Junky (14 page)

“The border is pretty hot,” I said.

“I hope you won't take offense at what I say,” he began, “but you look like you use stuff yourself.”

“Sure I use.”

“Do you want to score?” he asked. “I'm due to score in a few minutes. I've been trying to hustle the dough. If you buy me a cap, I can score for you.”

I said, “O.K.”

We walked around the corner past the NMU hall.

“Wait here a minute,” he said, disappearing into a bar. I half-expected to get beat for my four dollars, but he was back in a few minutes. “O.K.,” he said, “I got it.”

I asked him to come back to my apartment to take a shot. We went back to my room, and I got out my outfit that hadn't been used in five months.

“If you don't have a habit, you'd better go slow with this stuff,” he cautioned me. “It's pretty strong.”

I measured out about two-thirds of a cap.

“Half is plenty,” he said. “I tell you it's strong.”

“This will be all right,” I said. But as soon as I took the needle out of the vein, I knew it wasn't all right. I felt a soft blow in the heart. Pat's face began to get black around the edges, the blackness spreading to cover his face
as though it were actually changing color
. I could feel my eyes roll back in their sockets.

I came to several hours later. Pat was gone. I was lying on the bed with my collar loosened. I stood up and fell to my knees. I was dizzy and my head ached. Ten dollars were missing from my watch-pocket. I guess he figured I wasn't going to need it any more.

Several days later I met Pat in the same bar.

“Holy Jesus,” he said, “I thought you was dying! I loosened your collar and rubbed ice on your neck. You turned all blue. So I says, ‘Holy Jesus, this man is dying! I'm going to get out of here, me!
'
”

A week later, I was hooked. I asked Pat about the possibilities of pushing in New Orleans.

“The town is et up with pigeons,” he said. “It's really tough.”

•

So I drifted along, scoring through Pat. I stopped drinking, stopped going out at night, and fell into a routine schedule: a cap of junk three times per day, and the time in between to be filled somehow. Mostly, I spent my time painting and working around the house. Manual work makes the time pass fast. Of course, it often took me a long time to score.

When I first hit New Orleans, the main pusher—or “the Man,” as they say there—was a character called Yellow. Yellow was so named because his complexion was yellow and liverish-looking. He was a thin little man with a dragging limp. He operated out of a bar near the NMU hall and occasionally choked down a beer to justify sitting in the bar several hours a day. He was out on bail at the time, and when his case came to trial he drew two years.

A period of confusion followed, during which it was difficult to find a score. Sometimes I spent six or eight hours riding around in the car with Pat, waiting and looking for different people who might be holding. Finally, Pat ran into a wholesale connection, a dollar-fifty per cap, no less than twenty. This connection was Bob Brandon, one of the few pushers I ever knew who didn't use the stuff himself.

Pat and I began pushing in a small way, just enough to keep up our habits. We only took care of people that Pat knew well and was sure of. Dupré was our best customer. He was a dealer in a gambling joint and always had money. But he was a hog for junk and so couldn't keep his hand out of the till. Eventually, he lost his job.

Don, an old neighborhood friend of Pat's, had a city job. He inspected something, but was off half the time sick. He never had money for more than one cap, and most of the money he did have was given him by his sister. Pat told me Don had cancer.

“Well,” I said, “I guess he'll die soon.”

He did. He took to his bed, vomited for a week, and died.

“Seltzer Willy” owned a seltzer truck, and had a seltzer delivery route. This business brought him two caps a day, but he was not a very enterprising seltzer pusher. He was a thin, red-haired, mild-mannered man, the type described as harmless.

“He's timid,” said Pat. “Timid and stupid.”

There were a few others
who dropped by for an occasional bang. One was called Whitey—I never found out why, because he was dark—a fattish, stupid man who worked as a waiter in one of the big hotels. He figured that if he paid for one cap he was entitled to the next cap on credit. Once, after Pat turned him down, he rushed to the door in a rage and held up a nickel. “See this nickel,” he said. “You're going to be sorry you turned me down. I'm going to call ‘the People' on you.”

