II. - J U N E 1 9 7 4

Today was Friday. Gail was getting ready for her bartending shift at the Half Way House. We had just ended an impromptu lovemaking session somewhat abruptly when a couple of Gail’s friends, Randy and Satan knocked on the door.

Gail was pissed off at them. She made it clear that if they came again so early, they'd have their brains fried in oil and served with Parmesan cheese.

She was stalking around the bedroom now, trying on clothes then discarding them as 'not right.' Randy and Satan were out in the kitchen testing a new batch of "regs" – regular old Mexican weed – that had just come in. Gail stood next to the bed and drop-kicked a blouse across the room, muttering under her breath.

"Those sonofabitches! The next time they screw up my sex life, they're not coming back!"

I tried to comfort her, patting her shoulder. "Look, it's okay. When we get home tonight, we can pick up where we left off. C'mon, they mean well."

She fumed. "If they'd just waited two more minutes. Two more minutes! Why do they do this? Just two lousy minutes! Now I gotta go around all night so frustrated I could bust! Holy Mary, Mother of God!" She turned and buried her head on my shoulder. "What am I gonna do with you guys?"

I shook my head, sighed and kissed her on the forehead. "I'm gonna go see what they're doing," I said, patting her on the behind.

I went into the front room and put an album on – Blodwyn Pig – 'Ahead Rings Out.' I paused, looking at the album cover. I still got a laugh out of it – a picture of a pig with a ring through his nose, wearing headphones and sunglasses, smoking a large joint. I put the album cover down and turned up the volume.

Randy and Satan were at the kitchen table passing a joint back and forth.

Randy was about twenty-two, heavy with a big gut riding over his belt, sandy hair cut short. He had a scraggly beard and mustache cut in mutton-chops. He wore jeans and an old, blue work shirt, with black, scuffed-up engineer boots. He was a police science major at Monterey Peninsula College, MPC, but looked like a would-be biker.

Satan was about twenty-one. Medium height, dark brown hair down to his collar. He had a funny beard – it looked like the devil's – or pictures you see of the devil. And it certainly fit with his name. Satan was skinny, and couldn't have weighed more than about one thirty, and had tattoos all over his hands and arms. He was wearing a pair of black dress pants that probably came from Goodwill, tennis shoes and an old yellow shirt with the cuffs turned up, exposing his forearms. He kept talking about how he hated it out here and how he wanted to go back to the joint.

Gail figured they were both okay. She had known them for quite some time before I moved down, and they gophered for her and did errands.

Randy, she said, really wasn't into the cop thing. He was just doing it to please his father. He tested all her weed for her – Gail didn't smoke that much anymore – she preferred coke.

Satan was supposed to be cool, too. He'd been kicked out of his home when he was about thirteen. He'd gone from one foster home to another, eventually ending up in reform school, then when he was older, jail. Nothing big, just penny ante stuff like shoplifting and gas theft. He'd gotten his nickname while he was in jail. Gail said she thought it was supposed to make him sound tough, and help keep his dance card from getting filled up while he was inside.

Satan offered me the joint as I sat down.

I declined and lit a cigarette, then asked, "Is it any good?"

Randy answered, "Yeah, not bad. It's got a good stone. Does look weird though, huh?" He nodded at the plate of weed in the center of the table. The stuff was a strange bright green color.

I frowned. "Yeah, it does look kind of different. Too green or something. What the hell, if it smokes good, that's all that matters."

I reached to the plate and picked up some of the weed.

Satan exhaled a large lungful of smoke. "Yeah, it is a good stone. Kind of trippy." He looked at Randy. "Reminds me of that stuff we had a few months ago, had all the seeds in it." He looked back at me. "Stuff had seeds up the ass. More seeds than smoke. But you get the seeds out, it was good shit. You really got twisted behind that stuff."

He laughed then continued, "Me and Randy were driving around in his car one night smoking that shit. We went out Ocean View to Point Pinos and watched the light on the lighthouse go round and round for about an hour. Musta smoked half the bag. On the way back, we come up on this old Corvair full of kids. Randy pulls out this red light and puts it on the dash and turns it on, then turns on his high beams. The kids pull over. Randy puts on this cop hat and a coat with a badge, then gets out and goes and starts fuckin' with the kid who's driving."

Randy smiled and said, "Yeah, the car was full of highschool kids from Marina. God, they were scared shitless. I got to the car, I shined my flashlight all around the inside. Two guys, two girls. They had a case of beer in the back, and looked like they were on their way to park. The driver opened his window and you could smell the booze. His pants were all wet. It looked like he had spilled a beer all over them or pissed himself or something. I got their IDs, and made a big scene of it. One of the girls starts crying and asking if they're going to jail. I tell them they are in violation of section 643a of the penal code, minors in possession of alcohol, which is a misdemeanor offense, punishable by a one thousand dollar fine and six months in jail. That really got 'em. The other girl starts crying too – both guys look like they could start any minute."

He paused to take a hit of the reefer, exhaled, and then continued.

"I go on about do their parents know where they are and what they're doing, and ask who bought them the beer. The driver tells me they went to a Seven Eleven and got some guy to buy the beer. Said he didn't know the guy." He passed the joint to Satan, saying, "The driver looks up at me and says his parents would keel over if he was busted. Says he had never done this sort of thing before and couldn't I please let him off this one time. The girls and the other guy all chime in with the same thing, 'Oh please, oh please mister officer, can't you please let us off this one time?' I look at all of them, then tell them just because it's their first time, I'm gonna let them off, but that if they're ever caught again, they'll go to jail. I tell the kid in the back seat to pass me the case, then tell them to take off."

Satan broke in. "The kid pulls out, then Randy comes back with this fucking case of Coors. Damn near full. I just about shit." Looking at Randy, he said, "You sonofabitch! Mr. Po-lice-man. Scared them po' little kids. You should be ashamed of yourself. Tsk, tsk."

Randy leaned back, smiling, eyebrows raised. "Damn straight. I was just helping them obey the law. Like they say, ya know: don't do the crime if you can't do the time." He got the joint from Satan and took a big hit. Exhaling, he went on, "We went back out by the lighthouse and drank the beer and smoked some more weed. Never say my law enforcement education ain't good for nothing."

Satan and I laughed. Satan said, "Yeah you fat slob, you did good that night."

Gail came into the room and stood in back of my chair with her hands on my shoulders. I tilted my head back and looked up at her, and then kissed her forearm.

Satan settled back and said, "Hey Gail? Did you hear what that fucking Tony did last night?" Gail shook her head and Satan continued, "He got this car, a Ferrari, from where he works, went out down the coast road to Big Sur and rolled it just before the Bixby Canyon bridge. He was lucky, he didn't go over the edge, just flipped it on the corner and bounced off a guardrail. The cops find him, he's in the car, hanging upside-down from his seatbelt, not a scratch on him. Christ, he told me he was doing a hundred when it happened. Anyway, the cops, they ask him what happened and he says he thinks a tire blew out. Tells 'em it wouldn't a happened if he was in his Porsche. I love it." He shook his head in wonder. "Of course the cops checked the registration, found out the Ferrari wasn't his, and he ended up getting a ride to the gray bar hotel in Salinas. He called this morning."

Gail flinched, digging her fingernails into my shoulders. "I knew that crazy Mexican would end up that way." Looking down at me, she went on, "He used to show up all the time with these fancy cars. Ferraris, Lamborghini’s, Porsches, Jags, even a Rolls once. He's a parking valet at the Highlands Inn, just south of Carmel. They get a lot of movie stars and rich people there."

Randy lit a new joint, took a big hit, held it, and then exhaled. He passed the joint to Satan, and then said to Gail, "Remember that time he had the red Ferrari and he took us down to get beer?" He looked at me, and said, "We scream down the fuckin' streets, he tachs the thing way out. We're sliding through all the corners, then he stops in front of these two jail-bait chicks on the corner by the Seven Eleven, and he rolls down the window and asks them if they wanna go for a ride. Before they can answer, he screams off again, fish-tailing all over the place. Shit, I thought we were done for." He took the joint back from Satan, and held it out to me and Gail asking, "Hey, you guys want some?"

Gail and I shook our heads.

Satan moved his chair back. "Hey Gail, you hear Junkie Jerry is back in jail?"

Gail said, "No. What happened?"

"He was down on the Plaza. He'd just done a big load, and was kinda noddin' on one of the benches. A couple of cops stopped to roust him, and he took a swing at one of 'em. They frisked him, and found his stash. He's gonna do ninety days. I talked to him on the phone a couple days ago and he told me about it. Said he thought it was someone trying to rip him off. He was fucked up, but he's not stupid enough to try an' hit a cop." He took a big hit off the joint Randy had passed him.

"What's his old lady gonna do?" Asked Randy.

Satan held in the smoke until he burst. He coughed, then answered, "I think she's gonna go back on the streets. Jerry was after her to do it anyway. His habit was getting pretty big."

"I thought he was just chippin'?" Asked Gail.

"Naw," said Satan. With his finger, he took some spit from his mouth and touched it to the side of the joint where it was burning too fast. "His Jones was getting him. You know nobody just chips. Specially not Jerry. He's one stone junkie."

Randy asked, "Has his old lady got a pimp?" He took the joint from Satan.

"Why? You gonna volunteer?" We laughed and Satan continued, "Yeah. She's gonna work for JZ." He started picking at one of his fingernails and said to me, "JZ is our own local black Mafia. He's got about seven brothers. They own all sorts of things. They've got an after hours place over on Crestview. You can play big stakes poker, get laid, drink and do dope all night. And he owns the `Pit', or at least everyone seems to think so. He's got his fingers in all the action."

I nodded and said, "Yeah, so I hear. I met him. We made it up to his after hours place last week. It’s pretty cool. But what's the Pit?"

"It's this place over up Broadway where all the blacks hang out," said Satan. "Right next to the Welfare office. They've got pool tables, and beer."

Randy lifted his head, and said in a cold voice, "They say white people have gone in there and come out in a box. It's some place. Those niggers don't take shit offa no one, but if you're white, they'll cut out your gizzard and feed it to you, raw."

Gail laughed, "Yeah, right! I've gone in there and I'm still alive."

"Well JZ likes you. If JZ likes you, nobody fucks with you."

Gail smiled. "Yeah, he thinks I'm his daughter." Still smiling, she looked down at me and said, "Hey, I’m sorry to be a party pooper, but I better get going or I’m gonna be late. Can I see you alone for a moment?"

We went in the bedroom and she closed the door. She wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed me.

After a few intense moments, she pulled back, and said, "There. Now you remember that. When we get home tonight, we're gonna pickup where we left off, and you're gonna finish what you started."

She smiled, and then kissed me again.

I stroked her hair. "We've got a lot of that coke left. You wanna do it right, tonight? We could go for the record."

She widened her eyes and smiled. "You got a date, lover. Ya know, I bet I could break the record tonight, the way I feel." She nodded and looked thoughtful. Continuing, she said, "Don't hang around till closing tonight. You come back early and cut up a whole bunch of lines. I'll get out of there as fast as I can. I'll see if I can get David to cover my shift tomorrow. He's said he wants some more hours. Yeah, we'll do it right."

We kissed again. She pulled back slightly. "You got all the orders for today down?"

I nodded agreement. "Yeah. Pete needs five pounds of regs. Parker needs two. Laura Lee needs a half. Janet and Spencer want a half pound of weed and a gram of coke."

