by Alan Furst
The next two weeks went by prettv fast. The three of us are getting tireder and tireder, and it’s getting harder and harder to be Cosmic Charley for every goddamn college hippie in Pennsylvania who has money or friends enough to buy grass in big lots. At Swarthmore we sell to the son of a senator. He’s got great big ears and fucked-up eyes and we have to listen to an hour’s reading of Winnie the Pooh before we can do business. A black business maior at Lafavette tells me that he’s going in with the New York brothers on a thing and to cancel the next shipment. A short fat freshman with a Corvette, in Indiana, Pa., comes on to Genelle so hard she practically raps him one in the teeth and he gets all pissed off and starts talking about free love. A chick buying in Harrisburg tells me that all dope should be free, and I tell her that when money is free, dope will be free. I never saw so many people locked into so many prisons talk so hard about so much freedom. I’m sleeping five hours a night and driving 200 miles a day to be about part-free and I don’t think I could handle, very much more of it. Tbey’re blowing their fingers off every day with firecrackers and screaming for dynamite. There’s a few good ones, people who are themselves and just in it to get themselves and their friends stoned, make a little bread and have some laughs. But too few, too few, and too far between.
Seventeen days after our little treasure came sailing down out of the sky, we can see the end. We’ve been driving around and around inside Pennsylvania, with a few dips over into Ohio and West Virginia, and we’ve got two more stops, about 30 keys total left to turn, and then it’s a well-earned vacation and a bonus for Genelle. Inside the door panel of the Yacht is about $50,000, of which $26,500 equals initial outlay, working capital, and another $15,000 for expenses of various kinds (I keep an incredible lawyer in New York on permanent retainer. That costs.) and about $9,000 is mine. I’ll do this trip about four times a year, so now you know what I make. Thing is, except for a little shit like my ten grand in the Fullerton National Bank in old Jim Adler’s name, very little of it will ever earn any interest. So when I retire, I’ve got to have enough principal to live on, forever. The FBI is nothing compared to the IRS—the King’s tax collectors know where the peasants are stashing that extra bushel of grain and if you’re showing a heavy lifestyle, you had better be prepared to explain things to your local agent. There’s lots of money turning over and cleaning itself in Miami and Vegas, but I don’t know those people and they don’t know me. So I got to figure on a $300,000 stash—cash money every penny of it—and then $10,000 or so for the next thirty years and I don’t think I get to have social security. Of course there are always opportunities for someone with a little bread, but they don’t come along often, and you’re either in this business or not in it. John Accardo has two beach houses on the Med in Morocco that he rents and I might do something like that. And you can forget about Switzerland—that’s crime novel stuff, or for people who make their bucks unethically rather than illegally. In America one got nuthin’ to do with the other.
So I’m thinking all this over and deciding that Paris might be nice after the summer tourist season is over and all the Europe-On-Five-Dollars-A-Day people go back to their high school teaching jobs, and it’s about eight and just getting dark and misty and Genelle and Robbie are watching Archie Bunker on the tube and all of a sudden I see that red gumball machine flashing in my mirror. “Oh Jesus,” I say, and start to pull on the shoulder, and I look at Genelle and say “We’re busted” and she shrugs. Don’t bother trying to flush 30 keys of marijuana down a chemical toilet. We pull to a stop and Genelle tugs her shirt down a little so her tits stand out and sits Robbie on her lap and that’s about as ready as we can get.
Levin’s Law: The cop who finally gets you is the kind of cop you’re most afraid of. No exception this time. He is tall and rangy and kind of slithers out of his natty black and white cruiser. He has high cheekbones and no lips anywhere I can see, Buck Rogers mirror-reflecting sunglasses where his eyes should be, and every twill inch of his uniform hangs clean and steady. He is county fuzz—the loosest, freest, wide-rangingest of American enforcement types.
“Good evening folks,” he says, “like to see license and registration.”
