* * *
Things happened faster than I could keep track of during that first investigation. The Pasadena P.D. installed me in an apartment on the east side of town and Jim introduced me to my first informant, a speed-freak scooter nasty named Skip who was looking at automatic time for violating probation.
He was to introduce me to dealers, who would take his word that I was okay and sell to me. Jim would come by, usually well after midnight, to pick up evidence and fill out the paperwork. That was the plan. Jim estimated that the investigation would last about ninety days. The defendants would be arrested only after it was finished, after I had testified before a grand jury and indictments were issued.
I hadn't even been to the police academy yet.
* * *
Skip had to show me how to roll a joint. He brought an ounce of pot over the night after Jim introduced us and showed me how to sprinkle the leaf into a cigarette paper and roll it up. I was trying not to let him see how nervous I was, but I kept tearing the paper.
“Keep practicing,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to do this.” Eventually, I managed to roll the entire ounce into joints.
“So you’ve passed Doobie Rolling 101,” Skip said. “Wanna burn one?”
“I’d better pass.”
“Captain Raynor said you knew what was happening.”
I didn’t know anything. Jim had said Skip would show me the ropes. He’d mentioned simulation, but hadn’t explained how it was done.
Skip lit a joint and held it out to me.
“Relax,” he said, “it’s practice.”
He watched carefully as I drew smoke into my mouth and held it there while I passed the joint back to him. I let the smoke out slowly, blowing air through my nose to make it look like I’d inhaled. I thought it was convincing. Skip took another hit and shook his head at me.
“You do that on the street,” he said, “and I guarantee we’ll both be up Shit Creek without a paddle.”
Skip drove, leaving patches of rubber at each red light on the way to the Londonderry Apartments. His car was his life: a black ’57 Chevy, heavily chromed, polished so bright it would burn your eyes on a sunny day.
The girl who answered the door was plain but pretty, about nineteen or twenty, with a pale, freckled face and long brown hair. She was dressed much as I was, with flared Levi’s and a pullover top.
“Hey, Skipper,” she said, opening the door wide and motioning us in.
“How’s it going,” Skip said. “I got friend here who’s in the market.”
When the girl handed me the pot, I tried to look like a connoisseur, opening several baggies and sniffing at their contents. The smell was sweet, like fresh-mown hay. Finally I chose one and twisted up a joint as if I’d been doing it for years. I handed it to Skip, who struck a match against one seam of his jeans and inhaled so deeply it looked like he was trying to suck some kind of relief out of the thing. He took three or four quick small hits and passed it back to me. I held it in what I hoped was a casual manner, and put it to my lips.
When Jim came by late that night to pick up the evidence, I told him what Skip had said about my attempted simulation.
“The dude’s exactly right,” he said. “You’ll get made in a stiff minute. Listen to what I’m saying here. Simulation is a word that comes in handy in court. We’re out there to buy dope.”
* * *
It was nearly three in the morning when Skip dropped me at my apartment. We’d been out on a deal, scored hash and some kind of speed. We were making buys regularly, and as the weeks went by I was starting to enjoy my job. I didn’t have to think about what would happen after, and I chose not to. I went with Skip and bought dope and turned it over to Jim. I was one of the good guys, convinced that I was doing the right thing and working hard to take it all so easily in stride.
When I walked into the living room, there was Jim, sitting on the mattress beneath a Wizard of Oz poster I’d taped to the wall, rattling ice cubes in his empty glass.
I had done the apartment in post-hippie funk: the mattress on the living-room floor, posters of Humphrey Bogart, Blue Oyster Cult, Omar Sharif, a couple of cinderblock bookcases holding candles and paperbacks. I lit the candles and turned off the overhead light.
“Scored hash,” I said. “And some speed. Brown and clear capsules. More scotch?”
“Sure.” He handed me his glass. “Brown and clears? Probably Dexedrine.” He lit a cigarette and tossed the pack to the mattress. “And bring me a side of water with that, would you?”