I brushed some lint from her blouse. She looked lovely. She was wearing tight jeans that looked like they'd been poured on, and a turquoise body-shirt that emphasized her firm breasts. Her shining blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail with a black ribbon.

She stood on her tiptoes and gave me a peck on my cheek. "And don't forget to give everyone samples of the new stuff."

"Right. When will we be able to deliver it?"

She looked like she was thinking. "We can have ten pounds tomorrow or the next day. If you get a lot of demand, I can probably have twenty L-Bs or more if we need it." L-B was our common shorthand for "pound."

I started tracing the outline of her nipple through her thin blouse. She slapped my hand. "Quit that. God, I gotta get out of here while I still can. Tonight!"

"You sair it bwana."

I followed her through the door. As we entered the kitchen, I pinched her behind. She yelped, slapped my hand and gave me an evil look. Randy and Satan laughed. Randy was rolling another joint. He finished by licking it, then placed it on the table.

"Do it again Mark, I think she likes it," he said, leering.

Gail kissed my cheek and gave both of us a cold stare.

"I'm leaving," she said, primly. "You boys be careful now and don't injure yourselves while I'm gone."

She turned as if to leave, then reached around and pinched me hard. I jumped back and she raced to the door, giggling, "Gotcha!"

She opened the door and was gone. Randy and Satan looked at me, laughing.

Satan said, "Yup, she got you. Can't control your woman there, eh Mark?"

Smiling, I shook my head. "I don't think there was a man born who could control Gail."

Satan smiled. "Yeah, she is a lot of woman. You need some help there Mark, you just let me know, right?

"Right. You know what I need help on now? I've gotta manicure about eight pounds of dope. You guys wanna help?"

It had been just over three months since I had arrived, and things had settled into a casual routine, more or less.

A few days after I arrived, Gail took me all around the Peninsula and showed me the sights – we played tourist to the max. We went to Carmel with its scurrying hordes of real tourists and had breakfast at a place called the Viennese Pastry Shop. Then we drove through Pebble Beach and the Seventeen Mile Drive, and gawked at the magnificent houses of movie stars and ordinary rich people. From there, we went over to Asilomar, Point Pinos, then on to Lover's Point and all through Pacific Grove.

At the Park by El Estero Lake in Monterey, she rented a pedal-boat and we pedaled our way around the water, looking at all the people picnicking on the shore. It was a beautiful day, almost seventy-five.

That night we dressed up, and she even put on makeup – she hardly ever did that – and we went out. She took me to a restaurant called 'Mike's' on Fisherman's Wharf. She said it was mostly for locals, not tourists. It had a sparse interior done in a nautical theme, cheap Formica-covered tables with cheap silverware and paper napkins. They weren't real busy, so we got a table by the window. When you looked out, you could see the lights reflecting off the bay. It was a gorgeous view. We split two bottles of champagne. The food was excellent, as she had promised.

After dinner, we strolled about on the wharf for a while, mingling with the multitudes of tourists and looking at the shops, and then we walked back and went up the train tracks to Cannery Row. We milled around playing tourist, looking at the old cannery buildings and the shops. At one shop, I bought her a pair of shell earrings, which she thought were pretty. Then at another shop, she bought me a sweatshirt with a silk-screen of Einstein on it. We were real tourists. We debated about going and seeing the 'Exorcist' at the Steinbeck Theater, but thought better when we saw the manager who was standing out in front, flash a gun at some young toughs who were loitering there.

Instead, she took me up to a lounge called the Boiler Room on the second floor of an old cannery building. We had a drink while listening to the house band. They were bad. Ugly. They played some unusually bad teenybopper type lounge music – 'Yummy yummy yummy I got gum in my tummy...'

As an alternative to being sick, we left and went walking up the Row, eventually finding ourselves outside the old Pacific Biological Lab where Doc Ricketts used to live – now a tourist shop. Looking across the street to the right, we saw a building which advertised itself as Lee Chong's grocery. Cattycorner the other way from the lab was a building I assumed had been the Bear Flag Restaurant.

We stood there quite a while and reminisced about Steinbeck's book, wondering what the Row had really been like back then. Finally, cloaked in the lingering mystery of Cannery Row and slightly drunk, we walked back up to the train tracks looking for the Palace Flophouse, of which there was no sign. Eventually we got back to our car.

Gail had to have a nightcap and it had to be at a bar in Carmel owned by Clint Eastwood, the Hogs Breath Inn. We drove up Prescott, then over Highway 68 and into Carmel and down Ocean Avenue. We turned right onto San Carlos and then went down a couple of blocks, then after circling the area a couple of times, found a parking spot. We walked over to the place. It was done as an Olde English Pub. Very cutesy. There were lots of well-dressed people lounging at tables, and it looked like a rich crowd. Clint wasn't there – I was devastated.

Gail ordered a cognac, and I had a seven and seven. We sat for the next couple of hours sipping several drinks, making a game of trying to guess what each of the other patrons did for a living. The results were somewhat inconclusive, but we did decide that none of them could have worked for a living. Gail thought that they looked way too uptight and that we should get a bunch of acid and dump it in the town water supply, and then stand back. She said when they all came down, they'd wake up, lose their inhibitions and be real people again. She was getting pretty drunk by then.

When we left, she stopped at a planter outside the bar, picked a handful of flowers and presented them to me with a curtsey. I accepted graciously, then guided her to the car, put her in the passenger side, and got in and drove. We went back by the freeway.

We were pulling off the freeway into Seaside when she decided we had to have just one more drink before we went home. She pointed me up Broadway, then on a series of turns till we were almost at the boundary to Fort Ord. We parked behind a long row of cars and walked up the street to JZ's after-hours place.

A huge black guy in a blue suit opened the door, saw her and let us in. There were about twenty people in there, mostly black. We went to the bar and got some drinks, and then she took me around introducing me to people. She seemed to know everyone. It turned out JZ was in a back room. She led me back there.

There was a green circular table with seven people around it playing poker. A whole lot of money and chips were on the table. Standing in the corner next to a small bar was JZ. He was about forty or fifty years old and was wearing a powder-blue suit, silver tie and had gold cuff links. A scar on the left side of his face went from jaw line to ear, and a short-trimmed mustache adorned his upper lip. He saw Gail, and smiled.

She introduced us. He was happy to see her. They talked business for a while, comparing notes, then he took us into the front room and told the bartender our drinks and anything else we wanted were on the house. Gail took this literally, got a hundred dollars in chips, and went into the back room and proceeded to lose it, playing poker.

By that time, she was really drunk. I managed to extricate her from the card game, and walked her out of the house to the car and poured her in. She went to sleep instantly when her head hit the seat.

When we got home, I carried her into the house, laid her out on the bed and undressed her. By then, she was snoring softly. So ended our night on the town.

We’d ended up moving less than a week after I came to Monterey. Gail's apartment manager had come to the door one morning, demanding to be let in so he could inspect the premises. That was all it took for Gail to start packing. She found the new place a couple days later, and with Randy and Satan's help, we moved there quickly in just one afternoon.

The new house was only a half-mile or so up the hill away from the apartment, in a nice part of Seaside. It was a two-bedroom duplex with open beamed ceilings – quite a bit larger and nicer than the apartment, very private, and better yet, had no manager with prying eyes living there on site.

Unemployment and the National Guard were working out as I had hoped. I'd started to receive unemployment within a couple of weeks of when I arrived. My transfer for the Guard hadn't come through yet, but I'd been told it would.

The business was going well, and I was making a fair bit of money. I had taken over deliveries as promised. The only thing I was having problems with was some of the walk-in traffic, Randy and Satan excluded. Some of the people were so flaky it bothered me.

Janet and Spencer were among the flakiest of the walk-ins. They lived at a place over just the other side of Broadway, the bad section of Seaside. Janet was a pretty black lady, maybe twenty-three or so. Tall, shapely, straight black hair done in a style reminiscent of Doris Day. Nice long legs. And bisexual. She always had a flock of other ladies over there, petting each other. You'd be sitting in her front room, two of them would disappear into the bedroom, then come out twenty minutes later all sweaty and ruffled looking. This made me uneasy.

Spencer was an old black guy, maybe fifty years old. He was about five ten, skinny with a full beard. He always carried a kid's type walkie-talkie, a 'Space Commando' radio. He claimed that if the cops were going to bust them, he'd hear about it on his radio first and warn us. He wasn't her lover and wasn't a relation. He wasn't her pimp. I never could figure out how he fitted in. He was really fruit loops.

They bothered me.

It was almost eight o'clock before I managed to get on the road.

In the car Gail had bought me – a 1964 Oldsmobile – I first drove to Marina to see John Parker first. Parker was a sergeant in the army. A supply sergeant – it seemed appropriate.

I got the bag out of the trunk, walked up to his door and knocked. Parker opened the door and I went in.

He smiled. "How you doing?"

"Great," I said. He was alone. I moved to the kitchen table, put down the bag, and sat. Parker sat beside me and opened the bag.

He examined the two pounds, and then nodded his head. "Looks good. How much more of this stuff is left?"

She smiled at me while sitting back down, and closed her robe somewhat. "What's a matter sugar? You sick?"

I shook my head no. She put some of the coke on the mirror, and started chopping.

"Hows about we tests this, huh? You do a couple a lines with me?"

I nodded yes. "Sure," I said, as I tried not to stare at her breasts, still visible through the opening in her robe.

She smiled and quickly drew out four lines and picked up a straw, handing it and the mirror to me.

I snorted my lines, and then passed the mirror back. She did hers and put the mirror on the bed. Spencer was still listening intently to his radio.

I looked at the paper from my wallet. "Okay, you owe me one twenty-five. Got it?"

She smiled and nodded, then stood and drug her breasts past my face again as she got the money out of the nightstand and handed it to me.

"Here you are, honey." She sat smiling, her robe now open to her crotch, which I noticed was shaved bare.

Clearing my throat, I focused on the money, and counted it. It was all there. Quite distracted, I looked up. "So when can you pay me for the new stuff?" I looked away, staring at Spencer, still sitting at the foot of the bed.

"I can pay by next week. Would that be okay?" She scratched her cheek with a long silver fingernail again, and then said, "Hey, you want to hang out tonight, sugar? I'll make it worth your while?" She raised her eyebrows and stared, smiling.

However flaky she might be, she was awfully damned good looking and I had to admit the invitation was appealing. Still, I couldn't do that to Gail.

Resisting temptation, I shook my head. "Naw, I got some more stops to make tonight. But thanks for asking." I nervously looked back over at Spencer and asked, "Hey, you heard any good busts come down on your radio?"

He broke out of his trance and looked up. His eyes were quite bloodshot, and he swayed from side to side as he spoke.

"I was listening to them last night and they was talking about this one they was gonna do – they talks all the time and I hears 'em. They talks about all sorts of people, and what be coming down. But they ain't talked about you or your lady." He put the radio down and crossed his arms. "No sir. And if they does starts to talking about you or yourn, I'm gonna tell you straight out so as nothing bad happens. You be my main man."

He looked very sincere, and so way, way out of it. He really believed this stuff. I smiled at him. "Thanks. I'm glad you're looking out for me."

I turned to Janet. "I gotta go. Call if you need anything more, okay?"

She smiled, showing a lot of teeth. "Oh, yeah sugar. I will call."

