Dr. Paulie's Snowstorm
COTTLE, THOMAS J.
STUCK ON THE SHOW Dr. Paulie's Snowstorm By Thomas J. Cottle RAYMOND PAULIE CWGHTON IS a tall, frighteningly thin boy of 13. When I first met him —while doing research on how families...
...He knows, I know, my mother knows...
...But whatever his verbal shifts and inconsistencies, he never stops talking...
...Paulie to get stuff...
...It's going to blow down on folks as long as it likes...
...Idowhatldo...
...Standing on a street near his home, his pockets bulging with money, he says to me: "Hey, doc, tell me what you need...
...One minute I hear the big man bravura, the next minute he reveals contrition, even remorse...
...Hundreds of guys comin'out of school sayin', take alook at me, boss...
...No way...
...Nurses too, doc...
...I got TVs, doc...
...Hope she's got a lot of time, but the doctor don't think it looks good...
...And how many hours a day I work...
...Paulie will walk free from the courts...
...You think we're hiding around doing this...
...You get the steak warm, how come the dish don't get warm...
...Can't get out of it...
...I might have already put someone in the grave...
...He says he'll fix me up...
...They got patients bleeding and dying and falling all over the place, and all these nurses can think about is, when's Dr...
...I just keep my mouth shut and my beeper on...
...Hell no...
...That means someday, when they find one of these people who dies from the show, they're going to do one of their examinations and find the bullet...
...They ain't never ashamed...
...Take care of my body...
...Doctors with keys to cabinets with pain killers that could putmeout of business buy fromme...
...I don't need school now...
...You got a 13-year-old kid making more money than most everybody in the country...
...I've taken money from some of the sickest folks anyone could meet...
...I went to this court with a friend of mine...
...Young guys can't afford my show...
...We both know she's lyin...
...Paulie, I see his fright...
...We meet in a goddamn McDonald's...
...I'm the bullet...
...Refrigerators...
...So what's wrong 'bout this arrangement...
...Too late for that...
...My mother will tell you she takes my stuff and doesn't care how I got it...
...I see a 13-year-old boy fearing things with which he should never have become involved...
...It's like a snowstorm...
...And for the first time since I have known Dr...
...How many people you know dealing with big shots like I do...
...I treat him...
...One might say that Raymond (Brighton is a successful businessman, if that term applies to a boy barely in his teens...
...He's probably right about this...
...You tell him where to go, he'll be there...
...This is a bad act, doc...
...Not for himself, not for all thepeople in the picture on his desk, and not for me, you can bet...
...These days his mother frets that Paulie flunks most of his courses in school, shows up for classes only 50 per cent of the time and never stays for more than 50 per cent of the day...
...I'm no different than half the people you know...
...Paulie's tone and mood begin to vacillate...
...Politicians too...
...He'll call...
...How'm I gonna check a microwave...
...You wanna know...
...In the streets, back of someone's car somewhere...
...You want 27 inches, you got it...
...Don't know if I want to, either...
...We die...
...No one else did...
...Plenty times I thought about it and it always comes out with the same answer...
...There are people, you know, who can't go to the wards and I get to go 'cause folks up there say I'm this one's son or this one's brother...
...I'm a criminal...
...He makes a killing while you go off thinking you made a killing...
...Do it so clean the guy don't even know he's hit...
...I get him drugs...
...When I first met him —while doing research on how families without fathers were faring— he was only five...
...He does his work for her...
...Got all kinds of gadgets on 'em...
...I'm standing there while he's making some fool spend his money or lose his money to pay a 13-year-old kid who gets him drugs...
...Checked 'em out myself...
...Man has more money than god...
...But I'm the one took their money...
...A cousin of mine helps him lay bets...
...Microwaves...
...I know what's happening...
...He knows the game...
...I make money off people like you, doc...
...Nothing I say ever seems to affect Dr...
...Don't want nobody to tell me I'm dumb...
...Guys like me, we don't go to court, 'cept to sell drugs, I s'pose...
...Paulie.' Probably knew it all the time...
...He is openly angered, for example, to learn that a friend does drugs, but he articulates his rage 10 minutes after he has sold the friend cocaine...
...I'm saying old guys...
...So he says, you want business, Dr...
...Paulie's life...
...Frames could send me on a trip somewhere...
...You put me away today, they got 10 million kids, most of 'em younger than me, waitin' to get hold of my client list...