I told Pat we'd better stop serving Whitey.

“Yes,” said Pat, “but he knows where I live. We ought to find another place.”

Another occasional was Lonny the Pimp, who had grown up in his mother's whorehouse. Lonny tried to space his shots so he wouldn't get a habit. He was always beefing how he couldn't clear anything now, he had to put out so much for hotel rooms, and the law kept him on the move. “See what I mean?” he said. “There's no percentage.”

Lonny was pure pimp. He was skinny and nervous. He couldn't sit still and he couldn't shut up. As he talked, he moved his thin hands which were covered on the backs with long, greasy, black hairs. You could tell by looking at him that he had a big penis. Pimps always do. Lonny was a sharp dresser and he drove a Buick convertible. But he wouldn't hesitate to hang us up for credit on a two-dollar cap.

After he took the shot he'd say, as he rolled down the sleeve of his striped silk shirt and fastened his cufflinks, “Look, boys, I'm a little short. You don't mind putting this one on the cuff, do you? You know I'm good for it.”

Pat would look at him with his little bloodshot eyes. A surly peasant look. “For Chris' sake, Lonny, we have to put out for this stuff. How would you like it if people came in on you, laid your girls and then wanted to put it on the cuff?” Pat shook his head. “You're like all of them. Once they get it in the vein that's all they care. Here I have a cool place where they can come and shoot, and what consideration do I get? Once they get it in the vein that's all they care.”

“Well, look, Pat, I don't want to hang you up. Now here's a dollar and I'll bring the rest this afternoon. O.K.?”

Pat took the dollar and put it in his pocket without saying anything. He pursed his lips in disapproval.

Seltzer Willy dropped by around ten o'clock on his route, took a cap and bought a cap for the night. Dupré came in around twelve when he got off work. He was on the night shift. The others came any time they had the inclination.

Bob Brandon, our connection, was out on bail. He was charged in State Court with possession of junk, a felony under Louisiana law. The case against him was based on traces—that is, he got rid of the junk before the cops shook his place down. But he did not wash out the jar in which the junk had been kept. The Federals will not take a “traces” case, so the State took it. This is regular procedure in Louisiana. Any case too shaky for the Federal Courts passes to the State Courts who will
prosecute anything
. Brandon expected to beat the case. He had good connections with the political machine and in any event the State had a weak case. But the D.A. dragged in Brandon's record, which included a murder conviction, and he drew two to five years.

Pat found another connection right away and we went on pushing. A peddler named Jonkers began selling on the corner of Exchange and Canal. Pat lost a few customers to Jonkers. Actually, Jonkers' stuff was better, and sometimes I scored from Jonkers, or Jonkers' partner, an old one-eyed character named Richter. Pat always found out somehow—he was intuitive as a possessive mother—and then he would sulk for two or three days.

Jonkers and Richter did not last long. Exchange and Canal is one of the hottest spots in New Orleans for junk. One day they were gone and Pat said, “Now you'll see some of those guys come back to me. I told Lonny, ‘If you want to score off Jonkers, go ahead, but don't come back here and expect me to serve you.' You'll see what I tell him if he comes back here. Whitey, too. He's been scoring off Jonkers.” Pat gave me a long sullen look.

One day the woman who managed Pat's hotel stopped me in the lobby. “I just want to tell you to be careful,” she said. “The cops were here yesterday and made a thorough investigation of Pat's room. And they arrested the boy with the seltzer truck. He's in jail now.”

I thanked her. A little later Pat came in. He told me the cops had grabbed Seltzer Willy as he left the hotel. They didn't find any junk on him so they took him to the Third Precinct and booked him to “hold for investigation.” He was there seventy-two hours, which is the longest period they can hold anyone without placing charges.

The cops searched Pat's room, but he kept his junk stashed in the hall so they didn't find it. Pat said, “They told me, ‘We have information you're running a regular shooting gallery up here. You'd better pack in, because next time we're going to come and take you, that's all.
'
”

“Well,” I said, “better pack in except for Dupré. No harm to serve him.”