I stood holding his empty glass.
“Yeah,” he said. “You look like you scored a little hash. Any good?”
“Seems to be,” I said. I was cool about it. Stupidly cool. He knew I was high and I knew I was supposed to be high. It was part of my job.
“Wait’ll you meet a junkie,” he said. “That’s when things get real.”
When I brought his drink back from the kitchen, he was pulling a small plastic package from his sock.
“You’ll need to know about this,” he said. He put the package on the coffee table. “You got any cotton balls?”
I brought some from the bathroom.
“Think you can handle this?” he asked.
“Handle what,” I said.
“I’m going to put a needle in my arm.”
I was so calm it was disgusting. I wanted to handle things. I wanted to prove myself. He unwrapped the package and took out a syringe and a small cellophane packet of yellowish powder.
“A spoon,” he said. “I forgot my spoon.”
“A tablespoon,” he called as I walked to the kitchen.
He bent the handle so that the bowl rested level on the table and then he drew water into the syringe and squirted it into the spoon. He mixed some of the powder in.
“This is called cooking,” he said. “The spoon and cotton and rig are sometimes referred to as works. If you don’t have cotton you can used a piece of cigarette filter.”
He struck a match and ran the flame under the spoon a few times, until the water bubbled.
“Okay,” he said, drawing the word out long and slow. “You cook heroin, you don’t cook coke. Some people cook speed, but mostly they don’t.”
He finished preparing the shot and then turned the syringe upside down and flicked his middle finger sharply against the plastic cylinder until air bubbles rose to the top. Then he slowly pressed the plunger until a small drop of liquid appeared on the tip of the needle.
“There it is,” he said. “Ready to run. But it’s a good idea to let it cool a moment. Shoot that shit now and you’ll parboil your damn heart.”
He looked around the room, focused on the braided leather belt I was wearing.
“Give me that,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re a fucking natural.”
I watched as he strapped the belt around his biceps and pumped his fist. Large, ropelike veins rose up on his inner arm.
He picked up the syringe and slowly pushed in the needle.
“Okay, take the belt off,” he said. His voice was husky.
Circulation. I had memorized it for biology class. A few months ago? Arteries, veins, capillaries, the heart. Gas and nutrient exchange. It would come in through the superior vena cava. Oxygen-depleted, carbon dioxide-loaded blood. To the pear-shaped, fist-sized heart. Heroin-rich blood to the heart. Cocaine-laden blood to the heart. To the lungs. To the brain.
“This I’m about to show you,” he said, “is called registering.”
He pulled on the plunger until bright red blood swirled into the cylinder, mixing with the cloudy fluid already in there.
“It’s how a junkie knows he got the needle in a vein. If you put the thing in too far, or not far enough, you just shoot the drugs into tissue. You’ll still get a little buzz, much later, but nothing at all like you do on a mainline. Junkies get awful pissed if they miss.”
He sat there like that, with the needle in his vein, his blood in the syringe, the syringe
resting on his arm, for a very long moment. I looked carefully, saw the spiked ridge of the needle below the surface of his skin, saw the syringe moving ever so slightly with his pulse.
The process fascinated me—the ritual preparation, the religious intensity with which Jim laid out the instruments in order of use on the glass-topped coffee table, the anticipation of pleasure showing clearly on his face. I, with all of the enthusiasm and phony omnipotence that goes with being a rookie, persuaded myself in that moment that I could handle it, could handle anything. I sat there in the candlelit living room, staring at the needle, and refused to let myself be scared.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“It’s just Cremora, but it looks a little like heroin and a lot like crystal meth. I thought it would be a good demonstration.”
“Come on,” I said, “you can’t possibly inject that.”
“No way. But I might, in a pinch. I might. I usually carry some with me.”
