Michael Crichton - Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

“FBI,” said the first man.

“YOUR NAME HARKNESS?” barked another.

“Yes,” I said.

“You rented a ’69 Mustang from Hertz today?”

“Sounds familiar. What can I do for you?”

Silence. Then, “We just want to look around.” Spoken in typical deadly Oh Nothing plainclothesman tones. Deadly. The speaker was a skinny guy with a crew cut. He had 86-proof brains you could smell across the room, and his neck was covered with acne. He started looking and so did the other two, poking here and there in the room and in the corridor outside.

I suddenly remembered Sukie’s lid and got a woozy rush of anticipation, but I couldn’t see it on the table, so maybe she’d stashed it. At any rate, I decided to try to get them out of the room as soon as possible.

“Since we haven’t been formally introduced…” I said. Nobody looked up. “You wouldn’t mind telling me what you’re doing here?” I continued.

“We would,” Crew Cut said. Okay, fair enough.

“In that case, you wouldn’t mind producing a search warrant.” Fuck these dudes. First thing I’d done when I’d gotten into dealing was to read a manual on search-and-seizure techniques, complete with the latest test cases, rights of the citizen, common police ploys. All the dope, as the saying goes. And so I wasn’t about to stand around and watch while these jokers turned the place upside down.

I repeated my question.

“Why don’t you shut up,” Crew Cut said.

I decided to be indignant. “You know as well as I do that you need a search warrant to go over this place,” I said.

Sukie was lying on the bed, the blankets twisted around her, looking unhappily at her dress on the floor. One of the cops stepped on the dress as he walked around the room.

“And I have a witne—”

“Listen, Harkness,” the third one said, fat with glasses and a choked, menacing voice, “if I were you I’d keep quiet just now, because—”

“Because what, cop?” I said. I was getting mad. “Right now you’re up for breaking and entering, illegal search and, for all I know, seizure, besides—”

“Besides, you’re under arrest,” Crew Cut said. “For possession. Put your shirt on, you’re coming down with us.”

I couldn’t believe it. I just stared at them as they moved around the room, shuffling and sniffing and poking at things. I was trying to figure out if one of them had picked up Sukie’s lid, but they didn’t act like it.

“I’m what?”

“Under arrest, candy-ass. Now move it.”

If they were bluffing, I figured, I might as well follow them down the line. “On charges of possession?” I said. “I’m clean. Go ahead, look around all you want, you won’t find anything on me.”

I was scared and Crew Cut was looking pleased. “Sure we don’t need a search warrant?” he said.

“Let’s go, kid,” said another.

There was nothing to do but go. Sukie gave me a So Sad To Be Lonesome look as I got dressed, and I saw how suddenly cold and tired she looked, huddled up in the blanket. Meanwhile the cops kept looking around, but miraculously didn’t find anything, not even the roaches. I got all my clothes on and was knotting my tie.

“Forget that,” Crew Cut said. “There’s plenty of time for that.”

I watched them nosing around the room, and felt like laughing. It was almost impossible to take them seriously, with their cops-and-robbers huffing and puffing and the staid, predictable way they played the scene. As if they were actually playing a scene. I felt like I was watching TV—this kind of thing happened to people on TV, not to real flesh-and-blood persons. I was a spectator at my own bust.

Then one of them turned to the dude with the glasses and said, “Hey Murph, you want the girlie?” I felt tight and weak until Glasses said, “Naw. Just candy-ass here.”

Then they twirled me around, grabbed both wrists and pulled them tight behind me, and slapped on the cuffs. Wrenched them shut.

“What’s the point of that,” I said. “I’m non-violent.” It was a joke, if a grim one.

“How are we s’posed to know that?” said Crew Cut, dead serious.

“He’s bleeding,” said Sukie. “You’ve got them on so tight he’s bleeding.” I hadn’t noticed, but I took her word for it.

“Relax, lady,” said Glasses, the one they called Murph. “Lover-boy here can take it. Right?” He slapped me on the back and I stumbled out of the room.

Out in the hallway I went up against the wall. A good frisk with a knee in the balls, special delivery from Crew Cut.

“What the hell,” I said, “you watched me get dressed.” Very loud, hoping to wake someone up.

“Shut up,” they said, taking me downstairs.

In the downstairs hall, I could see their faces better. Crew Cut was very young, with pimples all over his face as well as his neck. No wonder he was being the tough guy, I thought. This may be his debut. He was glowering ferociously as we left the house.

The second guy looked like a butcher putting on airs. A nouveau riche butcher. Rolled old ladies for their opera tickets so he could fart in a box seat. Butcher needed a shave and some deodorant.

The third guy Murph, the one with the glasses, looked strangely familiar. He was a mean-looking son of a bitch, short and stocky, with closely cropped gray hair, forty-five years old, maybe fifty. His face was smooth, round, complacent: the face of a pig who’d been getting fattened by the farmer all year but hadn’t yet figured out what for. His voice was as stiff as his walk and sounded like he’d forgotten how to laugh.

Law and Order, I thought. Bring Us Together.

Outside, the patrol car was waiting, a bored cop in the driver’s seat. We drove off into the night, one narc on each side of me. Nobody said anything. The narcs seemed suddenly as bored and passionless as the automaton at the wheel. Finally I said, “What have you got on me, anyway?”

No answer. Everybody was engrossed in the empty, pale night streets.

“Well listen,” I said, “long as you’re running me in, you might as well—”

“Just shut up, huh, punk?” one of them said. Lazily, enjoying it.

I couldn’t believe it. What was this shit, anyway, the drive-ins or a special number they did for guys like me.

After a few minutes one of them turned to me. “We got your friend,” he said.

“My friend?”

“Yeah. We got him. Took us a while to find out where you were. Sorry about the delay.” Chuckles. I was delighted to see that somebody was having a good time.

“My friend?” I said again.

“Look, buddy, how dumb are you? There’s no use fucking around with us. It’s over. We got the whole story. Picked up your friend and found the shit. So don’t fucking waste our time.”

Crew Cut turned around from the front seat to look at me. “See, punk, this time it’s for real. It’s all for real.” Then he laughed. “Christ, you guys are all the same. Like that guy we picked up last week—hey, Murph, you ’member the guy on the beach? Yeah. We picked up this guy on the beach in Frisco last week, busted him while he was shooting up. He had his whole outfit right there with him, along with half a bag of scag, and he was so smacked out of his mind that the whole way in to the station he wouldn’t do nothing but tell us what a great guy God was.” Titters all around. Crew Cut was being appreciated. “Goddamn. The whole way, the guy stuck to this one story. Said he just went down to the beach to meditate, ’cause he wanted a bag of scag so bad that he’d decided to pray to God, and suddenly—this is what he says, he says, ‘and then suddenly, Officer, God answered my prayers, and that bag, my bag you got there, that bag just dropped into my lap, right out of the sky.’ Wouldn’t tell us anything more. Christ, you guys are all the same.”