Chapter 22

 

 

Lou was probably out of his mind.

He had decided to invest heavily in a quantity of marijuana.

He was well past wanting to smoke the stuff himself, but he knew from his operatives at the Club Festival, mainly Linda Avery, Emily Lou Resnick and Randi Obvitz, that demand for weed was high.

It was also a fact of life that by the time a person had become desperate enough to buy from a stranger, they’d pay anything for any amount. It wasn’t as if Lou had to try to rip off anyone; customers were willing to pay handsomely for marijuana.

He decided he wanted to make some money becoming a middleman for the sale of dope. So he made a series of telephone calls and ended up negotiating with a mid-level dealer who could offer a quantity buy of marijuana. Lou was not familiar with the current price of weed, but after a thorough indoctrination from the women at the club, he felt comfortable with the transaction he’d arranged.

The whole enchilada was accomplished over a period of two days.

First, he had to get a large quantity of cash together; checks, debit cards or credit cards were not going to work, too many ways to trace it back to responsible parties. He’d made a substantial withdrawal from his retirement savings account to be able to afford the deal.

“How would you like your cash, sir?” the bank teller asked Lou.

“Large bills,” Lou said.

“Hundreds?” replied the teller.

“That’ll be fine,” Lou said.

The teller counted out the cash. Fifteen bills with Benjamin Franklin’s visage on them.

“Would you like an envelope?” the teller asked.

“Please.”

Lou was instantly uncomfortable with carrying so much cash. Getting robbed was only one of the many possibilities. Humans being what they are, misplacing or losing the large wad was also possible. He preferred having his money in the bank. Having that much cash on his person made him nervous.

With the cash in hand, he was ready to complete the deal.

His waitress Randi Obvitz was going to be his main helper in the deal. She had a gram scale to help weigh the product, and promised to pick up small plastic bags in which to place the weed for sale. Then, they’d keep the product nearby the club, but not in the club, with all three women having access to a place for picking up the stuff. Whatever the circumstance, Lou did not want the drug dealing going down within the club. Keep the drug dealing separate from the club, and avoid legal entanglements.

The next day, as scheduled, he received a phone call from the dealer.

“Got the cash?” the man asked Lou.

“Of course,” Lou said. “When and where?”

“Let’s do it at your place, at noon,” the dealer said. “I’ll get the money from you, then go get the stuff.”

“You’re not gonna bring it with you?” Lou asked, nervously.

“No way,” replied the dealer. “I’m not that stupid.”

“OK, if that’s the way you want it,” Lou said. It’d been years since he actually made a drug deal, and he realized that everyone would be paranoid of being ripped off or set up by the cops.

The two met at noon at Lou’s apartment in the Hollywood district of Northeast Portland. Lou handed the dealer the cash.

“I’ll be back in one hour,” the dealer said. “Just wait here.”

It was the longest hour Lou had ever experienced in his life. There wasn’t the kind of excitement he might have had in his youth, waiting to score weed with friends. Then it was an adventure. Now it was business, and it involved a lot of cash.

The dealer returned an hour and a half later.

“What took you?” Lou asked, as he let the dealer into his apartment.

“What’s it to you?” the dealer replied. “I’m here.”

The dealer entered the apartment and sat down on the old couch.

“Where’s the stuff?” Lou asked.

“Don’t you worry, I’ve got it,” said the dealer. “What’s your hurry, anyway?”

“No hurry,” Lou said, trying to get a grip on himself. He didn’t want to give the impression he was nervous – which he was.

“So how’s business at the club?” the dealer asked.

“I’ve taken about all of your pussyfooting around I’m gonna take,” Lou said, in no uncertain terms. The man was pissed, you could tell, and he wanted either the product or the money. At this point in the transaction, probably getting the money would suffice.

“I’ll tell you what,” the dealer said to Lou. “I’ll get it to you when I’m damned good and ready.”

