Chapter 29. The Dark Night Closes In

 

I went along with Ted to meet his pal, Hank, at a bar owned by a Jar Head. It was quite a reunion. I was considered an honorary guest but, though I was a Vet, I knew I could never be an equal in that company. I sat and listened to Hank and Ted catch up. They had been together through some heavy shit in the bush. I understood that the experience drew a line between them and, so-called, civilized society that sent them there to do our bidding. There was a feeling that the potential for violence was moderated by discipline, but it was no less potent than if I was sitting in a Hell’s Angels clubhouse. I drank, and while I sat there, I heard some things I’d rather not have heard.

“Max, you can dig it, Ted and me…” Hank slapped me on my back with a massive hand that damned near knocked my wind out, “well, we’d go into the bush all fucked up on acid. We’d get inserted for a couple days and then drop a tab. Or once, we missed our Huey, maybe a week. We fuckin’ loved it!”

I looked over at Ted to see if I could read anything otherwise in his face and saw him grinning at the memory of it.

“No shit, you dropped acid in the bush? Wasn’t that a freaken, fuckin’, place to trip?”

Ted confirmed what Hank said, “Everything was clearer, man. You could see things better. Like, if Charlie was setting up an ambush, anything different stood out… and we could stay awake… alert, ya know?”

“Ted,” Hank continued, “these guys I’m tryin’ to tell you ‘bout… civvies… ex-grunts like us. They come in here… friends of Calvin.”

Ted asked, “Who’s Calvin?”

“He owns this joint. Cal’s Recon and some other shit... served in the Nam and fuck-holes all over the place. I'll introduce ya. See, these guys set me up with a meeting to go back… like, Laos, Cambodia… Make more money in a week than we could get in a year State-side.”

Ted’s face lit up, “Did you go for it?”

“Yeah, I sure as fuck did. All I had to do was… we were in this old fuckin’ hotel… ya know, that pink one, … South Beach… The Flaminco.”

“The Flamingo?”

“Yeh, Flaminco, that’s right… I was sayin’, we was in a board-room at a conference table, ya know, one of those big tables. They pitched ‘bout being private contractors and so on, but this guy came around to us, plopped down AK’s and M-16’s in front of us, and blindfolded, they told us to break ‘em down and put ‘em back together… which we did… piece o’ cake… and they told us that the agency we’d be working for was PRU.”

 “What the fuck is PRU?” Ted asked.

“I have no fuckin' idea. But they told us we’d be doing a security job, slippin’ in and out of villages in Laos … Cambodia … taking out NVA and shit.”

“No shit?” Ted was interested.

“Then the bad news… They were honest and warned us that life expectancy in the field is short.” Hank was grinning, “But you could retire after six months.”

Ted toasted, “Fuck, that’s what they told us in Nam. Semper Fi!”

I wasn’t paying much attention after that much was said. I got good and drunk while Ted and Hank were talking business and left the table to sit at the bar. At the bar I got into a face-off with a character there. All the testosterone of the earlier conversation, mixed with the booze, triggered something in me I hadn’t felt since my drinking bouts in the Navy. Ted and Hank saw what was happening, swept me up and walked me out to the car.

“Hey, Max,” Ted scolded, “What the fuck do you think you’re doin’?”

“That fucker wasss wantin’ to fuck with me,” I slurred.

Ted wasn’t putting up with a drunk, “Yeah, we woulda let him kick your ass, but you don’t know who you’re fuckin’ with. He’d be feeding your ass to the gators.”

I passed out in the back seat and didn’t come-to until the next morning.

The car was parked at a motel.  It was one of those old ones with rooms in separate cottages. The door to the room was open. Ed and Hank were sitting on the stoop as I peeled myself out of the back seat and stumbled inside for the can. Passing through the room I noticed a bloodstained North Vietnamese flag pinned to the wall along with an AK47. An M-16 was leaning on the dresser. It looked as though Hank had been living there for some time. I wrenched out the contents of my stomach into the toilet bowl. While in there, I overheard Ted and Hank casually talking about the meeting they’d been to the night before.

“So, what happened last night?” I was trying to remember but everything was a fog from the time Hank was telling Ted about the meeting and I'd sidled up to the bar.

“We dumped you like a sack of potatoes in the car and Teddy here put in his application with PRU.” Hank snorted.

“What…?” I was confused, “You goin’, Ted?”

“Yeah, I’m goin’, but it won’t be for a month or so ‘fore I do. I’ve got some stuff to take care of in Crestview and I gotta get my little brother home.”

