I couldn’t believe any of the things that had gone down that afternoon, but that was the end. Finally I said, “Far out.” Nothing more.

John nodded. “It is far out. It’s a drag, too, but it’s what’s happening. I’ll do everything I can. But I can’t do anything till Monday.”

“Far out,” I said again. Then, almost as an afterthought, “You son of a bitch.”

“Peter,” John said slowly, “it’s all I can do. It’s all I can do.” He got up and put on his jacket. On the way out he paused and said, “If you want me for anything, I’ll be at Sandra’s.”

Then the door closed, and I was alone.

38

THE FIRST THING I DID was pour myself three fingers of John’s J & B, put on some blues, and sit down to try to get my head together. Which was easier said than done. I was flashing on all the things that had gone down, on all the ridiculous little twists and turns the trip had taken in the course of a few hours. Sukie busted. Murphy on our backs again. John broke—that was what really blew my mind, that John could be broke. It was too much. Finally I realized that I wasn’t getting anywhere, that I had to get ripping or I’d just drown. But I just sat there, immobilized.

The worst thing in the world is not to be moving when you’ve got to move, when you’ve got to do something. Like hitching. I used to hitch a lot, whenever I was desperate to get moving. Once when I was bumming around Vermont I ran into this fag, an old guy who was really hurting for somebody to come-on to. He picked me up, wanted to know where I was going, and I just said, Wherever you are. Which was all he needed to get it on. Before I knew it we were off the road and at his house, and he said I should go on in and make myself comfortable, he had a few phone calls to make.

His place looked as though no one had ever lived there, full of broken furniture and old newspapers. The guy was on the phone a long time, so after a while I went into the can to take a leak. I’d just gotten it out when he popped his head in the door. His eyes lit up when he saw me and then he casually sauntered in and started brushing his teeth. I didn’t have the faintest idea what was going down, so I continued about my business. Suddenly he pops his head up from the bowl and asks me if I’ve ever been blown. I didn’t think so, I replied. Well, he demanded, wouldn’t I like to try it out now? I mean, after all, if I’d never tried it, I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was missing. I said No thanks, I didn’t want to try. The whole scene had suddenly become bizarrely comic, as I’d realized why he was brushing his teeth. The dude was being polite. He was letting me know that, hygienically at least, he wasn’t a dirty old man.

And he wasn’t about to give up so easily, either. Was I sure I didn’t want to try it out? Honest-to-goodness sure? ’Cause he’d noticed—no harm in looking, see—he’d noticed that I wasn’t circumscribed, and did I know how much more sensitive that made me? Circumcised, I thought he meant. Circumscribed, circumshmibed, what difference did it make—didn’t I want to try?

No, sorry, I didn’t, and maybe I’d just better be going, if he had finished making his phone calls. And then all of a sudden he was blocking the door, and I was realizing that he wasn’t so old, and that he was pretty big to boot. So I picked up the nearest thing at hand, which was a plumber’s helper, and asked him if he was going to get out of the way, feeling ridiculous even as I did so. Knock the fag around in his own can with his own plumber’s helper. It was too much. Suddenly I started to laugh. I couldn’t believe it, but I laughed and laughed and laughed, until I dropped the plumber’s helper; and I kept laughing long after he’d shaken his head in dumb amazement and walked out.

By the time I stopped laughing he’d brought the car around front, and was all ready to drive me back to the highway. On the way he suddenly started rapping. Seemed the dude was married, had a few kids, held down a regular job. But he just couldn’t have enough of that old Get you, Gertrude, so he’d rented the second house for practically nothing, and he went out every night picking up hitchhikers. I asked him how he did. He said that now and then he found himself a goodie, but usually they were like me. You mean No Go, I said. Well, at first, he said, but then he’d hassle them in the can, and they’d get tough and knock him around. It suddenly dawned on me that this was the whole point of that scene. They’d knock him around, and then he’d cry and apologize, and then they’d be sorry, and then half the time, it turned out, they’d feel so bad they’d wind up letting him work them over.

He was about to go on when I asked him why he did things that way. I meant that if he was a fag, why not be one full-time? Why screw around working the night shift when you’ve got the whole day, too. But he didn’t understand me that way, and what came back was a jumbled, confused defense of his wife, and the kids, and his place in the community.

Why didn’t he just split? I kept asking. Oh no, was all he’d say. He couldn’t do that. After all, that’d been his life for twenty years. To quit now would be ridiculous, totally ridiculous. Be a fag? Of course not. Nobody would ever buy shoes from him again. His wife would probably leave him. The kids would look at him funny.

I began to see things differently after that. I began to notice how much people treasured their solidity, their immobility. It made everything safe. And what I noticed now, on my third shot of John’s J & B, was that I was into the same riff. I was a student—that was my gig—and even though I put it down, I was completely into ripping it off for all it was worth. I didn’t mind getting busted in Berkeley, because there I was just another dude. But to have Sukie busted on my turf, in my town, where I was cool—well, that just didn’t make it. It didn’t make it at all, and instead of trying to do something about it I just sat around and waited for somebody to bail me out.

I started over to grab another hit of J & B, paused, and sat down. It was up to me now, as it had always been. I simply hadn’t wanted to look it in the face. If Sukie was still in jail at the arraignment, she’d be up the river; and even if I got her out before then, there was still a chance that she’d go up unless I got her a lawyer as well. I had to do something.

So I dialed O’Leary’s office and demanded to speak to someone, anyone. But I only got a half-witted chick on answering service, who informed me that it was Saturday and everyone was home. Would I please call back Monday? How about home phones, I wanted to know. Well, that depended. Was I a client already? Or was I simply seeking information? No, she was sorry, if I wasn’t already a client she wasn’t permitted to give me any home phones. Lawyers had to sleep, just like everyone else. The office would be open on Monday at nine.

Thank you, bitch. What next? I called up all the bail bondsmen I could find in the book. They had not gone home—they did a thriving business on Saturday night, that much was obvious. But no, they wouldn’t accept a stereo as collateral on a ten-thousand-dollar bond, it wouldn’t be worth it to them, and anyway they’d been getting too many stolen goods for collateral lately. They were taking only large items they could be sure of, like cars, these days. Click.

I poured myself another Scotch, got thoroughly sloshed, and turned on the television to catch the evening news. As it came on, Herbie showed up; he was on his way to dinner and was looking for company. I said I wasn’t hungry but offered him a drink, and he sat down to watch the news with me.

After the usual Vietnam-Central-American-coup-Middle-East-retaliation-domestic-upheaval reports, they came to the local news. And to Susan Blake, a nineteen-year-old resident of San Francisco, California, arrested today at Logan Airport on charges of possession of marijuana. Her suitcase was found to contain forty pounds of marijuana. She will be arraigned Monday. Elsewhere in the city…

“Far out,” Herbie said.

“Yeah,” I said.

He laughed. “Well,” he said, nodding to the TV, “you don’t have to take it personally, just because somebody gets busted.”

I looked over at him. “Herbie,” I said, “that’s my chick.”

There was a long pause while Herbie thought that one over, and I thought that one over. Then Herbie said again, “Far out.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What’re you going to do?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got to get bail for her. I’ve got to get her out of there.”

“That means money,” Herbie said.

“Yeah.” I got up, a little unsteadily, and went into the bedroom to get some cigarettes. When I came out, Herbie was still there, staring at me with a quizzical look on his face.

“How are you going to do it?”

I shrugged. “Your bet’s as good as mine.”

Herbie laughed. “In other words,” he said, “you don’t have any idea.”

I didn’t laugh. Herbie was right.

39

LATER THAT NIGHT IT BEGAN to rain, cold, streaky splatterings against the window, as I stared out at the courtyard. I was wrecked but I was still trying to think of something to do for Sukie. I had been in tight places before, especially when I’d been doing my own dealing. One time in Berkeley a good friend of mine had been busted, busted so badly that if I hadn’t come up with some bread for a lawyer he would have done a couple of years. But getting that bread had been something else—something I just wasn’t up for, this time around.

It was spring—a warm spring, I remembered, staring out at the rain—and I had been so enchanted with Berkeley and the people I’d met, that I’d just kept putting off the business part of my trip. And then, the morning that I was definitely going to see about business, Steven announced that we were going to Big Sur and loaded his VW bus full of camping equipment and charming chicks, and off we had gone, my feeble protests notwithstanding. So that it wasn’t until my last day in town that I had gone to see Ernie, the connection in those days.

