“Phil?”
“Phil Carroway. Short guy with a goatee.”
Shank nodded again, remembering Phil Carroway.
“He said—”
“I never hold,” Shank said. “I’ve got some stuff back at my pad, if you’ve got the time.”
“Where do you live?”
Shank told him.
“I’d like to get some.”
Shank turned and studied the man out of the corner of his eye. Well-dressed, clean-shaven, eager as a sixteen-year-old at a whorehouse for the first time. A Madison Avenue type trying to be hip, looking for a kick and ready to pay for it. Square as they come, but his wallet was full and he would pay good money for a few joints.
Shank stood up. The man hesitated, then rose and stood next to him awkwardly. “Let’s make it,” Shank said. “It’s a long walk.”
“We can take a cab,” the man said. “I’ll pay for it.”
Shank nodded shortly and they walked over to Fifth where the man flagged a taxi. The man held the door for him and Shank hopped in, sinking heavily into the seat.
The square had bread, heavy bread, if he was ready to lay out cab fare just to make a buy, Shank decided. The square was going to be profitable, he decided.
Chapter 3
Shank held the cigarette paper between the thumb and index finger of his left hand. He poured marijuana into the paper from a small brown envelope. When the paper held a sufficient quantity, he rolled it expertly, wetting the gummed edge by a flick of his tongue, then twisting the ends so the marijuana would not dribble out.
Then he took the cigarette once again between the thumb and the index finger of his left hand and examined it thoughtfully. He held it to the light, checking for possible punctures in the paper. Putting it to his lips, Shank drew on it experimentally to make sure it would smoke properly.
Then he tossed it across the room to Joe Milani, who caught it one-handed, studied it momentarily, and dropped it into his pocket.
“Did you score?” Shank said.
Joe shook his head.
“What happened?”
Joe thought for a minute. Then he shrugged. “I picked her up is all. Picked her up and won the bet.”
“How come you didn’t ball her?”
“I don’t know.”
Shank said nothing. The guy never pried, Joe thought. He was a clever son of a bitch—he just sat there waiting and pretty soon you told him whatever it was he was waiting to hear. Non-directive as all hell.
“I don’t know,” Joe said again.
Shank remained silent.
There were so many things you didn’t know, Joe thought, and it was such a general pain to bother trying to think things out, especially when there was no point-thinking them out to begin with.
“Name’s Anita Carbone,” Joe said. “Lives up in wop Harlem with her grandmother.”
Shank shrugged.
“College chick,” Joe continued. “Psych major at Hunter, comes downtown once every third blue moon.”
“Pretty chick.”
“Yeah.”
More silence.
“Look, I didn’t even try to make it with her,” Joe said. “I don’t think I could have if I tried, and it’s like there’s no future in it anyway. She’s a nice square little thing with a good head and a good body and that’s all.”
“Where did you take her?”
“Around. We walked around for a while and sort of talked at each other. After a while I let her buy me a hamburger at Riker’s. Then I put her on a subway and she zipped off to Harlem and I came down here. That’s all.”
“You gonna see her again?”
“No.”
“No?”
Joe frowned. “What for, man? Like I told you—she’s a nice square little chick and all and we have nothing to talk about and nothing to do. So what for?”
Shank let it drop. “I worked a deal while you were walking around with her,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I sold some cut-down stuff to a Madison Avenue type for more than it was worth.”
“What did you get?”
“Twenty cents for twelve.”
A cent was a dollar in hip parlance. Twenty cents was twenty dollars, twenty dollars for maybe four or five dollars worth of pot. Joe whistled.
“He’s happy,” Shank said. “Now he can throw a party for a dozen people who want to feel hip and they can all blow off the tops of their heads. He’ll get high for the first or second time in his life and he’ll turn some square little chick on for the first time and she’ll come across, also for the first time. He’s getting his twenty’s worth out of the bit.”
“Sure.”
“Everybody’s smoking now,” Shank said. “A guy like this one thought he was pretty far out a few years ago when he had a martini on an empty stomach. Now he starts reading and talking to people and he decides that juice isn’t far out at all. So he has to reach a little farther.”
Joe nodded.
“He’ll dig it,” Shank went on. “It’s a bigger kick than juice. Besides, it’s illegal. He can get a year and a day just for holding and he knows it. That makes it more of a kick. He can feel like all the hippies he reads about.”
“The gospel according to Saint Jack.”
“I’m hip, man. He reads Kerouac and he decides to get remote. You shoulda been there, man. You would’ve got a kick out of the way he came on. Like it was all something out of a spy movie, you know? Sitting down next to me and talking out of the side of his mouth and all. And he fell over when he saw the pad, like we were living on the other side of the moon and it was heaven on wheels.”
“Everybody’s smoking it,” Joe said. “A year or two and they’ll make it legal.”
“You kidding.”
“Why? They’ll have to, with everybody turning on right and left. By the time everybody knows it’s harmless and non-habit-forming they won’t be able to keep the law on the books. It—”
“You’re nuts, man.”
Joe looked at him, and Shank went on.
“Things get legal because somebody wants them legal, man. Things don’t get legal because somebody doesn’t want them legal. You think anybody wants pot legal? You think the Mob wants it legal when they can sell it? You think the liquor lobby wants it legal when nobody would drink juice any more if it was? Hell, you think I want it legal? I pull in close to a bill a week selling it, a hundred pennies per keeping squares high. If it’s legal they’ll sell it in the drugstores, man. Won’t that be a bitch?”
Joe nodded, and Shank hauled himself to his feet.
“Gotta go,” he announced. “You got any idea what time it is?”
“Few minutes after eight.”
“That late?”
“Around there.”
