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

  “It means,” she said, “oh, just that you don’t fuck with what you don’t understand.”

  “I’m not nice,” I said, withdrawing my hand. “As a matter of fact, I’m impotent. And I don’t like people who make jokes about it. So let’s have another smoke and forget about it.”

  She nodded, and as she did she leaned forward to light the joint in the flame of the candle, her skin glowing smoothly, hair pulled back as far as it would go, as if to keep it out of the flame and as I watched her fiercely puffing on the joint, I understood. There was something a little odd about her left eye, which had been covered until now by hair, it seemed a little out of focus. It made me happy and angry at the same time, this ridiculous, dangerous, vicious game we were playing, now that I began to understand the rules, and I could not laugh as I wanted to. Finally I said, “Give me the joint, would you?”

  She handed the smoke over and got up to change the record. “What do you want to hear?” she asked, from behind me.

  “You just put that on, just a minute ago.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said.

  “Big deal,” I said.

  I could hear her flipping through the albums. They made a slapping sound and she said, “It doesn’t bother you?”

  I was suddenly angry with her for drawing it out. She had trusted me, she had shown me—and now what was all this crap? I said, “Is it supposed to?”

  She came back over. “That was not nice,” she said.

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  Very softly, “Are you pissed?”

  “No, why should I be?” I was blowing my mind.

  She was quiet for a long time before she spoke again. Her voice was full and throaty when she did. “Do you have someone?”

  “Are you asking, or do you want to know?” It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to talk about, just then.

  I flashed on Annie and she said, “Yeah, that happened to me, too.”

  I looked at her, disbelieving.

  “This guy and I had a real good thing going,” she went on, “but he thought he could treat me like shit.”

  I looked at her, feeling something like affection. I thought I was going to laugh when she said, “You remind me a little of him,” and I breathed out in a rush.

  “Thanks, I’m overwhelmed.”

  She laughed. “No, no,” she said, “just the way he looked. And you don’t even look that much like him. He was a prick.”

  “Oh,” I said, not knowing what else to say but suddenly laughing at the whole scene, at the fear and anger which was so important and then not even important enough to be remembered. I looked up at her and she was laughing too.

  “The only thing is”—still laughing—“I can’t stand those duds you got on. Do you go around like that when you’re in Cambridge?” I nodded. “All the time?” I nodded again. “I couldn’t stand it,” she said. “It must be like walking around inside a tank.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “Why don’t you get out of them?”

  “I’m wrecked,” I explained, and she just nodded and came around the table and leaned over to undo my shirt. I pulled her down to me on the floor and kissed her hard.

  Then she was tickling my ear with her tongue, saying, “Your jacket’s going to get dirty.”

  “It comes clean.”

  “Come on,” she said, “let’s get in bed.”

  “You were taking my shirt off,” I said, kissing her. She started unbuttoning and I picked her up and carried her to the bed.

  “Is everyone at Harvard such a gentleman?” she whispered, and I dropped her. Laughs.

  Somebody was knocking on the door.

  “He’s not in,” I said, and sat down to take my socks off. Another, heavier, knock, and a thick voice asking for me. “Nobody’s home,” I said. Christ, take a hint.

  And then the door was open and three cats were in the room, all wearing gray pin-stripe suits and looking like walk-ons for Robert Stack. Dangling their wallet badges before I could get my glasses on.

  “FBI,” said the first man.

  15

  “YOUR NAME HARKNESS?” barked another.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You rented a ’69 Mustang from Hertz today?”

  “Sounds familiar. What can I do for you?”

  Silence. Then, “We just want to look around.” Spoken in typical deadly Oh Nothing plainclothesman tones. Deadly. The speaker was a skinny guy with a crew cut. He had 86-proof brains you could smell across the room, and his neck was covered with acne. He started looking and so did the other two, poking here and there in the room and in the corridor outside.

  I suddenly remembered Sukie’s lid and got a woozy rush of anticipation, but I couldn’t see it on the table, so maybe she’d stashed it. At any rate, I decided to try to get them out of the room as soon as possible.

