Junky Read online

  “The next time I find you around here bothering the doctor,” he said, “you won’t be in a condition to walk away.”

  Ten minutes later, Herman arrived. The brother-in-law was giving him the same treatment when Herman pulled out a silk dress he had under his coat—as I recall somebody unloaded a batch of hot dresses on us for three grains of morphine—and turning to the doctor’s wife who had come downstairs to see what all the commotion was about, he said, “I thought you might like this dress.” So he got a chance to talk to the doctor who wrote him one last script. It took him three hours to fill it. Our regular drugstore had been warned by the inspector, and they would not fill any more scripts.

  “You guys had better keep out of sight,” the proprietor said. “I think the inspector has warrants out for all of you.”

  Our croaker had packed in. We split up to comb the city. We covered Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Jersey City and Newark. We couldn’t even score for pantopon. It seemed like the doctors were all expecting us, just waiting for one of us to walk into the office so they could say, “Absolutely no.” It was as though every doctor in Greater New York had suddenly taken a pledge never to write another narcotics script. We were running out of junk. Patently, we would be immobilized in a matter of hours. Roy decided to throw in the towel and go to Riker’s Island for the “thirty-day cure.” This is not a reduction cure. They don’t give any junk, not even a sleeping tablet. All they offer the addict is thirty days’ detention. The place is always full.

  Herman got picked up in the Bronx while he was looking for a croaker. No definite charge, just two detectives didn’t like his looks. When they got him downtown they found out the narcotics squad had a warrant for him sworn out by the State Inspector. The charge was wrong address on a narcotics script. Some wagon-chasing lawyer called me up and asked if I would put up the money to buy Herman a bond. I sent two dollars for cigarettes instead. If a man is going to do time, he might as well start doing it.

  I was all out of junk at this point and had double-boiled my last cottons. Junk is cooked up in a spoon and sucked into the dropper through a little piece of cotton to get it all out of the spoon. Some of the solution stays in the cotton, and addicts save these cottons for emergencies.

  I got a codeine script from an old doctor by putting down a story about migraine headaches. Codeine is better than nothing and five grains in the skin will keep you from being sick. For some reason, it is dangerous to shoot codeine in the vein.

  I recall one night Herman and I were caught short with nothing but some codeine sulphate. Herman cooked up first and shot one grain in the vein. Immediately he turned very red, then very pale. He sat down weakly on the bed. “My God,” he said.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “It’s perfectly all right.”

  He gave me a sour look. “All right, is it? Well, you shoot some then.”

  I cooked up a grain and got out my works ready to take the shot. Herman watched me eagerly. He was still sitting on the bed. As soon as I took the needle out of my arm I felt an intense and most unpleasant prickling sensation entirely different from the prickles you get from a good shot of morphine. I could feel my face swelling. I sat down on the bed next to Herman. My fingers were puffed up double size.

  “Well,” said Herman, “is it all right?”

  “No,” I said.

  My lips were numb like I’d been hit across the mouth. I had a terrific headache. I began to pace up and down the room, since I had a vague theory that if I got the circulation going the blood would carry away the codeine.

  After an hour I felt a little better and went to bed. Herman told me about a partner of his who passed out and turned blue after a shot of codeine. “I put him under a cold shower and he came around.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” I demanded.

  Herman was suddenly and unaccountably irritated. The sources of his anger were generally unfathomable.

  “Well,” he began, “you have to expect to take some chances when you’re using junk. Besides, just because one person has a certain reaction doesn’t necessarily mean that someone else will react in the same way. You seemed so sure it was all right, I didn’t want to bug you by bringing anything up.”

  •

  When I heard that Herman had been arrested I figured I would be next, but I was already sick and did not have the energy to leave town.

  I was arrested at my apartment by two detectives and a Federal agent. The State Inspector had sworn out a warrant charging me with violation of Public Health Law 334 for giving a wrong name on a prescription. The two detectives were the con-man and tough-guy team. The con-man was asking me, “How long you been using junk, Bill? You know you ought to give a right name on those scripts.” Then the tough-guy would break in, “Come on, come on, we’re not boy scouts.”

