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

It probably would have been a cool idea for Ross to keep his guns out of sight if he’d been doing anything, if he’d been a Panther or a Weatherman—even if he’d been a member of the Sierra Club. Anything. But Ross wasn’t doing anything, short of letting everyone know what a heavy he was, and knocking out a few token Bank of America windows with the butt of his gun when the inevitable spring riot came to Berkeley. That was why he always cut such a ludicrous figure to me.

Ross was a fervent Marxist-Leninist. At least, that’s how he thought of himself. He was one of the first people I’d ever met in Berkeley. I’d just been walking down Telegraph, digging the street scene, and he’d looked like he knew his way around, so I’d asked him if he knew where such-and-such Dwight Way was. He lived there too.

We’d been great good friends for an hour or so, which was, I later discovered, about as long as Rossie could function before finding it necessary to pause and consider the state of the coming revolution. So we’d started talking about the revolution, and after a bit of it I’d just laughed—and that had offended him deeply. You could do anything, say anything, be anything, to Ross—but you couldn’t laugh at the revolution.

Later, when Stevie mentioned that I was in Berkeley to score some dope, the dislike had turned to contempt. Ross had no place in his life for drugs. He was serious enough about his trip to live in constant preparedness for the big day. He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, and you could hear him panting every night as he did his calisthenics. He stayed in shape for it, and he expected others to do the same. And so he especially detested dope people, whose presence meant a possible bust, and with it the confiscation of his well-maintained arsenal. We really didn’t get along.

But what bothered me about Ross, in the end, was that he couldn’t dig what anybody else was up to. I mean, I didn’t want the dude to knock off what he was doing just because I couldn’t dig it, but that was exactly what he seemed to want me to do. And as far as I was concerned, that was half-assed, because it all came down to personal excuses, which were purely a matter of choice. His excuse for not paying any attention to us was that we blew dope, which was not only illegal but was quite literally an opiate of the people, an anti-revolutionary device that we were politically ignorant enough to indulge in.

And our excuse for not digging Ross’s trip was that we figured that any changes that were really going to happen were going to happen in people’s heads. We figured that once you started killing, you admitted that you were at a loss for other solutions, and that your own way was so poverty-stricken in the knowledge department that all you could do with people who didn’t see the light was liquidate them. And we figured that was nowhere. So we blew our dope and stayed in our heads; maybe that was nowhere, but that was our problem.

The only hitch in all this was that, from the point of view of Ross’s repressionary society, he was a lot cooler than we were. I mean some places the written penalties for selling marijuana are greater than the written penalties for killing somebody. In that sense, Ross was a lot more hip than we were.

STEVIE AND I SAT IN the living room, waiting for something to happen. Pretty soon the chick came back out. I was fumbling around for a cigarette, but I didn’t have a match. “Do you have a match?” I asked her. She stared at me blandly for a moment, then said, “If you made a salad out of tobacco leaves and ate it, you would be very sick.” It was said without judgment or heat, simply a stated fact. But all I could think was, Christ, not again. Another California health-food freak.

“Stevie, got a match?”

He shook his head. “I’m all out, man. Ask Ross, why don’t you.”

Just then Ross came out of the bathroom, still holding a towel to his head. He was mumbling to himself, so I left the honors to Stevie.

“Ross, you got a match?” he asked.

“So you can smoke some more dope and stink the place up? Hell, no.”

“It’s not for a joint,” said Stevie. “Just a plain, ordinary butt that won’t stink anything up any more than it already is. For Peter,” he added.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. In my room, near the phone.” As I got up he said, “Hey, and there’s a number by the phone that you were supposed to call if you showed up here. Some guy from Boston called this morning and left it.”

I nodded and said, “Thanks.”

“If you call Boston, call collect,” Ross yelled after me as I went into his room.

There was a number with a Boston exchange written on a newspaper. There was blood all over the paper and I wasn’t sure of the last digit, but what the hell. I dialed and a far-off voice answered.

“Hello?”

“This is Peter,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” said John. He sounded like I had just wakened him, which was the way he always sounded on the telephone. “What’s happening?”

“Not much. I got invited to a bust but I didn’t attend.”

“Good man. Musty gave me a ring about five hours ago. He said he’d had to split his place fast.”

“No kidding,” I said.

John ignored me. “Yeah. We were really worried about you for a while there, Peter.” I’ll bet he was. It would’ve cost him a lot of bread. As if he knew what I was thinking, John went on. “We were afraid the heat might hassle you when they found the house clean.”

I said, “They did. Big deal.”

“Ummm.” I had half expected congratulations on my narrow escape, but of course there weren’t any. John said, “Big bust?”

“Eight narcs. Couple of patrol cars.”

“Shit, that’s the trouble with Musty. When they come down on him, they come down hard.”

“I thought he was so cool,” I said.

“For Chrissake,” said John, “he is. He knew this was coming. He called me, didn’t he? Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” I said, “okay. You know where he is now?”

“Just a minute.” John left the phone. I could hear music in the background and, faintly, a chick giggling. Then John came back. “Peter?” he said. “Take this number down.” He gave me an Oakland number, told me to be careful, and hung up. I sighed a deep sigh of relief, knowing at last that everything was still cool. I felt like I could relax a bit, maybe even dig the Sukie chick for a while before I dived back into the business routine. I picked up Ross’s matches and went back into the living room.

Ross was sitting alone on the couch, smiling and drinking a medicinal glass of wine. He was telling Stevie with great glee how he’d managed to kick a cop in the ’nads before they’d gotten to him. “Took that fucking pig right out with me,” he said.

Stevie looked up at me. “Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine,” I said. “Thanks.” Then to Ross: “Where’s your old lady?”

“Who, you mean Sukie?” I nodded, and he laughed. “She’s not my old lady, man. Just a good head. She hangs around to take care of friends on days like this, when she knows there’s going to be trouble.”

“Where’d she go?” I asked.

“She went back up to campus to see what’s happening.” He looked at me hard, and then laughed again. “You can forget about her, Harkness, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking. She’s got a good head. She doesn’t go for druggies like you.”

“Oh, I see,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, but I just shook my head and sat down. I wasn’t going to argue with the dude, I was just going to relax for a change and enjoy myself. In my hand I had the number John had given me, Musty’s number. I should’ve been on the phone trying to get hold of him, to set up a time. But I didn’t feel like I had to be in any rush. I could wait. Musty had almost put me on the shithook, and it was my turn to reciprocate. He could sweat it for a while, not knowing whether I’d been picked up. It was all part of the game.