  “Since we haven’t been formally introduced …” I said. Nobody looked up. “You wouldn’t mind telling me what you’re doing here?” I continued.

  “We would,” Crew Cut said. Okay, fair enough.

  “In that case, you wouldn’t mind producing a search warrant.” Fuck these dudes. First thing I’d done when I’d gotten into dealing was to read a manual on search-and-seizure techniques, complete with the latest test cases, rights of the citizen, common police ploys. All the dope, as the saying goes. And so I wasn’t about to stand around and watch while these jokers turned the place upside down.

  I repeated my question.

  “Why don’t you shut up,” Crew Cut said.

  I decided to be indignant. “You know as well as I do that you need a search warrant to go over this place,” I said.

  Sukie was lying on the bed, the blankets twisted around her, looking unhappily at her dress on the floor. One of the cops stepped on the dress as he walked around the room.

  “And I have a witne—”

  “Listen, Harkness,” the third one said, fat with glasses and a choked, menacing voice, “if I were you I’d keep quiet just now, because—”

  “Because what, cop?” I said. I was getting mad. “Right now you’re up for breaking and entering, illegal search and, for all I know, seizure, besides—”

  “Besides, you’re under arrest,” Crew Cut said. “For possession. Put your shirt on, you’re coming down with us.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I just stared at them as they moved around the room, shuffling and sniffing and poking at things. I was trying to figure out if one of them had picked up Sukie’s lid, but they didn’t act like it.

  “I’m what?”

  “Under arrest, candy-ass. Now move it.”

  If they were bluffing, I figured, I might as well follow them down the line. “On charges of possession?” I said. “I’m clean. Go ahead, look around all you want, you won’t find anything on me.”

  I was scared and Crew Cut was looking pleased. “Sure we don’t need a search warrant?” he said.

  “Let’s go, kid,” said another.

  There was nothing to do but go. Sukie gave me a So Sad To Be Lonesome look as I got dressed, and I saw how suddenly cold and tired she looked, huddled up in the blanket. Meanwhile the cops kept looking around, but miraculously didn’t find anything, not even the roaches. I got all my clothes on and was knotting my tie.

  “Forget that,” Crew Cut said. “There’s plenty of time for that.”

  I watched them nosing around the room, and felt like laughing. It was almost impossible to take them seriously, with their cops-and-robbers huffing and puffing and the staid, predictable way they played the scene. As if they were actually playing a scene. I felt like I was watching TV—this kind of thing happened to people on TV, not to real flesh-and-blood persons. I was a spectator at my own bust.

  Then one of them turned to the dude with the glasses and said, “Hey Murph, you want the girlie?” I felt tight and weak until Glasses said, “Naw. Just candy-ass here.”

  Then they twirled me around, grabbed both wrists and pulled them
tight behind me, and slapped on the cuffs. Wrenched them shut.

  “What’s the point of that,” I said. “I’m non-violent.” It was a joke, if a grim one.

  “How are we s’posed to know that?” said Crew Cut, dead serious.

  “He’s bleeding,” said Sukie. “You’ve got them on so tight he’s bleeding.” I hadn’t noticed, but I took her word for it.

  “Relax, lady,” said Glasses, the one they called Murph. “Lover-boy here can take it. Right?” He slapped me on the back and I stumbled out of the room.

  Out in the hallway I went up against the wall. A good frisk with a knee in the balls, special delivery from Crew Cut.

  “What the hell,” I said, “you watched me get dressed.” Very loud, hoping to wake someone up.

  “Shut up,” they said, taking me downstairs.

  In the downstairs hall, I could see their faces better. Crew Cut was very young, with pimples all over his face as well as his neck. No wonder he was being the tough guy, I thought. This may be his debut. He was glowering ferociously as we left the house.

  The second guy looked like a butcher putting on airs. A nouveau riche butcher. Rolled old ladies for their opera tickets so he could fart in a box seat. Butcher needed a shave and some deodorant.

  The third guy Murph, the one with the glasses, looked strangely familiar. He was a mean-looking son of a bitch, short and stocky, with closely cropped gray hair, forty-five years old, maybe fifty. His face was smooth, round, complacent: the face of a pig who’d been getting fattened by the farmer all year but hadn’t yet figured out what for. His voice was as stiff as his walk and sounded like he’d forgotten how to laugh.

