Confessions Of A Former Child Prodigy Turned Heroin Addict [Ch. 6: The First Quarter-Brick Of Raw]

Chapter 6: The First Quarter-Brick Of Raw

A few weeks later, there came a certain point where our process of dealing with Jeff and Black changed considerably. By that point, we were almost exclusively selling heroin, with most of our customers only buying coke as an addition or to “top off” their heroin consumption. The supply chain for Oxycontin had been interrupted to the point that the pills were either not available, or had jumped to prices that were absurdly high. We did keep a small amount of them around – I mean, I wasn't going to get in the way of a trust fund kid spending over a $1 per mg, but I also wasn't going out of my way to find people who specifically wanted Oxy and not dope. Today, this vacuum in the market has been filled by cartels that produce counterfeit pills using pill press machines that actually contain fentanyl rather than oxycodone, and are thus quite dangerous, but at the time, there was simply a void in the market, and prices for the pills that were out there had skyrocketed. Practically all of our previous OC80 customers were now buying heroin from us on a regular basis. Our system had also changed considerably at this point. Black ended up sending us 2 kids from the neighborhood that he said were trustworthy, but Andy, Jeff, and I were incredibly weary. We thus chose to run things much differently than we had before. Instead of making both “new hires” runners, we made one a dispatcher, and the other a runner who would only handle small amounts. The larger orders were handled personally by Andy, Jeff, and I, and in order to keep foot traffic low, we began making deliveries ourselves.

The much larger change in our routine, however, came when Jeff and Black started dropping off raw heroin to us, first in ¼ kilogram sections of a brick, and eventually in whole bricks. This was considerably different than the way things had been running. We had been receiving heroin that was already packaged and bagged into retail amounts, meticulously done so in fact. Like most heroin in major east coast cities, each waxpaper bag was folded into a small square, and then wrapped in glassine (this had the dual purpose of keeping the dope dry and showing the customer it probably hadn't been stepped on by a middle man). “Bundles” of 13 were rubber banded together and usually sold for $100, with each bag costing $10 if sold individually. I knew that Black and Jeff were bagging and packaging the dope themselves, but I hadn't ever expected to be included in that process. That changed one fateful Saturday night when I saw my phone buzz with Jeff's number. I knew this was going to be a little different right off the bat because he had called me rather than messaging me from our secure app.

“We 'bout to be on the block, Reese. You got anyone besides Andy in the trap right now?”
“Nah, we good. You don't want me to come outside though? What's up?”
“We finna talk in a minute, come let us in.”

This was certainly different. As I've mentioned previously, Jeff would always have me come outside for pickups, and it seemed like this time Black was with him as well. I opened the door and let them in. Andy was sitting on the couch behind me nervously. I shut the door and handed Jeff his cut of the weekly money, as I was used to doing. Jeff took the money and put it in his jacket pocket, but instead of handing me a bag like I was expecting, he looked to Black, who briefly looked around the small studio apartment, then motioned to the couch and began, “Take a seat man.”

I sat down nervously next to Andy. Black and Jeff continued looking around the small apartment, not really saying anything.

“What up guys? We good?” I asked, the reticence clear in my voice.
“Yeah, yeah. We just tryna make sure y'all's setup all good, feel me?” Black responded, “Where the safe at?”

I motioned to the cabinet underneath the kitchen sink as Black bent down, opened it, and looked around. There were several unopened bottles of household cleaning products that had been arranged in a row, blocking the safe from plain view.

About a month before that, Jeff had instructed us to buy two small safes – one for our trap house and one for our actual residence – and begin keeping the majority of our product and money in the safes. Only a small amount of product was left outside the safe for convenience, so that we could quickly serve customers without having to open the safe every single time. Once the safes were set up and in use, Jeff also brought over a gun to be kept at the trap house, which he saw me place in the safe, and immediately scolded me for it.

“Fuck you think you gon' do with a grip in the safe? How you finna grab the shit when you need it, Reese? I swear, it's the smartest muhfuckers who be dumb as hell sometimes.”

I looked at the ground, embarrassed at my obvious blunder, while Andy chuckled.

“Shut the fuck up, Andy, it's not like you know any better. At least Reese know what the fuck that is. You prolly never even seen a fuckin' grip, aside from my shit, and I know for damn sure you ain't never held one. You a Stacey-Dash-'Clueless'-valley-girl-ass nigga, Andy. For real, young bull. Shut up and listen for once.”

