An excerpt from my book

Chapter 11: Crack Epidemic

In the 1980s crack was in full force, the “Crack Epidemic” as it became known as was spreading all over New York like a disease. I didn’t get my hands on it until 1994. It was the end of September and the leaves on the trees were starting to change. The weather was getting cooler but not to the point where I would have to wear a heavy jacket. J.R. used to sell crack but once we started selling more and more coke and getting successful and popular, J.R. thought that it was time to start selling it again. We went to the same place to get the crack, Spanish Harlem. “You know what, we can buy some cooked from the guy,” I remember J.R. telling me on the drive over there. Crack was basically, cocaine mixed with baking soda and water cooked over a fire. It can be cooked in a coffee pot or jar over a flame. When the baking soda and the cocaine are mixed together it creates an oily mix. Once you remove the jar from the flame and swish it around in a circular motion everything goes to the middle and the mixture begins to solidify and it becomes hard like a rock. The better the cocaine is the more crack you can get out of it. If the cocaine was cut or mixed with baking soda already, then the freebase, another word for crack, wouldn’t be as good. 1 gram of cocaine we usually sold for $50. But after it was cooked we would make 10 pieces off the one gram and sell it for $10 each. We could sell the crack for more money by selling more of it we would make $100 from the 7 grams. “We’ll make a lot more money off the base. Watch, people will fiend for it a lot more than the blow,” J.R. told me in the car. I wasn’t too sure about selling crack because I heard rumors about what it did and how people would become addicted. I never seen crack heads before.

Since crack was smoked the heads experienced a high in less than 10 seconds. Once someone took a hit of crack they were immediately addicted and they would do anything to get it. When we got to Spanish Harlem I parked two blocks around the corner from the place. I never met the person that sold us the cocaine. J.R. wanted me to meet him on this particular day. All the guys that worked for the dealer hung out on the corner. They were the scouts to watch out in case cops come by. There was a different scout for each guy that lived in the building. We dealt with the guy who worked on the 3^rd floor. They had buzzers that looked like garage door openers, so in case they saw any cops or under cover detectives they would hit the buzzer and a buzzing sound would go on inside the building to inform the others. As we came around the corner all the scouts were trying to get us to deal with their guys. Jesus was the scout for our guy and he recognized J.R. Jesus spoke broken English; he was Puerto Rican, 5’10” with light skin and green eyes, short cropped hair and a thin looking mustache. He brought us up into the building. On the outside the building looked shitty; it looked like all the other buildings in Spanish Harlem. On the inside there were tiled floors, and looked very dingy. There were only two or three rooms on each floor and we had to go up to the 3^rd. The stairs greeted us when we first walked in. The building was 8 stories high. Jesus led us to 3b. Jesus knocked on the door, told them something in Spanish and they let us in. It was a tiny one bedroom apartment. Everything in the apartment was very dirty. The furniture was a dingy dark green couch and a burgundy chair with wood arms and Queen Anne legs in the living room.

The guy had all his shit in the bedroom but he was dealing with someone so we had to wait. There was a picture of the Virgin Mary on the wall, very typical for a Catholic home. The person he was dealing with was some chick, when she came out of the room we realized that she was a head and not another dealer. She looked strung out and yet happy to be receiving some more shit. There was a beaded curtain separating the living room from the bedroom. He let the chick out and relocked the door. He had a steel lock that he slammed down after the girl left and attached it to the wall to make sure we were locked in. He took us through the hall way to the bedroom. His bedroom had a small bed it looked big enough for only one person. He sat down at this vanity, and there was a picture taped on the mirror of a girl’s titties and midriff showing. He had his whole set up on the vanity table. He had a digital scale and beam. He had a bucket of cut straws for everyone to sniff, because people would test their shit right there. That was a way for him to test if there were undercover cops or not. So we had to sniff a line each of cocaine.

He had empty sandwich bags in the top drawer and cocaine in the middle drawer. It looked like he had a brick of it. He cut a chunk off his brick put it on the scale and wrapped it up for us. In the bottom drawer he had the cooked shit. It was an off white color; it looked like half a bar of “soap”. He had a shit load of crack in the drawer he gave us a whole bar of soap. We paid $1500 for all of it. J.R. put the cocaine in his pants and I put the crack in my pants. I was very nervous to have all that shit on me walking down the street. We didn’t know if there were cops looking out or under covers. I was trying not to make any stupid moves like people did in the movies. It was 9 pm on a week night so we wanted to get home as soon as possible. We went to the Web and broke up the shit so we wouldn’t have a whole lot on us. I’m sure my parents knew that I was home because they could see the garage light on. I hardly ever saw my parents so they were probably happy that I was home and safe.