by Lionel White
The trip took less than fifteen minutes, and although I was not familiar with the geography of San Francisco, I was quite sure when the heavy car finally came to a stop that we were somewhere in the heart of Chinatown. The street sounds, even in the early hours of the morning, were a tip-off, and there was a certain odor in the atmosphere that was unmistakable.
My two back-seat companions accompanied me, one on each side, as we walked up a short flight of stairs and then down what seemed to be a long, narrow hallway. There were three more flights of very steep stairs. At the top we made a right-hand turn; a door opened and we entered a room. I was eased into a seat on a large, leather couch, the blindfold was removed, and I was attempting to adjust my eyes to the dim outlines of the room, when I heard the door close, and I sensed that my guides had left.
There was a heavy odor of incense in the almost completely darkened room, and as I attempted to make out objects, a tensor light, some fifteen feet away, came to life, exposing the flat top of a large, square, teak desk. The shadow cast by the light outlined the man who sat behind it.
“You have sought me out and now you are here. Will you please state your business.”
The voice was a thin, high falsetto, and the pronunciation of the words was almost too precise. I was still unable to make out the man’s features, but I was convinced that the voice belonged to an Oriental.
I said, “I’m looking for Mr. O’Farrell. Charlie sent���”
“You are talking to O’Farrell, Mr. Johns. Will you please state your business.”
“I was told by a man named Bongo in Saigon that you deal in a certain commodity in which I have a great deal of interest.”
“I deal in many commodities, Mr. Johns.”
“In that case, I am sure we can do business. I have been in San Francisco for exactly two weeks, and during that time I have purchased at one place or another-in Height Ashbury, down by the wharfs, at certain motels, in this area itself, on Telegraph Hill, and other places-something in the neighborhood of fifty individual joints. I have found them to be uniformly poor in quality.”
“And what would that have to do with me, Mr. Johns?”
“I will not beat about the bush. It is my understanding that you probably control most of the traffic in this area, marijuana as well as other assorted goods. I am interested in improving the quality of the product, one specific product. Grass.”
A second light suddenly came on, illuminating the figure behind the desk. I had been correct in my guess, and I was sitting some fifteen to eighteen feet away from a thin, elderly Chinese. Rather than inscrutability, his expression was one of pained amusement. He slowly stood up, and I saw that he was dressed in a conventional American business suit.
“Are you telling me, Mr. Johns, that you have gone to all this trouble and bother to find me so that you can pick up a kilo or so of superior quality merchandise?”
I shook my head.
“A kilo is two and two-tenths pounds,” I said. “I am not interested in kilos. I am not interested in pounds. I am interested in tons.”
A half-annoyed, half-amused expression lighted his face, and he slowly sat down.
“I do not sell by the ton,” he said. “I buy by the ton.”
“Exactly my point, Mr. O’Farrell,” I said. “You buy and I am selling.”
Perhaps two or three minutes went by before he spoke.
And then, almost sighing, he said, “And what gives you the impression that I am in the market?”
“If you are not in the market, you should be. Believing, as I do, that you are in control of most of the grass that is retailed in this town, and having made a wide sampling of that grass, I can only say that your product is completely inferior, and that I am prepared to supply you, probably at little more than you are now paying, with pure Acapulco Gold. The stuff that’s being peddled here is obviously domestic and possibly only slightly spiked with the real thing.”
Again there was silence, and this time it lasted for a full five minutes. I saw his hand reach for a button on his desk, and a moment later the door opened and a young Chinese entered the room.
O’Farrell, or the man who called himself O’Farrell, spoke a few quick words in Chinese, and the boy who had entered took a gold cigarette-case from his pocket. He walked over and handed me a stick. It was slender, about two and a quarter inches long, wrapped in brown rice-paper.
There were a couple of more words in Chinese, and he took out a lighter and held it to the joint as I put it to my lips. I took a puff, a deep puff, and held it. After I had slowly released it, I repeated the performance another two or three times.
The boy was holding out an ashtray, and I butted out the joint. He turned and left the room. Again the high falsetto voice spoke, “And what did you think of that sample?”
“That is nothing like anything I have been able to buy in this town so far,” I said. “That was Acapulco Gold.”
“You are right. That is what we do, dilute it with the local product. And are you trying to tell me that you can supply it by the ton?”
I told him that I could. He stared at me skeptically and shook his head.
“Mr. Johns, I happen to know that you have been in this city for only two weeks. I also happen to know that you have only recently been discharged from the armed forces and have not been in Mexico since you arrived on these shores. I should like to know exactly how you intend���”
I cut him short. “How I intend to do it is my business. Assuming I can meet the quality of that stick I just sampled and that I can deliver in lots of a ton, more or less, in this city, are you interested?”
“And the price, Mr. Johns?”
“The price will be subject to certain fluctuations. However, I can guarantee to deliver you the real thing for within ten to fifteen percent of what you are paying for this garbage you are now peddling.”
“And what proof do I have of that, Mr. Johns?”
“The only proof you need is the acceptance of delivery. Show me that the market is here, and I will assure you that you will receive your product.”
