A friend told me about the heroin game. Yes, he was my friend. He was a better friend than he even knew, because this is what shook me loose from this madness. Tired of the crack trade and interested in some new clientele and a whole new hustle, I gave up the crack game. I passed all of my customers to an associate of mine. I probably had about $15,000 cash under my bed at that time.

I spent $2,000 of that on my first heroin cop, with a friend of this friend, and that third party needed more help. (A cop means a buy, to sell. Intent to distribute, which I fully intended. That party is the person that was recently killed.) This person was fully immersed in the heroin trade, and passed several of his customers to me. He had gotten too big for his britches, and needed more distributors. There weren’t enough hours in the day to service all of his customers, so he needed more people like me, people that were determined and driven, and unforgiving.

He immediately liked me. I didn’t have a steady girlfriend and I didn’t like to involve my friends in my business. I was a loner. I never drove a fancy car, I had a decent Toyota Camry. I didn’t ride around smoking weed and blasting music while I was dealing. I thought dealers like that were clowns. I didn’t ride around with all my drugs at once. I drove back and forth, picking up drugs and dropping off money. I was almost robotic in my discipline. He liked my style.

I went to this work like a hungry man that had never seen food, and I never went back to school as a result. But this person that connected me with the drugs warned me: ‘This ain’t like what you were doing before. These people need their drugs to exist. They’re not like crackheads…this is not a game for them.’

I believed him. His own father and uncle were heroin addicts. ‘The connect’ as I will refer to him, wasn’t kidding. I watched heroin addicts put together bikes and blenders and cook breakfast at 3 in the morning for us after they had been served. Then, they would nod off, sleeping and snoring, sometimes drooling. But they were serious about getting high, and they kept money to pay me. They weren’t a bunch of slobs like crackheads.

I thought, “Goddamn! These people are a gold mine!”

Sick, right?

My connect schooled me on the chemistry of heroin.You couldn’t screw up the product. I won’t go into that because I don’t want to teach anybody these methods, but it was almost like being a scientist, which held a strange appeal for me. He also taught me about the trust that must exist between heroin dealers and their customers. Heroin addicts will often be sick before they trust a dealer that doesn’t deliver the right dosage.

I made a little money; it was alright. Until I realized that my customers only came to me as a last resort. It all used to get real at 2 or 3 in the morning, pager just going fucking crazy. I finally asked one of them “Why? I come to you whenever you call! What’s with all this 3 in the morning bullshit?”

He sniffed; he was a snorter, not a gunner. No syringes.

“Your shit is low-grade.”

What?? I’ve been on the streets, this shit is good. I’ve learned the game. I cut this to fair proportions. You should be out of your mind right now.

“Your shit is cut before you cut it yourself.”

I went to my connect. I told him, “this is bullshit. You played me. Everybody you gave me hates me, and they want you instead. This bullshit you’re selling me is trash.”

He’s sniffling, and wiping his nose. It was then that I understood this bastard was sniffing the shit himself. I had heard that wet sniffle way too many times by that point. You’re my connect, and you’re an addict yourself. This isn’t part of the game. I cussed him out, right in his face, and dared him to do anything about it. He was broken. He didn’t want any drama. I knew right then, I was going to take everything he had. Weakling. I just didn’t know at the time we were both weaklings.

I went back to guy that told me the truth. He showed me some tablets and explained that these were Vitamin C tablets. Cut it with these, we like this. But you need a new connect. Your boy is one of us. I wanted to tell you, but…you know. I don’t wanna get shot.

I told him to give me somebody else. Somebody that was real.

He hesitated. Of course, he did. Who wants to tread on the dealer of their dealer, even if he is a friend, himself? I had to offer something. I promised he would be my tester, meaning he would try the drugs out before I sold them. Again, in the heroin game, trust is everything. If your product is trash, so are you. Crackheads will smoke anything resembling hard cocaine; heroin addicts will cut you off.

Deal, he said. Everytime, no exceptions, right?

I agreed.

