Dealing, or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

Crichton Writing as "Michael Douglas"

As a stand-by, you get the seat right behind the jets. Sit down, tuck the special suitcase under the seat in front of you, buckle up and look out the window at the Boston rain. Then look over and smile at the two Marines sitting next to you and wait for the goddamned thing to take off.

Once in the air, you get your choice of chicken, swordfish or roast beef; Life, Vogue or Sports A field. Life features an article on the growing menace to our children, the marijuana habit. A follow-up on how one Illinois town rallied to the challenge and pulled itself out of the dope gutter. A quote from a kid at the University of Illinois, who says reality is the best trip of all.

When you can't stand any more, you up and amble back to the can and flip on the occupied sign. Once safely locked in, you fumble around with the air whooshing up out of the john; you try not to spill your whole stash on the floor as you rolla neat little joint in your clammy dope-fiend hands. And then you blow it.

After that, things slow down a bit and you amble back and stumble across the two Marines and get your earphones on just in time to catch the flick. Last time it wasn't too bad, some Nazis torturing a prostitute, but no such luck on these daytime ventures--it's Andy Griffith as an iconoclastic but truly lovable parish priest. For the next two hours, you are part of Andy's G for General Audiences struggle to refurnish the church, and it's all pretty wonderful. But toward the end of the movie, high-altitude dehydration sets in and you find yourself feeling pretty miserable. So you amble back toward the can again, with numerous eyes flicking up at you suspiciously as you walk down the aisle--since everybody smelled dope the last time--but you fool them all and get a cup of water.

While you're there, you pocket a few of those absurd little booze bottles that they hustle for a buck apiece before themeal. Have a few more cups of water, turning occasionally to face the cabin and smile innocently at anyone who is looking. Then return to your seat, with some ice in the cup, to get thoroughly and quietly juiced.

This doesn't help the dehydration any, but it makes the time go a lot faster. Toward the end of the trip, you even join the Marines in molesting the stewardesses. The stewardesses are very good-natured about them, because they are in uniform, poor fellows, and so young, too. The stewardesses are less good-natured about you.

Finally, the captain comes on to announce that San Francisco airport is still there and that we may be landing soon. The seat-belt sign comes on, the canned music returns and everyone frantically puffs away, trying to get that last little hit of nicotine before the no-smoking sign flashes on, too. Behind you in the next seat, the middle-aged lady searches her purse for the tranquilizer she always takes before the landing.

And then the plane comes down. It's 3:55 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, 72 degrees, the sun is shining on both sides of the street and it's all before you.

• • •

I was expecting to be met at the airport, but nobody showed. I couldn't believe John hadn't called my friends, let them know I was coming, so I shuffled up and down the arrivals platform, waiting for a familiar face. Everyone was waiting. There were Servicemen waiting for the bus, businessmen waiting for the fat wife and the dog, porters waiting for tips: all of us waiting to see what would happen and waiting then to see what came next.

After an hour, I knew John hadn't called. It pissed me off that he could be so casual. He could afford to be, that was the heart of the matter. John had enough bread to buy himself out of anything that he got into--and into anything he felt out of. He simply assumed that things were the same for other people--and if they didn't measure up to the assumption, then what the hell were they doing hanging around with him? But I was still angry, because I couldn't take a bus across the Bay, not with $2500 in 20s bulging in my coat pocket. The only alternative was a rented car, and he knew that I didn't have the bread to waste on a rented car. But then he did....

So I went over to the Hertz counter, where a sleazy blonde in a zebra suit was smiling into space. She could be replaced easily by a machine that smiled, I thought, as I stepped into view. But then, a machine would have known that my license was a phony. And anyway, it was all part of the game: I gave her the license and she smiled. I pretended the smile was real and she pretended the license was real. A reasonable bargain, all things considered.

The car was a green Mustang. First thing I did when I got in was to check the ashtray. A ridiculous gesture, but the kind of thing I always find myself doing, just to make sure that the ads are really up front. Yeah. Well, the ashtray was clean, but the ignition was burned out and the car wouldn't start, so I exchanged it for an identical green Mustang and rolled out to Berkeley.

Back on the Bay Shore Freeway. It felt good to be ripping along at 65 miles an hour, a cool salty breeze blowing in off the water and the blue-green hills of the city up ahead. It was after five and the lanes going out of town were mobbed, sweaty tangles of bumper-to-bumper steel frustration. But there was barely another car on my side of the road. I suddenly thought of Boston and I laughed. It would be raining there, still, and the streets would be filled with the long, dour faces of people trying to convince themselves that spring really was on its way--or at least would be, once exams were over. Boston seemed so far away and so ridiculous. Just then, I rounded a corner and the whole side of a hill bade me welcome to South San Francisco.

I realized that I shouldn't let myself get too carried away, that I should stay cool for the work ahead. But I felt so good about being back in California that I just couldn't feel anything else. I couldn't get uptight about meeting Musty and I couldn't feel all the small, soberingly paranoiac things that I should've been feeling, that I was supposed to be feeling. Just before I had left Boston, John had given me the rundown on Musty, so that I could get good and paranoid about doing business with him. Being paranoid was supposed to make me cautious, discreet, cool about the whole riff. But what John had told me had just made me more confident than ever.

Because Musty was big. At 23. he was one of the biggest, and probably the most successful, dealers in the country. He was successful because he'd never been busted and because he ran a full-scale, across-the-board operation.

Which meant that his scene was very different from most other dealers'. Most of them when they're doing lots of 10 or 15 or 20 bricks at a time think they're moving a lot of dope. They figure they've got a good hustle going and, for the mostpart, they do. But they've got one hangup and that is their dependence on a supplier. In that respect, they're as helpless as the little guy who picks up a street lid now and then on his way home from work. And they can get burned and ripped off and hustled in a thousand different ways, just like that little guy. Because they're not in control of what's going down. They're just taking part.

Musty was in control. He did only one kind of job and he did it extraordinarily well. Musty ran lots of 2000 kilos--no more, no less on any given run--across the border from Mexico. He dumped them in San Diego, in his own warehouses, and there they sat until they were shipped out in broken-down lots to New York. Musty kept his hands in the operation up to the point where the bricks were shipped, his own art-supplies front doing the job. But after that, he was through with it: He took his cut and split. That way, anything that was busted, either in New York or on the way back to California, was almost impossible to pin on him. For all the narcs ever knew, the stuff was coming in through the New York Port Authority, right under their noses.

Musty ran a tight operation, with everyone from the Federales to the Customs people to the Mexicans who drove the trucks and airplanes being liberally paid off. He wasn't just careful, though: He had class. When it came time for a shipment, he went down to the Mexican plantations himself. He was friends with the plantation owners he bought from and he spoke fluent Spanish. His concern did not go unnoticed by the sellers and, as a result, his marijuana was only the purest, his bricks the heaviest. They were almost always at least 32 ounces--dry--with very few sticks and no stones or clay. On a market that's usually full of oregano, gasoline-cured or otherwise hopelessly souped-up garbage, his dope was highly regarded. And it always brought a good price.

The most impressive thing about his operation was that he'd been running it for almost four years, without a hint of trouble or a cramp in his style. A record like that demands respect, whether you're behind the law or trying to keep ahead of it. The IRS people in San Diego had finally gotten on his back a few months before, but it had been nothing serious, just a lot of irritating questions, and he'd simply stepped out of town for a while. To San Francisco, which was now his base.

John had met Musty earlier in the spring, on the Massachusetts Turnpike. John was test-driving the Ferrari he'd gotten the week before, seeing how it "performed on the road." And Musty was bumming around the East--California style--with a pack on his back and his thumb out, dangling. So John had picked him up and they were rolling along at maybe 80, nobody saying anything and Musty no doubt sitting there, thinking, What a bummer this is, to ride in this car with a straight creep--thinking this because in California, anybody who smokes dope looks like he smokes dope, and Musty wasn't used to the Eastern style yet. So when John, with his maroon Ferrari and his J. Press suit and his Newport accent, opened the glove compartment to reveal a pound bag of clean Michoacán. Musty blew his mind. The dope had come from one of Musty's kilos that was nothing but buds and flowers to begin with; he just started laughing while he rolled a few joints. John rolled up the windows so the smoke wouldn't get out and they both managed to get high as the sky before they hit the Newton tolls.

Which is a sad pun, for hit the Newton toll booth they did, going about 25. Drove right up the cement fender and piled into the little box the toll guy stands in. Seemed that John, who was never a good driver, had had a little trouble maneuvering his machine after a few joints. The toll guy was terrified, expecting to find some epileptic old lady who'd had a coronary and, instead, being greeted by two very stoned young men, laughing hysterically and wiping the tears from their eyes. Completely unscathed, both of them, but not looking particularly grateful for it.

When the cop came, he told John that he was a very lucky guy. The cop also said some other things about rich mother-fuckers and about Kids Today. Everybody is interested in. Kids Today, even the cops. He asked John how he happened to total his brand-new Ferrari and John explained about the faulty disk brakes--these crummy little Italian imports, you know, they're all the same--and the cop farted.

Then he drove John and Musty back to a gas station, where they could call for someone to pick them up. John sat in the front seat, because he had a suit on and looked respectable. Musty sat in the back. The cop talked to John first, giving him some more about rich mother-fuckers and damage to public property and asking how his old man liked picking up the tab. Then the cop looked in the rear-view mirror and asked Musty how long it had been since he had taken a bath and whether he thought he was Jesus Christ, with hair like that. The cop also said he had fought in the War, he wanted them both to know, in the goddamn War.

To change the subject, John suggested that it must be tough work to be a state trooper. The cop mellowed at this and admitted that it was tough work. Everybody thought it was a great job to be a state trooper, he said. Everybody thought it was all glory and gravy. Everybody wanted to be a trooper, but they didn't have no fucking idea, it was hard work and no joke.

John got off with a state warning. Musty was ordered out of the state within 48 hours.

