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

  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.