She got up, and we moved out of the bedroom and towards the front door. I nodded to the young ladies on the couch. They giggled. It looked like they could still be in high school. Janet went and sat between them as Spencer closed the door behind me.

Several hours later, I was in New Monterey parking at Debbie and Jimi's place. Jimi worked as a plumber and Debbie did the business for both of them. I'd found that they really were nice people. We had the same interests more or less. And they liked poker.

Several times, Gail had come with me and we'd sat around with them playing poker all night, snorting coke and listening to music. They knew another of Gail’s customers, Pete Bomartin. He'd come over and had played with us, several times. Nothing big. Quarter limit, three raises, nothing wild. Guts to open.

It was a lot of fun. I had nothing to hide because they were my customers. If someone I didn't know came over while I was there, we just made sure not to talk shop. I was just another poker player.

Jimi answered the door, and smiled through his bushy beard when he saw it was me. "Hey dude, we were just talking about you. C'mon in." His long hair was loose, trailing down his shoulders over his chest.

Jimi was twenty-two. A mellow person and very soft-spoken, he most usually had a smile on his face – which in part may have been due to the enormous quantities of weed he smoked. And while he was most usually stoned, he didn't let it interfere with his work – he was a journeyman plumber. He'd started working for a plumbing contractor out of Salinas while he was still in highschool, and he had completed his union's apprenticeship course by the time he was twenty. He was very responsible, very focused. While most highschool kids were out cruising for babes and burgers or otherwise goofing off after school, Jimi had sat at home smoking joint after joint – studying the building codes. He said the weed helped him memorize stuff. Really. He had a perpetually happy, oval shaped face with a faint scar on his left cheek, which he said he'd gotten in a fight as a kid.

Tonight, looking like he'd just got home from work, he was wearing a long-john shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and stained, ragged blue jeans. He was about my height, five eight, and weighed probably one eighty, all of it muscle from his work. He led me through the darkened living room back to the kitchen.

Debbie was standing at the kitchen sink, rinsing their dinner dishes. She smiled at me as I walked in. "Hey Roosevelt, you sonofabitch. Sit down. You want a beer?" Her voice as usual, was low and nasal and somewhat hoarse, probably from smoking the non-filtered Pall Malls she favored. She was wearing tight jeans and a low-cut peach-colored blouse with padded shoulders.

I pulled out a chair and sat. "Sure. I'm thirsty as hell. How you guys doing tonight?"

Debbie was twenty, although her fake ID – which I'd found out was how she was able to drink in bars – said she was twenty-three. Her fine, straight, light-brown hair was parted in the center, running down almost to the middle of her back. She was five foot six, slim, and weighed about a hundred and ten pounds. She had freckles scattered all over her face – although you had to look close to see them – and kind of a button nose that tilted upwards, and small breasts with a good figure and nice legs. She was really cute, with nice straight white teeth and full lips, and the green eyes that sometimes seemed to stare right through to your soul.

Before meeting Jimi, she'd worked as a bartender – probably the only person I'd ever met that had worked as a bartender – for almost a whole year – while still under-age, using fake ID. I had no idea how she'd pulled it off, but from what I'd heard, I assumed it must have involved a whole lot of fast talking on her part. I truly admired the nerve she had to even contemplate something like that, because it had to have taken some real balls to keep it up for a whole year. Eventually, she'd given up the job after she'd been living with Jimi and dealing for a while, claiming it interfered too much with her weed business.

She was quite a shrewd businesswoman. She'd built up her business from nothing and in the space of just a few months, had become one of my best customers. None of which was accidental, either – she had planned every move. I was always impressed with her knowledge and foresight, and just plain good sense, and I'd watched with interest as she plotted the course of her business.

She worked exceptionally hard to get what she wanted, and the fact that she was a natural speed freak helped – Debbie was always in motion. She talked fast, drank fast, thought fast, walked fast – she did everything fast. It seemed like she always had to be doing at least three things at once to be happy. She couldn't just sit and have a friendly beer. No, she'd drink a beer and talk as she washed the dishes, or maybe as she cleaned the kitchen. Which as it turned out, actually worked well – because she had a mania for cleanliness and her house was always spotless.

Throwing the dishrag in the sink, she grabbed a beer out of the fridge and sat down next to Jimi, placing the beer in front of me. "We're doing good," she said, tapping her fingers on the table. "I got off most of that batch of regs from last week. I should be ready for more in a couple a days. What are you gonna have?"

I swallowed a drink of the beer then said, "That's why I came over. I've got a sample of some new stuff for you guys to try."

I pulled out a bag and passed it to her. She and Jimi looked at the weed.

Jimi asked her, "Smoke some?"

Debbie let him have the baggie, then turned back to me. "So how's Gail? She working tonight? When are you guys gonna be ready for another game?"

I smiled. "She's fine. She had to work tonight. I think she may be getting tomorrow night off, though. She was talking about asking David to cover for her. What say I give you guys a call about a game tomorrow?"

She nodded her head. "That'd be outasite. I've got some new coke she'd like. Big flakes. Peruvian. It's cut with vitamin B-12. Snort coke and get healthy at the same time. What more could you ask for?" She grinned.

Jimi laughed. "Yeah, but the B-12 is hard as shit on your nose. You just can't chop it fine enough."

He licked the joint and lit it. Debbie watched him take a hit, saying, "Yeah, so what? It's gotta be sixty percent pure. The stone is outrageous."

Jimi held in the smoke till he burst, then exhaling, said, "Yeah, the stone is good, but you won't be saying it's nice when you go in for surgery for a deviated septum." He paused, and then went on, "Hmm. That's pretty good smoke. How much?"

I waved away the joint Debbie tried to pass me and quoted her the prices. She gave it back to Jimi.

"This is good," she said. "Looks kind of weird, but it has a good high. Is it all this dry?"

I frowned. "Yeah. At least what I've seen anyway. Supposedly, it's last years' crop – been warehoused all last year. That's why it's so dry. The guy Gail gets it from is gonna open a bunch up and try a humidifier, see if he can make it a little less crumbly. Still, if you're careful when you break down the bricks, you can get good tops out of it. Lots of them. And there are hardly any seeds."

Looking thoughtful, Jimi stared off into space for a few seconds, and then turned to me. "Maybe we should tell everyone it's sensimilla." He got a really wide smile on his face. "Yeah!" He picked up the bag and said, "This, is Guerreran green sensimilla!"

Debbie and I laughed.

"Sounds good to me," I said. "I like it."

Debbie nodded. "It's weird. You give somebody a bag of dope and don't say anything, sometimes they like it, and sometimes they don't. But if you tell them it's Maui Wowee, or Acapulco Gold or whatever, you know, give it a big build up, then they start falling over saying it's the best stuff they ever tasted." She took the bag from Jimi, held it up and toasted it with her beer. "I christen thee Guerreran green sensimilla! Weed extraordinaire!"

We all toasted the baggie and took a chug of beer.

Jimi asked, "What kind of wrappers do the bricks have?"

"The sample we have was a green wrap."

Jimi looked disappointed. "No pictures? No funny writing, 'Inspected by number 69' or whatever?"

"Sorry."

"Oh, what the fuck."

He took another hit of his beer.

Debbie asked, "Hey, did you hear someone spotted Patty Hearst again, just north of Santa Cruz? I heard it on the news today. They said the FBI has just about cracked the case, and arrests are imminent and all that shit." She took a hit of beer.

Jimi was slouched back in his chair. He put his beer on the table and said in a low voice, "It wouldn't surprise me if the SLA was holed up in the mountains there in Santa Cruz. Man, it can really get strange back there in the mountains - it's like a different world."

He looked at me. "One time I was at a place up in Ben Lomond called the Chateau. Big beer bust. Maybe two hundred people. Two bands. All freaks. Everybody's smoking and doing dope right there in front of god and everyone. It was great! You run out of dope, there's dealers all over the place, so many of them that you could get lids of really good shit for like five bucks. Good ones too, full ounces. The place was a riot, and right there in the center of town, too. It was an old community hall or something."

He leaned forward. "Just before midnight, I'm outside in the parking lot getting some air. There's a lot of people outside, hanging out doing coke and shooting the shit. In one car, some lady's doing the train, and there's a line of guys outside, waiting their turns. All of a sudden, three sheriff's cars pull in, lights flashing. They get out, and everyone starts running every which direction. Figure we're toasted. The deputies form kind of a line, six of them, then start walking towards the main door. They're not coming in my direction, so I'm not real worried. I decide to stay put and see what happens."

He paused for a hit of beer then continued.

"They stand there talking at the door for about five minutes. I guess they weren't real sure they wanted to confront two hundred seriously fucked up hippies. Finally, they're just drawing their nightsticks, looking like they're gonna go in, when around the corner of the building comes this old Power Wagon. It slides to a stop in a cloud of dust under this street light about twenty feet from them, and you hear this really loud, crack-slam noise. The cops jump, and turn around. When the dust clears, you can see the Power Wagon better. It's one of those old open jobs like from the Second World War, and in the back, there's this freak standing there – with a fucking fifty-caliber machine gun – that's pointed at the cops! You can see the ammo belt hanging out the side of the gun, man was it outasite! The crack-slam we heard was the hippie racking the bolt of the gun."

He paused for another sip.

"The cops look like they're gonna shit. Big time. They just stand there, not moving a muscle. Finally, the driver calls out to them, asking why they're there. The head cop answers that they'd had a noise complaint. The guy in the Power Wagon asks them, ‘What noise?’ The band had stopped playing when they found out the cops were outside. The head cop hesitates for a second, and then says he guesses the complaint must have been bogus. The other cops start nodding their heads. They're all really scared, you could tell. Then the guy in the Power Wagon says, well, since the complaint isn't true, why don't you guys all leave?"

Jimi lit a cigarette, and then went on.

"You shoulda seen the cops. All at once, it's 'Yup yup yup. False complaint. No sense staying. We'll leave right now. Yup yup yup.' They start out for their cars, real careful like. The guy with the machine gun keeps it pointed at them as they leave. They get in, turn their lights off, and then peel rubber out of there. The freaks in the Power Wagon watch them leave, take a bow, then go back where they came from."

Debbie and I let out our collective breaths. Everybody had hits off their beers.

Jimi lay back in his chair again, smiling. "No shit, the Santa Cruz Mountains are one trippy place. Weathermen, Symbionese Liberation Army, Black Panthers, White Panthers, regular old SDS, yeah, they got 'em all up there." He shook his head.

I asked, "Did the cops ever come back that night?"

Jimi smiled. "Nope. Never saw them again, and I was there till about four AM. Bands played as loud as ever. Nothing happened at all. I guess the cops decided it would be in their best interest to pretend they hadn't seen anything. Shit, I mean who wants to take on a fuckin' fifty caliber machine gun? They use those things for shooting down aircraft, for Christ's sake!"

He shook his head again and we all laughed.

Debbie asked me, "Has Gail taken you to Club Zayante yet?" I shook my head no. She continued, "You gotta go there. It's this place just out of Felton, in the mountains. They have really good music there - blues, mostly. Jill Croston, William Strickland, Ron Thompson play there all the time. Sometimes they get some big names. I saw Elvin Bishop there once, Nick Gravanites once and John Lee Hooker, and Charlie Musselwhite, too. And," she paused for a moment, then in a low voice, said, "They have a nude swimming pool there. I love it. Have dinner, get drunk, listen to good music, and go swimming bare-assed naked. All at the same time, more or less." She took Jimi's hand in hers. "Maybe the four of us can go up there sometime."

