Junky (10 page)

Gains had a malicious childlike smile that formed a shocking contrast to his eyes which were pale blue, lifeless and old. He smiled, listening down into himself as if attending to something there that pleased him. Sometimes, after a shot, he would smile and listen and say slyly, “This stuff is powerful.” With the same smile he would report on the deterioration and misfortunes of others. “Herman was a beautiful kid when he first came to New York. The trouble is, he lost his looks.”

Gains was one of the few junkies who really took a special pleasure in seeing non-users get a habit. Many junkie-pushers are glad to see a new addict for economic reasons. If you have a commodity you naturally want customers, provided they are the right kind. But Gains liked to invite young kids up to his room and give them a shot, usually compounded of old cottons, and then watch the effects, smiling his little smile.

Mostly, the kids said it was a good kick, and that was all. Just another kick like nembies, or bennies, or lush, or weed. But a few stayed around to get hooked, and Gains would look at these converts and smile, a prelate of junk. A little later, you would hear him say, “Really, So-and-so must realize that I can't carry him any longer.” The pledge was no longer being rushed. It was time for him to pay off. And pay off for the rest of his life, waiting on street corners and in cafeterias for the connection, the
mediator between man and junk
. Gains was a mere parish priest in the hierarchy of junk. He would speak of the higher-ups in a voice of sepulchral awe. “The connections say . . .”

His veins were mostly gone, retreated back to the bone to escape the probing needle. For a while he used arteries, which are deeper than veins and harder to hit, and for this procedure he bought special long needles. He rotated from his arms and hands to the veins of his feet. A vein will come back in time. Even so, he had to shoot in the skin about half the time. But he only gave up and “skinned” a shot after an agonizing half-hour of probing and poking and cleaning out the needle, which would stop up with blood.

•

One of my first customers was a Village character named Nick. Nick painted when he did anything. His canvasses were very small and looked as if they had been concentrated, compressed, misshapen by a tremendous pressure. “The product of a depraved mind,” a narcotics agent pronounced solemnly, after viewing one of Nick's pictures.

Nick was always half sick, his large, plaintive brown eyes water­ing slightly and his thin nose running. He slept on couches in the apartments of friends, existing on the precarious indulgence of neurotic, unstable, stupidly suspicious individuals who would suddenly throw him out without reason or warning. For these people he also scored, hoping that he would receive in return at least the head off a cap to take the edge off his constant junk-hunger. Often, he got nothing but a casual thanks, the purchaser having convinced himself that Nick had somehow got his on the other end. As a result, Nick began stealing a small amount from each cap, loosening up the junk so that it filled the cap.

There was not much left of Nick. His constant, unsatisfied hunger had burned out all other concerns. He talked vaguely about going to Lexington for the cure, or shipping out in the merchant marine, or buying paregoric in Connecticut and tapering off on it.

Nick introduced me to Tony, who tended bar in a Village bar and restaurant. Tony had been pushing and nearly got nailed when the Federals rushed into his apartment. He barely had time to throw a
1
/
16
-ounce packet of H under the piano. The Federals found nothing but his works and they let him go. Tony was scared and quit pushing. He was a young Italian who obviously knew his way around. He looked capable of keeping his mouth shut. A good type customer.

I went to Tony's bar every day and ordered a Coca-Cola. Tony would tell me how many caps he wanted, and I would go into the phone booth or the W.C. and wrap his caps up in silver paper. When I got back to my Coke, the money for the caps was there on the bar like change. I dropped the caps into an ashtray on the bar and Tony emptied the ashtray under the bar, taking out his caps. This routine was necessary because the owner knew Tony had been a user and told him to stay off stuff or get another job. In fact, the owner's son was a user—at this time in a sanitarium taking the cure. When he got out, he came straight to me to buy stuff. He said he couldn't stay off.

A young Italian hipster named Ray used to come to this bar every day. He seemed O.K. so I took care of him, too, dropping his caps in the ashtray with Tony's. This bar where Tony worked was a small place down several steps from street level. There was only one door. I always felt trapped when I went in there. The place gave me such a feeling of depression and danger that I could hardly bring myself to go through the door.

After taking care of Tony and Ray, I generally met Nick in a cafeteria on Sixth Avenue. He always had the price of a few caps on him. I knew, of course, that he was scoring for other people, but I did not know who they were. I should have known better than to have dealings with anybody like Nick, who was sick and broke all the time and therefore liable to pick up anybody's money. Some people need an intermediary to score for them because they are strangers in town, or because they have not been on junk long enough to get acquainted. But the pusher has reason to be wary of people who send someone else to score. By and large, the reason a man can't score is because he is known to be “wrong.” So he sends someone else to score who may not be “wrong” himself, but simply desperate for junk. To score for a pigeon is definitely not ethical. Often a man goes on from scoring for pigeons to become a pigeon himself.

I was not in a position to turn money down. I had no margin. Every day I had to sell enough caps to buy the next ¼-ounce, and I was never more than a few dollars ahead. So I took whatever money Nick had and asked no questions.
I knew Nick was a bad security risk, but I could not afford to pack him in.

•

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.