•
I went into pushing with Bill Gains, who handled the uptown business. I met Bill in an Eighth Avenue cafeteria after I finished up in the Village. He had a few good customers. Izzy, probably his best, had a job as cook on a tugboat in New York harbor. He was one of the 103rd Street boys. Izzy had done time for pushing, was known as a thoroughly right guy, and he had a steady source of income. This is a perfect customer.
Sometimes Izzy showed up with his partner, Goldie, who worked on the same boat. Goldie was a thin, hook-nosed man with the skin drawn tight over his face and a spot of color on each cheekbone. Another of Izzy’s friends was a young ex-paratrooper named Matty, a husky, handsome, hard-faced young man who bore none of the marks of a drug addict. There were also two whores that Bill took care of. Generally, whores are not a good deal at all. They attract heat, and most of them will talk. But Bill insisted that these particular whores were O.K.
Another of our customers was Old Bart. He took a few caps every day which he sold on commission. I didn’t know his customers, but I didn’t worry about it. Bart was O.K. If there was a beef, he would take the rap without talking. Anyway, he had thirty years’ experience in junk and he knew what he was doing.
When I arrived at the cafeteria where we had our meet, there was Bill sitting at a table, his skinny frame huddled in someone else’s overcoat. Old Bart, shabby and inconspicuous, was dunking a doughnut in his coffee. Bill told me he had already taken care of Izzy so I gave Bart ten caps to sell, and Bill and I took a cab to my apartment. There we had a shot and checked over the stock, setting aside ninety dollars for the next ¼-ounce.
After Bill got his shot, a little color crept into his face and he would become almost coy. It was a gruesome sight. I remember once he told me how he’d been propositioned by a queer who offered him twenty dollars. Bill declined, saying, “I don’t think you would be very well satisfied.” Bill twitched his fleshless hips. “You should see me in the nude,” he said. “I’m really cute.”
One of Bill’s most distasteful conversation routines consisted of detailed bulletins on the state of his bowels. “Sometimes it gets so I have to reach my fingers in and pull it out. Hard as porcelain, you understand. The pain is terrible.”
“Listen,” I said, “this connection keeps giving us a short count. I only got eighty caps out of the last batch after it was cut.”
“Well, you can’t expect too much. If I could go to a hospital and get a good enema! But they won’t do a thing for you unless you check into the hospital and, of course, I can’t do that. They keep you at least twenty-four hours. I told them, ‘You’re supposed to be a hospital. I’m in pain and I need treatment. Why can’t you just call an attendant and . . .’”
There was no stopping him. When people start talking about their bowel movements they are as inexorable as the processes of which they speak.
•
Things went on like this for several weeks. One by one, Nick’s contacts located me. They were tired of scoring through Nick and having him steal the head off their caps. What a crew! Mooches, fags, four-flushers, stool pigeons, bums—unwilling to work, unable to steal, always short of money, always whining for credit. In the whole lot there was not one who wouldn’t wilt and spill as soon as someone belted him in the mouth and said “Where did you get it?”
The worst of the lot was Gene Doolie, a scrawny little Irishman with a manner between fag and pimp. Gene was informer to the bone. He probably pulled out dirty lists of people—his hands were always dirty—and read them off to the law. You could see him bustling into Black and Tan headquarters during the Irish Trouble, in a dirty gray toga turning in Christians, giving information to the Gestapo, the GPU, sitting in a cafeteria talking to a narcotics agent. Always the same thin, ratty face, shabby, out-of-date clothes, whiny, penetrating voice.
The most unbearable thing about Gene was his voice. It went all through you. This voice was my first knowledge of his existence. Nick had just arrived at my apartment with some score money when I was called to the hall phone by the buzzer.
“I’m Gene Doolie,” said the voice. “I’m waiting for Nick, and I’ve been waiting a long time.” His voice went up on “long time” to a shrill, grating whine.
I said, “Well, he’s here now. I expect you will see him directly,” and I hung up.
