Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro (15 page)

The Mount Airy Lodge appeared ahead, a palace tucked in the snow. It was the largest resort in the Poconos. The limousine pulled up to the entrance and Coco stepped out onto a red carpet. Through the lobby’s smoky windows, she could see a chandelier. As George registered, Coco and Cesar and Jessica stood in the lobby and watched the guests pass. People chatted, skis balanced on their shoulders, and strolled nonchalantly in boots, as though the Mount Airy Lodge were something that happened every day. Boy George handed Cesar his own set of keys. Like the limo, the room had a name—the Crystal Palace Suite.

Everything was color-coordinated in gold and powder blue. There was a TV, a stereo, a fireplace with a log that never stopped burning. The red Jacuzzi in the huge bathroom was shaped like a heart. The bed was round and there were mirrors on the ceiling and the walls. The living room opened onto a miniature swimming pool. The room was so interesting, Coco thought, that you’d never need the street. And even if they did go outside, no one was looking to fight.

George equipped the group with skis, boots, and poles, and then he and Cesar deposited the girls on the bunny slope and took off. Coco was nervous with excitement; this was the first time she and Jessica had been able to hang out. Jessica was warm and open, and she didn’t mind looking dumb. A T-bar dragged them up through swarming crowds of little kids. Neither girl could ski more than three feet without falling down. Their legs split. Their knees caved in. They laughed so hard they could not stand up. Coco understood why Cesar was so attached to his sister.

As the girls waited in line for the T-bar, they spotted George and Cesar swooping down an advanced trail. Cesar had never skied before, but he was athletically gifted. The girls screamed and waved frantically, but the boys didn’t even turn to look. Boy George admired Cesar’s guts; the kid was willing to try everything. And he was bold with Boy George as well:
at one point, Cesar told George, “If you gonna be with my sister, you got to accept her kids.”

“What’s between me and your sister is between me and your sister,” George answered, but he gave the kid credit for having heart. Jessica and Coco, soaked and cold, waited for the boys indoors.

Coco would remember this afternoon as one of her happiest: the breeziness of the families in their bright jackets with matching hats and gloves; the confident little boy who actually hovered over them after they’d fallen and politely offered help; the trail of blue blotches that Jessica’s new jeans left in the snow.

That night, the boys wandered off again. They said they were going to the casino, but Jessica knew they were cruising for girls. She didn’t mind. She and Coco were having their own good time, dipping their legs in the heated swimming pool. Suddenly, the lights went out, and the girls sat in near darkness. Only the underwater spotlights in the pool glowed. A croaky voice broke the silence. It was George pretending to be Jason from the movie
Friday the 13th.
“We were so scared,” Jessica remembers. “That was when there were things that could scare me.” Boy George tossed Jessica in the water, fully clothed.

Back in their own Crystal Palace Suite, Coco and Cesar pretended they were on their honeymoon. They made love on the round bed and ordered food and watched TV and made love again in the heart-shaped Jacuzzi and laughed and playfought and never went to sleep. “We broke night,” Coco said. From their bed, they watched the morning brighten.

Sometimes, in the Bronx, Coco broke night in her bedroom, watching the police conducting surveillance on the roof of the building across the way. Three Cuban brothers ran their drug operation from several of the apartments, and there was always activity. Countless times, Cesar and Rocco broke night on the street. But daybreak in the Poconos was different. They weren’t facing time to kill, or feeling left behind, or stuck. There was nobody out to hurt them, no sad mothers or brothers or sisters to worry about. The Poconos held promises beyond the reach of the usual; they could ski again, or play basketball, or go ice-skating, or ride a snowmobile.

But the peace was what Cesar cherished most, the respite from acting tough. He later said, “That’s enough to hold a memory in.” That weekend in the Poconos was the only honeymoon Cesar and Coco would ever have, although they would remain in love for many years. They were both fourteen.

I
n the early spring of 1989, George installed Jessica in his mother’s old apartment on Morris Avenue. His brother, Enrique, lived there still. That George let Jessica join his family mattered a lot to her. Not long before, she had ordered Milagros to bring her the twins. Now she finally had a home; she even had a brother-in-law, if not quite a husband. She was ready to act like a mother and a wife.

Milagros was distressed about losing the twins; she had taken care of Brittany and Stephanie for the last two years. The sudden nature of the separation was especially brutal: a friend of Jessica’s had greeted Milagros on the street with a machete, ushered the girls inside the building, and warned Milagros never to visit again. Jessica had refused to come out. Milagros worried that Brittany and Stephanie would feel bewildered and hurt, and that they might not be safe in George’s household, but she saw nowhere to turn for help. She didn’t want to risk angering George. Milagros comforted herself with the thought that the arrangement would never last. In the meantime, she inherited Kevin, the little boy she and her mother used to watch. Kevin’s own mother had been arrested, and BCW, the Bureau of Child Welfare, had come for him; he was headed for foster care unless Milagros took him in.

George didn’t spend much time in the apartment at Morris, but Jessica and George’s brother hung out. Enrique was working at Fordham University as a security guard. On his way home, he’d call in to see what Jessica needed. She always needed—rice, Burger King for the girls, something to unclog the bathtub.

“What am I? A home-delivery man?” he would joke.