I wondered what I was going to do while Ted and I drove back to Hollywood. I could go north with Ted and his brother? Try to make it back to New Mexico or California from there? Shit, I thought, I don’t wanna be here and I don’t wanna be anywhere at all. I had run out of places I wanted to go. I heard myself moan out loud, “Just a log cabin in Northern Canada… a jug of wine and a squaw.”

“What are you talkin’ about?” Ted asked.

 “Oh, nothing, I just know Corky’s right. The gigs up here in Florida and I’ve got to go somewhere, but I have no idea where. You know, I’ve been thinking about my share of all that money we’ve made. I know I didn’t do much to deserve it and don’t need it. You guys can divvy-up my share. I just need enough to get the fuck outa Florida.”

“Awe c’mon man, deserve it? Say, buddy, you’ll need some cash. There’s a town on the sand-spit near Crestview called Fort Walton. It has an amusement park where we can get rid of some of this acid we got stashed and split it three ways. That oughta give you some more traveling money.”

“Yeh, I kinda wish I could go through PRU with you and Hank. Man, I’ve got nothing holding me here.”

Ted laughed, “Funny, I figured you for some sort of peace and love hippy guru when we first ran into you and Stan. I thought Stan was your Butt-Boy… know what I mean?”

I found it hard to believe what Ted was saying because I had been pretty much following Stan’s lead since leaving New Mexico. It was, however, what he’d said after that that drove a nail in my soul.

“Max, when you drink you hit it harder than you can handle and when you’re drunk you’re an asshole.”

“I know, that’s why I…”

He scowled, “You’re just no good under fire, buddy. Never seen you like that.”

It felt like a dagger went straight into my heart because I respected Ted and wanted badly to be respected by him. I knew that I had lost that respect and understood that it would take something extraordinary to gain it back. I knew better than to dispute Ted’s judgment… that I wasn’t someone who could be trusted...  His words would haunt me, “no good under fire.”

I had become something dark since leaving Jamaica… the curse… the Hoss Bozz curse.

“That bad, huh?” darkness closed in on me. 

“Yeh, that bad.”

Chapter 28. Corky's Invitation

This meant stepping into another arena.

The curfew had been lifted and the rioters had pretty much burned everything down that they were going to burn down. The sniping stopped, and we resumed our business in the evenings. The Crew got busy making personal deliveries, pulling in some serious cash, and making up for lost time. The success we found was easy for us at this level because we had a niche that we filled. Stan felt we ought to move up out of selling lids and put our money in kilos. This meant stepping up into another arena that I wasn’t at all comfortable with. Teddy and his brothers were with Stan on it. Even though The Crew wasn’t run exactly as a democracy we had a casual feel for consensus among us on major decisions.

“So, look, we are just risking prison time for petty cash, Max,” Stan argued. “Every time we leave the house there’s a chance we’ll get pulled over by ‘the heat’ and we’ll be picking up our mail at Dade County Jail.”

The money had been good enough for me, but I had to agree, “Yeh, Stan, you got a point. You know that I just wanted to make enough money to get back to New Mexico in the first place and get the fuck out of here.”

The others treated me like I was the one calling the shots most of the time, but Stan and I knew he was the real work horse and that I was in no way driving the business in any realistic manner. Maybe they were right, practically speaking, because he always checked with me before doing anything important like this. I agreed, “Let’s go for it.”

The Crew started moving kilos. The money was coming in and I kept the lid business with the college professors. It was fun, and it had a clean feel to it that was almost like not dealing drugs. It seemed more like I was providing a quality service. Along with some Blue Micro-dot acid, the business made a little money but nothing like the rest of the Crew with selling kilos.

Stan came along with me and I put six lids in the glove box to make a few deliveries to our original customers. We hadn’t gotten a block away from the apartment when a squad car slipped in behind us. Stan was driving, and I was riding shotgun. The glove box had a separate key and I locked it, slipping the key under the dash. Roland had explained to The Crew the evening before of an oversight in Florida Law, at that time, having to do with unlawful search and seizures. The police couldn’t open the glove box or trunk of a car without a warrant.

About a mile down the road the cruiser finally lit up and pulled us over. I was more than a little nervous when two other unmarked cars boxed us in at the same time. I was nervous because I had about two hundred and fifty bucks in my pocket. They had us leaned-up face-down against the car hood with our arms and legs spread to be frisked.

The cop lifted a wad of money from my pocket up to show the others and then laid it on the hood, “So, what’s this?”

I answered in a monotone of resignation, “It is money I have for school. I’m a Navy Vet… Cashed in my separation checks. Enrolling at Miami Dade this week. GI Bill, ya know.”

