A Mirror of Before and After - CHAPTER XII
By Frank Moore circa 1970s
Dennis came back in the early afternoon and started cleaning the store … sweeping the floor, even under the car seats, and dusting off the display of hash pipes and special glass superchargers.
Moe’s number one chick, Debbie, was feeding me the usual two cheeseburgers and orange juice. At last Moe had picked one who had a head as well as boobs. She was a solid, down-to-earth person who was studying to be a nurse. But she had one hang-up. She was too neat. She kept wiping away the saliva out of my beard every three seconds. I liked to be clean. But when someone had a thing about not letting the slightest bit of a mess remain, it showed me that the person was too busy worrying about how I look or how he was handling the situation for him just to be with me. Moreover, there was some kind of law that said the more you worry or even think about the mess, the bigger the mess gets. I slobber gallons more when I or someone else worries about it. But Debbie was too solid not to get over that fast, especially around Moe, who never did give a shit about that sort of thing. She had to get over it to be the nurse that she wanted to be.
I was sitting, looking at the wall of clothes that separated the back room from the main part of the store. Two rows of shirts with cartoon characters on the front of them. Daffy Duck. Porky Pig. Road Runner. In between rows and in between shirts, there were enough spaces to see what was happening on the other side. I took a bite and accidentally looked through the shirts.
Dennis was opening my suitcase on my mattress. I watched unseen as he felt around in my clothes in a business-like manner. First, he found the unopened package … it should have been under some brightly lighted tree. He put the package on top of the clothes and picked up a shirt revealing another package. The side of this one had been ripped open … and beside this package laid a Baggie. Philip! You lamebrain!
Dennis didn’t even have to look in the opened package. He just put it beside the other one on top of the clothes and stuck the Baggie between the two packages like a baby sleeping between its parents. He didn’t close the suitcase but put it under Moe’s desk where nobody would notice it … unless they were looking for it. I tipped my head back for another piece of cheeseburger as Dennis walked out of the back room. He called out to Moe that he was taking a short walk. But he would be back to still help clean the place.
“Tell Moe FBI found the dope,” I told Debbie.
She went out to get Moe, and they wandered back.
“Did our friend open the wrong present?” Moe asked.
“He would have, but Philip saved him the trouble,” I said. “He searched my bag. I saw him, but he didn’t see me.”
“In that case, how would you like to have a secret mission, my sweets?” Moe asked Debbie.
“I’m game,” Debbie said with a gleam in her eye.
Moe put the dope in a brown paper sack and instructed her to go home with the dope in the opposite direction that Dennis had gone and call the store when she got there.
“Yes sir, Captain,” Debbie saluted us, gave Moe a long, sexy kiss, and was gone.
Dennis came back in a few minutes and busied himself cleaning the Cerebral Palsy handicrafts display in front. After that, he dusted with great gusto the three Harleys in the middle, under the row of clothes. Suddenly he said in an even tone, “Moe, you’ve got visitors.”
Four big cops came through the door. They weren’t the young guys, the regulars on the beat, guys who had just gotten out of the Army or who were in school and needed a job to keep the young wife and the newborn baby in clothes and food. They weren’t the ones who came in to get warm, joke with Moe and maybe buy a poster or a blacklight when they got off work. In the Chevy Chase section, where the store was, the cops on the beat worked in twos, one working each side of the street. Obviously, these guys wanted something more than to warm their feet.
“We’d like to look around,” said the fattest, the most bored one of the foursome.
“Sure. Knock yourself out.” Moe said good-naturedly. The phone started to ring. Moe cried, “Got it!” and scrambled up the steps of the tower. He stopped long enough to tell the cops, who were filing into the back room, that they should make themselves at home. They mumbled for a few minutes among themselves. Moe called down from the tower to tell them they could see the posters better if they turned on the overhead blacklight.
Soon they marched out, saying they would be back when they had enough money to buy the “EARTH … THIS IS GOD … YOU HAVE THIRTY DAYS TO CLEAR OUT … I HAVE A CLIENT INTERESTED IN THE PROPERTY” poster.
When they had left, Dennis came up next to Moe and knowingly asked, “Were they the Vice Squad?”
“What would the Vice Squad want here? I always get the age of the chicks I sleep with. Other than that, I am a healthy, legal male.”
“But still, people have to be careful,” Dennis said with an undercurrent of an attempted threat … as much a threat as a mouse could master against a lion.
“Nah. You see, I got a letter yesterday asking me to write on my highest ambition. I wrote them that my highest ambition is to live until I am a hundred. That’s my main purpose … the only goal for living. Anything else that happens to me is pure gravy.”
“But the way I figure it, I won’t hit the century mark by worrying or by being careful. I don’t give a shit what happens to me. If it is shit, I can handle it; if it is putting out along the highway, I dig it. But either way, I am living,” Moe said. And added to me, “That was Debbie on the phone. She says she hopes you stay around for awhile because she wants to get to know you … or some such shit.”
Next morning, Dennis decided that he should work on his folks’ West Virginia farm after all. There were some real nice people in the town near there. A little straight … a little narrow … but real good people. We all … the Before and After crew … let out a sigh and raced into the bathroom after Dennis left. All except Moe, the straight freak, and me, who had to wait until closing time to get stoned.
Even if Dennis was a milk toast agent, he did get me to D.C. And FBI agents don’t always pop up when you need one. I would have to get back home without the help of an agent. So how was I getting back? How in the fuck did I know? Again, I would have to wait for a key to come to me.
Good work, Debbie! 😁