I’d found Ernie lying on the living room floor of his gaudily painted apartment, stoned out of his mind on psilocybin. And Ernie had informed me, in rather vague but nonetheless emphatic terms, that there was no grass to be had, at least not down his alley. The gist of our conversation was more accurately that he told me to get the hell out of his place, he was stoned on psilocybin and didn’t want to get bummed on dope deals. That night I’d found out about my friend’s bust, and it was then that I’d decided to do some instant hustling on my own.

The next day I went out on the street. Walked down to the Forum and stood around, just listening, waiting for something to happen. Asking anybody who looked like they knew which way was up if they had any bricks, and always getting No for an answer, but always with a few references (“Shit man, nothing happening far as I know, but you could ask Toad—you know that dude, Toad, wild-looking freak with four fingers on one hand, he’s always up around here about six. He had some bricks last week”). And waiting around to ask Toad, and Sonny, and Detroit Danny, and anybody else that might show up.

And then finally, just when I was about to leave, say the hell with it, and climb back onto the Beantown bird, these four black cats showed up and started talking bricks. And everybody jumped, because Ernie had been, in his own way, telling the truth. There just wasn’t that much dope to be had. So everybody on the street was hungry to get their hands on weed, and they were taking chances they wouldn’t ordinarily take, like fronting bread to strangers, in the hope of scoring some smoke and being the only cat in town with, as the saying goes, shit to burn.

Which set up these four spades, who wouldn’t normally have had a prayer of hustling dope on the Avenue. They were flashy dressers, all conked and zooted, and they looked to be as likely prospects for bricks as a Central Square car salesman. But everybody else seemed to trust them; everybody else was fronting bread to them and dreaming mounds and mounds of dope, so I dreamed too, and we arranged to meet and exchange commodities.

I went off to wait in a supermarket parking lot, and pretty soon a huge white Caddy snaked in and I hopped on board. They didn’t know Berkeley, they said, they’d just driven a load up from San Diego because they’d heard things were dry. So we drove around for a while, looking for a good place to do the deal. The whole time, all they could say was “What’s a cool place? Find a cool place, man, a cool place.” They seemed very nervous and jumpy, which I thought a good sign, a sign they really had stuff. I kept them driving around for a long time in search of the mythical cool place.

I wasn’t about to tell them I didn’t know Berkeley any better than they did, because I didn’t want them to think I didn’t know what I was doing. Dope dealing, especially when buyer and seller are unacquainted, involves a primitive ritual which can be described in terms of I Am More Hip Than Thou. The object, if you are buying, is to let the other cat know (never directly but as forcefully and significantly as possible) that (1) you have bought a lot of dope in your time, and are not to be messed with; (2) you know what dope goes for in the area, and what quality it should be for the price; and, hopefully, (3) you are a very big dealer yourself and can provide the seller with a lot of business if he measures up to your standards.

Now all this is for real, and deadly serious at the time it’s going on, simply because the margins for profit are so broad and so extraordinarily ill-defined for both parties. For example, the seller knows that he can deal a good brick in Berkeley for about a hundred and twenty-five bucks, but he may have paid fifty, seventy-five, or even a hundred for that brick himself, depending on where he bought it and in what quantity. So he may or may not be in a position to be talked into lowering his price. On the other hand, if the seller discovers that you, the buyer, are not from Berkeley but from the East Coast, and consequently will not have to be competitive in terms of California prices when you unload the bricks, the seller’s price will shoot right up. So both sides play an intense strong-arm psychological game, and I was working hard at it when we got to one quiet, lazy street and I motioned them over to the side.

“This a cool street, man?”

“Yeah, very cool,” I said. And then, “In fact, I live here. I just wanted to do it here so I wouldn’t have to walk around the streets holding.” They laughed nervously. “Let’s get out and check those bricks,” I said. The keys were supposed to be in the trunk. I started to get out when a quick, leathered arm pulled me back.

“Be cool, brother. I’ll get the stuff.”

Be cool. Yeah, groovy. Only I didn’t dig “being cool” in the car, because I was holding a fuck of a lot of bread and they’d seen it. And so long as I stayed in the car it was too easy a set-up. I’d shown them my bread but I hadn’t seen any bricks, and I was alone with four cats I didn’t know. So when the cat hopped out I stuck my boot in the door, then kicked it open and followed him back to the truck.

“Thought I told you to stay in the car, man. You want to fuck us up?”

“Relax, man,” I said, “relax. Nobody’s going to fuck anybody up. I’m just doing what I came here to do. Now let’s see those bricks.”

He looked at me suspiciously and then nodded and opened the trunk. That’s a good sign, I thought, as he disappeared into the trunk, that’s a good sign, that he’s so nervous. He’s as uptight about getting ripped off as I am and that means he must have the shit.

He emerged holding a small brown-paper bag. There were supposed to be four bricks in the bag and it didn’t look big enough for two, but I figured, What the hell, what the hell, the market’s tight and he’s probably got pound-and-a-half bricks. He wouldn’t have told me beforehand because he’d be afraid I wouldn’t want them, but what the hell, I’ll take pound-and-a-half bricks before I’ll go home empty-handed, and maybe we can arrange a lower price or something. At any rate, I was still with him as he placed the bag of bricks on the roof of the Caddy and turned to me. I was still with him and events were moving along now like a poker game. After every round the spade would look over to see if I was still in the game.

“Let’s see them,” I said.

“You got all day to look at them bricks,” he said. “How’s about you handing over the bread?”

The stakes were going up. “I just want to have a quick look,” I said.

And then I pulled out my knife, a little Swiss Army knife that I always carried with me to cut the bricks open and slice off a taste.

The spade had been looking nervously in the direction of the other three dudes in the car, and when he turned to me and saw the knife he jumped back in fright.

“Hey man!” he was almost yelling. “What’chu doing, huh? What’chu doing? Put that blade away, man! Put it away right now or the deal’s off.” He stood back away from me as he talked, as if I’d threatened to stick him with it when I’d taken it out.

“Relax for Chrissake,” I said. “I’m going to cut a taste and then you can get out of here.”

“How ’bout the bread, man,” he said, still keeping his distance from the blade. “How ’bout the bread. You got the bricks now how ’bout the bread!”

I told him to relax again and reached for the bag, knife out to cut the string, and all of a sudden he was banging on the roof of the Caddy, banging hard and the doors were opening and I suddenly realized why he’d been so paranoid about the knife, if he hadn’t been trying to rip me off he wouldn’t have given a goddamn about the knife. He wouldn’t have even been thinking about the knife. He would’ve been shitting in his pants because of an insane honky who was insisting on tasting his bricks in broad daylight, on a side street just three blocks off Telegraph, a side street that the heat could come down at any moment, just casually cruising, the heat, and then I knew what was happening, knew and it was unbelievable that I’d walked into it as alone and blind as I had. The four of them were standing around me now and they had their hands in their pockets and before they could get them out I was talking.

“Listen, man, you digging that window, that window over there, that ground-floor window, my brother lives in there and right now he’s got a forty-four trained right on your fucking head, you dig? You mess with me and the dogs around here gonna be munching your guts for dinner, you dig? Right in that ground floor window over there my brother—”

And as I talked two of the dudes had their hands out of their pockets and I was staring down two shiny silvered .38s, thinking, Ugly, ugly, this can’t have happened to me, this isn’t real, I didn’t walk into a setup like this, I mean, I couldn’t have, this just can’t be real—thinking, This is real, it must be real, those guns are ugly, they’re pointed right at my fucking guts, this has got to be real and I’ve got to get out of here before it gets any more real—

thinking, I know this can’t be real, I know it’s not real, it’s happening so fast, all of it, but I’ve got to get out of here so fast before it is real—

thinking, Suddenly I’m getting my ass out of here before I’m not around anymore to dig how real it is; and then out of nowhere I started yelling, yelling my lungs out, not daring to look at the spades, yelling at the window yelling

“Zeph, hey Zeph, Zeph, these boys are looking for trouble, show ’em where you’re at in there, Zeph” and I kept right on yelling, and the dudes were looking at each other and getting a little more nervous, and then it happened.

Whoever the hell he was, he saved my skin. Some scared little guy pulled back the curtain in the ground-floor apartment and gave me one of those Crazy Kids looks and dropped the curtain again. And that was just enough of a pause for me. I grabbed the paper bag off the roof and ran faster than I’d ever known I could run, down underneath an apartment house through the garage and running my ass off, waiting the whole time to catch something hot and sharp in the small of my back, running and waiting and running for what seemed an eternity, running up to an eight-foot fence and right over it into a backyard on the next street over.

I couldn’t believe I’d made it. I took a deep breath, but the situation had me flowing with its energy and before I’d even thought about what had happened I had the bag open and was staring at a pair of sneakers wrapped in T-shirts. I dropped the bag and went back up to Telegraph to badmouth those cats. The whole number lasted maybe twenty minutes.

