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

I’d just started the car when I heard sirens. I was wondering how close the fire was, when the patrol cars came screeching around the corner, going the wrong way on a one-way street, and pulled up in front of 339. Behind the patrol cars were two Ford sedans, loaded with narcs. They had a cop driving, so it looked like they weren’t just dropping in to pass the time of day. I sank down in my seat, and waited.

The bust moved very quickly, and very efficiently. The cops jumped out of the patrol cars and staked the house out, three in the rear and three up front. Two others headed for the front door; one had an ax and one had a portable vacuum cleaner.

The narcs spread out behind the cops, five of them going into the house. They were fingering their lapels and hitching up their pants nervously, like they expected some trouble. Which was absurd, because anyone as big as Musty wouldn’t hassle cops. But it appeared from my bucket-seat foxhole as though they might be planning to shoot first and ask questions later. Oakland heat, it will be remembered, have that habit.

I was afraid to leave. I suddenly realized why John had been so insistent on my looking straight, and so insistent on my schedule. It looked like the man had finally come down on Musty. If I took off, one of the plainclothesmen standing near me might notice the car and take down the plate numbers. And then, if he decided to check and found out that the car had been rented that afternoon at the airport by a kid from Cambridge, Massachusetts, well, that’d be Fat City for the narcs.

So I stayed. And I sweated it, because the bust was shooting one of our little rules to hell. The Three Day Rule. It was nothing more than a rule of thumb that we always worked by: the heat were usually at least three days behind anything that was happening. More likely five days, to be sure, but for safety we usually kept our schedule down to three. So the courier always flew in within three days of Musty’s run from S.D., and got out of town within three days of the pickup. It was cool to work that way, because the heat simply couldn’t move any faster than that. I mean, the heat are only people. They’ve got a job, and for eight hours a day they do it. But after that they go home and watch the box with the wife and kids, like everybody else. And so if you worked full time, the way we did, it was easy to stay ahead of them.

But here they were, and here I was, curled up in fetal position on the seat, peeping over the dashboard at the plainclothes narc nearest me. He was watching the house. He didn’t look too interested. In fact, he looked bored shitless. The cops-and-robbers glow began to fade close up, and as the bust progressed I got more and more into this dude. He had his hands in his pockets now, and was staring at the street. God, what a drag, I suddenly thought. What an unbelievable bitch of a drag it must be to work as a narc, and spend your whole life rushing around town trying to bust a few druggies. It was a unique train of thought for me to take, because narcs have achieved a certain hard-earned prominence in the mythology of dope smoking. They’re cast as relentless, evil, and thoroughly mindless cogs in the great machine of repression. Wowie zowie. This guy didn’t look evil, he didn’t look like much of anything. Just a tired, dull, underpaid stool for the law.

But then I thought, What the hell. I wasn’t going to get suckered into that routine again, into thinking of that pig as just another person. Because he wasn’t, and it was dangerous to think of him as if he were. The danger was a personal one. I’d just be setting myself up for a rip-off if I ever got into any kind of hassle with the dude.

Because if I got into a hassle, I’d still be a person, but he’d have to be a pig. It’d happened to me so many times, that whole riff. Like you talk to any cop who’s hassling, and after a while—if you come on like a regular chum—after a while, he’ll swear up and down that he’s Real Sorry To Have To Do This To You. He’ll tell you that if it weren’t for the blue he’s wearing, he’d take you home to have a beer and meet the wife. But then he’ll lay it on you: he’s real sorry, and you’re supposed to understand because you’re a regular chum, but he’s got no choice but to run you in. His job is to enforce the law. And then it’ll all come tumbling out, all the excuses, all the lies, all the jive about how he doesn’t have anything to do with anything. He’s just doing his job, and he’s not really running you in. It’s the law, and he can’t change the law, he just has to do his job, so… so? On go the cuffs, and on go the masks—and off you go.

A couple of minutes went by, and I could hear walls coming down inside the house. If they hadn’t found any people, they probably wouldn’t find any dope. But they were giving it the old pig try. When the worst suddenly seemed to be over, I lit a cigarette and sat up. And then:

“Hey you, what’re you lookin’ at?”

It was one of the cops from behind the car. The narc I had been watching was startled into action by his voice and flashed me his best piercing narc stare. They both came over to the window. “You hear what I said, boy? What’re you lookin’ at?”

“Oh, nothing, Officer, I was just—”

“You were just what? You want to get run in, huh, for obstructing the law?”

“No, sir, you see I was just driving through when—”

“I didn’t ask you what you were doing, wise guy, I asked you what you were lookin’ at, huh? Now you gonna answer me, or you want to double-talk the Captain down at the station?”

“No, sir.”

“No sir what? What d’you mean, no sir. I asked you a question. You gonna cooperate or not?”

“Yes, sir, I certainly will.”

“Then what were you lookin’ at, just then?”

“Nothing, sir, I was just on the street when I heard the sirens, and I thought it was a fire so I pulled over—”

“That was a long time ago, boy, a long time ago you thought it was some fire, and I’m asking you now! What’ve you been lookin’ at just now!”

“Well, sir.” I was scared shitless again. The suitcase was in the car and if they picked me up it wouldn’t take long for them to pick up on what was happening.

“Whatsamatter, boy, you tongue-tied? Huh? I asked you a question. You gonna answer me or not, ’cause if you’re not I got other places I can ask you, understand?” Suddenly he stepped back and took a fresh look at me. “You a college boy? Is that what’s wrong, huh? College boy, don’t like to talk to no police, think your girl won’t like you anymore, is that it? Huh?”

I decided the only way out was to kiss ass. “Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir, what?”

“Yes, sir, I am a student.”

“A student. A student, huh? Oh, I beg your pardon, student. I thought you were a college boy. Well, tell me something, student, where’d you get this car, huh? Did your student studies get it for you, or what? Huh? Tell me about this car you got here.”

“Well, sir, ah, my, ah… my father bought it for me.”

“Oh, I see, your father bought it for his student.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When your father bought this car for his student, did he by any chance make sure that his student was a student of driving, or did he just give it to the college boy?”

“Ah, well sir, I ah—” I ah was ah scared shitless that he ah was going to ah ask me for my license. Ahhhhhhh.

“What I’m asking you, boy, in plain language that even I can understand, see, even me who never was no college graduate, what I’m asking you is if you know how to operate this vehicle.”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Well then why don’t you do yourself a favor, and operate it right out of here right now!” He was almost yelling.