Wedo’s eyes flicked over Alex but without recognition. Wedo’s gaze was unrelentingly on one person: Itchy. Alex walked around the spectators of a snooker game and came up on Wedo from the rear, getting his attention by grabbing his sleeve. Wedo turned, his eyes narrowed for a couple of heartbeats, and then they widened with recognition. “Alex!” he said; it was almost a question. “Holy fuckin’ mackerel! You fuckin’ finally raised.”
“Yeah, man,” Alex said, grinning so wide his facial muscles ached, meanwhile cuffing Wedo’s shoulder while shaking hands. “I’m out again.”
“Man, did you escape again—”
“No, they got weak and let me out—finally. I’m on parole … after almost four fuckin’ years, less those few months on escape. When I went in, I was so young I couldn’t get a hard-on, much less be able to come.”
Wedo still listened, but the exuberance of the surprise quickly disappeared. Wedo’s eyes were over Alex’s shoulder, fastened on Itchy. Alex saw this and understood. “He ain’t goin’ nowhere … but you’d better see him to put your mind at ease.”
“Yeah, man, gotta make sure he’s holdin’ the bag.… Say, you know Itchy?”
“He got out of Preston last year. I knew him there.”
“Yeah, right, I knew he was there—but I just didn’t think to ask him how you were doin’.” He affectionately patted Alex’s back. “I don’t think about too many things lately … one-track mind.”
“Okay, go see him … take care of biz. I’ll be out on the sidewalk. Tell Itchy I said ‘thanks.’”
On the sidewalk, posing with one foot propped on the wall, Alex stood watching the jam of vehicle traffic; the bumper-to-bumper autos inching along in the orange glare of sunset looked like a horde of insects—shiny-backed beetles. Alex felt young and energetic, yearning for adventure and excitement.
Wedo came out and walked by him without speaking, merely gesturing with a hand held low. It was best to get off Temple Street quickly, especially with fresh needle marks on his arms and five capsules of heroin in a cigarette cellophane in his hand, held loosely so the caps wouldn’t melt. The narcotics officers, unable to catch big dealers, kept up their arrest reports by hauling in addicts for vagrancy and picayune possessions. Besides, Wedo was in a hurry. Nobody is more single-minded than a junkie going to fix.
In the darkness around the corner was Wedo’s car, a ten-year-old coupe with a bashed-in right side. The headlight was out, the fender pulled away from the tire, and the right side door held shut by baling wire.
“Slide in the driver’s side,” Wedo said. “It runs pretty good, but I went on the nod and scraped a brick wall.”
“This sure ain’t the Batmobile,” Alex said, sliding under the steering wheel and along the seat to the passenger side. “I can see us making a hot getaway in this fucker … like Laurel and Hardy it’ll look.… Remember that one chase … that cop almost killed me.”
Wedo grunted; he remembered but was too preoccupied with his imminent fix to reminisce now.
The silent ride took ten minutes of smaller streets where they were less likely to meet narcotics detectives or a black-and-white car interested in a dark headlight. The detectives knew Wedo’s car. He was on bail as a vagrant-addict already. He lived in a third-rate residential hotel near Sixth Street and Alvarado. He parked in the alley behind the brick building, and they went up the rear stairs to the second floor. As soon as the door was closed, Wedo not only locked it but also pulled the dresser in front of it. “Just in case,” he said. “They’ll bust a foot if they try to kick it open.” He nodded to the open door of a cramped bathroom. “Get some water.”
Alex brought the water. Wedo was spreading his paraphernalia on the dresser. “At least you’ve got a toilet,” Alex said. Wedo didn’t answer; he was too intent on what he was doing. He went through the same ritual as Itchy, except his blood pressure was down and it took half a dozen probes until the blood squirted up into the eyedropper to mix with the heroin, giving notice that the needle was in a vein. He also “jacked it off,” first squeezing a bit of fluid into his body, then letting the blood rush back into the eyedropper. He did it twice more, and finally squirted the whole thing into himself. Afterward, he wiped the blood from his arm with toilet paper and ran water through the needle. By then the ecstasy of “the flash” was coursing through him. “Mmmm,” he sighed. “Jesus, it’s fuckin’ good dope. I’d give you a taste, but I’ve just got a getup for the morning.” The heroin, at least this amount, made Wedo more voluble and energetic. His attention was now able to turn outward and really acknowledge the presence of his friend. “Man, I didn’t think you were ever gettin’ out,” he said. “I heard stories about you fuckin’ up—had a private war goin’ with the greasers.”