  But they were not much interested in the case, and no statement from me was necessary. On the way downtown, the Federal man asked me some questions and filled out a form for their records. I was taken to the Tombs, mugged and fingerprinted. While I was waiting to go before the judge, the con-man gave me a cigarette and began telling me what a bad deal junk is.

  “Even if you get by with it thirty years, you’re only kidding yourself. Now you take these sex degenerates—” his eyes glistened—“the doctors say they can’t help themselves.”

  The judge set bail at a thousand. I was taken back to the Tombs, ordered to take off my clothes and get under the shower. An apathetic guard poked through my clothes. I got dressed again, went up in the elevator, and was assigned to a cell. At four p.m. we were locked in our cells. The doors closed automatically from a master switch, with a tremendous clang that echoed through the cellblock.

  The last of the codeine was running out. My nose and eyes ­began to run, sweat soaked through my clothes. Hot and cold flashes hit me as though a furnace door was swinging open and shut. I lay down on the bunk, too weak to move. My legs ached and twitched so that any position was intolerable, and I moved from one side to the other, sloshing about in my sweaty clothes.

  A Negro voice was singing, “Get up, get up, woman, off your big fat rusty-dusty.” Voices drifted back and forth. “Forty years! Man, I can’t do no forty years.”

  At twelve that night, my old lady bailed me out and met me at the door with some goof balls. Goof balls help a little.

  Next day I was worse and could not get out of bed. So I stayed in bed taking nembies at intervals.

  At night, I would take two strips of benzedrine and go out to a bar where I sat right by the jukebox. When you’re sick, music is a great help. Once, in Texas, I kicked a habit on weed, a pint of paregoric and a few Louis Armstrong records.

  Almost worse than the sickness is the depression that goes with it. One afternoon, I closed my eyes and saw New York in ruins. Huge centipedes and scorpions crawled in and out of empty bars and cafeterias and drugstores on Forty-second Street. Weeds were growing up through cracks and holes in the pavement. There was no one in sight.

  After five days I began to feel a little better. After eight days I got the “chucks” and developed a tremendous appetite for cream puffs and macaroons. In ten days the sickness had gone. My case had been postponed.

  •

  Roy came back from his thirty-day cure on Riker’s Island and introduced me to a peddler who was pushing Mexican H on 103rd and Broadway. During the early part of the war, imports of H were virtually cut off and the only junk available was prescription M. However, lines of communication reformed and heroin began coming in from Mexico, where there were poppy fields tended by Chinese. This Mexican H was brown in color since it had quite a bit of raw opium in it.

  103rd and Broadway looks like any Broadway block. A cafeteria, a movie, stores. In the middle of Broadway is an island with some grass and benches placed at intervals. 103rd is a subway stop, a crowded block.
This is junk territory. Junk haunts the cafeteria, roams up and down the block, sometimes half-crossing Broadway to rest on one of the island benches. A ghost in daylight on a crowded street.

  You could always find a few junkies sitting in the cafeteria or standing around outside with coat collars turned up, spitting on the sidewalk and looking up and down the street as they waited for the connection. In summer, they sit on the island benches, huddled like so many vultures in their dark suits.

  The peddler had the face of a withered adolescent. He was fifty-five but he did not look more than thirty. He was a small, dark man with a thin Irish face. When he did show up—and like many oldtime junkies he was completely unpunctual—he would sit at a table in the cafeteria. You gave him money at the table, and met him around the corner three minutes later where he would deliver the junk. He never had it on him, but kept it stashed somewhere close by.

  This man was known as Irish. At one time he had worked for Dutch Schultz, but big-time racketeers will not keep junkies on the payroll as they are supposed to be unreliable. So Irish was out. Now he peddled from time to time and “worked the hole” (rolling drunks on subways and in cars) when he couldn’t make connections to peddle. One night, Irish got nailed in the subway for jostling. He hanged himself in the Tombs.