Give or take ten years.

40

I DIDN’T WANT TO GET into that kind of scene again, but I didn’t know what else to do. So finally I went to see if Herbie was still up and about, and I found him wide-eyed and stoned out of his mind but ready to rip.

“I thought you’d show,” Herbie said as I came into the room. “Want to get some breakfast?”

I was surprised. “It’s that late?”

“Yeah.” He checked his watch. “Seven-thirty.” He stepped out the door, and came back in holding the morning paper. “Your old lady ought to have gotten a big write-up,” he said. “Big splash.” He sighed. “Wish I could help,” he said, “but…”

I nodded. There was nothing he could do. Obviously, there was nothing that any of us could do. “A forty-brick bust,” I said. “That’s a hell of a big bust.”

“She got anything else going for her?” Herbie said.

“No prior offenses, no record,” I said. “That’s something.”

He nodded. “College student?”

“No.”

“Too bad. Work history? Can she prove she doesn’t do this for a living?”

“She hasn’t worked at some job for five years, if that’s what you mean.”

“Psychiatric history?”

“Nothing,” I said. That was the last resort, so far as defense went, but for young defendants it often helped.

Herbie sighed again, and shook his head. Then he looked up suddenly. “How many bricks did you say?”

“What?”

“How many bricks was she busted for holding?”

“Forty,” I said.

“Forty kilos?”

“That’s what I said.”

“That’s odd,” Herbie said. As I’d been talking he’d been leafing through the paper. “Because it says here… wait a minute… dadadadedah… umm… Here. It says ‘Susan Blake, busted for forty pounds in twenty kilos.’”

“Well, they made a mistake,” I said. “Fucking newspapers can’t even get the facts on a goddamn local bust down right. Anyway,” I shrugged, “it was forty keys.”

Herbie stared at the paper some more. “No,” he said.

“No, what?”

“No, they did not make a mistake. The sentence is internally consistent. Forty pounds would be just under twenty kilograms. That’s accurate.”

“Yeah, well, she had forty keys, forty bricks—”

“What did they say on the news last night?”

I shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

“Well,” Herbie said, “it’s important, because if it’s only twenty keys, her bail might be lower.”

“Far out,” I said, and felt momentarily encouraged. Until I began to think of some other things that I had never thought of. Things I should have considered right off, especially with Murphy involved.

“Herbie,” I said, “this is far out. This is very far out.” Herbie looked interested. “Dig it: I know that there were forty keys in that shipment. Sukie was holding down two suitcases, twenty keys to a suitcase. Total value, ten thousand dollars. I mailed the check to her myself.”

“That is far out,” Herbie said. “The boys in blue seem to have gotten pretty arrogant.” He smiled, and buried his nose in the newspaper. “’Cause it says here ‘one suitcase,’ and that means that… Where do you think it’s being dumped?”

“Roxbury,” I said, “or Somerville. That’s a beginning, anyway.”

“Okay,” Herbie said, getting off on the whole idea of fucking up the pigs. “Now we need a car, and binoculars. I have both. Also, we have to stop off at the drugstore…”

“What?”

“I’ll meet you in the courtyard in ten minutes,” Herbie said on his way out the door.

41

AN HOUR LATER WE FOUND ourselves in Herbie’s VW, parked across the street from District Station House Number Four. It was still raining slightly, and on a Sunday afternoon this part of town, on the east edge of Roxbury, was quiet. Herbie gave me the binoculars. “Here,” he said. “You’re the one who knows what he looks like.”

I took the binoculars and tried to look through them. Herbie had focused them for his own eyes, and they were completely blurred for me. While I changed the focus, Herbie took off his glasses and wiped them on his tie. “You know,” he said conversationally, “Boston has the lowest pay scales for police of any place in the country.”

“That right?” I said. I was now focused on the front steps.

“Yes,” Herbie said. “That’s what’s behind it all. That and the mail.”

“The mail?” I repeated, still looking through the binoculars. A man came out of the station, talking to a cop in uniform. The man wasn’t Murphy.

“Yes,” Herbie said. “Cops get mail just like everybody else. Last year’s murder rate in Boston went up sixty percent over the year before. But the mail doesn’t say ‘Stop the murders.’ The mail says ‘Get those nasty kids with their nasty drugs.’”

“Oh,” I said.

Another man came out of the station. He wasn’t Murphy, either. I sighed.

“Better relax,” Herbie said, lighting a joint and passing it to me. “It could be a long time. You know, you can’t really blame them.”

“Who?”

“Whom. The police,” Herbie said. “Dope is money, you know. Why not make a little extra?”

“Yeah,” I said. And I added, “I hope Murphy’s broke.”

“That probably isn’t the motivating factor,” Herbie said. He said it in a cryptic, dry way and I suddenly flashed on what Herbie was doing here: weak, nearsighted, brilliant little Herbie, who was still working up to his first Big Date at the age of seventeen. Herbie was here because it was a manipulation trip, action at a distance, control from afar, guess and second-guess, with cops-and-robbers overtones. He was playing it hot and heavy, and loving every minute of it.

“I’m going to work on the gun,” he said, and leaned into the back seat to get it.

One hour passed, then two, then three. I began to get depressed. It seemed that things like this were always coming down on me, waiting things, dependent things, things where I wasn’t in control and had to bide my time, see what developed. It happened to everybody, of course, but that didn’t make it any better. Waiting to get out of high school so you could get away from Main Street. Waiting to get your degree so you could go out and wait for a job. Waiting for the bank loan. Waiting for the kids to grow up. Waiting for the draft to blow your neck. Waiting for the record to end—the same dismal, crummy record that played the same dismal, crummy song over and over, the song that went “When does it end, and who is it that’s won, and will I die, too, before it’s begun?”

Three and a half hours later the VW seemed very cramped, the air very stale. Herbie said he’d go across the street to a sandwich shop and get a couple of subs, while I stayed with the binoculars. He asked me what I wanted and I said a meatball sandwich. He came back with it for me, and it was terrible, a true crapball concoction, to be washed down by an artificially flavored, artificially colored beverage of some sort. I frowned when I bit into it and he asked me if it was what I had wanted. It wasn’t, of course. I thought about how I could never seem to get what I wanted. Nobody in America could, for that matter, unless of course you happened to want something that you could purchase, in which case you had an immense variety of guaranteed satisfactions. But even that had been going on too long. Too many people had been getting all the new cars and the new tubes and the new refrigerators that they’d wanted for so long. And now they wanted something else. But they didn’t know what.

Four hours passed.

Herbie got the latest papers, to see if there was more about Sukie or the size of the bust. There wasn’t.

Another half hour.

And then, suddenly, stepping out into the afternoon light, rubbing the bald spot on the back of his head, was The Pig. “Herbie,” I said, “that’s him.”

Herbie put down the paper. “What’s six letters meaning determination?”

I pointed to Murphy, walking alone down the steps with a small briefcase in one hand. “That’s him.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Herbie said. “Let’s get going.”

I started the engine, and put the VW in gear.

42

MURPHY DROVE A GREEN PLYMOUTH sedan. It was dusty and needed to be washed, and it had the usual 415 narc plates. Murphy climbed in and carefully put on a large pair of Highway Patrol-type shades, and then started off.

I followed the car through the Boston traffic. As we went, I said, “Herbie, there’s one problem.”

“There are no problems,” Herbie said flatly.

“Yes,” I said, “there’s one: what if he’s already unloaded the stuff? What if he unloaded it last night?”

“That’s not a problem,” Herbie said. “That’s a factor we’ve taken into account.”

“We have?”

“Yes. It’s been perfectly clear from the start that if he has already unloaded the dope, or if he’s not the one who’s doing it, then we are wasting our time.”

“Oh,” I said.

Murphy drove to the South End of town, pulled up at a bus stop, parked, and got out. I pulled over beside a hydrant a few yards back. We watched Murphy go into a church.

“I don’t like it,” Herbie said.

“Why?” I said.

“He’s taking that briefcase with him,” Herbie said, getting out of the car. I started to follow him. “No,” Herbie said, “not you. He’d recognize you.”

So I got back into the car and waited while Herbie scurried up to the church, and disappeared inside. Several minutes passed. I turned on the radio but all I could get was Connie Francis singing “Who’s Sorry Now?” and some damned symphony. I turned the radio off and smoked a cigarette. Several more minutes passed. I turned the radio back on. This time I found a talk show, with Tony Curtis. They asked Tony whether he thought he was successful and Tony said it depended on how you defined it. He defined success as doing better than his best friend. And he said he was successful, on that basis. He didn’t name the best friend.

