Happy Mutant Baby Pills (5 page)

FIVE

Crime Spree

The “job” was simple. Pull up behind a pharmacy in a strip mall on Wiggins and Main and walk in. Riegle broke it down.

“The owner goes to our AA home group. After the ten-thirty meeting on Friday morning, he fellowships until quarter to two. The place will be closed.”

“He's got a year on Friday,” Jay added, with what sounded like sincerity and affection. “We're taking him out to lunch. So he won't be back till three.”

N
obody counted on what happened happening. Though considering the success rate of recovering addicts and alcoholics, maybe we should have. I walked up to the CVS door at eleven on the dot. Only I didn't need the key Riegle'd slipped me. The door was open. The pharmacist, Sy S., was behind the pharmacy counter, open for business, but he didn't look well. I knew this wasn't part of the plan. In the plan, Sy was at his AA meeting. But I could see what happened. Up close his skin shone a little green. He was sweaty. He had his hand over his eyes and he was sitting forward, behind the Plexiglas, looking down. Like he was readying a particularly tricky prescription. I was improvising now. But it felt okay. It felt fine. (That's F-I-N-E, as Pastor Bobb used to say, in his Aw-Shucks mode: FUCKED-UP, INSECURE, NERVOUS, and EMOTIONAL.) At the last minute I decided to turn around, but it was too late. Sy the pharmacist sensed my presence. He looked up, and right away I knew what happened. He was weeping. Red-eyed. It took him a while to register what was in front of him, and when it kicked in he craned his neck sideways like he was trying to bite his own shoulder. The man had obviously relapsed. I couldn't say on what, but whatever it was he'd taken too much of it.

Without knowing I was going to, I crooked my finger and hissed, “Sy! Hey, Sy!” His eyes darted left and right, but he moved forward to the speaking holes in the glass.

“What is it, Sy? What did you take?”

“Vicodin,” he said, as though he'd been waiting for the question, visibly relieved that I'd asked.

“What else?”

“Adderall.”

“What else?”

For the first time, the glimmer of the man behind the red, tear-streaked face revealed itself.

“Valtrex,” he said, and lowered his eyes. “I got the herpes.”

“Keep that. Give the rest to me,” I said. “Right now.”

To my surprise he didn't slam the window closed. But he hesitated, which is when I pulled out a one-year A.A. medallion and pressed it against the Plexiglas like a detective badge. (You never know when you need one; it's as useful as a Masonic handshake.)

“I'm a Friend of Bill. It's okay. I'm going to give them to a hospital. We distribute meds to the homeless.”

“They do that?”

I nodded. “When they think you're ready, they'll be sending you to help guys like you.”

He handed over the drugs without another word, and then I suggested he should probably open the register and give me the money, so it would look like a robbery and he wouldn't have to explain why big jars of narcotics were unaccounted for.

“What big jars?”

“The ones you're not telling me about,” I said. “Come on, Sy. This is just one addict talking to another.”

Again, he handed the drugs over without a peep: the stuff he mentioned, plus two jug-sized jars marked Percocet and Ritalin respectively. Up, down, and in between. I could have used a wheelbarrow.

I thanked him. “You're helping
me
, Sy. You don't know even know how much.”

“I am? I'm helping you?” He sniffled and wiped his cuff across his tear-runny eyes.

“You're showing me how The Program works,” I said. Which seemed to make Sy unaccountably happy. “Now hand over the money. We have to make this look real.”

I imagined the shit I'd get from Jay and Riegle when I told them the story. Sy pulled a key from an extendo-chain on his belt and unlocked a drawer under the cash register. From the drawer he pulled out a small satchel. He dumped the satchel out on the counter and handed me four fist-sized rolls of twenties, tens, fives, and ones. I almost wanted to stop and recommend Depakote, drug of choice for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. (Some patients complain of feeling “fuzzy,” a gauze-like patina over vision, and in rare cases a fecal taste on the tongue.)

“Don't tell your sponsor about this till tomorrow.” I said. “That's the tradition.”

For the first time, Sy looked skeptical. “Which tradition is that?”

“The Thirteenth Tradition,” a voice suddenly boomed from behind me. “Put your hands behind your back.”

“He made me do it!” Sy whimpered.