“That so?” Lou gave the man a crooked look.

“That’s so,” said the dealer, in a rather matter-of-fact tone.

Lou didn’t want to get physical with the guy, but he was about at the end of his rope. He was considering what to do next when the dealer broke out laughing.

“I’m fuckin’ with you, man,” the dealer said. “Chill. I’ve got the stuff.

“OK, cowboy,” said the dealer, “here’s the stuff,” as he quickly whipped out a long, fat package the size of a submarine sandwich from inside his jacket, magically, as if out of nowhere.

“Excellent,” said Lou.

“Let’s keep the deal going,” Lou said, as he examined the merchandise. The dealer got out a pipe and a cigarette lighter.

“I like what I see… and smell,” Lou said. He’d opened the package, and the dank rank reek of the skunky weed began to permeate the residence. It had an unmistakable odor. Even without burning the damned stuff, it gave off a powerful and smelly signature.

The dealer got out some weed and placed part of a bud, about the size of an M&M candy, into the pipe. He lit the green material, taking a long drag. Then he passed the pipe to Lou.

Lou turned down the chance to take a puff of the sweet-smelling marijuana.

“No, thanks, really,” he said. “God I love that stuff, it’s great.”

“So why don’t you take a hit?” the dealer asked.

“I’m not into it anymore,” Lou replied. “It’s something that I used to do that I don’t do anymore, like LSD.”

“Gone soft on us, eh?” the dealer said. “You’re not gonna get up on your high horse and start lecturing me about the negative effects of drugs, are you?”

“I’m no hypocrite,” Lou said. “I used to smoke pot, and I don’t have any objection to other people smoking it. I don’t like the side effects.”

The dealer put down the pipe after only two hits. He was plenty stoned on the high-quality bud and was cast adrift in a cloud world. The dealer got out of his stupor long enough to come up with an intelligent response.

“Like what?” the dealer said. “What kind of effects, man?”

Lou didn’t really feel like having to explain his whole philosophy about drugs. It was complex. The dealer may be feeling good while under the influence, but Lou was feeling good, too. He was in good place in his mind. He was happy he wasn’t so weak as to have to smoke the pot. It was also his philosophy, as espoused in the movie, Scarface, that in dealing drugs, you “Don’t get high on your own supply.” But there was more to it than that.

“Well,” Lou said, “first of all there’s the residual effect the day after. It’s like having a hangover, except I call it getting ‘burned out.’”

The dealer raised his eyebrows. He was familiar with getting “burned out,” as Lou put it. It wasn’t exactly like a hangover, in that there wasn’t any painful headache or nausea. It was a feeling of being psychologically drained, emotionally numb, intellectually faded.

“I know you what you mean,” the dealer said.

“There’s also the fact,” Lou continued, “that I did enough weed and acid back in the day to satisfy me. I certainly don’t need to take any more chances with acid, that’s a wild thing. But with pot, well, I’m OK with the way my mind works now. I don’t need to cloud my decision-making process.”

“But you’re not against other people experimenting?” the dealer asked.

“That’s true and not true,” Lou said. “I think there are some people who shouldn’t take psychoactive drugs. I couldn’t really say who those people are, but I’ve seen guys whose minds were already unbalanced enough as it was. Drugs for them turned their minds into mush.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“There’s also another type of person,” Lou said, “who gets easily addicted to stuff, you know what I’m talkin’ about, guys and gals who get hooked on other stuff like booze or porno. Those people are always gonna have to watch out they don’t get hooked on something new. So pot probably isn’t the best thing for them.”

“I know, I know,” the dealer said, reaching for the pipe again. “Are you sure you don’t want a hit?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Lou said.

The two sat there in silence for half a minute. The dealer’s mind wasn’t functioning as sharp as it could have been. Lou’s mind was racing.