He threw the wad on the hood and turned his attention to Stan, “What’s in the glove box?”

Expressionless, Stan answered, “I don’t know. It’s locked, and I lost the key.”

One of the plain clothes cops walked over to me and gave me a once over with the steeliest eyes I had ever seen. His drawl was unnerving as he said, “You might have heard of me from the scum around Coconut Grove, I’m Corky.” He opened his wallet and flashed his badge, “Now, I know, you may be going to college in the fall or you might not.” He paused… lit a cigarette, blew smoke in my face, and continued, “I’m not going to bother asking what it is you got in the glove box.”

He pulled a lid out of a, above-his pay-grade-expensive, linen sportscoat pocket, “I could drop this lid inside of your car and have probable cause to have our boys in blue tear your mother-fuckin’ car apart from trunk to hood.”

Dangling the lid in my face, he said cordially, “Do I have your attention Mr. McGee?”

“Yes sir,” I knew I didn’t want to piss off this cop.

“The gig’s up. We’ve been watching you boys for a month now, Max. You’ve been doing alright for yourselves.” He offered me a smoke… lit it and waited ‘til I took a drag, watching closely perhaps to see how steady my hand held it. He said in a whisper so that no one else could hear him, “I think you ought to take a vacation instead of going to school, Maxie.”

“A vacation? I need one of those. Any suggestions where I might go?”

Corky got back in his car, rolled down his window, and answered in passing, “Anywhere but here. You understand?”

We drove off and, when we had gotten only a block away, a hole smacked into the center of a spider web in my window with the buzz of a bee above the side of my head simultaneously ripping into the fabric of the backseat across from me.

I was already ducking below the dash when Stan stepped on it, shouting, “Sniper! Get down.” And burning rubber out of the neighborhood.

A few blocks away, Stan sat up and continued the conversation as though nothing happened at all, “What does he mean, the gig’s up. They got nothin’ on us.”

 I was surprisingly calm too, and explained, “Don’t you see what just happened? They don’t need to have anything on us!”

Stan didn’t want to believe what we’d just gone through, “There’s been snipers everywhere since the riots began. That shot wasn’t Corky’s doin’s.”

“Oh yeah, the riots have been over for a week. That was an invitation,” I answered and, after a moment of stasis, saying, “We oughta cash-in and get out of Dodge?”

“What, those pigs ain’t runnin’ me out of town,” Stan snorted. “They’re protecting their own interests, or they would’ve just arrested us.”

We made our deliveries and returned to Hollywood towards midnight. A conference was called between the original five. Stan, Ted, Kenny, Danny and I sat around the kitchen table smoking. The mood was glum. The pros and cons of what had happened were bantered about. We weren’t arguing as much as we were simply stating facts about our predicament.

I’d already decided and said, “This was lots of fun but the heat’s on. I never wanted to make a career of it anyway.”

“What, you want out?” Stan was liking the business more than me, “I’m diggin’ this trip. We’re makin’ money. So much we gots’ta find places t’stash it. I don’t want to leave now.”

“Yeah, Stan,” Ted interrupted, “you and Danny can have the professor’s wife and the teeny boppers on campus too…”

“It ain’t just that, Ted,” Stan took another hit and paused, when he finally spoke he was dead-on serious, “I’ve worked hard to build up the business and I don’t like the idea of fuckin’ Corky running us out of town. We might be able to make a deal with him. We’re all in this together, ain’t we?”

I was burnt-out and said so, “You can stay if you want but I don’t like Miami all that much and, hell, to be honest, I’m not contributing much business-wise. Besides, dirty cops don’t make me feel any better about it. They think I’m the ring-leader. I might as well have a target pinned to my ass sayin’, put your dicks in here!”

 Stan looked us over: maybe hoping we’d stick together, “I know you ain’t in charge, but we fuckin’ need you.”

“Maybe you do, but what do I really do. At least Ted has some muscle?”

 Stan was grasping, “What’re you thinking, Ted?”

“I was thinking, he’s right. I have the muscle, Max has the brains, but before we even started dealing kilos, Kenny and I wanted to get back to Crestview. We could split the cash five ways, Max, Kenny and I can put some of it into acid for traveling money, and head up north.”

“How about you, Danny?” Stan was beginning to look relieved that Ted volunteered to split-up the cash evenly.

“I like it here too.”

Danny had been doing most of the footwork along with Stan. It made sense that he’d want to stay. “Maybe we can keep it going a while longer… like you said, make a deal. Fuckin’ Corky just wants to make money off us.”

