Jessie’d probably strangle his mother for nine hundred dollars. I’m gonna go home and stash this, I’ll be back here around five and we can go celebrate.”
“Alright man… and hey listen. Thanks for including me in this little business deal. You solved my money problems.”
“Thank you man.” He said. “You were good. I think you’re a natural liar, and I mean that as a compliment. There’ll be more where that came from too, watch.” He picked up his skate. “I’ll see ya in a couple hours.” He said, with a big smile on his face. In my room I took the cash out and counted off a hundred dollars. I rolled up the rest as tight as possible and put a rubber band around it three times. In the small front compartment of my backpack was a discreet pouch for change or erasers or something. I put the roll in there and Velcroed it shut. I zipped up the compartment and put my backpack in the closet. The hundred dollars I folded neatly and put in my wallet. I could do whatever I wanted with that hundred dollars, it was all party-money. I stepped out onto the front porch and lit a cigarette.
Jessie’s house was in a state of disrepair. Walking on his front porch I noticed the wood was weak, and I thought it might cave in. A tree in his yard was growing into the roof and there were branches and little acorns that crunched underfoot. “I don’t think anyone uses the front door. Maybe we should walk around back.” I said.
“I think it’s better to be direct so they know we’re not trying to sneak up on them.” Michael said.
He was about to knock when the door opened. Skinny Jessie was standing there, looking at us with indignation. He was wearing tight jeans and work boots with a white tank top and a pair of wrap-around sunglasses sitting on top of his head. His hair was long and he had color tats down his right arm and black and white ones down his left, giving the impression that the work was unfinished. I didn’t catch much of their actual content, but skulls were featured prominently. “Well look at this- black as night and pale as fuck.” He said. “What’re you doing on my porch?”
“I haven’t seen you in two years and that’s how you’re gonna act?” I said.
“Holy fuck, what’re you doing here?…Nick, right? What happened? I thought you must have joined the witness relocation program boy, damn. I ain’t seen you since that time you gave me your mamma’s TV.” He said.
“Gave it to you? Is that what I did?”
“I don’t remember much of a fight. I hope you didn’t wait all this time to come back for revenge.”
“No man, we just want to buy some herb.” Michael said.
“Oh is that all? Come on in.” He opened the door. We walked through a dark hallway with boxes stacked along the wall and came to the living room, which was sparsely furnished with a couch, a mismatched easy chair, a coffee table, and a big screen TV that was playing the Home Shopping Channel loud. On the wall behind the TV hung a confederate flag. There was a full ashtray and some open beer cans on the table. “Sit your asses down for a minute.” He said pulling the sunglasses down over his eyes. “How much you want?”
“We were hoping to get an O-Z.” Michael said as we sat on the couch. The Home Shopping Channel was selling a small statue of a boy in overalls and a straw hat holding a fishing pole.
Jessie stood there scratching his head. “Really? That much huh?” He was suspicious. “Are you two going into business together or something?”
“No man, it’s just for us to split. We’re gonna party with it.” I said.
“Good, cause I aint giving you kiddies no wholesale price. I could just as easily sell that shit by the dime bag. It’s forty bucks a quarter, so that’s a hundred and sixty dollars for the ounce.” He said. Michael and I pulled out our wallets and each counted off eighty dollars. Jessie stood there and watched. It was hard to tell if he was surprised because of the sunglasses.
“Here you go.” Michael said handing him the money.
“Fuck… All you little brats around here are loaded. Whatd’ya have jobs or something?”
“We’ve been saving up.” I said.
Jessie counted the money. “Hang on I’ll be right back.” He left the room and we heard him go up the stairs.
“Hey man, check it out.” Michael whispered. He was looking at a shelf under the coffee table. There was a big handgun and a black plate with a sizeable pile of yellowish clumpy powder. There was a rolled up twenty dollar bill sitting next to it, and a credit card. I noticed that the name on the credit card was Paula Riley.
Jessie came down with four bulging packets made of newspaper. “Here you go boys, an ounce of Buddha. Don’t smoke it all in one place.” He said, handing two envelopes to each of us. “And I have another little item you might be interested in.” He produced an M-1000, identical to the one I’d used to blow up the Madonna. He held it out to us in the palm of his hand. “It’s a quarter stick of dynamite. A guy I know brought back a bunch of these from Mexico. Only twenty bucks apiece.”