“Another thing,” Lou said. “Getting high is also something to do on special occasions, not because it’s offered out of the blue. I appreciate you offering me some, but I’ve got to keep my wits about me, and I’ve got more stuff to do today. If I got high right now, I’d be worthless for the rest of the day. And when the effects wear off, when I finally ‘come down,’ I tend to get sleepy. I need to be alert, there’s a lot to do today.”

“Sure, sure,” said the dealer. “I understand.” The dealer was tired of listening to Lou’s excuses for not get stoned with him. It didn’t matter to the dealer. “More for me,” he thought to himself. The drug is expensive, and not altogether that easy to come upon, so it was OK that Lou didn’t want to smoke it.

The dealer was curious about something.

“Hey,” he said to Lou. “I heard tell that you’re a Vietnam vet. Did you get to score some good weed when you were stationed in Southeast Asia?”

Lou looked at the dealer and wondered if it were wise to get into his military background with the man who dealt drugs. Satisfied there wasn’t a risk, he opened up.

“First of all,” Lou said, “I served in the theater of conflict, in Taiwan. I was attached to a U.S. Air Force base there as an Army supply grunt, for some reason. So although I got the ribbon for serving during a war and in the so-called theater of conflict, I didn’t do the hard work the other guys did by fighting and dying in Vietnam.”

The dealer shook his head up and down in affirmation, though his mind was so adrift that he really didn’t completely understand what Lou meant. To the dealer, who had never served in the military, the distinction seemed hazy. It seemed to him that if you were in the military, you were in the military, and could be asked to kill someone at any moment, no matter who you were or where you were serving. He thought of it like someone in a basketball or baseball game, sitting on the bench waiting for his turn with the ball or at bat.

“Second,” Lou went on, “Taiwan wasn’t like Vietnam. The people there weren’t living in the modern world, they were still living in the days when getting stoned meant getting liquored up on bourbon or vodka. That was their version of a good time.

“In fact,” Lou said, “they shot heroin dealers. Execution by firing squad. I heard about it, and American military witnessed the executions. So scoring weed over there was a hassle. In fact,” he stressed, “I scored weed only once in the 13 months I was stationed there. The situation was so desperate that dudes were getting high on cough medicine. They had parties where they got high on cough medicine, for the codeine, for God’s sake.”

The dealer was numb. The combination of the effects of the marijuana and Lou droning on and on about the Vietnam War, Taiwan and cough medicine had made him quite sleepy. He shook his head vigorously from side to side and blinked his eyes a few times to regain some semblance of consciousness and sobriety. It was time to leave. Time to get the hell out of there.

The dealer got out a plastic container, placed the smelly pipe in it and stuffed the whole affair in his front pocket.

“I’ll see you,” said the dealer to Lou. Lou’s back was to him as he headed to the apartment door.

“If I could only get more folks like you lined up,” the dealer said as he opened the door, “to buy this stuff. It’s so hard to move weed in this town. Or anything. This town is so tight.”

“I know what you mean,” Lou said, as his parting words, and the door shut.

Linda’s brother called one night while Linda was enjoying some time off from work. Her brother Joe lived in North Portland, across the city from Linda.

The two siblings did not get along. They were close as children, but as adults developed their own lives and friends, and had drifted apart. They only stayed in touch with each other out of family loyalty. Linda did not consider her brother a friend.

Her brother Joe began babbling about some problem at work. Joe was always having problems at work. He’d never been able to hold a job for longer than a year or so. At first the position Joe held was the greatest job in the world, but it didn’t take but a few months before he became hypercritical of everyone he worked alongside. Within a few months he would develop an attitude about the job, and how he thought he could make it better.

Linda listened patiently as her brother went on and on about the strife, seemingly created in his own mind, about his latest workplace.

After 20 minutes of her brother’s diatribe, Linda had enough. She then made a big mistake. She decided to give him some advice. He didn’t take it so well.

“Don’t argue with me,” he said.

“OK, OK,” she said, condescending to her brother. “I’m not arguing with you.”