Jimi laughed, and I said, "Uh, well, we'll see what happens. I don't know if I'm ready for Santa Cruz, yet. But I will mention it to Gail. Nude swimming at a bar? Jesus, what'll they think of next?"

Jimi laughed again. "Only in Santa Cruz." He looked at my beer, which was empty. "You want another cold one?"

I looked at my watch. It was past ten thirty. "I've got a couple more stops I've gotta make tonight. I'd like to, but I shouldn't." I sighed. "I really should get going."

He asked, "You going down the Half' later?"

"Yeah, I oughta be there before midnight."

He looked at Debbie, his eyebrows raised. She nodded.

He said, "Okay, we'll meet you down there." He looked at Debbie again. "Now?"

She nodded and drained the rest of her beer. She grabbed her purse and we all got up. They kissed briefly, and then we put on our coats and filed out, Jimi turning off the lights as we went.

It only took about five minutes to drive to Laura Lee and Jim's. It was a little house off on a side street in PG – Pacific Grove. Nice middle class neighborhood. I knocked on the door. Laura let me in.

Laura Lee and Jim were college students. They were actually married, not just living together, and both were in their early twenties. Laura was about five foot five and one twenty. Straight blond hair cut like Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary. Jim was over six feet, skinny, with short brown hair. They both looked really straight. Most of their trade was with other students. They didn't really do any volume, and didn't appear to want to. Still, they were good customers.

I said hello, then went in and she shut the door behind me. Jim came over and we exchanged greetings and shook hands. The front room had a couch and a couple of chairs, all in nice condition. Hanging on the wall were what looked like Navajo rugs, all earth-tone colors, quite striking, actually. They had a fire going in their fireplace.

Laura sat us down next to the fire and asked, "So have you got it?"

I nodded. "I'm sorry I'm so late, but it's been one of those evenings. I think maybe I'm gonna stop trying to work on Friday nights, there's just too much other stuff happening. Here." I handed them the bag with the half-pound.

Jim asked, "It's the same as the last we had?"

I nodded again. "Yeah, and still sixty a half. You think you're gonna need more anytime soon?" I noticed an antique clock on the mantle. It was almost eleven PM.

They looked at each other, and then Laura spoke.

"We're not sure. We have this guy that says he may take a quarter. If he does, we'll need to get more within a couple of days. If not, it'll be next week."

I nodded and said, "Okay. Just let me know. I have a few more pounds of this stuff left, but it'll be gone in three or four days. Here's what we're getting in next." I pulled a baggie of the green stuff out of my pocket and handed it to her, then gave her the price structure. They looked at the bag.

Jim asked, "Can we have some of this to smoke?"

"The bag is yours. Keep it. Smoke it with your friends. If you like it, buy some."

"Wow, thanks man!"

He smiled at Laura Lee. I got up. "I've got more stops to make, so I better go. You got the sixty from last week?" They paid me the money and I was on my way to Bomartin's place.

Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting on one of the mattresses in Pete Bomartin's living room, laying back listening to the Grateful Dead do 'Box of Rain', having a sip off an ice cold Dos Equis, and watching Pete carve his name on a Buck knife with an engraving tool he just got from somebody for a lid. I was lost in the song when Pete slipped, and accidentally drilled a hole in his finger.

Bomartin was about twenty-one. He was maybe five foot nine and skinny as a rail. With a wild imagination and being a firm devotee of Firesign Theater, Peter was always stoned. His favorite "snack" was a fat joint of Thai weed dipped in hash oil, and he could smoke more and still maintain better than almost anyone I'd ever met. Where everyone else would be ready to pass out in a coma from too much dope, Peter would simply give the "lightweights," as he called them, a disdainful look. And then he'd light up another joint, and launch into one of the wild, off-the-wall stories he loved to tell – especially when he had a captive audience that was too stoned to move. He had a full beard and mustache neatly trimmed short, with long, straight brown hair that fell over his shoulders, and round glasses with wire frames, like John Lennon wore – and coincidentally, he looked a little like Lennon.

"Shit! Fucking sonofabitch! God dammit!" He waved the finger in the air and then put it in his mouth.

I choked back a laugh. "Ah, Pete. Maybe you should wait until tomorrow when you're straight to screw with the Dremmel?"

He took the finger out of his mouth. "Naw, man. I just got this today. Shit, I just wanted to try it out." He shook his head. "Aw, what the fuck." He reached into a small box beside the mattress. "Thai stick. That'll make me feel better."

He started to pull buds off of a stick he extracted from a baggie. He took a small pipe out of his pants pocket and filled it with the weed. He held out the pipe to me.

"You wanna do the honors?"

I shook my head no. He lit the pipe and took a huge hit. He held the smoke for what seemed like at least a minute, and then looking like he was going to choke, let it out all at once and started coughing.

"You okay, dude?" I asked.

He nodded his head while continuing to cough.

After a couple of minutes, the coughing fit subsided. He looked at me, and in a theatrical gesture, drew the back of his hand over his brow.

"Jesus!" He smiled, "That is some stuff! Lordy, lordy."

He lit the pipe again, and took a smaller hit. He exhaled, and amazingly, didn't cough. He put the pipe down.

"Okay. Now I feel all better. That shit could fix everything up to decapitation."

Suddenly he widened his eyes, started going cross-eyed, then began jerking his head left and right, while his eyes tracked in the opposite direction, looking like a junkie that was high on nitrous oxide who had just shot up a load of battery acid. Abruptly, he stopped making faces, then narrowed his eyes, and looked very serious.

"Of course the side effects are somewhat of a problem. We've got to work some more bugs out of it. And speaking of bugs, hey! Today only, we're having a one-time special for your gastronomic enjoyment! I've got some chocolate covered ants in the bedroom. You game?"

His eyes were wide again. He looked like a lunatic.

I laughed. "I think I'll take a big pass on that one. You've been listening to too much Firesign Theater, dude. You're one crazed motherfucker."

He raised his eyebrows up and down looking like Groucho Marx. "Yeah, well I'm from misery, whadaya expect? Ma and Pa kept me out in the barn with the hogs till I was eight! Try eating slop for eight years and see what you're like!"

"You stoned sonofabitch." I laughed again. "Hey, what's misery, anyway?"

"Misery? You ain't heard of Misery?" He looked incredulous. "You're a fuckin' geek! It's the place they raise hogs, corn - you know farmers, rednecks and all that shit. Misery. Spelled M-i-s-s-o-u-r-I – Misery. God I'm glad to be gone from that fucking abysmal place. If I ever see another goddamn pig, it'll be too soon."

I cracked up.

He listened to the stereo for a minute. The Dead were singing.

"Look out, look out, the Candyman.

Here he come then he's gone again.

Pretty ladies ain't got no friend,

till the Candyman comes 'round again."

Bomartin looked at me. "Hey, they're singing about you, man."

"Say what?"

"They're singing about you. You're the Candyman. You go around bring everyone treats to make them happy. Yeah, that's you, man.

I listened to the song and thought about the words. "Knowing the Dead, they're probably talking about their coke dealer. Or maybe Owsley."

Bomartin nodded vigorously. "Yeah, exactly. You're the same thing. Yeah, that's what I'll call you. I been trying to think of a nickname for you. It's perfect! Mark the Candyman. I like it."

I laughed, and shook my head. "What ever makes you happy, man."

The song ended. He got up to put on a new record.

I asked, "Hey, how about some Bad Company? The side with 'Can't Get Enough of Your Love'?"

"Don't mind if I do."

We listened to the music in silence. When the last song ended, I spoke.

"Hey, I gotta go. I'm gonna meet Jimi and Debbie down at the Half' at midnight. You wanna come?"

"Yeah, I'd like to go to the Half'."

"What say we mosey on down then?"

"Cool, man. Just let me get my coat and stash the weed."

He took the grocery bag of weed I had delivered and went into the kitchen. A moment later, he returned wearing a leather bomber jacket. He beat his fists on his chest and gave a Tarzan cry, then snapped his head up, and adjusted his glasses.

"Let's blow this joint."

"Mark. Wake up." A soft voice was in my ear. I could smell coffee. Coffee? I lifted my head and opened my eyes slowly. There was light coming in around the edge of the curtains on the bedroom window. Puzzled, I looked at the clock: Ten thirty-five in the morning.

I’d gone down to the Half Way House and met Jimi and Debbie and Pete Bomartin, and we’d stayed almost till closing. Gail had me leave a little early to go home and chop lines of coke. Our plan had been that she would close the bar and then meet me at home as quickly as possible. We figured to do the coke and make love all night long.

I blinked my eyes, groggy from too much beer. To the best of my recollection, I’d just finished cutting out the lines of coke a few minutes ago. I’d laid down on the bed to rest afterwards, and had just barely closed my eyes. How on earth could it be ten thirty-five in the morning?

But I could still smell the coffee. I rolled onto my back and looked up.

Gail was in her bathrobe standing at the side of the bed, leaning down holding a cup of coffee out towards me. I was laying on top of the blankets with a comforter thrown over me. I pushed myself into a semi-sitting position and accepted the coffee.

I took a large gulp, and then cleared my throat. "What happened?"

"I got home about a quarter to three. There you were, asleep. You looked so peaceful, I couldn't wake you. I was awful beat, too. What a night!" She sat down beside me on the edge of the bed.

I shook my head to clear out some of the cobwebs, then said, "Oh well. Were there any problems after I left?"

"No. Everything was cool. It was hard to get rid of everyone, though. Even with the early last call. Par for the course, I suppose."

"Huh. Were you able to get tonight off?" I took another sip of the coffee.

"Yes, thank god. Hey," she paused, reaching for me under the covers. "You wanna fool around?" She grinned.

Afterwards, we had just gotten out of the shower when the phone rang. Gail ran off to pick it up.

Smiling widely, she came back into the bathroom a couple minutes later, as I was toweling dry. "Hey guess what?" She asked. "Bruce and Lorretta are down from Seattle, and they brought Stan and Dudley with them. I guess we're gonna have a party!"

I'd talked with Bruce several times since I'd arrived in Seaside, and with Gail's blessing, had told him what we were doing and invited him and Lorretta down. There hadn't been anything solid set, but I wasn't surprised that he and the others had shown up. I'd had a feeling they would soon.

Stan was Bruce's brother, and another of our mutual friends from Seattle. Stan and Bruce had dealt weed through highschool, lids mostly, and they'd been one of my first and best connections. Everything I'd learned about dealing before I came to California had been from them. To have them coming down here now with me being a dealer was the greatest thing that could have ever happened. I felt so superior, because I was now dealing far more weight than they ever had. Me the former pupil, had surpassed his teachers. They'd be so proud.

Dudley was another friend, a draft dodger. His number had come up in 1970 and rather than be sent to Viet Nam, he'd taken off from where he was living at his mother's and had spent the last four years on the road, moving from one friend's house to another. He had narrowly escaped being busted by the FBI on a number of occasions, and he reveled in telling of his exploits, staying as he called it, 'One step ahead of the shoeshine.' Dudley was also an excellent guitarist – much better than I was – and he and I had often played together while I lived in Seattle.

They arrived about fifteen minutes later. Gail broke out some Thai sticks and Mexican beer and we proceeded to get wasted.

"So what happened then?" I asked, taking a large drink of my Dos Equis.

