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

“No sense of humor, huh?” I said. They didn’t think that was so funny either.

“You could say that,” Musty said.

“I gotta split,” Clarence said, standing up, “before Lou comes back to tell us how it was.” He nodded to Musty and said to me, “Catch you later, man,” and was gone.

Lou returned, looking ecstatic. “Boy you shoulda seen—”

“You want to taste it?” asked Musty, nodding over at the bricks.

“Sure,” I said.

“Listen,” Lou said, sitting down with us. “Listen, guys, yesterday was nothing compared to the one I just dropped.”

Musty suddenly turned on Lou. “Why don’t you just forget about your bowels for a while?”

Lou looked hurt. “What’s the matter with you? Just ’cause you almost got your ass busted today doesn’t mean I have to—”

“Just shut up,” Musty said. “I don’t feel like hearing about it any more, and I’m sure Harkness here doesn’t either.”

Lou looked over at me, defensively. “You don’t like hearing about it?” he demanded. I shrugged.

“Look, Lou,” said Musty, suddenly smiling. “Why don’t you go for a nice long walk. The air’d do you good, you’ve told me that it does you good a million times.”

Lou looked sour. Finally he said, “Okay, I’ll go. But I’m not walking. Give me the keys to your wheels.”

Musty laughed. “Haven’t got the wheels here,” he said. “Too hot. I left them in the garage down by the Holly Street place. And I’m sure as hell not giving you my bike, if that’s what you’re thinking about. Nobody drives my bike. Except me.” There was a silence, while Lou looked glum and Musty laughed some more. Then he said, “What about you?” I realized he was talking to me. “How about it, Harkness? Did you drive over?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound noncommittal. I wasn’t too big on giving the car to some dude I didn’t know from a hole in the ground.

“Well,” Musty went on, “Lou here is cool. Aren’t you, Lou?” Lou nodded. I was thinking just then that I’d hang around for a while and taste the dope, so what the hell. “Come back soon,” I said, pulling out the keys. “And just don’t bust it up, okay? It’s not my car.” We all laughed and Lou hustled out the door.

“He’s a weird little dude,” I said, but Musty was already over in the corner, opening one of the bricks. He removed the tin foil first, then the paper wrapping. On the paper was a peace sign and the words BERKELEY 890. I wondered what it meant and then realized it must be the gram weight—not a bad one at that. A righteous brick, eight hundred ninety grams. Below that was a large, stenciled M. Musty saw me looking at it and laughed.

“My trademark,” he said. “I wanted to get one of those hand-press stampers, so I could punch it right into the brick. But, shit, you know what they want for those things?”

“No,” I said, thinking that Musty was pretty cocky. Or else pretty fucking good.

“Like a thousand bucks, man. I looked into it.”

It was cocky, but it wasn’t unheard of, trademarking your own dope. A lot of dudes had done it, most notably Augustus Stanley Owsley III, who’d helped put acid in the dictionary. He used to stamp a little owl right into his tabs; it was like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. It meant that the acid was pure, with a good base and a uniform three-hundred-five-mic dose. It also meant another two bucks a tab on the street.

Musty pulled a hunk off one of the bricks, and began rolling some joints. While he rolled he talked about the dope supply, the way things were getting tight. “It’s the same all over the country,” he said. “Christ. Used to be a year-round business, now it’s getting seasonal. It’s only April now, and the squeeze is on already. Everybody’s cracking down.”

“Cracking down?” I said. “Dealers, or what?”

“Well, dealers, yeah, but mainly it’s the full-scale crackdowns that hurt. Like the American government leans on the Mexicans, and the Mexes, dumb fuckers, start burning crops. And then the border guards start getting honest and the FBI decides to do nothing but hassle big runners—and things get tight.”

“Shit,” I said. “The FBI? Haven’t they got better things to do?”

“Never have before,” Musty said. “Old J. Edgar and the boys have been mowing down straw men for years—communists, dope fiends, hidden persuaders, anything they can think of. Anything that sounds tough but can’t fight back. They’re smart, man. If they didn’t keep everybody hopped up about the red menace and the international dope conspiracy, then they’d have to really get down to work and do something. Like go after the mob—and the mob’s a tough cookie, man. The mob’d bust J. Edgar’s balls.” He sighed, finished one joint, licked it, set it aside, and started on another. “Listen,” he said, “you know why the mob doesn’t deal dope—and why the only people who get busted by the FBI are punk pushers like me? You know why? Because the mob doesn’t want anything to do with grass. They’re not interested. Grass is small-time, and it’s too bulky to move without a lot of hassle. But mainly they’re not interested because there’s no real money in it. Like a dude can smoke dope his whole life, and if the supply gets cut off it won’t hassle him to stop smoking. Or if somebody’s fucking the market and the price goes up, he can stop smoking. Or if the stuff he’s getting is cut with milk sugar or oregano or whatever, he can stop smoking, and wait till something better comes along. ’Cause your basic teahead isn’t hooked, dig, he hasn’t got a monkey on his back. He’s blowing his weed ’cause he digs it, period. If things get too hot, or too expensive—zap! No dope market.” I nodded. Big deal. But Musty was getting into it.

“Now you figure this,” he said. “The mob doesn’t go for dope at all, see, because they’re a business organization, out to make money. They’re interested in shit that gives you a habit, creates a real market. A market that stays to buy whether the shit is only ten percent potency, or whether the price jumps five-hundred percent after the first week of supply. A market that stays no matter what, a market of guys who’ll do anything they have to do to keep getting their daily fix. But the FBI isn’t working on that market, see. They’re out busting dope fiend creeps like me who turn innocent teeners on to a stick of mary jane every now and then.”

“Far out,” I said. There was nothing else to say. I had heard it all before. Anybody who was into dealing had heard it all before.

“Goddamn right it’s far out,” Musty said. “It’s also a drag to talk about.” He paused and I hoped he was through, but he suddenly picked up again. “And I’ll tell you what else is a drag,” he said. “A real bummer this is, too. You got any idea how many people are blowing dope these days?” I shrugged. “A hell of a lot, man,” he said. “A hell of a lot. Ten or twenty million, if you read Life magazine. Five percent of this country, bare minimum. You have any idea how much dope all those people consume?” I shook my head. He shook his head back. “A hell of a lot, man,” he said again. “And I’ll tell you what happens. The heat, see, the heat figure they gotta stop all these people from blowing dope, ’cause otherwise they’re going to have a country full of drug addicts on their hands, right? Right. Okay, so they crack down on the dope supply, they make it hard as hell for a normal Joe to get his hands on some normal smoking dope. And they figure that’s good, see, they’re doing their job and preventing everybody from getting addicted. Right?” He laughed bitterly. “But then look what happens. There’s not enough dope around, so the shitbird dealers start burning the scene down. And they don’t have any more good weed than the next man, so they sell shit—any kind of shit—and they cut it with something to give it a kick. And the people who know what weed’s all about, see, they’re not getting burned, ’cause they know better. But the people who don’t know better, they get screwed.”