Then Murphy came out of the church, still carrying the briefcase. Herbie was nowhere to be seen. Murphy got into his car, threw the briefcase into the back seat, started the engine, and waited. I watched him, wondering where Herbie was, and why Murphy was waiting.

At that moment, Herbie came out of the church, moving very fast. I glanced over at Murphy. Murphy was looking at Herbie. Christ, I thought, it’s all over. Herbie jumped into the seat next to me. “All set,” he said. “Why’s he waiting?”

“Don’t know,” I said. But then I saw him lean forward, take out the dashboard lighter, and light the cigarette between his lips. I sighed. “There’s your answer. Just getting a nic hit.”

At that moment, Murphy took off. He patched out, leaving a blue cloud of exhaust and the smell of rubber, and streaked down the street.

“Shit,” I said, slamming the car into gear.

“I wonder what he has under that hood,” Herbie said thoughtfully.

Murphy was now moving very fast, heading toward the Expressway. He went up the ramp and I followed him, running a red light to make it. “What was he doing in the church?”

“Praying,” said Herbie.

Murphy screamed forward onto the Expressway. He wove among the lanes of traffic, trying to lose us.

The VW didn’t have enough power to touch the Plymouth, which moved steadily away from us. For a while, Herbie was able to keep track of him with the binoculars, while I took some bad chances, slipping in and out among the cars. But finally, near Milton, we came over a rise in the Expressway and looked down over the far slope, and he was gone.

Completely gone.

Herbie kept on scanning the road ahead. Then he put down the binoculars. “Get off at the next exit,” he said. “We’ve lost him.”

43

THE TOWN OF MILTON WAS established in 1710, according to the welcome sign, and from the looks of that sign and the looks of the houses, it had kept a tight ass-hole ever since. It would be hard to build a community that looked more prim. It was all very neat and clean and historical and nauseating. Herbie directed me through it. He didn’t seem discouraged, but I was discouraged as hell.

“What are we doing here?” I said.

“Playing the odds,” Herbie said. “You have your money?” I nodded. “How much?”

“Thirty-six dollars.”

“That should be enough,” Herbie said, “if we can get enough change. We’re going to have a problem.”

“Change?”

“Dimes,” Herbie said. He directed me to a large, modern drugstore. We walked to the back, past the counters of Nytol, E-Z Doz, Sleeptite, Awake!, Rouse, Bufferin, Anacin, Contac, and all the other pills. Behind the druggists’ counter there were giant bottles of pills, the tranqs, bennies, and sleepers that you needed a prescription for. We went straight to the back, where there were three telephone booths, with the phone books hanging from a wall rack.

“Okay,” Herbie said. “We assume, because we have to, that he’s going home. And home is south of Boston, since he was on the Southeast Expressway. And probably within an hour of commuting. Okay. We know his last name is Murphy. What’s his first name?”

I tried to remember. “Roger, I think. Anyway, something with R.”

“Good. And his rank?”

“Lieutenant.”

“Good,” Herbie said, opening the directory. “Go get your change.”

And then we began. We each took one column of Murphys. I took the left column, beginning with Murphy, Ralph A. Herbie took the right column, beginning with Murphy, Roland J. And we called. All of my calls were the same.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” I would say, “is Lieutenant Murphy there?”

“Who?”

For the first few, I would mumble some excuse, or say wrong number. Later, I got so that when I heard “Who?” I just hung up. Alongside me, in the next booth, Herbie was doing the same thing. I heard the clink each time he put in another dime.

Finally, around the fifteenth time: “Hello?”

“Hello, is Lieutenant Murphy there?”

“Not at the moment.”

I sighed and smiled. At last. “When do you expect him back?”

“Not until tomorrow night. He’s on weekend maneuvers at Fort Devens. Who’s calling please?”

“Sorry,” I said, “wrong number.”

At the bottom of my column were the Roger Murphys. I missed on Roger A., Roger J., Roger M., Roger N. Finally I got Roger V.

“Hello, is Lieutenant Murphy there?”

“No, but I expect him any minute. Who’s calling?”

“Uh, this is Captain Fry.”

“Captain Fry?” She obviously didn’t know any Captain Fry.

“Yes. I’m down at the Fourth stationhouse now. I wanted to see your husband. I guess I just missed him.”

“Yes,” she said, “you must have. Can I have him call you back?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll call back later on.”

“What did you say your name was again?” she asked.

“Nice to talk to you, Mrs. Murphy,” I said, and hung up.

I had my finger on the line. Murphy, Roger V., 43 Crescent Lane, Ackley.

44

“HOW MUCH LEFT?” HERBIE SAID, as we drove away from the drugstore.

“How much what?”

“Money,” Herbie said.

I shrugged, and handed him all the dimes I had, and the few dollar bills the drugstore hadn’t been able to change.

“You’re in luck,” Herbie said. “Fifteen dollars.”

“Why am I in luck?”

“Make your next left, and the left after that.”

I followed his directions, and came to the E-Z Car Rental. Lowest Rates on Compacts and Other Fine Cars.

I parked. “What are we doing?”

“Getting a new car,” Herbie said. “They’ll take fifteen dollars here as a deposit.”

We got out and went inside and talked to H. Lewis, Prop. It turned out he wouldn’t take fifteen dollars as the deposit. He would take fifty dollars, and not a penny less.

“We don’t have fifty dollars,” Herbie said patiently.

“That’s it, then,” Mr. Lewis said, behind the counter.

“Come on,” Herbie said. “Give us a break.”

“Sorry.”

“Come on. We’ll leave the VW with you.”

Mr. Lewis looked out the window at Herbie’s VW. “Probably hot,” he said.

“Come on,” Herbie said. “Who’d steal a VW?” The man squinted at him. “Look,” Herbie said, “I’ve got the registration for it and everything. It’s not stolen. Give us a car for fifteen.”

“No.”

“Come on, Mister, we got dates tonight, and if we don’t get there…”

“Use your VW.”

“We can’t. It’s overheating. It’ll blow out on us if we drive any farther.”

The man sighed. We both tried to look as pitiable as possible. Finally he said, “Where’re the girls from?”

“What girls?”

“Your dates.”

“Oh. Currier College.”

Mr. Lewis sighed. His face softened. He looked at me, then at Herbie, and he smiled.

“Currier College, eh?” His smile got broader.

“Yeah,” we both smiled. “Currier College.”

“Heh, heh, good old Currier,” he said, beginning to chuckle and shake his head with memories.

“Yeah, right, good old Currier,” we both said, chuckling.

He was laughing openly now. “No wonder you want a bigger car,” he said. “Got to have a bigger car.”

“Yeah, right, got to be bigger.” He was laughing and shaking his head as he gave us the keys. “I remember how it was, I sure do,” he said. Herbie started filling out the forms. “Just remember, boys, no stains on the back seat. I don’t want to see any stains.”

45

FORTY-THREE CRESCENT DRIVE IN Ackley was not in a run-down neighborhood, but it wasn’t spiffy, either. The house was small. There was a faded, red, 1956 Ford sedan in the driveway, and Murphy’s Narc Special, the green one, parked in the street out front.

Down the street some kids were playing stickball. The Murphy house was quiet. As the evening grew darker, a small boy of five or six came out and rode his bicycle around the house, down the drive, and into the street. As we watched, he joined the stickball game.

We were parked a couple of houses up, in what Herbie called our “inconspicuous” car, a canary-yellow Corvair with one front headlamp knocked out. It was all we had been able to get for fifteen dollars but at least, as he kept saying, it wasn’t the VW.

About half an hour passed. It was now quite dark. Pretty soon Murphy came out, his jacket off, his tie loosened. In one hand he held his dinner napkin. He came out into the street and looked up and down, then whistled once, shrilly.

He waited, looking up and down. He whistled again.

And then his son came back, pedaling furiously, and I thought, That poor, scared kid, with an old man like that. And the kid streaked up the drive, jumped off his bike, and ran up to his father, who bent over and scooped him up, and hugged him while the kid beamed, and they both went inside.

“Well, he can’t be all bad,” Herbie said.

“Don’t be a sucker,” I said.

We waited another hour. I got to thinking about the writer who said you are what you pretend to be. I’d thought about that and decided it was wrong, that you became what you were least afraid of becoming; and that was a much more dangerous thing, because it was much more basic and much more subtle. You are what you are least afraid of becoming…

I’d had some good times with that theory. It had led me to believe that no one could even imagine what it was that he really wanted unless he first lost the fear of his own imagination. And he couldn’t begin to do that without an opportunity. I mean, you can’t expect the president of Dow Chemical to suddenly go out and join the peace marchers. He simply hasn’t got time to think about such things. He’s the president, for Christ’s sake—all he wants to know is if the marches are hurting the sale of Saran Wrap. And in the same light, you can’t expect Huey Newton to join the police force next chance he gets, because it’s not exactly his trip.