“Just with a few assholes,” Alex said, blushing because Wedo’s comment had been respectful. “What about you? How the fuck did you get hooked? You used to knock heroin.”
Wedo explained that he’d dated a young woman—but older than him, of course—who was a dope fiend whore. She had left her pimp in Texas and didn’t have a connection in L.A. Wedo had bought it for her, on her money, and began taking a fix now and then because she always offered it. The intervals between fixes grew less and less, and finally it was every day. She went back to Texas, and he woke up puking and hooked. “I usually do better than this,” he said, meaning the sleazy room. “Not the Beverly Wilshire, ese, but spots way better than this. But I got pinched last week for marks and the puto bail bondsman and lawyer got whatever I had … and connections don’t up shiva without bread, que no? I’ll get it together now.”
“What’re you doin’ to get money?”
“Lemme show you.” He went to the closet, his back covering what he was doing with his clothes. Suddenly he spun around. “Okay, motherfucker! Freeze! Or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off.” He had a nickel-plated .32 revolver in his hand.
Despite himself, the aimed pistol frightened Alex. “Turn that thing away,” he said, raising his hand for emphasis.
“Your money or your life, asshole!”
“Man, point that the other way.” His fear was now tinged with anger. Wedo saw the truth and let the weapon hang along his leg.
“Okay,” Wedo said, abashed. “Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing, pulling heists—two or three a week.”
“What’ve you been hitting?” Forgotten was the momentary fear of the aimed pistol.
“Liquor stores, mostly. They’re open late at night, and they’re off by themselves.”
“Can you get another gun?”
“Already got a sawed-off shotgun … just a single shot, though. It’s in the car. I pulled my first two with that … then I got this thirty-two for five caps of stuff. Itchy can get you a pistol quick, man! Sheeit! He just tells those junkies he wants one. It’ll be there. Those dope fiends will do anything … steal Mama’s Kotex for two caps.”
Alex laughed and clapped his friend’s back.
“Where you stayin’?” Wedo asked. “Got a spot to crash?”
“Nowhere, man, nowhere. I even hung the parole up.”
“Este vato, ese, you just sprung!… You ain’t gave yourself a chance.”
“Fuck all that preachin’, man. Let’s go make some money.”
* * *
Half an hour later the battered car was cruising through the fringes of Hollywood, with multihued neon bouncing from the painted metal, giving it an undeserved sheen. Wedo drove, able to stay alert except at a couple of traffic lights; then Alex had to nudge him awake. The shotgun was under the seat; the pistol beneath a shirt on the seat between them. Alex was conscious of the broken headlight, which might get them a flashing red light from a prowl car. His belly was knotted and queasy as they cruised—a crime looking for a place to happen.
23
For an hour Alex was ready to point a shotgun at someone to get some money. His mind was locked in determination, his gaze fierce, his jaw muscles pulsing. They spotted a motel on Sunset Boulevar
d that looked good. The office could be reached by walking in from pitch darkness at the rear. They could park on a dark side street a block away, then appear and disappear via an alley without being followed. But when they parked and got out to walk back, a black-and-white prowl car appeared, coming toward them slowly. It was just about to go by when its spinning red light burst forth. Alex had been watching the prowl car, and the suddenness of the red light sent a bolt of terror through him. He tensed to run, thinking of the single-barrel shotgun under his jacket, and he even took a step before realizing the car was burning rubber—he wasn’t thinking of them but of something else.
After that, however, Alex’s composure was shattered. As they drove around, looking for something else to heist, Alex’s determination oozed away, especially since he lacked Wedo’s enslavement. For Wedo, withdrawals were more frightening a prospect than was arrest. He only risked being arrested; the agonies of withdrawals were inevitable if he failed to obtain the money to buy the heroin.