Smooth, milky, Cremora-rich blood to the heart. Something was wrong, it would have to be fatal. Have to be. But Jim was a captain; he knew. The lesson was outrageous enough that I accepted it, though it left a queasy uneasiness floating in my stomach. I didn’t know enough to judge for myself and could not help feeling that I did not want to know. Cops and dope. For the greater good.
“It ain’t no lightweight thing,” he said. “You’re getting there. Sooner or later you’re gonna run into this.”
He looked at me closely, and then at the rig, and slid the syringe out. A dark red drop of blood beaded on his arm. He wiped it off with his forefinger and licked the finger clean.
“Let me just go wash all this stuff up,” he said.
“There’s alcohol in the bathroom.” I got up to show him.
“Keep your seat, keep your seat, I’ll find it.”
He locked himself in and I heard water running. He was in there for several minutes, for what seemed to be a very long time. Finally I went to the door.
“You all right?” I asked.
He cleared his throat. “Fine, fine. Be right out.” The same husky voice.
A few minutes later he sat back down on the mattress.
“One more refill,” he said, raising his glass.
I brought him a scotch and he leaned back against the wall, one knee up, arm across knee, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other.
“Listen, this shooting business is heavy,” he said, “but it’s a thing where knowing how may save your life. You find yourself looking at a rig or a .45, you gotta take the rig. If you see that it’s the only way to get out of a deal alive. It happens. You fix it yourself, and you let the dealer go first. A hot shot’s as fast as a bullet.” He reached to crush his cigarette into the ashtray. “All this crap about addiction? It’s only a matter of how strong you are. I’ve seen agents been brought up after six or eight weeks hanging in shooting galleries and the dudes are plenty strung out, but you gotta get strong. You kick bedcovers for a week or so. You run a little temperature.” His hand trembled when he set his drink on the carpet. “Then,” he said, “you stand up on your feet and walk.”
I must have looked like I didn’t believe him.
“Hey,” he said, “it’s how it’s done. Fucking heroin dealer won’t split down with anyone, nobody, ’less he knows they’re cool. It’s business. It’s the way it is. But you’re stout for a chick, man, plenty stout. I know you’ll handle it.
“You been putting in some long days, you just keep after it and you’ll find the heavies.” He leaned toward me, his shoulder so close to mine that I could feel heat. “You look really tense,” he said quietly. “Why don’t I give you a little old massage.”
I hadn’t been exposed. I didn’t know the symptoms. I wanted him to know that I was strong, I was standup, that I could take anything. Part of me knew that it hadn’t been Cremora, but he seemed okay; he hadn’t metamorphosed into some strange and dangerous monster. He was sitting next to me on a mattress in my living room, sipping scotch. His eyes seemed more sharply focused, and he swallowed frequently and seemed ready to talk forever, but that was all. I wanted to believe it had only been a lesson, a little on-the-job training.
For weeks he’d been coming over almost every night, to pick up evidence, or else, as he put it, to make sure I hadn’t been dragged off to Mexico by some dealer. He was protective of me, and I liked that, but, more important, I felt he believed in me. He told me he was getting hassled for putting a woman undercover. He didn’t care, he said, he had confidence in me. When he left me each night to sleep there alone, I lay in my bed and drifted off while thinking of him, hoping he would enter my dreams.
I wanted the massage. I wanted him to touch me.
He began rubbing my neck, moving his hands in slow circles across my shoulders and then down my back, and his touch was even stronger than I had imagined. When he reached my hips he turned me to him and began kissing me, softly at first, biting my lips gently, then deeper and I couldn’t stop what was happening, I couldn’t and didn’t wanted to and knew I should and Jim kissed me until thought was gone, until he had stripped away resistance and I was falling, and he took my face in his hands and went gentle again, kissing softly, with care, and then I felt the mattress give next to me and he stood up quickly and walked to the kitchen bar.
I sat up, trying to recover, feeling like I’d been pushed out of a window. He stood silently for some time, his back to me, his fingertips tucked into the pockets of his jeans. I took a sip of his drink.