“Maurice right?” I asked. “You got that from Maurice?”
“You know Maurice? How the fuck do you know him?” Jessie asked. He seemed impressed.
“He’s my friend’s cousin. I owe him ten bucks.”
“I wouldn’t owe him money for too long. He’ll cut your nuts off.”
“Nah, Maurice’s a sweetheart. He likes me.”
“Let me see that thing.” Michael said. Jessie handed him the M-1000. “This is no fucking quarter stick of dynamite.”
“Actually I think it is.” I said. “I’ve set one of those things off, and it’s crazy loud. I bet you could blow a hole in a brick wall with one of those.”
“I can’t believe you know Maurice.” Jessie said. He sat in the easy chair. “I’ve known that fucker since high school.”
“Yeah I know. When I first met him and told him I lived on Los Robles he asked if I knew you and Pat right away. He’s the one that told me how Pat died.” I said.
“Oh, you heard about that? Those fucking cops man. Some day, I swear to god, I’m gonna kill a cop just for Pat.”
“I guess he was more afraid of the cops than he was of the concussion.” I said.
“What?” Jessie shook his head. “No way. He wasn’t afraid of any fuckin’ cops. Come on. That shit was fun to him, he loved running from the cops. He died on the Ho Chi Minh trail.”
“The what?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of the fucking Ho Chi Minh trail?” Michael and I looked at each other. “All we used to do was run the Ho Chi Minh when we was your age. Me and Pat used to be able to outrun any goddamn cop who ever said boo to either one of us. We had routes through backyards all over this whole neighborhood, it was beautiful. We used to time each other to see how fast we could do certain routes. There’s hiding places all over too. We used to start up on Mendocino and run all the way down to Woodbury through backyards in a half hour. No cop could come close. We used to strategize and shit. One of our best moves was to double back on ourselves to confuse them. If we had a young cop who was actually keeping up with us, we’d take him through Henry’s yard, ‘cause of his big-ass dog. The cop didn’t know that Henry kept the dog on a chain back there, all he knew was there was a fence and a dog goin’ apeshit on the other side. No cop ever followed us over Henry’s fence.”
“I like that.” I said.
“Yeah.” Michael agreed. “The fucking Ho Chi Minh trail, just like in ‘Nam.”
“Don’t you remember we used to call Pat King Cong? That’s why, ‘cause he was the king of the trail.” Jessie said.
“I didn’t know that was why.” I said. “I thought it was because of his personality.”
“So you wanna buy one of these fucking things or not?” Jessie asked.
“Not today.” I said.
“Me neither. If I think of something I want to blow up I’ll be back though.” Michael said. We thanked him for the weed and picked up our skates. He took us through the kitchen and out the back door. There was a motorcycle and an old pickup truck in his backyard. We skated to the grotto
and rolled up a fat joint using two papers.
“We should take this shit over to Jeremy’s house. I told him I’d smoke him out, and he probably has some beer or something to wash it down with.” Michael said.
“Alright. We can’t smoke it here.” I said, putting the joint in my cigarette pack. “I’ve never had this much weed. The most I ever bought all at once was a quarter. How ‘bout you?”
“My brother and me went in on an ounce one time.” He said. “But I’ll tell you this, nine hundred dollars is more money than I’ve ever had before. I mean I can get money any time I want, you know, fifty bucks here, twenty there, but this shit’s on a whole other level. Too bad we can’t do it again.”
“How do you get money whenever you want?” I asked. “Just stealing shit?”
“Yup.”
“Like what? What do you steal to make fifty bucks?”
“It doesn’t matter what you steal.” He said. “You can steal anything. The question is, how do you sell it? That’s the hard part. Take a bike for instance. Anyone can steal a bike, it’s the easiest thing in the world. But unless you need a bike what good does it do you? It’s not worth anything until you can sell it. I happen to know a guy who pays fifty or sixty bucks for used bikes and he doesn’t ask any questions. I don’t waste my time thinking about what I should steal, I only think about what I can sell.”
“We should do it man, we should rip off some bikes.” I said.