That shut Andy up really fast. Jeff wasn't wrong about him, though I couldn't help from nearly bursting out laughing at the reference to the movie Clueless, of all things. It was not exactly a movie that I expected to be referenced by one of the largest heroin dealers in the area.

Andy was a preppy kid from the D.C. suburbs who had lived a very sheltered life, always attending private schools, and growing up in 90% white towns where practically every family owned a mansion. Things had been a little different for me. I believe I mentioned this previously, but Andy actually was Hispanic – Argentinian – though he couldn't possibly look more like a preppy white kid. He had been a in a fraternity while we were both in college, and was very much the typical east coast, pretentious frat boy who liked to frequently remind people that he attended an Ivy League university.

While I've been financially independent for a long time due to my careers as a child actor and tech entrepreneur (which began when I was a teenager), before that, I grew up on the south side of Chicago in what is, objectively speaking, a very dangerous neighborhood. I attribute my professional and academic success to coming from a family that was very educated – with both my parents having Ph.Ds from extremely prestigious universities. While I did do very well financially by the time I was in my late teens, which was also around the same time my mother finished her Ph. D and began working, we lived in a GD (Gangster Disciples) neighborhood before that, and almost all of my childhood friends have been gang-affiliated at some point. Even today, Englewood, the neighborhood I'm referring to on the south side of Chicago, is almost like its own little bubble of reality. Things have gotten so bad and violent, that even people from elsewhere in the same city don't really know what's going on in Englewood, and the local residents have so much of their own drama to deal with, that it becomes difficult to keep up with things happening in the larger world. To be perfectly honest, I believe it's uncommon to even find a male from my generation who grew up in that neighborhood and has managed to avoid the gang issue entirely. More or less the only circumstance in which that happens is when there's an older family member or close friend who's already involved, and intentionally keeps you out of it. My childhood best friend is a couple of years older than me, so by the time I got to the age where some of my friends/classmates were getting jumped into gangs, started wearing “colors”, got gang tattoos, etc, my best friend was already very active in his set, and he made sure I stayed out of it. While it really upset me at the time, I can see what he did for me in hindsight.

“Take that out the safe and tell him what the fuck that is, Reese.”
“Um... Looks like a 22 cal. Ruger?”
“My nigga. At least one of you ain't totally naive.”

It was now Andy who was staring at the floor, red in the face from embarrassment. I really, really do not like guns, but I've been around them enough to know a thing or two about them. Jeff then handed me a box of ammo, before sitting down and making sure both of us knew how to load and unload the cartridges. Jeff did take us to a remote part of south New Jersey one weekend shortly thereafter to teach us exactly how to use that gun, aim it, account for the kickback, and so forth... but like I said, neither of us liked guns at all – I, in fact, was actively uncomfortable being around one, especially if it was loaded.

Thus, neither of us ever had any intention of ever firing that gun. We weren't about to tell this to Jeff, but Andy and I decided then and there that it would be kept unloaded at all times, and if anything, would only be used a prop to deter someone potentially trying to rob us. I think we both realized that did leave us in a somewhat vulnerable position, but frankly neither of us was comfortable with a loaded gun around. I'm sure Jeff would have scolded us for this, but I really wasn't convinced of its necessity. We were serving college kids and yuppies, not running a trap house in an unsafe hood. Besides that, Andy and I were handling nearly everything ourselves at that point, which made both of us a lot more comfortable. As I mentioned before, Andy and I had started to make deliveries in the area, although only when a known and established customer requested a large amount (typically at least $1000 worth of product) and was close enough that we could walk to his/her place.

All of a sudden, I snapped back to reality and realized Black and Jeff were looking around our trap house for some reason, which had never really happened before.

“You hear me, Reese?” Black asked.
“My bad, I zoned out for a second,” I replied, then thinking to myself that “nodded out” probably would have been a more accurate description.
“That's a quarter ki of raw in the bag on the table plus enough candy to last you. Along with all them waxpaper bags and mix. They already stamped, but I'ma need y'all to break it down and bag up, you feel me?”