That was the way John worked. He needed to be with a person only about 15 minutes before he knew what his weak spot was and how to go to work on him. It didn't matter if that person was a cop or a professor or a freak. Fifteen minutes. Anyway, John put his finger on Musty's weak spot as efficiently as he'd managed with the trooper. And before Musty said goodbye to Massachusetts, he agreed to sell dope to John in small lots, as long as the pickup was made on the West Coast. Musty, who never did anything less than 2000 kilos and never touched his dope after it was in San Diego.

So I was on my way to meet Musty.

• • •

Traffic was heavier going over the Bay Bridge, but I made the corner of Ashby and Telegraph by six o'clock. From there it was just a few blocks to Musty's address, 339 Holly Street, in the middle of a quiet neighborhood of clean, pink-and-white stuccos with palm trees and clipped lawns. There was nobody on the street to stare at the straight honkie who jumped out of a green Mustang with a suitcase in his hand and went up to ring 339.

The suitcase was a little thing John had rigged up, small enough to fit under an airplane seat and lined with aluminum to keep the dope smell in. It also had internal and external locks to disappoint inquisitive cops. A sealed package of any sort requires a specific search warrant before it can be legally opened. Altogether a neat and reassuring way to travel.

I rang the buzzer beneath the name on the mailbox: Padraic O'Shaucnessy. No wonder they called him Musty. Then I waited and, when nothing happened, I pushed the buzzer again. The apartment was on the second floor and I could faintly hear it ringing up there. But nothing else, no footsteps or talking or other noise.

I began to get irritated, because I was right on time and they should've been there to open the door for me when I came up the steps. I couldn't figure out where they could be, but then, I didn't really give a damn. I just didn't dig standing around like the Fuller Brush man, waiting for somebody to come to the door.

Finally, I went back to the car and started reading the Tribe I'd picked up on Telegraph. What a drag it was, this waiting. I pulled out my own little traveling stash, rolled a joint and blew it, trying to relax.

I'd been sitting there half an hour when I decided to get something to eat. I could never eat on planes and after the six-hour flight, I was hungry as hell. The stoned hungries, I might add, which is what the "now" generation is all about. A normal case of the hungries anyone with a will can sit out, but the stoned hungries are merciless. When dope eventually gets legalized, it'll be the A&P lobby that's responsible. How can you argue against a drug that keeps you eating regularly, sleeping regularly and buying a six-pack of Pepsi every day? No way, in America.

I'd just started the car when I heard sirens. I was wondering how close the fire was when the patrol cars came screeching around the corner, going the wrong way on a one-way street, and pulled up in front of 339. Behind the patrol cars were two Ford sedans loaded with narcs. They had a cop driving, so it looked like they weren't just dropping in to pass the time of day. I sank down in my seat and waited.

The bust moved very quickly and very efficiently. The cops jumped out of the patrol cars and staked out the house, three in the rear and three in front. Two others headed for the front door; one had an ax and one had a portable battery-powered vacuum cleaner.

The narcs spread out behind the cops, five of them going into the house. They were fingering their lapels and hitching up their pants nervously, like they expected some trouble. Which was absurd, because anyone as big as Musty wouldn't hassle cops. But it appeared from my bucket-seat foxhole as though they might be planning to shoot first and ask questions later. Oakland heat, it will be remembered, have that habit.

I was afraid to leave. I suddenly realized why John had been so insistent on my looking straight and so insistent on my schedule. It looked as though the Man had finally come down on Musty. If I took off, one of the plainclothesmen standing near me might notice the car and take down the plate numbers. And then, if he decided to check and found out that the car was rented that afternoon at the airport by a kid from Cambridge, Massachusetts, well, that'd be Fat City for the narcs.

So I stayed. And I sweated it, because the bust was shooting one of our little rules to hell. The three-day rule. It was nothing more than a rule of thumb that we always worked by. All it meant was that the heat were usually at least three days behind anything that was happening. More likely five days, to be sure, but for safety, we usually kept our schedule down to three. So the carrier always flew in within three days of Musty's dope run from San Diego and got out of town within three days of the pickup. It was cool to work that way, because the heat simply couldn't move any faster than that. I mean, the heat are only people. They've got a job and for eight hours a day, they do it. But after that, they go home and watch the box with the wife and kids, like everybody else. So if you worked full time, the way we did, it was easy to stay ahead of them.

But here they were and here I was, curled up in fetal position on the seat, peeping over the dashboard at the plain-clothes narc nearest me. He was watching the house, I guess. He didn't look too interested. In fact, he looked bored. The cops-and-robbers glow began to fade from close up and, as the bust progressed, I got more and more into this dude. He had his hands in his pockets now and was staring at the street. God, what a drag, I suddenly thought. What an unbelievable bitch of a drag it must be to work as a narc and spend your whole life rushing around town, trying to bust a few druggies. It was a unique train of thought for me to take, because narcs (continued on page 190) Dealing (continued from page 122) have achieved a certain hard-earned prominence in the mythology of dope smoking. They're cast as relentless, evil and thoroughly mindless cogs in the great machine of repression. Wowie-zowie, I thought. This guy didn't look evil, he didn't look like much of anything. Just a tired, dull, underpaid stool for the law.

But then I thought, what the hell. I wasn't going to get suckered into that routine again, into thinking of that pig as just another person. Because he wasn't and it was dangerous to think of him as if he were. The danger was a personal one. I'd just be setting myself up for a rip-off, if I ever got into any kind of a hassle with the dude.

Because if I got into a hassle, I'd still be a person, but he'd have to be a pig. It had happened to me so many times, that whole riff. Like, you talk to any cop who's hassling, and after a while--if you come on like a regular chum--after a while, he'll swear up and down the line that he's real sorry to have to do this to you. He'll tell you that if it weren't for the blue he was wearing, he'd take you home to have a beer and meet the wife. But then he'll lay it on you: He's real sorry and you're supposed to understand, because you're a regular chum, but he's got no choice but to run you in. His job is to enforce the law. And then it'll all come tumbling out, all the excuses, all the lies, all the jive about how he doesn't have anything to do with anything. He's just doing his job and he's not really running you in. It's the law and he can't change the law, he just has to do his job, so.... So? On go the cuffs and on go the masks--and off you go.

A couple of minutes went by and I could hear walls coming down inside the house. If they hadn't found any people, they probably wouldn't find any dope. But they were giving it the old pig try. The worst suddenly seemed to be over and I lit a cigarette and sat up. And then:

"Hey, you, what're you lookin' at?"

It was one of the cops from behind the car. The narc I had been watching was startled into action by his voice and flashed me his best piercing narc stare. They both came over to the window. "You hear what I said, boy? What're you lookin' at?"

"Oh, nothing, officer, I was just--"

"You were just what? You want to get run in, huh, for obstructing the law?"

"No, sir; you see, I was just driving through when--"

"I didn't ask you what you were doing, wise guy, I asked what you were lookin' at. Heh? Now, you gonna answer me or you want to double-talk the captain down at the station?"

"No, sir."

"No. sir. what? What d'you mean, no, sir? I asked you a question. You gonna cooperate or not?"

"Yes, sir, I certainly will."

"Then what were you lookin' at, just then?"

"Nothing, sir, I was just on the street when I heard the sirens and I thought it was a fire, so I pulled over--"

"That was a long time ago, boy, a long time ago you thought it was some fire, and I'm asking you now! What've you been lookin' at just now?"

"Well, sir." I was scared shitless again. The suitcase was in the car and if they took me in, it wouldn't take long forthem to pick up on what was happening.

"Whatsamatter, boy, you tongue-tied? Heh? I asked you a question. You gonna answer me or not, 'cause if you're not, I got other places I can ask you, understand?" Suddenly, he stepped back and took a fresh look at me. "You a college boy? Is that what's wrong, heh? College boy, don't like to talk to no police, think your girl won't like you anymore, is that it? Heh?"

I decided the only way out was to kiss ass.

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir, what?"

"Yes, sir, I am a student."

"A student. A student, heh? Oh, I beg your pardon, student. I thought you were a college boy. Well, tell me something, student, where'd you get this car, heh? Did your student studies get it for you or what? Heh? Tell me about this car you got here."

"Well, sir, ah, my, ah, my father bought it for me."

"Oh, I see, your father bought it for his student."

"Yes, sir."

"When your father bought this car for his student, did he by any chance make sure that his student was a student of driving or did he just give it to the college boy?"

"Ah, well, sir, I, ah--" I, ah, was, ah, scared shitless that he, ah, was going to, ah, ask me for my license. Ahhhhhhh.

"What I'm asking you, boy, in plain language that even I can understand, see, even me who never was no college graduate, what I'm asking you is if you know how to operate this vehicle."

"Yes, sir, I do."

"Well, then, why don't you do yourself a favor and operate it right out of here right now!" He was almost yelling.

"Well, sir, I was going to do just that, but"--I pointed feebly at the massed cop cars that blocked the road.

"Well, then, put the car in reverse, goddamn you, and git out of here!"

"Yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir," as I started the car again and backed out of there as fast as I could and, at the end of the street, moving off at good speed, I leaned out and shouted, "Fuck you!" as loud as I could, but it didn't make any difference.

• • •

I stopped at a Peter Piper drive-in and got a sandwich. I felt better after eating, all primed and ready to go. Where I was going to go was another question entirely. I didn't have the slightest idea what I was going to do next--all I really knew was what I couldn't do.

I couldn't find Musty. I didn't know how to even begin to look for him. He was John's connection, not mine.

And I couldn't call John in Cambridge, because he had been convinced his line was tapped and had had his phone taken out. I could try to reach him at Sandra's place, which was the phone that we always did business on, but John wouldn't be with her at this hour.

And I couldn't go back to Cambridge without scoring, because that would be $160 in plane fare down the drain and, more important, all our timing thrown off.