  The job of peddler was a sort of public service that rotated from one member of the group to the other, the average term of office being about three months. All agreed that it was a thankless job. As George the Greek said, “You end up broke and in jail. Everybody calls you cheap if you don’t give credit; if you do, they take advantage.”

  George couldn’t turn down a man who came to him sick. People took advantage of his kindness, hitting him for credit and taking their cash to some other pusher. George did three years, and when he got out he refused to do any more pushing.

  The hipster-bebop junkies never showed at 103rd Street. The 103rd Street boys were all oldtimers—thin, sallow faces; bitter, twisted mouths; stiff-fingered, stylized gestures. (There is a junk gesture that marks the junkie like the limp wrist marks the fag: the hand swings out from the elbow stiff-fingered, palm up.) They were of various nationalities and physical types, but they all looked alike somehow. They all looked like junk. There was Irish, George the Greek, Pantopon Rose, Louie the Bellhop, Eric the Fag, the Beagle, the Sailor, and Joe the Mex. Several of them are dead now, others are doing time.

  There are no more junkies at 103rd and Broadway waiting for the connection. The connection has gone somewhere else. But the feel of junk is still there. It hits you at the corner, follows you along the block, then falls away like a discouraged panhandler as you walk on.

  Joe the Mex had a thin face with a long, sharp, twitchy nose and a down-curving, toothless mouth. Joe’s face was lined and ravaged, but not old. Things had happened to his face, but Joe was not touched. His eyes were bright and young. There was a gentleness about him common to many oldtime junkies. You could spot Joe blocks away. In the anonymous city crowd he stood out sharp and clear, as though you were seeing him through binoculars. He was a liar, and like most liars, he was constantly changing his stories, altering time and personnel from one telling to the next. One time he would tell a story about some friend, next time he would switch the story around to give himself the lead. He would sit in the cafeteria over coffee and pound cake, talking at random about his experiences.

  “We know this Chinaman has some stuff stashed, and we try every way to make him tell us where it is. We have him tied to a chair. I light matches”—he made a gesture of lighting a match—“and put them under his feet. He won’t say nothing. I feel so sorry for that man. Then my partner hit him in the face with his gun and the blood run all down his face.” He put his hands over his face and drew them down to indicate the flow of blood. “When I see that I turn sick at my stomach and I say, ‘Let’s get out of here and leave the man alone. He ain’t going to tell us nothing.’”

  Louie was a shoplifter who had lost what nerve he ever had. He wore long, shabby, black overcoats that gave him all the look of a furtive buzzard. Thief and junkie stuck out all over him. Louie had a hard time making it. I heard that at one time he had been a stool pigeon, but at the time I knew him he was generally considered right. George the Greek did not like Louie and said he was just a bum. “Don’t ever invite him to your home, he’ll take advantage. He’ll go on the nod in front of your family. He’s got no class to him.”

  George the Greek was the admitted arbiter of this set. He decided who was right and who was wrong. George prided himself on his integrity. “I never beat nobody.”

  George was a three-time loser. The next time meant life as an habitual criminal. His life narrowed down to the necessity of avoiding any serious involvements. No pushing, no stealing; he worked from time to time on the docks. He was hemmed in on every side and there was no way for him to go but down. When he couldn’t get junk—which was about half the time—he drank and took goof balls.

  He had two adolescent sons who gave him a lot of trouble. George was half-sick most of the time in this period of scarcity, and no match for these young louts. His face bore the marks of a constant losing fight. The last time I was in New York I couldn’t find George. The 103rd Street boys are scattered now and no one I talked to knew what happened to George the Greek.

  Fritz the Janitor was a pale thin little man who gave the impression of being crippled. He was on parole after doing five years because he scored for a pigeon. The pigeon was hard up for someone to turn in, and the narcotics agent urgently needed to make an arrest. Between them they built Fritz up to a big-time dope peddler, and smashed a narcotics ring with his arrest. Fritz was glad to attract so much attention and he talked complacently about his “nickel” in Lexington.

