‘You’re gonna have a hell of a time trackin’ down every pusher in town that might be peddlin’ this shit, ain’t you?’
‘Maybe not. I haven’t seen any red devils on the street in a year or two. Too expensive. They go down for about five bucks a pop.’
‘Jesus, you can do smack for that kind of money.’
‘Different kind of high. Point is, maybe they were specially ordered. That would narrow the field a bit. How about you?’
‘I got three names, M’man Ramsey says if these three juicers ain’t bookin’ him and he’s a big player, then he’s using a phone contact somewhere else. And I know one of these guys. We grew up together. I can always finger him, so I figure we try to run down the other two first, save old Zipper until last.’
‘Zipper?’
‘Got a scar down his back at least a foot long. I grew up in a rough neighbourhood.’
‘Okay, but first let me try one more call.’
Ben Colter had worked his way through Georgia State University playing ‘Melancholy Baby,’ ‘One for the Road,’ and other such classics for raucous salesmen and ageing divorcees in a red-and-black vinyl lounge called Mona’s Piano Bar. It was a job he had learned to hate passionately while staring out across the elongated piano six nights a week at faces he later said had only two expressions, drunk and desperate. The day he received his diploma he swore he would never again play the piano, not even in the solitude of his own home. The world Lad heard his last rendition of ‘My Way’.
Retirement from the keyboard, however, was not in the cards for Ben. After serving six months as a rookie on the APD and two years and three months as a patrolman, Colter was promoted to third grade detective and assigned to Captain Vernon Oglesby in Narcotics. Oglesby was a competent officer, but he had a flaw. He was intrigued by intrigue. Because he loved the drama of subterfuge, Oglesby had more men on the Street undercover than he had on straight duty. Any excuse at all and Oglesby would put another man out with phony I.D.’s and some new and flamboyant cover.
Colter was made to order for Oglesby. His presence on the Narcs summoned forth one of the captain’s most outrageous ideas. Colter’s past had caught up with him. He would form a trio and the Captain would arrange for the group to play at the Arboretum, one of the city’s more popular uptown bars, there to get the inside on the dope traffic among the better-heeled swinging singles.
Within four weeks, an appalled Colter found himself the leader of the Red Colter Trio, the other two members being a hastily drafted teenage drummer who thought he was Buddy Rich and a guitar player who, as one of the patrons once observed, probably could make better music picking cotton than guitar.
Nevertheless the trio was modestly successful and Ben Colter, to his joy, discovered a marvellous fringe benefit:
flesh. The ladies were young, liberated, and among the best looking in town. Hardly a night passed that the latent groupie instincts of some female patron were not vested in Colter’s corner. They always had a little Colombian weed and occasionally a snort of coke to share. Ben properly excused his transgressions as part of the job and one night he had experienced his first amyl nitrite popper, later likening the resulting orgasm to a combination of the Mount Vesuvius eruption and the San Francisco earthquake.
Almost as a side benefit of the job Colter became an expert on the latest hip talk, the ultimate styles, the fashionable drugs — pot, Quaaludes, coke, poppers — anything that stimulated bedtime organs, heightening the allure and dulling the uneasiness of the one-night stand. He also was compiling an impressive list of the uptown pushers, those who made their contacts at the crowded Arboretum Bar and delivered their dream cigarettes and nose candy in the seats of the Mercedes, Corvettes, and baby Cadillacs that nightly filled the parking lot.
On this particular Friday night Colter was feeling very lucky indeed. A young woman in a black skintight jumpsuit zipped down the front almost to her navel and bulging with incredible natural endowments was sitting just below the bandstand where for an hour or so she had been staring at I Colter without even blinking her eyes.
Colter was stirred. He was also encouraged by her escort, a thirtyish loudmouth who obviously thought he was still in a fraternity. His size indicated that he had probably played either guard or tackle, although what had once been muscle had long since congealed into blubber. For an hour he had been extolling the virtues of the Auburn University War Eagles while quaffing down one bottle of Bud after another, swallowing the contents in a single long, horrifying gulp until eventually the beer took its toll. The War Eagle rose, his face the colour of a bishop’s vestments, and headed unsteadily towards the men’s room.
Now is the time to strike, thought Colter, and abruptly ended his version of ‘Take the A Train’ while his two partners floundered hopelessly in mid-chord. As Colter hit the floor a waiter handed him a note.
‘Guy says it’s urgent,’ the waiter said.
The note said: ‘Sharky. P-929-1423.’
The P was a simple code for phone booth. The call was indeed urgent.
Colter smiled at the jumpsuit zipper and winked, then hurried across the room to the public phones.
Sharky answered on the first ring.
‘Sharky?’ Ben said.
‘Yeah. That you, Ben?’
‘Yeah, man. How ya doin’?
‘I’ve had better days.’
‘I heard what The Bat did to you for icing High Ball Mary. That dumb shit. For what it’s worth, Shark, I think we lost the best street man we had.’
‘Thanks, Ben. How’s it with you?’
Ben wasn’t listening. The girl in the jumpsuit was leaning over, saying something to one of the other girls at the table.
