Dream of: 29 February 1996 "Set Up"
I had taken my father to visit Lane, who was living on Charles Street in Portsmouth in about the same block where Walls used to live on Jackson Street. We arrived at the house and walked in. The rooms were long and narrow; we passed through the front room to the middle room, where we found Lane sitting on a couch. I introduced Lane (in his early 20s) to my father (who looked to be in his late 20s) who was quite thin and wearing a white shirt. I told Lane he had met my father once before when Lane had once spent the night at my house when I had been younger.
My father and I had come to Lane's house to buy some cocaine. I thought Lane would have some because I had recently accompanied him on a deal where he had bought a pound or a kilo of cocaine. I also knew Lane had dealt drugs for a long time, and I even seemed to recall that he and I had once traveled to Mexico together to purchase drugs. I quickly came to the purpose of our visit. At first I was unsure Lane would trust my father since Lane didn't know my father, but Lane seemed to trust my father and was willing to sell us the cocaine.
As we talked, I noticed several stacks of comic books sitting on a table in the room – several hundred comics must have been in the stacks. I began looking through the comics; most were Marvel comics and all appeared to be in brand new condition. I picked up a handful of the latest issues of Avengers comics and asked Lane where he had gotten them. I wondered if he had a subscription for the comics or whether he had bought them at a newsstand. I asked Lane several times, but he kept avoiding the question. Finally I realized why: he had obviously stolen the comics.
I had once before bought some comics from Lane and I thought he might sell me some of these, but he didn't seem interested in selling the comics on the table. Instead he pointed to a cardboard box and said he would sell me some of the books in the box for a dollar or a dollar and a half apiece. I quickly began looking in the box but was disappointed. Only one comic book was in the box – an old worn Fantastic Four. All the rest of the books were paperbacks. Someone threw another copy of a Fantastic Four comic into the box and I picked it up and leafed through it – I noticed pictures of the Thing and the Human Torch. Part of one page had been torn out. I put the comic down. One of the paperback books also had a picture of the Human Torch on the cover; I might be interested in it. But basically nothing in the box excited me. I was only interested in the stacks of comics on the table – but Lane didn't seem interested in selling those.
A water pipe was sitting on a coffee table; it looked as if it had some marijuana in it. I picked it up and tried to take a hit, but I apparently put my mouth on the wrong end where the air comes through, and I couldn't get anything. I asked someone else in the room if they had any more pot, and the person left the room to fetch some.
Meanwhile Lane said he had something else for me. He handed me a pill which he said was a Quaalude. When I had the pill in my hand, I saw that it looked exactly like a peanut M&M. I told him I thought it was an M&M, but he insisted it was a Quaalude. I looked at it more closely; indeed, instead of a little "M" written on it, it had an "R," which I thought might stand for "Roche," the name of a drug manufacturer. I stuck the pill in my mouth and after tasting it, I thought the pill might indeed be a Quaalude; I decided to save it for later. I took the pill back out of my mouth, wrapped it up in a small piece of newspaper and stuck it in my pocket. If I encountered the police later, I could just eat the pill and paper together. It shouldn't be a problem.
Meanwhile my father began talking about how he hadn't used any drugs for several years. He said he had first started taking drugs in the 1950s. I reminded him that our family had moved to northern Ohio in 1958, and he said he had started using drugs before then. This was all news to me, but somehow I wasn't particularly surprised.
I talked to Lane about how much he was going to charge my father for the cocaine. My father had plenty of money, but he seemed ignorant about prices. Lane quoted me a price which seemed a fair price for my father to pay.
When Lane left to get the cocaine, I began thinking about how safe it was there. The front door was even open so apparently Lane wasn't afraid of anyone coming in. But no sooner had these thoughts passed through my mind than plain clothes policemen suddenly appeared in the room. They came in so fast, they just seemed to materialize – I hadn't even seen them enter. And suddenly I realized what had happened: my father had set us up. He had arranged this whole bust. I recalled that my father had done this same kind of thing once before. I was thinking that if he continued to do this he would get a bad reputation and no one would sell him any drugs.
The police were polite. I thought they had guns, but I didn't see any. I spoke with one and asked him how they had entered the house. He said the house had been surrounded and some of the police had been waiting on the front porch.