So I devised a little scheme whereby everyone in the country, for one day out of each month, had to assume the role of the person or persons whose station and intellect he feared most. It was quite delightful, figuring out what everyone’s role would be. J. Edgar Hoover spent the day stoned in a commune in Arizona. Spiro Agnew had to hawk copies of Muhammed Speaks in front of Grand Central Station. Radical student politicos took over the police departments of the nation. Lester Maddox shined shoes in Watts. Walter Hickel dropped acid in the Grand Canyon. Julius Hoffman served Panther breakfasts to school children in S.F. And Richard Nixon was allowed to do anything in the world that he wanted to do, so long as he did it right.

“Oh-oh,” Herbie said.

I sat up straighter in the seat. It was quite dark now; the street and the neighborhood were completely silent. Murphy was coming out of his house. He had his jacket back on, but no briefcase. And no other baggage.

I frowned as I watched. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Herbie.

Murphy got into the red car, backed out, and headed down the road, with us behind.

46

HE WENT NORTH AND TURNED off at the Roxbury exit. That was a little bit of a surprise, but not much. Roxbury was as good a place as any.

While I drove, I said to Herbie, “You got the Baggies?”

“Yeah.”

“And the piece?”

“Yeah. All set.” Then he giggled.

“What’s funny?”

“I’m nervous,” Herbie said.

I was nervous, too. We could get really fucked up doing this cops-and-robbers riff.

Murphy turned onto Mass Avenue, still going north. He drove past the hospital, then turned right on Columbia.

“Maybe he’s getting a little action,” Herbie said, and giggled again.

“Will you cut that out?” I said.

“Sorry.”

Murphy drove up Columbia. He went straight past the hookers without even slowing down.

Herbie said, “Slow down.”

“Why?”

“I want to look.”

“Shit, Herbie.” I kept going, right after Murphy. He went up five blocks, and turned right again, onto a side street, where he parked. I parked and watched as he got out of his car, walked around to the back, opened the trunk, and removed a large suitcase.

“Far out,” I said, to no one in particular.

Herbie started to get out of the car to follow Murphy, but I pushed him back. “My turn,” I said. I got out and followed him down the street a short distance, then watched as he climbed the steps of one of the old brownstones. He kicked aside some broken glass, which clinked down the steps to the sidewalk. I paused a moment, then followed him up, my shoes making a crunching sound on the glass.

At the ground level, I paused once again. I could hear Murphy going up the steps. I opened the door and stepped into the hallway. Then, cautiously, I looked up the stairwell. I saw his hand grip the banister as he went up to the third floor. Then his hand disappeared, and he paused, and I saw him leaning back against the railing. A knock, then the door opened and he moved out of sight.

I waited there a moment, then took off back to the car.

“You find it?” Herbie said.

“Yeah. Third floor on the right.”

“Good. How many?”

I was sitting down, fumbling for a cigarette with trembling fingers. “How many what?”

“Voices. Didn’t you go up and listen at the door?”

“Are you crazy?”

“That’s what I would have done,” he said and, looking at him, I realized it was true.

“You are crazy.”

“It’s important to know how many people are in that room,” he said.

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

“That’s true,” Herbie said. “Only it would be nice to know before we find out.”

“Yeah, well.”

Silence. I smoked and tried to get my hands under control. In the back of my head was the feeling that this might work after all, that we might really pull it off. I hadn’t really believed that all day. I didn’t expect we’d get this far, and in some ways I had hoped we wouldn’t get this far. Because from now on the trip was for real.

Murphy came out of the brownstone about ten minutes later. He was empty-handed, and he whistled “As the Caissons Go Rolling Along” as he got into his car.

We waited a few minutes after he’d driven off, and then Herbie said, “Ready?”

I nodded.

We got out of the car and walked to the brownstone.

47

IT IS WRONG TO SAY we were nervous. We were terrified. We stood in the ground-floor hallway of the brownstone, smelling the combination of old cabbage, urine, dust, and mildew which hung in the air. As we started up the stairs, Herbie gave me the gun. “Just remember,” he said. “Watch your fingers.”

“Is it loaded?” I asked. It felt light for a piece.

“Yeah,” said Herbie. “Just watch your fingers. If they see—”

“Okay, okay.”

We came to the third-floor landing and walked around to the door. Herbie moved forward and I stayed behind him, keeping the gun out of sight, as we had agreed. Staring at the door, I had a vision of a six-foot-six, two-hundred-forty-pound spade standing behind it, just waiting to grind up a couple of college punks.

Herbie knocked, looked back at me, and smiled.

Herbie was enjoying himself, in his own nervous little way. He didn’t know any better, I thought.

He knocked and waited. Nothing happened. Right at that point I was ready to forget the whole thing and leave, but Herbie knocked again, louder. Then I heard soft footsteps inside. They didn’t sound like the footsteps of anybody big; I began to feel better.

A voice said, “Who is it?” Herbie glanced back at me, uncertain what to say. “Who’s there?” said the voice.

“Murphy,” I growled. As soon as I said it, I knew it was stupid. Murphy wouldn’t use his real name with a Roxbury front.

Behind the door, a pause. “Who?”

There was nothing to do but barge ahead. “Murphy,” I said, in a louder voice. “I’m twenty bucks short.”

We heard the chain rattling. Then the door opened and a pimply, white creature nosed into view and said, “Listen, you counted it right in front—”

He broke off, staring at us. He started to slam the door, but Herbie got his foot in. “One moment,” Herbie said. “We wish to make you a business proposition.”

I pushed Herbie from behind and there was a creaking and then the soft crunch of rotten wood breaking as a chain lock ripped out of the door. We stepped into the room and the cat jumped back and stared at us.

“B-business,” he said, “I-I’ma not innarested.”

The last word came out in a tumble and as I looked at him I saw why. He was thin and pale and his pupils were tiny. Arms covered with tracks. Speed freak. Probably paranoid as hell to begin with, I thought, without a couple of dudes barging into his room and pulling a piece on him. Then I realized that the way we were standing, he wouldn’t be able to see the piece, and I moved aside from Herbie enough so that he could dig it. He crumpled on the floor and babbled as Herbie said, “Hear us out. We have no intention of doing you any bodily harm.” He paused to look around the room. “You seem quite capable of taking care of that yourself.” At this the guy only babbled some more, the words flowing out in an unintelligible staccato, and groveled on the floor. “Please sit down,” Herbie said, giggling again, and the guy pulled himself over to the single mattress in the room and collapsed. The room was definitely a speed freak’s home-sweet-home. The walls were peeling and there was the one mattress and a couple of posters that covered the places that were peeling the worst. The floor was littered with empty soda cans and candy wrappers, and right next to the mattress was a set of works and an old spoon in a glass of water. Ho hum. A couple of bags of what looked like hydrochloride. Nothing else.

By this time the cat was speaking in sentences.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t got no money, honest I don’t—”

Herbie motioned him to be silent. “We don’t want your money,” he said. “We have an offer to make.”

The guy jumped up, and I waved the gun at him. “Don’t mess with me,” I said, doing my best to sound lethal. “I’m getting nervous with this piece.” He sat down again and Herbie went over and started fooling with the telephone. It was my rap.

“Okay,” I said, “here’s the deal. We’re willing to give you two hundred and fifty, a good fucking price, for every one of those bricks Murphy laid on you.”

“Bu-but,” he said, and I looked down at the piece.

“Murphy,” I said, “the cat who was just in here. We’ll give you two-fifty for every one of his bricks. Think about it. You could be out of town before they even knew you’d gone wrong on them. And you wouldn’t have to shoot that shit any more…” waving the gun in the direction of the hydrochloride. “Get it? You’d be a rich man. Nothing but pure meth, pure coke, anything you wanted. Pure. No more street shit for you, brother.”

He looked at me, or rather squinted, with new respect. I had touched his frame of reference. The word meth, the very idea of pure meth, filled his mind and a soft glow spread over his face. An involuntary “Wow!” seeped out of him.

“Okay,” I said, “now you got the picture. And all you gotta do for that bread is produce those bricks.” The words broke his reverie.

“Lissen, fe-fe-fellas, I’d like to he-help ya, ba-but I can’t tell you what I don’t know, da-dig? I don’t have a-nothing. Da-dig? I’m a dra-drop, dra-drop, I’m a dropoff man. They give me the ra-room and I pay out the bread. I never seen a bra-brick for two years now, da-dig? The cats come in here and I pa-pay ’em what I got.” He stopped and looked at the piece. “Honest.”

