The Cocaine Chronicles Part 1

The Cocaine Chronicles.

by Gary Phillips.

introduction.

by gary phillips & jervey tervalon

So, Jervey, how about it? Did you ever partake?

No, G, I've never smoked cocaine, never hit the pipe, didn't tempt me in the least, because I had been inoculated against it with a healthy dose of junior high school a.s.s-kicking. I a.s.sumed the pusherman would just as soon poison me as get me high. It never occurred to me that it would be a way to live, but it's always fascinated me, how folks fall into it, plunge headlong into the depths of human tragedy through the pursuit of the pipe. I've written about murderous crack addicts, about dope fiends, the true zombies of the streets because because.

If you lived through the '80s anywhere near an urban core, you'd have to be stone-cold stupid not to notice them. And you'd have to be dull-witted not to know that these drug zombies were fictionally interesting and shouldn't be consigned to the lower rungs of pulp fiction or ghetto literature. Certainly cocaine has had a long-lasting appeal in popular culture, from Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" to Public Enemy's "Night of the Living Baseheads."But it's not just about popular appeal, it's also about an inclusive literary landscape.

What about you, G?

For me, blow serves as two clear demarcations in my life. The first was the summer of '73, when I was home from my first year of college at San Francisco State. That summer there were sarto- rial ripples in the ghetto culture caused by the film Superfly. Superfly.That flick laid down some serious iconographic s.h.i.t in the brains of my friends from high school like crack would grip fools in the years to come. Cats were stylin' in long quilted coats, wide-brim hats, and flared slacks. Everybody was sporting ornamental c.o.ke spoons around their necks when they hit the club, trying to keep their balance in those silly-a.s.s platform shoes while rapping to a fox in fake leather thigh-high boots and a velvet mini.

I didn't sport a coat like the anti-hero drug dealer Priest in Superfly, Superfly,with a style and att.i.tude that would influence other movies and TV shows like Starsky and Hutch Starsky and Hutchand Baretta Baretta-Antonio Fargas as Huggie Bear in the former, and Michael D. Roberts as Rooster in the latter. But I do remember going to a hat store on Manchester and purchasing a gray gangster brim and wearing that bad boy to parties, driving my dad's yellow '65 Galaxie 500 with the black Landau top and blasting Curtis Mayfield's too-cold Superfly Superflysounds and Isaac Hayes's "Theme from Shaft" on the 8-track. There was a lot of weed at those parties but I don't recall much blow-though there was a lot of talk about somebody knew a dude who knows a dude and we can get some-but sure as h.e.l.l, if there was some getting, n.o.body offered me any that summer. This was before crack became synonymous with the inner city, and powder the suburbs.

Drugs are cla.s.s-driven like everything else, and stories about crack cocaine aren't for the mainstream readers of fiction; not the polite subject for drug literature or its cra.s.ser little brother, heroinfiction. heroinfiction.Lithium is cool, antidepressants are too, but don't mention crack or freebase...those low-cla.s.s drugs for self-medication.

Which brings me to the second incursion of c.o.ke into my life, Jervey. This was a few years later when I met this older woman-I mean, she was in her thirties and I was in my twenties-and we started going around together. She introduced me to the wonders of the toot. Now, given my wife might be reading this, or my teenage kids, I shall eschew graphic reportage of intimate encounters enhanced by the 'caine. But as Hendrix would say, I did, indeed, kiss the sky.

As to how this book came about, we'd been invited to the LosAngeles Times LosAngeles TimesFestival of Books to partic.i.p.ate on a panel commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Los Angeles riots of 1992.

Jervey had edited Geography of Rage, Geography of Rage,a collection of essays about the civil unrest published in 2002, and Gary had a piece in it.

Later we talked about how weird it was that with all the anthologies, from the erotic to the criminal, we hadn't come across any inspired by cocaine, the scourge of our times. We both thought it would be a good idea, but good ideas get lost with bad ones.

So we met a few weeks after the panel, kicked the idea around some more, and came up with an outline, but didn't get too far beyond that. We went our separate ways a.s.suming it wouldn't get done.

