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fit.”
    “How?”
    “They bust open this light bulb and one of them held the filament with a piece of cardboard and a rag and the other just kept heating it up with matches, and those suckers stretched that thing out until it was a pretty good eyedropper. They stuck a hole in it with a pin and attached a plastic spray bottle to it and it wasn’t a bad fit. I’d a took a chance and stuck it in my arm if there was some dope in it.”
    “Probably break off in your vein.”
    “Worth the chance. I seen guys without a spike so strung out and hurting they cut their arm open with a razor and blow a mouthful of dope right in there.”
    He was puffing big on the smoke. His hands and arms were covered with the jailhouse tattoos made from pencil lead shavings which they mix with spit and jab into their arms with a million pinpricks. He probably did it when he was a youngster just coming up. Now he was an old head and had professional tattoos all over the places where he shoots junk, but nothing could hide those tracks.
    “I used to be a boss booster at one time, Bumper. Not just a cigarette thief. I did department stores for good clothes and expensive perfume, even jewelry counters which are pretty tough to do. I wore two-hundred-dollar suits in the days when only rich guys wore suits that good.”
    “Work alone?”
    “All alone, I swear. I didn’t need nobody. I looked different then. I was good looking, honest I was. I even talked better. I used to read a lot of magazines and books. I could walk through these department stores and spot these young kids and temporary sales help and have them give me their money.
Give
me their money, I tell you.”
    “How’d you work that scam?”
    “I’d tell them Mister Freeman, the retail manager, sent me to pick up their receipts. He didn’t want too much in the registers, I’d say, and I’d stick out my money bag and they’d fill it up for Mister Freeman.” Wimpy started to laugh and ended up wheezing and choking. He settled down after a minute.
    “I sure owe plenty to Mister Freeman. I gotta repay that sucker if I ever meet him. I used that name in maybe fifty department stores. That was my real father’s name. That’s really
my
real name, but when I was a kid I took the name of this bastard my old lady married. I always played like my real old man would’ve did something for us if he’d been around, so this way he did. Old Mister Freeman must’ve gave me ten grand. Tax free. More than most old men ever give their kids, hey, Bumper?”
    “More than mine, Wimpy,” I smiled.
    “I did real good on that till-tap. I looked so nice, carnation and all. I had another scam where I’d boost good stuff, expensive baby clothes, luggage, anything. Then I’d bring it back to the salesman in the store bag and tell him I didn’t have my receipt but would they please give me back my money on account of little Bobby wouldn’t be needing these things because he smothered in his crib last Tuesday. Or old Uncle Pete passed on just before he went on his trip that he saved and dreamed about for forty-eight years and I couldn’t bear to look at this luggage anymore. Honest, Bumper, they couldn’t give me the bread fast enough. I even made
men
cry. I had one woman beg me to take ten bucks from her own purse to help with the baby’s funeral. I took that ten bucks and bought a little ten-dollar bag of junk and all the time I was cutting open that balloon and cooking that stuff I thought, ‘Oh you baby. You really are my baby.’ I took that spike and dug a little grave in my flesh and when I shoved that thing in my arm and felt it going in, I said, ‘Thank you, lady, thank you, thank you, this is the best funeral my baby could have.’” Wimpy closed his eyes and lifted his face, smiling a little as he thought of his baby.
    “Doesn’t your P.O. ever give you a urinalysis or anything?” I still couldn’t get over an old head like him not having his arms or urine checked when he was on