Bruce and I were sitting at the kitchen table drinking beer, exchanging gossip about Seattle. Gail and the others were sitting in the living room.

Bruce had a long, lanky build, and was around five foot ten. Two years older than me, he had wavy, shoulder-length brown hair and a mustache. What you noticed first about him though, were his glasses with the heavy brown frames, and the extra-thick, curved lenses. What seemed like a long ways off in back of the coke-bottle lenses, his brown eyes were red-rimmed from his long drive. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a dark blue thermal underwear shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He took a drink of his beer and gestured at me with it.

"No shit, Rosy, it was a helluva party. We musta had thirty-forty people there. All getting high and having a good time, listening to some tunes. Next thing we know there are goddamn cops pouring all over the place, shouting 'Stop, Police! This is a raid!' We all get straight real fast. The cops, they line everyone up, and ask who lives there. Me, Lorretta and Stan speak up. They tell us to sit down on the couch then they tell the others all to leave. Johnny Vale was standing next to me, so I pass him my dope and he and the others split, all bummed out, bitching at the cops as they leave. After everyone finally gets out, the three of us sit down on the couch and then the head oinker starts questioning us while the others search the place. Stan's real paranoid 'cause he's got some plants out in back. Lorretta's holding his hand trying to calm him down. Every question the cop asks, I just look at him and say, 'Gee Mr. Po-lice Officer, we were just having this little party, drinking some brew and we don't know nothing about any mari-ju-ana or other illegal drugs."

"Did they ever find the plants?"

He nodded. "Yeah, in about two minutes. Cop comes in from out back, and asks us to get up and look out through the sliding glass doors at what's sitting on top of the doghouse. We look – they'd found Stan's plants and set them there on top of Eric's doghouse. We all look at each other and ask, 'Gee, what are those?' The cop grabs my shoulder, spinning me around, and says, 'Those are your tickets to jail, sonny. Illegal cultivation of marijuana plants.' They start reading us our rights and handcuff us, then sit us back on the couch while they finish tossing the house. Man, I'd like to tell you I was about ready to shit."

"Was there any other dope in the house?" I took a drink of my beer.

"Naw. The only thing we had right then was the lid I handed Vale. Lucky, I guess. Anyway, so we sat like that for about fifteen minutes while they searched. All of a sudden, we hear a scream, and this cop comes running in from out back. He's screaming at the other cops, 'The plants are gone, the plants are gone!' God, we about bust a gut. Turns out that Vale had gone around in back, and hid in the woods and watched what was happening. When he saw the cops had got the plants, he waited till they were all inside, then went and snatched the damn things!"

I laughed, almost choking on my beer. "No shit?"

Bruce nodded, smiling. "No shit. The cops hassled us and kept on searching the house for another hour, but when they didn't find anything, they ended up taking the handcuffs off and letting us go. But lemme tell you, they were some kinda pissed! Saw Vale the next day down at Casey's and he told me what he'd done. Got a helluva good laugh. Jesus those pigs were pissed!"

At that moment, Stan sat down next to us and held out a joint of Thai weed. I declined, and he passed it to Bruce who took a big hit.

"Bruce was just telling me about when you guys almost got busted," I said to Stan.

Stan was a year older than Bruce. He had the same thick-lensed glasses, but was clean-shaven and had straight blond hair, which he kept short. A couple inches shorter than Bruce, he was the straight-man of the pair. Where Bruce was always the comic playing for the crowd, Stan was more serious and intent. When they were dealing, Stan was always the one who ended up making the business decisions. As he often said, if he had left the business to his brother, Bruce would have ended up giving everything away. Dressed in what looked like clothes that were nearly identical to Bruce's, he sat down next to us.

"No shit. It was pretty damn close," said Stan. "If Vale hadn't done his commando trip and made off with those plants, this boy'd be making big rocks into little ones right now."

Bruce laughed. "Yeah, and I'd be getting my dance card punched by the big, ugly sonofabitch in C block that has the tattoo of a battleship on his chest."

"I think I could take a big pass on that," I said, smiling.

"No shit, Rosy," said Bruce. "We can all take a big pass on that."

Pushing up the sleeves of his shirt, Stan leaned back in his chair and asked, "Hey you catch the news lately?" I shook my head and he went on, "You haven't heard that Nixon was named as an unindicted co-conspirator by the Watergate Grand Jury?"

Exhaling a cloud of marijuana smoke, Bruce added, "Fucking dickhead's up to his ass in alligators, and 'bout time, too."

I looked back at Stan. "I haven't watched the news in a few days. What happened?"

Stan smiled broadly, and then said, "It came out several days ago. The Federal Grand Jury investigating the Watergate cover-up named Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator. Because he wasn't on the indictment, he's not charged with anything, at least officially. But the congress will still be able to use the information as the basis for impeachment. Last I heard before we left, Pete Rodino was calling for a floor vote on impeachment in the House by August first. Fucking Nixon's gonna be toast. He's finally gonna pay. Finally." He accepted the joint from Bruce and took a deep hit.

I nodded. "Gail figures he's gonna be impeached. Me, I still find it hard to believe he won't worm his way out of it somehow. We're talking about one slimy motherfucker." I laughed and went on, "What the fuck, I guess I'll have to start watching the news again. If the man's gonna fry, I wanna watch every minute of it. Fucker owes me that much for screwing up my life, getting me drafted."

Bruce laughed. "Yeah, fry baby, fry!"

Still holding his hit, Stan handed the joint back to Bruce, then quickly expelled the pungent smoke and broke into a coughing fit. When he finally finished coughing, he asked, "So you and Gail are dealing, huh?"

"Yeah. We're getting by." I smiled nonchalantly.

"What do you do?"

"Oh, weed mostly. But we do a little coke, acid and speed and whatnot as well."

"How much weed you doing?" asked Bruce, peering at me through the thick lenses.

I shrugged and said in an off-hand manner, "Oh, I dunno. Maybe twenty pounds a week."

Both faces showed surprise. "No shit?" said Stan. "That's pretty damn good. How much are you doing pounds for?"

I was really enjoying this. "Between one ten and one twenty. Depends on exactly what we've got and how many you buy at one time," I said crisply, savoring the moment.

Stan nodded. "Hmm. That's pretty good prices. We're paying one and a quarter up north. Got a sample?"

I scooted my chair back from the table. "Sure, hang on a minute and I'll get some." I rose and went towards the bedroom, giving Lorretta a quick smile as I passed through the living room. She, Dudley and Gail were sitting on the couch, talking.

Lorretta was beautiful. High cheekbones that gave her an aristocratic look and deep blue eyes, all framed by strawberry blonde hair that fell loosely over her shoulders. I'd always had a crush on her, but as she was Bruce's old lady, I'd never had an opportunity for exploration. She was a year older than me, about five foot nine, and probably weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds. She'd been with Bruce now for over five years, and we had grown to be good friends, if nothing else.

Of the bunch, she was the spiritual one, always searching for some inner truth, some mystical explanation. Still, all things considered, I think I liked Gail's straightforward, pragmatic approach to life better than Lorretta's. When it came down to it, I'd never been big on spiritualism. It did make for some interesting arguments, though.

While she went to school and worked part-time as a secretary for a real estate office in Burien, Lorretta figured her real calling was art – she was quite a good artist. Her favorite medium was watercolors, but she also sketched using charcoals and pastels, and she did some mixed media stuff. I had a couple of her paintings stashed at my parent's house, paintings I'd really admired. After pestering her endlessly for several months, she'd eventually relented and sold the paintings to me for some weed – as well as a couple tickets for a Quicksilver concert at the Eagles Auditorium in Seattle. One painting was a portrait of Jimi Hendrix patterned after the cover of "Cry of Love." The other was of Pike Place Market at twilight. I figured they'd be worth big bucks someday.

I grabbed a brick out of the closet and went back into the kitchen. Sitting down, I handed the blue construction paper-wrapped kilo to Stan.

He looked at it tentatively, as though he was weighing it in his hands.

"Can I open it?" he asked.

I smiled broadly. "Sure, go for it."

At that moment, Dudley appeared. "Wow, man. Is that a kilo?" he asked.

"No, it's a fucking giraffe," said Stan sarcastically as he peeled back the paper.

Dudley was almost six feet tall, skinny, and had long blond hair parted in the middle, that reached the middle of his back. He was wearing a pair of jeans with an American flag sewn on the cuffs, and an off-white linen shirt open at the neck, where a peace sign hanging from a bead necklace was visible. An angular, almost feminine face and clean-shaven – if indeed he did shave. His real name was Bill Culligan, but since he had gone underground from the draft, he'd insisted everyone call him Dudley. He felt that the less people there were that knew his real name, the safer he'd be.

He'd evaded the draft because he was opposed to the war in Viet Nam on both moral and philosophical grounds, as well as being opposed to the army generally. He had ridiculed me for my own compromise solution of joining the National Guard to escape the draft. Dudley was a person who didn't believe in compromise.

Another point we differed on was guns. While he refused to have anything at all to do with firearms, I had come to feel that guns were a good idea for personal protection. In fact, a necessity for someone in my line of work, a point to which Gail had eventually acceded. Gail and I both had recently bought handguns at my urging. Hers was a .25 Beretta, mine was a more powerful, model 1911, Colt .45 automatic. I felt good having them in the house. It made me feel more secure. But Dudley would have freaked if he'd known we had them. A real peace freak.

"Gee," he said, smiling, "Are you sure it's a giraffe?"

Bruce nodded. "And this is a fucking zebra." He hefted his beer and took a large hit.

Stan looked at the open kilo and ran his fingers over the pressed block of weed, searching out buds. "It looks pretty good. Are they all this dry?"

"Yeah, right now, at least," I said. "This is the tail end of a batch. The quality of the last few hasn't been as good as the rest. Got some new stuff coming in after it – bright green – looks kinda weird. But it does smoke good."

"Can we smoke some of this now?" asked Bruce.

I shrugged. "Yeah, if you want to. But after smoking Thai weed, it ain't gonna seem very good."

"That's cool," said Bruce. To Stan, he asked, "You got the papers?"

"I got 'em," said Dudley, taking the pack of Zig Zags out of his pocket and passing them to Stan.

At that moment, I heard the phone ring, and a few minutes later while they were smoking the joint, Gail came in and announced that Debbie, Jimi and Pete Bomartin were on their way over to join the party.

I had moved into the living room and was talking with Lorretta and Gail when the phone ran yet again.

I stood up. "I'll get it."

I went in the bedroom, expecting it was Jimi, as they hadn't shown up yet.

I picked up the receiver. "Hello."

Janet's thick voice slowly responded, "Hey, sugar. How’s y’all doing?" It sounded like she was about ready to pass out. She must have been way, way stoned.

Not wanting to have to deal with her at that precise moment, I said curtly, "I'm doing just fine. What can I do for you?"

She hesitated for a second, then said haltingly, "Uh, sugar... uh, I just wanted to axe you if I could get another of those things, you know, the ski stuff... Uh, can I come by now?" She sounded really wasted. I’d fronted her the gram of coke the night before, and apparently she wanted another one. I figured she must have been doing a bunch of heroin with the coke to sound like she did. Speedball city.

I frowned, uneasy at the thought. I didn't like heroin. Plus, I didn’t like it when she came by, and in any event, I really didn’t want to front her any more dope until she paid on her bill. "You got some bucks for me?" I asked.

"Aw, c'mon, sugar. You knows I'm good for it," she said thickly.