Next day, Doolie called me again. “I’m just around the corner from your place. Do you mind if I come on over? It’s cooler for me to meet you alone.”
He hung up before I could say anything, and ten minutes later he was standing in the door.
When one personality meets another for the first time, there is a period of mutual examination on the intuitive level of empathy and identification. But it was impossible to relate one’s self to Doolie in any way. He was simply the focal point for a hostile intrusive force. You could feel him walk right into your psyche and look around to see if anything was there he could make use of. I stepped back a little from the door to avoid contact with him. He squeezed himself into the room and immediately sat down on the couch and lit a cigarette.
“It’s better to meet alone like this.” His smile was ambiguously sexual. “Nick is a very un-cool guy.” He stood up and handed me four dollars. “Do you mind if I take off here?” he asked, pulling off his coat.
I had never heard anyone else use this expression. For an insane moment I thought he was making advances. He dropped his coat on the couch and rolled up his sleeve. I brought him two caps and a glass of water. He had his own works, for which I was grateful. I watched him as he hit a vein, pressed the dropper and rolled down his sleeve.
When you are hooked, the effects of a shot are not dramatic. But the observer who knows what to look for can see the immediate working of junk in the blood and cells of another user. I could detect no change whatever in Doolie. He put on his coat and picked up the cigarette which had been smoldering in an ashtray. He looked at me with his pale blue eyes that seemed to have no depth at all. They looked artificial.
“Let me tell you something,” he said. “You’re making a big mistake to trust Nick. A few nights ago I was in Thompson’s Cafeteria and I ran into Rogers, the agent. He told me, ‘I know Nick is scoring for all you Goddamned junkies here in the Village. You’re getting good stuff, too—between sixteen and twenty percent. Well, you can tell Nick this: We can take him any time we want, and when we do catch up to him he’s going to work with us. He opened up for me once. He’ll do it again. We’re going to find out where this stuff is coming from.’”
Doolie looked at me and sucked on his cigarette. “When they get Nick, they’ll get you. You’d better let Nick know that if he talks you’ll have him poured into a barrel of concrete and dumped in the East River. I don’t need to tell you any more. You can see what the situation is.”
He looked at me, trying to gauge the effect of his words. It was impossible to tell just how much of this story I was expected to believe. Perhaps it was just a roundabout way of saying, “How will you ever know who fingered you? With Nick such an obvious suspect, if I talked you could never be sure, could you now?”
“Could you let me have one cap on credit?” he asked. “What I’ve just told you should be worth something.”
I gave him a cap and he pocketed it without comment.
He stood up. “Well, I’ll be seeing you. I’ll call at this same time tomorrow.”
I put out a grapevine to see what I could find out about Doolie, and to check his story. No one knew anything definitive about him. Tony the bartender said, “Doolie will fink if he has to.” But he couldn’t give me a definite instance. Yes, Nick was known to have talked once. But the facts of this case, in which Doolie was also involved, indicated the tip could just as well have come from Doolie.
Several days after the Gene Doolie episode, I was coming out of the subway at Washington Square when a thin, blond kid walked
up to me. “Bill,” he said, “I guess you don’t know who I am. I’ve been scoring off you through Nick and I’m tired of having him steal the head off all my caps. Can’t you take care of me directly?”
I thought, What the hell? After Gene Doolie, why get particular? “O.K., kid,” I said. “How many do you want?”
He gave me four dollars.
“Let’s take a walk,” I said, and started towards Sixth Avenue. I had two caps in my hand and waited for one of the empty spaces you run into in a city. “Get ready to cop,” I said, and dropped the caps into his hands. I made a meet with him for the next day in the Washington Square Bickford’s.
This blond kid’s name was Chris. I heard from Nick that his folks had money and that he lived on an allowance from home. When I met him the next day in Bickford’s, he immediately began to give me the let-me-warn-you-about-Nick routine. “Nick is followed all the time now. You know yourself when a guy is yenning, he doesn’t look behind him. He’s running. So you see who you picked out to give your address and phone number to.”
“I know all about that,” I said.