...They ain't never been in our house but if they don't do nothin' it's because they pretend they can't see nothin...
...His friends call him "The Fifty-Fifty Man...
...People think they can stop it...
...Gets stuff through a guy who's been in prison...
...I got friends in high andlowplaces...
...Doc, I make more money in two hospitals than I make out here in the streets for two weeks...
...Strangely, I often use the word brilliant to describe him, but it may not be accurate...
...I don't understand what the hell's going down...
...Name it, you got it...
...Paulie coming...
...They go to court, they do their song and dance and they walk...
...But it don't matter 'cause I'm still the bullet...
...No one takes note of us, no one sees anything out of the ordinary...
...The housing project Dr...
...I have never actually observed him doing anything long enough to know exactly how smart he is...
...Ain't many people in the world who breathe easy knowing how things have found their way into their home...
...Whereas once I dreaded this boy's telephone calls with their grandiosity and braggadocio, now suddenly I worry whenldon'thearfromhim...
...When she dies, I ain't goin' to turn myself in or nothin' but then everything can go away...
...I can't even figure how those suckers work...
...Most kids like Dr...
...Similarly, his argument at times loses its logic and impact...
...Partly because of this, and partly too, I imagine, because of the supreme danger of his work, he has mastered the big man image and the art of bravura...
...Thomas J. Cottle, a longtime contributor to the NL, has served as lecturer on psychology at the Harvard Medical School...
...Anyway, we're talking, and this man comes up and tells me this judge is a head...
...They act so smooth all the time, but if I don't come up with what they want, they go out of their minds...
...They're there guaranteeing him, and while they're doing this, they're writing notes to each other 'bout this and that...
...That means my mother, my sisters, my brother...
...Bad one, too, which makes everybody who knows what I do a criminal...
...Istand there, doc, next to guys in the stock market business...
...Course I got cop friends who gotta know what's going on...
...I see it in his face...
...He ain't goin' to kick nothin' anymore...
...Four...
...I'm the new Dr...
...She comes in for treatment, he does his job, but he won't call me for weeks...
...That crazy...
...Money ain't stole or nothin', but it's dirty...
...That's the way he wants it...
...The bankers do it...
...Callsmeon the beeper...
...Man's stuck on my show...
...And doc, I ain't payin' no visit without someone callin' me first...
...You think I'm lyin' doc...
...Hey, I'm the one saw where the money comes from...
...One man don't like me so much now 'cause I bring my mother to him and he can barely look at me...
...He sets up complicated payment programs, installment strategies with interest, and hardly ever makes an error...
...There is obvious danger at almost every turn of Dr...
...In a goddamn court...
...Paulie is in the sunlight, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, a sprinter awaiting the order to enter the starting blocks...
...Boom, off into the air I hit this guy right between the eyes...
...thro w ice in your face if you hit the right button, doc...
...Lots of the time I walk around here feeling like some kind of big shot myself...
...His innocent smooth face saves him...
...All I care about is the man pays me good old American cash...
...Cause those yellers and screamers want my drugs...
...Idon'tknowif they're lying...
...He ain't goin' to change his life...
...I been in their offices with the pictures of the wife and kids on the desk...
...I know better than anyone how people are beggin' for the show...
...he protests when I start up once again on the subject of his staving in school...
...This guy sells TV sets that cost him a few bucks...
...Astonishingly, he has never been robbed, even though his pockets literally bulge with the bills he receives from his clients...
...Everybody's screaming and yelling...
...He was up for something he never did...
...After all, no show runs forever, and no actor, no matter how superb his performance, is immortal...
...Don't make out like everybody's clean...
...The doctors do it...
...I sit tight...
...He is revved, always revved...
...Now Dr...
...Too great a chance you lose out on another score...
...They're safe, doc...
...That he gets home every night, that he avoids fights and shootings, is a miracle...
...Don't drink...
...So who you think is crazy, doc...
...I say, in here man...
...They teach that in my school, I might just sit there awhile...
...Paulie lives in is located in a high crime area...
...In subsequent conversations, however, I begin to hear increasing references to penance, punishment, guilt...
...Then there is the matter of his moral dilemmas...
...Shedies, I quit...
...You believe what I'm tellin' you...
...They're wearin' clean clothes and all, but they are sick...
...I'm doin' lots of things bad, doc...
...I'll tell you then...
...Want 'em for their recreation...
...Feels good being somebody people can see...
