Chapter 33. The Justice Card

The storm had turned east before landfall and petered out. The next night at the park was to be our last. We would sell our stash, split up the money between ourselves and go our separate ways.

“How many hits are left, Max?” Ted asked as he got out of the car.

I pulled the film canister from my pocket and poured the contents into my palm… “Thirteen, can you believe that? Lucky number. We oughta be able to get rid of these in less than an hour.”

I put the canister back in my pocket with the lid loose… just in case. I was already dreaming of Taos.

It happened in a blur of action. A squad car pulled up in front of our car and another behind us. We were effectively blocked, in-between parked cars… doors opened… I had just enough time to flip the lid and chuck the contents of the canister into my mouth with the same circle of motion that had my arms pulled down behind my back and cuffed. The canister made a tinny sound as it rolled under one of the parked cars. I recognized the cop in front of me even though he wasn’t wearing a long-blond-wig this time. In less than a flash, I was being tucked into the back seat of a cruiser. The same was happening to Ted and Kenny. They were also cuffed and in one of the several cop cars. I could see Duggie off to the side talking with Art as we left the parking lot.

I was doing the math in my head… thirteen hits of acid at two hundred and fifty mics each… comes to what? Three mgs and two-hundred and fifty mics? Woah! Had I swallowed more than that before? Maybe at Magic Mary’s bash… I’d be okay… I think… I’d been telling folks that these blue microdots were as pure as acid gets, and I was hoping I wasn’t wrong. If the myths about pure acid were true, they say that it takes at least two-hundred and fifty mics to get off on acid, but that acid was peculiar in that anything over two hundred and fifty mics won’t get you any higher. The drug myths on the streets were not always the most reliable sources of information, but so much of what people believed and accepted as absolute truth concerning drugs, amounted to nothing more than street mythology. If anyone were to overdose on acid, it meant it was believed that the acid was cut with speed or strychnine. I was going to test this theory this night.

I wasn’t paying much attention to where the squad car was going but was curious when they pulled up and parked at a diner inland from Fort Walton Beach. The other squad car, with Kenny and Ted, came in next to ours about five minutes later. I watched and was surprised that the cop opened my door and helped me out of the car. We were escorted all the way back to the booths in the back of the far corner from the door. My hands were un-cuffed from behind, and cuffed to my front, before the cop gestured that I slide into the seat  first and he sat next to me on the aisle side. There was no way out but to leap past him over the table but I was in no mood to test mine, or his, reflexes.

The waitress came, he ordered, "We'll have some coffee; won't we, boy?"

I knew that the coffee would activate the acid faster but I no longer cared, "Sure, you don’t suppose I can have a piece of pie with my coffee?” I asked, half in jest.

“Sure, why not, you want it ala mode?” The cop seemed almost giddy.

“Sure, vanilla is fine."

The waitress nodded at the cop for permission, smiling, "Sure, Hon, want the pie heated too?”

Ted and Kenny were seated together with their backs turned to me two boothes from us. Ted looked calm, and winked when they passed, but Kenny, fear pasted on his face, was shaking and I heard him refuse his offer of coffee before he was asked.

I noticed one squad car, then another, and another, cruising by outside our window very slowly. The drivers were looking hard at the three of us… like we were on review. “Must be a big bust for y’all.” I commented under breath.

“Why do you say so, Mr. Max?” The giddy cop asked.

“Oh, the parade, I guess,” I pointed outside with cuffed hands.

“Oh, yes,” a sneer replaced the giddiness, “the fellahs want to see what big city Miami drug dealers look like.”

"And the witnesses too?" I wasn't really asking because I knew we were being fingered.

That pie was the best pie I'd ever eaten by the time the acid started to do its magic. Before we left the diner, it looked to me like human beings were wearing cop masks, and cops were wearing human masks. They escorted us back to the squad cars and driven to the Okaloosa County Jail where we were separately booked. I hoped the others remembered my coaching for interrogation, but I knew it was likely Kenny would crack. I was fucked and resigned to the reality of the Taos reading by Truth.

At the jail, a human being in a guard’s mask took me back to a holding cell where I shared the space with a mask of a drunk. This holding cell was luxurious compared to some I’d been in. It  had bunks… no mattresses, but it had bunks. I didn’t feel like climbing to the cold steel top bunk so I stood holding on to the bars letting the acid take my mind where it would.