“Listen, Speedy,” I said, “we haven’t got the time, da-dig?” Herbie laughed. “Now who pays for this room and who gets the stuff and who sets you up with guys like Murphy?”

“Mm Ma-Murphy?” he said, or rather tried to say.

“The punk who was just in here, the pig you paid off. Who sets you up with him?”

“Th-th-that guy’s a pa-pig?” said Speedy, incredulous.

“Herbie,” I said, “he’s gonna need a little work.” Herbie nodded. He was enjoying the whole thing tremendously.

“You got the silencer, just in case?” he said, and I smiled grimly.

“Na-No! Fellas, ha, ha, honest!” He sounded like he had hay fever. “I’ll tell yah what I know. A sp-spade dude I met on the street seh-seh-sets me up, honest. Tha-that’s all.”

“Herbie,” I said, cold as ice. “Check the mattress.” Herbie went over to the mattress as I motioned Speedy off with a wave of the piece.

“Hey,” he said, “ha-who do you think you are?”

“Unless you wanna find out, you better shut up,” I said. Herbie lifted the mattress and there, lo and behold, were our bricks. “Pull ’em out!” I said to Herbie.

“Ha-hey!” said Speedy, suddenly realizing what was going on. “You ca-can’t take those. The ma-man’s coming by tonight for th-those!”

“Well, then, we’d better be on our way,” I said. “Herbie, put the stuff in the sack and let’s leave this punk to his works.” Spoken in the best tough-guy, out-of-the-corner-of-the-mouth tones I could muster. Speedy was not impressed.

“Ha-hey! What about my br-bread?”

“Shut up, punk,” I said, but just as Herbie turned his back on him the freak lunged for the bag of bricks, and they were both down on the floor.

“Up,” I shouted. “Get up unless you wanna eat some lead,” and he stood up, leaving Herbie rolling around on the floor, laughing.

“Too much,” Herbie said. “Eat some lead. Too much.”

Speedy looked at Herbie, then back at me, and stepped forward with a lead-be-damned gleam in his eyes. “Pa-punk, heh?” he gurgled. “Punk, punk, alla ta-time punk, heh? Whozza pa-pa-unk?”

He was only about a yard away from me and I was thinking we had to get out of there fast. “Stay back,” I said. “Back!”

But he kept on coming and finally I felt myself getting excited and desperate at the same time, and a strange feeling was welling up inside of me, power, a power feeling, his fate in my hands, and all of a sudden I knew that his fate was in my hands, and I felt the rush of it, I’m going to do it I rushed, I’m going to do it, and I pulled the trigger thinking simultaneously O my God I’ve done it O my God what have I done I’ve done it—

And just then a fine stream of water arced out of the gun, hitting Speedy in the knees.

He was so freaked he didn’t understand for a minute, but then he knew what had happened and jumped at me. Herbie was on the floor again laughing, and I knew that I was going to have to put Speedy away for a while to get us out of there in one piece. Fortunately speed freaks are not noted for their muscle tone. A quick right to the temple brought him to the floor and then I dropped down on him, knee first, and caught him in the crotch. Another right and a left to the jaw and he was gone. It’d look better that way, I thought, when the man showed up. I pulled Herbie up from the floor and we ran.

We were almost to the door when the first gunshot echoed through the hallway, and the banister nearby splintered. We dropped to the ground, ducking back into the shadows.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Herbie said. He was too scared to say anything else.

I looked up toward the third floor. A cloud of pale blue smoke hung in the air. I started to move downward again, and there was another gunshot. This time I saw the flame spurt from the rifle. Speedy was up there, all right. But his shot was wide—he couldn’t hit anything in his condition.

“Come on,” I said, “he can’t hit anything.”

“The hell he can’t,” Herbie said, crouched down behind the splintered banister.

All around us, the apartment building was beginning to wake up. We heard people moving and talking in their rooms. No doors opened, though; everybody was afraid to look outside. On the other hand, they’d certainly be phoning the heat.

“Come on, Herbie!”

For a moment he stayed curled up, paralyzed, and then he sprang forward. We sprinted downstairs. There were two more shots. And then, just as we were going out the door, a final shot and Herbie shouted, “I’m hit, I’m hit!” He stumbled and fell through the front door and lay on the steps.

I was already halfway down the steps when I heard him cry out. I ran back up, knowing that Speedy would now be racing from the stairwell to the outside window. I grabbed the bag that Herbie had dropped, and helped him to his feet. He was wincing with pain.

“Got me… in the shoulder… bad…” Herbie said. I put my arm around his waist and got him down the steps and off to the car. There was one more shot as we drove off into the night.

48

THE NEAREST PLACE WAS SANDRA’S apartment. It took us about ten minutes to get there, ten very bad minutes, with Herbie trying to be manful about things but not succeeding very well. He kept talking about how he could feel the blood running down his back. I wanted to take him to a doctor but he said No, no doctors, No—and anyway we couldn’t go to a doctor with a carful of dope, so I drove to Sandra’s. I got him up the steps to the apartment. John wasn’t there; no one answered the buzzer. I reached up above the door, found the key, and unlocked the door.

John and Sandra wouldn’t dig Herbie’s blood all over the apartment, but that was just too bad for now. I threw the sack of dope inside, then helped Herbie down the hallway to the bedroom. He was groaning softly, and covered with sweat.

“Easy now, easy,” I said, helping him down onto the bed. “Let’s get your jacket off.” He moaned as I removed it, his face contorted; with the jacket off, I got him onto his stomach and pulled out his shirt, which I then tore straight up the back to see how bad the wound was.

And stopped.

For a flash I was puzzled, and then I began to get pissed. Fucking Herbie. “Where does it hurt, man?”

“Oh… oh… in the middle… right shoulder… around the scap… scapula.”

“Yes,” I said. “I see.” What I saw was a smooth, slightly flabby, white expanse of unbroken skin. “Doesn’t look too bad, though. Here, you better see for yourself. Go look in the mirror.”

“Okay,” Herbie said, doing the heavy number. With a wince he said, “Give me a hand up, Pete, buddy.”

“Sure.” I whipped him off the bed with one hand and watched in silence as he staggered to his feet and walked into the bathroom. The bathroom light went on, and there was a long silence.

Finally, quietly, came an awed voice: “Far out.”

There then followed another long silence, in which I lit a cigarette, smoked it, and tried to keep from going in and plugging the little bastard myself. After a while, I heard him say, “Most perplexing.” And then, finally, he came back into the bedroom.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Herbie said. He was being very dignified and composed. “And I apologize for being an alarmist.” And then he walked out of the room.

“Hey, where’re you going?” I went out into the hallway after him, and found him returning with the sack. He walked toward the kitchen, and as he passed me, he said, “I think we’d better count the bricks, don’t you?”

He had made a fast recovery, and I told him so. He didn’t say anything in response. Out in the kitchen, he began to count the bricks while I raided Sandra’s refrigerator. Sandra is a candy freak. Every kind of American, Italian, French, Spanish, Swiss, Indonesian, Japanese candy can be found in her refrigerator. While I was looking, I said, “How many bricks?”

“What?” Preoccupied voice.

“How many bricks?”

“C’mere and dig this, Peter.”

I turned around to look. He was holding the sack in front of him. At first I saw nothing. Then, to demonstrate, he stuck his finger into the neat little hole.

“Interesting?” he said. He then picked up one of the bricks, and cut it open with a knife before I could protest. There was a piece of dull gray metal imbedded in the brick.

I went over and plucked it out. “Far out,” I said.

“The bag was over my right shoulder,” Herbie said.

“Far out,” I said again.

“I believe you owe me an apology,” Herbie said.

And then I began to laugh. “I owe you more than that,” I said. “I owe you the biggest smoke of your life.” I got a piece of newspaper and tore off a quarter, and pulled off a chunk of brick and began to roll it into a joint.

As Herbie watched, he said with a small smile, “All in all, it was pretty exciting, wasn’t it?”

An hour later, we were still in the kitchen, drafting the statement. We were both very stoned and very happy. I was writing and Herbie was dictating. I said, “How about ‘Please release her tomorrow morning’?”

“No,” Herbie said. “Make it strong. ‘I want her released tomorrow morning’—and then put in the D.A. and the Globe and all that.”

I nodded, and made the changes.

“Is that it?” Herbie said.

“That’s it,” I said, and picked up the phone to call. The first three times I dialed, I got the siren whine of a nonexistent number. Finally, the fourth time, it began to ring. I was very, very stoned.

