The Story of Junk

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The Story of Junk

A Novel

Linda Yablonsky

FOR PAT

AND

FOR DAD

For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.

JAMES BALDWIN, “SONNY'S BLUES”

PART ONE

KNOCK KNOCK

New York City March 1986

KNOCK KNOCK

There's a simple knock on the door, nothing special.

“Who's there?”

“Mailman,” comes the answer. “Special delivery.”

I open the door. Why did I open the door?

I see a mailman, six-foot, barrel chest, receding blond, blue eyes. No mail.

“Is your name Laura?”

“No, you must have the wrong apartment.” I start to close the door. It's afternoon but I'm in my pajamas, rags I sleep in. I like to sleep in rags.

“Just a moment.” He pushes back the door. “Your name's not Laura?”

“No,” I say. “It isn't.”

He takes a folded letter from a trouser pocket, opens it. I'm staring at his shoes, scuffed, pointy-toed, buff-colored western boots. Do mailmen wear western boots?

“Is this—?” He gives the address, the apartment number.

“Yes, but there must be some mistake.”

“This is the right address but you're not Laura?”

“That's right. I'm not.”

“Is this your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Well, who are you then?” Before I can make a reply, he pushes the door open wide. “Never mind. Federal agents, D.E.A. Step back, please. We're coming in.”

Now there's a gun in his hand. He shoulders past me into the hall. Behind him, four men in plain clothes—no, five—are coming up the stairs. There's a woman, too, blonde, petite with a ponytail, wearing a tweed blazer. I see many hands on holstered guns.

I shrink back inside. My head is spinning. I sit at a table in the living room.

A man with a chin cleft, in a suit and trenchcoat, carefully reads me my rights. I stare at the floor. My cats are looking back at me, one gray fluffball, two tigers. I look away.

“Can I see some identification?” I ask. I'm stalling. I sound like a child.

The man in the trenchcoat shows me his badge and ID. While the others station themselves around the room, study walls, and peek out windows, I scrutinize the ID's photo and particulars without comprehension. My eyes won't focus. I see only “Drug Enforcement Agency.” This one's name is … Dick.

“Now, what is your name?” Dick asks. He speaks softly. He's very patient.

I have to spell it out. It's painful. I'm not alone. A friend with whom I share this apartment is sitting speechless on my bed.

“Ladies, you're under arrest for the sale of narcotics, a federal offense,” Dick announces. “We know you've been dealing heroin here. We've made several buys through an intermediary. Is there anything you'd like to say?”

“No.” My friend shakes her head, pets one of the cats.

“All right, I have to ask one question: do you have any heroin here now?” The female agent and two of the men surround me at the table. Hands are still on guns. I'm in my pajamas. I might as well be naked.

“We'll have to search your apartment,” Dick says.

“You have a warrant?” I'm all attitude. Do I think this is TV?

“No,” he admits. “We don't have a warrant, but it won't be difficult to get one. It'll take about an hour, maybe two, and we'll stay right here till it arrives.”

Then we'll wait, I say to myself. To the cops, I say not a word.

“Do you have any heroin in your possession?” Dick says again.

In another room off the kitchen, the tiny room that is my office, several grams of Pakistani brown, brought by the regular mailman, are sitting on a table-shelf in front of a scale. I'd been waiting for one of my better customers. Was he the rat? That one? You can never trust a junkie. I should have known.

My new source was here minutes before, left with all my money. In my pocket I'm holding nearly an ounce of his China White.

The woman agent makes a move toward me. I stand up, reach in my tattered pocket, hand a plastic sandwich bag over to Dick. It's not my lunch; it's my life.

The woman pats me down lightly, with nervous hands. She's more scared than I am. A rookie, I guess. They sent me a rookie. I almost laugh.

Dick looks at the bag, eyes its contents: white rocks the size of mothballs, loose powder at the bottom. It's the best stuff money can buy—pure. I've only had a taste. It's still in my nose.

“Okay, good,” Dick says. A lock of dark hair falls over his eyes. They're gray. No, they don't have a color. “Do you have any more heroin in this apartment?” It's five rooms, light and airy, good location.

