Chapter 1: The Gun Show Loophole pt. 3

Dope was a solitary drug. When a friend had a bag of coke, it was fair game to ask for a bump or two and even a little rude to refuse if it was offered. Pot rarely skipped people in the rotation even if they owed you money. A bottle of liquor or a case of beer was essentially communal. Dope on the other hand was sacred. Asking for a bit out of a buddy’s personal stash simply wasn't done even if it meant being sick. Asking to buy off anybody who didn't sell regularly was bad manners. Requests like these left other people in the awkward position of refusing you then getting high in front of you immediately afterward. There was no sympathy for the user who couldn't score for themselves. In fact, they were generally prayed upon by the more resourceful junkies. Friendship and altruism were put by the wayside when heroin was involved. It was a substance for the independent.

    I drove the car toward my least favorite spot to cop in: Mosby Court. Downtown Richmond was beautiful as long as you stuck to the areas in and around the Virginia Commonwealth University campus. Stray too far away from the hipsters and art students and you had to keep your head on a swivel. Injectable pills and some dope could be sourced in the suburbs and even delivered to your doorstep with the right amount of money but there were some advantages to doing your shopping in the rougher areas of town. The most obvious reason to go into the hood was to save money. To my knowledge, all the dope in the suburban West End could be traced back to city dealers if you followed it back far enough. With every transaction, quality was cut down and the price was bumped up. Only small amounts were available in the suburban West End. Anything bigger than a gram required a trip to the city. The dealers where we were headed didn't get high on the stuff they sold which was also a big plus. It didn't matter how much self control you thought you had; if you used heroin and had enough to be selling, you were putting more in your arms than you planned. Overdoing it was part of being an addict. City dealers and corner boys didn't have that problem and could sell exactly as much as they bought. As counter intuitive as it sounds, a dealer that was in the business for profit and not to get high was a junky's best friend. They made more of an effort to keep a quality product so customers would spread the word. If you came back for repeat business or brought them new customers, they would reward you with extra dope too.

    Despite the advantages, Mosby Court and other areas like it weren't a cakewalk. As they were well known open air drug markets, police maintained a presence there. White people passing through on foot were often searched on sight. Even scoring in a car wasn't a sure thing. Sometimes police kept a squad car parked in the neighborhood for extended periods of time to freeze drug traffic entirely. The dealers themselves were easy to locate but hard to maintain. They all used burner phones and changed them month to month. If you didn't build a solid financial report, you wouldn't have much of a chance to get the new numbers and that meant starting over with a new dealer.

We exited the highway and skimmed the edge of the VCU campus. Black and gold banners bearing the head of the mascot hung from lamp posts every few dozen feet to mark off the areas that were safe from those that weren't. The well maintained roads and sidewalks were a testament to the millions of dollars pumped into the area by students convinced that their degrees would assure them a top tier job in the adult world. I resented the students. They carried armloads of books and rode fixed-gear bicycles from class to class. A part of me knew that the area I came from and my father's salary meant I was expected to join their ranks soon but the idea of classrooms and homework for another four years made me nauseous.

    Fortunately, today there was enough excitement to distract me from thinking too far into the future. My junky blinders were on, I hardly saw the students. When it was time to get high, my eyes could only see dealers and cops. Miles and Toddler shared my head space and the car passed quietly by as if the campus didn't exist. Toddler's normally jovial attitude shifted to a steely focus when we copped. He goofed around when we didn’t have a job to do but business was business. Miles tensed when we got to the bad part of town. He usually stuck to the West End dealers when he got good without us and since he looked about us streetwise as a Girl Scout, I couldn't say I blamed him. Copping off the street took a different level of caution and savvy than calling up your regular guy and meeting him at the mall. His inexperience didn't matter much at this point, though. He had played his part and was owed a share of what we ended up scoring. It was time for Toddler to earn his keep.  

