1. The Hooker
I was out drinking with some cops from the Houston narcotics squad. One of them said to me “You’re okay. We’d like to do something for you.”
“What?” I said.
“We want to give you a girl.”
“Give me a girl.”
“Not give, but, you know.” He explained that most of the guys in narcotics had previously worked in vice, so they knew a lot of hookers. Some of them, he said, were really nice girls, “Not scags like you see on the street.” I was alone, he said, in a strange town and they thought it would be nice if I had a bed warmer.
“Oh,” I said, “that’s okay. You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s no trouble,” one of them said. “They owe us lots of favors.”
“They do favors for us all the time,” another said.
One of them explained to me that when they were in vice it was their job to arrest the hookers but now that they were in narcotics the hookers often helped them with tips and they often helped the hookers by getting them off beefs. “It’s territorial,” he said. “You’re not out there to arrest everybody.”
“So,” the first one said, “we’d like to send this girl out to your motel.”
“No,” I said, “I’d rather not.”
The temperature dropped maybe forty degrees. Why would I turn down a nice girl coming to my room for free? It was one thing if I was a Harvard commie jew with a New York accent; they could deal with that; everybody had a bit and that was mine. But what if I was queer? Was that it? Was I queer? (The term “gay” was not yet in currency.)
In Texas in those years engaging in homosexual acts was a serious felony. I knew a guy out at Ramsey prison farm who was doing ten years for what he called “anvil sodomy.” Anvil sodomy. The poor sonofabitch was doing a dime for it and he couldn’t even pronounce it.
I couldn’t say “I don’t want to fuck a whore,” because that would be saying I was better than they, and here we’d spent all this time riding around and lurking and drinking and going on raids. You know: bonding. I couldn’t say, “I don’t want a whore because I’ve got a speedfreak splitting Desbutols with a single edge razor out in the motel on I-45, which was true. (She would pop the blue methamphetamine side immediately. She saved the pink Nembutol side in case, “I ever want to sleep.” She had jars of those pink Nembutols.)
So, I said, “I’d love to accept, believe me. But I’m here studying you for the Federal government. If I let you give me a girl, then you’ve got something on me. Even if I’m not saying anything critical, people can say, ‘He didn’t say anything critical because they had something on him.’ It’s to your advantage for me not to take anything from you and for you not to have anything on me.”
That made perfect sense to everybody. Another round of drinks appeared, stories were told and corrected, more drinks followed. After a while I said, “There is one thing.”
“What? Name it.”
“I’ve rented this Shelby Cobra 350 and I’ve never had a chance to open it up. I’ve never had it over 80. I’m going back to Cambridge tomorrow. Is there someplace I could go and really open it up and not have to worry about getting a ticket?”
“Absolutely,” one said, pointing to the door. “Right out there.”
“There?”
“There’s an entrance to I-10 a half mile from here. There’s no traffic there this time of night. Get up on that highway and floor the sonofabitch.”
“Floor the sonofabitch,” someone else said.
“That’s what I’d do,” another said.
“What if some cop is up there and gives me a ticket?”
“Call us. Nobody’s gonna give you a ticket for speeding in Houston. Just call us.” They gave me their cards.
It seemed to make sense. This was before cell phones. If I’d been the least bit sober it would have occurred to me that there was no way I could’ve gotten hold of any of them until they came into work the next morning so, if arrested, I would have spent a night in jail.
But I was not the least bit sober, so after a little while I bade them goodnight, got into the Shelby G350H and headed for the highway.
2. The Shelby G350H Cobra
It was black and its pipes made a terrific sound. Everything about that car had to do with speed and power. Nothing gracious about it. It was the fastest car in Hertz’s offerings: 470 horsepower. No engineering wasted on things that made driving easy. No power steering; no power brakes; no air-conditioning. Everything went into the driveshaft.
It had seemed a great idea when I was at the Hertz rental counter; it had been horrible ever since. This was Houston, Texas, in July and the car was black: my shirt was forever wet and I was constantly wiping my brow so I could see.
I got up on I-10 and headed west, toward Katy and San Antonio. I came up the ramp in second, dropped it into third, ran the tachometer nearly to the red and dropped into fourth when the speedometer was already approaching 100. The windows were all open, it was finally cool in that oven on wheels. 105. I didn’t have to worry about a speeding ticket because if a cop was able to catch me we’d just call my buddies at the bar. 110….
Then it occurred to me that it wasn’t a traffic cop I should be worrying about. It was death I should have been worrying about. I was tearassing along a Texas highway at well over one hundred miles an hour on a road I didn’t know in a car I hadn’t spent any quality time in.
All of a sudden the single most important thing was getting that beast going very slowly. I knew I couldn’t even tap the brakes. If the brakes were the least bit uneven, the car would’ve spun into the whirlwind. I didn’t know the car well enough and wasn’t sharp enough to compensate correctly at the steering wheel if a spin began.
I took my foot off the accelerator and watched the tach and speedometer slowly drift to the left. It seemed to take forever. Then I hit the clutch and dropped into third, and the rate of slowing accelerated. Finally, I got to a speed where if I got a ticket it would have been for crawling on the interstate. My shirt was drenched, and not from the heat and humidity.
I took the next exit and cloverleafed so I was heading back east. I caught the I-45 connection and went to the motel. I was as quiet as I could be but when I got into the room she woke up anyway.
“You smell really ratty,” she mumbled.
“Sorry,” I said, “I’ll take a shower.”
“No,” she said. “I like ratty. You know that.”
3. The Chrome-Plated .380 Llama
Before I tried to break the sound-barrier with the Shelby, one of those Houston cops said, “For somebody from up there”—he meant New England—”you’re all right. If you ever need anything, let us know.” A couple of the others said, “Yeah” to that.
I told them there was one thing. Ever since I’d been in the Marines I’d wanted a Colt .45 automatic. I didn’t have any use for one; I just liked the idea of it. “If you ever take one off somebody and don’t have to turn it in, save it for me.” They all said they would. I was sure they’d forget by the time they sobered up.
The next year I was visiting a friend in San Antonio and I learned one of those guys was now a federal narcotics agent based there. I let him know I was coming down. He wrote to say he’d pick me up at the airport, we could have a drink and catch up, and he’d drop me at my friend’s house.
He met me at the gate. He said “I’ve got something for you. What you wanted.” He gave me the .380 chrome-plated Llama automatic.
I’d forgotten our Colt conversation. “What do I do with this?” I said.
“Right here,” he said. He turned around and lifted his shirt. “Between these two belt loops. Best way to carry it.” There we were, in the San Antonio airport, him with his shirt pulled up pointing at the gun tucked in his pants and me holding the .380 and nodding. No one paid us any mind.
I pulled out my shirt and tucked the gun into my belt, just like he showed me. He was right: you could walk with a pistol there, without a holster. As we walked through the airport to his car I wondered if every guy I saw with his shirt out was carrying.
I never fired it. I held onto it for a few years, lent it to my brother once, then disassembled it and put half the pieces out with the trash one week, the other half the following week.
I had another pistol, a souvenir from graduate school in Indiana, an enormous British .44 Webley revolver. A friend and I would sometimes go to one of the limestone quarries outside of town and shoot floating beercans and condoms.
I did the same thing with the .44 Webley: I put half the pieces out with the trash one week, and most of the rest the next. I kept one part because it was pretty: the six-round cylinder. Without the rest of the gun, it’s just an old dark piece of steel. I still have it.