I saw the cop in the mirror above the counter, the one customers checked to see if anything sketchy was going on behind them when they got their pills. He answered the pharmacist when his eyes met mine. “I'm not talking to you, Mr. Sydowsky, I'm talking to your customer.”

He was a shambling man in a brown suit, with a solid roll of fat over his belt. He held up his badge in one hand and a gun in the other. “Nice and easy,” he said.

I complied without a struggle. But I was still curious. “Is there a thirteenth tradition?”

“Sure,” said the policeman, pocketing his baggage but leaving his gun-hand extended. “It starts with you have the right to remain silent. You want to hold hands and say it together, sunshine?”

T
he Shambler walked me to an unmarked Crown Vic, opened the back door, barked the obligatory “Watch your head” familiar from big screen and little, and shoved me in. That was not the last thing he did. The instant my backside hit the ripped upholstery, the officer leaned in, shoved me roughly sideways—my hand landed in something wet—and reached down to unlock the cuffs. Before I could ask why, he slammed the door and disappeared. I sat still for a second. The car smelled like Lysol and Armani for Men. (Pastor Bobb's scent of choice.) I realized there was someone else in the car. Behind the wheel. A sleek, bullet-headed African-American fellow, his right cheekbone sporting a crescent scar. (He resembled Paul Robinette, the handsome, high-cheekboned black assistant DA in the early days of
Law & Order
. Then I saw his name tag and the coin dropped. This was Detective Dustin. This was Jay's Dusty. The mythical Dusty, in the flesh, with a wedding ring and a stare that burrowed into the back of your head. “You still here?” he said.

“What? Am I supposed to—”

“Shut up, Lloyd. You know how this works. Tell us who set up the caper, we'll let you go right now.”

He actually said the word “caper.”

“Nobody set it up,” I said. “I walked into the pharmacy and got a stupid idea on my own.”

“You sure about that? I know all about you and your pal Pastor Bobb. None of your buddies, back at Christian Swinglers or whatever, had anything to do with this?”

“It's Swingles. And I don't have any buddies there.”

For the first time, Detective Dustin's gaze softened. (It was like watching an
L & O
rerun, except I was in it.) He gave the faintest of nods and spoke without moving his lips, like a ventriloquist. “You passed. Door's unlocked. Get out. Go to Greyhound, Will Call. There's a ticket waiting. Don't make any stops and nobody's gonna stop you.”

As I stepped out, I was pretty sure I saw a shimmer, the noon sun bouncing off binoculars in a building directly across from the pharmacy. I could feel the blessing of Pastor Bobb upon me. Or maybe it was the five Percocet I dry-gulped before getting in the car. (
Artificial sense of well-being, occasional hypermania
.) Sometimes the side effects are the only ones you want.

SIX

Riding the Dog

When's the last time you traveled by long-distance bus? Or sat in a Greyhound station? It's not just the home of homeless and runaways anymore. Now it's a family place. The way homeless shelters have become family fun zones. Without the fun.

I had two hours before my bus. There were years when I was two hours late for everything, in the worst days of the worst days. But now I'm the early guy. Which is either vaguely pathetic or commendably responsible, depending. (The more out of control you feel, the more normal you try to act.) I had a yen for Necco Wafers. I don't know why. Retro candies were fashionable. Or maybe, in Greyhound-world, they weren't retro. Either way, I didn't feel like feeding the pay TVs bolted to the chairs in the waiting room. So I just walked around. And saw a row of Necco Wafers at the snack stand, a row of them right beside some Beemans gum and a stack of Chunkys. I got a Chunky as well, because, even though I'd been on a rigorous protocol for my liver and parasites for some time, I did not foresee being able to stay on it now. I'd managed, through my brief stint at Christian Swingles, to keep up with the juicing, and to administer my coffee enemas. (More room for heroin!) But now, with a three-day ride on Greyhound, I didn't foresee any quality enema time—not to mention the prospect of pouring bus-stop java into a hot water bottle and tubing it into my lower intestine in a back-of-the-bus toilet did not strike me as either wise or de-toxy. If I attempted it and the door swung open, I could probably be arrested by Homeland Security for lewd and malicious interstate anal probing. (I didn't actually drink coffee anymore, but I won't lie, the caffeine buzz after bottom-hosing a hot water bottle full of fair-trade joe is not to be sneezed at. It left me flying. The other advantage—you couldn't dunk with a coffee enema. On other occasions, when I'd relapsed on latte, I'd find myself unable to resist purchasing a Dunkin' Donuts Toasted Coconut Vanilla Kreme or some Sugar Glazed Strawberry Munchkins and soaking them in my liquid liver killer as I consumed them. Why coffee should destroy your liver orally and save it anally remains one of the great mysteries of New Age medicine.) So, when I saw the candies, and realized I'd had some kind of yen I didn't even realize—I don't even like Necco Wafers, they're hell on my chalky molars—I took it as some kind of omen. I was actually going to get clean. I'd decided. Now was the time. No ifs, ands, or balloons.