“One more thing,” Ted added as an afterthought, “I have a Marine bud that’s in town. I want to check-in with him before we split.”

Chapter 27. The Boots

The apartment in Hollywood gave the Crew a sense of distance from the scene in Coconut Grove, where most of our dealings were centered, though we were careful not to conduct business there. I made sure that there were very few people who were allowed into our inner circle. Once in a while some girls, and a few characters that had dealings with the Crew, came all the way out to Hollywood. One was a Canadian who had recently been released from jail in the Bahamas for possession and dealing pot. Roland was one of those good looking guys who always managed to bring some women over whenever he dropped by. Stan was convinced he was a narc until the time he showed up touting a new drug, MDA.

Roland had me cornered at the kitchen table and he pitched, “It comes from Orlando manufactured by some group, The Family. You guys know that biker, Throttle, who hangs at the park?”

I really wasn’t interested, “Yeh, the bad-assed dude with the crank-head whore?”

“There was some of this MDA goin’ around at the park and people were saying it was a better rush to hit than speed.”

I still wasn’t very curious, but I decided to hear Roland out, “Shit, what is it?”

“No one seems to know exactly. It acts something like acid, but the trip isn’t so radical… no bummers, but you do trip.”

The gears were turning as my mind took me through the whole catalogue of drugs I’d tried, “Then it has to be some kind of speed.”

“No, and it isn’t addictive like crank.” Roland was trying to get back to his story and to the point, “Anyway, We said he should sit down to hit up… that it would knock you out. Throttle was all macho and called everyone pussies for saying that. So, he ties himself off and slams standing up right there in front of where the old ladies at the Rec-Center pass by. It took about a half minute… maybe fifteen seconds and WHAM! He hit the dirt flat on his back!”

“Pretty potent shit,” now I was interested.

“The funny part of it was that, after he lay there a few minutes, he just started tossing his head back and forth saying all kind of shit that would have never, not in a million years, come out of his bad-assed mouth. Eh?”

“Like what?”

“Like, I love you guys, I love life. I love the sky. I love the earth, grass on the ground, I love you and on and on.” Roland was pulling a film-case tin from his pocket, “and I have some here, Max. You wanna try it?”

“Sure, I’m game.”

Stan came in the room at that time, “Yeh, Max, you gotta try it. I want to slam some acid along with it. It is fucking great!”

So, we fixed up and Stan slammed MDA in one arm and acid in the other. I was sure that using needles with acid had to be one of the greatest violations of a sacrament imaginable, but I decided to do it anyway. It was everything that Roland promised and more so. But I was no longer arriving at palaces of bliss and enlightenment on these trips. I wasn’t really going anywhere. Sure, I’d be high and all that, but the thrill was gone.

Another character that showed up at our place was a tall lanky New Yorker who called himself Tex. He crashed on our couch one night and then disappeared with a pair of western boots that belonged to Ted. About a week later Ted and I saw Tex in Coconut Grove on the other side of Grand Avenue.

“Hey, ain’t that Tex?” Grand Avenue was a broad street but Tex was a very recognizable character. I turned to Teddy.

“Yeah,” Ted was already headed across the street… “Hey!” he shouted.

Tex kept walking but realized Ted was barreling across the street and that he’d best stop and say something… anything! He came to meet Ted midway to the traffic island. “Hey, Teddy, I was planning on coming out to see…” He was grinning a nervous grin and reaching out his hand as though greeting a welcome friend.

“You’re wearing my boots!”

“Oh, yeah… I just borrowed ‘em. I was gonna bring ‘em back this afternoon.”

Ted let fly with a left hook to the side of the cowboy’s head, as Tex spoke. He went straight on his back to the grass. Ted stood over him and glowered, “Take ‘em off.”

“Sure, I wasn’t planning on keeping them.”

“You had ‘em a week.”

 He explained meekly as he took them off and handed them to Ted, “Yeh, well, I had to go out of town before I could get ‘em back to you.”

I caught up to them by this time and, as Ted slapped the boots from Tex’s hand, I found the words coming out of my mouth, “Kill the mother fucker, Ted. Kill him!” It was like I was possessed.

Ted was kicking and punching the poor bastard, and I was goading him on. When it was over, Tex was laying there on the grass of the divider weeping in convulsions with a bloody face puffed up and contorted blubbering, “I didn’t mean to steal them. I didn’t mean to…”

“Then why did you! Why did you!” I screamed and kicked him a few times more. I looked over at Ted as we walked away with the boots and thought I read disgust on his face. The adrenaline wore off and my rage was smothered by a sense of shame. It wasn’t shame for what violence Ted had done to Tex but rather it was shame for my cheerleading. I had been juiced on the brutality of the beating. I knew that, had Teddy killed Tex, I would have been okay with it. Furthermore, my hatred for Tex was almost completely unwarranted. Sure, Tex had stolen property from the Crew and we couldn’t have word get out that we had been ripped-off by a punk… but where had this blood-lust come from? The onslaught of it was so sudden, and alien to me, that I could hardly believe that I was that ape-man calling out for mayhem and bloodshed.