Which left me with no leads, no place to crash, $2500 in my sports coat and a connection who was probably busting ass for Mexico, unless they'd already caught up with him. Not a particularly cheerful prospect. So I just drove around Berkeley, looking for somebody I knew and trying desperately to remember a single street address out of the dozens I knew in that town. I'd spent time in Berkeley before--mostly on three-day dope trips like this one--but there had been a trip last spring that had lasted a month. It hadn't started as a month trip, but that's the way it had worked out. And I'd met a lot of good people--I'd been things and seen places, as the saying went. But just then, when I needed them, the addresses and names wouldn't come back and I wound up parking the car in the municipal lot off Channing, so I could walk up to campus and look around. It was late in the day and the avenue was jumping. The freaks were out in their usual positions: stoned hostile funky greaser freaks on the west side of Telegraph and stoned outasight panhandle peace freaks on the east side. The bikers were lined up in full formation in front of Pepe's and I could hear some pickets up on Sproul Plaza. I hurried on to see what they were putting down, forgetting that I still had on my Weejuns and jacket. That was a mistake, because I looked like I should've been up on the hill, drinking keg beer with the jolly mindless frat brothers, and since I wasn't, it could only mean that.... The street punks jumped into action, edged toward me; and all around me, their soft liturgical drone filled the air: "Lids, speed, acid; righteous lids," as the street people decided they had me figured. What a drag.

Up on campus, a heavy scene was (continued on page 279) Dealing (continued from page 190) under way. The Berkeley police were huddled like sullen refugees under Sather Gate, looking as if they were just waiting for the word to come down swinging. And on Sproul Plaza, a slowly circling ring of picketers was chanting and stomping. Most of them had helmets on: Anyone who exercised the right to assemble and petition in this town knew what to expect.

In the center of the ring, a heavy-set, shaded and leathered black, man, beret tilted to one side and covered with buttons like a war hero with medals:

"Brothers and sisters, the time has come for us to act. There is no longer a defensible middle of the road. And by that I mean the middle of the road, man, that sit-on-the-fence shit. 'Cause when the long knives come"--it was not a threat, but logic--"when the long knives come, they aren't gonna ask where you stand and where you been standin'. They're gonna know!" He was rapping and flapping his arms, talking to the picketers, turning away to speak to the crowd. Trying to get that old group-solidarity number down before the heat did. There was no middle ground, he said again, no fence left to sit it.

"You are either part of the problem or part of the solution!" He shouted at passers-by, fringe observers like me. "Part of the problem or part of the solution. The time has come to act," he went on. "Join the Third World Brothers and Sisters, in support of their legitimate demands for Third World Faculty and Curriculum. And join them now."

There was a lot of energy running through the crowd and I was suddenly uncomfortable, standing there in my Ivy League monkey suit. The lines were sharply drawn in Berkeley, and everyone understood what they meant: The fight had already begun. Nobody said you had to get on the battlefield, but then ... it wasn't hard to put yourself in no man's land. I looked back at the heat, who were starting to move toward the picketers. "... Or Donald Duck Reagan or Mickey Mouse Rafferty. And we can't relate to seeing our black brothers dying to support this pig fascist system in the rice paddies of Vietnam. We can't relate to that and we can't stand by and watch it happen no more, neither. The time has come to act. Join the pickets now." The heat were bearing down and I beat a hasty retreat back across the street. The pickets had picked up on the energy now and were stamping their feet as they marched, chanting, "Who are the people, we are the people, Power to the People." Yeah. Get that ball. Fight, team, fight. Push 'em back, push 'em back, waaaaaaaay back. I began to think about how nobody had ever really figured out what four years of high school did to a reasonably healthy mind, when I saw somebody I knew: Stevie.

• • •

Stevies place was peaceful and quiet, in the back of a house on Dwight Way. It looked onto a lot that had once been used for parking but that had, miraculously, fallen into disuse. Someone had planted a small garden and there were people all around, sitting out on their back steps, smoking dope in the sunset and laughing quietly. 1 remembered my dorm room in Cambridge, which had a generous view of all four lanes of Memorial Drive, complete with traffic jams twice a day, and wondered again why I hadn't transferred to Berkeley when Stevie had.

You never realize what you're missing until you come to Berkeley--and when you leave, it's easy to forget. The air is light, the sun bright and you feel tremendously energetic and strong. You also experience a sudden resistance to credibility gaps, realities of life, overdue bills and other pitfalls of the American way. That's why the campus revolt began in Berkeley and that's why it has never made more sense than it did, and does, in Berkeley: because the people who are striking and picketing are picking up their energy from the land. When the sun shines in that town, life is so outrageously beautiful that a black man shot in Oakland the night before or a zillion tons of bombs dropped on Quong-quong in the past week doesn't seem wrong--it doesn't seem like anything. It is inconceivable and totally ludicrous. Which is what it would seem like to intelligent people anywhere. The difference is that in Berkeley, at least, the need to rectify the ludicrous offenses is as obvious and as natural as the presence of the sun in the sky.

Even the little details showed. Like, in Boston, if you wanted to call for the exact time, you dialed 637-8687--which in letters spells Nervous. In Berkeley, the equivalent number spells Popcorn.

Stevie came out with a couple of joints and a gallon of Red Mountain. He gave me a joint and then a glass and said again it was great to see me. Then he said: "How's Annie doing?"

"OK," I said. The hooch was good. "Well, not OK. I don't know. Shitty, in fact. I haven't seen her for about a month now."

"Jeez, I thought you two were really--"

"Yeah, well...." I shrugged. "I still dig her." I lit the joint. It was even better. "She's bumming around with some dipshit from the Piggy Club now. I see her every once in a while on Mt. Auburn Street, smashed out of her mind. We exchange pleasantries and that's about it. You know. How's Barbara?"

"Cool," Stevie said. "Great chick. Everything's cool." He lit his joint and said:. "Came out here to get away from Annie, huh?"

I shook my head. "Not really." Stevie had introduced me to Annie, about a year before, and ever since, he'd taken a kind of paternal interest in how we were doing. But, hell, I thought, people changed. I'd changed, she'd changed. It had been a good thing, but it wasn't anymore and I didn't feel like talking about it "Not really," I said again.

"You and your parents seeing eye to eye these days?" he asked.

I laughed and shook my head. I knew what he was asking. He was asking how I could afford the trip out. "Not exactly," I said.

"You dealing again?" Stevie said, pulling a long face. "I thought you quit that."

"I did," I said, "but John's been getting into it lately. Pretty heavily, in fact. He's turning over about twenty bricks a week."

"Far out," Stevie said, "Twenty bricks a week, around Cambridge?"

"Yeah, everyone's turning on these days. But you know John. He's not particularly interested in the details, just the wheeling-dealing. So here I am."

"Just doing bricks this time?"

"Yeah. Just bricks. Ten in the little bag under my seat and away I go. With a free vacation in California in the process."

"You ought to knock that shit off," Steive said. "You're going to get busted sometime."

I shrugged. "You drive a car long enough, you'll have an accident," I took a long hit off my joint. "Anyway, there wasn't anything else to do. I mean, this is spring break, right? So I can come out here and dig what's happening. I can go back to fucking Westhrop to spend a restful week listening to the old man telling me what I ought to do with my life, while the old lady asks me where they've gone wrong." I laughed. "You know, man, like, you got a mustache and they want to know where they've gone wrong. Fuck that. If I started pushing beds across the country and organizing panty raids, they'd be unhappy because I was apathetic and uninvolved. You can't win. Shit, I don't even want to win anymore. I just want to do the things I want to do."

"Yeah," Stevie said, "I'm hip." He lay down on his back and stared at the tinted sky. We were silent for a while and then he said: "You still buying from Ernie out here?"

I shook my head. "Ernie's not too cool these days. He got busted with thirty bricks last month and didn't have the bread to buy himself off."

"Is that right?" Stevie said, sitting up, suddenly interested. "But I just saw him last week...."

He stopped. He thought it over.

"Maybe he found somebody to post bail."

I said: "Maybe."

He looked vaguely apprehensive. "Well, if he made a deal, he'll just turn in a couple of smack freaks." He thought that over and then added: "He wouldn't turn in any of his friends. Ernie's all right."

"I'll let somebody else find that out," I said.

"Ernie's all right."

"Yeah, probably he is. But we've got another connection now and there's no question about whether he's cool or not." Which reminded me. "Can I use your phone?"

"Yeah, sure," Stevie said. He got up and followed me back into the kitchen. I was asking how to dial information when there was a noise at the back door and a huge freak walked in, holding his head and bleeding.

It was Ross.

There was blood all over everything, including the little blonde chick who was holding him up. Ross had his sheepskin vest on, as usual, and, as usual, he was mad. Ross was always mad about something; a good bust in the head just gave him a chance to focus his energy. He slumped down on the couch with the chick, beneath the poster that said "See America First. "Stevie ran for a rag.

"What happened?" I asked the chick, who was crying and wiping her face and Ross's with the same bloody handkerchief. There was a hell of a lot of blood, but then Ross was a hell of a big boy. He was big enough to be playing football for Ohio State, except that this was Berkeley and Ross had hair down to his shoulders and was wearing a huge pair of yellow shades. One frame was shattered and they were lopsided on his nose now as he looked up at me.

"Oh," lie said. "It's you."

"What happened?" I said again.

"Up on campus," the chick said, "the governor gave the order to the pigs to break up the picket lines." I tilted my head. "We were keeping people from classes," she added.

"At seven o'clock at night," Ross said. "The motherfuckers, keeping people from classes at seven at night."

"So the pigs broke it up," the chick said. She had stopped crying and was staring at my clothes. Stevie came back with a rag and started wiping more blood off Ross's lace. "Motherfuckers," Ross kept saying.

"Quit moving your head," said Stevie.

"See it now," Ross said, to no one in particular. Suddenly, he tilted his nose in the air and started sniffing. Sniff, sniff. "Goddamn," he suddenly said. "Goddamn morons. You been smoking again."

"Relax," Stevie said.

"Goddamn," Ross said. "Now of all times."

Stevie and the chick were working on him. Stevie said to her: "Sukie, this is Peter. Peter, Sukie."

"Hello," Sukie said. Her back was to me. She was bent over Ross, putting Merthiolate on his head. Her long legs were stretched taut and they were very brown. Hello, hello.

"You guys are going to screw everything," Ross said. "You're going to get us all busted for sure. Jesus, I think if you have too much of this, it begins to affect your brains. I think--"

"Quit moving your head," Stevie said again. He glanced over at me, and we exchanged looks. Old Ross. He'd never change.

He sat patiently until they had patched up his head, then stumbled off to the bathroom, with the chick still supporting him. When they'd gone, Stevie said: "He bought another one."