Then along came Akashic Books publisher Johnny Temple, who, fresh from the success of Brooklyn Noir, Brooklyn Noir,an ambitious collection of crime-fiction stories, asked us about the cocaine idea months after we'd mentioned it to him in pa.s.sing. Soon the concept was cranking, and not long after we began inviting submissions, excellent stories started blowing in.

The stories we ultimately selected for this collection reflect what interests us as observers of the human condition in its various physical and psychological permutations. The four sections of the book are used as a rough breakdown of the effects cocaine has on the partic.i.p.ants in a given story, no matter what side of the tracks it occurs on-though some relate tales of those who actually cross crossthose tracks in their hunt for the flake, the rock...or in their attempt to escape its grip.

Here are some samples: Detrice Jones's powerful vignette of a young girl living with addicted parents who spend their days trying to gank their daughter's lunch money; National Book Awardnominee Susan Straight's hard-a.s.s story of an aging crackwh.o.r.e; Jerry Stahl's absurd, ribald portrayal of a debased c.o.ke fiend; and Bill Moody's low notes about the nature of caring and waste. There's also Bob Ward's tale of love gone strange, Nina Revoyr's harrowing piece revealing how things do not always go better with c.o.ke, and Laura Lippman's hilariously twisted slice of the underbelly.

These are some of the scary charms found in The CocaineChronicles. The CocaineChronicles.We hope you find value in them.

Every contributor to this anthology stepped up and delivered. We are very grateful to each of them for coming through on relatively short notice and relatively minimal pay. They were truly inspired by the subject matter.

For as the late, great superfreak Rick James once said, "Cocaine, it's a h.e.l.l of a drug!" "Cocaine, it's a h.e.l.l of a drug!"

Part i

touched by death

Blanche Mackey

LEE CHILD is the author of the Jack Reacher thrillers, published worldwide in thirty-nine countries. A native of England and a former television producer, he lives in New York City. The ninth Reacher novel, is the author of the Jack Reacher thrillers, published worldwide in thirty-nine countries. A native of England and a former television producer, he lives in New York City. The ninth Reacher novel, One Shot One Shot, is due soon, and Child is currently at work on the tenth in the series, The Hard Way The Hard Way. His debut, Killing Floor Killing Floor, won both the Anthony and Barry Awards for Best First Mystery. For more information, visit www.LeeChild.com.

ten keys

by lee child

Mostly s.h.i.t happens, but sometimes things fall in your lap, not often, but enough times to drop a rock on despair. But you can't start in with thoughts of redemption. That would be inappropriate. Such events are not about you. Things fall in your lap not because you're good, but because other people are bad. And stupid.

This guy walked into a bar-which sounds like the start of a joke, which was what it was, really, in every way. The bar was a no-name dive with a peeled-paint door and no sign outside. As such, it was familiar to me and the guy and people like us. I was already inside, at a table I had used before. I saw the guy come in. I knew him in the sense that I had seen him around a few times and therefore he knew me, too, because as long as we a.s.sume a certain amount of reciprocity in the universe, he had seen me around the exact same number of times. I see him, he sees me. We weren't friends. I didn't know his name. Which I wouldn't expect to. A guy like that, any name he gives you is sure to be bulls.h.i.t. And certainly any name I would have given him would have been bulls.h.i.t. So what were we to each other? Vague acquaintances, I guess. Both close enough and distant enough that given the trouble he was in, I was the sort of guy he was ready to talk to. Like two Americans trapped in a foreign airport. You a.s.sume an intimacy that isn't really there, and it makes it easier to spill your guts. You say things you wouldn't say in normal circ.u.mstances. This guy certainly did. He sat down at my table and started in on a whole long story. Not immediately, of course. I had to prompt him.

I asked, "You okay?"

He didn't reply. I didn't press. It was like starting a car that had been parked for a month. You don't just hammer the key. You give it time to settle, so you don't flood the carburetor or whatever cars have now. You're patient. In my line of work, patience is a big virtue.

I asked, "You want a drink?"

"Heineken," the guy said.

Right away I knew he was distracted. A guy like that, you offer him a drink, he should ask for something expensive and amber in a squat gla.s.s. Not a beer. He wasn't thinking. He wasn't calculating.But I was.