Chapter 26. The Twilight of the Soul (pt. 3, The Bean Jar Sniper attack)

 Our apartment in Hollywood was bordered by a dismal black ghetto on one side and a vital Cuban neighborhood on the other. The year being 1970, there were riots in the Miami ghettos and a curfew to go along with it. Snipers were picking off anything that moved, and rioters were burning anything that didn’t. It was Burn-Baby-Burn, black or white, and it didn’t seem to matter whether it was before, or after, curfew. I was dazed at the news that a twelve-year-old black kid on a bicycle was shot dead in broad daylight by a roof-top sniper. The sniper could just as well have been a cop. At that time there was as much vice in Miami Vice as there was on the streets. But, just as likely, it could’ve been target practice for an asshole on either side, aiming to stir things up more than they already were. Several nights during the curfew we sat around the kitchen table drinking wine and smoking dope, while sirens, helicopters and gunfire sporadically popped away as surreal background noise to the blues of Aynsley Dunbar and the Retaliation on the turntable… “but if you give me any trouble, I’m gonna run you off the hill.”

https://youtu.be/WUv1IntFDuQ

The curfew had killed the business for over a week. We all had a case of nerves, living in a war zone and, cooped-up with each other, we were getting cabin fever. I figured that there would be nothing like a hot bowl of chili to cheer up the boys on a friggen hot/humid summer evening in south Florida. Spicy, hot peppers always did the trick for me in Southeast Asia. I decided to make a pot and had filled a gallon pickle jar with a couple cups of pinto beans and water to pre-soak them before cooking . I set the jar on the kitchen counter with the lid off to the side. It was like jail... we played cards and slept while we passed the time. Ted was resting in the bedroom (the only room with air-conditioning) while Danny, Kenny and I were sitting at the kitchen table with the windows open. It was a couple of hours later, while the Crew was sitting around chewing the fat and passing time that suddenly a sharp report like a rifle-shot sent glass flying across the room.

Ted jumped up from the bed and hit the switch to the lights while snapping the slide on his forty-five. I did the same to the kitchen lights, barefoot on broken glass and yelled, “Sniper, hit the fuckin’ deck!”

Everyone was on the floor in the same second. Kenny and Danny headed for the bathroom crawling into the shower.

It was quiet, and some time passed before Ted called out, “Anybody hit?”

Nobody answered. I wasn’t sure but decided to call out names in a hushed tone, “Kenny?”

“I’m okay.”

“Danny?”

“Okay.”

“Stan?”

“Fine, what the fuck?”

“It was a rifle shot…” I whispered, “I’m sure. It must have come through the window where we were sitting. I think I heard the round buzz past my ear.”

“You sure it was a rifle?” Ted was on the floor in the bedroom with a loaded 45 automatic at ready.

“Yeh, it had to be… what else could it…”

“Where did it hit?”

“The counter,” Stan said, “The bean jar on the counter.”

“The bean jar?” I  put two and two together. “Did anyone put the lid on the bean jar?”

“Yeh, I did,” Stan muttered.

I got up off the floor, turned the lights back on, and grabbed a beer out of the fridge. I surveyed the scene where the bean jar had been. Seeing that there were no bullet holes behind where the jar was I took a long pull off the bottle of beer. Danny and Kenny came out of the bathroom, “What was it?”

“The bean jar,” I snickered, “We were attacked by a bean jar!”

“What do you mean?” Ted came out of the bedroom sheepishly disarming the automatic.

I started sweeping and wiping up the beans and glass from the floor and counter and explained the physics of it, “Stan screwed the lid on the jar of beans I was soaking. One cup of beans expands into six when you soak ‘em. The jar flat-out fuckin’ blew up!”

“I thought you said you were sure it was a rifle shot.” Ted scowled. “What about the round buzzing your ear?”

I went over to the open window and checked the screen. My inspection revealed what I already knew. There were no holes in it, so I had to admit, “I might have imagined that.”

No one had any hard feelings about it. We laughingly referred to the incident as the “The Bean Jar Sniper Attack” and just the mention of it was usually good for a laugh.