“Dupré lost his job,” Pat said. “He's already into me for twenty dollars.”

We were back looking for a score every day. We found out that Lonny was “the Man.” That is the way it went in New Orleans. You never knew who was going to be “the Man” next.

About this time an anti-narcotics drive hit the town. The chief of police said, “This drive is going to continue as long as there is a single violator left in this city.” The State legislators drew up a law making it a crime to be a drug addict. They did not specify where or when or what they meant by drug addict.

The cops began stopping addicts on the street and examining their arms for needle marks. If they found marks, they pressured the addict to sign a statement admitting his condition so he could be charged under the “drug addicts law.” The addicts were promised a suspended sentence if they would plead guilty and get the new law started. Addicts ransacked their persons looking for veins to shoot in outside the arm area. If the law could find no marks on a man they usually let him go. If they found marks they would hold him for seventy-two hours and try to make him sign a statement.

Lonny's wholesale connection gave out and a character called Old Sam was “the Man.” Old Sam was after doing twelve years in Angola. He operated in the territory directly above Lee Circle, which is another hot spot in New Orleans for junk or anything.

•

One day I was broke and I wrapped up a pistol to take it in town and pawn it. When I got to Pat's room there were two people there. One was Red McKinney, a shriveled-up, crippled junkie; the other was a young merchant seaman named Cole. Cole did not have a habit at this time and he wanted to connect for some weed. He was a real tea head. He told me he could not enjoy himself without weed. I have seen people like that. For them, tea occupies the place usually filled by liquor. They don't have to have it in any physical sense, but they cannot have a really good time without it.

As it happened I had several ounces of weed in my house. Cole agreed to buy four caps in exchange for two ounces of weed. We went out to my place, Cole tried the weed and said it was good. So we started out to score.

Red said he knew a connection on Julia Street. “We should be able to find him there now.”

Pat was sitting at the wheel of my car on the nod. We were on the ferry, crossing from Algiers, where I lived, to New Orleans. Suddenly Pat looked up and opened his bloodshot eyes.

“That neighborhood is too hot,” he said loudly.

“Where else can we score?” said McKinney. “Old Sam is up that way, too.”

“I tell you that neighborhood is too hot,” Pat repeated. He looked around resentfully, as though what he saw was unfamiliar and distasteful.

There was, in fact, no place else to score. Without a word, Pat started driving in the direction of Lee Circle. When we came to Julia Street, McKinney said to Cole, “Give me the money because we are subject to see him at any time. He walks around this block. A walking connection.”

Cole gave McKinney fifteen dollars. We circled the block three times slowly, but McKinney did not see “the Man.”

“Well, I guess we'll have to try Old Sam,” McKinney said.

We began looking for Old Sam above Lee Circle. Sam was not in the old frame rooming house where he lived. We drove around slowly. Every now and then Pat would see someone he knew and stop the car. No one had seen Old Sam. Some of the characters Pat called to just shrugged in a disagreeable way and kept walking.

“Those guys wouldn't tell you nothing,” Pat said. “It hurts 'em to do anybody a favor.”

We parked the car near Sam's rooming house, and McKinney walked down to the corner to buy a package of cigarettes. He came back limping fast and got in the car.

“The law,” he said. “Let's get out of here.”

We started away from the curb and a prowl car passed us. I saw the cop at the wheel turn around and do a double-take when he saw Pat.

“They've made us, Pat,” I said. “Get going!”

Pat didn't need to be told. He gunned the car and turned a corner heading for Corondolet. I turned to Cole, who was in the back seat. “Throw out that weed,” I ordered.

“Wait a minute,” Cole replied. “We may lose them.”

“Are you crazy?” I said. Pat, McKinney and I yelled in chorus “Throw it out!”

We were on Corondolet headed downtown. Cole threw the weed out and it skidded under a parked car. Pat took the first right turn into a one-way street. The prowl car was coming down the same street from the other end, going the wrong way. An old cop trick. We were boxed in. I heard Cole yell, “Oh, Lord, I've got another stick on me!”