“That right?” the driver said.
“This is police business,” I said gravely.
“It don’t sound—”
“Okay,” I said, and started down the line toward the second taxi.
“Just a minute!”
I went back and looked at my driver. His name, I could read on the seat-plate identification card, was Joseph V. Murphy. Naturally.
“Just a minute,” he said. “The Newton tolls?”
“Yeah.”
“Fifteen bucks and I’ll take him. That covers my waiting time. I might get a customer, you know.”
I looked around the deserted station entrance. What the hell. “Okay,” I said. “Fifteen.” I gave him the money, and made a production out of writing down his name and license number. He watched me do it.
“What’s this all about?” he said.
“Undercover,” I said. “Narcotics division.” The cabby looked at me. Then he looked at the fifteen dollars. Then he nodded, and I went back inside.
The first part was completed. I re-checked the telephone number in the booth. I sat in the booth and looked out. From where I sat, I could see through to the street and to the warehouses beyond. There were dozens of windows, all dark, in the buildings across the street.
Perfect.
Whistling now, I went into the innards of the station. A train was pulling up on one of the far tracks; I heard the metallic screech of brakes and the hiss of steam. Otherwise, it was silent. A half-dozen sailors sat laughing drunkenly on one of the benches near the center of the room. I went over and sat down next to them, placing my nondescript suitcase (an old one of Sandra’s, wiped of prints) at my feet. The sailors ignored me. After a moment I leaned over toward the nearest one and said, “I got to take a leak. Watch my bag?”
“Yeah, sure,” the sailor said, and kept on talking with his friends. I wandered off.
Fifteen minutes to go. I kept glancing at my watch. I looked back at the sailors, wondering if they’d decide to take off with the bag or maybe open it. But they weren’t paying any attention. I went over to the train schedules, pretended to read them, and then wandered over to a far corner of the station, where there were more telephone booths. I sat down in one of them. I could barely see the booths near the entrance; they were perhaps a hundred yards away, and down a slight incline.
I waited.
I kept thinking of things that could go wrong. A million things could go wrong. For instance, he could flood the place with narcs—but that would mean he’d have to split the take, or else he’d have to play it straight. Too much bread in it for that to happen. Unless Murphy was going to be honest. A dreary thought.
I waited some more.
At three-thirty I looked over at the west entrance. Nobody there. Five more minutes passed, and still no one arrived. I was beginning to worry. And then I saw him come through the doors.
Sukie was with him. No cuffs. He’d done it—he’d gotten her off, charges dropped, and brought her to South Station for the exchange. Just as I’d told him.
For a moment, I felt exhilaration, and then caution. Murphy stood with Sukie in the center of the west entrance, waiting. He said something to her; she shook her head.
I put my dime into the receiver and dialed. Faintly, I could hear the phone ringing in the booth near where she was standing with Murphy. They ignored it for a moment. Then Murphy looked over at the pay phone. One pay phone in a row of twelve just doesn’t start ringing at three-thirty in the morning for no reason. He went over to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Good morning, lieutenant.”
I could see his body stiffen. He started looking around, back toward the inside of the station, and then outside.
“Forget that,” I said. “I’m where I can see you, and you can’t see me—unless you want to search a lot of buildings.” That one worked; he was looking out toward the warehouses.
“Is the girl free?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me talk to her a minute.”
“I want those—”
“Let me talk to her. I’m watching you.”
“You son of a—”
“You want to blow it, Murphy? And have to book her again? What would they think about that, down at the station?”
There was a long silence. Then he waved Sukie over. He remained sitting in the booth. He held his hand over the receiver, said something to her, and then gave her the phone.
“Hello?”
“Sukie,” I said, “don’t speak. Just listen. I want you to answer yes or no to my questions. Have you been released?”
“Yes.”
“Have charges been dropped?”
“Yes.”
“Is Murphy alone?”
“I think so.”
“All right. Give the phone back to him.”
She did. I watched Murphy take the receiver. “All right now you little—”
“First of all,” I said, “send the girl to stand by the information booth in the center of the station. Then go over to the sailors inside. You’ll see a black suitcase near one of them. The suitcase contains six bricks. Go check that.”
“What about the rest?”
“I’ll tell you about it.”
Murphy put down the receiver. He said something to Sukie, who walked away from him. Then he went over to the sailors and demanded the suitcase. They protested. He flashed his badge. They gave it to him. He walked back to the telephone, sat down, opened the suitcase and checked.
“The bricks there?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“All right. Here’s how you get the rest. Go out to the taxi rank and get into the first cab. Say you are a policeman and show identification. The driver will take you to where the rest of the bricks are—and they’ll be there, if nothing happens to the girl in the meantime. Understand?”