"I do. But, I'm sorry. I can't front you any more until you pay down your bill."

"Please, Mark? My cousins, they’s down from the city and they's really hurting." She sounded desperate.

"I'm sorry, I can't. You're gonna have to pay down your bill, first."

She pleaded, "Then let me talk to Gail, she'll let me. We go way back, me and her."

"Janet, it won't make any difference. She'll tell you the same thing."

She exploded, angry now. "Bullshit! Me and that lady is tight! Put her on the goddamn phone right nows or I'll hang-up and come and talk to her in person. I don't have to take this kinda shit!"

"Hang on," I said simply.

I put the phone down and went into the living room. I got Gail's attention and crooked my finger at her. She got up from the couch where she was still talking with Lorretta, and came over.

"What's up?" She asked.

I frowned. "Janet's on the phone. Wants me to front her some more blow. I told her that she’s gotta pay down her bill first, and now she wants to talk with you. She won't take no for an answer. She's pretty wasted, and she's pissed."

"How much does she owe?"

"A little over three hundred. I just don't feel good about fronting her more before she pays some on her bill. She's just too damn flaky. And she's way too fucked up, already."

Gail looked annoyed. "Okay. I agree. I'll tell her."

I followed her into the bedroom. Gail picked up the phone from where it was laying on the nightstand.

"Hi, Janet. What's the problem? ... Yes, that's what he told me... Yes, I understand, but ... No, I can't, you owe me over three hundred dollars right now..."

I could hear screaming coming from the receiver, which Gail was holding away from her ear.

"Look, I'm very sorry to hear that but there's nothing that I can do. You come and pay off half of it and I'll extend more credit ... That's not my problem. I won't give you any more until you've paid some on you bill ... Yes, it is."

The noise was audible from across the room as Janet slammed the phone down. Gail replaced the receiver. She shrugged.

"Pretty pissed, huh?" I asked.

She smiled. "That's an understatement, I think. But she'll get over it when she comes down. C'mere."

I moved close to her and we kissed, long and passionate. She'd smoked and drank quite a bit that evening, and as usual, it made her horny.

I broke off the kiss and pulled back a bit. "I think we better get out of the bedroom real quick or we're gonna be in here for hours, huh?"

She smiled, clinging to me tightly. "Uh huh. You know, it's great to have Bruce and them here, huh? Makes me think it's three years ago."

"Except it's better now than it was then."

We kissed again, long and deep. There was a knock at the door. We moved apart and Gail opened the door. It was Pete Bomartin.

Tonight he was wearing a white t-shirt, frayed blue jeans, and black, square-toed boots.

"Hey, ladies and gents, how the hell ya doing?" He said, smiling, a big reefer sticking out of his mouth.

"Hi, Peter," said Gail. "Jimi and Deb here too?"

"Yeah, they're out there talking with Mark's friends." He turned to me. "How you doing Candyman?" He stuck out his hand at me and we shook.

"Not bad bro," I said. "Hey, let's go out there and I'll introduce you guys around." I pulled Gail behind me and ventured out into the living room, now brimming with people.

Several hours later the house was getting really packed. Randy and Satan had shown up, bringing a case of beer with them. Stan, Jimi, Bruce, Satan and I were in the kitchen playing cards, with Randy observing. Dudley, Gail and the other ladies were in the living room talking. Everyone was smoking and drinking. I was having a great time.

Randy exhaled a tremendous lungful of marijuana smoke and passed the joint to Bruce.

"And then," he said, "The cops busted the sonofabitch. That was all there was to it. Just drug his poor ass off to jail. Hell of a bad day."

Jimi looked at me. "You guys gonna bullshit or play cards?"

I was dealer this hand. "Uh, right. Lessee, how many you want?"

"Three." I dealt the cards.

"Stan?"

"One."

"Oh, we got a pat hand here, huh? Satan?"

"Four." He grimaced.

"You gotta show an ace."

"Right, right." He turned an ace over and shoved the rejects towards me. I dealt him four new cards.

There was a great crash, and the front door burst open. Two black men jumped inside, waving guns. A gun in each hand. They screamed at us.

"Everyone down on the floor, now! Move!"

The larger one motioned at me with one of his guns and screamed shrilly, "You wanna die, motherfucker? I told you to move! Now!"

I was frozen, stuck to my chair. Jimi grabbed my shoulder and shoved me down onto the linoleum. I slammed down hard, and lay there shivering, the adrenaline rushes making me giddy and sober. From the front room, I could hear a woman sobbing, softly.

The smaller of the two blacks screamed at us again to lie still, and I raised my head slightly to look. He was standing in the middle of the living room, with people laying all about his feet, bodies everywhere on the carpet. His partner stepped gingerly over the prostrate forms and then stood next to me in the kitchen, and began rummaging in the refrigerator. They were both dressed in black pants and black turtleneck sweaters.

"Now you all listen here!" the small one shouted, pointing his guns menacingly in opposite directions. They looked like 9 mm Browning’s. "Listen! If'n you're all good and behave, no one's gonna die. We're gonna take what we want and then we're gonna leave. We don't want no goddamn trouble. Anybody gets cute, they'll get a fucking bullet. Hey! You in the blue! Get your head down, now! And you! Eat that carpet!"

I was wearing a blue shirt, so I quickly lowered my head. I found that with my cheek lying on the floor, I could still see them. My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest.

The one going through the refrigerator was about my size, and had close-cropped kinky hair, and a pockmarked face. He stopped abruptly, having found our coke stash, which he put in his pocket. He then stepped over me and grabbed the open kilo from where it still sat the table, and tossed it to his partner in the living room. Then I could hear him gathering up the poker money from the table.

That done, he pulled a pillow case out of his back pocket and began removing our wallets, stuffing them in the pillow case. I could still hear a woman sobbing in the living room, and I thought it sounded like Lorretta. The black moved into the front room and began removing jewelry from the ladies fingers and going through their purses. Next to me I could hear the sounds of Jimi and Stan's labored breathing.

Every muscle in my body was tensed to run a race, but I couldn't move. I wanted to jump up and try to disarm them like you see on TV, but it was all I could do just to breathe. I felt so utterly helpless, violated – and absolutely scared shitless, more afraid of dying than I ever had been before in my life.

The larger one moved off into the bedroom while his partner guarded us, and then shortly came back with a grocery bag of what I figured must be our weed. The smaller one spoke again.

"Now, all you good people have been just fine to us tonight, and I wants to thank y'all. We're gonna leave now. I want you to all stay where you are for five minutes. You hear me? Don't move for five minutes! Me and my partner, we're gonna be outside looking through the windows, and if'n anybody moves, they's gonna die! Hear me? You in the blue, hear me? Don't move your bones or you'll die!"

They stepped over the trembling bodies lying on the floor, a sack in each of their left hands, guns in their right. I heard the door open and close. Lorretta was still sobbing. I could hear others breathing deeply.

I turned to Jimi and stammered in a coarse whisper, "You think they're really watching?"

"I dunno, dude, but I don't aim to find out!" He whispered back.

I waited for another long minute, and then when I couldn't stand it any longer, I jumped up, racing for the bedroom and my gun.

They hadn't found it, buried in a stack of laundry at the bottom of the closet. I checked the clip and then racked it. As I ran back through the living room, gun in hand, people were starting to get up. I stopped by the front door and flicked off the lights. Looking out the window next to the door, I couldn't see anyone outside under the amber glow of the streetlight. Bruce and Jimi's cars were out on the street and across the other side was Randy's old Caddy, then Gail's and my cars were in the driveway. No people at all, and no other cars. I locked the deadbolt which was undamaged - the door hadn't even been locked when they kicked it in - then after closing the window shades, I turned the lights back on.

Gail came to me and we hugged, pressing tightly into each other. She turned back to the others.

"Is everyone alright?" She asked.

There were murmurs of agreement from the room.

Jimi walked up to us and asked, "Have you got another gun?"

Gail nodded and I said, "Yeah, I'll get it, hang on." I walked towards the bedroom, calling back to him, "You wanna help me find them?"

"Damn straight, dude."

I dug Gail's gun out of the closet and checked it, then brought it back and handed it to Jimi. Debbie was holding his arm.

"You guys be gawdawful careful," she said. To Jimi, "I don't want you coming home in a box."

He kissed her as I kissed Gail, and then we left, running for my car.

Doors slammed, ignition on, I dropped the car into gear and burnt rubber out of the driveway.

Three-quarters of an hour later, we had cruised what seemed like every street in Seaside at least twice, and we hadn't seen anyone that looked like the people who had ripped us off. We decided to go back to the house.

Gail was in the bedroom on the phone when we got back. Jimi sat down on the couch with Debbie, and I went to sit at the kitchen table to talk to Bruce and Lorretta.

"You see anything?" Asked Bruce.

I shook my head. "Not a fucking thing. Nada."

"How could they do that?" asked Lorretta, her eyes still red from crying. "They took my grandmother's wedding ring! And that big one, he kicked me in the ribs! Goddamn it, I was so scared he was gonna shoot me!"

Bruce kissed her on the cheek. I replied, "You weren't the only one who was scared. I never been so scared in my life."

Stan came up and leaned against the table. "You got any idea who they were?"

"I dunno. Maybe. They knew right where our coke stash was, and there aren't that many people who know that."

Gail came in. "I just got off the phone with my man, Glen. He'll help us any way we want. Money, heavies, whatever. You and Jimi find anything?"

"Nothing."

"Did you drive past Janet's?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, we did. Couldn't see much, and I didn't want to go in, in case they were there."

"You think it was someone she knew?"

"Damn good possibility. They knew where our coke stash was, and she is one that knows. And we just cut her off. Could be her friends."

Gail nodded thoughtfully. "She was really pissed."

"What did we lose, anyway?" I asked.

She frowned. "Well, they only got about half the weed. All the coke and the acid and MDA. But they missed my cash – I had it in my hip pocket – they didn't even check it, just went though my purse and took my rings. Let's see, ten pounds of weed, three grams of coke, what were there, fifty hits of acid, left?" I nodded. "And twenty or thirty hits of MDA. I think I had only about two hundred dollars in my purse. Maybe fifteen, sixteen hundred bucks, total."

"How much cash did they miss?"

"I've got about two thousand bucks on me."

Debbie and Jimi stepped up behind her and she turned to them.

"How much did they get you guys for?" she asked.

Debbie answered. "We left most all of our cash at home. I had less than fifty bucks in my purse." She looked at Jimi. "How much did you have in your wallet?"

"Maybe thirty bucks. But my lucky rubber was in it! They took my lucky rubber!" He smirked.

Debbie punched him just under the ribs and he grinned.

Gail turned to Randy and Satan. "How about you guys?"

They shook their heads and Satan spoke. "I don't have a wallet. Neither does the fat slob."

"Hey Gail, I got some contacts that might be able to help locate the dudes," said Randy. "Can I use your phone?"

"Go for it," said Gail.

He peeled off for the bedroom, and Dudley came forward.

"How about you, Dud?" I asked.

He frowned. "No, I didn't have anything for them to take."

"Stan?"

"Bruce's and my cash is stashed in the trunk of the car, thank Christ."

I nodded. "Pete?"

He frowned. "Yeah, they got my wallet and a hundred bucks or so. Plus a gram of that blond Lebanese hash. Fuck this shit. Let's go find the sonofabitches and fuckin' off 'em. Who's gonna give me a ride home so I can get my shotgun?"