...Most of 'em already got their names, like The Croaker, Roach, Spider Man...
...I sold drugs to a judge in a court...
...Man said if I told someone 'bout him he'd have me in his court...
...Nah, I didn't really...
...They do business right there, because no one will suspect 'em of nothin' Right out in the open...
...Why do you ask those questions doc...
...You believe this...
...I got a dentist near where you live, doc...
...We're talking honest to god docs wearing white coats so pressed you can see your face in 'em...
...You can have him bring any amount of cocaine you desire...
...He brags to me of living without conflict, but just when I conclude that his conflict-free outlook is nothing more than psychopathy, he turns around and ruminates on his destiny—as he does on that hot afternoon near his home...
...Paulie, as he now refers to himself (after all, he's dispensing a "medicinal" product), handles thousands of dollars a month...
...His periodic grandiose offers of products continue, our discussions go on in cars, hamburger joints, ice cream parlors, shopping malls...
...So I welcome his calls these days, despite their high blown promises of free TVs and refrigerators...
...They want drugs, I get 'em drugs...
...People could be watching us like we were on TV...
...Sometimes he works three days a week, sometimes seven...
...All I remember is that he had one of those sweet innocent faces that prompted people to call him "Sugar...
...Although one of his brothers was in jail, there was of course no way to tell how little Paulie would turn out...
...I can tell myself what I'm doin' don't hurt nobody but it's lyin...
...We don't go to court...
...Gambles...
...He's a helluva doc...
...He sells drugs...
...I ain't the gun, I ain't the guy pulling the trigger...
...She ain't gonna be healthy just ' cause I go home some night and tell her I'm out of work and goin' back to school...
...He seems to sell them everywhere— on the street, in shopping malls, restaurants, office buildings, hospitals...
...I figure I can make it a few more years...
...I saw a guy a few weeks back, he made someone buy something or sell something, 'cause the sucker owed me money...
...Besides, it is the older dealers and organizers the police seek...
...Good looking nurses waiting for me to visit...
...Police admit to their frustrations in dealing with child drug dealers...
...Nightly, police respond to knifings, shootings, and drug overdoses, the large majority of them involving children...
...He treats her...
...I'm the one who goes between the people killing people and the people getting killed...
...Real low places...
...Everybody's doing the illegal thing or the stupid thing or the killer thing...
...Whole damn hospital knows, for all I care...
...There are never problems he can't handle, never reasons to be pessimistic...
...She ain't gonna suddenly say goodbyto cancer...
...Does cocaine...
...There are also more references to death as a logical and preordained solution...
...This guy makes money with money...
...I'm a damn criminal who maybe ought to be killed for what he does...
...I don't let him down, but he's ashamed...
...He's rarely late for an appointment and is always reachable, since he wears a beeper on his belt...
...But I got to pay a price somewhere, don't I? I ain't foolin' myself...
...Their recreation gets me my recreation, see what I'm saying...
...Maybe...
...This guy makes money with cars...
...Good days he may take in $600, bad days around $100...
...You understand that...
...You gotta be kiddin' me...
...The murders of children continue in our city, and what Raymond Crighton calls the snowstorm has barely abated...
...The tone of his voice is enthusiastic, ebullient...
...You wanna know if I'm a criminal...
...He keeps only a percentage of what he earns, but the sum is substantial...
...You want the floor models with the colored lights, consider it arranged...
...They're going to hold it in their hand and say: 'Well, I'll be, here's the first time we laid our hands on the bullet that killed all these folks, or made 'em poor as hell, and wouldn't you know, it's old Dr...
...Too young for sex, right doc...
...They're on the phone getting some sucker to buy a stock...
...I ain't sayin' that...
...I'm only sayin' I stay as long as she stays...
...Judge pays me cash...
...Every place is wide open drug crazy...
...I ain't in it 'cause of her...
...That's why I keep gettin' her everything she ever wants...
...Manyin his family are worried as well...
...Whole thing's too big now...
...Tell me the color...
...I don't do drugs...
...Too many people sittin' ready to get even with us if we make a mistake...
...I'll bet I been places you never been...
...You know why I'm there, doc...
...Man'sgot to be 60 years old and he's calling Dr...
...His recent books include Like Fathers, Like Sons and Children in Jail...
...Gonna get caught, but I can't stop the show...
...All's I want is to live longer than my mother...
...Think about this, doc...
Vol. 74 • August 1991 • No. 9