“Well,” he said finally, “tell me what we’ve got ourselves into here.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
And then I was letting him undress me, and he was kissing me again, and then inside, inside and driving, and he raised himself, reached with one arm to brace himself against the coffee table and watch our bodies move.
* * *
“We’ll bring the state boys in on this one,” Jim said. His tone was strictly business, as it always was when I called him on the straight-line. “I know just the man. Tell the asshole you’re bringing your boyfriend with you. Best agent in Texas.”
“It’s set up for tonight at seven.”
“He’ll be at your place by six. Tall guy, big brown beard. Rob Johnson. Good friend of mine. Call me when it’s finished.”
I had met Hayden, the dealer, a couple of days earlier, standing at the mailboxes beneath the stairwell that led to our shared landing. He told me he was studying theology and art history, and then he dropped his mail all over the sidewalk. When he bent to pick it up, a vial fell out of his pocket and I took a chance. Jim had told me, at dinner that first night in Houston, to ask for chemicals. I did, and Hayden went for it.
“Sure,” he said. “If you’re in the market for snow or acid, I can help you out.”
Just like that. Ask and it shall be given to you.
The state man was indeed smooth. He walked into Hayden’s apartment with me that night wearing six-hundred dollar gray ostrich-skin boots and finger-combing his beard. He sprawled on the couch like he owned the place, his boots shining to the point of glare, and patted the space next to him. I stood a moment longer, pretending to look at the religious prints that hung on the opposite wall, but actually trying to gauge Hayden’s height and weight. Rob would be writing the report, and if he should ask, I wanted to be able to give an accurate description.
When I sat down, he slipped an arm across the sofa back, playing the boyfriend role, letting his hand rest gently on my shoulder. Hayden brought a Ziploc full of powder from his hall closet.
“Not trying to brag,” he said, “but this is some of the best I’ve ever run across.”
“Let’s check it out,” Rob said. He wrapped his arms around my neck and nibbled on my ear, whispering, “Follow my lead, I’ll walk you right through.”
Hayden took a framed print from the wall and set it carefully on the coffee table. He spooned some powder onto the glass and began forming it into lines, following the cur
vature of the robes worn by the saints in the painting.
“This was done by a guy named Giovanni Di Paolo,” he said. “I mean, it’s only a print, a poster, you know, but it’s called Paradise, and I dig it.”
Rob raised his heavy brown eyebrows at me, and then shrugged and began rolling a hundred-dollar bill into a tight tube. He edged forward on the couch, leaning toward the table, twisting and retwisting the bill, and then he looked over at me and winked. I had to have looked frightened. I must have. I was trying to hide it, trying to act like this was something I did all the time, but I was flat-out scared of this stuff, this cocaine. Scared, but I wanted to try it. I wanted to know why it was such an item, why everybody was talking about it. And on top of that I was wondering if this were some kind of test, if Jim had brought in Rob to find out whether I could handle the buy. I felt incredibly thick, and wondered if I was perhaps being a bit paranoid about things, but we weren’t dealing with pot here. I was sitting next to a state cop, scared out of my mind and wondering if it was a trap, if he was going to watch me do the stuff and then arrest me for it.
And I was doing my best to be so very, very cool about it all.
Rob lifted the print to his lap, leaned over and sniffed up two of the lines. I watched him and I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I thought he must have been simulating, but I saw the stuff go into the cylinder of the C-note, I saw the little flakes of cocaine that started to fall out of his nostrils before he tilted his head back and sniffed deeply. And I saw the pleasure in his eyes.
Then he handed the print to me and I saw that he was as nervous as I was. We didn’t know each other; we’d only just met that evening, and here he had laid himself wide open.
The powder hit the back of my throat and numbed it almost immediately. Even before Hayden had finished his lines, I was feeling the first overwhelmingly pleasant rush of what psychologists call euphoria.
And Rob was sitting there next to me with the slightest kind of smile on his face, almost hidden by his beard, but very much there.
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