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

“My friend?”

“Now let’s not waste each other’s time, fella,” Crew Cut said. “We’ve been through all this before.”

“We know all about you,” Deskman said. I noticed how thick his glasses were.

There was nothing to say. I still wanted a smoke.

“We got your friend, he’s in the other room if you want to speak to him,” Crew Cut said. Sure you do, chum. “And we’ve got your marijuana here”—Deskman lifted the bag in the air and gazed at it—“so you might as well play ball. Now are you going to tell us about it or not?”

“About what?”

They didn’t blink. “About the whole thing.”

“There isn’t any whole thing,” I said. “I’ve never been to Berkeley before—I’m a student in Boston and I happen to be on vacation, which is almost over now, thanks to you gentlemen—and I met the girl I was with when you picked me up on Telegraph that afternoon. And we got along, so she offered to put me up.” Smirks all around. “And this guy, Lou, whoever he is, needed a car, and she knew him and said he was all right, and I lent him my car. Now the fact that he was busted with an ounce of marijuana in my car may be legal grounds for hassling me, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to know what it’s all about. I haven’t got the slightest idea what he was doing with the dope, or where he got it from. Why don’t you ask him?”

“We have. He said it was yours.”

“Mine? I don’t even smoke marijuana. I haven’t touched dope for years. There’s a lot of things you can try and pin on me, but a possession rap isn’t one of them.”

“You’ve got one on you right now, buddy boy.”

“Did you by any chance do any fingerprints off this bag of marijuana? Did you by any chance find any of my prints? Or did you simply take his word for it, that ’cause it was my car it was my bag of dope? Isn’t it usually the case that where there’s a lid, there’s a pound, or a kilo, or a number of kilos? And did you find any dope in the young lady’s room that night, or on my person at that time? And have you found any since then?” I was getting worked up and I remembered suddenly the tracks on Lou’s arms and decided to take a new tack. “In other words are you doing anything except hassling me on the word of a paranoid speed freak who borrowed my car and then laid a bum rap on me?”

“Relax, Harkness,” said Deskman. “Yeah, we did all those things, and we ain’t got much on you. But the fact remains that it was your car, and the dope was in it, and we can make things pretty uncomfortable for you on your, ah…” he paused, savoring his own thoughts “… vacation. Unless you come around and talk dirt with us.”

“Talk to you. I have been talking to you. And so far it hasn’t gotten me anywhere.” I was doing the indignant-citizen number now and enjoying it immensely, after doing time for what even they admitted was a pretty thin hustle. “I want a cigarette. I haven’t had one for three days. Don’t any of you guys have a match?”

Deskman nodded to Crew Cut, who grudgingly reached in his coat and pulled out some matches. Handed them to me. As if on signal, all three of them pulled out their butts. I lit mine, looked around at all of them, and blew the match out. Threw it on the floor, put the book in my pocket. Crew Cut was staring at me. Deskman again, suddenly, intensely:

“You a good friend of O’Shaugnessy’s?”

The question caught me completely by surprise and I was glad I had the cigarette. Took a long drag. It tasted unbelievably good. Meanwhile, my thoughts not at all under control. Had they busted Musty that night, after I’d gone, and were they now keeping it from me? Had they been watching him the whole time, and me, and known why I was in the house? Had they seen my car at the first house that afternoon and followed it, hoping to catch me with something? (It didn’t seem like Hertz to have no tail lights.) Had they planted the dope on Lou just so they could run me in? The last made the most sense, ’cause it would explain their letting him off with a few questions, and “taking his word” that it was my dope. Just how much did these pigs know? It was all happening very fast. I decided the least I could do was make them work for it.

“O’Shaugnessy?” I said.

“Yeah, Harkness, you know Padraic J. O’Shaugnessy? Big pusher, long black hair and a moustache? Ring any bells?”

“No, I don’t know any O’Shaugnessy. Is this another one of Lou’s ideas?” I had to find out.

“No, your friend Lou didn’t have anything to do with it. So you don’t know any O’Shaugnessy, huh, kid? Fred”—to Crew Cut—“What’s the name he uses on the street—what do the creeps call him?”

“Musty,” said Crew Cut, with the expression of a man who’s blown lunch and missed the bowl.

“Know anybody by the name of Musty?” Deskman asked, leaning forward.

“Musty,” I said, trying to sound as if I was mulling it over. “Yeah, I met a cat named Musty. He was with Lou when I met Lou at the house that night. When Lou asked me for the car. Wears his hair in a ponytail, is that the guy you mean?” Said in a tone of intense distrust, as if that were just the kind of weirdo a nice clean-cut Harvard boy like myself could never forget.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Seems that you have an excellent memory, Harkness, when you feel like it.”

“I do have an excellent memory,” I said, “but not for people’s last names when I only know their first.”

“Okay, wise-ass,” said Crew Cut. “Didn’t learn nothing in the cooler, huh? That kinda talk’s gonna get you nowhere around here. We don’t wanna know how smart you are. We know all about you and this O’Shaugnessy. So let’s have it. Is he the one who gets you the shit? Where does he get it? Where’d you meet him? Who do you deal the shit to? C’mon, Harkness, let’s have it. Now!”

The vibrations in the room were getting a bit tense. They were going through the kind of verbal foreplay that cops do when they’re deciding whether or not to really hassle you. But Crew Cut had blown the scene, I could see that from the way Deskman was glaring at him. He’d given it all away. They knew I was connected with Musty, but they didn’t know how, or why, or when, or where. And probably they didn’t even really know, they just had a damned good hunch.

Deskman shifted position, took his glasses off and looked through them. Put them back on his nose, and said, “Now, Harkness, you got a trial coming up, a hearing tomorrow. You play ball with us and things could go very smoothly. You don’t, and your vacation’s going to be something of a financial disaster.”

Blew it again, Deskman. Trial. Hearing. That meant everything was all right.

“I’m not saying another thing till I see a lawyer,” I said.

“You could’a spoke to your lawyer anytime,” Crew Cut exploded.

“Not after you thugs took all my money, I couldn’t.”

“You didn’t have any money, Mr. Excellent Memory,” Fats said, breaking his silence. “I seen you sign the sheet.”

“I had twenty bucks, goddammit, and you saw me tell the guy that, too. And you saw how he hustled me out of it, and you played along with him and dragged me up here. Sign the sheet, my ass.”

“You wanna go back down and talk it over with him?”

“I want to get out of here, right now,” I said. “I know damn well somebody’s paid my bail, or you wouldn’t have me up here, and you’ve got no right to hold me any longer. I’m not saying another thing till I see a lawyer. I don’t care if it’s just one of your crummy P.D.s. You wanna try and make those phony charges stick, go ahead.”

Deskman looked at me, sizing me up. He knew that I knew that it was all over and he had to let me go. But it wasn’t over yet. He held the bag up to the light, swung his chair around to face me and shoved it under my nose. “How long you been smoking this shit?” he said.