A Nation of Mystics

by Pamela Johnson

  When the door to the small, three-bedroom ranch opened, David appeared genuinely happy to see him.

  “How’s it goin’, man?” Christian asked, shaking David’s hand.

  “Good, but it’s a whole different ball game living with a pregnant ol’ lady,” David laughed.

  David had met Michelle at a ballroom concert, and his flirtatious charm had lured her into his life. Auburn haired, with creamy skin, she was a beauty. More, Christian realized, her heart was in the right place. She’d made good friends among women he knew.

  David motioned to the pillows on the rug and reached for his rolling box—smooth, polished, and inlaid with different colored hardwoods.

  “What’s up these days?”

  Christian laughed and said straight out, “I’m looking for a tabbing machine.”

  If acid were to be dispersed, it generally had to come in either a capsule or a tablet. Those in the Haight who were fortunate enough to score a crystal gram of LSD needed to buff it into powder, then either cap or tab the mixture. Empty gelatin capsules could be bought in any drugstore, and often, a capping party would emerge. A number of people would sit down to push one end of an empty capsule into powder mixed with LSD, then push on the other half of the cap. The problem was that the cappers got really fucked up pretty quickly, and a lot of acid was simply lost in the shuffle of the night. The more efficient way was to use a small machine to make tablets.

  “You still have that machine for sale?” Christian asked.

  David chuckled, lit the joint, and passed it over. “How many tabs you think they’ll be producing?”

  Christian shrugged, not wanting to say that the machine would be for someone producing all his orders. Although he could have asked David to do his tabbing, he didn’t want David involved that intimately with his trip. “Who knows.”

  “Well,” David considered, “I’m pretty sure I can get hold of a machine for about two grand.”

  “Can your man do repairs?”

  “Easy. He can make up just about any part you want. If he does have something for sale, it’ll probably be next week till I can get it to you. Why don’t I give you a call about Wednesday?”

  Stoned now, his movement slowed, Christian pulled money from his coat pocket and began counting. “Two grand. Does that include your cut?”

  “Yeah. Plus, I’d like a favor.”

  Christian stopped, raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

  “I’d like your entire load next week, all fifty kilos. I’ve got them sold.”

  Christian needed a minute to think. He didn’t want to have to give his whole load to David. It meant he’d be cutting out his other customers who needed product for their own markets. If David were taking all he had, controlling the supply, he could raise the market price, and it was just the thing David would do.

  “That’s a lot of weed,” Christian hedged. “Are they going to one person?”

  “A longtime customer. They’re going through him to some people from back East.”

  The twinge of something out of balance just creased the corners of Christian’s consciousness, and when he passed the joint back to David, he closed his eyes, let his mind drift.

  “Back East?” he murmured. “Has your man checked these guys out? It’s not too many people who come out of the blue with the bucks to buy fifty kilos.”

  “It’s funny you should mention it.” David scratched his neck. “His people did want to meet me.”

  “Where does the dude live?”

  “Berkeley.”

  “And does he know where you live?”

  “He’s been here a few times.” David stood, suddenly uncomfortable, paranoid. He began to pace the floor. “I wonder if he’s sold to these dudes before.”

  Christian remembered Lance’s warning about greed, becoming blind when a large sum of money was involved. “Better to know now than after the sale.”

  “You know who just ate it?” David continued his pacing.

  Christian thought he was really agitated, something other than paranoia.

  “Remember Tiny Tim—big guy, used to walk the street a lot? Busted. Three hand-to-hand sales, to some people from back East. Shit, now I’m wondering if Mick’s being set up.”

  David laughed nervously and cast a quick glance toward Christian.

  He’s out of his rhythm, Christian thought. He’s let Mick’s name slip.

  “No sense taking chances.” Christian reached into his pants pocket and came out with a piece of paper. “Here’s a place for rent in Mill Valley. Long driveway, private, no one can see who’s visiting unless they pull in next to the garage. Some people I know were thinking of renting, but you can have the house if you want it.”

  “Thanks. It’s time to move anyway. This place is burnt out.” He sighed hard, feeling shaken. “I was supposed to meet Mick here tomorrow afternoon. I’d give a lot to know if he was followed.”

  Suddenly, Christian smiled. “You could have him followed yourself. I know a private investigator in Berkeley who specializes in this kind of surveillance.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Come into Berkeley later, and I’ll introduce you.”

  Running his hands through his hair, David nodded. “Thanks. I will. I need to know.”

  As David closed the front door behind Christian, his mind swung wildly.

  Maybe I should just clean up and ride it out. Maybe I am just being paranoid. I sure don’t relish the thought of going through the hassle of a move because of a freak-out paranoia trip.

  Fuck it.

  Michelle looked up from the cookbook when David entered the kitchen. He stood by the door, staring into space.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think Mick may be setting up a deal with the Man.”

  “Oh, David, really? So don’t sell to him.”

  “Chances are, he’s been followed over here already. We should get packed and be out of here by this evening.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. But Mick’s expected here tomorrow afternoon with this dude, and I don’t think we should be around. Here’s the number of a house that’s for rent. Call and see what the story is.”

