Vespers, p.29
Vespers, page 29
Popeye Ortega. i He went to the door of apartment 37, it.
A peephole opened.
"I'm supposed to meet Popeye Ortega," he If it worked once, he figured
it might work It did. The door opened. The man standin was a big,
good-looking black man who a job playing the sidekick cop on a police
show. first thing he said was, "Have I seen you before?"
"No," Willis said.
"I didn't think so." "Popeye told me to meet him here."
"He's upstairs. What can I get you?"
"Nothing right now," Willis said.
The man-looked at him.
I'll just go talk to him," Willis said, and past him into the apartment.
Kitchen on the Dead ahead, in what would have been the room, three young
men sat a table. One. black, white, one Hispanic. Crack pipes on the
Butane torch. Butane fuel. Crack vials. cream-colored rocks in a vial,
cost you five and in L.A., fifteen in D.C., the nation's capital. rocks.
Good for an instant high that lasted ut thirty minutes. Then you were
back in the again till your next hit.
On the Coast, they called it rock. In D.C., they it Piece of the
Mountain. In this city, there were a dozen different names for it. You
made the ;tuff in your own kitchen. You mixed cocaine der in a pot with
baking soda and you stirred it till you had a thick paste. Then you
cooked the paste on your stove and you let it dry out until it resembled
a round bar of soap. You broke it into chips. Another name for it. Chip.
If you were a roller, you packaged it and sold it under you own brand
name. If you used made from coke powder that had already been cut with
some deadly shit like ephedrine or amphetamine, you could end up in the
morgue.
Users like to know what there were smoking. They looked for brand names
they could count on. Lucky Eleven. Or Mister J. Or Royal Flush. Or
Paradise. Or Tease Me.
Actually, you didn't smoke the stuff, you inhaled it.
Although you could crunch up the rocks, and sprinkle them inside a
marijuana cigarette. You called this "whoolie," the pot laced with
crack, and it was one way you could actually smoke the product.
But you didn't normally burn it the way you burned tobacco or pot.
Normally, you melted it.
The three young men at the table were go.
They were each holding a glass pipe. This resemble a real pipe the way a
glass sl
resembled a real slipper. The "pipe" was fasl of a clear glass bowl with
two glass tubes from it on opposite sides at right angles to each one
vertical, one horizontal. It looked more laboratory instrument than a
smoking You expected to see it over a Bunsen burner, some mad
scientist's evil brew boiling in bowl was about the size of a tennis
ball, and it hole in it through which water could be poured.
glass tube was about five inches long, diameter of half an inch or so.
You wedged rocks each rock weighed about a milligrams into the top of
the vertical glass which after very few uses became blackened, you put
the horizontal glass tube in your mouth, you picked up the butane
torch... "Beam me up, Scotty," one of the young said.
Intent on what they were doing now.
flame into the tube. The rocks beginning to Sucking the vapors through
the water in the pipe. Up through the other glass tube, lips around it,
inhale the vapors, a five-second from the lungs to the brain, and
whammo!
The equivalent of an orgasm, most addicts said.
Rapture.
Euphoria.
In laboratory tests, rats ignored electric shocks to at their cocaine
doses, chose cocaine over food, se it over sex, allowed it to dictate
the very course their lives. By the end of a month, nine out of ten them
were dead.
Willis watched the young men sucking up death.
The crack house was in actuality three separate ;nts on the second,
third and fourth floors of building. The floor and ceiling of the
third-floor :nt had been broken through and ladders set to allow access
to the second floor below and the floor above. There were entrance doors
on floor, of course, but anyone wanting to come in and smoke away the
time had to come in on the third floor, where he paid his money for his
vial and his pipe. The three-level arrangement also served a more
practical purpose. In the event of a raid, the second and fourth floors
could be emptied in a flash while the cops milled about on the entrance
floor of the dope sandwich.
He found Popeye Ortega on the fourth floor.
He was sitting at a table in the far corner of the second bedroom,
looking through a rain-lashed window, at least a dozen empty vials of
crack spread on the table top before him. Willis did not know how long
he'd been here. He looked as if he had not changed his clothes or shaved
in days, and he Smelled of the stench of his own urine. He kept staring
through the window at the rain outside, as if viewing somewhere in the
streaked greyness and images mere mortals could not see.
"Ortega?" Willis said.
"Scotty got dee chip, man," he said.