"Oh?" Nothing had changed since the year before.

"Yeah. Last week."

"What was it?"

"Shotgun," Stevie said.

"Out of sight. What's he got lying around by now?"

"I don't know. At least six. Two shotguns for sure."

"Two?"

"Yeah, one to replace the automatic. He jammed it last week and he's having a hard time getting it fixed."

I nodded. Seeing as how automatics were illegal, you'd have a very hard time getting one fixed. Besides the fact that none of Ross's guns was registered. But that was just the way his head worked. He figured that if he registered his guns, he'd just be tipping them off--the big "them"--so that when the day of liberation came, "they" would know about him, would know to come and get him. He figured that they probably already knew enough about him to come and get him anyway; but just let them try. He was ready. Muthfuggin' pigs.

It probably would've been a cool idea for Ross to keep his guns out of sight if he'd been doing anything. If he'd been a Panther or a Weatherman--even if he'd been a member of the Sierra Club. Anything. But Ross wasn't doing anything, short of letting everyone know what a heavy he was and knocking out a few token Bank of America windows with the butt of his gun when the inevitable spring riot came to Berkeley. That was why he always cut such a ludicrous figure with me.

Ross was a fervent Marxist-Leninist. At least that's how he thought of himself. He was one of the first people I'd ever met in Berkeley. I'd just been walking down Telegraph, digging the street scene, and he'd looked like he knew his way around, so I'd asked him if he knew where such-and-such Dwight Way was. He lived there, too.

We'd been great good friends for an hour or so, which was, I'd later discovered, about the longest amount of time Rossie could function before finding it necessary to pause and consider the state of the coming revolution. So we'd started talking about the revolution, and after a bit of it I'd just laughed--and that had offended him deeply. You could do anything, say anything, be anything to Ross--but you couldn't laugh at the revolution.

Later, when Stevie had mentioned that I was in Berkeley to score some dope, the dislike had turned to contempt. Because Ross had no place for drugs in his life. He was serious enough about his trip to live in constant preparedness for the big day. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, and you could hear him panting every night as he did his calisthenics. He stayed in shape for it, and he expected others to do the same. So he especially detested dope people, whose presence meant a possible bust--and with it the confiscation of his well-maintained arsenal. We really didn't get along.

But what bothered me about Ross, in the end, was that he couldn't dig what anybody else was up to. I mean, I didn't want the dude to knock off what he was doing, just because I couldn't dig it; but that was exactly what he seemed to want me to do. And as far as I was concerned, that was half-assed, because it all came down to personal excuses, which were purely a matter of choice. His excuse for not paying any attention to us was that we blew dope, which not only was illegal but was quite literally an opiate of the people, an anti-revolutionary device that we were politically ignorant enough to indulge in.

And, finally, our excuse for not digging Ross's trip was that we figured that any changes that were really going to happen were going to happen in people's heads. We figured that once you started killing, you admitted that you were at such a loss for solutions and that your own way was so poverty-stricken in the knowledge department that all you could do with people who didn't see the light was to liquidate them. And we figured that was nowhere. So we blew our dope and stayed in our heads; and maybe that was nowhere--but that was our problem.

The only hitch in all this being that, from the point of view of Ross's repressionary society, he was a lot cooler than we were. I mean, selling marijuana could often get you into worse trouble than killing somebody. In that sense, Ross was a lot more hip than we were.

Stevie and I sat in the living room, waiting for something to happen. Pretty soon the chick came back out. I was fumbling around for a cigarette, but I didn't have a match. "Do you have a match?" I said to her.

She stared at me blandly for a moment, then said: "If you made a salad out of tobacco leaves and ate it, you would be very sick."

It was said without judgment or heat, simply, a stated fact. But all I could think was, Christ, not again. Another California health-foods freak.

"Stevie, got a match?"

He shook his head. "I'm all out, man. Ask Ross, why don't you?"

Just then. Ross came out of the bathroom, still holding a towel to his head. He was mumbling to himself, so I left the honors to Stevie.

"Ross, you got a match?" said Stevie.

"So you can smoke some more dope and stink the place up? Hell, no."

"It's not for a joint," said Stevie. "Just a plain, ordinary butt that won't stink anything up any more than it already is. For Peter," he added.

"OK," Ross said. "OK. In my room, near the phone." As I got up, he said: "Hey, and there's a number by the phone that you were supposed to call if you showed up here. Some guy from Boston called this morning and left it."

I nodded and said: "Thanks."

"And if you call Boston, call collect," Ross yelled after me as I went into his room.

There was a number with a Boston exchange written on a newspaper. There was blood all over the paper and I wasn't sure of the last digit, but what the hell. I dialed the number and a far-off voice answered.

"Hello?"

"This is Peter," I said.

"Oh, yeah," said John. He sounded like I had just wakened him, which was the way he always sounded on the telephone. "What's happening?" he asked.

"Not much. I got invited to a bust but I didn't attend."

"Good man. Musty gave me a ring about five hours ago. He said he'd had to split his place fast."

"No kidding," I said.

John ignored me. "Yeah. We were really worried about you for a while there, Peter." I'll bet, I thought. It would've cost you a lot of bread. As if he knew what I was thinking, John went on: "We were afraid the heat might hassle when they found the house clean."

I said: "They did. Big deal."

"Ummm." I had half expected congratulations on my narrow escape, but of course there weren't any. John said: "Big bust?"

"Eight narcs. Couple of patrol cars."

"Shit, that's the trouble with Musty. When they come down on him, they come down hard."

"I thought he was so cool," I said.

"For Chrissake," said John, "he is. He knew this was coming. He called me, didn't he? Don't worry about it."

"OK," I said, "OK. You know where he is now?"

"Just a minute." John left the phone. I could hear music in the background and, faintly, a chick giggling. Then John came back.

"Peter?" he said. "Take this number down."

He gave me an Oakland number, told me to be careful and hung up. I sighed a deep sigh of relief, knowing at last that everything was still cool. I felt like I could relax a bit, maybe even dig that chick for a while before I dived back into the business routine. I picked up Ross's matches and went back out into the living room.

Ross was sitting alone on the couch, smiling and drinking a medicinal glass of wine. He was telling Stevie with great glee how he'd managed to kick a cop in the 'nads before they'd gotten to him.

"Took that fucking pig right out with me," he said.

Stevie looked up at me. "Everything work out OK?" he said.

"Yeah, fine," I said. "Thanks." Then to Ross: "Where's your old lady?"

"Who, you mean Sukie?" I nodded and he laughed. "She's not my old lady, man. Just a good head. She hangs around to take care of friends on days like this, when she knows there's going to be trouble."

"Where'd she go?" I asked.

"She went back up to campus to see what's happening." He looked at me hard and then laughed again. "You can forget about her, Harkness," he said, "if you're thinking what I think you're thinking. She's a good head. She doesn't go for bad druggies like you."

"Oh, I see," I said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he said, but I just shook my head and sat down. I wasn't going to argue with the dude, I was just going to relax for a change and enjoy myself. In my hand, I had the number John had given me, Musty's number. I should've been on the phone, trying to get hold of him, to set up a time. But I didn't feel like I had to be in any rush. I could wait. Musty had almost put me on the shit hook and it was my turn to reciprocate. He could sweat it for a while, not knowing whether I'd been picked up. It was all part of the game.

• • •

Dealing is funny, as a game. It is very external and controlled and it follows patterns of protocol and consequences asrigid as any ever encountered by nine-to-five man. More rigid, perhaps, since not everyone is playing the dealing game on the same scale nor with the same intensity nor with the same degree of knowledge.

But everyone in the park is playing, whether he's on the grass or in the bleachers, drinking beer, because everyone figures he's got something to lose. That essentially is what makes dealing so dangerous and so thrilling--the simple fact that everyone is convinced he's got something to lose. Because not everyone is going to admit it.

That's the difference between the dealer and nine-to-five man--who is forced to admit it, whether he likes it or not. He has to wear a suit to work and he has to keep his shoes shincd and he has to get haircuts and watch out for telltale underarm stains. These rules are accepted by J. P. Nine-to-Five, by Mrs. Ruth Wanamaker Nine-to-Five and by all the little Nine-to-Fives. It's accepted by them and before they know it, it is them, for which they receive the consolation prize of knowing who they are. And everybody's happy as long as the supply of glycerin suppositories holds out.

But that's not what's happening on the street, because all the people who are playing there aren't sure they're playing, and sometimes they're most definitely not playing but only trying to play or thinking they want to play or some variation thereof. That's what makes dealing so interesting.

It doesn't start that way, of course, with the fully developed patterns and responses and the paranoia and the inimitable thrills and chills. It usually starts as an act of love and only later turns into a game.

You start with John Joseph Strait, single, on his way through life with one finger cocked piously up his ass and another thumbing through the Yellow Pages. To this sturdy fellow, add two pernicious influences, one psychedelic experience, a taste of rock-'n'-roll music and some form or other of idle mind, which is widely accepted as the Devil's playground. Beat pernicious influences and psychedelic experience until fluffy, add rock 'n' roll, season with idle mind and lick the gummed side. Hold a match to one end, insert in mouth. You are now smoking a joint and wondering why you never thought to do this before, while the little man in the back of your head who holds the keys to your future is rolling around on the medulla in a fit of epilepsy. He is shouting that you will never be the same again, that you have permanently damaged your chromosomes and your taste buds and that you have generally corrupted your body and fulfilled your parents' worst expectations.That is, that's what he would be saying if you could hear him. But right now, you are thinking you have never in your whole life ever noticed how perfidiously intricate the sun looks coming through a half-filled cut-glass decanter of wine nor how amusing it is that your belly button should be stopped shut, while your nose has two holes instead of one.

After a few experiences of this sort, the dastardly weed becomes a fond and coveted friend and it attracts others. That is to say, in the spirit of brotherhood and togetherness that is the mark of the Aquarian Age, you and your friends blow dope together; and those of your friends who don't aren't around much anymore. This isn't any fault of yours--you're still digging them as much as you did before--but you just can't stand those soon-to-be-behind-bars looks they give you when you get your shit out and ask them if they want a smoke; nor the way they ask you if you're high on "that stuff" before they'll tell you how ugly their date was that night.