He called some guy, and told him he had a youngster that was about his business. This youngster needs you, he told him. And I swear he doesn’t play, at all. I’m listening to this. He goes quiet, and I can hear talking on the other end. Ok, I promise, he says. He hangs up the phone. The White Castle on 16th, he tells me. Be there at 7 a.m. tomorrow. Bring 2 Gs. If it’s a sting, you’re dead. You’ll have to trust me with the money. That’s it. He doesn’t wanna see you."

I was skeptical. Why the fuck would I trust you like this?

He’s my nephew. And he’s coming from up north. I begged him for this. You really think I can’t just never call you again? Only because you promised to take care of me. Tell me now, or I’ll call him back and tell him it’s off. It was then that I remembered that these weren’t crackheads. This drug addict is staring me down, waiting for my answer.

Three months later, this ‘nephew’ has assigned a dealer in Indianapolis to me. This dealer was no joke. He didn’t care if you were caught in traffic, and you were late. He didn’t care if you didn’t have all your money. I liked him. And you better not have anybody in the car with you, either.

I also met a few people right here that could hook me up. The same addict that hooked me up to my boss connect introduced me to a guy that was selling me morphine tablets. I ground these up into powder and used these to cut the heroin. That’s when shit hit the fan. Every heroin addict in my part of town was looking for me in the daylight with a flashlight. Around that time, I probably had $40,000 cash under my bed.

I won’t tell all the wicked acts it took for me to get to the point, because that’s not the point. The addicts are what I remember. They actually are people.

I pulled up one day to one of my customers homes. You may think all of these people are poor and live in the ghetto. WRONG. Most of them are white, probably because the majority of our country is white. These particular customers weren’t home. But their guests were. They were a nice looking white couple and they were actually sitting on a blanket having a picnic on the front lawn. They had food, lemonade, and everything. When I walked up to the door, I ignored them.

They watched me the entire way. I observed them, with a nasty look. I didn’t know these people. The guy looked like John fucking Lennon. The woman looked like a flower child from the 60s, and she held a little baby in her arms. Cute kid. They both had on nice clothes and shoes. I glared at them, and rang the doorbell, shitty that I was seeing people I wasn’t familiar with. These customers were about have an ugly discussion about the strangers on the lawn….

They’re not home, brother! The dude called.

Where the fuck do you get off calling me ‘brother’? If we had been in my neighborhood, I might’ve kicked him in his teeth. I turned and started to leave.

Can you help us out? He said. We were just waiting. We’ve seen you before. They hide us when you come over. They said you’re really careful…! Please…!

I had seen a nation of addicts, by this time. And I wasn’t dumb enough to believe some of the money I had wasn’t from them. But still…

Help you with what? I asked, angrily.

They weren’t that excited to answer that question. John Lennon looked at his wife, wondering if he should elaborate. I stood there, wondering if I should kill these people. Lennon looked at me desperately, and bowed his head.

Nothing, he said. Sorry, man.

I walked down the walkway, passing them. I had already noticed their white Volvo on the street, and I had seen it before. This was probably stupid. They knew exactly who I was. I looked back over my shoulder.

Pack all that shit up, and get in your car, I told them.Follow me, no matter where I go. If you’re too scared, then stay here.

Lennon meant business. He hurried his wife, and took the baby, and left everything, and followed. You can probably imagine they became some of my favorite drug addicts. I literally grew to love those two, and their baby. Lennon was an engineer. Just like Sammy was shift coordinator at Ford. Larry was a guy who wouldn’t even give me a job where he worked, but would call me twice a week to get him and his friends high as a kite. Drug addicts aren’t who you imagine. But they weren’t the ones that ultimately broke me out of my wicked ways.

I’ll call her Jean, because that’s what she called herself, but it wasn’t her real name. She was black, about 50 years old, and she was beautiful. Her skin was flawless, she had a short natural before it was as stylish as it is today. She had pretty dark skin, about the color of Cicely Tyson. She was impeccably clean. I can’t remember how I met her. When you sell drugs, you just come across people. She was older than my mother. Nobody would ID her as a heroin addict. She had no track marks, and she lived in a place that was better than my own.