He was, in truth, as ugly as Marilyn had des him, as ugly as his picture
and/or his the Buenos Aires documents and the I.S.
But there was something missing here.
Willis stepped out of the room, opened in the hallway, and allowed the
cool, clean fresh rain to sweep into the apartment. He wait until Ortega
came down from his high, he would question him. But he already certain
that the man sitting in there, staring window and stinking of his own
piss, could the same man who was threatening What was missing in this
man was the Marilyn had described. The huge ugly man in had long ago
lost all sense of direction, drive. Crack had stolen his life force. He
was effect, already dead.
Willis took a cigarette from the package in pocket, lighted it, and
stood by the window on it, looking out at the rain, wondering how would
be before Ortega surfaced. He could voices from downstairs welling up in
the hole had been cut in the ceiling. The good-loking man greeting a
customer. Willis figured that he was here, and just so it shouldn't be a
total he might as well ruffle a few feathers. He went ladder again to
the third floor. He walked past the young men sitting at the table. They
had been by a fourth man, who was at that very moment up. This has to be
China in the 1800s, Willis thought. This has to be a nation of drug
addicts. This has to be the disgrace of the planet. This has to be an
America that makes you ashamed.
The good-looking black man was sitting at a table in the kitchen.
Willis walked in with his gun in one hand and his shield in the other.
"What's this?" the black man said. "What do you think it is?" Willis
asked.
"Hey, come on, man."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning you know."
"No, I don't know. Tell me."
"Come on, man."
Meaning, of course, that the fix was in. As simple as that. Hey, come
on, man, this has been taken care of, huh? Go talk to your people, man,
they tell you let it slide, huh, man? With the numbers involved in the
drug trade, there would always be somebody letting it slide, somebody
looking the other way.
"What's your name?" Willis asked.
"Come on, man."
"What's your fucking name?"
"Warren Jackson."
"Mind if I use your phone, Warren?"
"You steppin' in deep shit, man."
"Wait'll you see what you're steppin' in," said, and yanked the phone
from the wall dialed the precinct number. Charlie-car showed five
minutes. The driver looked surprised. So man tiding shotgun. Both of
them knew Willi..
"Gee, Hal," one of them said, "when did thi spring up?"
"Surprises every day of the week," Willis Warren Jackson was scowling at
both Charlie-car cops. Willis figured they were both the deal. Partners.
Helping Young America its fucking brains out.
"More detectives on the way " he conversationally.
"Good," the shotgun cop said.
"You know Detective Meyer? He's on the "Oh, sure," the driver said.
"Meyer Meyer. bald guy, right?"
"Right. He's got young kids."
Both cops looked at him.
"He has a thing about crack," Willis said, pleasantly.
So far Warren Jackson wasn't saying He was possibly waiting for somebody
to tell to fuck off. But nobody was doing it. Not yet. young crack
addicts sitting around the table something was going on, but they were
so far out! it, so high up on the third moon of the planet the galaxy
Romitar that they figured maybe guys in blue uniforms were the palace
standing there with the big black eunuch and the short curly-haired
jester, all of them guarding the Emperor Pleth's harem, this was a good
movie.
"Where's your sergeant?" Warren said at last.
This was Charlie Sector, the Patrol Sergeant's name was Mickey Harrigan,
a big redheaded red-faced hairbag who'd been on the force since Hector
was a pup. It was entirely possible that Harrigan was in on it, too.
Maybe every cop in the sector was in on it, including the CPEP cops on
the beat.
"Call your fuckin' sergeant," Warren said, "tell him. we got a
misunderstandin' here."
The Charlie-car cops looked at each other. They were trying to figure
what the protocol was here.
They knew their Patrol Sergeant outranked Willis, but if it came to a
matter for Internal Affairs, rank didn't mean a goddamn thing. Unless
Willis himself was in on the deal. In which case... "Sure, call him,"
Willis said.
They figured he wasn't in on the deal.
"Go ahead," Willis said.
The shotgun cop's name was Larry Fitzhenry. He raised Harrigan on the
walkie-talkie and asked him could he please, Sarge, stop by this
apartment here on Ainsley and Fifth, apartment 37, Sarge, where there
seems to be some sort of misunderstanding here? Harrigan said he'd be
right over. His voice sounded noncommital. Over the years, Willis had
learned that you should never trust anyone Mickey unless his last name
was Mouse.
