Reel to Real (2 page)

Slick laughed a loud, high pitched laugh and then, duffle bag in hand, walked out the same way he had come in. Bryan hot on his heels.

Dallas, Texas

After partying all night and getting wasted to the point of blacking out, which happened all the time, Spice cracked her eyes open at noon. She felt like crap, and her tongue tasted like it. But, so? That’s the way she rolled. She gulped down some warm beer and lit a cigarette to freshen up.

Her scrawny, hairy husband flopped over and faced her, his eyes a pair of lifeless holes. “We’re out,” he said flatly. “Go get more.”

When he said “more,” he meant crack. For the two of them, a day without crack was like a day without air. They just had to have it.

For nearly twenty years now Spice had been addicted to one drug or another, and even though the passion was one-sided, she loved them all. Her climb through the drug spectrum was typical: first marijuana, then pills, then meth. Then she eventually worked her way up to cocaine, and then ultimately, to crack.

It turned out that crack cocaine was the crème de la crème of dope. The pleasure she felt was stratospheric, plus she didn’t have to destroy her already annihilated veins by shooting up; she could smoke it in a pipe like everybody else. She understood that there were downsides to drugs, like poverty, poor health, and the imminent possibility of assault or arrest, but again ... so?  None of that held a candle to the rush that flowed through her body when she lit up. The feeling was like the best sex ever — only better.

With two ten's in her front pocket and a hangover the size of Houston, she straddled her red, one-speed bicycle and pedaled the three short blocks over to her drug dealer’s dilapidated one story house. She glided to a stop, perspiration dotting her pale, focused face. Trying to keep a low profile, she hid her bike behind one of the side yard bushes and rapped on the back door.

Chuckie, a barrel-bellied and altogether large black man, peered through a peep-hole and asked, “Who dere?”

“It’s me,” she said softly, “Spice.”

Recognizing the skinny white chick with the mop of brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses as a regular, he unlocked a complicated set of locks and let her in.

It was even hotter in the kitchen than it was outside. Only a single overhead fan circulated in a vain effort to lessen the swelter. Two African American males in sweat-drenched wife beater t-shirts sat at the kitchen table, hard at work on a melon-sized piece of crack. One diligently chipped off chunks of product with a razor blade while the other weighed, bagged and stacked the chips in bundles by size. The bagger, a wiry guy with a gold-capped tooth, looked up as Spice entered.

“Yo,” he said, and then turned his attention back to packaging the crack.

“I need a twenty rock,” she said. Her arms twitched as they hung at her side.

“Drop your bank on the table,” Goldtooth said as he took a swig from a nearby bottle of malt liquor.

Familiar with the routine, Spice smoothed out her two ten dollar bills and placed them side-by- side, where instructed. Normally, one of the workers put the money directly into a locked metal box kept in the freezer. But this time, Chuckie’s large, sweaty hand shot out and grabbed the cash. “Dat’s mine,” he asserted. No one argued. Spice cocked her head in curiosity at the change in procedure, but said nothing.

Goldtooth rifled through the stack of plastic bags and selected a tiny one. “Is dis what you’re lookin’ for?” he asked.

Spice nodded. She grabbed the bag and turned to leave, but Chuckie’s large body blocked her path.

“Ha, ha, Chuckie,” she tried to joke. “Quit screwing with me. I need to get this shit back to my husband or he’s gonna pop a blood vessel. And then he’ll probably pop me for making him wait so long.” She tried stepping around Chuckie, but he stepped where she stepped.

“What’s going on?” she said.

Chuckie’s big hands reached out and grabbed her small shoulders. “Shug, I wan' chu come in here wit’ me ri’ now.”

Spice shook her head and tried to pull away, but Chuckie’s meaty fingers dug deeper. Chills traveled the length of her spine as he pushed her from the brightness of the kitchen to the smoky, dark living room.

“Chuckie, why you doing this?”

Her eyes adjusted as she took in the scene. Cigarette butts, beer bottles and discarded fast food containers were scattered on the floor like crack house tumbleweeds, but it was the stack of weapons in the center of the room that got her attention. Guns of varying sizes, shapes and calibers were spread out like a criminal buffet on the scarred wooden coffee table. She shook her head.
Not good
, she thought. Across the room, two skinny black guys she had never seen before sat on the couch and watched as they shared a glass pipe. Also not good.