Enrique liked Jessica. They laughed over the stupidest things. He wasn’t much of a ladies’ man, so she introduced him to her friends. He also saw how hard she tried to please his brother. George would call and tell Jessica to prepare dinner, then not show up. He mocked the love notes that she sprayed with perfume and left on top of their satin sheets. He called her
stupid
and
ugly
and
fat, fat cow, fat bitch, fat fucking dumbo bitch,
and
ho.

When George was mean to Jessica, she would sometimes turn her rage and frustration on her little girls, calling them
stupid
and
crackheads,
then
mocking their tears. “Stupid bitch, what the fuck is your problem,” she would snap. “Turn on the TV!” George berated her for being a rotten mother, but he had even less tolerance for children than she did. Even his jovial paternal moods were mixed with cruelty. He pitted the twins against one another to playfight, which was common—families routinely toughened up their kids this way—but George always crossed the line. He’d force the twins to fight even after they cried—not the early cries of hurt that everyone seemed to ignore, but deep sobs of distress. Once, he tossed Brittany into the bathtub; another time, he folded Stephanie up in the pullout couch.

Playfights with Jessica soured just as inexplicably. One time, he hit her so hard during a mock wrestle that his hand swelled. “I ain’t gonna wreck myself over this,” he muttered, and swung at her with a stick instead. When Jessica laughed, George went berserk. “Ever since I was little, whenever somebody starts hitting me, I start laughing,” Jessica later said. “And if I laugh, he thinks I’m laughing on him, and he just keeps beating me.”

George taunted Jessica: she had no place to go, her own family didn’t want her, people hung out with her only because of his money, her mother was a fiend, she’d abandoned her own kids. Jessica comforted herself by taking inventory of what she had: her old hooky partner, Lillian, for one, had been her friend long before Boy George. “I have Lillian,” Jessica repeated to herself like a mantra, as though the assertion of sisterhood defended her against what she feared was true.

One weekend, unknown to Jessica, George took Lillian to Atlantic City. Then he asked Jessica why she had not spent time with her friend.

“Lillian was away,” Jessica said.

“Do you wonder where she was? Your friend?” George grinned. “I just fucked her. Call her up.”

Lillian denied that she had been with George, until George got on the line and described what she had been wearing when he’d deposited her in front of her mother’s building, just an hour earlier. Lillian hung up. Jessica rushed to Lillian’s, but Lillian had fled. Jessica told Lillian’s boyfriend what had happened, then seduced him, after which she smugly reported her conquest back to George. Predictably, George beat her up, but that time, he did not kick her out. That month at the Morris Avenue apartment was her longest continuous stretch of living with George, which was to Jessica a significant accomplishment. She’d never made it that long with any man. Unfortunately, that April was the same month a federal judge approved a warrant for the FBI to install a wiretap.

The wiretaps largely documented Jessica’s conversations; George was usually out and about while she spent the better part of her days on the phone, shifting between people on call-waiting. She paged beepers obsessively. She pined for Serena, whom she often didn’t see for weeks, even though she couldn’t handle Serena when she had her for any length of time. Jessica was bored and depressed. Only in those conversations about intrigues and plans, or during the terrified calls placed to girlfriends after George’s beatings, did she sound energized.

She continued to harass Gladys, the bank teller, with crank calls. She moaned over a girl named Erica whom George had met in Hawaii, a Millie from Puerto Rico, and a local drug-dealing girl named Razor, who drove a Rolls-Royce. But being neglected had some advantages: Jessica kept up with a busy love life of her own. She continued to meet George’s associate Danny. She called Puma, sometimes to see him, but as often to complain about the neglect she suffered from George.

“Trinket there?” she’d ask.

“Yeah,” Puma would say. Once he pretended to arrange a drug deal as a cover for their next rendezvous.

Jessica would pretend that she was sneaking out to see Serena, and Enrique would baby-sit Brittany and Stephanie, unknowingly covering one layer of Jessica’s double lies. Sometimes Jessica didn’t feel like going out, but Enrique insisted; he was extremely attached to the twins.

Other prospects absorbed George. His heroin supply had returned and Obsession continued to sell well, which made laundering money a priority. He worked with a stockbroker who converted sneaker boxes full of tens and twenties into bonds. George had hired a financial consultant to diversify his business interests, and now he owned shares in a water filtration company and was considering building a strip mall and franchising a fast-food chicken chain. He backed several promising young boxers.

While 10-4 managed most of the daily business, George attempted to launch several new heroin spots in Manhattan. He set up stores on Fifth Avenue and 105th Street, First Avenue at 115th, and 132nd Street between Madison and Park. None took off. He launched a second brand name, Sledgehammer, but needed another mill so as not to cut into Obsession’s production. “What are you trying to be,” 10-4 asked him, “McDonald’s
and
Burger King?” George bought cars and shipped some to Puerto Rico. He flew Rascal and Danny and 10-4 to San Juan with suitcases full of cash. He also kept in close touch with Vada, who was in the midst of renovating their country house.

George had bought the place the year before, for $140,000 in cash. Landscapers dug and raked and planted. Laborers mixed tar for a basketball court. The brass bathroom fixtures were ripped out and replaced with gold plate. George installed a swimming pool with the tiles arranged in his initials above a replica of the Obsession crown. When Fried Rice visited, he was struck by the discrepancy between the opulence of the house and its dirt-poor surroundings: “The inside didn’t match the outside,” he said. “It was like wearing a twenty-dollar dress with a three-hundred-dollar bra.”