Mosby Court was at the edge of the city across a bridge over the James River. As urban neighborhoods closer to the city center were gentrified, areas like Mosby seemed to go further down hill. The entrance to the area where we usually found dealers was in between the city jail and a little restaurant called Sandra's Soul Food. I took a sharp left turn and drove up the hill toward our destination. All of our eyes were peeled for police. The street looked clear but even if it wasn't, it would only have slowed us down for an hour or so. When it was time to get high, a one track mind came with the territory and at this point we were too invested to turn back. Families were gathered on front porches to enjoy the evening. When I first came to Mosby, the people who were obviously not pushers made me uncomfortable. I felt as if they were staring at me. After some time I learned that people like us came though this neighborhood too often to be noticed by anyone who didn't have business with them. A carload of pale, sickly-looking, white kids was only there for one reason. A solid chunk of the income in neighborhoods like this came from the pockets of people like us so even if there was dissent among the residents, it went unspoken from what we could tell.

    At the top of the hill I slowed the car down. This was usually where we saw dealers waiting. Just as expected, two corner boys sat on lawn chairs under a tree not far off to our right. The ability to spot a dealer came over time. It's not something that was easy to explain but when you saw one, you just knew. Toddler's senses were keen and he had motioned for me to slow down as soon as I clocked the dealers. Slowing the car to a crawl as we passed was all the invitation required for the man on the left to walk towards us.

    It didn't matter how often I came down here, it was never exactly comfortable. Worrying about the police played a role but that was a concern in anything we did so I was used to that part of the fear. I think my real issue was rooted in the fact that I was vulnerable down here. In the West End, we didn't have to worry about much. If any of us got burnt, we could take care of it. Down here that wasn't even a consideration. It didn't matter whether you brought one carload of guys or three, we were hopelessly outmatched. As big as they talked, none of my buddies had the balls to stand up to dealers who actually used guns and didn't just sell them every once in a while. No, if we were going to get fucked, there wasn't shit we could do about it and today, it was my wallet on the line.

    Toddler had the window rolled down. It went without saying that he would be doing the talking. Even with his pathetic size and young looks, he had a way about him that set dealers at ease. He arranged deals as casually as normal people talked about the weather. I had long since stopped trying to understand his social grace; it was beyond me. Once he started running his mouth, things just went his way. In a matter of minutes he had worked out a deal to trade the gun for dope straight up instead of making a deal for cash and having to cop separately.

    Richmond had a dope scene that was a little different from bigger cities.  I had heard of stamp bags like they had in New York and Jersey but I had never seen one. Baltimore had dope bagged out in gel caps but those never made it this far south either. Tar heroin was a West Coast thing so balloons of that stuff would be the last thing we saw. The dope here was sold by weight the same way cocaine was sold most other places. The dealer motioned for us to pull around the corner. Street dealers didn't keep their stock on them while they waited for customers. Doing so would almost certainly lead to robbery or arrest. We pulled around and parked in front of an old house with boarded up windows. I thought maybe this was the stash house but if that were the case, it wouldn't have taken so long for our new dealer to come back. We waited for close to 15 minutes. Just before I suggested we take a look around for somebody else, Miles spotted the corner boy approaching from down the road.

    The rest of the deal was standard procedure. I drove towards him until he could hop in the back seat next to Toddler. I continued to drive with the dealer giving me occasional instructions to turn left or right. As tempted as I was to look back at the exchange, I had to trust that Toddler had things under control. Miles hadn't spoken since we came into Mosby and didn't seem himself. It was safe to say that this wasn't the type of deal he was excited to be involved in. He was definitely a little dope sick or he wouldn’t have agreed to help us out with this. Toddler had probably withheld drug connections earlier this week to get Miles amped up and ready to go. That was the way Toddler operated. If he felt it would help the cause, he’d keep you sick for a month. The only thing keeping us associated was the fact that whatever he planned worked and worked well.