In full view of the men on the couch, Chuckie, pushed Spice farther into the room.

There was a grim downturn of his mouth. “Sit here,” he said and pointed to a tattered floral foot stool.

She had no choice, she sat. Chuckie walked over to the coffee table and picked out a Smith and Wesson .45. Then he pulled back the slide and touched the barrel to Spice’s head. Her eyes widened and she held her breath.

“Would you please tell me what’s going on?” she pleaded.

“Do me,” he said with no smile. She looked at the gun and then over at the men on the couch.  They were interested, but made no move to intervene.

“Wha-at?

“I say ... do me.”

“Right now?”

She stalled, her stomach sick. Why was he acting like this? She had been in this house dozens of times, and he had always been very respectful to her. He had even given her free crack dust when she was short on cash.

He must be showing off, she decided. He must be trying to impress his buddies on the couch. He was doing it because he could, and he knew that she knew that she could neither resist nor report him. Both of those options would be very bad for her health.

“Yeah,” he said. “Ri’ now.” And stepped closer.

***

Sierra County Jail, Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

“Hey, what are you in for?”

“Nothing.”

“What’d they say you did?”

“Aw, same ol’ shit. My old lady said I held her down. Hit her. I didn’t. She did it herself. Drank too much and fell down. Bitch’ll say anything to fuck me over. Now I gotta pay the damn court to get  outta here. It’s all bullshit.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. My ex was like that, too, always calling the cops on me for no reason. Got her back, though. Fucked her best friend when she was at her mom’s. In our bed. Ha.”

“What’re you in for?”

“Armed robbery.”

“Robbery? That’s heavy.”

“Fucked it up, though. I was too fucking nice. Won’t ever do that again.”

“What’d you rob?”

“Los Arcos, downtown. Everything went cool 'til the end. Fucking manager got loose too quick. I’m screwed now. Lookin’ at a whole bunch a time.”

“How much?”

“A lot … probably like ten.”

“Years?”

“Yup.”

“That sucks.”

“Yup. Like I said, too fucking nice.”

“What do you mean, too nice?”

“I shoulda shot him.”

“What?”

“I shoulda shot the fucking restaurant manager.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No, I mean it. If I woulda just shot the motherfucker he wouldn’t of ratted me out.”

“I guess not.”

“Now I know.”

“Know what?”

“Don’t leave witnesses.”

***

That afternoon, Spice returned home from Chuckie’s house with a taste in her mouth that would take days to wash out. She made some resolutions.

She told herself she was going to go straight. No more drugs. No more drug dealers, and for God’s sake, no more men. One always led to the other, and it was always bad news. Right now, she hated everything about drugs. She hated the sores inside her mouth, she hated having to shoplift or trick to get more money to buy drugs, she hated the cavalcade of abusive men in her life — including her husband. And she hated the way she looked.

She wasn’t exactly sure when she’d become that boney, washed-out, homeless-looking person in the mirror, but she had.

Grants, New Mexico

Prison turned out to be a lot less cool than Slick thought it would be. The work was hard and the outlook bleak. He had assumed he would have an easy rise to the top. Nope. Nothing came easy in prison. Nothing except trouble, and trouble was everywhere.

Small infractions of rules he wasn’t even aware of were severely punished. One time he merely went the wrong way down an unfamiliar hallway and ended up in segregation – for a week. Another time, one of his podmates thought Slick stole his hair gel and Slick was forced to buy the guy a case of the stuff just to keep his face intact.

Then there was the money game. In prison, cash was considered contraband, but if you had it, things went your way. Slick made twenty-five cents an hour working full time in the prison laundry, which didn’t go far. Luckily, his parents sent him sixty bucks a month to buy things like cookies, paperbacks and razor blades. But if he needed more money than that, he had to hustle the other inmates. That’s where it got dicey.

Slick decided prison would be a lot more tolerable if only he had a TV in his room to watch the movies he loved so much. Sadly, he didn’t have the cash. Long story short, he borrowed the money but couldn’t pay it back, at least not according to the terms dictated in the loan agreement. With debt enforcers expected at any time, Slick realized he was in over his head.

