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He’s looking at me really weird. I don’t like it.
“My buddy,” Billy said. “He’s all right.”
The guy turned back to Billy.
“How I know he ain’t Five-Oh?” He narrowed his eyes. “Hell, how I know you ain’t working for the man? Or trying to rip me off.”
“Look. I just want some more weed.”
The big guy looked at Billy a long moment. Then he jerked his head to look over his shoulder again as he said, “You want wet? I got wet.” He looked back at Billy. “Good shit. Fuck your head right up.”
“What’s wet?” Dan said.
Billy quickly motioned at Dan with his right hand as a signal for him to shut up.
“No wet,” Billy said. “Just plain weed.”
The big shaved glistening head nodded. “Okay. How much?”
“Two zips. You got that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What’re you getting for it? Same as before?”
“A zip be a buck-fifty.” He said it buck-fitty.
“One-fifty for an ounce. Right?”
“What the fuck I just say?” He made a loud grunt, as if he were disgusted or impatient or both. He suddenly grinned. “Yeah. Unless you wanna pay more.”
A regular comedian, this guy, Billy thought as he reached down for his worn fabric wallet in his lap. He tugged at the Velcro closure, making a ripping sound as it opened, then pulled out four fifties and five twenties. He folded the stack of bills twice and slid it to the top edge of the window.
“That’s three hundred.”
“Better be.”
Billy knew it’d be counted before he reached the delivery point. He’d be damn stupid if he tried shorting the big guy. He’d just keep Billy’s money. That, and maybe worse.
The wad of cash disappeared in the big guy’s left fist, which he then stuffed in the belly pocket of his sweatshirt as he straightened up and stepped back from the car. His left hand then came out of the pocket with a tiny walkie-talkie.
He looked down at the far end of the street. Billy and Dan looked there, too, as they heard the guy say into the walkie-talkie, “Two green Zs.”
They saw the skinny guy down on the corner lowering his left hand from his ear, then motioning to a young kid who was sitting on the crooked dirty concrete stoop of a row house. The kid, who looked maybe ten, then got up and disappeared behind a chain-link fence gate.
“All right, Little Man down there will fix you up,” the big guy said, then turned and went back to his corner.
Billy put the car in gear. It slowly began to move.
After a moment, Dan shook his head.
“Damn! You see how much he was sweating?” he said, nervously glancing back at him. “Like it was the middle of summer!”
“And paranoid. That’s why I shut you up. That’s the wet.”
“The sweat?”
“The wet—it’s weed, or sometimes just a cigarette, that’s been laced with PCP. That angel dust makes them sweat, yeah, but it really makes them crazy.”