Alex rode silently, but his mind shrilled and keened with fear. He’d been out less than three days; the cage was so vivid that he was almost still in it. Instead of ignoring the fear to concentrate on the robbery, he tried to fight the fear down. The silent scream in his mind grew more piercing and sent tendrils down into his guts. Fear was equivalent to weakness in the unwritten codes—codes he accepted because they were of his milieu. When they stopped for a traffic light and another police car pulled up beside them, one officer glancing over, Alex verged on panic. The crushed headlight was legal cause to pull them over and “run a make.” It was, among other things, stupid to be cruising around in such a rattletrap with guns, drug paraphernalia, the marks on Wedo’s arms, and a parole-violation warrant on file for Alex.
When the light changed, the black-and-white pulled away. Wedo made a left turn. Alex reviled himself, yet was forced to admit that his nerve was shattered for this night. Unable to admit the truth to Wedo, he lied.
“Wedo, man, I’m fuckin’ sick as a dog.”
“Huh? What’s that mean, ese?”
“It means my stomach is burning and has cramps … gotta take a shit. It feels like diarrhea.”
“Carnal,” Wedo said, a note of both pain and petulance in his voice. “You know I gotta get some bread for shiva tomorrow.”
“I thought you had a getup fix.”
“Yeah, one chickenshit geeze … that I’ll do up in a few hours. I need another one to get through the day … and one more for the noche so I can caper. I already owe Itchy … and I was short four bucks this morning.”
“Look, Wedo, I’m sick … really! I’ve got a little over twenty bucks. That should get you fixed until tomorrow night. And I’ll be all right tomorrow.”
If Wedo had questions, he withdrew indicating them. His terror of the next day rescinded; he shrugged and headed the dilapidated car away from Hollywood toward Temple Street. Alex even maintained his lie by having Wedo stop at a drugstore on Melrose Avenue. Wedo waited outside while Alex went in to buy some Kaopectate. When Alex came back out, he was excited.
“Man, oh man! That’s what we should rob.” He jerked his thumb toward the drugstore. “Sheeit! There’s all kind of dope in there. Ain’t that so?”
Wedo took his thumb from the starter button and leaned forward to scan the drugstore’s windows. Displays hid the interior; pedestrian traffic was light. “Yeah, there’s lots of drugs in a drugstore. No heroin, but morphine, dilaudid, pantapon … goofballs and uppers up the ass.”
“That’s what I’m sayin’. Fuck, man, we could sell what we didn’t want, and get some decent bread, too.” He stopped and watched Wedo reflect. Wedo nodded agreement.
“Besides,” Alex went on, “that pharmacist in there is skinny and scared, and has glasses thick as Coke bottles. He won’t give us no trouble. In fact,” he continued belatedly, “we better bring him toilet paper in case he shits on himself.” Gone was the earlier fear. Alex was caught up in imagining his idea. The excitement erased fear. The wheels of his imagination were spinning madly.
* * *
Alex slept on the floor of Wedo’s hotel room. It was a fortunate choice, for in the morning Wedo had several rows of red marks, hard little knots several inches apart in straight lines.
“Bedbugs,” Alex announced, having seen the bites before. No other insect nipped in a straight line.
“Fuck!” Wedo cursed, scratching himself while standing in his shorts preparing his “getup” fix. “This is the last I got.”
“I told you I had some dough. A little. We’ll see Itchy. Tonight we’ll have plenty of dope and money. I know Itchy’ll buy some of what we get.”
“What a way to live,” Wedo said, squirting a line of water through the needle into the air, cleaning it; then he wrapped up all the paraphernalia. “How is it that we’re like this and they’re like they are? I mean, I don’t feel like I’m so different … not down inside. I don’t feel like I made a decision to be what I am.” The powerful narcotic so obliterated all pain, physical and emotional, that it was the greatest tranquilizer of all. Euphoria is fertile earth for reflections on existence. “Aw fuck it,” he said. “Let’s go find that Chicano with the stuff … and we can cruise by that drugstore, que no? Check it out in the daytime—case the joint like the bigtimers do.”
