Okay, lets see your I.D., the cop would say, reaching out; and then, as Arctor-Fred-Whatever-Godknew fumbled in his wallet pocket, the cop would yell at him, Ever been ARRESTED? Or, as a variant on that, adding, BEFORE? As if he were about to go into the bucket right then.
Whats the beef? he usually said, if he said anything at all. A crowd naturally gathered. Most of them assumed hed been nailed dealing on the corner. They grinned uneasily and waited to see what happened, although some of them, usually Chicanos or blacks or obvious heads, looked angry. And those that looked angry began after a short interval to be aware that they looked angry, and they changed that swiftly to impassive. Because everybody knew that anyone looking angry or uneasyit didnt matter whicharound cops must have something to hide. The cops especially knew that, legend had it, and they hassled such persons automatically.
This time, however, no one bothered him. Many heads were in evidence; he was only one of many.
What am I actually? he asked himself. He wished, momentarily, for his scramble suit. Then, he thought, I could go on being a vague blur and passers-by, street people in general, would applaud. Lets hear it for the vague blur, he thought, doing a short rerun. What a way to get recognition. How, for instance, could they be sure it wasnt some other vague blur and not the right one? It could be somebody other than Fred inside, or another Fred, and theyd never know, not even when Fred opened his mouth and talked. They wouldnt really know then. Theyd never know. It could be Al pretending to be Fred, for example. It could be anyone in there, it could even be empty. Down at Orange County GHQ they could be piping a voice to the scramble suit, animating it from the sheriffs office. Fred could in that case be anybody who happened to be at his desk that day and happened to pick up the script and the mike, or a composite of all sorts of guys at their desks.
But I guess what I said at the end, he thought, finishes off that. That wasnt anybody back in the office. The guys back in the office want to talk to me about that, as a matter of fact.
He didnt look forward to that, so he continued to loiter and delay, going nowhere, going everywhere. In Southern California it didnt make any difference anyhow where you went; there was always the same McDonaldburger place over and over, like a circular strip that turned past you as you pretended to go somewhere. And when finally you got hungry and went to the McDonaldburger place and bought a McDonalds hamburger, it was the one they sold you last time and the time before that and so forth, back to before you were born, and in addition bad peopleliarssaid it was made out of turkey gizzards anyhow.
They had by now, according to their sign, sold the same original burger fifty billion times. He wondered if it was to the same person. Life in Anaheim, California, was a commercial for itself, endlessly replayed. Nothing changed; it just spread out farther and farther in the form of neon ooze. What there was always more of had been congealed into permanence long ago, as if the automatic factory that cranked out these objects had jammed in the on position. How the land became plastic, he thought, remembering the fairy tale How the Sea Became Salt. Someday, he thought, itll be mandatory that we all sell the McDonalds hamburger as well as buy it; well sell it back and forth to each other forever from our living rooms. That way we wont even have to go outside.
He looked at his watch. Two-thirty: time to make a buy call. According to Donna, he could score, through her, on perhaps a thousand tabs of Substance D cut with meth.
Naturally, once he got it, he would turn it over to County Drug Abuse to be analyzed and then destroyed, or whatever they did with it. Dropped it themselves, maybe, or so another legend went. Or sold it. But his purchase from her was not to bust her for dealing; he had bought many times from her and had never arrested her. That was not what it was all about, busting a small-time local dealer, a chick who considered it cool and far-out to deal dope. Half the narcotics agents in Orange County were aware that Donna dealt, and recognized her on sight. Donna dealt sometimes in the parking lot of the 7-11 store, in front of the automatic holoscanner the police kept going there, and got away with it. In a sense, Donna could never be busted no matter what she did and in front of whom.
What his transaction with Donna, like all those before, added up to was an attempt to thread a path upward via Donna to the supplier she bought from. So his purchases from her gradually grew in quantity. Originally he had coaxed herif that was the wordinto laying ten tabs on him, as a favor: friend-to-friend stuff. Then, later on, he had wangled a bag of a hundred for recompense, then three bags. Now, if he lucked out, he could score a thousand, which was ten bags. Eventually, he would be buying in a quantity which would be beyond her economic capacity; she could not front enough bread to her supplier to secure the stuff at her end. Therefore, she would lose instead of getting a big profit. They would haggle; she would insist that he front at least part of it; he would refuse; she couldnt front it herself to her source; time would run outeven in a deal that small a certain amount of tension would grow; everyone would be getting impatient; her supplier, whoever he was, would be holding and mad because she hadnt shown. So eventualy, if it worked out right, she would give up and say to him and to her supplier, Look, you better deal direct with each other. I know you both; youre both cool. Ill vouch for both of you. Ill set a place and a time and you two can meet. So from now on, Bob, you can start buying direct, if youre going to buy in this quantity. Because in that quantity he was for all intents and purposes a dealer; these were approaching dealers quantities. Donna would assume he was reselling at a profit per hundred, since he was buying a thousand at a time at least. This way he could travel up the ladder and come to the next person in line, become a dealer like her, and then later on maybe get another step up and another as the quantities he bought grew.
Eventuallythis was the name of the projecthe would meet someone high enough to be worth busting. That meant someone who knew something, which meant someone either in contact with those who manufactured or someone who ran it in from the supplier who himself knew the source.
Unlike other drugs, Substance D hadapparentlyonly one source. It was synthetic, not organic; therefore, it came from a lab. It could be synthesized, and already had been in federal experiments. But the constituents were themselves derived from complex substances almost equally difficult to synthesize. Theoretically it could be manufactured by anyone who had, first, the formula and, second, the technological capacity to set up a factory. But in practice the cost was out of reach. Also, those who had invented it and were making it available sold it too cheaply for effective competition. And the wide distribution suggested that even though a sole source existed, it had a diversified layout, probably a series of labs in several key areas, perhaps one near each major urban drug-using spot in North America and Europe. Why none of these had been found was a mystery; but the implication was, both publicly and no doubt under official wraps, that the S. D. Agencyas the authorities arbitrarily termed ithad penetrated so far up into law-enforcement groups, both local and national, that those who found out anything usable about its operations soon either didnt care or didnt exist.
He had, naturally, several other leads at present besides Donna. Other dealers he pressured progressively for larger quantities. But because she was his chickor anyhow he had hopes in that directionshe was for him the easiest. Visiting her, talking to her on the phone, taking her out or having her overthat was a personal pleasure as well. It was, in a sense, the line of least resistance. If you had to spy on and report about someone, it might as well be people youd see anyhow; that was less suspicious and less of a drag. And if you did not see them frequently before you began surveillance, you would have to eventually anyhow; it worked out the same in the end.