Jimi nodded, a grave expression on his face. "Yeah, looks like it's time I got my piece, too."

Gail held up her hands. "Wait! C'mon now. Before everyone goes rushing off to get their guns, let's see if we can't find out some information first – rather than running blindly all over waving guns in people's faces. That kinda stuff's just gonna get us busted."

Pete shook his head, looking at Gail. "I take it very personally when someone sticks a gun in my face and robs me and my family. You people are my family. Someone is not gonna fuck with my family and get away with it."

"Right on," said Jimi in a cold tone. "You can't fuck with family and get away with it. We'll bury the motherfuckers. You don't, then word gets around, and others think it's okay to rip you off. Think you're an easy mark. We gotta take-out the fuckers that did this."

Gail smiled, her eyes steely cold, burning with the same kind of slow fury I saw emanating from Jimi and Pete. She nodded. "You're right. We are family, and we will make them pay. My man Glen said he'd spring for a contract. Even arrange for it, with some of his friends up in the city. But I still don't wanna go off half-cocked. We've got to plan, and be careful, otherwise we could end up worse-off than we are now." She paused, then went on, "Look, why don't you guys all go home for tonight. It's pretty late, anyway, and I really don't think we can accomplish much right now. Let me check out a few things and then see where we are." She turned to Jimi. "Can I have my gun back?"

He nodded, and drew it out from his belt, handing it to her.

Randy spoke up. "I called my friends and they haven't heard of anyone suddenly coming into a bunch of weed or coke, but they're gonna keep their ears open."

Gail smiled. "Good. That's what we need. Now, let's everyone go home and get some sleep. Tomorrow's gonna be a busy day." She turned to Bruce. "You guys got your sleeping bags and stuff?"

Lorretta nodded. "Yeah, they're out in the car."

"Good. Bring them in. You and Bruce can use the spare room, Dud, you and Stan can flip for the couch. Cool?"

Much to the dismay of Dudley, in the last two days, the house had been transformed into an armed camp. People had been coming and going at all hours, as we feverishly worked to find out who had been responsible for the rip-off. Every person we knew was contacted to see if they could provide any leads. All other business was put on the back burner.

JZ, the black godfather had even come over on the morning following the rip-off to console Gail. He had put out the word through his people and we'd heard back from him today that the robbers had not been local talent. But beyond that he wasn't able to help us.

Janet was the best suspect we had. Gail had contacted her on the morning after, and she had denied any knowledge of what had happened. But Gail wasn't at all satisfied with the denial, and so she decided to bring Janet over to the house so we could grill her. Pete Bomartin and I waited for them to return.

Pete and I were actually alone in the house as Bruce and the others had left to go lay on the beach, trying to make the best of what had turned out to be a very bad vacation. Pete was cleaning his shotgun, a double barreled twelve gauge that was cut off short so it could be hidden under his coat.

"I wish I'd gone over there with her," I said glumly. "God knows who Janet's got over there and if there was a scene, she might need some help."

Pete shook his head and smiled, as he rubbed an oily patch over the barrels. "Don't worry. She can take care of herself. That's one lady I'd never worry about. Whatever the situation, she'll come out on top. Hey, you wanna clean your .45?"

It was in a shoulder holster under my arm, where it had been almost constantly since the night of the rip-off. "Naw, it's cool. If you're done with the stuff, just put it back in the bag and stash it under the sink in the kitchen."

I heard the door being unlocked, and Janet came through the door, followed by Gail.

Janet looked pretty shook, as though she'd been crying. She was tall and shapely, with long, slim dancer’s legs. Her face was narrow and angular, framed by straight black hair cut in a bob. She was wearing tight blue slacks and a paisley print, sleeveless blouse. She eyed Pete and me, taking long looks at our guns.

Gail indicated the couch, and without a word, Janet took a seat. Gail sat down across from her on the coffee table, dipped into her purse, and placed her pistol beside her on the table. Janet looked really frightened.

Frowning, Gail silently stared at her for a few moments, and then let out a big breath. "Well... So, what am I going to do?" She asked, peering at Janet.

I sat down next to Gail, facing Janet. Pete came in and sat down on the couch beside Janet, placing the shotgun in his lap.

All the firepower was not lost on Janet. It looked like she was going to cry. "I don't know nothing! Nothing, I tell ya!" she said quickly. She looked away.

Gail stared coldly at her. "The people knew where the coke was stashed - they just went right to it. How did they know that?"

Still avoiding Gail's eyes, Janet shook her head violently. "I didn't tell nobody nothing!"

Gail calmly reached out and slapped her backhand across the face, her hand making a resounding crack as it hit. Janet recoiled in terror.

"I swear! I didn't tell nobody about you!" Screamed Janet.

Gail picked up her gun, and held it in her lap, pointing it vaguely in Janet's direction. Janet's eyes widened, looking at the gun, and her tears began running freely.

Gail leaned forward and slowly tapped the muzzle of the gun on Janet's leg three times. Janet started shivering, her eyes riveted on the muzzle of the gun, the barrel now pointed towards her head.

"Look here, dammit! I want the truth," said Gail, almost in a whisper. "I must have the truth. My family and me got hit for close to two thousand dollars and I will find out who's responsible. You're the key. I'm sure of it."

"I don't know! I don't know!" Screamed Janet in a high-pitched voice. She was out of control now, shivering and shaking, a stream of mucous beginning to run from her nose as she watched the muzzle of Gail's gun.

Gail shook her head, and then quickly shifting the gun to her left hand, she slapped Janet again, harder. "Tell me," she said softly. "Tell me who did it now, and we'll let you go. I know you know who did it. I'm sure of it. There's no one else that could have told them where to find the coke. No one!"

Janet leaned forward clutching her knees and rocked from side to side. Pete stuck the shotgun in her face and made clicking noises, and then said, "Bang!" Janet froze and then started sobbing, making whimpering noises, and she was shivering again, as if having an epileptic fit.

Gail slapped her again, hard, and Janet's head rebounded off the barrel of the shotgun, leaving a bloody cut on her left cheek.

"You've got to tell me, Janet," said Gail softly, shaking her head. She went on, "Make it easy on yourself. Please. Tell me now."

"I ... I can't," she stammered, sobbing. A glob of mucous, distended on a thin strand hanging from her nose, fell, landing in her lap. The makeup on her face was a ruin, mascara running with the tears streaming down her cheeks, mingling with the blood running freely from the cut on the left side.

Gail took Janet's chin with her hand and turned her face so she was staring directly at her. "You must tell me who they are, Janet. I am going to find out. I want you to tell me the truth."

Janet's eyes widened. "But I can't. They'll kill me!"

Gail shook her head, her eyes like cold gray steel. "It's me you really have to worry about, not them."

Bomartin cocked the hammers on his shotgun, first one, then the other. With each click, Janet jumped. She began hyperventilating.

She screamed, "I can't tell you, I can't tell you, I can't tell you...”

"Enough!" Gail stood up abruptly. She turned to me. "Mark, there's some duct tape in the kitchen, get it and tie her wrists behind her back. Gag her with it too." She turned to Pete. "Peter, will you back my car in the driveway so it's right next to the door?" Indicating Janet with her head, she continued, "We'll stuff her in on the floor of the back seat and drive down to the coast to Palo Colorado Canyon. I know some good desolate spots there. We'll off her and dump the body there. No one will ever find it."

Janet lunged at Gail grabbing her around the knees, and buried her face between her legs, wailing and sobbing, "Please! You can't! You can't do that! You can't! You can't..." she pleaded.

Gail peeled her off and pushed her back on the couch. "You've given us no choice Janet."

"But ... but you can't kill me!" she wailed, wide-eyed with terror.

"I can and I will. Mark, the tape, please."

She held up her hands. "Wait! I'll tell you! Please, please wait. Ohmigod..." She shrieked, her voice trailing off into broken sobs.

"What will you tell me?" asked Gail, softly.

Janet sobbed, almost inaudible, "I'll tell you who did it! I will!"

Gail sat back down and took her hand. "Alright. Tell me what happened. All of it. Don't leave anything out. And don't lie – I'll know if you're lying."

Janet closed her eyes and sniffed noisily, drawing a long streamer of mucous back into her nose. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and shivered, drawing a sharp breath. You could see she was trying to bring herself under control.

Gail brought out a small packet of tissues from her purse and handed it to Janet, who blew her nose.

Gail waited a few more moments as Janet collected herself, then said, "So tell me what you know."

"Well, it was like this," she said shakily. "You knows when you told me you wouldn't give me any more toot?" Gail nodded. "Well, I was terrible mad. I gots to talking with my cousins, they was there. They asked all these questions about you. You know, like where did you live, where did you keep your dope. How many people is usually there, that stuff."

"And you told them?"

"Yeah. I couldn't help it, I was just insane. I didn't think nothing of it at first, then after I realize what they was gonna do, it was too late. I just couldn't help myself. They was just ragging on me to tell 'em the stuff and I couldn't help myself."

"What are their names?"

"Trina Mae Daniels and Joyce Williams. They's bad folk. Really bad. Calls themselves Sammy and Jo Jo."

"They're women?" I exclaimed in shock.

She nodded. "Bulldaggers. Everyone thinks they's men."

Gail asked, "Where do they live?"

Janet shook her head. "Up in the city somewheres. I ain't been to their new house yet. They moved just a while back. I think it's in the Mission. I do gots their phone number." She blew her nose again.

"Did they come back to your house after they got done here?" asked Gail.

"No ma'am. After they left, I ain't never seen them again, since."

"Do you know where they are right now?"

She shook her head again. "I just don't know. They coulda gone back to the city, or they could still be down here. They knows a lot of people."

I asked, "If they were here around Monterey, where would we find them?"

Janet thought for a moment, and then answered, "Well, there is one place where they might show up if they was around here. It's the Satellite Club. You know, downtown offa Alvarado. It's where all the sisters hang out."

Bomartin nodded. "It's a fag bar."

We questioned her for another hour or so, drawing out all the details we could, and finally, Gail drove her home.

We ended up deciding to split our forces. Gail took the information she had gotten from Janet, including a phone number and the names of some likely bars they might frequent in the city, and left. Glen had followed through on his promise and had hired two hit men. She had arranged with him to meet the hired guns up in San Francisco and together, they would check out the leads up there. This made sense, because she had grown up in the city, and knew it much better than me.

"'Cause then I think me and those guys oughta go down the alley and approach that way instead of all of us walking down through the lot. They see five guys walking towards them all at the same time, they may get spooked. Give us five minutes to walk around the block and get in place, then you and Bruce start walking down the lot. We'll hit 'em at the same time."

I nodded. "That'll work great."

He walked casually off to where Jimi and Pete were standing, out of sight from the lot. I looked at my watch. Eleven thirty five. I loosened my gun in the holster, so I could draw it out fast. Bruce spoke.

"What are we gonna do with them?"

I thought for a moment. "Well, we oughta try to get them back to my car - no - what we'll do is have Jimi and Pete take one to their car and we'll take one to my car - split them up. We got the duct tape, right?"

"Yeah."

"We'll tie their hands behind their backs and make them lie on the floor of the back seat, then we'll drive south, down to Big Sur. Then we'll find out where they stashed the stuff."

Bruce stared intently at me, all quite serious now. "Are you gonna off 'em?"

I returned his stare. "I don't know. I don't know if I could."