  “It shouldn’t take too long to pack. Boxing up the kitchen’s the hardest part. Can you give me a hand at some point?”

  “I’ll try, but right now I have to go to Berkeley to meet a private investigator. I’d like to know just how much Mick’s fucked up. Or even if he has.”

  “Then I’ll call Debbie. They’ve been moving so often that Kevin’s bought a truck.”

  David hit the San Rafael–Richmond Bridge doing barely seventy in the blue Porsche. No need to be too obvious today by pushing the speed to ninety. Things were bad enough without dealing with a highway patrol cop and getting another ticket.

  Furious with the entire situation, he hit the steering wheel of the car with his closed fist and once again asked whether he was simply being paranoid. If the buyers were legit, why should he blow the deal?

  Okay, Christian, if you’re right about the Heat being on Mick, then I owe you one. I’ll make sure you get your tabbing machine.

  Originally, he’d planned to hold out on the machine, stringing Christian along. If he held out long enough, Christian might be forced to ask him to do the tabbing. A lot of money was involved in tablet making, and he didn’t want to lose the work.

  On the passenger seat was a small, open plastic baggie. He scooped a tiny amount of white powder into a small spoon and lifted it to his nose. The flash of coke hit his brain and he blinked, sniffed, and pushed harder on the gas pedal. The speedometer read eighty-five. Ninety.

  Suddenly grinning, roaring across the bridge, he wondered if this would be the day when the car hit a hundred miles per hour.

  SUPERVISOR DOLPH BREMER AND MYLES

  BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 1967

  Supervisor Bremer was in his office early, studying the file in front of him. Not a very large file,
but interesting. He turned a page, reading, then reviewed the surveillance photos. He liked this kind of work—fast, smooth, easy, falling together perfectly without danger to his agents. From Myles Corbet’s information, the targets would probably be unarmed. Only once had one of Corbet’s drug busts turned up a weapon. Safe, easy operations, and they still scored on his tally sheet.

  Bremer sensed Corbet was onto something big with this case. The kid was good—really good—and getting better. For once, Hanson had been right. Corbet was an unusual informant. His talent lay in pointing people out, sensing their weaknesses, and setting them up.

  He closed the folder. By this afternoon, he would know the big Marin connection. A sale, and he’d have the guy.

  “Hey, Dolph,” Agent Wilson called from the doorway of the office, “you have a minute?”

  Ed Wilson was a man after Bremer’s own heart. Wilson would be going places in the bureau.

  Suddenly, eight men in dark suits trooped into the office, one of them—Philips—carrying a cupcake with a lit candle, all singing “Happy Birthday to You!” Agent Phillips set the cake down in front of Bremer.

  With unusual embarrassment and a silly grin, Bremer shook his head. “I’d almost forgotten my birthday.”

  Wilson handed him a package. “A little something to show our esteem.”

  Bremer pulled at the ribbon, ripped off the paper, and opened a box. Tenderly, he picked up a pearl-handled Colt .45 semiautomatic. The chrome plating picked up the fluorescent light. The gun looked almost iridescent.

  “Beautiful,” he told them, truly admiring it, already in love with the feel of it in his hand. “Nonregulation, but … I’ll use it for special occasions. Now,” and suddenly his voice was all business, “let’s talk about our plans for this afternoon. Someone get Corbet over here.”

  Myles had set up a separate telephone in the basement apartment he had at his parents’ home, the phone’s only function to receive his police messages. He hated that phone, hated the way it screamed for him to leave his studies. On this morning, he was expecting Bremer to call for finalization on the Mick Crogan case. Every few minutes, he had looked over, waiting for it to ring. Then, when he was most involved in what he was writing, it had, shattering his concentration and pushing aside his thoughts.

  “Yes?”

  “Bremer wants you over here. On the double.”

  Myles left the house quietly, through the side entrance of the basement, the door that made his room a separate apartment. On the way to the station, he mulled over the Crogan case.

  Actually, he called it the Crogan/Simpson case, exceptionally pleased with the way he’d set it up. Once again, he reminded himself that although he’d been forced into the game, he’d received a special kind of heady power, one that was capable of deciding someone’s fate. And right now, he was determined to use that influence.

  Greg Simpson had been the reader for one of his undergraduate classes. New to the university, he didn’t know Myles or his reputation. When Myles had picked up his first midterm exam paper, he’d been horrified to see that Simpson had handed him a B, clearly visible in bold marking pen. Myles had never received a grade below a solid “A” in his life.

  During office hours, he’d asked Greg to review the exam again, but Greg had been adamant. He’d had two hundred undergrad papers to read, he explained, and it seemed as if all two hundred students wanted a reread. Between his own classes and research, teaching, and his dissertation, he simply didn’t have the time. As Myles became angrier and more aggressive, Greg had lost patience, mumbled something about “getting a life,” and had walked away down the corridor, leaving Myles standing in an empty hallway, seething, and holding a crumpled exam in his clenched fist.