Well this was certainly odd. I didn't really have a problem with what we were being asked to, it had just never happened before, and I wasn't sure why it was now. It turned out that Black didn't want to keep any dope at either his home, or the laundromat he was using. As a result, he was now stopping by every trap house, directly on the way back from meeting his supplier. Black wanted to touch the drugs as quickly as possible and hand them off to someone else. As a result, each trap house was now bagging up separately, or so it seemed to me at least. At that point, I had only vaguely met a couple of other people who were running another of Black and Jeff's trap houses, and certainly did not know any of them well.

“You sure man? I know how to bag up diesel, I'm just sayin'... I don't wanna fuck it up,” I explained to him.
“Don't worry, we all good, Jeff gon' show you how to shake the shit up real quick,” Black replied.

Jeff then pulled out an electric coffee grinder, a bottle of lactose, and a bottle of Dormin capsules (diphenhydramine, the same active ingredient in Benadryl – which is a slight potentiator of opiates).

“Aight, now for each gram of raw, put a gram of lactose and a gram of 'Dorm' on there, which is about 4 caps – just break 'em open and pour them in like this,” Jeff explained, while demonstrating the process.

The raw heroin that was were receiving had clearly come directly off a brick and was not in powdered form yet, rather it was in small, hard rocks, which would need to be broken down. After adding the heroin, lactose, and Dormin into the coffee grinder, Jeff took a plastic sandwich bag and used it to cover the top of the coffee grinder before screwing the cap back on. I looked at him quizzically.

“It helps make sure no product spills out,” Jeff explained, and then held down the “Grind” button while gently shaking the coffee grinder, making sure to thoroughly mix the inner contents. After about 2 minutes, he set the coffee grinder down, grabbed a paper plate, and poured the now-mixed-heroin on to it.

“And that, my boys, is how you turn a gram of dope into three,” Jeff laughed to himself while concluding the lesson of the day, “I'm tellin' y'all, ain't no money like hair-on money,” Jeff said, smiling to himself. He wasn't wrong.
“There's a couple face masks and rubber gloves in there too,” Jeff continued, “I really don't think y'all gon' need the shit, but just in case you want... it's there.”

There was no real reason for Andy or I to be using masks and gloves while bagging up. We were both addicts already. And the dope wasn't strong enough that accidentally breathing in a small amount from the air was going to have a negative effect on either one of us.

He then pulled out a small spoon, and explained, “Two scoops of this in each bag. They should weigh out to about 0.1g, but don't be sweatin' that too much, it's finna take you forever if you weigh every single bag. Mix up about 5-10 grams at a time so it don't take forever, but I'm just warning y'all – it's finna add a couple extra hours. Shake up at least 40 bundles every morning so the shit stay fresh and leave as little raw in the trap as you can. Anytime I'm around in the morning I'm finna help y'all out so don't trip.”

“Bet. We got it,” I said, looking towards Andy as we nodded at each other.
“Aight, that should hold y'all for least 2 or 3 weeks. I'ma holla at you after that and drop by. But until then, make sure you clear out the trap every couple days like you been doing. Take all the money home and put it in the safe there. You might wanna break things up, pry up a floorboard, use your couch cushions, unscrew a wall outlet, it really don't matter, but find a couple good hiding spots and use 'em.”

I knew Black was right. After he and Jeff had left for the night, Andy and I found a lose floorboard on our “kitchen” floor and managed to pry it up. Under it, we stashed roughly an 1/8 of a ki of heroin, that was used on a more routine basis than opening up our safe. There was perhaps only one time that I was slightly careless with the placement of the dope under that floorboard, which later came back to bite me in the ass.

We generally shook and bagged up 10 grams of raw dope (a “finger”) at a time. This required filling our coffee grinder about 3 times, the gentle buzz of which became more and more familiar to me as time went on. Jeff had left us an already mixed up gram of raw on a plate, so of course we decide to first sample the product before starting to bag up. Sunday mornings were usually pretty quiet at the trap house, but we figured we should get a head start on tomorrow's work since we had never done this before. But of course, first we had to check out what we actually had. Now, for readers who don't know how heroin purity works, allow me to explain. The stats that the DEA puts out based on drug seizures are practically worthless and have almost no connection to what you can expect in terms of dope you might buy in retail amounts. The DEA seizure stats in most states indicate above 80% pure heroin, which represents an average of the local wholesale quality only. Retail dope is NEVER above around 20% pure, addicts would be dropping like flies if it was.

