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

“I find that difficult to believe,” Herbie said, sounding for all the world like my old man.

“Yeah, well, that’s what’s happening.” I was beginning to see what it meant, from Murphy’s viewpoint, to be hassled by a couple of kids. And I began to see just how little power we had. Nobody ever had power unless someone gave it to them. Murphy wasn’t giving us an inch.

“Maybe he doesn’t think we can do it,” Herbie said.

“Maybe we can’t,” I said. It had all been an enormous bluff. We didn’t know anybody on the newspapers, or at the D.A.’s office. We didn’t know anybody, period.

John chose that happy moment to walk in with Sandra. She ran for the John, and he came into the kitchen, sniffing the air. “Jesus, it stinks in here.” He walked over to the sink, took a look, and shook his head. “Harkness, you never could—”

“And you couldn’t either,” I said. “Get bent, or get lost, or preferably both.”

John paused to savor the atmosphere. “What’ve you dudes been up to?”

“The impossible,” Herbie said.

Then John saw the bricks on the kitchen table. His spirits rose. “My, my, what have we here?”

Nobody said anything.

“Fine stuff,” he said, crumbling a bit between his fingers. “Almost as good as—” He stopped, looked at another brick, at the stamp on the wrapper. “Where’d you pick this up?”

He looked over at me. I didn’t say anything. So he looked over at Herbie. “Three guesses,” Herbie said. John just stood there, totally out of it, and then Sandra walked in and began clucking about the smell. I was feeling a little sick again. John saw the bottle of Chivas out and began bitching about my drinking his stuff again. All I could think of was how we couldn’t touch Murphy. It didn’t seem possible that he was untouchable. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible.

“Herbie,” I said, “we can do it.”

“How’s that?” Herbie sounded bored.

“We could arrange a trade.”

“No!” He sat suddenly upright. “That ruins everything. The whole point of the plan—”

“I know,” I said. “But the flawless plan didn’t work. We already know that. The only thing we can do is trade.”

“You mean,” Herbie said, his mouth turning down in distaste, “give him the bricks?”

“Give who the bricks?” John said sharply. He had suddenly forgotten all about the Scotch.

“Yes,” I said. “Give them to him.”

“That’s nowhere,” Herbie said. “That’s greasing the wheels, playing right into the system. Greasing Murphy’s wheels.”

“What’s going on?” John demanded. He seemed almost frightened by not knowing what was going on. A power trip that he wasn’t part of. Frightening.

“We’d be playing right into it anyway,” I said, “if we tried to buy her off on Monday.”

“It’s not the same,” Herbie said. “You got to believe in justice sometime. You got to believe that if this stuff went to the papers, and the district attorney—”

“No,” I said. I didn’t believe it. And for some reason, I remembered a conversation I’d once had with my father about Boston justice. I was telling him how Super Spade got busted, and then bought himself off. He refused to believe the story. I tried to make him believe it—believe that everyone in Boston, from the mayor to the garbage collectors, was crooked. “But think what that means, or would mean if it were true,” my father said. I had never thought about it. Not really. But I was thinking now.

“It won’t work,” Herbie said. “Even if he agrees, he’ll take the bricks and keep the chick anyway.”

“Maybe not,” I said.

“Maybe not,” Herbie mimicked. “You going to trust him?”

“Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on here?” John shouted.

But by that time I was checking through Sandra’s silverware, plucking at the tines of her forks, trying to find one that sounded good. And when I finally did, I picked up the phone and dialed.

“You’re crazy,” Herbie said.

“Who’re you calling?” John said. His voice had a slight whine now, a very atypical voice for John. I began to see him differently.

This time, a male voice answered the phone directly. An irritable male: “Hello.”

“Lieutenant Murphy?” I said. I looked over at Herbie and John. John was beginning to get the picture. His mouth was open.

“Yeah.”

“Is this Lieutenant Murphy?” I said again.

“Yeah.”

“I’m calling with a business proposition and—”

“Not interested. Goodbye—”

“Wait,” I said. I had a flash of desperation. But the bastard waited. I could hear him breathing at the other end. “I’ve got twelve bricks here,” I said. “They were… borrowed from a gentleman in Boston. As you know, their market value is in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars. I’d like you to have them.”

“What for?” He was growling, but he was interested.

“All we want is the girl,” I said. “Drop charges and release her. We’ll get the twelve bricks to you.”

“That’s not good enough, sonny,” Murphy said. “Goodbye.”

By now, though, I knew he wasn’t going to hang up. “As a demonstration of faith,” I said, “we will arrange for you to receive four bricks tonight. You’ll get the rest on her release.”

“Six bricks,” Murphy said.

“Six bricks?” I said. “That seems an awful lot.”

“Six bricks,” Murphy said, “and not one less.”

“You’re not being very reasonable, Lieutenant Murphy,” I said. “But if you want six bricks, then…” and here I plucked the tines of the fork “… six it will be.”

“What was that?” Murphy said.

“Are we agreed on six bricks?” I said. And I plucked the tines once more. It didn’t make a very realistic sound, but then, it didn’t have to.

“What was that noise?”

“We’ll call you in an hour,” I said, “to tell you where you can collect the bricks. Is that satisfactory?”

“What was that noise?” But he knew damned well what the noise was, or thought he knew.

“We want you to be honest,” I said. “That’s just our way of keeping things up front. We’ll talk to you in an hour.” And I hung up.

Herbie was staring at me. “Far out,” he said.

John said, “What was the fork stuff?”

“Brilliant,” Herbie said, “brilliant. We can drop the bricks at the Museum of Science, and—”

“What was the fork?” John said.

I plucked it again, and listened to the brief twink it made. “Our tape recorder,” I said, and began to laugh.

“MURPHY’S FORKED HIMSELF,” Herbie laughed. I was laughing so hard there were tears in my eyes.

Only John wasn’t laughing. He was frowning and staring at the bricks. Then he frowned and stared at us. And finally he said, “He’ll still rip you off.”

“Who?” I said. “Murphy? After we taped him?”

“Yeah,” John said. He didn’t explain. He just sat back and watched us as we stopped laughing slowly, the laughs turning into coughs, and then silence.

“What do you mean?” Herbie said.

“I mean,” John said, “that Murphy is going to sit back and ask himself what kind of taping device makes a beeping noise. And he’s going to decide that only a commercial device does—like they use for telephone interviews on the news radios and stuff. And he’s going to decide that a bunch of snot-nosed kids don’t have a commercial device, that they have a kitchen fork and are trying to rip him off.”

I shook my head. “He’s not that smart.”

I looked over at Herbie for confirmation. Herbie was staring at his feet.