Meyer got there before Harrigan did.
He did not like what he saw. Willis took him and told him he thought the
proprietor was blow the whistle. He figured some uniforms about to hit
the fan, at least one of them dec with a gold shield. Meyer looked even
annoyed. The Charlie-car cops looked nervous. Warren Jackson was getting
angrier over the untrustworthiness of the department.
When Harrigan showed up, he said, this ? What is this ?" Warren Jackson
told him to get his men in this wasn't what three grand a week was buy.
Harrigan told the detectives he didn't know the fuck Jackson was talking
about.
Meyer said, "You're full of shit, Mickey."
Willis went upstairs to talk to Ortega.
Shad Russell refused to discuss it on the When they met later that
night, at a on The Stem, he told her why.
"It occurs to me that perhaps you're setting up," he said.
This was already nine o'clock. The rush had peaked, but neighborhood
people were ;gling in and taking seats at tables near the where they
could watch the springtime rain the sidewalk outside. There were still
things this city that were nice.
"You still think I'm a cop, huh?" she said.
"Or working for the cops, yes," he said.
"Setting you up for what?"
"First for dealing guns and next for dealing dope."
"Don't be ridiculous," she said.
"Maybe I am being ridiculous," he said, and shrugged. "But maybe I'm
not."
"I thought you called Houston.'"
"I did."
"I thought you talked to Sam Seward, how could I be a cop?"
"Maybe he's in their pocket, too, the Houston cops. And maybe they got
you sewed up here, the cops here. All I know is first you come around
looking to buy a gun, and next thing I know you've got five hundred K,
and you wanna buy dope. To me, that sounds like a setup."
"Well, it isn't."
"For all I know you're wired. For all I know, you got a mike hung
between your knockers. I set up a drug buy for you, I end up in a
holding cell."
"I'm not wired."
"Prove it."
"How?"
"Strip," he said.
She looked at him.
She sighed heavily.
"So we're back to that again, huh?" she "No, we're not back to that
again," mimicking her, "get your fuckin' mind out gutter. I call up this
lady friend of mine, we place, you strip for her, not me. She tells me
clean, we talk."
"Did you find a deal for me?" "No strippee, no talkee," he said.
"I cashed that check today," she said.
Shad looked at her and said nothing.
"I've got five hundred thousand in hundre bills."
Still he said nothing.
"Come on, don't be a jackass," she said.
"Lady," he said, and stood up, "it was meeting you."
"Sit down," she said.
"My friend lives on Darrow," he said. "Nei old Franklin Trust building.
Yes or no?-"
Marilyn was shaking her head in amazement; "Yes or no?" Shad said.
Russell's lady friend was a hooker, for sure, but apartment was tidy and
well-furnished, and guessed she worked solo. Her name or it least name
by which she introduced herself Joanne. This was a common hooker name.
Like Tracy or Julie or Deborah. She looked to be in her d-thirties, but
Marilyn guessed she was at least a decade younger. She told Marilyn she
could undress in the bathroom.
The bathroom was spotlessly clean. Through force of habit, Marilyn
checked out the medicine cabinet and found several bottles of mouthwash,
three boxes of condoms, and a bottle of Johnson's Baby Oil. She took off
her clothes and folded them neatly on the small wooden table opposite
the sink.
There were two robes hanging on the back of the door. Marilyn put on one
of them. Silk. The aroma of perfume clinging to it. Something she
recognized but could not for the life of her name. Not a cheap scent.
She fastened the sash at her waist and came out into the bedroom wearing
only the robe and her own high-heeled pumps.
Joanne looked at the robe and said, "Make yourself at home, why don't
you?"
"Sorry, I thought..."
"You mind taking it off, please?"
Shad was sitting on the edge of the bed.
Marilyn looked at him.
"This is a search," Joanne said, "take off the fuckin' robe."
Shad got up, and went into the other room.
Marilyn took off the robe. Joanne looked her up and .down.
"Nice," she said.
"Thanks."
"Your own?"
"Yes." "Nice," she said again. "Turn around." turned.
"Nice," Joanne said again. "You gay?"
"No."
"Bi?"
"No."
"That's a shame. Take off the shoes, Marilyn slipped out of the pumps.
Joanne them up, felt inside each of them, tested each see if she could
slide it away from the body shoe, and then handed the shoes back.