Miserably, I sink into a chair. “In there,” I say, nodding toward the office. “You'll find it.”

Unlike the rest of the place, the office is dark and gloomy, its floor worn out by heavy traffic. In three years I've had to retile it twice.

Dick sends the mailman to check it out. The others pair off to begin their search, but all that seems to interest them is our record collection—it's vintage.

“Please,” I say dumbly. “Can I ask you not to make a mess?” As if I'll be there later and have to clean it all up.

“No problem,” Dick says cheerfully. “We're not like your city cops. You're lucky you got us.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Lucky.”

“Someday you'll thank me for this,” he predicts.

“Not real soon,” I say.

He laughs, says we can all relax. “She's cooperating.” I freeze up.

When the mailman-cop returns with my Pakistani in his hand, Dick takes me in the office. He closes the door, seats himself at my desk. I take the plain wooden folding chair beside it that has always been the customer's. I've never sat in it before myself.

I look around. The scale is gone, the mirrors and the razors, the straws. I glance at the bookshelves extending up the opposite wall, and quickly look away. My remaining cash is hidden there, between the pages of several old books. I wonder if they've found it.

“So,” says Dick. “How did a nice girl like you end up in a dirty business like this?” He gives me a silly grin.

“Look, I'm just a junkie, that's all.” My shoulders sag. “Anyone can be a junkie.”

“That so?”

“Yeah.”

“I wonder.”

“It's the truth,” I say. It is.

“How does it happen?” he asks. “I'm just curious.”

“It happens, that's all.”

He tells me they've been watching me for several weeks, intercepting my mail, tapping the phone, making small buys. He asks if I keep my old phone bills. I do, I don't know why. Collecting was never my thing. The phone is ringing now, incessantly. We let it ring.

I stand up and reach for a cardboard briefcase on a shelf above Dick's head. “All my bills are here,” I tell him. “Take your pick.”

He lays a few pages on the desk and looks them over. I see a puzzled expression cross his face, disappointment.

“I never made any phone calls,” I explain. “Everyone always called me.” Same as they're doing now. Won't these people ever learn? The answering machine clicks and clicks, pleading voices asking if I'm home, when they can come over.

Dick cocks an ear, looks up from the bills. “You never made any calls? Then how'd you get your stuff?”

“It knocked on the door, like you.”

“Come on.”

“It did,” I tell him.

It did.

Dick's still in his coat. He shifts in his seat. Can't tell his age, maybe forty. “I want to tell you something,” he says, fingering the cleft in his chin, milky smooth, no stubble. “I can't make any promises, but I can almost guarantee, from what we've got here, right now you're looking at five to fifteen years in a federal prison.”

Five to fifteen? I'm thinking, that means two, maybe three, if I'm good. I can't stand it. I stop thinking.

He asks if I know a certain guy—what should I call him? Angelo.

“Angelo who?” I say.

“Angelo something.”

“I'm not sure.”

“Listen,” Dick says. Still patient, very deliberate, he tells me all about Angelo, a smuggler. He's been on this Angelo a long time but the guy keeps slipping away. Dick knows more about him than I do. He peers at me, searching my face, then the phone bills, then again my poker face. “Is Angelo a friend of yours?”

“I don't know who you mean.”

“You know who I mean.”

“Who set me up?”

“You can figure that out for yourself.”

“I haven't got any idea.” Actually, I have several, all of them wrong. I must've been too greedy, I think.
Never be greedy
, a supplier once told me. When you start to get greedy, it's the beginning of the end.

“You weren't that surprised to see us, were you?” Dick inquires.

“Of course I was!” I nearly shout. “I mean, I knew this day might come. I just didn't think it would be today.”

“So, why'd you let us in?”

“I thought you were the mailman!”

He chuckles. “That was a good trick, wasn't it?” He offers me a smoke. It's not my brand and I demur. He lights one for himself, has one of the other agents bring me one of my own.

“You're not very tough,” Dick says.

“Not at all,” I agree. I feel nauseous.

“So, how'd you and Angelo meet?”