  Law and Order, I thought. Bring Us Together.

  Outside, the patrol car was waiting, a bored cop in the driver’s seat. We drove off into the night, one narc on each side of me. Nobody said anything. The narcs seemed suddenly as bored and passionless as the automaton at the wheel. Finally I said, “What have you got on me, anyway?”

  No answer. Everybody was engrossed in the empty, pale night streets.

  “Well listen,” I said, “long as you’re running me in, you might as well—”

  “Just shut up, huh, punk?” one of them said. Lazily, enjoying it.

  I couldn’t believe it. What was this shit, anyway, the drive-ins or a special number they did for guys like me.

  After a few minutes one of them turned to me. “We got your friend,” he said.

  “My friend?”

  “Yeah. We got him. Took us a while to find out where you were. Sorry about the delay.” Chuckles. I was delighted to see that somebody was having a good time.

  “My friend?” I said again.

  “Look, buddy, how dumb are you? There’s no use fucking around with us. It’s over. We got the whole story. Picked up your friend and found the shit. So don’t fucking waste our time.”

  Crew Cut turned around from the front seat to look at me. “See, punk, this time it’s for real. It’s all for real.” Then he laughed. “Christ, you guys are all the same. Like that guy we picked up last week—hey, Murph, you ’member the guy on the beach? Yeah. We picked up this guy on the beach in Frisco last week, busted him while he was shooting up. He had his whole outfit right there with him, along with half a bag of scag, and he was so smacked out of his mind that the whole way in to the station he wouldn’t do nothing but tell us what a great guy God was.” Titters all around. Crew Cut was being appreciated. “Goddamn. The whole way, the guy stuck to this one story. Said he just went down to the beach to meditate, ’cause he wanted a bag of scag so bad that he’d decided to pray to God, and suddenly—this is what he says, he says, ‘and then suddenly, Officer, God answered my prayers, and that bag, my bag you got there, that bag just dropped into my lap, right out of the sky.’ Wouldn’t tell us anything more. Christ, you guys are all the same.”

  More titters. Even the cop who was driving joined in. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable.

  “I want to see my lawyer,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Crew Cut. “At the station.”

  16

  I FINALLY GOT THE STORY when I was booked. Lou was driving around in the car and the brake lights hadn’t been working, so the cops pulled him over for a routine check. And Lou hadn’t had his license, and nothing but rental papers in place of registration, so they had decided the car was stolen, called in the FBI, and given him a good going-over. Along with the car. It was then that they’d found a lid of Lou’s grass under the seat.

  So they ran him in, and he swore that it was my grass and my car, and that he’d just innocently borrowed it. He had become extremely helpful, and even gave them Musty’s address.

  So they busted me.

  It was just a freak accident, the kind of dreary, half-assed thing that could happen to anybody. I couldn’t even get very angry about it.

  The walls of the cell were green.

  17

  NOTES FROM JAIL: BROUGHT TO you by the silent majority of Alameda County. Arrival sensations. Jail really exists. Astoundingly dull. In conception, execution, duration, the idea of jail is a watershed in man’s inanity to man. Does have its good points. A raving genius couldn’t possibly have thought of a simpler way to drive one absolutely crazy. Sense deprivation child’s play compared to this. Jail is will deprivation. No life. Death meaningless. Ambition a torture. Failure a vision in steel.

  More: It goes on. Green everywhere, bathroom green. Like going blind from an overdose of ethyl crème de menthe. County runs a tight ship. Enter jail proper, all personal effects removed and checked. Money, matches, belt, shoestrings. Don’t want people hanging themselves by their shoestrings. Then on to converted shower stall, also green, big enough for three men sitting. Five men are standing. Pay phone on wall, am allowed two calls, lawyer and bondsman. Names of bondsmen scrawled all over the wall, no lawyers. Search-and-seizure manual forgot to tell me they take my money away when I come in. I can’t call. Others are calling. Suddenly realize they’ve been through all this before. Have to have been through it to know the ropes, like everything else. Whacked out old bestubbled wino asking everyone if he can blow them. Sorry bud. Gets heavy and I start singing. Very effective. Yell till your lungs burst but singing drives the guards crazy. Transferred immediately to cell by myself.