Chapter 26. Twilight of the Soul (pt.2)

We never had to assert our roles. It was just natural. Stan was like a lieutenant in charge of street hustle leading the brothers. Those three did all the real work… scoring and selling. Ted’s role was the muscle and that was obvious to all of us from the get-go. I didn’t have a real role at all. If I could have been called anything it would have been a misnomer, but I was supposedly the brains… the organizer… the guy with ideas… the mastermind of the operation.

The Crew became very active in Coconut Grove. The apartment we operated out of was in the back of a duplex on the border, so to speak, between the Black and Cubano neighborhoods of Hollywood. Stan and I moved in with them and switched off at first using the couch and floor. Because of my back, the floor with an air mattress was fine with me. We commuted into town from there in Ted’s rusty red Dodge Dart and began selling high-end dope to the professors and students at the University of Miami. The way that happened was one of those serendipitous things I had stumbled onto while hanging out at the park with Ted.

We’d just gotten started. Stan, Danny and Kenny were off hustling lids. Stan was good at expanding contacts with buyers and, his word, the Chicks. His talents with women and marketing were incredible… women know men who want them and, because of that, men are usually the ones who buy the pot. Danny and Kenney vended baggies on the street and in the Park.

Ted got out of the Marine Corps around the same time that I got out of the Navy, so we were talking about our service time and comparing notes… bars, skivvy-houses in Da Nang, Olongapo and so on… when a middle-aged man, with a neatly trimmed beard, nervously came toward us. He would change his mind and step back gazing into the coconut palms like he was bird-watching.

“What do you think this fag wants?” Ted commented just loud enough for the man to hear him but not too loud to scare him off.

“Say now, he might be the guy Stan was telling us about, remember?”

The man finally mustered his courage, and approached the table, “Excuse me, do you mind if I sit with you a minute?”

I wasn’t sure what he was up to. Ted might’ve been right. He could’ve been cruising for a rim job. He was too nervous to be an informant or narc. I was curious, “Sure, have a seat. What can we do for you?”

“I… I’m looking for… ah, well, not sure how to put it.

“Just say it,” Ted glowered at him.

“Okay, do you know where I can get a lid?”

“Are you a cop?” Ted asked. It was a joke. He knew it didn’t matter what a cop said off-mike.

I talked as though the guy wasn’t there, “You think a cop would be that nervous?”

Ted laughed and elbowed me, “What if he is a cop… don’t cops need pot too?”

I was high and didn’t care.

“No… no,” the man protested. “I was told… you guys have the best. I can pay thirty-bucks for a good lid.”

Though I knew better than to deal directly out of the park, I winked at Ted, “We might know someone that can get it for you at that price.”

The man threw out thirty dollars, offering a card with it, “I trust you guys. I’m off work tonight after seven and this is my address. Come on over for a drink. My wife and I like discrete company.”

He got up and walked a few steps, turning around one more time, he invited us, “I’ll see you there.”

We said in unison, “Sure.”

“Goddamned, did that just happen?” I grinned at Ted.

“Could be a narc.”

“Maybe. We’ll call a conference when we get back to the Hollywood Hacienda.”

Back at the apartment, we had a meeting. So far, we didn’t bother to split up the money between each other. The rent got paid and we all found ways to feed ourselves. We were about to see a dramatic change in fortunes. Stan made sure that he’d come along for this transaction as he read aloud the name on the card, “Dr. Arnold Wilcox, PHD, Professor of physics, University of Miami… That’s the guy!”

We parked down the street from the address and watched the place a few minutes. We could see the man peeking out… looking for us. He’d opened the drapes enough so that we could see that he was wearing a robe.

Ted blurted out, “Shit or go blind! If he’s a narc, he’s a fag of a narc, goin’ around wearing a robe like that. Max, narcs aren’t usually fags. Are they?”

As ridiculously naïve reasoning, it was still logical. I assured him, “Not flaming ones, I wouldn’t think.”

“Well, let’s go,”

Stan went first and rang the doorbell. We followed to the front porch of the townhouse apartment. The door opened to reveal a tall, dark-haired woman in her forties. She was in a sheer black something flowing over a very pleasant to-look-at body, wrapped in a silky black something else.

She greeted us with a sultry invitation, “Hello, we’ve been expecting you.”

After brief introductions, she invited us to sit on a couch. Ted and I sat at the dining table and Stan took the couch.

The man in the robe wasn’t present at first, but soon after came down the stairs with a matt-board under his arm.

“This is my husband… what’s the name you want to use for these gentlemen?” she asked.