There was silence for several minutes, and finally he looked up. “And you want nothing in advance?”
“Nothing. I will be back in San Francisco within thirty days. I will be carrying one hundred and fifty kilos of first-grade Mexican marijuana. I will expect to be paid in cash on the line for it.”
He interrupted me. “I thought we were talking about tons, Mr. Johns?”
“Second delivery will be your ton. I cannot finance a ton on my first delivery. After I have been paid for the first delivery, I shall be able to handle the second, and that will be a ton.”
“You wouldn’t care to tell me exactly how you intend���”
Again I cut him short. “How I do it is my affair. I can only assure you that I will live up to my end of the bargain. Will you live up to yours?”
Again he stood up.
“When you return to San Francisco with your cargo, contact me. Use the same method you used before. And now, I will see that you are driven back to your hotel.”
2
I arrived back at the Mark Hopkins at a little after 4:30 A.M., and I was tempted to catch a cat nap before checking out and starting south. But I was keyed up and anxious to get on the road, anxious to embark on the second stage of my plan.
I would cut the long trip into two parts and find a motel somewhere north of the border and rest up before completing my journey. There was no longer anything holding me in San Francisco. The car was ready, and I had stopped in at the local branch of the Bank of Hong Kong the day before and withdrawn the money I had deposited there over the last several years.
As dawn broke over the horizon, I found myself south of Monterey, following Route 1, down the coastline. I had selected this route purposely, knowing that it was a particularly tough road, narrow, with steep grades, sharp turns, and dangerous precipices on the ocean side. I wanted to give the Jaguar a thorough breaking-in under
difficult circumstances, and I was particularly anxious to hit this stretch of road when there would be little or no traffic.
I was anxious, not only to see how the car would perform, but also to get used to driving it. During the last four years my experience had been pretty much confined to army jeeps and command cars.
By the time I reached Santa Barbara and picked up the freeway, I was satisfied. I was also getting very, very tired. I gassed up in Ventura, and so I drove the freeways through Greater Los Angeles, heading southward and didn’t stop again, except for coffee, until I was on the outskirts of San Diego.
My next job was to fix myself up with exactly the right kind of boat. She had to be equipped for sport fishing and in top condition. I wanted full electronics, including radar. I didn’t want a commercial boat. I wanted one owned by a private party, preferably someone who belonged to a prominent yacht club and carried its burgee.
It took a few telephone calls, but at last I found a man who had the right vessel, and I went and looked her over. He told me she’d be available the following month, but that I must make my reservation well in advance.
It was almost dusk when I was again on the road, heading toward the border, where I would eventually cross over to Tijuana.
Again, in spite of being tired and exhausted, I was tempted to go on, and probably would have, if I hadn’t spotted a small, broken-down motel off to the left of the road, a few miles from the border. It was a dingy-looking place with less than a score of cabins, and there was a lone 1956 Cadillac with dented fenders in front of the office. A neon sign with two letters missing read: Cabins. Single, $5. Double, $6.
The price was right. The place looked crummy, but after that forty-dollar-a-day deal in San Francisco, I felt it was time I became a little frugal. I pulled up and stopped in front of a sign which read: Happy Hours Lodge.
I took the bag out of the back of the Jag and entered through a torn screen-door into a sad and discouraged office.
It made a liar out of the name sign outside.
The room was virtually bare, except for a fly-speckled, glass-topped desk, on which there were a few outdated copies of sporting magazines, a moth-eaten registration book, and a bell with a button on top to summon the manager. At least the sign said: Ring for Manager.
I dropped my bag on the floor and pushed the bell.
Nothing happened.
I punched it again, and a voice from somewhere behind the closed door said, “One minute, I’m coming.”
It was a woman’s tired voice, and a moment later the door leading into the interior opened, but it wasn’t a woman who opened the door. It was a young girl, somewhere in her late teens. She was holding by the hand a five-or six-year-old boy with a dirty face and wearing soiled pajamas. She was a blonde, with very blue eyes and a beautiful complexion. She had the face of an angel, and in spite of the ragged Levi’s and open-throated, man’s shirt she was wearing, it was obvious that she had a body to match.
She was a damned sight too beautiful to be in a dump like the Happy Hours Lodge, and she was too young to be the mother of the child she held by the hand, unless someone had taken a chance on a prison sentence for seducing a preadolescent.
I gave her a tired smile, as tired as her voice.
“If you’re the manager here, I’d like a room.”
She didn’t smile back. She merely looked at me with a peculiarly curious expression.
“You want a room here?” She asked it as though she doubted my sanity.
“For tonight.”
She pushed the register toward me, and I signed it. She watched me as though I were making some sort of terrible mistake.
“That will be five dollars,” she said.
I took five dollars from my wallet, and she reached for a key on the rack behind the desk.
“Number One. First cabin next to the office,” she said.
I asked her if I could have a bucket of ice, and she told me she would bring it to the room in a few minutes.
“You want Cokes, there’s a machine outside the door.”