Chris pretended to be hurt. “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing. Now listen, this is not a routine. I’m positively getting a check from my aunt this afternoon. Look at this.”
He pulled a telegram from his pocket. I glanced at it. There was some vague reference to a check. He went on explaining about the check. As he talked, he kept putting his hand on my arm and gazing earnestly into my face. I felt I could not stand any more of this sweet con. To cut him short, I handed him one cap before he could put it on me for two or three.
Next day he showed up with a dollar-eighty. He didn’t say anything about the check. And so it went. He came up short, or not at all. He was always about to get money from his aunt, or mother-in-law, or somebody. These stories he documented with letters and telegrams. He got to be almost as much of a drag as Gene Doolie.
Another prize customer was Marvin, part-time waiter in a Village nightclub. He was always unshaved and dirty-looking. He had only one shirt, which he washed every week or so and dried out on the radiator. The final touch was that he wore no socks. I used to deliver stuff to his room, a dirty, furnished room in a red brick house on Jane Street. I figured it was better to deliver to his place than to meet him anywhere else.
Some people are allergic to junk. One time I delivered a cap to Marvin and he took a shot. I was looking out the window—it is nerve-racking to watch someone probe for a vein—and when I turned around I noticed his dropper was full of blood. He had passed out and the blood had run back into the dropper. I called to Nick and he pulled the needle out and slapped Marvin with a wet towel. He came around partly and muttered something.
“I guess he’s O.K.,” I said. “Let’s cut.”
He looked like a corpse slumped there on the dirty, unmade bed, his limp arm stretched out, a drop of blood slowly gathering at the elbow.
As we walked downstairs, Nick told me that Marvin had been after him for my address.
“Listen,” I said, “if you give it to him, you can find yourself a new connection. One thing I don’t need is somebody dying in my apartment.”
Nick looked hurt. “Of course I won’t give him your address.”
“What about Doolie?”
“I don’t know how he got the address. I swear I don’t.”
•
Along with these bums, I picked up a couple of good customers. One day, I ran into Bert, a character I knew from the Angle Bar. Bert was known as a muscle man. He was a heavy-set, round-faced, deceptively soft-looking young man who specialized in strong-arm routines and “shakes.” I never knew him to use anything but weed, and I was surprised when he asked me if I was holding any junk. I told him, yes, I was pushing junk, and he bought ten caps. I found out he had been hooked for about six months.
Through Bert, I met another customer. This was Louis, a very handsome type with a waxy complexion, delicate features, and a silky black moustache. He looked like an 1890 portrait. Louis was a pretty fair thief and was generally well-heeled. When he asked for credit, which was seldom, he always made good the next day. Sometimes he brought around a watch, or a suit, instead of cash, which was all right with me. I picked up a fifty-dollar watch from him for five caps.
Pushing junk is a constant strain on the nerves. Sooner or later you get the “copper jitters,” and everybody looks like a cop. People moving about in the subway seem to be edging closer so they can grab you before you have a chance to throw away the junk.
Doolie came around every day, impudent, demanding, insufferable. Usually he had some new bulletin on the Nick-Rogers situation. He didn’t mind letting me know that he was in constant touch with Rogers.
“Rogers is shrewd, but he’s corny,” Doolie told me. “He keeps saying, ‘I don’t care about you damned junkies. I’m after the guys who make money out of it. When we find Nick, he’s going to fink. He opened up for me once. He’ll do it again.’”
Chris kept hounding me for credit, whining and pawing at me and talking about the money he was going to have for sure in a few days, or a few hours.
Nick looked harried and desperate. I guess he didn’t waste any money on food. He looked like the terminal stages of some wasting disease.
When I delivered to Marvin, I left before he took his shot. I knew he would die from junk sooner or later and I didn’t want to be around when it happened.
On top of all this, I was just barely scraping by. The short counts we kept getting from the wholesaler, the constant nibbles of credit, and customers coming up twenty-five, fifty, or even a dollar short, plus my own habit, cut profits to bare subsistence.