So you and your dope friends blow dope together and have a lot of good times together and watch the sun go down every night together and go to Baskin-Robbins to taste ice cream together. And after a while, it gets so that you're blowing a lot of dope together.

And that's cool, contrary to the local witch doctor's medicinal meditations or the Surgeon General's latest case of theblahs. Because you know--having violated the number-one principle of Western science and entered into self-experimentation--you know that dope doesn't make your eyes bug out nor make your head split open and grow asparagus. And you know that you don't wake up the morning after with the cold-turkey liver-lidded hungry frenzied glassy-eyed pure need look of dope in your eyes, because you're eating better and sleeping more than you ever have before. And you know that dope doesn't zap your brain into the fourth dimension only to drop it off in the second, leaving you with three eyes and a dork the size of a pineapple and the insistently insane, uncontrollable need to kill, rape, pillage and plunder--which a stint in the Army would at least teach you how to do--because in that sense, dope is very uneducational.

On the contrary, you find that it is vocational. You change your name to Phineas Phreak or Seymour Stone and wear bell-bottoms and dirty B.V.D.s and grow your hair down to your ass and try to keep from passing go, while still collecting your $200 for tuition every month. You cancel your subscription to the Times and read the L. A. Free Press and don't brush your teeth and look sullen as much as possible. You hang up when old girlfriends call and lead a mysteriously quiet life, enjoying the knowledge that your straight friends are sorrying about your health and the "deterioration of your nervous system."

But most of all, you become conscious of the extent to which you were hoaxed by people you once believed in. Dope doesn't drive you to needles nor crime and you still laugh at your father's dull jokes.

So you try to create your own mechanism and struggle to survive within it. You do what you think is right and you say not what you're supposed to say, usually not even what you want to say, but what you have to say. And then one morning, you wake up and it's you they're describing in the editorials and they're talking about you like you're a piece of shit that won't flush. You've dropped out, it seems. You're alienated and, God knows, what else.

By this time, however, your evil habit is consuming a bit more of your lunch money than it properly should and you and your friends decide to start buying in quantity. This makes for cheaper dope and quite often for better dope, because you're getting a solid chunk of a brick and not a lid bag half full of oregano. So you find a big dealer and buy stuff for your friends, and they love you for being so wise in the ways of the street and so kind to their pockets and throats.

Which continues until you finally realize, one day, that you don't have to pay for any of your smoking dope, if you buy in quantity with your friends and then sell a few ounces at street prices to anybody who's interested. And probably, by this time, your parents have seen a picture of you in the papers with long hair, hanging out of the occupied administration building, and they have told you to come home to Flat Top Community College or be damned--which is to say, you have been cut off. So that's the way it begins, with a few lids to friends to keep the bookstore off your back or the landlord or the used car salesman or whoever has it in for you at the time, and from there it grows like a weed. And soon enough, you're dealing quite a bit of dope and you aren't seeing many friends, since you're either buying or selling, or smoking with buyers or sellers, and you spend a lot of time hustling and being far out and saying, "Oh, wow! Hey, man, did you dig that?" And it goes on that way for as long as you can stand it--or forever, if you can stand it that long. But the chances are excellent that the game will grow either too bold or too old and the routines too sadly and forlornly familiar, and you will retire from public street life and go back to where you came from. Which is where you are.

• • •

I called Musty's number in Oakland and some guy who seemed to know said I should come over, that everything was cool. Iwas supposed to ring the buzzer marked Carol Moss. I said fine and went over.

Driving over in the car, I felt better and better. It was a beautiful spring night and the windows were down; I could hear the sounds of the street and the people. The driving was mechanical and I began to drift into the fantasy, the currentfantasy, you might call it, but strong just the same. At first it was just faces--faces in my mind, faces of the people blurring as I drove past them, and then I saw the crowd fanned out before me like a huge faceless corpse, dead but alive, jumping and jiving as I tuned up for the next number, and I was telling the engineers to make sure all the recording equipment was in order, because I didn't want to have to do it more than once. If I had things my way, I was going to do the damn thing once and then get out from under the glaring heat of those spots, out into the night and alone. They yelled back that everything was cool and I nodded to Willie. He thumped up the bass and started it rolling, drifting and flowing, echoing hollow from the P. A. s in the back of the stadium. And then the drums chopped in, stomping and humping, with the light clang of the cymbals on top of it, and then we were into it, the crowd knew that it was what they'd been waiting for all night and they moaned, an insane screaming moan of pleasure, screaming We Love It, It's Yours; It's Yours, We Love It, We Love It. And then the harp flew in and we were going, man, we were going and this was all they were going to get; but before we went, they were going to get it. Just then, the cords broke in front of the stage and there were cops all over the place, tripping and falling over the equipment and themselves and the chicks clawing and grasping and then it was gone, done and gone and the m.c. was yelling, "The New Administration," and the crowd was chanting for more, more, but we were down and under and out of the lights--

The lights--Jesus, I'd just run a red light and some poor bastard back there was screaming at me. I checked the rear-view mirror nervously, but there was no heat. Pure luck. I took a deep breath and there were no more faces. I finished the drive and parked across from the address I had been given.

It was an old two-story house with big bay, windows. There was a chopped Harley leaning against the side of the house, back behind the cars so you couldn't see it easily from the road; it must be Musty's. I smiled in the darkness. Connection at last.

I pressed the buzzer and a funky little blonde showed up, wearing a bathrobe that was much too big for her and an irritated expression. She sized me up with a cold eye, like one of those people at fairs who guess how much you weigh.

"You're the guy from the Coast," she said. "In the back."

I stepped into the hallway, which smelled old and dark. "Are you Carol Moss?" I said. "I'm--"

"In the back," she said, walking away.

The hall led me back toward the only light in the place, past the stairs leading up to the second floor, past an empty living room and a foul-smelling can. I came out into the light and saw three dudes sitting around a small kitchen table. There was a nappy-looking spade in a white linen suit, a guy with long, curly hair and a droopy mustache and a little guy with glasses and a nervous look. They all glanced up when I came in.

Mustache looked at me. "You Hark-ness?"

"Yeah."

"Have a seat," he said. "This is Lou," he said, pointing to the little guy, "and Clarence." I nodded and sat down. There was only a bare bulb overhead and the walls were painted black, giving the place a séance atmosphere. The walls were covered with posters: Peter Fonda on a hog, with a sign saying, "Ours is the Addicted Society"; Jimi Hendrix scratching his belly; Bill Miller for Berkeley City Council.

"Good trip?" Musty asked me.

"Little dull so far," I said, lighting a cigarette. Nobody laughed.

"You miss the bust?"

I shrugged. Obviously I missed the goddamn bust.

"Well," Musty said, "we got your stuff here. It's not quite Michoacan, but it's nice. Very smooth." He pointed to a place beside the stove where there were a lot of bricks wrapped in foil. "Very nice gold. John'll really dig it."

Then we talked about the bust for a while and then Clarence asked me how the heat was in Boston. "About usual," I said. "They can't hassle the colleges much. Mostly, they try to hit you when you're away from the nest. Airports, stuff like that."

"You want these bricks now?" Musty asked me.

"No," I said. "Cat I'm staying with doesn't want any dope around at his place. He's got a paranoid friend. I might be around later in the week. Could you put me up here?"

"No problem. You can use Jack's room upstairs. It's empty. And the place'll be cool, because I'm going to get these bricks out of here for a while. When are you leaving?"

Carol Moss walked into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of milk and walked out without saying a word.

"What's hassling her?"

"Me," Musty said, laughing. "She's ripped at me because I spend more time with my machine than I do with her. You see my hog out there when you came up to the house?" I nodded. "Fine machine. That's a fine fucking machine. I keep telling her that if she had seventy-four cubic inches, I'd spend more time riding her, but she doesn't think that's so funny."

"No sense of humor, huh?" I said. They didn't think that was so funny, either.

"You could say that," Musty said.

"I gotta split," Clarence said, standing up. He nodded to Musty and said to me, "Catch you later, man," and was gone.

"Do you want to taste this dope?" said Musty, looking over at the bricks.

"Sure," I said.

Lou, who had been out of the room, came back in. "I'm going," he said to Musty. "Give me the keys to your wheels."

Musty laughed. "Haven't got the wheels here," he said. "Too hot. I left them in a garage down by the Holly Street place. And I'm sure as hell not giving you my bike, if that's what you're thinking about. Nobody drives my bike. Except me."

There was a silence while Lou looked glum. Then he said, "What about you?" I realized that he was talking to me. "How about it, Harkness. Did you drive over?"

"Yeah," I said, trying to sound noncommittal. I wasn't too big on giving the car to some dude I didn't know from a hole in the ground.

"Well," Musty went on, "Lou here is cool. Aren't you, Lou?"

Lou nodded. I was thinking just then that I'd hang around for a while and taste the dope, so what the hell.

"Come back soon," I said, pulling out the keys. "And just don't bust it up, OK? It's not my car."

We all laughed and Lou hustled out the door.

"He's a weird little dude," I said, but Musty was already over in the comer, opening one of the bricks. He removed the tin foil first, then the paper wrapping. On the paper was a peace sign and the words "Berkeley 890." I wondered what it meant and then realized it must be the gram weight--not a bad one at that. A righteous brick, 890 grams. Below that wasa large, stenciled M. Musty saw me looking at it and laughed.

"My trademark," he said. "I wanted to get one of those hand-press stampers, so 1 could punch it right into the brick. But, shit, you know what they want for those things?"

"No," I said, thinking thai Musty was pretty cocky. Or else pretty fucking good.

"Like a thousand bucks, man. I looked into it."

It was cocky, but it wasn't unheard of, trade-marking your own dope. A lot of dudes had done it, most notably Augustus Stanley Owsley III, who'd helped put acid in the dictionary. He used to stamp a little owl right into his tabs, and it was like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. It meant that the acid was pure, with a good base and a uniform 305-microgram dose. It also meant another two bucks a tab on the street.