* * *
Itchy was missing from his pool-table office, but according to a pair of waiting junkies, one of whom was already getting sick, he was due momentarily. When he finally arrived an hour later, seven junkies were waiting. Christ personally dispensing sacraments would not have gotten more homage than did Itchy for his heroin.
When Alex and Wedo left, Wedo demanded to fix again, although he didn’t need it. “I just wanna get high once,” he said, “instead of fixing just to keep from being sick.”
They had checked out of the hotel room, so Wedo used a gas station restroom, Alex leaning on the lockless door to make sure nobody came in.
Afterward, with Wedo nodding, Alex took over the driving. With nothing to do until nightfall, he cruised the city, happy to simply see things. In midafternoon the junkheap car was on the winding, expensively bucolic streets of Bel Air. The palaces of the rich peeked out between trees and over manicured hedges. The only life they saw was an occasional automobile or a gardener rolling up his hose. Alex tried to imagine what living in one of these mansions was like, what it meant in terms of a whole life—but such a world was too far removed from his experiences. To him being rich meant a new car, sharp clothes, and a slick apartment. Such things were hard enough to get—he certainly didn’t have them except as a dream—and yet he could see clearly (others from his world couldn’t) that his desires were trivial, picayune in this world. Bel Air was another universe.
Next he followed the winding curves of Sunset Boulevard to U.S. Coast Highway No. 1, and then along the seacoast northward for an hour. Wedo rose from his stupor but said little as he, too, became involved in watching the serene landscape of ocean, sky and green hills. It was far from the mean streets and the Sisyphian struggle of their tawdry lives.
At dusk they were back in the city, eating cheeseburgers and french fries at a greasy-spoon café. In fact, Wedo pocketed a cheap teaspoon and Alex asked for a paper cup of water to take with them. They parked in a deserted, still undeveloped spot on the road along the top of the Hollywood Hills. While Wedo used the dashboard glow to prepare his fix, Alex stared out over the endless city, the lights of which seemed like exquisitely bright jewels carpeting the world to infinity. It was so beautiful that he ached. The stars were coming forth as the sky darkened, but from here the city’s lights were much brighter and more entrancing.
Wedo pulled Alex from his reverie, asking him to hold the flashlight’s beam on the inner elbow so Wedo could see the blood register in the eyedropper. It flashed up, a streamer of red in the liquid, and Wedo squeezed the rubber knob, half-humming and half-sighing as the concoction flashed through his system.
“Well, let’s go do it,�
� Wedo said, voice gravelly; he was scratching himself in a variety of places. “Fuck! It’s either got a lot of codeine still in it, or they cut it with procaine. They’re starting that lately, makes the flash stronger … but they cut the dope. That’s why I’m scratching. But it’ll go away in a few minutes.”
As they drove down from the hills and through the streets, the knot of fear was in Alex’s gullet, but its fingers didn’t probe through the rest of him to create a form of paralysis. Tonight he could control fear, for his greatest dread was not of capture but of showing a lack of courage and nerve.
The drugstore’s doorway threw a rectangle of light across the sidewalk. Wedo went by and turned down the next street. They would come out, turn left down the side of the building, turn left again through an alley to the next street, and then to the right would be the car. Nobody would follow them down the alley, certainly no unarmed citizen, so nobody would see the car. And when Alex got out, sliding across the seat just vacated by Wedo to do so, he went to the back, looked at the license plate, and decided that when they came running a few minutes hence he would bend the license plate down. Nobody could even see it that way. After the getaway he would put it back the right way.
They began walking. Ahead was the lighted boulevard with cars flashing past the intersection. The fear cried for attention, but tonight Alex was resolute. He clenched his teeth and kept walking despite feeling a weakness in his legs. He refused to let his imagination conjure pictures of bloody shootouts and screaming police sirens. The single-barrel shotgun, sawed off to about twenty inches overall, was tucked beneath his armpit and under his jacket; his fingers curled around the pistol grip that remained of the stock.
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