Detective

night with all my adrenaline flowing, but it sure weighed a ton now. I flung it in the back of the car and drove off, heading for the West Side Highway and home.
    Yeah, I think I’ve had it with the detective business. After all, it was never meant to be permanent. It was always a source of income, nothing more.
    I know an actor named Phil who’s a cokehead, who deals grams just so he’ll have something around to snort. He’s not big time, or anything, but he probably moves about an ounce a week. I don’t know what he pays for his coke or how good it is, but I do know that if I offered him what I have at $1500 an ounce he’d probably come in his pants.
    Let’s see now, there’s 16 ounces to a pound. A kilo’s over two pounds; I’m not sure exactly what, it’s never come up in my life before. So two pounds is 32 ounces; round it off to 30, say 30 ounces a key, times 20 keys, or 600 ounces. That’ll bring me 1500 tax-free a week for at least the next ten years. Well, if I can’t get any writing done with that much free time, I might as well hang it up. I’ll worry about it when I’m 50. Jesus, do people really get to be 50? I guess they do. It surprised the hell out of me to discover they got to be 40.
    Yeah, I know, all this talk about dealing dope makes me a bad person. But I’ve done the right thing all my life and been fucked over by everyone I’ve ever met. Over half the jobs I’ve ever had, I never got paid for, or at least never got paid for in full. I’ve been pushed around all my life by asshole producers, directors, agents, editors and bosses. I’ve never gotten anywhere. I’m 40 years old and I’m tired, and I’ve got a wife and kid to feed, so can you blame me for taking the free ride?
    Look, a lot of people do coke, and they’re gonna go on doing it whether I get my weekly skim or not. And it’s not like I’m hanging out by the schoolyard trying to get the kids hooked. No one in the world is gonna do any more or any less of the stuff whether I get paid or not. So why not get paid?
    Yeah, I know, it’s a lousy moral justification. So I’m a bad person. What can I say. I look at my assets after 40 years of struggling through life, and what do I see? Nothing. Zero. With the small exception of 20 kilos of coke.
    All right, it’s illegal. But my father-in-law cheats on his income tax, and Richard sues innocent people and bilks insurance companies out of millions of dollars, and Leroy’s a thief, for Christ’s sake. They think nothing of it, but they would all look down their noses at me as a dirty filthy dope peddler. Shit. If I’d just had the presence of mind to hit Red on his way down to Miami, and rip off the drug money instead of the drug, they’d think it was just great. Well, fuck ’em all. You gotta do what you gotta do.
    I got on the West Side Highway and headed uptown. Ahead, in the. distance, I could see the sign for the 79th Street Boat Basin.
    Yeah. The coke was mine. I’d worked hard for it. I’d earned it. I had every right to keep it I had every right to sell it.
    Like Albrect.
    Jesus.
    Just like Albrect.
    I pulled into the Boat Basin, stopped the car, and got out. I took the suitcase full of coke and threw it in the Hudson River.
    Tough luck, Phil.
    I threw my beeper in too.
    Tough luck, Richard.
    I got in the car and drove home.
    Yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do.

42.
    D RIVING H OME ON THE W EST side highway, I got to thinking about the case again, and I had a revelation. I guess it’s not surprising for a guy who just threw a half a million dollars in the river to experience a revelation, but actually, that had nothing to do with it. What set it off was the fact that I realized I was referring to the Albrect affair as “the case,” just as if I were a real detective. Which of course struck me funny, seeing as how the whole time I’d been working on “the case,” my big problem had been that I wasn’t a real detective.
    And then, for the first time, I started thinking about what a real detective was. Up to now, my only definition of a real detective had been one that wasn’t me. I’d never really taken it any further than that. But why wasn’t I a real detective? Because I hadn’t kicked down any doors or shot anybody or had any high-speed car chases? Because I hadn’t captured the bad guys single-handed and held them at bay until the police arrived? Just what was a real detective, anyway?
    Well, Fred Lazar’s a real detective. What would