Andy grabbed the plate with our fresh-from-the-coffee-grinder-dope and picked up a bus transfer card next to it that he used to ensure all the powder was thoroughly mixed, before cutting a handful of lines for us. I have no idea how pure that first quarter-brick was, but neither Andy nor I had ever snorted heroin this good. Andy rolled up a dollar bill, bent down, and inhaled.

“Woah. Shit, this is good. I'm practically getting a rush and I didn't even shoot it. Reese, be careful, seriously. It burns a little but I've never gotten warm this fast from snorting.”

Yeah, yeah, shooters always love to talk about the “rush” and how you can't really appreciate the first few minutes unless you IV. I'll admit that it does feel really good and there was a short period of time where shooting became my preferred route of administration. For the most part though, I've always preferred snorting opiates, probably because I have naturally small veins and don't like having to prick myself with a needle ten times before getting properly inside a vein.

“It burns?” I asked. “That's a little odd. We don't usually get dope that burns to sniff.”

I pulled a cut up straw from my pocket and bent down to sample the product. I had gotten about half the line up my nostril before I started involuntarily coughing and accidentally spilled some of what was on the plate. Andy smiled.

“Told you.”
“Yeah, yeah. What the fuck are we gonna do? The snorters aren't gonna fuck with this even if it is strong. It burns too much going up.”

As soon as I finished that sentence, I felt the dope kick in strongly. Very strongly.

“Ok, what the fuck, this is clearly way too strong. Let's pour it back in and see if we can soften the burn with an extra gram or two of lactose.”

That ended up working perfectly. We now had good, standard retail quality dope that didn't burn and probably wouldn't kill anyone. We bagged up around 50 bundles each that night and stayed up really late, but as I said, Sunday mornings were usually quiet, and we were so high that we didn't care.

Our dispatcher sent a couple people over to us that morning, but our runner hadn't arrived yet. At that point, we weren't really bringing anyone into the apartment, but it was Jake. He had brought a lot of us business, and had been in our trap house enough times that we were willing to make an exception. Both of us were also really tired, but Andy ended up convincing me it wasn't a big deal. We told the dispatcher to send him over and a few minutes later we heard a knock at the door.

“Sup boys? You got the same thing as last time? Can we do 4 bundles and an eightball of coke for 500?”
“Can you grab that C for him, Andy? I got the bundles here. It's some new shit, you'll like it though, don't worry. We just bagged it up last night.”
“Wait, you guys have raw?! Seriously?!”

This fucking kid's jaw practically hit the floor and he was smiling like a kid on Christmas morning, despite being clearly dopesick.

“Just sell me a gram, guys. Please. Please. I've always wanted to try it. Come on. Please.”

Andy and I exchanged uncertain looks with one another, at which point Jake just started pulling hundred dollar bills out of his pocket and dropping them on our coffee table.

“Yo that's 5 bills right there, plus I'll still cop the other shit, just please sell me a gram,” Jake begged.
“Fuck it, fine. This is a one time thing only, Jake. I'm selling you this shit because I know you'll be careful with it and I know you won't run your fucking mouth about it. Right?”

He quickly nodded in affirmation.

“Wait with him on the couch, Andy, I'ma grab the shit.”

I didn't really want Jake seeing exactly which floorboard the raw was under, but there wasn't much I could do about it – it was a small, one room apartment, and the kitchen was close to the living room area. We gave Jake his drugs and sent him on his way with a smile. I figured that purchase would hold him for at least a week, but I ended up hearing from again just 3 days later. The thing was, Mario, our dispatcher, sent me an address that was different from where I knew Jake still lived. I texted Rio back on my BlackBerry to ask what was up and apparently Jake wanted one of us to meet him at his girl's crib with 5 bundles and some coke. Andy was still out on his last run, which was to his old frat house, so he'd probably be gone a while.

“Ok, no problem,” I thought to myself, having no idea what was in store for me. Out of an abundance of caution, I grabbed the gun, tucked in the back of my waist, wrapped the drugs in a single sandwich bag, and exited the trap house. I walked the roughly half mile at a brisk pace; it was still early evening outside and there were lots of people around, but I wasn't exactly out for a pleasant evening stroll. I wanted to drop off a bag, pick up my money, and leave.