He frowned and then looked down. After a moment, he looked back up and said quietly, "Look, I'll back you in whatever you do. We been friends for a long time. But I think you oughta consider what Dud said. I mean, I don't buy everything he says, but I do think it's kinda out of proportion to off someone because they stuck you up. They didn't hurt anyone. All they got was your money and dope, and not all of that when it comes down to it. I know how your lady figures she's got her reputation to uphold, but there are other ways you can do that."

As I thought about what Bruce had said, I peeked around the corner of the building and I could see the truck sitting at the left end of the lot.

I trusted Gail's judgment better than mine in this situation, but in any event, I didn't want the responsibility for a decision like this. So, I waffled. I turned back to Bruce.

"Like I said, I don't know if I could do it. For right now, we just wanna get them out of here, and find out where they stashed our stuff. Any decision to off them or whatever can be made by Gail."

Bruce nodded. "That's what I'm afraid of. The more I see of that lady, the more she scares me."

"What the fuck do you mean?" I was almost angry.

He shook his head. "Rosy, I known a lot of people and I don't think I ever seen anyone quite as cold as her. Pete told me what she did when she was grilling that Janet babe. I never known a woman that could do shit like that. And we get these guys now and it's left up to her, I think she would off them."

"You're wrong about her, Bruce. I know her. Yeah, she acts tough, but she really ain't like that. She wasn't gonna do anything serious to Janet. I was there."

"I heard she told her she was gonna take her down the coast and off her. And that she slapped her around."

I shrugged. "Yeah, okay, so she slapped her a couple of times. But she wouldn't a offed her. I know Gail." I glanced around the corner again, and then looked at my watch. Eleven forty. I turned to Bruce.

"It's time. You ready?"

"Whatever. Just you remember what I said."

We started walking into the parking lot. As we approached the small truck, I saw Jimi and the others entering from the alley. We made like we were going to a car parked several spaces away, then at the last minute, I drew my gun, thumbed the safety off and raced to the driver's side of the pickup. Pete reached the passenger side at the same time.

I stuck my gun in through the open window and shouted, "Freeze!" The adrenaline raced through my veins. With a loud crash that made me jump, Pete broke out the passenger side window with the butt of his shotgun, and now held the barrel in the person's ear. Voice almost breaking, I screamed, "Hands on the dashboard, now! Get your hands where I can see them, move! Fuck up and you're dead!" The gun weighed heavy in my hands, and was visibly shaking as I held it in the drivers face.

The two people complied immediately, wide-eyed and obviously scared shitless, even more than I was. The driver began crying. They both had the short, kinky black hair of the robbers, but now looking at them, they didn't look quite right.

Transfixed, I gazed through the window. Thoroughly deflated and feeling like a fool, I broke my paralysis and called across to Pete in a small voice, "Uh, better take a look at yours. I don't think it's them." He looked at them then at me and shrugged.

Bruce and the others crowded in, taking long looks. Jimi looked up at me over the cab of the truck and shook his head. I turned to Bruce.

He too shook his head. "They're close but it's not them," he said with resignation.

I drew a deep breath, then put my gun back in the holster. I turned to the driver who was now shaking as she looked up at me.

I stared at her trying to think of what to say. Finally, I stammered, "Uh, look ... Uh, I guess this was a case of mistaken identity." I dug in my pocket and found a fifty-dollar bill, and handed it to the driver. "Here, this will cover the cost of the window. Sorry we frightened you." I hesitated, and then continued, "Uh, I guess you better stay put for the next five minutes or so. Don't try and follow us."

The driver started laughing hysterically. It looked like she was losing it. "Us follow you?" She said breathlessly. "You gotta be kidding. This girl's momma didn't raise no fool!"

I nodded. "Good." I raised my head and to the others, said, "C'mon! Let's get the hell outa here."

As we were walking back, I said quickly, "We gotta get out of here and I mean right now. I don't know whether they'll call the cops or not, but we gotta assume they will. Split right away and we'll meet up back at my pad."

There were grunts of agreement, and everyone walked swiftly back to the cars.

It wasn't until late the next morning that we finally heard from Gail. In a rather cryptic phone conversation, she told me that they had located the people and that she would call again later with the details.

I waited for her call for several hours, then leaving Randy and Satan to guard the house, I decided to show Bruce and the others around Monterey. I figured since they came all the way down from Washington, I had to show them at least some of the tourist spots before they left, even if we had been ripped off.

We spent an hour or so walking around Cannery Row and the wharf, and then we piled back in the car and drove over Highway 68 to Carmel. After getting stuck in the customary traffic jam of tourists in downtown Carmel, we decided to drive down to Big Sur, eventually stopping at Andrew Molera State Beach.

While the others went looking for shells and driftwood, I ended up sitting on top of a big sand-covered boulder with Lorretta, talking. It was at the end of some dunes, just short of the surf, and you could see all the way up the craggy coast to Point Sur. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm with only a light breeze, which was uncommon.

Lorretta was making the most of the sun. As we walked out the trail from the road, she had announced to Bruce and the rest of us that she was going to take her top off. Without waiting for a response, she stripped the light sweater off over her head, then un-did her bra, and stuffed both in her purse. Bruce just shook his head, smiled and kept walking. I tried to act nonchalant, but still, it was hard to not stare.

She had lovely breasts with large erect nipples, surrounded by oval-shaped pink areolas. We were laying in kind of a dish shaped depression in the sand on top of the rock. She reclined in front and to the left of me, laying back against the sand, hands behind her head, basking in the sun. I had taken my shirt off and was using it for a pillow, as I stared out at the surf, trying to keep from looking at Lorretta's comely breasts. Eventually, after exhausting all the usual small talk, she turned the topic of conversation to Gail and me.

"Clark? I mean Mark?" She asked, giggling, staring at me over the top of her aviator-style sunglasses. For some unknown reason, she often called me Clark. It had come to be sort of a private joke between us.

"Yeah?" I gazed into her blue eyes.

"Are you happy down here with Gail?"

I smiled. "Yeah, sure."

She took her hand from behind her head and leaned towards me. "I mean really happy?"

"Yeah, of course. Gail's the first lady I think I ever really been in love with," I said defensively.

"You know she's changed a lot since she was up that summer." She reached over to her purse and brought out some sun tan lotion, her breasts jiggling provocatively as she moved.

"How do you figure she's changed?" I asked, frowning.

She laid back and began rubbing the oil on her firm breasts and answered, "It's really difficult for me to say. I mean, I never knew her as well as you did, but, I dunno, I guess it's more a feeling."

Having given up all pretense of watching the surf, she noticed my stare and asked, "You want some of this oil?" Her eyebrows arched upwards, over the rims of her glasses.

I nodded. "Yeah, sure." She handed me the bottle and I asked, "How do you feel she's changed?"

She pushed the glasses up on her nose with her index finger and shrugged. "It's hard to explain. Bruce told me what she did with that lady Janet while the rest of us were down at the beach. But there's more beyond that. I get these vibes, it's like she's got something all bottled up inside her. Rage. And I think she's scared of something, something inside her."

I shook my head while rubbing the lotion on my chest. "You're wrong. Gail is the only person I've ever met that's never scared – of anything."

Lorretta lowered her head again and stared at me over the rims of her dark sunglasses. "I get the vibes and I'm not wrong. You think back to three years ago when you met her. She's this pretty, young chick, all footloose and fancy free. Never say a bad word about anyone, all she wants to do is party, talk revolution and hang out with this Mark Roosevelt dude." She paused, smiling at me, then continued, "You guys were so cute, going around, holding hands, always rushing off to ball. You remember that time we all did that psilocybin and Bruce let you guys use our bedroom? You were both so horny you woulda bust if he'd said no." I blushed with the memory. She went on, "Now, three years later, she's talking about offing people, and you're both all paranoid to the max. You wanna tell me she hasn't changed? Oh, Mark!"

I shrugged. "Sure, we're dealing some pretty good weight, and for Christ's sake, we just got ripped off! How you expect someone to react after something like that?" I handed the bottle of lotion back.

She placed the bottle back in her purse and laid back on one elbow, saying, "It goes beyond that. Just remember what I told you, and keep your eyes open. And remember you've always got a place to stay with me and Bruce." She smiled.

"Thanks, but I don't think I'm gonna need it. You watch, this shit gets behind us, she'll get back to her old self."

"Hey! Look what we found!" Bruce called out from behind us.

We turned and saw Bruce and the others approaching. Stan was carrying a large glass float off a fishing net.

Late that evening, Gail finally came home, looking beat. I was sitting in the kitchen talking with Stan when she unlocked the door and walked up and gave me a kiss.

"God, I missed you," she said, sitting down in my lap.

"So what happened?" I asked.

"Hold on for just a couple of minutes. I'm so damn grungy I gotta have a quick shower first. Let me get a shower and I'll be back in about five minutes to tell you what happened." She sniffed my hair, and then added, "Smells like you could use a shower too. Wanna join me?"

Stan smiled widely. I nodded. "Sure."

She slowly got up and took my hand, leading me into the bathroom.

"So there we were," said Gail to the circle of listeners gathered in the living room. She was dressed in only a red bath towel, her ash blonde hair laying wet on her bare shoulders. "We get to the second bar, have a few more drinks with them, then they invite us up to their place."

Hand at her mouth and horrified, Lorretta asked, "But they could have recognized you! How could you go near them?"

Gail shook her head. "It wasn't such a big deal, really. What, they were inside here for maybe three minutes, tops, and we were all lying face down on the floor. I doubt if they got all that good a look at any of us."

Bruce asked, "So what happened?"

"Well, I got in the car with Levon and Charlie – the guys Glen hired. We follow the car for a few blocks and then park in front of this old apartment building. The short one comes up to the car - this rental car Glen got us – and says, 'We're up in three-B, are you gonna come on up?' I tell her I wanna talk with the guys for a second and we'll be right up, and so she leaves." She paused for a moment and took a drink of beer, then continued, "Levon looks at me and says, 'Well, this is it lady. How you want them done?' I look at him, and it was like my whole life flashed in front of my eyes. Yeah, they had ripped us off, but they hadn't gotten everything. We were still in business, and we had our lives. It wasn't worth killing someone over. I just looked back at Levon and told him and Charlie to give me their guns, and I locked them up in the glove compartment. We went up, looked around, partied with them for a while, and then we left. I couldn't go through with it. It just wasn't worth it."

Lorretta looked at me and shaking her head, smiled, mouthing, "I was wrong."

I quickly looked away from her.

"That was all?" asked Stan, lighting a joint of Thai.

Gail nodded. "It just wasn't worth killing someone over."

Dudley asked, "How about all the dope?"

Gail frowned. "That was the other thing. From what we could find out, it was all gone. They had a little junk – I think they traded some of the weed for it – but nothing else. And I think they'd blown most of the cash, too. If we couldn't recover anything, then what was the point?"

Lorretta nodded agreement. Bruce asked, "So you just went in, looked around had a few beers and left?"

"Basically. We were in and out in about forty-five minutes. After we split, I went and dropped the guys off, then turned in the rental car, got my own car and headed home." She readjusted the bath towel around her breasts, and then said, "C'mon! Enough of this. You guys came all the way down here for a party and I'm for sure gonna give you one! Mark, if you'll look in my purse, you'll find some new coke I got from Glen. Why don't you chop out some lines for everyone and let's boogie!"

I quickly went off in search of her purse.

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