who I knew had stolen it somewhere. I carried it pressed under my belt right down the center of
my back. Someone had told me that the cops never hit there in any routine patting-down. And
unless I knew who I was with, I never allowed myself to get caught in any crush of people. The
narcotics cops had been known to rush up and get their o hands on you and plant evidence while
"searching." I felt that as long as I kept on the go, and in the open, I had a good chance. I don't
know now what my real thoughts were about carrying the pistol. But I imagine I felt that I wasn't
going to get put away if somebody tried framing me in any situation that I could help.
I sold less than before because having to be so careful consumed so much time. Every now and
then, on a hunch, I'd move to another room. I told nobody but Sammy where I slept.
Finally, it was on the wire that the Harlem narcotics squad had me on its special list.
Now, every other day or so, usually in some public place, they would flash thebadge to search
me. But I'd tell them at once, loud enough for others standing about to hear me, that I had nothing
on me, and I didn't want to get anything planted on me. Then they wouldn't, because Harlem
already thought little enough of the law, and they did have to be careful that some crowd of
Negroes would not intervene roughly. Negroes were starting to get very tense in Harlem. One
could almost smell trouble ready to break out-as it did very soon.
But it was really tough on me then. I was having to hide my sticks in various places near where I
was selling. I'd put five sticks in an empty cigarette pack, and drop the empty-looking pack by a
lamppost, or behind a garbage can, or a box. And I'd first tell customers to pay me, and then
where to pick up.
But my regular customers didn't go for that. You couldn't expect a well-known musician to go
grubbing behind a garbage can. So I began to pick up some of the street trade, the people you
could see looked high. I collected a number of empty Red Cross bandage boxes and used them
for drops. That worked pretty good.
But the middle-Harlem narcotics force found so many ways to harass me that I had to change my
area. I moved down to lower Harlem, around 110th Street. There were many more reefer smokers
around there, but these were a cheaper type, this was the worst of the ghetto, the poorest people,
the ones who in every ghetto keep themselves narcotized to keep from having to face their
miserable existence. I didn't last long down there, either. I lost too much of my product. After I sold
to some of those reefer smokers who had the instincts of animals, they followed me and learned
my pattern. They would dart out of a doorway, I'd drop my stuff, and they would be on it like a
chicken on corn. When you become an animal, a vulture, in the ghetto, as I had become, you
enter a world of animals and vultures. It becomes truly the survival of only the fittest.
Soon I found myself borrowing little stakes, from Sammy, from some of the musicians. Enough to
buy supplies, enough to keep high myself, enough sometimes to just eat.
Then Sammy gave me an idea.
"Red, you still got your old railroad identification?" I did have it. They hadn't taken it back. "Well,
why don't you use it to make a few runs, until the heat cools?"
He was right.
I found that if you walked up and showed a railroad line's employee identification card, the
conductor-even a real cracker, if you approached him right, not begging-would just wave you
aboard. And when he came around he would punch you one of those little coach seat slips to ride
wherever die train went.
The idea came tome mat, this way, I could travel all over the East Coast selling reefers among my
friends who were on tour with their bands.
I had the New Haven identification. I worked a couple of weeks for other railroads, to get their
identification, and men I was set.
In New York, I rolled and packed a great quantity of sticks, and sealed them into jars. The
identification card worked perfectly. If you persuaded the conductor you were a fellow employee
who had to go home on some family business, he just did the favor for you without a second
thought. Most whites don't give a Negro credit for having sense enough to fool them-or nerve
enough.
I'd turn up in towns where my friends were playing. "Red!" I was an old friend from home. In the
darsice
(darsice)
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