Free Death Claims by Joseph Hansen Page A

put you through the routine, a doctor saw you, remember? You pissed in a bottle for him. The lab ran a stat on that sample. It's called a naline test. Your urine showed opium derivatives. Morphine is an opium derivative. The dispensary at the hospital keeps missing morphine. In quantity." 
    "It puts you to sleep." The boy wanted to make friends with a clock over the door above Dave's head. His look kept going to it. It didn't seem to give him any satisfaction. "I'm not sleeping." 
    "You will be," Campos said, "but you'll hate it." 
    The boy's voice went shrill. "The dispensary! Everybody helps theirself at the dispensary. But you don't bust none of them. You bust me." 
    " 'Born to lose,' " Campos said. "Right?" 
    "You better believe it. Plenty of doctors in that place are hypes. But if a doctor pissed in that bottle, your lab would tell you it was full of tropical fish." 
    "One law for the rich, one law for the poor?" Campos said. "I know about that. You grow up a Chicano in this town and you know about it. But if you want to change it, you're starting at the wrong end." 
    A tough brown nine-by-twelve envelope lay under the paper with the photos and fingerprints. Campos pried up its little tin clasp, opened its flap, upended it. A wallet fell out, plastic that had never even tried to imitate leather. A rattle of pennies, dimes, quarters. A limp matchbook, a crumpled Kent cigarette pack, a nail-clipper, a little loop of tarnished ball chain with three keys on it. Campos took one of the keys off and tossed it in his palm. It winked in the cold overhead light. The boy watched it as if it were the only object in the room. Pale, like something from under a stone, his tongue came out, touched his lips, went back into the dark again. 
    Campos said, "This is a key to the dispensary. You aren't supposed to have a key to the dispensary." 
    "You said 'in quantity'!" the boy shouted. "Even if I was a user, how could I use it in quantity?" 
    Campos let the key fall. "You could sell it." 
    The boy had come in sallow. Now he looked made out of cheap wax. "Jesus!" he whispered. 
    "I wouldn't waste ten seconds on youw-Campos held open the brown envelope and dropped the wallet into it, the rest of the stuff, the keys — "if it was only yourself you were hurting." 
    "You're out of your skull," the boy said. "If I was a pusher, would I be swabbing up shit at that hospital all night? At a dollar-sixty-ass-five an hour?" 
    "It's your source." Campos fitted the hole in the envelope flap over the upright tin prongs and flattened them. "And your cover." 
    The boy laughed. There was despair in it. "You seen the dump I live in? You seen the car I drive? A beat-up '58 VW." 
    "It got you to Arena Blanca. To John Oats. Not once. Several times. Beginning when he left the hospital, back around Christmas." 
    "Who?" The boy squinted. "Arena what?" 
    Campos sighed. "Put on your coverall." He turned his head. Not far. He was too tired to turn it far. Just enough so Dave knew the words were meant for him. "Bring her in, will you?" 
    He found her in a room where vending machines, battered but flashy, stood against the walls like images left over from a religious procession. In a corner was a tan swing-top waste receptacle, but it was jammed and the floor was a trash map of candy wrappers, sandwich scraps, striped waxpaper cups. Arm desks of tan steel tubing and varnished plywood made a back-to-back row that divided the room. In the flat 2:00 A.M. glare of naked fluorescent ceiling lights, four people kept apart from each other at the desks. A bald black man leaned forward, big hands hanging, staring at his paint-stained shoes. Over the thick knees of a Mexican grandmother a frail brown little boy climbed, whining in Spanish to go home. April Stannard waited, pale, her girl hands knuckled together in her lap. When she saw Dave, she frowned and stood up. She wore a coat of her own now. 
    " You're here," she said. "So it's not good news." 
    "I