Phoenix

An Excerpt for an unfinished book by Zach Pelfrey.

Zach wrote a series of action packed stories that felt straight out of a movie during his time in the prison workshop. We’re hoping to help him finish up his book now that he has been released.

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Two days passed. I didn’t leave the room even once--old pizza, tap water, a box of syringes and drugs was all someone as lonely as I was needed. I’d never waited that long before, but I knew I was dealing with an organization as reliable as Apple, just with a more aggressive payment plan.

Finally, mid-afternoon on the 17^th of February my cell phone rang with an unfamiliar number popping up. I answered the phone, and it was my amigo’s son. He was maybe fourteen years old, max. He asked what I wanted and I told him two powders raw (it was the same potency as white heroin, they just don’t like brown east of the Mississippi).

The ‘lil amigo offered me 17,000 little blue pills with the familiar M on them which would cost me $10,000, just under sixty cents apiece. Not knowing what they were exactly, just that they resembled the familiar pill that giant pharmaceutical companies had used to enslave both young and old Americans for their own greed, I asked for more info. He explained that they were pressed Fentanyl powder, stronger than hydrocodone, and cheaper, but with a very similar high. He kept trying to sell me on it, being the little narco boss he was, but in the end I declined, not really feeling comfortable with owing even more to the cartel. He told me the runner would meet me at Marisco’s in Buckeye at 3:00 pm.

Hanging up the phone I only had one thought: I wished I hadn’t flushed those pills I’d brought with me. Then, very clearly, I had an epiphany. Our own government allowed those giant pharma companies, or “White Coat Cartels,” as I liked to describe them, to get millions of Americans strung out for years, make billions upon billions of dollars, and after they’d made all that money off of the enslavement of their own people, they cut the supply, leading to a heroin pandemic.

But now the cartel was using the marketing of the oh so familiar M to push a lookalike substance, that was apparently better and stronger, for the millions of lost Americans, myself included, that were no longer customers of the pharmaceutical giants, but had become street junkies, supplied by corner boys, supplied by small dealers, supplied by me, supplied by the cartel.

They’d done the smartest and most ruthlessly savage move of any drug organization of all time. They played off our own country’s greed and lack of empathy for its people. Pharmaceutical companies created the drug addicts, and the cartel was just taking advantage of an abandoned market. A generation left to fend for itself, with nothing but methadone and Suboxone to help—band-aids pharma had put over a fatal wound it’d caused society while lining their pockets with revenue from broken homes.

As three O’clock came around I decided, due to paranoia, to call an Uber to drive me to the rendezvous rather than use my vehicle. The drive to Marisco’s was about ten minutes down the I-10 into Phoenix. I arrived, sat at a small table, and waited for my amigo’s runner to show up.

Seven minutes later a work truck pulled in and out came a Hispanic male who I’d seen five or six times in the past. He came in and picked up a to-go order of authentic Mexican cuisine. We both left together, got into his truck, and he put the two large bible-sized bricks under the Styrofoam food-carriers in the bag and handed it to me. He then said, in broken-English, to stay in contact. I assured him I would, but for good measure he showed me my fiancé’s Facebook page on his phone. Without saying anything, because I knew what they were capable of, I stepped out and re-ordered another Uber.

Sitting on the bench observing the mesmerizing Arizona sunset in a Mexican shopping center in West Phoenix, I started to think about how I’d put my family in danger once again for my heroin addiction. The one rule I promised myself I wouldn’t break I’d just broken. I now owed the devil money for two kilograms of heroin and a Mexican dinner.

In the Uber on my way back to the hotel I began to feel followed. I had nothing to say even though my driver felt the need to ask me my life story. I start to realize everything that I’d done--buying drugs from individuals who took pleasure in making examples of those who betrayed them after just finding out that my phones were wire-tapped, getting involved in a shooting, going through a forfeiture case, fleeing a high speed chase, and finally being arrested on a drug case from Oregon, all in less than six months.

The phrase “life had become unmanageable” didn’t quite cut it. As the Uber pulled into my hotel parking lot, I felt the need to switch my location. I re-booked my Uber again and my current driver informed me that as long as I was quick, he could drive me to my new hotel destination at Peoria on the I-17. At the new hotel I’d be closer to my high school buddy Sean who had been selling large amounts of cannabis and extract for me for many many years.

There, I’d package my product up to ship home so I could drive felony-free back to Oregon. I packed my bag around the two brown-taped bricks, threw it over my shoulder, grabbed my Mexican food and made my way back down to my ride. I left my vehicle at the old hotel and headed to North Phoenix.

I was far from the young handsome athlete with the world at his fingertips that I’d been growing up in that city, now I was no better than the hopeless lost junkies my mom used to pray I wouldn’t end up like. The entire twenty-to-thirty-minute drive I was surveying my surroundings, passing the Cardinals Stadium where I took my first love to prom, seeing the Diamondbacks’ Stadium from a distance where my pop took me to the 2001 World Series, and passing North High School where I used to work-out with a pro scout for the Chicago Cubs on the weekends. How had life taken such a wrong turn?

Arriving at the hotel, I unpacked, went downstairs and bought two forty-ounce Gatorades, then proceed back upstairs to do the job I always hated most. Unwrapping the product was tedious work. Layer after layer of brown tape followed Vaseline and red ink, followed by more tape and a layer of mustard, followed by even more tape, Vaseline and ink. I finally got through to a pair of pants and a shirt and hit pay dirt! There it was, sitting side by side, two of the sexiest ladies a drug addict could ever imagine.

Worth more than gold, killed over, and a killer in its own right, there sat two twenty-four kilogram units of pure heroin. Powder as fine as flour with a beige-brown tint and a smell so potent it could rock you to sleep with just a sniff, sending you to a world where you felt finally secure from your past pain and sorrows. That is until you woke up and found you had a new master and are no longer in control of your own fate.