“What you get busted for?” the mask of a drunk was awake. I didn’t feel up to having a conversation.

“I haven’t seen the charges yet.”

“They booked you, didn’t they?”

“I didn’t read these papers.” I had the booking papers folded up in my back pocket. I pulled them out and handed them to the mask of a drunk.

“I don’t have my reading glasses… I can’t make out nothin’ without ‘em.” The drunk was resigned.

One of the trustees came to the door. He was a feminine, boyish looking kid, with bleached blond shoulder length hair, and a turquoise necklace that did nothing towards making him look more masculine. “I’m Ray… Shit man…  I hear you ate the evidence?”

“How’d you know?”

“Word gets around… you trippin’ yet?”

“Yeh, it is coming on pretty strong right now.”

“How much ya eat?”

“Not much… a dozen hits or so.”

“Shit… I can get you some Thorazine if you want.”

“No, I’m okay. This acid’s pretty pure.”

“I’ll be back… let me know if I can get anything for ya.” As he walked away he turned one more time asking, “No kidden, really, I can get some Thorazine for ya… let me know?”

“No thanks, I’m enjoying the trip.” I answered with a nervous acid grin.

The drunk sat up on his bunk, “What was he talkin’ ‘bout? You in for El Ess Dee?”

“It appears so.”

“You ain’t gonna flip out on me, are ya?”

“Don’t worry old-timer. I’m okay.”

My mind wasn't in the cell. My mind was trying hard to wrap itself around the events of the past months. Taos, Mama Puma, Jamaica, Hoss Bozz, Miami, the hurricane, the party in Destin, the girls, the booze, the rape… Shit, that is what it was… rape! Images of Duggie, the narc in the wig, the parade of cruisers, and Daphne… poor Daphne. "You are he, and you are me, and we are all together..." Oh no we aren't!  I knew why I was in jail. It wasn’t for selling a few hits of acid. It was for rape and my karma and a deep dark place I had submerged myself within: and it wasn’t over yet… oh, and the card reading!

I was eventually taken to the High Sheriff’s office where the Sheriff was none other than the guy in the wig I’d shined on a few days before.

“So, we meet again, Mr. McGee… or should I call you Max?” the Sheriff was grinning from behind his desk as I was seated in front of it. A deputy was observing, leaning back and rocking from a chair in the corner behind the Sheriff. “We don’t have much to ask you about… do we?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to know?”

“Your buds, Teddy and Kenny, already told us everything. We just need to get your version.”

“Told you about what?” I had seen enough movies to know cops don’t have to tell the truth. They just need a confession so their charges will stick if you go to court. I wasn’t so sure I cared one way or the other, but I didn’t want to give up anything that would screw up Ted or Kenny.

The Sheriff plopped down a thick wad of twenties and c-notes, “Is this your money, Max?”

“Sure.”

“How did you come by this much cash?”

This wasn’t the time to get smart with the Sheriff but I couldn’t resist, “A cake sale?”

The Sheriff pulled out a baggie with at least fifty hits of blue microdot acid, “You ever see this cake before?”

“What are they?” I thought of all the kids who were buying from me in the past few weeks. Of course, I never saw the buyers but I’d already knew that there might have been a few Eagle Scouts among our customers.

The third ace the Sheriff pulled out his figurative sleeve was a wild-eyed, psycho mug-shot type picture of Daphne. He tossed it across his desk where it spun around, perfectly, face up on my lap. A sledge hammer hit me in the heart. If ever I was fucked I was fucked in this minute. I looked over at the Sheriff’s stone cold face. There was nothing I could say or do. I just sat letting it sink in.

“I’m not saying, but you guys did fuck her up pretty bad, didn’t you, Mr. McGee.” He wasn’t asking. “You should know, she’s a basket-case now, as we speak. And I know you did it.”

Between guilt and shame for what I’d done, I was also overcome by fear. I feared what could become of me if I were charged with rape and I feared what I could face if charges were pressed for dealing acid. The State of Florida drug laws were not at all known for leniency and I’d heard of kids getting thirty years for three separate counts of possession on a roach; for the seeds, the stems and the papers, as paraphernalia. I needed an out… any out would do. I thought of confessions taken under duress… as when on drugs. I didn’t feel the guilt as hard as my senses reeled at the fear. I had to escape any way I could.