Somehow, gathering my candies and my copy of
Weekly World News
—I believed the
WWN
, home of “Bat Boy,” reflected America's primal fear and id in ways new media couldn't hope to, but it's not a point of view I'd want to defend—hope bit me like a werewolf and kept running, so that I felt simultaneously uplifted and infected.

Speaking of the infected, Curt Siodmak, who wrote the original
Wolf Man
, viewed the werewolf as a metaphor for the Jew in Hitler's Europe. Siodmak escaped Germany and landed in Hollywood. Through no fault of the werewolf's own, he'd been attacked by a monster, who in turn transformed
him
into a monster, a good man become hunted and shunned. Why do I know this? Because Wolf Man was the first Side-Effects movie. First the attack—then the symptoms. We see them at the same time the victim sees them. Once lycanthropic serum is in the blood, the effects—as so often happens, pharmaceutical commercial buffs will tell you—reveal themselves slowly, and then all at once.
Bitten by a werewolf? You may experience mild euphoria, feelings of newfound power, sudden appearance of full-body pelt and canine incisors during a full moon. Some patients report disturbing “incidents,” followed by memory loss and occasional incarceration. See your doctor if you experience rapid “bulking up,” four-legged gait, urge to urinate outdoors or kill and eat people.

I love that movie.

SEVEN

Daddy Ink

The woman—not a girl, just girlish—was tiny enough to curl up in the bus seat with her legs under her, and from what I could see, where her army jacket had crumpled down and exposed her back, owned a neck and shoulders of such sinewy delicacy that the size of her breasts came as a shock. Perhaps to equalize the impact, between her shoulder blades, in loving detail, was a tattoo of a German shepherd's head, teeth bared, like it was about to lunge, with DADDY inked underneath in Gothic letters.

Maybe the Daddy dog drove people away. You'd think stripper, or ballet dancer, or both. Trouble in any flavor. By the time I found out the story behind Daddy and the big-fanged dog, my heart cracked in a different place than it would have had I found out earlier. The only empty seat, besides this one, was next to the chemical toilet in back. Aside from the prospect of breathing disinfectant and people's private sadness for twelve hours, I knew, from experience, that the toilet door would probably de-latch at some point and start banging back and forth off the seat behind it. Off the knees of whatever large liver happened to be occupying it. I liked my chances better with Daddy's girl.

There had to be some reason nobody else would sit next to her. I had a feeling I was going to find out why. Is there a tribe of fuckups that seek each other out? That recognize the scent of exhilarating desperation that comes from etc . . . etc . . .

When you've written corpo-speak you sometimes lapse into it. Find that it's crept into your brainpan and shaped the patterns and presentation of all your precious thoughts. Or else whole-cloth replaced them. This is an area worthy of intense and unflinching self-analysis. I was just too tired to pursue it. I'd muddle on, as I did through most of life, guided by a vague sense—my personal code—that if I could stay a little farther from the things I dreaded and closer to the things I didn't hate, life might possibly, you never know, almost (these things happen) be okay.

Happiness. Possible side effects may include disappointment, recurring feelings of despair leading to possible long-term hopelessness. Some people report diarrhea and “copper penny” breath while using this product. Call your physician if condition persists.

I saw the stack of greeting cards fanning out of her backpack before I sat down. It seemed odd. But I wouldn't have reached in and snatched them had she so much as nodded at me.

Acknowledgment, however meager, sometimes matters. We're only human. But she offered none. The girl with the shepherd ink kept herself wedged against the window, face pressed into dark glass—it was a night ride—ignoring me completely.