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

by Michael Crichton

  “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 loa
ded?” 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 s
peed 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.