When I complained about the wholesaler, Bill Gains got snappish and said I ought to cut the stuff more. “You’re giving a better cap than anybody in New York City. Nobody sells sixteen percent stuff on the street. If your customers don’t like it, they can take their business to Walgreen’s.”
We kept moving our uptown meets from one cafeteria to another. It doesn’t take the manager long to spot a bookie or a junk pusher. There were about six regular uptown customers now, and that means quite a bit of traffic. So we kept moving.
Tony’s bar still gave me the horrors. One day it was raining very hard, and I was on my way to Tony’s about a half hour late. Ray, the young Italian hipster, stuck his head out of the door of a restaurant and called me over. It was a lunch counter with booths along one wall. We sat down at a booth and I ordered tea.
“There’s an agent outside in a white trenchcoat,” Ray told me. “He followed me over here from Tony’s and I’m afraid to go out.”
The table was made of tube metal, and Ray showed me, guiding my hand under the table, where there was an open end to one of the tubes. I sold him two caps. He wrapped them in a paper napkin and stuffed the napkin into the tube.
“I’m going out clean first in case I get a shake,” he said.
I drank my cup of tea, thanked him for the information, and left ahead of him. I had the stuff in a package of cigarettes and was ready to throw it in the water-filled gutter. Sure enough, there was a burly young man in a white trenchcoat standing in a doorway. When he saw me he started sauntering up the street ahead of me. Then he turned a corner, waiting for me to walk past so he could fall in behind. I turned and ran back in the opposite direction. When I reached Sixth Avenue, he was about fifty feet behind me. I vaulted the subway turnstile and shoved the cigarette package into the space at the side of a gum machine. I ran down one level and got a train up to the Square.
Bill Gains was sitting at a table in the cafeteria. He was wearing one stolen overcoat, and another lay on his lap. He looked sly and satisfied. Old Bart was there and an unemployed cab driver named Kelly, who hung around 42nd Street and sometimes picked up a few dollars peddling condoms and with a routine of hitting commuters for fifty cen
ts, which is one variety of the “short con.” I told them about the agent, and Old Bart went down to pick up the stuff.
Gains looked annoyed and said pettishly, “For God’s sake, watch whose money you pick up.”
“If I hadn’t picked up Ray’s money, I’d be on my way to the Federal building.”
“Well, be careful.”
We waited around for Bart, and Kelly began telling a long story about how he told off a guard in the Tombs.
Bart was back soon with the stuff. He reported that a guy in a white trenchcoat was still walking around on the station platform. I gave Bart two caps under the table.
Gains and I walked over to his room to take a shot. “Really,” he said, “I’m going to have to tell Bart I can’t carry him any longer.” Gains lived in a cheap rooming house in the West Forties. He opened the door to his room. “You wait here,” he said. “I’m going to get my works.” Like most junkies, he kept his “works” and caps stashed somewhere outside his room. He came back with the works and we both took a shot.
Gains was aware of his talent for invisibility, and at times he felt the need for holding himself together so he would at least have enough flesh to put a needle in. At these times he would assemble all his claims to reality. Now he began rummaging around in the bureau and brought out a worn manila envelope. He showed me a discharge from Annapolis “for the good of the service,” an old, dirty letter from “my friend, the captain,” a card to the Masons and a card to the Knights of Columbus.
“Every little bit helps,” he said, indicating these credentials. He sat for a few minutes, silent and reflective. Then he smiled. “Just a victim of circumstances,” he said. He stood up and carefully put away his envelope. “I’ve about burned down all the pawnshops in New York. You don’t mind pawning these coats for me, do you?”
•
After that, things got worse and worse. One day, the hotel clerk stopped me in the lobby. “I don’t know how to say this,” he said, “but there’s something wrong about the people who come up to your room. I used to be in illegitimate business myself years ago. I just wanted to warn you to be careful. You know, all calls come through the office. I heard one this morning and it was pretty obvious. If someone else had been at the switchboard . . . So be careful and tell these people to watch what they say over the phone.”