Because they’re not in control of what’s going down. They’re just taking part.
Musty was in control. He did only one kind of job, and he did it extraordinarily well. Musty ran lots of two thousand kilos—no more, no less on any given run—across the border from Mexico. He dumped them in San Diego, in his own warehouses, and there they sat until they were shipped out in broken-down lots to New York. Musty kept his hand in the operation up to the point when the bricks were shipped, his own art-supplies front doing the job. But after that he was through with it; he took his cut and split. That way anything that was busted, either in New York, or on the way back to California, was almost impossible to pin on him. For all the narcs ever knew, the stuff was coming in through the New York Port Authority, right under their noses.
Musty ran a tight operation, with everyone from the Federales to the Customs people to the Mexicans who drove the trucks and airplanes being liberally paid off. He wasn’t just careful, though; he had class. When it came time for a shipment, he went down to the Mexican plantations himself. He was friends with the plantation owners he bought from and he spoke fluent Spanish. His concern did not go unnoticed by the sellers, and as a result his marijuana was only the purest, his bricks the heaviest. They were almost always at least thirty-two ounces—dry—with very few sticks and no stones or clay. On a market that’s usually full of oregano and gasoline-cured or otherwise hopelessly souped-up garbage, his dope was highly regarded. And it always brought a good price.
The most impressive thing about his operation was that he’d been running it for almost four years without a hint of trouble or a cramp in his style. A record like that demands respect, whether you’re behind the law or trying to keep ahead of it. The IRS people in San Diego had finally gotten on his back a few months before, but it’d been nothing serious, just a lot of irritating questions, and he’d simply stepped out of town for a while. To San Francisco, which was now his company headquarters.
3
JOHN HAD MET MUSTY EARLIER in the spring, on the Massachusetts Turnpike. John was test-driving the Ferrari he’d gotten the week before, seeing how it performed on the road. And Musty was bumming around the East, California style, with a pack on his back and his thumb out dangling. So John had picked him up and they were rolling along at maybe eighty, nobody saying anything and Musty no doubt sitting there thinking, What a bummer this is, to ride in this car with a straight creep—thinking this because in California anybody who smokes dope looks like he smokes dope, and Musty wasn’t used to the Eastern style yet. So when John, with his maroon Ferrari and his J. Press suit and his Newport accent, opened the glove compartment to reveal a pound bag of clean Michoácan, Musty blew his mind. The dope had come from one of Musty’s kilos that was nothing but buds and flowers to begin with; he just started laughing, while he rolled a few joints. John rolled up the windows so the smoke wouldn’t get out, and they both managed to get high as the sky before they hit the Newton tolls.
Which is a sad pun, for hit the Newton toll booth they did, going about twenty-five. Drove right up the cement fender and piled into the little box the toll guy stands in. Seemed that John, who was never a good driver, had a little trouble maneuvering his machine after a few joints. The toll guy was terrified, expecting to find some epileptic old lady who’d had a coronary. Instead, he was greeted by two very stoned young men, laughing hysterically and wiping the tears from their eyes. Completely unscathed, both of them, but not looking particularly grateful for it.
When the cop came, he told John that he was a very lucky guy. The cop also said some other things about Rich Motherfuckers and Kids Today. Everybody is interested in Kids Today, even the cops. He asked John how he happened to total his brand new Ferrari and John explained about the faulty disc brakes—these crummy little Italian imports, you know, they’re all the same—and the cop farted.
Then he drove John and Musty back to a gas station where they could call for someone to pick them up. John sat in the front seat, because he had a suit on and looked respectable. Musty sat in the back. The cop talked to John first, giving him some more about Rich Motherfuckers and Damage to Public Property and asking how his old man liked picking up the tab. Then the cop looked in the rear-view mirror and asked Musty how long it had been since he had taken a bath and whether he thought he was Jesus Christ, with hair like that. The cop also said he had fought in the war, he wanted them both to know, in the goddamn war.
To change the subject, John suggested that it must be tough work to be a state trooper. The cop mellowed at this and admitted that it was tough work. Everybody thought it was a great job to be a state trooper, he said. Everybody thought it was all glory and gravy. Everybody wanted to be a trooper, but they didn’t have no fucking idea, it was hard work and no joke.
John got off with a State Warning. Musty was told to be out of the state within forty-eight hours.
That was the way John worked. He needed to be with a person only about fifteen minutes before he knew what his weak spot was, and how to go to work on him. It didn’t matter if that person was a cop, or a professor, or a freak. Fifteen minutes. Anyway, John’d put his finger on Musty’s weak spot as efficiently as he’d managed the trooper. And before Musty said goodbye to Massachusetts, he’d agreed to sell dope to John in small lots, so long as the pickup was made on the West Coast. Musty, who never did anything less than two thousand kilos, and never touched his dope after it was in San Diego.
So I was on my way to meet Musty.
4
TRAFFIC WAS HEAVIER GOING OVER the Bay Bridge, but I made the corner of Ashby and Telegraph by five-thirty. From there it was just a few blocks to Musty’s address, 339 Holly Street, in the middle of a quiet neighborhood of clean, pink-and-white stuccos with palm trees and clipped lawns. There was nobody on the street to stare at the straight honky who jumped out of a green Mustang with a suitcase in his hand and went up to ring 339.
The suitcase was a little thing John had rigged up, small enough to fit under an airplane seat, and lined with aluminum to keep the dope smell in. It also had internal and external locks to disappoint inquisitive cops. A sealed package of any sort requires a specific search warrant before it can be legally opened. Altogether a neat and reassuring way to travel.
I rang the buzzer beneath the name on the mailbox: Padraic O’Shaugnessy. No wonder they called him Musty. Then I waited, and when nothing happened I pushed the buzzer again. The apartment was on the second floor, and I could faintly hear it ringing up there. But nothing else, no footsteps or talking or other noise.
I began to get irritated, because I was right on time and they should have been there to open the door for me when I came up the steps. I couldn’t figure out where they could be, but then I didn’t really give a damn. I just didn’t dig standing around like the Fuller Brush man, waiting for somebody to come to the door.
Finally I went back to the car and started reading the Tribe I’d picked up on Telegraph. What a drag it was, this waiting. I pulled out my own little traveling stash, rolled a joint, and blew it, trying to relax.