Shadow Traffic Read Online Free PDF

off with my money, but it had its drawbacks too. Sometimes Dash would return empty-handed, saying the source wasn’t there. Once I said, “Why don’t you call him before you drive over to be sure he’s home?” “I do, brother,” he said, “but he doesn’t always answer his phone.” He went on to explain that the source (who was an electrician) generally didn’t do much once he got home from work, but sometimes he got emergency calls to fix something. “Then he’s gotta split right away in his car. … On the road again,” Dash suddenly sang, but more like Freddy Mercury than Willie Nelson.
    Waiting at the gas station for him to return was nothing I enjoyed. It was like a mini-mall for the unsavory. A number of times I saw some hookers hanging around there, sometimes with their pimps, other times I thought I saw drug deals going down. Worse still, about a third of the times I’d see parked police cars. The bottom line is waiting there I often found myself worrying about getting mugged or getting busted.
    The dealer worried a lot too. He’d been arrested before and once had to wear a wire for the FBI as part of his deal to stay out of prison. He’d had some really harrowing experiences as a result of that wire—one that involved sending his ex-wife to jail and her lover into a gunfight with the cops, who “blew his brains out then scattered them in all four directions,” as the dealer put it, looking me right in the eye. He worried more about getting caught than anyone I’d ever bought from, which wasn’t a bad thing really because it made him careful in lots of ways, likenever mentioning what we were doing on the phone, or never using anyone’s real name. It made me feel better about our odds of not getting caught. But it’s also true there’s a thin line between productive worrying and paranoia that the dealer sometimes crossed. For instance, his always wanting me to smoke while we were together, even in his little blue convertible. I thought it was reckless and said I didn’t want to do it. The next time we went out riding (it was in the afternoon after basketball this time) he asked me again, and I told him I didn’t want to get messed up in the middle of the day, ’cause I had work to do and I wanted to save my stuff for when I really needed it. It wasn’t until the time after that (which was only a few days later) that I finally understood. We were driving toward the source when he suddenly said, “Are you a cop, Jeff?” looking me straight in the eye again in that dramatic way he had, like he was a detective on a TV show interrogating me.
    â€œYou’re kidding, right?” I said, half laughing.
    â€œDo I look like I’m kidding?”
    â€œWhy would you think that? You’ve known me for months, you’ve been to my place. You know what my job is.”
    â€œYou never smoke in front of me, OK? If you smoked in front of me I’d know you weren’t a cop.”
    Next thing I knew he produced a joint and somehow lit it while he drove.
    â€œCome on, brother,” he said, “you have to smoke this now.”
    No man likes to hear the words “have to” from another man. But he was my only link to pot and the other drugs I was also sometimes taking, so I gave in and smoked.
    Things went along all right for a while but then the dealer began having trouble with his girlfriend, Maryann. He lived with her in a pretty nifty apartment in Center City, which I saw onetime. She was a good-looking woman with an excellent body, but she was almost fifty, nearly fifteen years older than him, and the dealer liked younger women. Maryann had some pretty serious bucks, though, and he was living with her for free. He claimed he loved her and bragged that he was being “almost faithful” to her. I thought, when you’re economically dependent on someone things can get