    “Yo, pull over here.” came the instruction from the back seat.  I obliged. We weren't close to where we had picked the dealer up but this was safer for both of us. Seeing somebody get scooped up and dropped off by a number of different cars all day would alert any police watching the area. Toddler held the man up just long enough to take down his number in case the bag was good. We never had the chance to weigh out bags we got from Mosby. It would be too much of a hassle in deals where quick exchanges were the safest way to do things. I had faith that Toddler could eye out the powder even though this was significantly more than we usually got.

    The team spirit that allowed us to work together so fluidly up until this point dissolved as soon as the bag was in the car and the dealer had left. Now that the actual scoring was out of the way, the boys were now my competition not my allies. Our scales had long since been sold for extra cash so splitting up the dope was done by hand and each of us would be looking to argue our way into a bigger cut.

It was my investment that made this whole thing possible so I felt the lion's share of the bag belong to me. Miles was the only 21 year old we could have roped into a deal like this but he never used his leverage the way he could have to ensure a good bag for himself. Once he had been a junky for a year or so he would learn to use the tools he had but he was still in that semi-ethical pupa stage. I had a feeling that even though Toddler had put in the least leg work he would find a way to make sure he was well taken care of. If I didn’t stay vigilant, he would have us scooping dope from our bags into his without really knowing why we were doing it. After some heated discussion, we decided to have Miles cut out about a gram for himself and Toddler leaving me the rest.

    When my portion was finally in my hand, I wondered if it was worth all the trouble. Miles and Toddler were a gram richer than they were when they set out for the day but I could have easily just taken my cash to the corner myself and ended up with nearly as much. There was a point in my life where I would rather have a point and a friend to get high with than three points to myself but that time had passed. I thought I liked being around the boys but once it was time to get faded, they just felt like cargo. Miles cut and scooped the dope into the torn off corner of a used plastic baggie. Getting the scoring out of the way meant we could be like normal friends for a little while. I made an effort to have a conversation.

    “How's it look?” I asked. Toddler and Miles were digging into their heroin like children on Christmas. I usually drove which meant I had to watch them get high before I had the chance to do so myself. I had taken bumps of coke and hits off a nitrous cracker behind the wheel but I couldn't stand anybody else sticking me so I had to wait until the car was parked to get my shot in. Miles tapped his finger into his dope and touched it to his tongue. He nodded.

    “It's decent.” He said. I reached my own finger toward his bag.

    

    “You mind?” I asked. He held his stash open. I tasted the bit of powder. When you got loose powder from different dealers and didn't maintain a consistent source, your taste buds were your best tool. Even without experience, it's easy to identify the flavor of baking soda or milk sugar and figure out what kind of cut you're dealing with. After some time, you can get an idea of how strong a batch is before you put it in your body. I was of the opinion that if junkies took the time to taste their shit before they cooked up, they wouldn't be ending up in emergency rooms getting narcan'd all the time. I took a great deal of pride in my pallet. If there were such a thing as a heroin sommelier, I'd be a shoe in for the job.

    Toddler cut about a quarter gram and scooped it delicately into the cap of his rig. They weren't the best cookers but in a pinch they would get the job done. I had to keep my focus on the road but it was a challenge not to get distracted. I watched him draw about 50 units into a well-worn syringe from an Aquafina bottle in the cup holder. He squirted the water into the rig cap, his movements automatic and smooth. I remember when he was first getting into needles and had to have a solid surface in front of him to cook up. In the back seat, Miles was already drawing his shot back into his rig.

    As the boys got closer to their respective highs, I felt the chill of dope sickness creeping under my skin. When my bones sensed the presence of heroin, they creaked and whined for a hit of their own. The longer I put this off, the worse the stiff aches would be. Toddler withdrew the rig from a trusty spot on the back of his hand, a bead of blood marking where the needle had been. I watched him as his head lolled back as if his neck could no longer bear the weight. His jaw slackened and dropped open entirely. My heart skipped with a violent pang of jealousy. I gave the Civic a bit more gas and rolled into the fast lane of I-95. I wasn't about to be the only sober motherfucker in the car.