She realized once again that he was the type of person who didn’t want to listen to anyone else’s opinion, that he had it all figured out. He certainly didn’t want any guff from her.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he said. “I know what I’m doing.”

So she kept her mouth shut from that point on. No need to give him any advice, good or not. He was going to do what he wanted, no matter what anyone said. She’d already had a taste of his attitude in earlier conversations. She would take the time to explain several salient points, but it didn’t matter, she was wasting her time. He was going to do what he’d already decided in his mind.

He was the type to create the answer before he understood the question. He colored his world with his view of it, and no one could convince him otherwise. He was stubborn, set in his ways and full of himself. There’s no stopping a man like that, and she began to realize it. She sat there brooding over his surly nature. Out the blue, she had to say something.

“I’ll keep my opinions to myself,” she snapped at him. “You seem to know what you’re doing anyway.”

“That’s fine with me, dear sister,” Joe said, and hung up the phone.

Linda sat in her apartment thinking about what had transpired. It seemed her brother was losing his mind. It was as if the whole world was losing its mind. Linda was nonplussed; she’d been through these episodes with her brother before. It’ll all blow over after a few days. Or weeks. She was tired from arguing, and drifted off to sleep while sitting on her couch.

She was jolted awake by the phone ringing.

“Linda?” said the woman’s voice.

“Yes,” she said.

“This is Marcia Calibri.”

There was a strain in Marcia’s voice and she sounded agitated.

“Yes, Marcia,” Linda said. “It’s kind of late to call, don’t you think?”

“I know, I know,” Marcia said. “I had to talk with you. I tried to call earlier, but the line was busy, so I waited a while and called back.”

“Oh,” Linda said, “I was talking to my brother. What’s going on, Marcia?”

“Linda, I need to talk to you.”

“I heard you the first time,” Linda said, beginning to realize that Marcia is no better mentally than she has been.

“Linda, Linda, I’m worried,” Marcia said.

“Worried about what?”

“I’m worried about having an alibi,” Marcia replied.

Linda was getting a bit worried.

“An alibi for what?” Linda asked.

“I want someone to die, and if they do, I don’t want to get blamed for it.”

Linda was really worried. Her old friend, who was now becoming more of pain in the neck than anything else, was going over the edge.

“Marcia,” Linda said, “you’re beginning to worry me. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I hate this man so much, I wish he were dead. But now I’m beginning to think that if he does die, I might get blamed for it.”

Linda rolled her eyes upwards, not knowing what to think. She wished her old friend Marcia would go away and stop bothering her. Every once in a while, ever since Marcia went “around the bend” and moved to another state, she’d call with some sort of dramatic catastrophe, and Linda would have to salve her friend’s upended emotional state.

At first Linda didn’t mind talking to Marcia, but there was so little left of Marcia’s mind, and though Linda wanted to help, it didn’t seem like anything she did helped at all.

“Marcia,” Linda told her, “I’m afraid there’s not much I can do for you. Have you thought of seeking counseling?”

“Counseling?” Marcia asked. “I’ve already received counseling, a psychiatrist, and he’s got me on some sort of combination of medications that don’t seem to help.”

“Well, you need to stick to it, girl,” Linda said. “But I don’t know what to say about your other issue. I don’t think you need to worry so much about it. Just put the whole thing about your friend possibly dying and you getting blamed for it out of your mind. That’s my advice.”

“That’s it?” Marcia said. “You haven’t helped at all,” Marcia’s voice beginning to sound strained and excited. “I’m reaching out for help and that’s all you have to say?”

“I’m sorry, Marcia,” Linda said, “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Marcia said, her voice trembling. “I’ll keep my thoughts to myself from now on,” and hung up the phone.

Now it was Linda who was upset. She’d tried to be patient with her friend, but there wasn’t anything Linda could say to help. Linda sat in the near darkness and contemplated the situation.