From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Subject: The Adventures Of Smacks Past (Part 28) Time, Place & Skylights Date: 1996/10/12 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard THE ADVENTURES OF SMACKS PAST (PART 28) TIME, PLACE & SKYLIGHTS Here's one from the annals of dope lore that I almost forgot about. In 1967 I had a job working for an insurance brokerage firm in midtown Manhattan. This place was a throw back to the 40's in a way. It was an older company that got started in 1920 or so. The old man, was a product of the times. Bald head, handlebar mustachio, Walter Winchel newsreel style voice, bombast, the whole nine yards. It was like watching one of those old movies from that era. Even the telephone receptionist used an old style switchboard with all the wires and plugs. I remember her name was Kay and like her boss, she had a voice to match the company atmosphere. I guess it was like the "Daily Planet" where Clark Kent and Lois Lane worked, back when the original series aired. I was most definitely strung out at the time. I started the job in the summer and kept it throughout the next year or so, until I finally got axed. During the time that I was working there, dope was freely available everywhere. Bags of heroin were to be had for as little as $2 or $5. each. These were the days of "deuces and pound bags." And like I recounted in an earlier tale, it was great stuff. I used to cop mostly in the South Bronx, but Harlem and Manhattan were just as good a bet as any place else. The usual thing to do would be to get the stuff at night after leaving work, keep enough for the morning shot and then if needed buy more during lunch! Of course, only if needed! Right. There was a public library not to far from where I worked, where a friend of mine had some kind of librarian job or something. Sometimes I'd meet him for lunch. Most of the time, we'd go get high. There were place right in the Midtown working district, where addicts could cop. Usually these were the back door of some office building, where dealers would sell their $2. or $3. bags during lunch time. As the cost of maintaining a habit always exceeded my work related income, I had to get creative from time to time. Toward the end of my time at this company, I got into the habit of "hitting" the petty cash box from time to time. The good news was that this petty cash box often had a lot more than petty cash in it! Depending on the needs of the business, at times it would have as much as $1,000 or more dollars in it. I knew that eventually I would probably get caught, but fuck, when you're trying to feed a $50 a day habit, you don't usually have time for such philosophical considerations. What I didn't know was that the CEO and his assistant were getting wise to me. I was so zapped all the time that I didn't realize I was about to be "set up." The week I got nailed, I bought a bunch of smack and stashed a good bit of it at the office. I had done this a number of times. It was convenient to have dope at the office! I found a file cabinet that nobody used too often, and stuck about thirty $5 bags behind one of the drawers. That week I "hit" the cash box for another $100 or so. The day after I hit the cash box, the boss came over to me and asked me for change of a $20. If I was a bit more lucid I would have known this was the "sting." Sure enough, the bills I pulled out of the cash box had been marked. Five minutes later, I was called into the bosses office. After being confronted and read the riot act, I was told to leave the premises immediately. The good news is that I was not going to be arrested. But I was most definitely to get the fuck out of that office now and never come back. This presented a minor problem. I had thirty bags of dope stashed! But because of the nature of the circumstance, there was no fucking way I could get to them now. Within minutes I was out the door. Since dope was cheap and I had some money, I just chalked the lost dope up for gone, forever. Occasionally I would think of that stuff sitting there, behind that file cabinet drawer. But I forgot about it for the most part. Of course there were times when I couldn't hustle enough money where I wished I could get my hands on it, but I never could figure out how I would do it. Almost a year later, I was going through a particularly lean time. Real strung out, not much money etc. One night I went home sick as a dog. I ran out of stuff in the mid afternoon and I was just too sick to try to cop anymore stuff. All night long I lay awake wondering how in the fuck I was gonna get some money to cop. And then I remembered the dope I stashed in the cabinet. Since I couldn't sleep, I sat up all night long wondering if there was any way I could get my hands on it. I wondered if it were even still there after almost a year. I wondered if someone had found it somehow. I wondered if it would even still be good, after all this time? But in spite of all these unknowns, I finally hit on a plan. I remembered that the door to the office had one of those skylight windows above it! And I thought I would get downtown before anyone got to work and climb through that skylight. Without knowing exactly what I would do, I got up to the train station and made it down to midtown by 7 A.M. I was a bit worried about any night watchman that might be on duty. This was a major building in Manhattan and I was pretty sure that someone would be on duty during the night. Sure enough, when I passed by the entrance on 5th Avenue I could see someone sitting at the concierge's desk. I walked around and thought for a bit. "okay," I told myself. "Okay, I'll just walk in, like I should be there. I'm just an office worker, coming in early that day." I walked in, and headed straight for the elevator. The "night watchman" asked me where I was going. I quickly told him the name of the company I was heading up to. He seemed satisfied and I got on the elevator. It was about 7:30 A.M. by now and the building was empty. I got off on the fifth floor and headed toward the office door. "Great, no one's here," I thought. But now the reality of what I was going to do sunk in. I looked at the skylight. "Shit, it's smaller than I thought it was. Could I really squeeze through that thing?" Plus I realized that jimmying myself up high enough to pull my way through that narrow opening in the window was going to be a bitch. I propped my foot on the door knob and pushed myself up to the skylight ledge. Now I realized it was not going to be that easy. Pulling myself up, I put my head and upper body through that narrow opening. I had nothing to work with, and the other reality of nothing to land on inside the office was another issue. But I proceeded anyway. Halfway through, I saw that I was getting stuck. You'll have to use your imagination to see this, but there I am, in a deserted office building, halfway through the skylight above this office door. "What if someone comes in early? It was almost 8 A.M.?" Even though the office didn't open until 9 A.M., I worried that someone might come in early. "What if the night watchman makes his rounds?" But with a final push I made it all the way through and fell onto the floor in a heap! Moving quickly I headed for the cabinet that I remembered I stashed the dope in a year ago. Luck was with me. Hands trembling I opened the drawer and pulled out enough so I could reach behind it. It was still there, taped behind the back of the cabinet drawer! Thank god. Still shaking, I started to leave just as quickly as I entered. I didn't even bother to see if the cash box had money in it. Fuck, I had the dope and all I wanted to do was get the fuck out of there. So I pulled myself up to the skylight, pushed my way through again and fell onto the floor outside the office. Mission accomplished. After that I headed to the men's room and tried some of the smack. It was just as good as I remembered it, losing none of it's potency. In a few minutes I headed back down to the lobby, hit the street and was headed home. The sun shinning brightly on that crowded Manhattan street as I headed for the subway. "At least today was going to be an easy one," I thought entered Grand Central Station. Copyright 1996 Gizmo