I pull it and hand it through the window. His gumball machine is still whirling around and the whole scene gets played out in red-black-red-black highway extravaganza lighting. I note the button flap on his holster is undone and I don’t know what’s in there but it’s plenty big and I don’t think he’s gonna ponder any supreme court decisions before he decides to put an auxiliary navel in somebody’s forehead. I’ve got the fat half of a sawed-off pool cue mounted under the dash with friction tape around the handle, but this ain’t no kampus kop. He reads a while, Genelle is sitting there and I can hear her breathing—it can get very tough on chicks in county-type calabooses. Robbie is very quiet, he knows something is going on and he’s bumming on all that fear coming off his mom.
“Mr. Adler,” he says, lots of tension in his voice but I don’t figure where it’s coming from, “I’m going to take a look inside your vehicle.”
We both pause what seems like a long, heavy pause. He can’t legally come into the Yacht and he knows he can’t and knows I know he can’t, but knows that I can bitch or not at him and knows that I know that if he presses, in he’s coming.
“Mrs. Adler, please step out on the pavement and stand in front of the vehicle.”
“That isn’t Mrs. Adler,” I say, and here we go, “I picked up this person by the highway a few miles back.”
‘That’s right, officer. My name is Genelle Fournier and I was hitchhiking with my child.”
“Please get out of the vehicle and stand in front.” And in he comes.
The last dope is stacked in the comer, about half a box full. He goes right to it, opens the flap, tears the plastic around one of the key-bricks, smells, rolls a little around in his fingers, and gestures at me with the brick:
“This is a controlled substance. Please get out of the vehicle and place your hands on the side.” I clamber out and he and the brick are right behind me. His right hand is free and I can hear that holster leather flap as he walks. Genelle and I got to spread our feet and lean on the side of the Yacht, and Robbie just stands there. He gets to frisking us, pat-pat, with that brick straddled between his legs. Meanwhile, Middle America is rushing by in Campers and Toronados and Airstreams and it’s el gawko all they way: “Look at that, Harold. The police are arresting someone with a Winnebago.”
I’ve seen the tag above the shirt pocket and the cop is named Byszka. He takes out a thumb-worn card from somewhere and reads us our rights and I say yes I understand, I want to call my laywer, and no, I have nothing to say. He takes out plastic cuffs and does my left hand to Genelle’s right hand and Robbie rears back and punches him in the knee. Byszka gives Genelle a long look, I can see her reflected in his sunglass mirrors, and she reaches out her free hand and says “You hold onto mommy, Robbie.”
We get in the back of the cruiser, no handles on the doors inside and a grille between us and Byszka, and I feel Genelle poke me in the thigh. I turn as the car takes off around the Yacht in a great spurt of gravel. She gives me a very strange look: it says ‘what’s going on here?’ And I curl my lip at her, ’cause it’s obvious to me what’s happening—we’re either busted or shook down and either way it’s very bad. My head is pretty blank, except for a bit of hunting around for my lawyer’s telephone number, which ordinarily I can rattle off, and the beginning conciousness of a deep desire to pee.
The county jail is in Webersburg, Pa. It’s that plastic modem kind of building built with the money that came pouring out of the federal government the first time Senator Hushpuppy found his daughter getting stoned in the family room. A “clean modern facility” if I ever saw one. Inside it’s all laminated blond wood and fancy electric communications shit and business-like officers storm-trooping around on the subdued linoleum. Who’da thought that there was such a crime wave in Meridan County pee-ayy?
Genelle and I exchange glances which agree that she is to be the hitchhiker. She says “Officer,” and fourteen guys turn around, including Byszka, “my child has to use the bathroom.” Well, they can’t have piss on these floors, so our cop, looking half annoyed, unlocks Genelle and marches them to a bathroom somewhere down a corridor. Redhead says to me: “Doesn’t he go by himself yet?”
“I wouldn’t know, man, I just picked up the chick an hour ago.”
