A Controlled Dangerous Substance Act

(Part Five-Conclusion) A Controlled Dangerous Substance Act


(Everything is about to go crazy. The cops screwed up on the charges and Dean’s play for the cops with Frost Pharmacy is no good and they want him to do it again. The four are all drunk and the run into Mickey, who originally set them up.)

Mickey knew that Dean was no threat to him. The bearded man was all head and no heart and Mickey had never heard him talk about fighting. But Billie! Billie was a brawler who had been 86’d from many bars and there were already legends about him. Mickey had heard people say that Billie was not allowed in any bar that had windows because the “Painter”, as Billie was known because of his trade, took special delight in shattering bar windows by throwing his opponents right through the glass.

Billie staggered along the edge of the six foot stone wall that bordered the apartment lawn and at times he came perilously close to lurching over the side but he never did. Dean followed closely behind him and Billie came up to Mickey, face to face, inches away from each other and Billie bellowing beer breath into Mickey’s face and Mickey backing away slightly and swinging tight from the side.

The crack of the blow echoed into the night air and Chrissie almost dropped the bottle, but not quite, as Billie crashed down onto the sidewalk with a dull thwack as the back of his head thumped the cement. He shook his head and struggled to his feet, smiling, and leaned toward Mickey with his whole body, breath coming hard.

Mickey threw another shot to the head and blood sprayed from Billie’s mouth. Billie took a punch to the gut and, in what appeared to be slow motion, spilled his large frame over the wall and whumped into the hard frozen grassy ground below.

Dean stared at the scene and his mouth hung open. Mickey glared at him and stood there, with the Irish Setter aimlessly circling around him, daring Dean to come ahead and attack him.

There was a groan and all eyes focused over the wall as Billie wobbled his head, spit his false teeth onto the grass with a splattering of blood-filled saliva and slowly pulled himself up the wall. Mickey’s eyes grew very large.

Billie stood in front of Mickey and there was the sound of heavy breathing. Mickey was like a statue and Billie rocked slightly.

“Had enough?” Mickey talking strange pitch to his voice.

Billie, smiling again, foot coming up quick from nowhere and crashing, smashing into Mickey’s chest. There was a cracking sound and the smaller man lifted into the air and slammed down onto the pavement on his back. Mickey gasping for lost breath, moaned and tried to rise, fell back, sobbing weakly.

“Now I’ve had enough,” Billie said as he jarred Mickey with a sharp-toed cowboy boot to the ribs. Another crack. Billie went back to the car and took the bottle from Chrissie, drained it and then tossed it onto the asphalt before he climbed down the wall, picked up his false teeth, and then turned to Dean. “Let’s get out of here.” Said Billie.

Dean didn’t argue with that. He hopped into the car and drove away as he shot a glance into the rear view mirror. The Irish Setter stood over Mickey and seemed to be licking his face but it was too far away to be sure. Dean pressed down on the gas pedal and the tires cried out into the night as the car strained to hold all four wheels on the road as they took a sharp corner. He thought about the police.

The next morning the Judas car pulled up as Dean and Brenda went out. Irish and D’azeo, wearing black leather jackets over t-shirts, came up and got right in Dean’s face so close he could smell stale liquor and old garlic as they growl-whispered at him.

“You think you’re smart.” Said Irish.

“We know about Mickey. Busted him up but he won’t say who or press charges.” D’azeo.

“We’re going to drop you. You’ll have stuff on yo whether you’re holding or not.”

“Go ahead punk. Tell someone. Ask for help. No one will believe you or your fucking whore-bitch dope-fiend wife.”

“Maybe when we get you, you’ll try to run.”

D’azeo pulled his gun partially from his holster.

“Dead. You’re dead mother-fucker.”

Dean cowered with fright and Brenda stepped back as the detectives sprayed them with threats and saliva. Dean felt his chest tighten up and there was an emptiness spooling down below his belly and he thought of rabbits with headlights bearing down on them, frozen to the death-spot on the road.

Suddenly the dicks were heading back to the black car, a screech of tires, and they were gone. The smell of burning rubber was in the air and it was like the winter quiet of a graveyard on the narrow urban street.

The night before court Dean and Brenda shot Dilaudid. Brenda also at some red bullet Seconals. She did not dream at all. Dean was plagued by a recurring nightmare all night long.

In the dream he and Brenda were at a wedding. The wedding party gathered in a giant boat at the top of a multi-tiered waterfall. Each person at the party flowed down the waterfall and the main gathering drank and made merry on the boat as it descended.

Suddenly it happened. Someone had forgotten to remove a partial glass barrier on one of the tiers and one of the bridesmaids got caught and started spinning around at the tier as the boat bore down on her.

A few people ahead looked back to see what the commotion was and saw the boat bouncing down tier after tier with the trapped woman screaming as the boat spilled down the beautiful wood-tiered flow-way towards her.

There were screams, the shattering of glass, another color danced in the water as the sound of something soft being squelched was heard. And then the boat, the giant wooden wedding boat, crashed over and splintered with a roar as it tumbled down the watersteps to hell, crushing everything in its path.

Dean and Brenda leaped from stone to stone, board to board, to flee the nightmare as it hurtled toward them. Suddenly Brenda fell backwards into the path of the massive ship. Dean saw someone in front of them with a look of sheer terror contorting their face. A hideous shriek filled the air.

Dean looked back to see the boat falling onto his wife as she screamed. And woke up covered with sweat. He looked at Brenda. She lay next to him on the bed. A cigarette had burned deeply into her fingers before it went out. She did not wake up.

Court was simple. Everyone got a fine and dirty looks from the detectives.

Chrissie broke up with Billie and moved. Some say she moved down south.

Billie had to do time in Seaside Heights. After he got out of jail he moved to Dover, New Jersey and no one ever heard of him again.