  The Fag was a brilliantly successful lush-worker. His scores were fabulous. He was the man who gets to a lush first, never the man who arrives on the scene when the lush is lying there with his pockets turned inside out. A sleeping lush—known as a “flop” in the trade—attracts a hierarchy of scavengers. First come the top lush-workers like the Fag, guided by a special radar. They only want cash, good rings, and watches. Then come the punks who will steal anything. They take the hat, shoes, and belt. Finally, brazen, clumsy thieves will try to pull the lush’s overcoat or jacket off him.

  The Fag was always first on a good lush. One time he scored for a thousand dollars at the 103rd Street Station. Often his scores ran into the hundreds. If the lush woke up, he would simper and feel the man’s thigh as though his intentions were sexual. From this angle he got this moniker.

  He always dressed well, usually in tweed sport coats and gray flannels. A European charm of manner and a slight Scandinavian accent completed his front. No one could have looked less like a lush-roller. He always worked alone. His luck was good and he was determined to avoid contamination. Sometimes, contact with the lucky can change a man’s run of bad luck, but generally it works out the other way. Junkies are an envious lot. 103rd Street envied the Fag his scores. But everyone had to admit he was a right guy, and always good for a small touch.

  •

  The H caps cost three dollars each and you need at least three per day to get by. I was short, so I began “working the hole” with Roy. We would ride along, each looking out one side of the subway car until one of us spotted a “flop” sleeping on a bench. Then we would get off the train. I stood in front of the bench with a newspaper and covered Roy while he went through the lush’s pockets. Roy would whisper instructions to me—“a little left, too far, a little back, there, hold it there”—and I would move to keep him covered. Often, we were late and the lush would be lying there with his pockets turned inside out.

  We also worked on the cars. I would sit down next to the lush and open a newspaper. Roy would reach across my back and go through the lush’s pockets. If the lush woke up, he could see that I had both hands on the paper. We averaged about ten
dollars per night.

  An average night went more or less like this. We started work about eleven o’clock, getting on the uptown IRT at Times Square. At 149th Street, I spotted a flop and we got off. 149th Street is a station with several levels and dangerous for lush-workers because there are so many spots where cops can hide, and it is not possible to cover from every angle. On the lower level the only way out is by the elevator.

  We approached the flop casually, as though we did not see him. He was middle-aged, sprawled against the wall, breathing loudly. Roy sat down beside him and I stationed myself in front of them with an open newspaper. Roy said, “A little to the right, too far, back a little, there, that’s good.”

  Suddenly the heavy breathing stopped. I thought of the scene in the movies where the breathing stops during the operation. I could feel Roy’s tense immobility behind me. The drunk muttered something and shifted his position. Slowly the breathing started again. Roy got up. “Okay,” he said, and walked rapidly to the other end of the platform. He took a crumpled mass of bills from his pocket and counted out eight dollars. He handed me four. “Had it in his pants pocket. I couldn’t find a poke. I thought for a minute he was going to come up on us.”

  We started back downtown. At 116th we spotted one and got off, but the flop got up and walked away before we could get near him. A shabby man with a wide, loose mouth accosted Roy and started talking. He was another lush-worker.

  “The Fag scored again,” he said. “Two notes and a wristwatch down at 96th Street.” Roy muttered something and looked at his paper. The man went on talking in a loud voice. “I had one come up on me, ‘What are you doing with your hand in my pocket?’ he says.”

  “For Chris’ sake, don’t talk like that!” Roy said and walked away from him. “Fucking wrong bastard,” he muttered. “There aren’t many lush-workers around now. Only the Fag, the Beagle, and that tramp. They all envy the Fag because he makes good scores. If a sucker comes up on him he pretends to feel his leg like he was a fag. Those tramps at 103rd Street go around saying ‘Goddam Fag’ because they can’t score. He’s no more a fag than I am.” Roy paused reflectively. “Not as much, in fact.”