“Oh yeah, man, I see how it it.” and he flashes me a really warm ivory smile.
“I’d like to call my lawyer. Have I been arrested or what?”
“Oh, we’ve got papers and things to fill out. Everything in time.”
“Nice little place you got here.”
“We like it.” And he’s back to shuffling forms for a while. After a time he looks back up and says “Answer me a question?”
“Anything I say may be used against me?”
“Oh we have you figured for a punk dealer. One level up from the hippies. So don’t make a federal case out of it, I’m not taping you.”
“So what’s the question?”
“What do you get out of it? Money Thrills? Prestige?” I recognize that style—it’s the epilogue from Dragnet, vintage 1957 TV.
“Out of what?”
“Out of pushing pot?” Pot! Maybe they hadn’t found the real goodies yet. Where was the Yacht? My 50,000 hard-earned? What were they doing to Genelle in the bathroom while Robbie peed? Pot? They must have some fucked-up people writing their training manuals. “I don’t push pot.”
“To us—you know we see you guys more than you see each other—you’re just small-time hoods with educations.”
“I’m not even a small-time hood.”
“Just a thug.”
“Don’t knock thugs, man.”
“Why not?”
“Thugs built this fucking country.”
“You think, hunh?”
“I think.” At which point Genelle and Robbie and a less composed Byszka appear. He must have had to stand in front of the urinal while Genelle helped Robbie unlimber his little league cock for a piss. Maybe his cheekbones aren’t so high after all.
Genelle sits down and positively acts out the drama of avoiding me. Though Byszka has us cuffed up together again, she is, by will, creating an observable space between us. I know this will be better for me because if they let her split she can call Lieberman, the lawyer in New York, and the anonymous little lady by a telephone in Dayton, Ohio, who will call the other Adler in California and tell him he’s part of the protest generation again and to get his ass headed in the general direction of Vancouver, B.C. All this I want to happen. Yet somewhere in me is a little string that keeps reaching out to tie onto her. So far I’m not as scared shitless as I thought I would be—believe me I have lived out this scene in my mind a number of times—and like with a lot of other things, what happens, when it happens, isn’t as terrible as you thought it would be. But we’ve been occupying the same space for a while, and balling here and there, and something in me is really looking for a hook to curl around, so that astral slide down the bench causes a twinge I didn’t think I’d be twinging.
Byszka and redhead are still deep in conversation. Redhead I figure for a D.A. watching the boys in the shop run their machine, or a plain clothes guy with a B.A., the “new policeman” no doubt written up in Cop Monthly, or maybe just a civilian dispatcher, or maybe somebody’s brother-in-law, ’cause although he’s standing behind the counter (there are in-front-of-the-counter people and behind-the-counter people in the world of civil service) not one goddamn cop who’s been truckin’ through there for the last half-hour has so much as looked at the guy. Now if that last is true, if he’s civilian, what the fuck is the confab between him and Byszka?
If you’ve ever driven a fifties automobile, you know what an idiot light is. It’s that little red light on the dashboard that comes on when something is not right. More often than not, though, when the thing goes on, you think not that the oil is low or the heat is high, but that the light itself is screwing around—the warning is warning you that it broke itself. In my head I have an idiot light. Mostly when it goes on I just tell myself that I’m being paranoid, hearing people in the living room. But, as they say, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that somebody isn’t following you. Anyhow, at about this point, my idiot light goes on, and even though I think it’s “a short in there somewhere” as the pump jockey always finally tells you, I start hunting along my mental highway for “mechanic on duty 24 hours a day” signs. Of course there aren’t any.
Here comes Byszka, all professional, striding towards me.
“Come with me,” he says, and uncuffs me.