Dean and Brenda were divorced. Brenda moved to Florida with her mother. Dean moved to New Hampshire. There were rumors that he had ripped off a major drug dealer and there was a contract on him.

Someone said he moved to Portland, Oregon with the proceeds of his take and became a pot dealer there to support his habit on black tar heroin. They said he caught that flesh-eating bacteria from the black tar and died. Who knows? In that world, nothing seems to end well.

I knew all of them and decided to write this story. Me, I live on the internet. You can’t find me anywhere.

(Part One) A Controlled Dangerous Substance Act


There was Dean Levy and he was counting the Quaaludes and he kept losing the count at around fifty or sixty. It was beginning to make him mad and his wife Brenda came over to help and dropped the coffee on his lap and he jumped up.

“Come on. Watch out with that, huh,” Dean’s voice whined at her.

Chrissie Bishop and Billie Sky were laughing at them and bumbling around the room. Every time Billie said something to Christine, she would say, “What, what, what,” over and over because she was so high she couldn’t hear.

The dog Conan woke up and started snuffling around the door and looked up at Dean and then squatted. It was diarrhea and it was mixed with blood.

Brenda yelled, “Dammit Dean, didn’t you give Conan the hookworm medicine?”

She stumbled to the cabinet and pulled it open. The medicine was there and she took it down from the shelf. She opened it and dropped two caps into her hand. Dean gave her the finger, smiling at Billie and Billie laughed hard into the kitchen air. Chrissie had the paper towels in her hand and was wiping up the pool of brown mixed red from the floor and Brenda watched with wide eyes as Chrissie’s feet just slicked right out from under her and she managed to hold the towels above her head when she fell.

The mess in the towels was running down her arm and she was swearing. Everyone broke out laughing and Conan ran into the living room and hid behind the couch.

Dean lost the count again.

Brenda went over to the dog and opened the mouth of it. She dropped the caps in and rubbed his throat.

Billie helped Dean make the count right and filled two envelopes with one hundred pills each. There were seven hundred or more still in the jar that they had picked up from Sammy at the Frost Pharmacy in East Orange earlier that day. Which means, between selling close to seventy-five in the afternoon to Jon, who was a lawyer practicing in the District Attorney’s office in town, they had, between the four of them, eaten at least twenty-five of the Quaaludes.

They had to make a delivery. None of them were really in any shape to go out but Mickey, who was a regular customer, had called and he was in begging mode.

“Dean, Dean, I just can’t wait until tomorrow. Please. I’ll kick in an extra ten if you can deliver tonight.”

Dean, cash registers clicking in an otherwise dysfunctional mind, heard himself saying, “That would be per hundred, am I correct?” and the deal was sealed.

As fate would have it, more than just that deal was going down. Listening at the end of Mickey’s hook-up, grinning madly at each other, were the Orange, New Jersey’s finest undercover mad dog detectives who, at the most inopportune time, had come in on Mickey and his “pinch” (girl friend), known as Viola, whilst they were in the midst of selling some pills to one of the dicks.

Selling drugs to cops was bad for business. Unless, of course, they were your friends. Unfortunately for Mickey and his old lady these cops were not their friends but they certainly offered what appeared to be a deal that seemed quite reasonable at the time.

“So all you got to do is call the man for us and arrange for him to bring you two-hundred pills and we’ll let you guys slither on the sales charges and only press for the possession,” the pasty-faced Irish cop hissed at Mickey. “You know what a big difference that will make to the judge and you’ll have us testifying not to send you away. Your girl-friend is real pretty and she would have a rough time down at the Newark Street Jail.”

The detective named D’azeo snickered. “I’ll bet she’ll be the only white chick there, haw haw haw.”

Viola was crying by now and she said, “Mickey, Mickey, don’t you see that we have no choice?”

Pasty-faced Irish smiled and patted her gently on the shoulder as he breathed beer-breath in Mickey’s face and said, “You got a smart girl-friend. I hope you are as smart as her.”

“Haw haw haw,” laughed D’azeo. “I don’t know. It seems like they’ve been thinking about this so long. I really don’t think they want to help us. Let’s just take them down. It’s Friday night so they’ll be stuck in jail for the weekend.”

He turned to Mickey, grinning like some dogs do when spoken to with a bone in the air waving above their heads, “You’ll have a bigger arsehole after a weekend in there. Never have to worry about constipation again, har har har.”

Viola sobbed uncontrollably and Mickey had wide-spinning-like-a-rabbit-in-the-headlight eyes. He caved and took the phone that Irish held out to him. Mickey called Dean.

Dean was at the wheel and Brenda sat next to him all Quaalude loving him with her hands on him in places that were too numb to know the difference and he grinned and watched the lane lines move in the road. The wad of pills pressed Brenda in her wet spot between her legs and she wiggled around lighting a cigarette between the lips on her face that tingled with half-feeling.

Billie and Chrissie in the back seat of the big Chrysler moved into each other and her tongue moving in the back of Billie’s throat as he moaned and slid his hand into her unsnapped jeans and she made the sexing motion with his hand slipping into her sweet.

The lights of the road spilled ahead of them as Chrissi spilled into Billie’s hand and she reached for his and Brenda was so moved by the noise in the back seat that as they turned the corner onto the street where Mickey and Viola lived she reached into Dean’s shirt and began to play with his nipple and——–

The lights were all around them. Shouting. Beer breath. Irish eyes not smiling and guns in their faces and blue lights on spin and Dean swallowed his gum when Brenda almost pulled off the nipple on his chest as she whipped her hand away and Chrissie pulled back from Billie so fast that her breath was still hot as she pulsed empty and closed and Billie was coughing for breath because he knew that he was in big trouble. (To Be Continued)