Musty pulled a hunk off one of the bricks and began rolling some joints. While he rolled, he talked about the dope supply, the way things were getting tight. "It's the same all over the country," he said. "Christ. Used to be a year-round business, now it's getting seasonal. It's only April now and the squeeze is on already. Everybody's cracking down."

"Cracking down?" I said. "Dealers, or what?"

"Well, dealers, yeah, but mainly it's the full-scale crackdowns that hurt. Like, the American Government leans on the Mexicans and the Mexs, dumb fuckers, start burning crops. And then the border guards start getting honest, and the FBI decides to do nothing but hassle big dope runners--and things get tight."

"Shit," I said. "The FBI? Haven't they got better things to do?"

"Never have before," Musty said. "Old J. Edgar and the boys have been mowing down straw men for years--Communists, dope fiends, hidden persuaders, anything they can think of. Anything that sounds tough but can't fight back. They're smart, man. If they didn't keep everybody hopped up about the Red menace and the international dope conspiracy, then they'd have to really get down to work and do something. Like go after the mob--and the mob's a tough cookie, man. The mob'd bust J. Edgar's balls."

He sighed, finished one joint, licked it, set it aside and started on another.

"Listen," he said, "you know why the mob doesn't deal dope--and why the only people who get busted by the FBI are punk dope pushers like me? You know why? Because the mob doesn't want anything to do with grass. They're not interested. Grass is small time and it's too bulky to move without a lot of hassle. But mainly, they're not interested because there's no real money in it. Like, a dude can smoke dope his whole life and if the supply gets cut off, it won't hassle him to stop smoking. Or if somebody's fucking the market and the price goes up, he can stop smoking. Or if the stuff he's getting is cut with milk-sugar or oregano or whatever, he can stop smoking and wait till something better comes along. 'Cause your basic teahead isn't hooked, dig, he hasn't got a monkey on his back. He's blowing his weed 'cause he digs it, period. If things get too hot or too expensive--zap! No dope market."

I nodded. Big deal. But Musty was getting into it.

"Now you figure this," he said. "The mob doesn't go for dope at all, see, because they're a business organization, out to make money. They're interested in shit that gives you a habit, creates a real market. A market that stays to buy whether the shit is only ten percent potency or whether the price jumps 500 percent after the first week of supply. A market that stays, no matter what, a market of guys who'll do anything they have to do to keep getting their daily fix. But the FBI isn't working on that market, see. They're out busting dope-fiend creeps like me who turn innocent teeners on to a stick of mary jane every now and then."

"Far out," I said. There was nothing else to say. I had heard it all before. Anybody who is into dealing has heard it all before.

"Goddamn right it's far out," Musty said. "It's also a drag to talk about." He paused and I hoped he was through, but he suddenly picked up again. "And I'll tell you what else is a drag," he said. "A real downer this is, too. You got any idea how many people are blowing dope these days?" I shrugged. "A hell of a lot, man," he said. "A hell of a lot. Ten or twenty million, says Life magazine. Five percent of this country, bare minimum. You have any idea how much dope all those people consume?" I shook my head. He shook his head back. "A hell of a lot, man," he said again. "And I'll tell you what happens. The heat, see, the heat figure they gotta stop all these people from blowing dope, 'cause otherwise they're going to have a country full of drug addicts on their hands, right? Right. OK, so they crack down on the dope supply, they make it hard as hell for a normal Joe to get his hands on some normal smoking dope. And they figure that's good, see, they're doing their job and preventing everybody from getting addicted. Right?" He laughed bitterly. "But then look what happens. There's not enough dope around, so the shitbird dealers start burning the scene down. And they don't have any more good weed than the next man, so they sell shit--any kind of shit--and they cut it with something to give it a kick. And the people who know what weed's all about, see, they're not getting burned, 'cause they know better. But the people who don't know better, they get screwed." He threw up his hands, then rapped the table once more. He was getting pretty excited. "Like these dudes who try to sell you a lid and say, drink it as tea--all that means is that they're pushing some ragweed cut with meth, and you aren't going to buy their crummy lid, right? Right. You know that, and I know that. But some high school punk isn't gonna know that, and he's gonna go home and fix himself up some 'tea,' and if he does it often enough, he's gonna have a speed habit. Too much, huh? This country has a potential drug night-mare on its hands, and the pigs are busting their balls to keep it going. All the time telling the straight mommies and daddies what a good job they're doing, keeping dope out of the kiddies' hands, when actually they're responsible for hooking more little ignorant brats on more kinds of shit than you can even think of. It's too much."

He sighed and seemed to run out of steam. He sat back in his chair, shaking his head, then seemed to remember the joints he had rolled. He lit one and took a drag, then handed it to me. "Comes on nice," he said. "Just wait."

Carol Moss appeared out of nowhere and sat down at the table. She didn't say anything, just sat.

"Want some smoke?" I said to her, holding out the joint. She shook her head and Musty laughed.

"Forget about her," he said. "She'll snap out of it."

I took another long, luxurious hit and then held the joint away from me, observing the fine blue-gray smoke and the creeping advance of the burning tip across the yellow terrain. And realized that I was stoned. "Wow."

Musty said: "Fine smoke, what?"

It was definitely extraordinary smoke and 1 couldn't say a thing for a while. The events of the day got up and introduced themselves to me formally and asked me to sit and chat. Having no alternative, that is exactly what I did. It had been quite a day.

I realized that I was very tired and that the business end of everything had been concluded. I could crash. The feeling came over me like a huge breath of hot air, not uncomfortable but impossible to escape, and I knew that I wanted to sleep.

Musty was in front of me, saying something. I think he was still talking about how good the dope was. My ears focused and zoomed in on his words. People talk too much, I was thinking. And they eat too much. So they fart a lot and have jizzy friends like Lou. They're fat and they drive fast cars and listen to the news and beat off to Lawrence Welk. They're lonely. They get cancer and diarrhea and heartburn and dysentery and malaria and syphilis and an education, all from talking too much. The hell with them. I wanted to go to sleep.

"Where's Lou?" I said and everyone in the kitchen stirred audibly.

"He said something," said Musty.

"Jesus Christ, he's alive." A chick's voice. Must be that Carol what's her name.

"And he wants to go to sleep!" said Musty, laughing.

"Where's Lou?" I said again. "Got to get some sleep. Completely whacked out. That dope is unbelievable."

"He's functioning," said Musty to the chick. "But just barely." Then to me: "Tell you the truth, I don't have the slightest idea where Lou is right now, and he probably doesn't, either. He may be back in an hour, which was an hour ago, but it's more likely that he'll be back sometime tomorrow. He's got an old lady in North Berkeley and once lie's up there, he doesn't show for a while. So you might as well crash here."

"Fine," I said, "anywhere. Sorry to be so lively, but this happens to me every so often, just comes over me. Nothing I can do about it. Uncontrollable desire to close my eyes. Strange but true."

"You can lake Jack's room," said Musty. "Second door on the left, at the top of the stairs. There's a sleeping bag in the closet, if there aren't enough blankets."

I thanked him and split.

• • •

Second door on the left, open, I stumbled in. Sat down and with a sigh of relief took off my shoes and was just about to throw off the jacket when I heard someone say hello. I whirled around and there she was or, rather, there it was, a shift of swirling colors so bright they hurt my eyes, glistening white teeth, beautiful dark skin--a fine woman, the whole thing extremely fine, too fine to be true, in fact, too fine to be true any time but now. All 1 could think was, Please, would you please just go away.

"Hello," I said. I put my shoes back on and stood up. "Sorry, but they told me downstairs this room was empty. Which room is Jack's?"

"Sit down," she said, still smiling.

"I'd like to very much," I said, "in the morning. But right now, I'm very sleepy and have to go to bed. So if you'd tell me where--"

"This is Jack's room," she said. "My dog is having puppies in my room and the smell is too much, and I didn't know anyone was staying here tonight, so...." She shrugged. "But if it really bothers you, I'll leave. The smell's not that bad."

Another beautiful smile. I was being hustled: She knew damned well I wasn't going to throw her out if her dog was having puppies. Well, hell, I figured 1 could probably get her to drop one of the Seconals I had with me, so the light wouldn't be on all night. I wondered how long I was going to have to be sociable before I could shove one down her throat. There was nothing to do but sit down and find out.

"Your dog's having puppies?" I said.

"Yeah," she laughed. "Six the last time I looked, but probably more by now. I'd take you in to show you, but Dagoo is getting motherly already and she wouldn't like having anybody around she didn't already know."

I nodded, cursing myself for not having been born a dog, with the same prerogative.

"Want to hear some sounds?" she said and, without waiting for an answer, she went over to the corner of the room. As she did, she brushed her long hair back from her face and I saw it clearly for the first time in the candlelight. Then she came back over and sat down next to me.

"Want to smoke some dope?" she said. "Ouf-of-sight stuff. Musty got it for a rich friend of his back East." At that, she produced a lid and began rolling some joints. She lit one and placed the others in the marvelous cleft peeking over the top of her shift.

"Great place to keep your stash," I laughed. Maybe I would blow some dope. This was obviously going to take some time, this social bit.

"Got into the habit last summer, during the riots," she said. "They were hassling people just for being on the street, stopping you and frisking you for dope, anything. The cops love to give a chick a good going over, but they never check there."

I nodded and took a long hit, noticing as I did that the dope was different from the stuff I'd been tasting with Musty.And had a quick paranoid flash: was he pushing me one brick of good dope and giving me another nine keys of shit? But then I thought, no, not Musty. He was a businessman and, besides, he was too close to John. No, that was the kind of stunt that smacked-out old Ernie Statler would've pulled. I laughed at the thought of Ernie, and just then a lightning bolt zinged between my ears and caressed the backs of my eyeballs. I was a new man.

"Fine smoke," I said, giving her the joint. "Very fine smoke."

"I should hope so, if you're going to knock off that much of it in one drag. Man, the look in your eyes was golden. What'sa matter, you feeling bad when I came in?"

"Just tired," I said. "It's been a long day."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," she said. "This stuff really gives you a run for your money." Then she hopped up: "Wow, listen to that!" and went over to turn up the stereo.

