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Even though Charlene and I both got over it quickly, I felt awkward around Scott Street and was relieved when, a week or so after the Magic Mountain Music Festival and Fantasy Fun Faire, Tim and I and another friend, Don, left on a whim for LA in Tim’s car, past midnight, all three of us on powerful psychedelics. We would sell acid down there, where we heard there was a shortage, and then buy grass (virtually all of it came from Mexico then) to bring back to the City (where most acid was made), which we knew to be running low on grass. It felt good to get away, have a vacation from Eden. We sold our acid and also met a big grass dealer who wanted to do a deal bigger than we could handle. So, after we returned, we arranged a deal between that dealer and a big Haight dealer, a friend of Tim’s, hoping for maybe a two kilo commission out of a fifty kilo deal. A couple nights after we returned from LA, the Haight dealer came over to Scott Street. Tim had told me that he was the acid dealer to the Hell’s Angels, and he told me his name, but it wasn’t until I saw him that I realized I already knew Shob. The year before, I tagged along for a few weeks of field-study and chauffeurship with Ziggy, junkie, master burn-artist, and friend of Howie and Art, who gave me my first methedrine for letting Ziggy and his wife crash with me. Actually, I didn’t know Ziggy was a junkie until the evening I drove him to score from Shob. We went to a huge, elegant, white Victorian with dormers and stained-glass windows on the north-east corner of Clayton and Page. The doorbell was answered by an attractive long-haired teenage chick who led us through what was a type of boardinghouse where a bedroom is rented along with access to a common kitchen and bathroom. On the third floor, while Ziggy and I sat on pillows on the floor and leaned against the wall, the chick disappeared. Across the room, Ziggy and I could see a vista over the roofs of the southern Haight. A towheaded boy of five or six stared placidly out at the view. When the chick returned, Ziggy asked her in his thick New York accent, “That yuah kid?” “No,” she cooed. “I’m just babysitting him.” “Oh. He’s a cute kid. A vehry cute kid.” She looked down at the boy with a warm, indulgent smile. The child blushed and squirmed with shyness. That was as close to a normal human sentiment as I would ever hear from Ziggy. He was awkward with it. “We’re coming down from acid,” the chick said. “Hi Ziggy,” said a cat who had just entered. He was tall and lean with mutton chops (a beard that leaves the point of the chin bare), and light brown hair, thin on top but reaching his shoulders. “Hi Shob,” Ziggy said and then stood. “Wait heeuh, I’ll be right back,” he said to me and followed Shob out of the room. At that time, I had only taken acid once, when it was still legal, and loved it. Little was known about it yet. For me it was just one of an array of unexplored drugs. But I was repulsed by the idea of giving it to a small child, and so I didn’t bother to make conversation with the chick. Instead, I listened to the light traffic on the street below. A few times I exchanged smiles with the boy who, in his post-acid calm, moved like someone underwater. Ziggy returned and led me downstairs and into the street. After we got into the car, he was the first to speak. “Man that cat is weeuhd,” he said, tossing his head back towards Shob. “Ya know what he does fuh kicks? He drives old caws down to Big Suh and rolls ‘em off cliffs. Fuh kicks!” So on a Wednesday night Shob limped into the Scott Street pad with one foot in a dirty plaster cast, a stale submarine-sandwich of toes. It was an excuse to sport a cane. He also wore a Smokey-the-Bear hat and a suede vest and leather pants, all in manly brown. He was stylish, self-assured, commanding, with no time or inclination for small talk. He glanced over the room, including me, without greeting or recognition, and I felt relieved, not wanting to be remembered as Ziggy’s mute sidekick. “Hi Shob,” Tim said. “Hi.” “What happened to your foot?” Tim asked. “Had some trouble with some spades. . . It’s nothin’. What’s this deal?” Tim explained the L.A. dealer’s terms: fifty kilos, forty dollars each. Shob smoked a sample joint, a few feet inside the door, looking down, evaluating, running through timetables and capital, ignoring Tim’s offer to sit. Eventually Shob said, “Yeah. O.k. I’ll do it.” Tim and I exchanged a thrilled glance. “But here’s how it’s gonna be,” Shob continued. “We’ll meet out in the desert, at night, like he wants to, but I’ll pick the spot. There’ll only be his pick up and my pick up.” “Great! We’ll contact him right away and then I’ll call you,” Tim said. The roller coaster of a Really Big Deal was starting down the tracks. “O.k. man, I gotta split. I’ll talk to ya later,” Shob said then pivoted and started out the door hobbled by that monument to whatever point he made by fighting. It wasn’t a new cast, yet, I noticed, it was conspicuously free of graffiti or autographs or psychedelic doodling. “Yeah,” Tim added, “Yeah, we’ll, we’ll let you know what he says as soon as we talk to him.” Just then Christine appeared outside our door. She came in and greeted Shob and it was immediately apparent they had been lovers and not long ago. I read their mime across the room. She tucked hair behind an ear and asked how he was. He told her and asked her the same and, at her bidding, explained the cast. All through this nonsense her eyes pleaded and she melted with contrition. He had to look down, and then when he looked back up, he showed her his stern resolution. She had apparently violated some section of his code and, painful as it was, he was going to have to abide by his earlier ruling on the matter. “Hey Tim,” Shob said, about to step out of the doorway. “I’m gonna have my piece with me. And if there’s any trouble, I’m gonna use it.” Apparently, recent events had driven the ex-Marine to resolve not take shit anymore from anybody. He said good-bye to Christine then clumped down the stairs. She watched him until he was out of the building then turned and went into her apartment, hurt again, and seemingly oblivious to the gun comment which was probably meant for her. Tim and I were stunned. “Piece” hit us like a bomb. Neither said good-bye to Shob. “Hey man,” I said. “We’ve gotta talk.” “Yeah,” Tim replied. “Man, I don’t wanna . . .” “Yeah, I don’t either,” he said. I understood that he agreed but I still couldn’t keep from venting fear. “The game of dealing is fun but . . . The kind of mind that sees a need for a gun can distort a situation for an excuse to use it .... If enlightenment was even a remote possibility. . . but this is… this is just… money… and he’s taking money too seriously…” We were both incapable of that. Each had decided separately and simultaneously to back out, regardless of what the other did.
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