When I reached the apartment building, I was surprised. I was expecting somewhere quite a bit more upscale given the way I had seen Jake throw around money, and his own apartment that I had seen several times. It certainly didn't matter to me, but that was the first thing I noticed that was a little bit off. A couple of minutes later, a very young girl came down the stairs and opened the entrance for me.

“Hi, I'm Amber,” she began, “Reese, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” I reluctantly replied. She was definitely no older than 18 or 19 and while I don't want to portray myself as some kind of morally upstanding white knight, I wasn't sure how I felt about the situation, and seriously considered just turning around and walking out of the building immediately. But I stayed, which was my own mistake.
“Jake's upstairs,” she said, briefly turning around to look at me as I followed her up an old, winding staircase.

The next sign that something was “off” hit me as soon as we entered the apartment. It was almost completely bare. There was nothing in sight except for 2 milk crates in the center of the room, where Jake was seated atop one, and a laptop sitting on the floor in front of the crates.

“What up bro, thanks for coming out so quick. This is Amber by the way,” Jake said, nodding in his girlfriend's direction, before handing me a wad of cash which I quickly counted, then handed him the bag in my pocket. Jake immediately pulled out a spoon and a bottle of water from under one of the crates and began to prep a shot.
“How fucking old is she, man?”
“Uh... She's 18 man, it's all good bro,” Jake replied, trying to reassure me at my obvious discomfort with the situation.
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah bro she's been in rehab for the past 6 months. Her parents had here in there for fucking weed, can you believe that shit? Only thing it did was make her want to try the hard shit,” Jake explained while laughing. Now I was furious. I really don't know what came over me, or why I chose that particular moment to grow a conscience, but I wasn't going to allow this shit to happen.
“Are you fucking serious, Jake?! What the fuck is wrong with you? She's done anything besides weed and you're about to shoot her up with a fucking speedball?! You're going to fucking kill her, you stupid piece of shit...”
“What do you care? You got your money,” Amber injected, while staring at the floor, refusing to make eye contact with me.

I'd had enough at that point. I slapped the spoon out of Jake's hand, spilling the contents on the floor, grabbed the drugs I had just sold him, and dropped his cash back on the floor, pocketing the drugs.

“Reese, what the fuck, come on man, you know it's not like that...”
“Don't ever fucking call us again Jake. We're done.”
“Oh come on man, please just let me buy a bundle then, you can see that I'm dopesick,” he begged.

And then I snapped. I pulled the gun from the waistband of my dark gray khaki pants, cocked it, and pressed it to Jake's temple.

“I don't want to ever fucking hear from you again, Jake. Do you understand?”

Jake had now begun to cry, very lightly whimpering and clearly trying to restrain himself, but unable to do so. He was involuntarily shaking as well, obviously scared for his life.

“Please Reese, I'm sorry, it'll never happen again,” Jake whispered, barely able to get the words out.

I briefly considered pulling the trigger of the unloaded gun, just to scare him as much as possible, but I didn't. I realized that doing so would effectively be my “final move” - once he realized the gun wasn't loaded, there was very little else I could do that would continue to keep him in a state of fear. On the other hand, if he continued to think there was a possibility of me firing a loaded pistol at his temple from point blank range, he'd remain in a state of fear, making him easy to control. I realize this makes me sound a little bit like a comic book super villain. I swear I'm not a bad person, but I've always been very good at controlling what most people assume to be involuntary reflexes. As I mentioned earlier, I had a short career as a child actor, which included a Young Artist Award nomination for best supporting actor in the film that I co-starred in. I know how to keep a straight face when needed. I can cry on command. I taught myself how to suppress the natural reaction of laughter to being tickled (seriously, I'm not ticklish at all anymore, though most people don't believe me). I then bent down to whisper into Jake's ear, keeping the cold, steel pistol pressed to the opposite side of his head.

“Next time, there won't be a next time,” I callously said to him, doing my best impression of a gangster from HBO's The Wire or The Sopranos. I stood up, tucked the gun back into my waist, and left without another word, Jake still kneeling on the floor in tears as I exited. Like I said, I'm very good at keeping a straight face when I need to. Truth be told, I did feel somewhat guilty about my role in the whole situation... But I also felt like Jake was a complete scumbag who deserved everything that happened to him that day.

Up next - Chapter 7: The Outsider