I was reaching for any thread of hope, “Okay, what do you want from me? I’ll sign it, but I’m tripping pretty heavy and I might O.D.” 

 I pictured myself locked-up in a funny-farm for the next twenty years, “I need to get medical help. I’ll sign anything you want… just get me to a hospital.”

I was passed a form by the deputy who had not said a word the whole time. The form had a list of charges and a space at the bottom of about a half-dozen blank lines for a written statement. I scrawled across the lines explaining I was under the influence of LSD and was admitting to the charges under the condition that I be given medical treatment. I signed it and waited to be put in a squad car with two young deputies.

The deputies were talking with each other as they cruised away from the County Jail towards Crestview. Making their way into town, the officer riding shotgun grinned towards me, “So you’re the big time drug dealer from Miami. Tell me, you ever get any of that New York Jewish pussy in Miami Beach?”

They parked in the back of what looked like a clinic. I was hoping for a hospital, not a clinic. Strapped down on a gurney, I was rolled into a small room that looked like a converted garage. It still had a garage door.  A heavy-set, middle-aged nurse came in; took my blood pressure, pulse, stuck a thermometer in my mouth and left the room. She came back in a few minutes later, “What’s wrong with ya?”

“… Took a bunch of acid.”

“Acid? What do ya mean, you swallered some battry acid or sumpin'?” She wasn’t acquainted with street terms.

“LSD.”

“Oh, LSD, that’s differn't. What did you go and do that fer?”

“Oh, I don’t know… looking for God I guess?”

“What parts you from anyway?”

“Washington.”

“Dee Cee?”

“State.”

“Well, you should’ve stayed home and read the bible.” She turned and walked out again.

I wasn’t all that sure, at this juncture, that the big, backwoods, nurse was at all wrong on that count. I lay there on the gurney waiting for what seemed to be hours going over and over in my head the events of the past few days. 

She came back with the doctor, who looked at my pupils with a pen light, “Yep, he’s under the influence of LSD,” and then, speaking to the deputies, “You can take him back now.”

This was not good news for me. I’d hoped I would be admitted to a nice, comfy, hospital bed. They picked me up off the gurney and cuffed my hands behind my back. On the way out to the squad-car I tried to stop, went limp, half-feigning panic, “No… no… where are you taking me? I need to be hospitalized!” I protested.

They swooped me up to standing and tossed me into the back seat of the squad car and, with a sure sense of finality, slammed the door shut. They turned out of the parking lot and I could see that they weren’t going back the same way they had come.

The deputies were joking, “Sure do like coon huntin’” the deputy riding shotgun turned, grinning back at me, “Do you like huntin’ coons, or do you like rabbits, Max?” He pulled out his revolver, holding it up for me to see, and spun the cylinder.

The deputy driving chuckled… “Oh, I think we should let this hippy loose in the swamp and let the gators take care of him.”

“Ole Daphne’s got six or seven bad-assed brothers. We oughta drop him off at her place,” the other deputy added.

I was thinking “This is the end.” I thought of Jesus on the cross saying, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they are doing.” Then the absurdity of posing as an innocent going to the cross struck me. It struck hard… Man, Jesus wasn’t a rapist. So I opted for one of the two thieves. I was the unbeliever one whose very life had become a mockery of Christ... the spirit of compassion, the cosmic union, and I lost it all the past few months.

The squad car came to a stop. It was so dark that I could barely make out the bayou. The deputy that drove got out and opened the back door. “You want ta stretch yer legs, Max?”

“Naw, I’ll stay here. If you’re gonna shoot me, you're gonna have to mess up your back seat.”

He spun the cylinder... fractions of seconds crawled by, one click-at-a time... for several lifetimes in the limbo of time and space.

I was sure this was it. It was all going to end right there.  I closed my eyes and waited for a bullet to go through my cranium and blow my acid muddled brains all over the back of the car.

The driver returned behind the wheel.

“Naw, Max, you got us all wrong, we wouldn’t want an accident like that to happen on our watch. Now, would we?”

The bullet never came. The car started rolling. The deputies were laughing, telling stories about this or that bust and otherwise ignoring me.