Free Junky by William S. Burroughs Page A

routines and “shakes.” I never knew him to use anything but weed, and I was surprised when he asked me if I was holding any junk. I told him, yes, I was pushing junk, and he bought ten caps. I found out he had been hooked for about six months.
    Through Bert, I met another customer. This was Louis, a very handsome type with a waxy complexion, delicate features, and a silky black moustache. He looked like an 1890 portrait. Louis was a pretty fair thief and was generally well-heeled. When he asked for credit, which was seldom, he always made good the next day. Sometimes he brought around a watch, or a suit, instead of cash, which was all right with me. I picked up a fifty-dollar watch from him for five caps.
    Pushing junk is a constant strain on the nerves. Sooner or later you get the “copper jitters,” and everybody looks like a cop. People moving about in the subway seem to be edging closer so they can grab you before you have a chance to throw away the junk.
    Doolie came around every day, impudent, demanding, insufferable. Usually he had some new bulletin on the Nick-Rogers situation. He didn’t mind letting me know that he was in constant touch with Rogers.
    â€œRogers is shrewd, but he’s corny,” Doolie told me. “He keeps saying, ‘I don’t care about you damned junkies. I’m after the guys who make money out of it. When we find Nick, he’s going to fink. He opened up for me once. He’ll do it again. ’ ”
    Chris kept hounding me for credit, whining and pawing at me and talking about the money he was going to have for sure in a few days, or a few hours.
    Nick looked harried and desperate. I guess he didn’t waste any money on food. He looked like the terminal stages of some wasting disease.
    When I delivered to Marvin, I left before he took his shot. I knew he would die from junk sooner or later and I didn’t want to be around when it happened.
    On top of all this, I was just barely scraping by. The short counts we kept getting from the wholesaler, the constant nibbles of credit, and customers coming up twenty-five, fifty, or even a dollar short, plus my own habit, cut profits to bare subsistence.
    When I complained about the wholesaler, Bill Gains got snappish and said I ought to cut the stuff more. “You’re giving a better cap than anybody in New York City. Nobody sells sixteen percent stuff on the street. If your customers don’t like it, they can take their business to Walgreen’s .”
    We kept moving our uptown meets from one cafeteria to another. It doesn’t take the manager long to spot a bookie or a junk pusher. There were about six regular uptown customers now, and that means quite a bit of traffic. So we kept moving.
    Tony’s bar still gave me the horrors. One day it was raining very hard, and I was on my way to Tony’s about a half hour late. Ray, the young Italian hipster, stuck his head out of the door of a restaurant and called me over. It was a lunch counter with booths along one wall. We sat down at a booth and I ordered tea.
    â€œThere’s an agent outside in a white trenchcoat,” Ray told me. “He followed me over here from Tony’s and I’m afraid to go out.”
    The table was made of tube metal, and Ray showed me, guiding my hand under the table, where there was an open end to one of the tubes. I sold him two caps. He wrapped them in a paper napkin and stuffed the napkin into the tube.
    â€œI’m going out clean first in case I get a shake,” he said.
    I drank my cup of tea, thanked him for the information, and left ahead of him. I had the stuff in a package of cigarettes and was ready to throw it in the water-filled gutter. Sure enough, there was a burly young man in a white trenchcoat standing in a doorway. When he saw me he started sauntering up the street ahead of me. Then he turned a corner, waiting for me to walk past so he could fall in behind. I turned and ran