Paul Coates

March 11, 1958

He sat across the desk from me, and while he didn't admit it outright, I got the feeling that he knew--by standards of our society--he was the lowest form of human being.

Because in our kind of society a man like him walks without friends.

Every step of the way, he walks afraid and alone.

He wonders how long it'll be before somebody gets him.

He does, because he's a fink. A stool pigeon.

Or, in polite language, an informer--a man who profits by telling tales on his underworld acquaintances and neighbors, who fingers them for the police.

He explained that financially there wasn't much gain in being a fink. Not for him, anyway. A few bucks now and then from a narco cop. No money--no big money--like there is in pushing H.

Maybe his gain was strictly mental, he suggested. Sort of an atonement for past sins, for the two stretches he did at Quentin.

Or maybe it was a personal grudge against junkies, against pushers. Getting even with them for the way they got his kid brother hooked.

That's what he wanted most to believe. That's what he wanted me to believe too.

"My brother was only 15," he said. "A pusher got to him young. Honest, it's just the pushers I finger. Nobody else. Not even users."

He told me that he had arranged 15 or 20 setups for the narco officers.

"Most of them are doing time now because of what I did," he said. "He said it without pride, without remorse.

I asked him about the people he sent up. Close friends? Casual friends?

"One of them," he answered, "was my brother."

"Your brother?"

"Yes. That's right."

"For pushing?"

"No. For armed robbery."

"But you said--"

"I did it for his own protection."

There was a pause.

"You see," he began again, "he was pulling too many jobs. He was getting careless. He'd go in with two guns, but sooner or later somebody would be there waiting for him. They'd blast him from the back room before he had a chance.

"I turned him in to a real nice cop who promised to go along when the robbery detail picked him up."

Still, I didn't quite understand.

"I'd rather have him alive, doing time," he explained, "than see him blasted to death."

"Does he know that you turned him in?"

"No. But if he ever found out, he'd hate me for it. He hates stool pigeons."

I was beginning to wonder why the man came to me. I asked him.

"The police," he said finally. "I set up a big one for them--a big pusher. I was going to make the buy. But I got nervous.

"The pusher was a big man. Lots of friends."

He studied the floor and looked up again.

"Either way I was caught in the middle."

He leaned toward me.

"I chickened out. I backed down. I left the cops looking awful foolish.

"Now," he went on, "they hate my guts. Last week they told me to get out of town. Not to come back. They meant it too.

"Then this weekend, Saturday, suddenly nobody else was talking to me. The bookie, the prostitutes, the users.

"They used to talk to me. But now they won't touch me with a pole."

With a certain finality, he added:

"Nobody will."

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"There's nothing I can do," the informer told me.