She came back and sat down again and stared at me. Not really at me--but at what I was wearing. As if to say, I like you and all, but whoever told you to put those things on? I got a flash on Sproul Plaza that afternoon and suddenly realized what had been happening that day, all day, ever since I'd gotten into town. I'd been swimming upstream the whole time because of the way I looked.

I laughed and said: "I know. Who's my tailor?"

She shook her head. "No, no, I didn't mean that. It's just that, well, I just can't get over those duds. You are the one from Cambridge, aren't you?" I nodded, and she laughed. "God, do all the dope people in the East look, like you?"

The way she said it, I had to laugh with her. "No, just the ones who run bricks for paranoid friends. I look like this whenever I come out here. It's a trip, huh?"

She laughed again, then said in a surprised voice: "Hey, I know where I've seen you. You were over at Stevie's this afternoon."

"Yeah."

"Good friends with Stevie?"

"You good friends with Ross?"

She looked at me, then shrugged. "Ross's OK. You've just got to get to know him. As a matter of fact. I remember him saying something about you. Sounded like you and him didn't get to know each other the right way."

"What is the right way with Ross?"

She laughed. "There isn't. Want another smoke?" I nodded and she reached down into her shift to retrieve another joint.I figured that at the rate we were going, neither of us would be needing a Seconal. We'd be out cold in an hour.

"This dope almost never got here today," she went on. "Musty's place got busted about ten minutes after he got the word and he barely had time to move it all out." Her eyes got big. "They wouldn't have had to bust him, either. Just his bricks. He's gotten cocky lately, and that house was rented in his own name."

"Yeah, I saw that." She stopped fumbling with the matches and looked at me. "I flew in this afternoon, see, and I only had that one address. And nobody left a note on the door."

She laughed. "Wow, I heard they took the walls out."

I nodded. "Yeah, they did. But hell, it's over, done. So why don't you light that joint?"

She did, and passed it over. Then she said: "You flew out just to pick up the bricks?"

I held up my fingers. "Three days and I'm off again."

She was incredulous. "Three days? That's all the time you're going to stay? Why not hang around, once you're out here?"

"Well, I'd like to, but I've got to get back. Exams." I laughed. "Anyway, it's not as ridiculous as it sounds, if you've ever spent a winter in Beantown." I looked at her, and she shook her head. "Oh. well, you've missed something. Snow, sleet, wind, gunk--Boston's got it all. It's a winter wonderland."

"Far out," she said. "I moved up here to get away from too much good weather. From L.A., just south of L.A., actually. Bright sun and eighty degrees all year round. It drove me nuts. So I split school and wound up here in Berkeley." She leaned close to me and gave me what was by this time a darkly stained roach. "How'd you know Musty?" she said.

"I didn't." I said. "He's a friend of a friend--that rich guy you were talking about before--dude named John. Very nice cat who, unfortunately, was born with a trust fund in his mouth." Then I shook my head. "That's just a state of mind," I said. "He's actually a great guy"

"Yeah," she said. "He sounds it." And as soon as I heard her say that, I knew that, somehow, she'd felt the same vibrations that I had. It was John and the world he'd built up around him: distant, alien and totally destructive to the atmosphere in the room.

And then she was saying something about another joint and I was nodding, not thinking about that but, rather, about the way I was feeling, the way I was slipping and sliding head over heels into the old I am you and Who is he? routine.

Because suddenly, the old Subterranean Laundry Man was there, pulling out the dirty linen for all to see and admire, watching everything that I did. Scrutinizing idiosyncrasies, scribbling notes, making points. She has her hand on your wrist, my boy; aren't you going to respond? She trusts you and wants you, old chap; aren't you going to help the lady out? It was weird, that feeling. And it made me very nervous. I was split in two, cut down the middle, the one half watching and the other half acting on dictation. I was suddenly being careful. Careful not to blow the scene, careful not to mess up all the good work done so far, careful to keep the emotional strain to a minimum until I could manage to plunk her firm little ass into bed. And with the caution, with the split, came the memories.

I first met the Laundry Man in high school. He was just a casual acquaintance then--a friend of a friend, you might say. But I soon discovered that I was more ambitiously horny than I would have ever dreamed possible--and that my three daily hours of football with the high school meatballs didn't alleviate the pain one bit. That knowledge was the birthright of the Laundry Man, and he thrived on it until one day he was bigger than me and was calling the shots. It soon became my habit to flee the chloroformed vistas of pep rallies and cheerleaders and student-body apathy and to make my way to New York. Where I haunted the bars of the Lower East Side, getting thrown out of most of them for being underage and the rest for drooling. But I continued undaunted, hunting for that mythical older woman who would, in the privacy of her run-down apartment, teach me every exotic churn and buzzle known to man.

I learned to drink Scotch on the rocks like apple cider and to perform a number of other routines suggested by fellow travelers--socks us a codpiece, a wedding ring on my finger, a carefully cultivated five-o'clock shadow, and on and on. And I got all the ass I wanted, Grade B ass to be sure, and not all of it inspected by the Department of Agriculture, but then, that's what I was looking for on the Lower East Side. I thought it was all very funky.

But the whole time I was hustling, I was watching. I was comparing notes with the other guys (TWA stewies are best?) and then trying new little numbers out (my wife died of leukemia, she was only 20) and then watching again. And one day I finally got sick of it, especially sick of the chicks who couldn't play it any other way except as this kind of a game and, more especially, sick of myself because I'd been doing it so long that it was part of me, it was there all the time, and I couldn't turn it on and off at will anymore. The Laundry Man wouldn't knock off after working hours like the rest of the boys. By the time I stopped going down to New York, I hated the whole riff.

Only to discover that my peers and classmates were now digging the joys of communion. The chicks in school were suddenly hankering for me, mostly because I was aloof. Sweet little homemade lemonade cunts sidling up to you in the corridor and launching into their version of Getting To Know You. I couldn't stand it. I told them to be quiet and then to go away and, finally, in desperation, to fuck off. I became a monk. I avoided them. Because the whole time the Laundry Man was back in my head, stiff with starch and saying. Come on now, son, oblige the lady. Be sociable. Be a man! But I knew better than anyone that the Laundry Man spoke with forked tongue, and I did not want to lie again.

So I tried to keep him under lock and key and just live my life. But here he was again, huffing and puffing and lusting for the battle--and here was this goddamned chick playing right up to him.

She was tapping my shoulder. "Hey," she said, "you planning to finish that all by yourself?"

I looked down at the roach in my hand and laughed. I was about to suggest another, but she already had it out and was lighting it. Then she said: "What do you do in Cambridge?"

"I'm on the dole," I said. It was supposed to be funny, but as I watched her face, I could see that she didn't understand. And then it wasn't all that funny, even if you did understand. In fact, it wasn't funny at all. It was a way of life.

"How's that?" she said, head to one side.

"Government," I said. "I study government, political science, whatever they call it around here."

"Oh," sort of drawing her breath in, trying to figure out if I was leading up to some kind of punch line. I wished there were some kind of punch line for school. "Is that interesting?"

I laughed. "I don't know. Ever read the papers?"

"Only the comics," she said, and I laughed again. That was good.

"Well, there aren't any comics in the Government Department at Harvard. At least they don't think of themselves that way. Nothing but serious, devoted scholars."

She said: "Why don't you split? I mean, it doesn't sound like you dig it much."

I shook my head. "Not for a while." Chances were pretty good that if you split, especially if you were splitting to get out of the machine, you'd just wind up in a different kind of machine.

"Draft?"

"Uh-huh."

"Can't you get out?" she said.

"Of the all-new, action Army?" I said. "I don't know. What the hell, though, what a drag this is, talking about it like this. This is exactly what they want you to do--get good and freaked out about something as half-assed as the Army, so you can't really concentrate on what's going down. Divide and conquer," I said, raising a mock finger, and she smiled. I finished the joint and put it back in the bag with the other roaches. "What're you up to in Berkeley right now?"

"Working in a studio," she said.

"Is that right?" I said. "Far out. What, modeling?"

She laughed. "No, no. A recording studio." She tossed her head in the direction of the stereo. "Like, we produced this album, for one, and we do a lot of remixing. But pretty soon we're going to be doing the whole works, from beginning to end. They've almost finished the new studio." She pulled out another joint. "Seventy-two tracks, man. Dig that."

"Far out," I said again.

She got up to change the record again and I didn't see but, rather, felt her presence this time as she moved about the room in the flickering light.

"Sukie," I said, half to myself as she sat down again beside me. Rolling it over against the roof of my mouth and seeing it come out with the smoke of the joint: "Sukie." I turned to her and asked: "Why do they call you Sukie?"

She looked up at me and I was filled with her strange eyes, rich and thick, and I couldn't hold the gaze. Suddenly, I wanted to kiss her and I folded my hands and thought about Mt. Auburn Street. There, that was better. I could talk again.

"You still haven't told me," looking at her again.

She turned away. "Because I'm, ah, tawdry." She seemed to savor the word as she said it, bitterly, and it dripped from her mouth.

"Tawdry," I said. "Good word. Fine word. Sukie Tawdry. Tawdry Sukie--"

"Don't," she said, and I could hear an edge in her voice, something hurting, so 1 didn't. I just sat. And wondered, What now? And wondered again about the Seconal. After a while, she put her hand out to me and said: "You're nice."

1 was angry. "What?"

"I said you're nice."

"What does that mean?"--thinking, Christ, Jesus Christ, not this bit, not just now, when I was starting to dig you.

"It means," she said, "oh, just that you don't fuck with what you don't understand."

"I'm not nice." I said, withdrawing my hand. "In fact I'm impotent. And I don't like people who make jokes about it. Solet's have another smoke and forget about it."

She nodded and as she did she leaned forward to light the joint in the flame of the candle, her skin glowing smoothly, hair pulled back as far as it would go, as if to keep it out of the flame and as I watched her fiercely puffing on the joint, I understood. Her left eye, which had been covered until now by hair, wandered out just a bit to her ear. It made me happy and angry at the same time, this ridiculous dangerous vicious game we were playing, now that I began to understand the rules, and I could not laugh as I wanted to. Finally, I said: "Give me the joint, would you?"

She handed the smoke over and got up to change the record.

"What do you want to hear?" she said from behind me.

