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marks, Bumper, not too bad,” he said, trying a black-toothed smile. “I shrink them with hemorrhoid ointment.”
    I bent the elbow and looked at the back of the forearm. “Damn, the whole Union Pacific could run on those tracks!” I didn’t need glasses to see those swollen abscessed wounds.
    “Don’t bust me, Bumper,” he whined. “I can work for you like I used to. I gave you some good things, remember? I turned the guy that juked that taxi dancer in the alley. The one that almost cut her tit off, remember?”
    “Yeah, that’s right,” I said, as it came back to me. Wimpy
did
turn that one for me.
    “Don’t these P.O.’s ever look at your arms?” I asked, sliding the sleeves back down.
    “Some’re like cops, others’re social workers. I always been lucky about drawing a square P.O. or one who really digs numbers, like how many guys he’s rehabilitating. They don’t want to
fail
you, you know? Nowadays they give you dope and call it something else and say you’re cured. They show you statistics, but I think the ones they figure are clean are just dead, probably from an overdose.”
    “Make sure
you
don’t O.D., Wimpy,” I said, leading him away from the arcade so we could talk in private while I was walking him to the corner call box to run a make.
    “I liked it inside when I was on the program, Bumper. Honest to God. C.R.C. is a good place. I knew guys with no priors who shot phony needle holes in their arms so they could go there instead of to Q. And I heard Tehachapi is even better. Good food, and you don’t hardly work at all, and group therapy where you can shuck, and there’s these trade schools there where you can jive around. I could do a nickel in those places and I wouldn’t mind. In fact, last time I was sorta sorry they kicked me out after thirteen months. But three years in Q broke me, Bumper. You know you’re really in the joint when you’re in that place.”
    “Still think about geezing when you’re inside?”
    “Always think about that,” he said, trying to smile again as we stopped next to the call box. There were people walking by but nobody close. “I need to geez bad now, Bumper. Real bad.” He looked like he was going to cry.
    “Well, don’t flip. I might not bust you if you can do me some good. Start thinking real hard, while I run a make to see if you hung it up.”
    “My parole’s good as gold,” he said, already perking up now that he figured I wasn’t going to book him for marks. “You and me could work good, Bumper. I always trusted you. You got a rep for protecting your informants. Nobody never got a rat jacket behind your busts. I know you got an army of snitches, but nobody never got a snitch jacket. You take care of your people.”
    “You won’t get a jacket either, Wimpy. Work with me and nobody knows. Nobody.”
    Wimpy was sniffling and cotton-mouthed so I unlocked the call box and hurried up with the wants check. I gave the girl his name and birthdate, and lit his cigarette while we waited. He started looking around. He wasn’t afraid to be caught informing, he was just looking for a connection: a peddler, a junkie, anybody that might be holding a cap. I’d blow my brains out first, I thought.
    “You living at a halfway house?” I asked.
    “Not now,” he said. “You know, after being clean for three years I thought I could do it this time. Then I went and fixed the second day out, and I was feeling so bad about it I went to a kick pad over on the east side and asked them to sign me in. They did and I was clean three more days, left the kick pad, scored some junk, and had a spike in my arm ever since.”
    “Ever fire when you were in the joint?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation going until the information came back.
    “I never did. Never had the chance. I heard of a few guys. I once saw two guys make an outfit. They were expecting half a piece from somewheres. I don’t know what they had planned, but they sure was making a