A woman’s voice: “Hello?”

I said, “Lieutenant Murphy, please. This is Captain Fry of the Narcotics Division.”

“Just a minute, Captain.”

A long silence at the other end of the phone, presumably while Murphy tried to figure out who the hell Captain Fry was—or who would be calling saying he was Captain Fry. Or what Captain Fry would want at this time of night, if indeed there really were a Captain Fry, whom he had never heard of… God, I was zonked.

Finally: “Murphy here.”

I jumped at the sound of his voice, the familiarity of it. For a moment I flashed back to Alameda County and the interrogation room, the kneeing, the whole riff. Then I got hold of myself. “Yes,” I said. “This is a mutual acquaintance. I thought you would appreciate knowing that I have acquired twelve kilograms of marijuana that have an interesting set of fingerprints on them.”

“Who is this?”

“The kilograms are stamped with a peace symbol and the numbers eight nine oh, which allows their California origin to be quite reliably established. The fingerprints,” I continued, “are yours and Susan Blake’s. That is an interesting combination. It is easy to explain how that combination of fingerprints got there. But I wonder, is it possible to explain how they came into my hands?”

“Who’s calling?” Murphy said, his voice tense.

“I think that a lot of people would be curious enough to be interested in my explanation,” I said. “I have one very curious acquaintance in the district attorney’s office, and another at the Boston Globe.”

There was a long, taut silence. Murphy was thinking it over. And he was going to play it our way, I knew. He had no choice. He’d have to drop charges on Sukie.

“What do you want?” he said, finally.

“I want the girl released and all charges dropped.”

There was a long, slow sigh at the other end. The bastard obviously wasn’t used to having other people play as rough as he did. Finally he cleared his throat.

“Now you listen to me, punk, and listen good. You can’t touch me, you can’t even rile me. You go near the D.A.’s office with those bricks and I’ll see to it personally that you get busted. Now. As far as I’m concerned, you can go right ahead and do anything you want. I’m going back to bed.” Click!

Herbie had been sitting across the table from me. He must have seen my face fall. “What happened?” he said.

I couldn’t believe it. I was shaking my head, absolutely not believing it. “He didn’t go for it,” I said.

49

I WAS SUDDENLY GHASTLY SOBER, the kind of sober where the room lights seem brighter and the shadows sharper and everything is a little bit uglier. I got up and poured myself a Scotch—some of John’s Chivas this time, the hell with him. I felt it slosh down in my stomach over the Perugina chocolate, and I thought about Speedy shooting at us, and I began to feel sick. I spent a few hours standing there, leaning against the wall, trying to decide whether I would make it or not, and finally decided I wouldn’t. I jumped for the sink.

“Flawless,” Herbie said.

I turned and looked back at him. The world was green. “Thanks,” I said.

“I meant the plan,” Herbie said, ignoring me as I wiped my mouth with a towel. He ticked the points off on his fingers. “Murphy is fronting bricks. His prints are on them. We recover the fronted bricks. We threaten to expose him unless he releases the girl. He releases the girl. We expose him anyway. A flawless plan.”

“It didn’t work,” I said again. “You can’t bust pigs, no matter how fucked-up they are.”

Herbie nodded in a puzzled way. “He must have protection,” he said. “That’s the only answer.”

I laughed, and as I did the green world shifted back to glaring white. “Uh-uh,” I said. “He doesn’t give a crap, that’s all. He knows that a couple of punk kids are trying to rip him off, and he doesn’t mind a bit. He knows they can’t touch him. The day when freaks bust wrong pigs is the day that—”

“I find that difficult to believe,” Herbie said, sounding for all the world like my old man.

“Yeah, well, that’s what’s happening.” I was beginning to see what it meant, from Murphy’s viewpoint, to be hassled by a couple of kids. And I began to see just how little power we had. Nobody ever had power unless someone gave it to them. Murphy wasn’t giving us an inch.

“Maybe he doesn’t think we can do it,” Herbie said.

“Maybe we can’t,” I said. It had all been an enormous bluff. We didn’t know anybody on the newspapers, or at the D.A.’s office. We didn’t know anybody, period.

John chose that happy moment to walk in with Sandra. She ran for the John, and he came into the kitchen, sniffing the air. “Jesus, it stinks in here.” He walked over to the sink, took a look, and shook his head. “Harkness, you never could—”

“And you couldn’t either,” I said. “Get bent, or get lost, or preferably both.”

John paused to savor the atmosphere. “What’ve you dudes been up to?”

“The impossible,” Herbie said.

Then John saw the bricks on the kitchen table. His spirits rose. “My, my, what have we here?”

Nobody said anything.

“Fine stuff,” he said, crumbling a bit between his fingers. “Almost as good as—” He stopped, looked at another brick, at the stamp on the wrapper. “Where’d you pick this up?”

He looked over at me. I didn’t say anything. So he looked over at Herbie. “Three guesses,” Herbie said. John just stood there, totally out of it, and then Sandra walked in and began clucking about the smell. I was feeling a little sick again. John saw the bottle of Chivas out and began bitching about my drinking his stuff again. All I could think of was how we couldn’t touch Murphy. It didn’t seem possible that he was untouchable. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible.

“Herbie,” I said, “we can do it.”

“How’s that?” Herbie sounded bored.

“We could arrange a trade.”

“No!” He sat suddenly upright. “That ruins everything. The whole point of the plan—”

“I know,” I said. “But the flawless plan didn’t work. We already know that. The only thing we can do is trade.”

“You mean,” Herbie said, his mouth turning down in distaste, “give him the bricks?”

“Give who the bricks?” John said sharply. He had suddenly forgotten all about the Scotch.

“Yes,” I said. “Give them to him.”

“That’s nowhere,” Herbie said. “That’s greasing the wheels, playing right into the system. Greasing Murphy’s wheels.”

“What’s going on?” John demanded. He seemed almost frightened by not knowing what was going on. A power trip that he wasn’t part of. Frightening.

“We’d be playing right into it anyway,” I said, “if we tried to buy her off on Monday.”

“It’s not the same,” Herbie said. “You got to believe in justice sometime. You got to believe that if this stuff went to the papers, and the district attorney—”

“No,” I said. I didn’t believe it. And for some reason, I remembered a conversation I’d once had with my father about Boston justice. I was telling him how Super Spade got busted, and then bought himself off. He refused to believe the story. I tried to make him believe it—believe that everyone in Boston, from the mayor to the garbage collectors, was crooked. “But think what that means, or would mean if it were true,” my father said. I had never thought about it. Not really. But I was thinking now.

“It won’t work,” Herbie said. “Even if he agrees, he’ll take the bricks and keep the chick anyway.”

“Maybe not,” I said.

“Maybe not,” Herbie mimicked. “You going to trust him?”

“Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on here?” John shouted.

But by that time I was checking through Sandra’s silverware, plucking at the tines of her forks, trying to find one that sounded good. And when I finally did, I picked up the phone and dialed.

“You’re crazy,” Herbie said.

“Who’re you calling?” John said. His voice had a slight whine now, a very atypical voice for John. I began to see him differently.

This time, a male voice answered the phone directly. An irritable male: “Hello.”

“Lieutenant Murphy?” I said. I looked over at Herbie and John. John was beginning to get the picture. His mouth was open.

“Yeah.”

“Is this Lieutenant Murphy?” I said again.

“Yeah.”

“I’m calling with a business proposition and—”

“Not interested. Goodbye—”

“Wait,” I said. I had a flash of desperation. But the bastard waited. I could hear him breathing at the other end. “I’ve got twelve bricks here,” I said. “They were… borrowed from a gentleman in Boston. As you know, their market value is in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars. I’d like you to have them.”

“What for?” He was growling, but he was interested.

“All we want is the girl,” I said. “Drop charges and release her. We’ll get the twelve bricks to you.”

“That’s not good enough, sonny,” Murphy said. “Goodbye.”

By now, though, I knew he wasn’t going to hang up. “As a demonstration of faith,” I said, “we will arrange for you to receive four bricks tonight. You’ll get the rest on her release.”

“Six bricks,” Murphy said.

“Six bricks?” I said. “That seems an awful lot.”

“Six bricks,” Murphy said, “and not one less.”

“You’re not being very reasonable, Lieutenant Murphy,” I said. “But if you want six bricks, then…” and here I plucked the tines of the fork “… six it will be.”

“What was that?” Murphy said.

“Are we agreed on six bricks?” I said. And I plucked the tines once more. It didn’t make a very realistic sound, but then, it didn’t have to.

“What was that noise?”

“We’ll call you in an hour,” I said, “to tell you where you can collect the bricks. Is that satisfactory?”

