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

“What are we doing here?” I said.

“Playing the odds,” Herbie said. “You have your money?” I nodded. “How much?”

“Thirty-six dollars.”

“That should be enough,” Herbie said, “if we can get enough change. We’re going to have a problem.”

“Change?”

“Dimes,” Herbie said. He directed me to a large, modern drugstore. We walked to the back, past the counters of Nytol, E-Z Doz, Sleeptite, Awake!, Rouse, Bufferin, Anacin, Contac, and all the other pills. Behind the druggists’ counter there were giant bottles of pills, the tranqs, bennies, and sleepers that you needed a prescription for. We went straight to the back, where there were three telephone booths, with the phone books hanging from a wall rack.

“Okay,” Herbie said. “We assume, because we have to, that he’s going home. And home is south of Boston, since he was on the Southeast Expressway. And probably within an hour of commuting. Okay. We know his last name is Murphy. What’s his first name?”

I tried to remember. “Roger, I think. Anyway, something with R.”

“Good. And his rank?”

“Lieutenant.”

“Good,” Herbie said, opening the directory. “Go get your change.”

And then we began. We each took one column of Murphys. I took the left column, beginning with Murphy, Ralph A. Herbie took the right column, beginning with Murphy, Roland J. And we called. All of my calls were the same.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” I would say, “is Lieutenant Murphy there?”

“Who?”

For the first few, I would mumble some excuse, or say wrong number. Later, I got so that when I heard “Who?” I just hung up. Alongside me, in the next booth, Herbie was doing the same thing. I heard the clink each time he put in another dime.

Finally, around the fifteenth time: “Hello?”

“Hello, is Lieutenant Murphy there?”

“Not at the moment.”

I sighed and smiled. At last. “When do you expect him back?”

“Not until tomorrow night. He’s on weekend maneuvers at Fort Devens. Who’s calling please?”

“Sorry,” I said, “wrong number.”

At the bottom of my column were the Roger Murphys. I missed on Roger A., Roger J., Roger M., Roger N. Finally I got Roger V.

“Hello, is Lieutenant Murphy there?”

“No, but I expect him any minute. Who’s calling?”

“Uh, this is Captain Fry.”

“Captain Fry?” She obviously didn’t know any Captain Fry.

“Yes. I’m down at the Fourth stationhouse now. I wanted to see your husband. I guess I just missed him.”

“Yes,” she said, “you must have. Can I have him call you back?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll call back later on.”

“What did you say your name was again?” she asked.

“Nice to talk to you, Mrs. Murphy,” I said, and hung up.

I had my finger on the line. Murphy, Roger V., 43 Crescent Lane, Ackley.

“HOW MUCH LEFT?” HERBIE SAID, as we drove away from the drugstore.

“How much what?”

“Money,” Herbie said.

I shrugged, and handed him all the dimes I had, and the few dollar bills the drugstore hadn’t been able to change.

“You’re in luck,” Herbie said. “Fifteen dollars.”

“Why am I in luck?”

“Make your next left, and the left after that.”

I followed his directions, and came to the E-Z Car Rental. Lowest Rates on Compacts and Other Fine Cars.

I parked. “What are we doing?”

“Getting a new car,” Herbie said. “They’ll take fifteen dollars here as a deposit.”

We got out and went inside and talked to H. Lewis, Prop. It turned out he wouldn’t take fifteen dollars as the deposit. He would take fifty dollars, and not a penny less.

“We don’t have fifty dollars,” Herbie said patiently.

“That’s it, then,” Mr. Lewis said, behind the counter.

“Come on,” Herbie said. “Give us a break.”

“Sorry.”

“Come on. We’ll leave the VW with you.”

Mr. Lewis looked out the window at Herbie’s VW. “Probably hot,” he said.

“Come on,” Herbie said. “Who’d steal a VW?” The man squinted at him. “Look,” Herbie said, “I’ve got the registration for it and everything. It’s not stolen. Give us a car for fifteen.”

“No.”

“Come on, Mister, we got dates tonight, and if we don’t get there…”

“Use your VW.”

“We can’t. It’s overheating. It’ll blow out on us if we drive any farther.”

The man sighed. We both tried to look as pitiable as possible. Finally he said, “Where’re the girls from?”

“What girls?”

“Your dates.”

“Oh. Currier College.”

Mr. Lewis sighed. His face softened. He looked at me, then at Herbie, and he smiled.

“Currier College, eh?” His smile got broader.

“Yeah,” we both smiled. “Currier College.”

“Heh, heh, good old Currier,” he said, beginning to chuckle and shake his head with memories.

“Yeah, right, good old Currier,” we both said, chuckling.

He was laughing openly now. “No wonder you want a bigger car,” he said. “Got to have a bigger car.”

“Yeah, right, got to be bigger.” He was laughing and shaking his head as he gave us the keys. “I remember how it was, I sure do,” he said. Herbie started filling out the forms. “Just remember, boys, no stains on the back seat. I don’t want to see any stains.”

FORTY-THREE CRESCENT DRIVE IN Ackley was not in a run-down neighborhood, but it wasn’t spiffy, either. The house was small. There was a faded, red, 1956 Ford sedan in the driveway, and Murphy’s Narc Special, the green one, parked in the street out front.

Down the street some kids were playing stickball. The Murphy house was quiet. As the evening grew darker, a small boy of five or six came out and rode his bicycle around the house, down the drive, and into the street. As we watched, he joined the stickball game.

We were parked a couple of houses up, in what Herbie called our “inconspicuous” car, a canary-yellow Corvair with one front headlamp knocked out. It was all we had been able to get for fifteen dollars but at least, as he kept saying, it wasn’t the VW.

About half an hour passed. It was now quite dark. Pretty soon Murphy came out, his jacket off, his tie loosened. In one hand he held his dinner napkin. He came out into the street and looked up and down, then whistled once, shrilly.

He waited, looking up and down. He whistled again.

And then his son came back, pedaling furiously, and I thought, That poor, scared kid, with an old man like that. And the kid streaked up the drive, jumped off his bike, and ran up to his father, who bent over and scooped him up, and hugged him while the kid beamed, and they both went inside.

“Well, he can’t be all bad,” Herbie said.

“Don’t be a sucker,” I said.

We waited another hour. I got to thinking about the writer who said you are what you pretend to be. I’d thought about that and decided it was wrong, that you became what you were least afraid of becoming; and that was a much more dangerous thing, because it was much more basic and much more subtle. You are what you are least afraid of becoming…

I’d had some good times with that theory. It had led me to believe that no one could even imagine what it was that he really wanted unless he first lost the fear of his own imagination. And he couldn’t begin to do that without an opportunity. I mean, you can’t expect the president of Dow Chemical to suddenly go out and join the peace marchers. He simply hasn’t got time to think about such things. He’s the president, for Christ’s sake—all he wants to know is if the marches are hurting the sale of Saran Wrap. And in the same light, you can’t expect Huey Newton to join the police force next chance he gets, because it’s not exactly his trip.