He sent out a message to a guy he had met recently in the rec yard; a well-built African American guy with ties to the Black Panthers. His name was Johnny Two X — the “Two X” standing for the two men he was rumored to have killed.

For whatever reason, Johnny agreed to meet Slick at the gym that evening.

“Hey, Johnny,” Slick said when he arrived.

“What up?” Johnny said, yellow eyes watching the door.

“I got trouble. I owe Jenks two bills for getting me a TV and I don’t have it yet. If I could get a couple more weeks, I’d be okay. I told him he could have the TV back, but he’s not going for it.”

“What the fuck you telling me for?” Johnny said, as he picked up a heavily-weighted barbell and curled it a couple of times. His eyes remained locked on the door.

“I heard you can do stuff, man. That you was a big dog.” Slick also picked up a set of dumbbells and curled one arm at a time.

“I can’t do shit.” Johnny said. “You got problems, bother someone else.”

“I work in the laundry,” Slick pressed on. “I find stuff. Good stuff.”

Johnny frowned. “You ain’t got nothing I want.”

Slick leaned forward and opened his palm slightly, revealing a small pocket knife.

Johnny glanced down. “Not bad. What else you got?”

“I got more. I got nail files, a razor blade, even part of a brass knuckle – two fingers worth. You could have ’em all.”

Johnny didn’t say anything and Slick straightened back up, waiting.

With a deep crease between his eyes, Johnny shook his head. “That’s not enough for me to get involved in your shit.” He put down the barbell and turned to walk out.

“Wait,” Slick said. “If you help me out on this, I’ll give you all the shit I just said plus fifty bucks.”

Johnny’s face bunched up. “What the hell you need me for if you already got money?”

“I don’t have it now, but it’s coming. My parents are sending me some. I just gotta wait for the damn mail.”

Johnny thought some more. “Fifty?” he said.

“Yeah, fifty. Plus, I’ll give you all the hardware now.”

Johnny sucked in a breath, filling his cheeks. Then he blew it back out. “Okay dude,” he said at last. “I know Jenks. I’ll get him off your back.”

Johnny walked away.

“I owe you,” Slick said, relieved.

“True,” Johnny said, not looking back.

Hobbs, New Mexico

So much for resolutions. The idea of not using drugs was so gone. That was literally millions of resolutions ago.

Spice had resumed getting high, and she did it as early and as often as she could.

She had a new job as a bartender, too, which turned out to be divine. She made a few bucks in tips from the ranch hands and roughnecks, but even better than that, she could get her drugs for free. Well, virtually free.

Working at the bar put her in the ideal situation to be the go-between for her drug dealer and other drug addicts. All she had to do was obtain the money from the drug user, bring the money to the drug dealer, and then get the requested drugs back to the waiting junkie. It was cake. And the very best part was, her commission was paid in crystal meth.

In terms of not getting busted, Spice had a spotless record. Sort of. She had never been arrested for drugs. Sure she had a couple of misdemeanors for shoplifting, prostitution, and so forth, but no felonies, and nothing for drugs. That’s because she had two simple rules. Deal only with people you know and trust your gut.

But one day she got sloppy. An acquaintance/friend told Spice about an individual named Ramon who would be coming in from Denver looking to party. The friend said Ramon had money and liked doing naughty things when he was away from his wife.

Sure enough, Ramon showed up at the bar later that night and threw back shot after shot. He tipped $2 for every $3 he spent. Somewhere in the middle of all that whiskey he slid a hundred dollar bill in Spice’s direction and whispered, “There’s another hundred in it for you if you can get me some crank tonight.”

Right away, Spice’s internal alarm went off. She told herself to pass, to not deal with this guy. Real junkies didn't make offers like that, not in Hobbs they didn't. She tried to think it through.

Was this guy a cop? She looked at him hard. He was young, Hispanic, wore a straw cowboy hat,  and was kind of short and pudgy. Short and pudgy?
That’s not a cop
, she thought. Cops were tall and athletic, everyone knew that. But this was New Mexico, not Texas, so who knew what cops looked like here?

Discretion being the better part of valor, she shook her head “no” and told him she didn’t think she could help him. The man nodded and went back to throwing back shots of Jack.