An old girl in a short skirt brought two bottles of beer, one for him and one for me. He picked his up and took a long pull and set it back down, and I saw him feel the first complex shift of our new social dynamic. I had bought him a drink, so he owed me conversation. He had accepted charity, so he owed himself a chance to re-up his status. I saw him rehea.r.s.e his opening statement, which was going to tell me what a h.e.l.l of a big player he was.

"It never gets any easier," he said.

He was a white guy, thin, maybe thirty-five years old, a little squinty, the product of too many generations of inbred hardscrabble hill people, his DNA baked down to nothing more than the essential components, arms, legs, eyes, mouth. He was an atom, adequate, but entirely interchangeable with ten thousand just like him.

"Tell me about it," I said, ruefully, like I understood his struggle.

"A man takes a chance," he said. "Tries to get ahead. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't."

I said nothing.

"I started out muling," he said. "Way back. You know that?"

I nodded. No surprise. We were four miles from I-95, and everyone started out muling, hauling keys of c.o.ke up from Miami or Jax, all the way north to New York and Boston. Anyone with a plausible face and an inconspicuous automobile started out mul-ing, a single key in the trunk the first time, then two, then five, then ten. Trust was earned and success was rewarded, especially if you could make the length of the New Jersey Turnpike unmolested. The Jersey State Troopers were the big bottleneck back then.

"Clean and clear every time," the guy said. "No trouble, ever."

"So you moved up," I said.

"Selling," he said.

I nodded again. It was the logical next step. He would have been told to take his plausible face and his inconspicuous automobile deep into certain destination neighborhoods and meet with certain local distributors directly. The chain would have become one link shorter. Fewer hands on the product, fewer hands on the cash, more speed, more velocity, a better vector, less uncertainty.

"Who for?" I asked.

"The Martinez brothers."

"I'm impressed," I said, and he brightened a little.

"I got to where I was dealing ten keys pure at a time," he said.

My beer was getting warm, but I drank a little anyway. I knew what was coming next.

"I was hauling the c.o.ke north and the money south," he said.

I said nothing.

"You ever seen that much cash?" he asked. "I mean, really seen seenit?"

"No," I said.

"You can barely even lift it. You could get a hernia, a box like that."

I said nothing.

"I was doing two trips a week," he said. "I was never off the road. I wore grooves in the pavement. And there were dozens of us."

"Altogether a lot of cash," I said, because he needed me to open the door to the next revelation. He needed me to understand. He needed my permission to proceed.

"Like a river," he said.

I said nothing.

"Well, h.e.l.l," he said. "There was so much it meant nothing to them. How could it? They were drowning in it."

"A man takes a chance," I said.

The guy didn't reply. Not at first. I held up two fingers to the old girl in the short skirt and watched her put two new bottles of Heineken on a cork tray.

"I took some of it," the guy said.

The old girl gave us our new bottles and took our old ones away. I said four imports four importsto myself, so I could check my tab at the end of the night. Everyone's a rip-off artist now.

"How much of it did you take?" I asked the guy.

"Well, all of it. All of what they get for ten keys."

"And how much was that?"

"A million bucks. In cash."

"Okay," I said, enthusiastically, deferentially, like, Wow, you'rethe man Wow, you'rethe man.

"And I kept the product, too," he said.

I just stared at him.

"From Boston," he said. "Dudes up there are paranoid. They keep the cash and the c.o.ke in separate places. And the city's all dug up. The way the roads are laid out now it's easier to get paid first and deliver second. They trusted me to do that, after a time."

"But this time you picked up the cash and disappeared before you delivered the product."

He nodded.

"Sweet," I said.

"I told the Martinez boys I got robbed."

"Did they believe you?"

"Maybe not," he said.

"Problem," I said.

"But I don't see why," he said. "Not really. Like, how much cash have you got in your pocket, right now?"

"Two hundred and change," I said. "I was just at the ATM."

"So how would you feel if you dropped a penny and it rolled down the storm drain? A single lousy cent?"

"I wouldn't really give a s.h.i.t," I said.