Naturally, the police had something on in any one of his incarnations; nobody hardly anybody becomes a snitch merely he believes he will be performing a service while simultaneously enjoying a romantic adventure.
What they had on Palacios a small tax-fraud violation that would have sent l to a federal prison for a good many years had chosen to exercise their option to arrest Palacios cheerfully accepted the grip the police over him, and tried to lead an exemplary life. now and then he did a little something illegal hot CD players along with his dildos and ,-dads he figured there wasn't much more he uld lose. With a federal rap hanging over his head, else seemed minor.
Willis went to him not because he was a better than Fats Donner ...
actually Donner had a :ht edge when it came to providing quality information ... but only because over the years penchant for young girls had become more more unbearable; being in the same room with was like inhaling a mix of baby powder and spermicidal gel. The Cowboy was actually pleasant to be with. Moreover, Carlos Ortega was of Hispanic origin, and so was the Cowboy, whose shop was in a section of the Eight-Seven known as El Infierno, which until the recent influx of Jamaicans, Koreans and Vietnamese had been almost exclusively Puerto Rican.
He was combing his hair when Willis, soaking wet after a two-block run from the bus stop, came into the back of the shop. High pompadour, the way kids used to wear it back in the Fifties. Dark brown eyes. Matinee idol teeth. It was rumored in The Inferno that Palacios had three wives, which was also against the law, but they already had him on the tax fraud. One of the wives was supposed to have been a movie star in Cuba before Castro took over.
That had to put her in her fifties or sixties, Willis guessed. He got straight to the point.
"Carlos Ortega," he said.
"Gimme a break," Palacios said. "You in here with Spanish names that all sound "Forty-two years old, ugly as homemade "What'd he do?”
"Nothing that we know of right now, not where he's supposed to be.”
"Where's that?”
“1147 Hillsdale.”
“Tough neighborhood," Palacios said, sort of comical in that he lived in anel that had racked up three dozen corpses beginning of the year.
"He was busted on a drug charge," Willis "Did good time, got paroled in October. He's very ugly, Cowboy, that might be where you "If I had a nickel for everybody's ugly city...”
"Big bald guy, knife scar over his n partially closing. “
“Popeye Ortega," Palacios said.
Which is the way it went sometimes.
The one thing Palacios forgot to tell him was was a crack house.
"Here's where you'll find him," he said, and him an address and an apartment number. If had known where he was going, he "might realized that the twelve-year-old kid standi outside the building was a lookout.
As it was ast him as innocent as the day is long, which maybe why the kid didn't challenge him. Or be it was because he didn't look at all like a cop.
Five-eight, slender and slight, wearing a sports shirt ;n at the throat, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, blue slacks, and scuffed loafers, he could have been anyone who lived here in a housing development where blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians lived side by side in a volatile mix. The twelve-year-old scarcely gave him a passing glance.
Still all unaware, Willis went into the lobby and took the elevator up to the third floor. Apartment 37, Palacios had told him. Ask for Popeye.
A kid of about sixteen or seventeen was lounging against the wall opposite the elevator doors. The moment Willis stepped out into the third floor corridor, he said, "You looking for something?" Big husky white kid wearing a T-shirt and jeans. The shirt had the call letters of a rock radio station on it. You looking for something? And all at once, the twelve-year-old downstairs registered and Willis realized that the Cowboy had sent him to a crack house.
"I'm supposed to meet Popeye Ortega," he said.
The kid nodded.
"You know the apartment number?”
"Yes," Willis said. "Thirty-seven.”
"End of the hall," the kid said, and stepped out of his way.
He did not want to go in here as a cop. If he flashed the tin, the roof would come down around his ears. But passing the scrutiny of a twelv.
outside and a sixteen-year-old here in the was not quite the same thing as slipping through enemy lines. He thought at once should split, put the joint under surveillance, back another time with a hit team. But he Popeye Ortega. i He went to the door of apartment 37, it.
A peephole opened.
"I'm supposed to meet Popeye Ortega," he If it worked once, he figured it might work It did. The door opened. The man standin was a big, good-looking black man who a job playing the sidekick cop on a police show. first thing he said was, "Have I seen you before?”
"No," Willis said.
"I didn't think so.”
“Popeye told me to meet him here.”
"He's upstairs. What can I get you?”
"Nothing right now," Willis said.
The man-looked at him.
I'll just go talk to him," Willis said, and past him into the apartment.
Kitchen on the Dead ahead, in what would have been the room, three young men sat a table. One. black, white, one Hispanic. Crack pipes on the Butane torch. Butane fuel. Crack vials. cream-colored rocks in a vial, cost you five and in L.A., fifteen in D.C., the nation's capital. rocks.
Good for an instant high that lasted ut thirty minutes. Then you were back in the again till your next hit.
On the Coast, they called it rock. In D.C., they it Piece of the Mountain. In this city, there were a dozen different names for it. You made the ;tuff in your own kitchen. You mixed cocaine der in a pot with baking soda and you stirred it till you had a thick paste. Then you cooked the paste on your stove and you let it dry out until it resembled a round bar of soap. You broke it into chips. Another name for it. Chip.
If you were a roller, you packaged it and sold it under you own brand name. If you used made from coke powder that had already been cut with some deadly shit like ephedrine or amphetamine, you could end up in the morgue.
Users like to know what there were smoking. They looked for brand names they could count on. Lucky Eleven. Or Mister J. Or Royal Flush. Or Paradise. Or Tease Me.
Actually, you didn't smoke the stuff, you inhaled it.
Although you could crunch up the rocks, and sprinkle them inside a marijuana cigarette. You called this "whoolie," the pot laced with crack, and it was one way you could actually smoke the product.
But you didn't normally burn it the way you burned tobacco or pot.
Normally, you melted it.
The three young men at the table were go.
They were each holding a glass pipe. This resemble a real pipe the way a glass sl resembled a real slipper. The "pipe" was fasl of a clear glass bowl with two glass tubes from it on opposite sides at right angles to each one vertical, one horizontal. It looked more laboratory instrument than a smoking You expected to see it over a Bunsen burner, some mad scientist's evil brew boiling in bowl was about the size of a tennis ball, and it hole in it through which water could be poured.
glass tube was about five inches long, diameter of half an inch or so.
You wedged rocks each rock weighed about a milligrams into the top of the vertical glass which after very few uses became blackened, you put the horizontal glass tube in your mouth, you picked up the butane torch... "Beam me up, Scotty," one of the young said.
Intent on what they were doing now.
flame into the tube. The rocks beginning to Sucking the vapors through the water in the pipe. Up through the other glass tube, lips around it, inhale the vapors, a five-second from the lungs to the brain, and whammo!
The equivalent of an orgasm, most addicts said.