“Yeah.” Very low.
“Anything happens to the girl between now and then, and by the time you get to the drop-off, the stuff’ll be gone. Understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” And I hung up.
Murphy closed the suitcase and walked out toward the door. At the door he was met by three other men in raincoats. So he had been planning something, after all. He spoke to the men; they glanced at Sukie, standing alone in the middle of the station. The men went away. Murphy got into the cab.
The cab drove off.
It was over. I got out of the booth and went to the center of South Station, put my arms around her, and kissed her.
51
MURPHY’S TRIP TO THE NEWTON tolls was a waste of time. There was no more dope at the Newton tolls that night than there was on any other night. Six bricks wasn’t much of a burn, but it was the best we could do for such a close friend.
All Sukie had to say in the taxi back to Cambridge was “How can those bastards arrest you and then decide, two days later, that they don’t have enough evidence to hold you?”
“It’s not easy,” I said, laughing.
She laughed with me.
A Biography of Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton (1942–2008) was a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Roslyn, New York, along with his three siblings.
Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received his MD from Harvard Medical School. As an undergraduate, he taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University. He also taught writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
While at Harvard Medical School, Crichton wrote book reviews for the Harvard Crimson and novels under the pseudonyms John Lange and Jeffery Hudson, among them A Case of Need, which won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery in 1969. In contrast to the carefully researched techno-thrillers that ultimately brought him to fame, the Lange and Hudson books are high-octane novels of suspense and action. Written with remarkable speed and gusto, these novels provided Crichton with both the m
eans to study at Harvard Medical School and the freedom to remain anonymous in case his writing career ended before he obtained his medical degree.
The Andromeda Strain (1969), his first bestseller, was published under his own name. The movie rights for The Andromeda Strain were bought in February of his senior year at Harvard Medical School.
Crichton also pursued an early interest in computer modeling, and his multiple-discriminant analysis of Egyptian crania, carried out on an IBM 7090, was published by the Peabody Museum in 1966.
After graduation, Crichton was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he researched public policy with Dr. Jacob Bronowski. He continued to write and published three books in 1970: his first nonfiction book, Five Patients, and two more John Lange titles, Grave Descend and Drug of Choice. He also wrote Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues with his brother Douglas, and it was later published under the pseudonym Michael Douglas.
After deciding to quit medicine and pursue writing full-time, he moved to Los Angeles in 1970, at the age of twenty-eight. In addition to books, he wrote screenplays and pursued directing as well. His directorial feature film Westworld (1973), involving an innovative twist on theme parks, was the first to employ computer-generated special effects.
Crichton continued his technical publications, writing an essay on medical obfuscation published by the New England Journal of Medicine in 1975 and a study of host factors in pituitary chromophobe adenoma published in Metabolism in 1980.
He maintained a lifelong interest in computers and his pioneering use of computer programs for film production earned him an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1995. Crichton also won an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writers Guild of America Award for ER. In 2002, a newly discovered dinosaur of the ankylosaur group was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini.
His groundbreaking, fast-paced narrative combined with meticulous scientific research made him one of the most popular writers in the world. His novels have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and thirteen have been made into films. Known for his techno-thrillers, he has sold more than 200 million books. He also published four nonfiction books, including an illustrated study of artist Jasper Johns, and two screenplays, Twister and Westworld.
Crichton remains the only person to have a number one book, film, and television series in the same year.
He is survived by his wife, Sherri; his daughter, Taylor; and his son, John Michael.
Crichton and his younger brother, Douglas, co-authors of Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues, which was published under the pseudonym Michael Douglas.
Telegram from Harvard College announcing Crichton’s acceptance, May 4, 1960. (Courtesy of the Office of the General Counsel of Harvard University.)
Lowell House Harvard yearbook photo, 1961. (Courtesy of Harvard Yearbook Publications and Harvard University Archives.)
Crichton as an anthropology major at Harvard College.
“Peabody Papers.” (Reprinted from “A Multiple Discriminant Analysis of Egyptian and African Negro Crania” in Craniometry and Multivirate Analysis, Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 57, No. 1, 1966, courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.)
Harvard Crimson article featuring Crichton, March 1969. (Courtesy of the Harvard Crimson.)
Crichton as a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute, 1969.
A photo of Crichton for his memoir Travels.
Crichton hiking while doing research for his novel Micro.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Portions of this book first appeared in Playboy Magazine.
Copyright © 1970 by Centesis Corporation and Douglas Crichton
Cover design by Andrea C. Uva
Cover illustration by Omar F. Olivera and Theresa Burke
978-1-4532-9932-6
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues Page 18