  Cell: Incredible. Everything electric, controlled from out in the hall. No keys, like in the movies. Bars four inches apart and cross-riveted, can’t cut and bend. Mine one of eight cells looking onto large room connected to mess room and guards’ corridor. Altogether ten doors for the one block, all controlled from corridor. More green. Bare bulbs on all day all night, no sunlight. No air. No idea what time, they have taken my watch. Might slit my wrists. Know that x amount of time has elapsed due to unidentifiable slop brought around twice a day. Never eat but go out to mess room, a chance to leave the cell. Doors lock behind even in mess. Four steel slats riveted to wall in my cell, one has a blanket. Somehow it is cold after dinner, good to have a blanket. Light directly overhead through grating, wish I had something to poke it out. Combination can-drinking fountain in my cell, attached to wall. I piss on mess floor. Anything to fuck them up.

  Amusements: Good deal of writing on the wall. Jails probably the most creative places in America. No time, have to create your own. Tremendous variety. Slogans, dates, epithets, jokes, obscenities. Some take me back to fourth grade, others brilliant. Everything indelible because scratched into paint of wall. No pens allowed. Layers of painted-over graffiti beneath current coat of paint. Deciphering these provides blessedly time-consuming endeavor. One magazine in cell, old copy of Life last seen in parents’ living room. The Grandeur That Was Egypt. Very appropriate for jail. All is Lost Empire here. Carefully drawn life-size penis inserted into Nefertiti’s mouth on cover. Excellent job. Flash: someone smuggled a pen in to do that. Have to know the ropes. Not eating makes me sleepy. I sleep a lot, surprisingly good dreams. All of things I cannot have. In one dream I order a Coke, the guard brings it. I wake
up crying so happy and see green. Back to sleep. I have no matches and can’t smoke. Guards won’t give me any, the cunts. First meal third day they come and take me out. Everything sharp and clear in my head from not eating. Gums hurt from no nicotine. Down the hall the desk. This the Out of Stater? Yeah. Two of the plainclothesmen who picked me up are here. No one in cells looks up as I go. Why bother? They’re still in. Manila envelope with what looks like my name on desk. Wristwatch, belt, ballpoint, blah blah blah. Piece of paper sign here. Where? Here. Plainclothesmen pull my hands behind again, on with the cuffs. Wait a minute, I hear my voice. First time I’ve spoken in three days. It sounds crystal clear. Wait a minute, I had twenty bucks on me when I came in here. Frown behind the desk. See the receipt? See your signature? You signed on, you’re signed off. So get the hell out. Wait a minute, I repeat, I had twenty bucks, see the twenty in the corner there? Behind the desk heavy now. He’d like to work me over cuffed, I think. So that’s your game, huh? he says. Looking at plainclothesmen like Do Him Good For Me. That’s your cell number! he says. About face. Have to know the ropes. Forward march past two guards and through a thick steel door, locks inside and out. Small sign on door says BE SURE TO CLOSE TIGHT AS YOU GO. Don’t worry, fellas, you don’t have to say it twice.

  18

  INTERROGATIONS WAS A FLIGHT UP and had padded chairs. It was a small room but on the way up I passed through an office of busy secretaries and big broad glass windows with the sun coming through. And then I realized that if they’d just wanted to interrogate me they could have done it in the cell, and a lot more privately, too. The fact that they were doing it here meant only one thing—I was out.

  Inside the room they took the cuffs off and I found myself facing Crew Cut and Fats. They sat and stared at me.

  “What day is this?” I said.

  “Tuesday,” Fats said.

  I nodded. Groovy. Economics on Friday. I hoped that Herbie would be in good form when I got back.

  Then the third guy came in, the head pig, and sat down at a desk after making a lot of noise taking off his coat and unbuckling his shoulder holster. He reached into his desk and fumbled around for a moment.