Pod.

On the trolley to TJ and a tourist wants to come on hip - Talks about "pod", and smokes it now and then, and keeps some around to offer the fast Hollywood types.

"Thanks, kid," I say, "I can see you're one of our own." His face lights up like a pinball machine, with stupid pink affect. "Grassed on me he did," I say morosely. (Note: Grass is British thief slang for inform.) I drew closer and laid my dirty junky fingers on his Perry Ellis all cotton sleeve. "And us blood brothers in the same dirty needle." I can tell you in confidence that he is due for a hot shot." (Note: This is a cap of poison junk sold to addict for liquidation purposes. Often given to informers. Usually the hot shot is stryctnine since it tastes and looks like junk.)

"Ever see a hot shot, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one on Coahilla Avenue. We rigged his room with a one way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit - kid, it was tasty...

"Recollect when I am travelling with the Vigilante, best Shake Man in the industry. Out in El Paso - we is working the fags in the Plaza. So one night the Vigilante turns up for work in cowboy boots and a black vest with a hunka tin on it and a lariat slung over his shoulder.

"So I say: 'What's with you? You go nuts awready?'

He just looks at me and says, 'Fill your hand stranger' and hauls out an old rusty six shooter and I take off across the Plaza, bullets cutting all around me. And he hangs three fags before the fuzz nail him. I mean the Vigilante earned his moniker..."

And the tourist is thinking: "What a character! Wait till I tell the boys back in Hillcrest about this one." He's a character collector, would stand still for Barat's foriegner act. So I put it on him for a sawski and make a meet to sell some "pod" as he calls it, thinking, 'I'll catnip the jerk.' (Note: Catnip smells like marijuana when it burns. Frequently passed on the incautious or uninstructed.)

"Well," I said, tapping my arm, "Duty calls. As one pedophile said to another, 'May all your troubles be little ones.'"