“What was that noise?” But he knew damned well what the noise was, or thought he knew.

“We want you to be honest,” I said. “That’s just our way of keeping things up front. We’ll talk to you in an hour.” And I hung up.

Herbie was staring at me. “Far out,” he said.

John said, “What was the fork stuff?”

“Brilliant,” Herbie said, “brilliant. We can drop the bricks at the Museum of Science, and—”

“What was the fork?” John said.

I plucked it again, and listened to the brief twink it made. “Our tape recorder,” I said, and began to laugh.

50

“MURPHY’S FORKED HIMSELF,” Herbie laughed. I was laughing so hard there were tears in my eyes.

Only John wasn’t laughing. He was frowning and staring at the bricks. Then he frowned and stared at us. And finally he said, “He’ll still rip you off.”

“Who?” I said. “Murphy? After we taped him?”

“Yeah,” John said. He didn’t explain. He just sat back and watched us as we stopped laughing slowly, the laughs turning into coughs, and then silence.

“What do you mean?” Herbie said.

“I mean,” John said, “that Murphy is going to sit back and ask himself what kind of taping device makes a beeping noise. And he’s going to decide that only a commercial device does—like they use for telephone interviews on the news radios and stuff. And he’s going to decide that a bunch of snot-nosed kids don’t have a commercial device, that they have a kitchen fork and are trying to rip him off.”

I shook my head. “He’s not that smart.”

I looked over at Herbie for confirmation. Herbie was staring at his feet.

John said, “Murphy’ll take your six bricks, keep the girl, and figure out a way to bust you later on.”

“No way,” I said, and laughed. But John wasn’t laughing, and Herbie wasn’t laughing. And I began thinking about Murphy, and the interrogation room in San Francisco, and I began to think that maybe they were right on. Murphy was a pig—the pig.

I stood up. “All right,” I said. “The only way is to arrange a trade.”

John shook his head. “Who do you think you’re messing with, man?”

But by now I was thinking very fast, and seeing things clearly. Seeing how it could be done. I picked up the phone again.

“What’re you doing?” Herbie said.

I just dialed the number.

There is no building in Boston quite like South Station. It’ll be torn down soon for some new structure, but in the meantime, it is unique: giant, cavernous, dirty, and deserted. Especially at three o’clock in the morning. The faint smell of piss hung over everything—the dirty walls, the cracked wooden benches, the handful of sailors and derelicts who were sitting around.

I arrived by taxi and walked in the west entrance. It had once been pretty fashionable, with a broad metal overhead canopy leading through six swinging doors to the inside. Just back of the doors were rows of telephone booths. I paused at one to take down the number. Then I went back outside. There was a taxi rank lined up at the curb, the drivers sitting back in their cars, smoking cigarettes. I went to the first cab and said to the driver, “I want you to do me a favor.”

“Sure,” he said. “You and the President.”

I held out a ten-spot. He looked appeased. “What’s the story?”

“In half an hour,” I said, “a man will get into your taxi and say he is a police officer. Ask to see his identification. If he produces it, drive him to the Newton tolls. This should cover everything.” I wagged the ten dollar bill.

“That right?” the driver said.

“This is police business,” I said gravely.

“It don’t sound—”

“Okay,” I said, and started down the line toward the second taxi.

“Just a minute!”

I went back and looked at my driver. His name, I could read on the seat-plate identification card, was Joseph V. Murphy. Naturally.

“Just a minute,” he said. “The Newton tolls?”

“Yeah.”

“Fifteen bucks and I’ll take him. That covers my waiting time. I might get a customer, you know.”

I looked around the deserted station entrance. What the hell. “Okay,” I said. “Fifteen.” I gave him the money, and made a production out of writing down his name and license number. He watched me do it.

“What’s this all about?” he said.

“Undercover,” I said. “Narcotics division.” The cabby looked at me. Then he looked at the fifteen dollars. Then he nodded, and I went back inside.

The first part was completed. I re-checked the telephone number in the booth. I sat in the booth and looked out. From where I sat, I could see through to the street and to the warehouses beyond. There were dozens of windows, all dark, in the buildings across the street.

Perfect.

Whistling now, I went into the innards of the station. A train was pulling up on one of the far tracks; I heard the metallic screech of brakes and the hiss of steam. Otherwise, it was silent. A half-dozen sailors sat laughing drunkenly on one of the benches near the center of the room. I went over and sat down next to them, placing my nondescript suitcase (an old one of Sandra’s, wiped of prints) at my feet. The sailors ignored me. After a moment I leaned over toward the nearest one and said, “I got to take a leak. Watch my bag?”

“Yeah, sure,” the sailor said, and kept on talking with his friends. I wandered off.

Fifteen minutes to go. I kept glancing at my watch. I looked back at the sailors, wondering if they’d decide to take off with the bag or maybe open it. But they weren’t paying any attention. I went over to the train schedules, pretended to read them, and then wandered over to a far corner of the station, where there were more telephone booths. I sat down in one of them. I could barely see the booths near the entrance; they were perhaps a hundred yards away, and down a slight incline.

I waited.

I kept thinking of things that could go wrong. A million things could go wrong. For instance, he could flood the place with narcs—but that would mean he’d have to split the take, or else he’d have to play it straight. Too much bread in it for that to happen. Unless Murphy was going to be honest. A dreary thought.

I waited some more.

At three-thirty I looked over at the west entrance. Nobody there. Five more minutes passed, and still no one arrived. I was beginning to worry. And then I saw him come through the doors.

Sukie was with him. No cuffs. He’d done it—he’d gotten her off, charges dropped, and brought her to South Station for the exchange. Just as I’d told him.

For a moment, I felt exhilaration, and then caution. Murphy stood with Sukie in the center of the west entrance, waiting. He said something to her; she shook her head.

I put my dime into the receiver and dialed. Faintly, I could hear the phone ringing in the booth near where she was standing with Murphy. They ignored it for a moment. Then Murphy looked over at the pay phone. One pay phone in a row of twelve just doesn’t start ringing at three-thirty in the morning for no reason. He went over to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Good morning, lieutenant.”

I could see his body stiffen. He started looking around, back toward the inside of the station, and then outside.

“Forget that,” I said. “I’m where I can see you, and you can’t see me—unless you want to search a lot of buildings.” That one worked; he was looking out toward the warehouses.

“Is the girl free?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me talk to her a minute.”

“I want those—”

“Let me talk to her. I’m watching you.”

“You son of a—”

“You want to blow it, Murphy? And have to book her again? What would they think about that, down at the station?”

There was a long silence. Then he waved Sukie over. He remained sitting in the booth. He held his hand over the receiver, said something to her, and then gave her the phone.

“Hello?”

“Sukie,” I said, “don’t speak. Just listen. I want you to answer yes or no to my questions. Have you been released?”

“Yes.”

“Have charges been dropped?”

“Yes.”

“Is Murphy alone?”

“I think so.”

“All right. Give the phone back to him.”

She did. I watched Murphy take the receiver. “All right now you little—”

“First of all,” I said, “send the girl to stand by the information booth in the center of the station. Then go over to the sailors inside. You’ll see a black suitcase near one of them. The suitcase contains six bricks. Go check that.”

“What about the rest?”

“I’ll tell you about it.”

Murphy put down the receiver. He said something to Sukie, who walked away from him. Then he went over to the sailors and demanded the suitcase. They protested. He flashed his badge. They gave it to him. He walked back to the telephone, sat down, opened the suitcase and checked.

“The bricks there?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“All right. Here’s how you get the rest. Go out to the taxi rank and get into the first cab. Say you are a policeman and show identification. The driver will take you to where the rest of the bricks are—and they’ll be there, if nothing happens to the girl in the meantime. Understand?”

“Yeah.” Very low.

“Anything happens to the girl between now and then, and by the time you get to the drop-off, the stuff’ll be gone. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” And I hung up.

Murphy closed the suitcase and walked out toward the door. At the door he was met by three other men in raincoats. So he had been planning something, after all. He spoke to the men; they glanced at Sukie, standing alone in the middle of the station. The men went away. Murphy got into the cab.

The cab drove off.

It was over. I got out of the booth and went to the center of South Station, put my arms around her, and kissed her.

51

MURPHY’S TRIP TO THE NEWTON tolls was a waste of time. There was no more dope at the Newton tolls that night than there was on any other night. Six bricks wasn’t much of a burn, but it was the best we could do for such a close friend.

All Sukie had to say in the taxi back to Cambridge was “How can those bastards arrest you and then decide, two days later, that they don’t have enough evidence to hold you?”

“It’s not easy,” I said, laughing.

She laughed with me.