“It’s okay, they have my card.” Motioning to her, he said, “This is my wife…”

She cut him off, “Oh honey, can’t we have some mystery, I’m calling myself, uh, let’s see… How about Fatima for tonight?” 

“Okay, Fatima it is. First, I want to show you this,” the professor offered. He passed the matt board to me.

I was astounded at what I saw on the board. It was a neatly labeled collection of every type of acid and speed on the streets at, or before, that time.

My feelings admiration and pity were mixed, “You collect samples?”

Under each pill or capsule was a description and potency scribed meticulously with a technical pen.

 “Oh, yes. And I do the same with pot too.” He went on about each one and talked on about the properties of each as though he had been showing off a stamp collection.

Seeing it from the couch and sounding a bit paranoid, Stan asked, “You don’t put who you gots ‘em from, do you?”

“Oh no, I can assure you, never,”

Stan gave him a bag we’d made up especially for the occasion. A pack of Zigzags and a colored cartoon from the Sunday paper was put in each bag … it was my idea because … we expected to develop a clientele more sophisticated than the hippies, vagrants, drifters and students that came to the park.

Stan was sitting on the couch with the professor’s wife and began getting a hard-on. She noticed the bulge in his pants and put her hand on his crotch. Stan was hung like a Tijuana Donkey and her interest must have perked as she felt the size of it growing under her hand. Ted and I were preoccupied with the dope being passed around and hadn’t noticed her pulling out Stan’s sausage from his pants. She was sucking on it right there in front of us and her husband. The professor didn’t seem to mind a bit, but Ted was visibly put off by it. I found it weirdly peculiar that Stan was still able to negotiate with the professor while the professor’s wife gave him a blow job. He asked, “So, do you know other professors at the university who would want what we have?”

“Sure enough,” the professor only gave an occasional glance at what was going down on Stan’s lap. “We need discretion and you guys look like you can be discrete.”

Stan stuttered, “How do you want to go about th…th…this?”

“None of my colleagues can afford to get caught going to the park to score pot but almost all of them smoke… at least the ones I work with. So, we need someone who can deliver discretely.

I tried not to watch Mrs. Professor’s head bob. Ted was red-faced, and I could see that he wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of the place. It seemed to me that Stan could do two things at once but not very well, so I decided to get Ted out of there before he blew up and spoiled the whole deal.

To get things moving, I took over the negotiations, “Sounds good to me. How we going to do this discretely?”

“You can make another delivery here in the middle of the week. When you do that I’ll give you a card or two of my colleagues and you can make a delivery to the addresses on the card.”

“Sounds good to me,” and we shook hands.

The professor continued…. “If you want to go now, I can drive Stan home after he is done with my wife.”

Stan, buttoning his Levi’s, said, “Naw, that’s okay. We’d rather you don’t know where we live… security reasons, you know.”

“Yeh, we’re discrete because none of us likes the inside of Dade County Jail…” I added.

“I see,” the professor seemed a little disappointed.

Behind the wheel Ted drove gripping it white knuckled. I was riding shotgun and Stan was sleeping in the back seat. I looked over at Ted and commented, “It bothered you… Mrs. Professor doin’ the nasty with Stan, huh?”

“Yeh, you know, any other time I might be okay but…”

“… Your ole lady in Seattle?”

“Yeh.” He gave me a look that said, Shut-up.

“I know what you mean.”

Stan mumbled… It was hard to tell whether he was awake… “Good deal, eh?”

Chapter 26. The Twilight of the Soul (pt.1) The Crew

I sized up Ted, thinking he might be my ticket out of the park. His hair was light colored and balding, even though he was about my age. He had the kind of body that belonged on a Harley and looked awkward anywhere else. There were two others hanging behind him. One was thin, tall, with dark curly brown hair while the other was shorter but with blond hair and looked a kid. It was obvious that Ted was going to do the negotiating and that the others were simply with him. Stan introduced the tall one first, “This is Danny and this one’s Kenny. They’re Ted’s brothers.”

“You sure?” I asked,just to see if I could get a laugh. Hell,I’d have even settled for a smile, I said, “Y’all don’t look like you came from the same egg.”

Danny spat out his chew and dead-panned, “Well, step-brothers,” .

Ted’s eyes were riveted on me. I was being evaluated but didn’t feel the least bit threatened. In these transactions everyone is sizing up the other… a checklist ran in my head as one did in his. 1. Size… bulk… upper body strength… if he could throw a punch would I be hamburger? Check the yes box on that. 2. How quick/smart is he? Quick… yes, smart, maybe. Naïve but not dumb. 3. Tattoo on his upper arm like a patch I’d seen… skull and crossbones… Swift/Silent/Deadly. Marine Recon. Okay… I wouldn’t try to test him Yes, and forget the list, I’d best respect him.

