by Thom Whalen
* * *
On the highway from Syracuse to Utica I thought more about Warts. Maybe I could get to know her a little bit. Take her on a dinner date. Talk about personal stuff but not get too intimate. Maybe even give her a goodnight kiss. That wouldn’t give me warts, would it? Her lips didn’t look bad. And I wouldn’t have to give her any tongue. Nope. That would not be on the table.
Definitely not.
I timed my trip so that I would arrive at Utica at about the time that Gus started his shift. I hoped that I wouldn’t have to nag him to pay what he owed.
I was soon to wish that were my only problem.
There was a huge crowd of kids, presumably students, gathered around the liquor store where Gus worked.
Three police cars were parked at the curb, lights flashing.
A smart guy would have kept on riding down the street. Especially a smart guy who had two kilos of marijuana in a paper bag strapped to his motorcycle gas tank with his belt.
But that would have meant driving past the cop who was standing in the street, managing traffic, and trying to keep the kids from crowding the store.
I told myself that it was my job to get as much information as I could. I didn’t know what I might learn here that would help keep Randal out of prison. The truth, though, was that I could never resist snooping around, trying to find out what was going on. I think it’s in my genes.
I stopped my bike at the curb, my front tire almost touching a kid with long hair and a buckskin vest.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
A couple of kids turned to look at me. “They’re busting Gus,” the buckskin clad kid said.
“What for?”
“Everything. Possession. Dealing drugs. Selling alcohol to minors. Spitting on the sidewalk. The pigs got it in for him.”
I couldn’t imagine why. “How’d they find out that he was doing all that?”
A girl with long blond hair wearing a tie-dyed tee shirt and no bra shrugged her shoulders, making her ample bust bounce. “A Tau Chi Zeta brat turned him in. Her dad made a surprise visit to ask her why she was on academic probation and he caught her with a roach. She caved and spilled her guts to him. He’s a big-time Wall Street lawyer and he went to the cops and raised a stink. They couldn’t ignore him. That’s the straight goods. I heard it direct from one of her sorority sisters. They’re all pissed because the whole sorority is going to get nailed to the cross.”
Buckskin kid shook his head sadly. “It’s going to be hard to throw a decent party around here now. There ain’t nobody else like Gus in town.”
Busty girl nodded in agreement.
Another guy, a little older, with hair longer than busty girl’s, said, “You can say that again. It’s not just Gus, you know. They’re going to find out who his supplier is. Gus isn’t the kind of guy who’ll take one for the Gipper. He’s going to trade everything he knows for a plea deal. I’m reading law and I can give you a gold-plated guarantee about that.”
My heart sank. We’d never told Gus our names or addresses but it was only a matter of time until I found a wanted poster with a drawing of my face on it in hanging in the Wemsley post office.
Maybe Randal and I could share a cell in Sing-Sing. I’d be okay as long as he didn’t freak out in the middle of the night and mistake me for a Viet Cong prison guard.
I looked down at the paper bag filled with marijuana that was strapped to my gas tank. They wouldn’t need to post my picture if Gus saw me in the crowd and pointed at me.
When I looked up, the door opened and Gus, his hands cuffed behind his back and an expression of dull horror on his face, was frog-marched toward a patrol car by a pair of burly cops, one on each arm.
I wanted to roar out of there, but I would attract attention if I moved. I saw the wisdom of Randal’s mouse – stay small and still until after the danger has passed me by.
But, as soon as Gus cleared the door, he scanned the crowd and caught my eye.
I shrank back in my motorcycle seat and stared at him, knowing exactly how a mouse felt when a cat was poised to strike at it.
The cops paused, waiting for one of their number to come and clear a path through the crowd to the cruiser.
Gus held my eye.
Seconds passed as slowly as hours while I waited for him to speak the words that would seal my doom.
Then the cops began dragging Gus toward the cruiser again and he had to break eye contact.
Buckskin Kid, standing right in front of me, began yelling, “Free Gus! Free Gus! Free Gus! … ”
Busty Girl beside him and Long Hair on the other side took up the chant. “Free Gus! Free Gus! … ”
All the cops, including the two holding Gus swiveled to look at us. Hands dropped reflexively to gun butts. The cop directing traffic on the street began striding toward us. He had noticed Gus staring at me and he looked pissed. Working crowd control had taken all the fun out of his life tonight.
The rest of the crowd joined the chant. “Free Gus! Free Gus! Free Gus! … ”
The bag of marijuana between my legs felt like it was burning. I had to get out of there, right now. I hit the starter button and cranked the engine to life. It was still warm and caught with a roar as soon as it turned over.
“Hey, you!” the traffic cop yelled.
I heeled the wheel over and pushed it past the busty girl’s calves, then juiced the throttle and let the clutch catch a bit.
The bike jumped a foot toward a skinny girl in a peasant skirt. She jumped aside and I goosed the clutch again.
“Hey!” the cop yelled. “Stop!”
The crowd had grown. I was surrounded by kids now. They were slow to move out of my way. But they weren’t quick to let the cop push through them, either.
More kids stepped aside as my front tire lurched toward them.
I could see a path to the road opening up.
The cop was pushing through the kids more aggressively, now. They were still chanting, “Free Gus!” and moved to block the cop – not because they wanted to help me, but because they wanted to cause any trouble for the authorities that they could, no matter how petty.
I glanced back and saw that the cop had drawn his revolver clear of his holster. Surely he didn’t dare fire at me in a crowd like this. But it had only been a year since the National Guard had massacred unarmed students at Kent State. And not one of those murderers had been brought to trial, even for as little as careless use of a firearm. Half the country hated students and the authorities could kill with impunity. Hell, half the country would pin a medal on this cop if he shot dead an eighteen-year-old college student who was holding two kilos of marijuana.
My heart was pounding with terror.
I gunned the bike and popped the clutch, aiming for the too-small opening between the last few kids and the road.
When they heard the roar of the bike, they jumped aside. Thankfully, they were young and nimble.
I cranked through the gears, working the clutch as hard as I could. I didn’t release the throttle until I reached sixty, some six or seven seconds later.
I don’t know if the cop fired on me or not.
I do know that I missed a couple of cars by less than a mouse whisker. Brakes squealed and horns blasted behind me, but I lived to ride another day.
I was lucky.
But my drug dealing days were over. I didn’t care if it cost Randal a year’s pay.
As I blasted down the highway back to Wemsley, I could only hope that nobody would recognize my picture when it appeared on post office bulletin boards.