"You just put that on, just a minute ago."

"I don't like it," she said.

"Big deal," I said. I could hear her flipping through the albums. They made a slapping sound and she said: "It doesn't bother you?"

I was suddenly angry with her for drawing it out. She had trusted me, she had shown me--and now what was all this crap? I said: "Is it supposed to?"

She came back over. "That was not nice," she said.

"It wasn't meant to be."

Very softly: "Are you pissed?"

"No, why should I be?" I was blowing my mind.

She was quiet for a long time before she spoke again. Her voice was full and throaty when she did. "Do you have someone?"

"Are you asking or do you want to know?" It wasn't exactly what I wanted to talk about just then. I flashed on Annie and she said: "Yeah, that happened to me, too."

I looked at her, disbelieving.

"This guy and I had a real good thing going," she went on, "but he thought he could treat me like shit."

I looked at her, feeling something like affection. I thought I was going to laugh when she said, "You remind me a little of him," and I let my air out in a rush.

"Thanks, I'm overwhelmed."

She laughed. "No, no," she said, "just the way he looked. And you don't even look that much like him. He was a prick."

"Oh," I said, not knowing what else to say but suddenly laughing at the whole scene, at the fear and anger that was so important and then not even important enough to be remembered. I looked up at her and she was laughing, too.

"The only tiling is"--still laughing--"I can't stand those duds you got on. Do you go around like that when you're in Cambridge?"

I nodded.

"All the time?"

I nodded again.

"I couldn't stand it," she said. "It must be like walking around inside a tank."

"Yeah, well--"

"Why don't you get out of them?"

"I'm wrecked," I explained and she just nodded and came around the table, leaned over to undo my shirt and I pulled her down to me on the floor and kissed her hard. Then she was tickling my ear with her tongue, saying: "Your jacket's going to get dirty."

"It comes clean."

"Come on," she said, "let's get in bed."

"You were taking my shirt off," I said, kissing her. She started unbuttoning and I picked her up and carried her to the bed.

"Is everyone at Harvard such a gentleman?" she whispered, and I dropped her. Laughs.

Somebody was knocking on the door.

"He's not in," I said, and sat down to take my socks off. Another, heavier, knock, and a thick voice asking for me. "Nobody's home," I said. Christ, take a hint.

And then the door was open and three cats were in the room, all wearing gray pin-stripe suits and looking like walk-ons for Robert Stack. Dangling their wallet badges before I could get my glasses on.

"FBI," said the first man.

"Your name Harkness?" barked another.

"Yes," I said.

"You rented a '69 Mustang from Hertz today?"

"Sounds familiar. What can I do for you?"

Silence. Then: "We just want to look around." Spoken in typical deadly Oh, Nothing plainclothesman tones. Deadly. The speaker was a skinny guy with a crewcut. He had 86-proof brains you could smell across the room, and his neck was covered with acne. He started looking and so did the two others, poking here and there in the room and in the corridor outside.

I suddenly remembered Sukie's lid and got a woozy rush of anticipation, but I couldn't see it on the table, so maybe she'd stashed it. At any rate, I decided to try to get them out of the room as soon as possible.

"Since we haven't been formally introduced," I said. Nobody looked up. "You wouldn't mind telling me what you're doing here?" I continued.

"We would," Crewcut said. OK, fairenough.

"In that case, you wouldn't mind producing a search warrant." Fuck these dudes. First thing I'd done when I'd gotten into dealing was to read a manual on search-and-seizure techniques--complete with the latest test cases, rights of the citizen, common police ploys. All the dope, as the saying goes. And so I wasn't about to stand around and watch while these jokers turned the place upside down.

I repeated my question.

"Why don't you shut up," Crewcut said.

I decided to be indignant. "You know as well as I do that you need a search warrant to go over this place," I said.

Sukie was lying on the bed, the blankets twisted around her, looking unhappily at her dress on the floor. One of the cops stepped on the dress as he walked around the room.

"And I have a witn--"

"Listen, Harkness," the third one said, fat, with glasses and a choked, menacing voice, "if I were you, I'd keep quiet just now, because--"

"Because what, cop?" I said. I was getting mad. "Right now you're up for breaking and entering, illegal search and, for all I know, seizure, besides--"

"Besides, you're under arrest," Crewcut said. "For possession. Put your shirt on, you're coming down with us."

I couldn't believe it. I just stared at them as they moved around the room, shuffling and sniffing and poking at things. I was trying to figure out if one of them had picked up Sukie's lid, but they didn't act like it.

"I'm what?" I said.

"Under arrest, candy-ass. Now move it."

If they were bluffing I figured I might as well follow them down the line. "On charges of possession?" I said. "I'm clean. Go ahead, look around all you want, you won't find anything on me."

I was scared and Crewcut was looking pleased. "Sure we don't need a search warrant?" he said.

"Let's go, kid," said another.

There was nothing to do but go. Sukie gave me a So Sad To Be Lonesome look as I got dressed, and I saw how suddenly cold and tired she looked, huddled up in the blanket. Meanwhile, the cops kept looking around but, miraculously, didn't find anything, not even the roaches. I got all my clothes on and was tying my tie.

"Forget that," Crewcut said. "There's plenty of time for that."

I watched them nosing around the room, and felt like laughing. It was almost impossible to take them seriously, with their cops-and-robbers huffing and puffing and the staid, predictable way that they played the scene. As if they were actually playing a scene. I felt like I was watching TV--this kind of thing happened to people on TV, not to real flesh-and-blood persons. I was a spectator at my own bust.

Then one of them turned to the dude with the glasses and said: "Hey, Murph, you want the girlie here?" I felt tight andweak until Glasses said: "Naw. Just candy-ass here."

Then they twirled me around, grabbed both wrists and pulled them tight behind me and slapped on the cuffs. Wrenched them shut.

"What's the point of that?" I said. "I'm nonviolent." It was a joke, if a grim one.

"How are we s'posed to know that?" said Crewcut, dead serious.

"He's bleeding," said Sukie. "You've got them on so tight he's bleeding." I hadn't noticed, but I took her word for it.

"Relax, lady," said Glasses, the one they called Murph. "Lover boy, here, can take it. Right?" He slapped me on the back and I stumbled out of the room.

Out in the hallway, I went up against the wall. A good frisk with a knee in the balls, special delivery from Crewcut.

"What the hell," I said, "you watched me get dressed." Very loudly, hoping to wake someone up.

"Shut up," they said, taking me down-stairs.

In the downstairs hall, I could see their faces better. Crewcut was very young, with pimples all over his face as well as his neck. No wonder he was being the tough guy, I thought. This may be his debut. He was glowering ferociously as we left the house.

The second guy looked like a butcher putting on airs. A nouveau riche butcher. Rolled old ladies for their opera tickets so he could fart in a box seat. Butcher needed a shave and some deodorant.

The third guy, the one with the glasses, looked strangely familiar. He was a mean-looking son of a bitch, short and stocky, with closely cropped gray hair, 45 years old, maybe 50. His face was smooth, round, complacent: the face of a pig who'd been getting fattened by the fanner all year but hadn't yet figured out what for. His voice was as stiff as his walk and sounded like he'd forgotten how to laugh.

Law and Order, I thought. Bring Us Together.

Outside, the patrol car was waiting, a bored cop in the driver's seat. We drove off into the night, one narc on each side of me. Nobody said anything. The narcs seemed suddenly as bored and passionless as the automaton at the wheel. Finally, I said: "What have you got on me, anyway?"

No answer. Everybody was engrossed in the empty, pale night streets.

"Well, listen," I said, "long as you're running me in, you might as well--"

"Just shut up, huh, punk?" one of them said. Lazily, enjoying it.

I couldn't believe it. What was this shit, anyway, the drive-ins or a special number they did for guys like me?

After a few minutes, one of them turned to me. "We got your friend," he said.

"My friend?"

"Yeah. We got him. Took us a while to find out where you were. Sorry about the delay." Chuckles. I was delighted to see that somebody was having a good time.

"My friend?" I said again.

"Look, laddie, how dumb are you? There's no use fucking around with us. It's over. We got the whole story. Picked up your friend and found the shit. So don't fucking waste our time."

Crewcul turned around from the front seat to look at me.

"See. punk, this time it's for real. It's all for real." Then he laughed. "Christ, you guys are all the same. Like that guy we picked up last week--hey, Murph, you 'member the guy on the beach? Yeah. We picked up this guy on the beach inFrisco last week, busted him while he was shooting up. He had his whole outfit right there with him, along with half a bag of scag, and he was so smacked out of his mind that the whole way in to the station, he wouldn't do nothing but tell us what a great guy God was." Titters all around. Crewcut was being appreciated. "Goddamn. The whole way, the guy stuck to tin's one story. Said he just went down to the beach to meditate, 'cause he wanted a bag of scag so bad that he'd decided to pray to God, and suddenly--this is what he says, he says, 'And then suddenly, officer. God answered my prayers and that bag, my bag you got there, that bag just dropped into my lap, right out of the sky.' Wouldn't tell us anything more. Christ, you guys are all the same."

More titters. Even the cop who was driving joined in. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable.

"I want to see my lawyer," I said.

"Yeah," said Crewcut. "At the station."

• • •

I finally got the story when I was booked. Lou was driving around in the car and the brake lights hadn't been working, so the heat pulled him over for a routine check. And Lou hadn't had his license, and nothing but rental papers in place of registration, so the heat had decided the car was stolen, called in the FBI and given him a good going-over. Along with the car. It was then that they'd found a lid of Lou's dope under the seat.

So they ran him in and he swore that it was my dope and my car and that he'd just innocently borrowed it. He had become extremely helpful and even gave them my address in Berkeley.

So they busted me. Speed kills.

It was just a freak accident, the kind of dreary half-assed thing that could happen to anybody. I couldn't even get angry about it.

The walls of the cell were green.

The quiet neighborhood of clean pink-and-white stuccos, palm trees and clipped lawns suddenly exploded......as patrol cars and two unmarked sedans loaded with narcs screeched to a stop in front of Musty's house.

This is the first of three installments of "Dealing." Part II of the novel will appear in the January issue.