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relations . Once, in New Orleans, I had to pull over to the side of a road and wait until the weed wore off. I could not tell how far away anything was or when to turn or put on the brakes for an intersection.
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    I was shooting every day now. Herman had moved into my apartment on Henry Street, since there was no one left to pay the rent for the apartment he had shared with Jack and Mary. Jack had taken a fall on a safe job and was in the Bronx County jail waiting for trial. Mary had gone to Florida with a “John.” It would not have occurred to Herman to pay the rent himself. He had lived in other people’s apartments all his life.
    Roy was giving himself a long shore leave. He located a doctor in Brooklyn who was a writing fool. This croaker would go three scripts a day for as high as thirty tablets a script. Every now and then he would get dubious on the deal, but the sight of money always straightened him out.
    There are several varieties of writing croakers. Some will write only if they are convinced you are an addict, others only if they are convinced you are not. Most addicts put down a story worn smooth by years of use. Some claim gallstones or kidney stones. This is the story most generally used, and a croaker will often get up and open the door as soon as you mention gallstones. I got better results with facial neuralgia after I had looked up the symptoms and committed them to memory. Roy had an operation scar on his stomach that he used to support his gallstone routine.
    There was one oldtime doctor who lived in a Victorian brownstone in the West Seventies. With him it was simply necessary to present a gentlemanly front. If you could get into his inner office you had it made, but he would write only three prescriptions. Another doctor was always drunk, and it was a matter of catching him at the right time. Often he wrote the prescription wrong and you had to take it back for correction. Then, like as not, he would say the prescription was a forgery and tear it up. Still another doctor was senile, and you had to help him write the script. He would forget what he was doing, put down the pen and go into a long reminiscence about the high class of patients he used to have. Especially, he liked to talk about a man named General Gore who once said to him, “Doctor, I’ve been to the Mayo Clinic and you know more than the whole clinic put together.” There was no stopping him and the exasperated addict was forced to listen patiently. Often the doctor’s wife would rush in at the last minute and tear up the prescription, or refuse to verify it when the drugstore called.
    Generally speaking, old doctors are more apt to write than the young ones. Refugee doctors were a good field for a while, but the addicts burned them down. Often a doctor will blow his top at the mention of narcotics and threaten to call the law.
    Doctors are so exclusively nurtured on exaggerated ideas of their position that, generally speaking, a factual approach is the worst possible. Even though they do not believe your story, nonetheless they want to hear one. It is like some Oriental face-saving ritual. One man plays the high-minded doctor who wouldn’t write an unethical script for a thousand dollars, the other does his best to act like a legitimate patient. If you say, “Look, Doc, I want an M.S. script and I’m willing to pay double price for it,” the croaker blows his top and throws you out of the office. You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.
    Roy was such a junk hog that Herman and I had to shoot more than we needed to keep up with him and get our share. I began shooting in the main line to save stuff and because the immediate kick was better. We were having trouble filling the scripts. Most drugstores will only fill a morphine script once or twice, many not at all. There was one drugstore that would fill all our scripts anytime, and we took them all there, though