I think “here it is” and begin to squeeze myself together inside ’cause I suddenly got the idea they’re gonna take me “behind the station house” and beat me up. We go back through a long hall and into a small room; one desk, three chairs. Indirect lighting in the ceiling so at least it’s not the old gooseneck lamp turned into the eyes and “Where were you on the night of the murder?” number. Maybe they’ll make me stare at that indirect lighting until I confess. A subtle torture from the new hip psychologists in the Pentagon? Byszka motions me to a chair and sits at the desk and begins unlimbering a giant deck of snap-out forms, IBM cards, and black ink questionnaires with ‘Do Not Write Here’ boxes on them. Shuffle, shuffle. There is absolutely no temperature to the air at all, they must have the thermostat regulated to perfect mean skin Fahrenheit. Sensory deprivation? What’s coming? And the idiot light glows even brighter. Then in comes Red, with the air of one who just finished a task of some sort. Without being out of breath, he is breathless.
“Mr. Adler,” Byszka starts in only after redhead is seated, “we are going to lock you and your girlfriend up for a long time.”
“I wanna call my lawyer,” with more whine in it than I intended.
“You’ll get your call, or you can cooperate with us and save us the dime.”
“Cooperate, how? I haven’t done anything, I don’t know anybody who has.”
“You know Anthony Villegas.”
That hurt. I could do more time than I thought. I get images of getting my old dignified dentist in Great Neck, Dr. Pignatero, to be a character witness. “Your honor, this young man has always had very clean teeth.” '
“Anthony who? Could you spell that?”
“Villegas and you know who he is.”
“You can’t interrogate me, I don’t have counsel.” The indignant citizen appears at last. Pretty soon I’ll start threatening to sue the mayor. I’ve seen my Uncle Max do this trick with headwaiters.
Red chimes in. “What we can and can’t do, my friend, at this time in history, is regulated by necessity and by the two of us who have the keys to the handcuffs.” Who is this guy? First Jack Webb, now Karl Malden as a vigilante.
“You can’t do any more than kill me, man. So kill.” “Don’t bet the rent.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you’re more important to us than most punk dealers we pick up in this part of the country.”
“I’m not important to anybody. Nobody loves me.” “Good. I like comedy. You’re important because you know Anthony Villegas.”
“Care to spell that?”
“Yes. I spell that this way: y-o-u c-a-n w-a-l-k your ugly hippie asshole out of here free if you cooperate.”
• Oh Christ, he’s trying to turn me. The old thing.
Give us Villegas and you can take a walk. I saw people turned by narcs in Great Neck. Pa
rt of me keeps saying “Biz is biz, go along with the program,” but another part is gathering itself up, tired and afraid, to say: “That you cannot do.”
But I sure am curious. How much do they know? Have they been following me the whole trip? Has Essegian gone down and fingered me? Why don’t they want the guy above me in the chain of command? If they know anything, it’s asking the bigger fish to get the littler fish, asking Jeff to bust Mutt. That doesn’t make any sense.
I say it cautiously, like I’ve risen to the bait, and I suppose I have, “What do you mean, cooperate?”
“That we can’t talk about here.”
“Why not?”
“ ’Cause it’s not within the jurisdiction of the local agency.”
It takes me a second to get this unraveled, and then my inner voice screams “Oh Jesus no, the FB-fucking—
I. Oh God I’ll never do it again just let me go this one time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Here’s the program. We have your tentative approval to cooperate. Officer Byszka stays here. We go somewhere else. I ask you to do something, something which nobody will ever know about. You and your girlfriend and your kid get to walk away with what you’ve got on you, which is 188 bucks and change. We hold the trailer, the contents, and whatever else we find in there.”
I think “Whatever else, hunh. Shit, I just landed on Park Place and you’ve got six hotels on it. I’m finished, nothing to mortgage, out of business, out of the game, and I’ve probably turned fucking narco to boot. And furthermore, it’s not a trailer, it’s a motor home, you asshole.” But my mind is spinning pretty good. And something Accardo once said makes sense all of a sudden: “If they ever catch you, don’t agree to anything but don’t make them put you in the slam.”