The child in the dirty pajamas began crying for some obscure reason as I hoisted my bag and started for the door. She was talking to him in a soothing voice when the door slammed behind me.
The room was just about what I would have expected for five dollars at the Happy Hours Lodge. There was a double bed with a soiled counterpane. The night stand next to it supported a lamp with the bulb missing, and a naked, forty-watt bulb in the ceiling fixture failed to conceal the fact that the flowered paper on the walls was peeling and that the linoleum on the floor was dirt encrusted and cracked with age. The single window facing the road was covered by faded drapes, and these half hid a green shade pulled down to the top of an air conditioner which,’ surprisingly enough, turned out to be in working order.
The formica-topped desk sat on one side of the room, and, oddly, it looked new. There was a straight-backed chair in front of it and, next to it, a folding rack for a suitcase.
The bathroom was about what I might have guessed. The small sink was rust-stained, and it was impossible to stop the drip from the cold-water faucet. The shower was one of those square, tin contrivances, sold by Sears Roebuck. The towels were clean and freshly laundered, and there were two small, wrapped cakes of soap with the name of another motel on them. There were two glasses enclosed in sanitary wrappings on the cracked glass-shelf over the sink.
I had put my bag on the rack and opened it and found the bottle of Jack Daniels. I took off my jacket and hung it on a hook, loosened my neck tie, and sat in the Naugahyde chair next to the bed. It faced a television set with a broken knob, but I couldn’t have cared less whether the TV worked or not.
I waited for the ice. Lights from a car flashed across the window, and I heard the sound of a dying engine, as heavy-rubber tires crushed the gravel, drive outside the door of my room. I stood up and reached in my pocket for some change, opened my door, and went out to find the Coke machine.
The driver of the truck, which had pulled up next to my Jaguar, was entering the office.
The Cokes were fifteen cents, and I didn’t have the proper change, but there was a sign saying that change would be given for a quarter. I put a quarter in the machine, the Coke came out, but I didn’t get the change. I went back to the room to wait for the ice.
The Coke was cold, and I opened it, took one of the glasses, and had a straight shot, using the Coke as a chaser. I figured I had a few more minutes to wait, and I was right. I was considering a second straight shot without the ice, when there was a light knock on the door.
I said, “Come in.”
She had combed back her hair, put on a little lipstick and eyeshadow, but it was wasted. With her face, she didn’t need anything. She was carrying a cardboard bucket filled with ice cubes.
This time she gave me the trace of a smile as she set the ice on the formica desk.
“I’m sorry to be so long,” she said. “We had another customer, and I had to put Johnny to bed.”
She hesitated a moment, and her eyes flickered to the bottle of Jack Daniels.
“Will there be anything else?”
I still don’t quite understand why I said what I did next. I was dead tired, exhausted from the long drive. All I wanted was sleep. Another shot or two, then eight hours of solid rest.
“Nothing else,” I said, “unless you would like to have a drink with me. You look as tired as I feel, and if you are, maybe a drink would help.”
The smile left her face, and again she gave me that peculiar, half-questioning look. It wasn’t so much that she was wondering what my motives might be in asking her to have the drink, as it was surprise that I had asked her. And then she shrugged, hunched her shoulders, went over to the straight-backed chair in front of the desk and sat down.
“I’d love one,” she said.
I retrieved the other glass from the bathroom, filled both glasses with ice cubes, plus a couple of ounces of bourbon, and added Coke to one
glass. I was about to do the same to the second when she shook her head.
“I’ll take it straight.”
I handed her the glass, and before I could go back to my chair, she downed it in two gulps. You would have thought it was mother’s milk.
I put my glass on the floor beside my chair, without touching it, walked over and took the glass out of her hand and poured another double shot in it.
This time, when she smiled, she gave me the full treatment. She lifted her glass in a small salute, but didn’t gulp it. Just took a sip and held on.
“Are you the manager of this���”
“This dump?” she finished for me.
She wasn’t being bitter, merely accurate.
“Not the manager,” she said. “He’s, down the road getting drunk again. I’m Sharon.”
She said it as though it explained everything.
“You work here, then?”
“You might call it that. But, my God, would I do anything to get away.”
“If you want to get away, why don’t you just leave?”
She smiled, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile.
“He’d kill me. That’s what he’d do. He’d beat me to death.”
“Who’d kill you? The manager? Who is he? Your father?”
“Not my father.”
“All right then,” I said, “you’re free, white, and twenty-one���”
“Eighteen,” she said.
“All right then, you are free, white, and eighteen. What’s holding you? Why don’t you just go? Nobody can keep you if you don’t want to stay.”
She stood up and turned her back to me, and her hands went behind her, and she jerked the man’s shut out of the Levi’s and lifted it half over her head. She didn’t say anything, and there was no need for her to say anything.
For a moment, I myself was unable to say anything, as I stared at her naked back. It was criss-crossed with ugly, red welts. She let go of the shirt, not bothering to tuck it in, and turned around and reached for the Jack Daniels bottle.
“That’s what the son-of-a-bitch did to me this morning, when he found me packing a suitcase.”