I injected the smallest amount of dope possible, so I didn’t fall out in the middle of my federal crime scene. Then I took the two forty-ounce Gatorade bottles in my left hand and the kilo of heroin in the other to make sure they were of similar weight. I had no desire to carry a scale for the simple fact that it was one more way of being tied to more felony counts. The two forty-ounce bottles were my equivalent to weighing produce at the grocery store.

As usual, dealing with an organization with a 5-star reputation on Yelp! both bricks were on point. I took out my phone, not thinking, because I was not only high but also feeling quite accomplished, and called my fiancé. We spoke for a bit until she got tired and I told her I’d see her on the 19^th and that I loved her.

I started getting bored in the room. I decided to walk to the gas station down the street. I popped out, being very observant, and started walking. I noticed a Toyota Sequoia that had been in the parking lot of the hotel drive by me a couple of times. As I came out of the gas station it was at the pump, but not getting fuel.

As I walked back to the room, drinking my sweet tea and smoking a Marlboro 27, I noticed the Sequoia pull back into the hotel and park with a view of my door. Just then it hit me. I’d called one of my old cell phones when I’d spoken to my women. I sometimes gave her my old phone, because I’d switch out every two or three months. Paranoid and in a panic, I went to my room and contemplated the situation.

I re-wrapped the heroin to be mailed and walked to the ice-machine down the hall, out of sight of the Toyota and cameras. I hide the dope under the ice-machine up against the wall, then went to the back exit to make my way out. I walked over to the Cane’s Cajun Chicken next door and sat there with some food in front of me. I didn’t touched a thing until closing time when I tossed the food in the trash. I was too busy wondering if I’d ever kiss my fiancé again to eat anything.

Those hours felt like years. Then I went and found a cozy spot next to the chicken restaurant’s trash can in the back of the establishment where I could seek asylum until morning.

I was paranoid, an unstable mess. Of course, I couldn’t sleep because deep down a small part of me understood how far from home I truly was, even though I’d grown up close by. There were no longer any pleasantries in Phoenix for me, just sorrow and crime. So, there I sat, a mamma’s boy, college ball-player, my father’s only son, and soon supposed to be a husband, nestled up next to a fast food trash can trying to go to sleep for the first time in my life.

As the sun climbed over the mountains that surround Phoenix and into the valley, I started to brainstorm my plan. It began with calling Sean. It took two or three times, but he finally answered, waking him up from his usual alcoholic stupor. He told me to come over and we’d smoke a blunt before he drove me to the post office and then back to my vehicle.

Before making my way back to the ice-machine I peeked into the parking lot and to my surprise there was no Toyota. My nerves felt slightly calmer, I retrieved my product from under the ice-machine and went to my room to take my “medicine” before I started to be sick from LOHIMB: lack of heroin in my blood.

As always what started out as a quick investment of time eventually turned into a multi-hour horror show, which would only make me capable of operating physically for eight to ten hours before I needing to visit my master again. After ignoring Sean’s calls for a couple of hours for lack of hands to pick up the phone, I finally answered and told him that I’d be on my way soon, making my arrival in thirty-five to forty minutes. I booked an Uber to Cove Creek, which is the suburban town I was raised in, and packed my bags.

I sat in the lobby awaiting the arrival of a very late Uber driver. Twenty-five to thirty minutes passed and finally a vehicle with the Uber mark in the front window arrived. I loaded my bags into the tattooed man’s vehicle and slipped into the backseat. Nothing was said for a few moments and then he began to ask: “So what brought you to Phoenix, where are you from, and what do you do in Oregon?” Being a proud cannabis cultivator, as well as using it to cover up extra income, I was only too happy to divulge all of my information to a man who I’d never met before.

The drive up the I-17 wasn’t long going from our start to my old neighborhood. We talked just about every minute of the drive until finally exiting the freeway, passing the Sonic I used to ride my bike to after a long day at the skate park, and turning into Sean’s neighborhood.

I remember taking my phone out to text my fiancé: “Hey I made it to…” when I looked up and saw Sean’s car parked about 500 yards down the road. As we passed a cul-de-sac on our right-hand side I saw a set of unmarked Toyota SUVs and Jeep Tahoes all roaring to life. My Uber driver pulled over before the cars were even behind us. Surrounding the small car the undercovers all jumped out before I could even think to run, all pointing semi-automatics at my face.

I put my hands up and was pulled out the open window. Being 290 pounds and six foot three, I don’t fit through windows real well, so I struggled and was struck by multiple cops several times in the face until I was laid down on my stomach with a knee on my neck and handcuffs on my wrist for the second time in less than a month.

The Uber driver got out of his car. I saw him pulling his badge up from under his sweatshirt. He looked at me smiling a smile I’ll never forget, as he began to half-hug, half-chest bump with his fellow officers. Before they put me into one of the police vehicles he told them to put my handcuffed hands in front rather than behind me, so I could smoke. They threw my lighter into my hands and my pack of smokes in my lap as I began to feel the emotion of my journey beginning to come to a grueling halt.

My head was hanging in complete defeat more severe than any sports loss. With eyes full of tears, I saw the undercovers remove my bag from the vehicle. They sat it on the asphalt and began to unzip it. I told them they didn’t have a search warrant for my bag, but one of the officers informed me that I still had a warrant from a high-speed chase from about four months ago.

I looked down the street towards Sean’s to see him leaning up against his car in heavy silence. I knew he felt sorry about who I’d become. I prayed to God to just take my life because death seemed easier than change, knowing in that moment that the only way out of my broken life was through the maze of loneliness and violence that lay ahead of me.