We moved to a picnic table away from the Stone Soup crowd and sat across from each other. Ted, Kenny and Danny on one side, Stan and I on the other.

Stan was all business, “I can get a key for one-fifty, but the good stuff is one-eighty. You can sell the cheap shit for a dime a lid, but can easily get twenty for the good shit.”

“Slow down. We don’t know anyone in this town,” Ted stated matter-of-fact, “Can you guys help us move it?”

I knew Stan was quick in seizing an opening; however, we didn’t know very many people in town either. Regardless of Ted’s imposing posture, I followed Stan’s bluff and was confident he could pull it off. I assured Ted, “Yep, we can. What brought you guys to Miami?”

Ted spoke in a laid-back drawl, “See here, I sent my girl a plane ticket from Seattle to Miami. She was coming down to get together, we were going to get married, but she called it off.” He reached into his cut-off denim jacket and pulled out an envelope from his inside pocket and slapped it on the table, “She sent me this, Dear - fuckin your neighbor – John, letter. I cashed in the ticket and I’ve got enough to buy a key… Can you move lids easy enough?”

We hadn’t seen that much money since we left for Jamaica. Without sounding too eager, Stan said, “Okay. We can do it for sure. What’s in it for us?”

 “That’s good, if you can do it we can split up the profits between us… equal, ya know.

“But, you gots to trust me with the money. This guy’s gonna MUF me, and I can’t take anyone with me.”

Ted wasn’t looking at Stan. His eyes were still locked on mine, “MUF?”

Stan shrugged.

I told him, “Money up front.”

 He scowled, “You stay here with us.”

Stan left to dig up the key. I thought I’d try to ease the tension with some common ground, “Ted,” I asked, “You were in Nam more than one tour?”

“Does it show?”

“Malaria,” I said, “Just seen enough of from there to recognize a real vet.”

“Yah, sure. Two tours,” he rubbed his hand over his thin and balding head.

“I thought so.” I reached a hand over the table. “Welcome home.”

“Marine Re-con,” he smirked, “and you?”

I was a little embarrassed, but said, “I know your patch. I’m Navy. No big deal… Nothin’ like Re-con,”

We had soup at the Stone Soup table and got to know each other. Ted had just gotten out of the Marine Corps after serving in Vietnam. He was a real ground-pounder and I was nowhere near it… a squid but, we were Vets, and had that much in common. I was right, he was Marine Recon… a bad-assed 1^st Recon, Kane Killer. Kenny and Denny were kids along for the ride with their big brother.

I told them about New Mexico and some of our Jamaica story and how we came back broke. Stan had already told them that much. I filled in the gaps, embellished with exaggerations, about the exotic island and Hoss Bozz for a very uncomfortable hour.

Stan finally showed up approaching us with a wide grin and a grocery bag with celery and carrot tops sticking out of the top. He set it on the table between us.

Ted looked pissed, “Groceries, fuck! I could get my own groceries. What did you do with the money…”

“There’s fucking narcs watchin’ this park all the time. I wasn’t gonna walk in here with a bag looking like it gots a key in it.

“We know what we’re doing,” I assured him. “We need to trust each other. Check us out. That’s okay. But, if we were going to burn you, Stan would’ve never come back.”

“Right on.” Stan said, “It’s all here. This is good shit. You gots someplace where we can put it in baggies

“We have an apartment in Hollywood.”

Back then, Hollywood was a district on the edge of a Black Ghetto and a Cuban Barrio. Ted and his brothers had a small, one-bedroom, with a kitchenette and enough room for a table and couch in the front room. It was in the back of a house off the street.

We spread out newspaper on the floor and separated the stems and broke up, weighed and packed the pot in baggies. Of course, we rolled some joints for ourselves.

After we were done we fired one up and Stan said, “We can sell this shit for twenty a lid.”

“Twenty a lid? Fuck, I’d never pay more than ten… fifteen at the most.”

“Tell me that after takin’ a hit off this,” he passed it to Ted.

By the time the joint circulated between all five of us, Ted exclaimed, “I ain’t had shit this good since Nam. You guys are okay.”

“I told you it was good. My friend knows ‘bout a college professor that’ll pay twenty bucks for good shit like this.”

“Only a fag or a narc would pay that much.” Denny said.

“So, what. He can suck my dick for another twenty.” Ted laughed, “What are we waiting for? Call him.”

 "I can't call him. Don't worry, he'll find us."

This was the beginnings of what we called, The Crew.