She had a son that was older than me, and he snorted heroin, too. She wanted 4 for 70 every other morning (4 $20 packs for a discount of ten dollars). She took care of her addict friends, most of them were gunners.

I loved Jean. She was the most effervescent personality I’ve ever encountered. I’d cringe when she referred to herself as a dope fiend. We had only one argument, and that was when I asked her to not say that to me. She screamed at me, and told me to never forget she was a dope fiend.

I wondered how she afforded her drugs until one day she walked into a Best Buy and walked out in her skirt, with a DVD player between her legs. She walked straight out, looking no different than she did when she went in. I couldn’t even tell. When I asked her why she had me bring her there, she pulled this thing from under skirt and handed it to me.

She grinned. Four for 70? She asked. That’s $300, easy, baby.

Yes. We were all crooked. It’s a dirty game. But she was the best I ever saw. And she took care of me when I was in trouble, and cooked for me when I was hungry. I bought her son’s gravestone after he OD’d.

I dealt with Jean for about a year. I would drop everything, and take her medicine so she wouldn’t be sick. I couldn’t stand to see her like that. She would scold me, and tell me I was stupid for bringing her the drugs when she had no money. But she always paid me. Nothing ever came up missing in her apartment. She was a thief, but she didn’t steal from herself and she had a sense of honor that was actually common amongst heroin addicts. She’d be sick before she lost things that she valued, and that included people.

Things were getting hot in my city, and I don’t mean the weather. I went to Miami for vacation and didn’t tell anybody I was leaving. Me and my crew had a hell of a time. I came back to Indianapolis after four days, and my pager snapped off seven pages that drew my attention after I entered the city limits. I called back, and got no answer. There was no way to know how old the pages were. Cell towers weren’t the same back in those days.

I ditched my friends and rushed over to Jean’s, ignoring everybody else that had called me. For once, the door was actually open. Spidey-sense tingling, I drew my gun, and walked in; she never left her door open. There was something blocking the door.

The fuck is this? I thought. Furniture? Was she trying to barricade the door?

I was ready. If I caught anybody in the act of harming her, I was going to take care of them, without qualification. I started to call her name, but thought better of it.

I pushed harder, expecting some kind of conflict. It was dark, but the light from the hallway gave me enough light to determine if there was threat. All of her nice lamps and furniture were still there. I flipped the light switch, and there she was, lying at my feet. I had scooted her small body across her hardwood floor.

Her eyes were wide open. That familiar foam was around her lips. She had overdosed. She had gotten something from another dealer, because I wasn’t there. She had tried to save herself and run for help, but she died right there in her in the shadow of her own door. I put my gun away, and foolishly, sat on her couch. I don’t know for how long.

I went out to my car, and it was raining and pitch black. It was raining buckets, and the streets were fairly empty. I had her medicine, the right medicine, in a large vial. I had killed her by not being there.

I cried. I cried so fucking hard, and wondered what my mother would think if she knew what I was doing. I wondered what my grandparents would think.I knew. They’d be ashamed. I wasn’t doing anything but contributing to the loss of human life. I was scum. I was a piece of shit, and I’ll never live it down. I couldn’t believe that with everything I had participated in, this was the event that snapped me out of it.

With all of the things that I could do with my life, this could not be the way.

I thought about all the things I had done in this dirty game, and knew it was over. I took the vial of heroin I had and slammed it against the wall of another apartment building. I probably threw away several thousand dollars, but it meant nothing. I was tired. My friends were dying and going to prison. There was a federal task force in Indianapolis, and they were taking out the trash. I had seen too much, done too much. And that was the end of my drug dealing.

I’m only telling this story because I think it has some value. A lot of people don’t understand the inner city, the violence or the people that live there. I hope this provides some perspective.

Very soon after that, I met the love of my life. She was NOT who I expected.I admitted all the terrible things I had done and taken part in. And she loved me anyway.Yeah, I know somebody took my place, and I won’t talk about how much money I ultimately made selling drugs because it is all a waste. The price of it is way too much, and whatever it could buy is not worth it.

To be continued...