grooves at the same time. The only word to describe it was a timelessness. A day might have
seemed to me five minutes. Or a half-hour might have seemed a week.
I can't imagine how I looked when I got to the hotel. When the Lesbian and her girl friend saw me,
they helped me to a bed; I fell across it and passed out.
That night, when they woke me up, it was half a day beyond West Indian Archie's deadline. Late, I
went back uptown. It was on the wire. I could see people who knew me finding business
elsewhere. I knew nobody wanted to be caught in a crossfire.
But nothing happened. The next day, either. I just stayed high.
Some raw kid hustler in a bar, I had to bust in his mouth. He came back, pulling a blade; I would
have shot him, but somebody grabbed him. They put him out, cursing that he was going to kill
me.
Intuition told me to get rid of my gun. I gave a hustler the eye across the bar. I'd no more than
slipped him the gun from my belt when a cop I'd seen about came in the other door. He had his
hand on his gun butt. He knew what was all over the wire; he was certain I'd be armed. He came
slowly over toward me, and I knew if I sneezed, he'd blast me down.
He said, "Take your hand out of your pocket, Red-real carefully."
I did. Once he saw me empty handed, we both could relax a little. He motioned for me to walk
outside, ahead of him, and I did. His partner was waiting on the sidewalk, opposite their patrol
car, double-parked with its radiogoing. With people stopping, looking, they patted me down there
on the sidewalk.
"What are you looking for?" I asked them when they didn't find anything.
"Red, there's a report you're carrying a gun."
"I had one," I said. "But I threw it in the river."
The one who had come into the bar said, "I think I'd leave town if I were you, Red."
I went back into the bar. Saying that I had thrown my gun away had kept them from taking me to
my apartment. Things I had there could have gotten me more time than ten guns, and could have
gotten them a promotion.
Everything was building up, closing in on me. I was trapped in so many cross turns. West Indian
Archie gunning for me. The Italians who thought I'd stuck up their crap game after me. The
scared kid hustler I'd hit. The cops.
For four years, up to that point, I'd been lucky enough, or slick enough, to escape jail, or even
getting arrested. Or any serious trouble. But I knew that any minute now something had to
give.
Sammy had done something that I've often wished I could have thanked him for.
When I heard the car's horn, I was walking on St. Nicholas Avenue. But my ears were hearing a
gun. I didn't dream the horn could possibly be for me.
"Homeboy!"
I jerked around; I came close to shooting.
Shorty-from Boston!
I'd scared him nearly to death.
"Daddy-o!"
I couldn't have been happier.
Inside the car, he told me Sammy had telephoned about how I was jammed up tight and told him
he'd better come and get me. And Shorty did his band's date, then borrowed his piano man's car,
and burned up the miles to New York.
I didn't put up any objections to leaving. Shorty stood watch outside my apartment. I brought out
and stuffed into the car's trunk what little stuff I cared to hang on to. Then we hit the highway.
Shorty had been without sleep for about thirty-six hours. He told me afterward that through just
about the whole ride back, I talked out of my head.