  Biding his time over the next few weeks, Myles had worked his way into Greg’s social life. In fact, by that time Greg had sheepishly made an awkward apology. He’d learned a bit more about Myles—his history and reputation, the name of his father. At the first party, Myles had evidence that Greg smoked, but to bust Greg for smoking pot wasn’t enough. Everybody smoked. He needed something more substantial, a quantity that would put the bastard away for a few months.

  On the night he overheard Greg ask Mick Crogan about a lid, he’d followed Crogan from the party. Another week, a few careful questions, some personal surveillance, and he’d built a police file. The target was the dealer, Mick Crogan. He simply had to make sure Greg Simpson was there when the cops came through the door.

  The following weekend, Agent Ed Wilson walked into a party, mingled easily, and quietly made arrangements to meet Mick for lunch. A few days later, Wilson bought five kilos from Mick to “send back East.” Two weeks after that, another fifteen.

  At Myles’s insistence, Wilson, pretending to run into Greg outside the Life Sciences Building, had discreetly asked for a friendly quarter ounce and had gotten it.

  To add to Myles’s good fortune, they had stumbled onto the Marin dealer.

  Wilson was to be walking into the Marin house today. In a few days, Myles would be able to add three more arrests to his record—Greg Simpson, Mick Crogan, and the dealer in Marin. That would bring his total arrests to twenty-five.

  CHRISTIAN AND DAVID

  BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 1967

  “The first thing we need to do,” Joe O’Brian told David after hearing his story, “is talk to Mick, have him meet you somewhere. I’ll sit in front of his house and tail him to see if there’s any surveillance on him now.”

  Christian watched Joe as he moved—tall and lanky. Not the kind of person you’d expect to be a private investigator. Or a street hero. His hands were big, powerful, almost too large for his body. He wore an inexpensive lightweight suit with the vest unbuttoned.

  “This little microphone and transmitter goes under your seat,” Joe said, his easy, fluid manner mixed with high energy. “We’ll record every word. Afterward, we’ll meet back at the office.”

  The room Joe called his “office” was comfortable and informal. No desk in the center for Joe to sit behind, only an old, threadbare but functional couch and two chairs set in a rough circle, two end tables with lamps, an oval hooked rug. The teakwood coffee table held empty coffee cups from a previous meeting, a copy of the Berkeley Barb and the Los Angeles Free Press, assorted pamphlets, leaflets, and magazines, and the San Francisco Chronicle. A large asparagus fern with branching tentacles grew in a terracotta pot near the sunny window. The formalities of running the office were in the outer room, where Jennifer worked.

  In thirty minutes, Joe and Christian were sitting down the street, watching Mick’s apartment building. They saw the door open, Mick’s easy descent down the stairs. His car started down Oxford Street. Joe waited. No car pulled out after him.

  Slowly, Joe eased his car into traffic, keeping back, looking for some pattern.

  Nothing.

  They heard the first lines of the conversation between David and Mick coming through the transmitter.

  “Mick,” David called from the Porsche. Mick was standing on a corner near Live Oak Park, leaning against a cement block wall. “Get in.”

  “Is anything the matter?” Mick asked David. “You didn’t want to come by?”

  “I’m worried about something. A lot of people selling to customers back East have been busted recently.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Jesus, Mick. Didn’t you say your people were from New York?”

  “Yeah. But not everybody from New York’s the Man,” he answered sarcastically. “Some people do come out to score.”

  “There’s something else that bothers me. Why do these people want to meet me?”

  “That should be pretty obvious. They’re putting up a large amount of cash. They’re afraid of a rip-off.”

  “How long have you known these people?”

  “Awhile.”

  “How long’s awhile?”

  “I don’t know … awhile …” he said with
some annoyance.

  “You know them well?”

  “I met the guy at a party. He’s from New York.”

  “You’ve sold to him?”

  “About twenty kilos. Each time I gave him the pot, he gave me the money. Jesus, why all the questions?”

  “I don’t know,” David hedged. “A feeling. Not many people come out of the woodwork with a market for fifty keys. It just makes me nervous, you know what I mean?”

  There was a long silence.

  “What’s he going to do with the keys? Bring them back East or sell them here?” David finally asked. “Did you ask?”

  “I didn’t really think it was any of my business. Look. It’s cool, man. Why don’t you just settle down?”

  Am I bein’ fuckin’ paranoid, David asked himself for the hundredth time. A lot of buyers do come from back East.

  “I still don’t feel comfortable meeting the guy.”

  “That’s up to you,” Mick told him. “If you don’t want him over, we could meet at a restaurant or a park.”

  “I just don’t want to put my face up there for him to see.”

  “Well, then you can kiss this deal good-bye. That means a connection that buys in fifty-key lots. And I don’t think this is a one-shot deal.”

  “You think he’ll become a regular.”

  “Not if he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.”

  If I’m being paranoid, David thought, I’ve put everyone through a lot of trouble and expense. The possibilities of this connection are so appealing. Christian could be forced to hand over that entire load as a condition for getting the tabbing machine. No problem.