...and cocaine for all

The chain of command at O’Malley’s Bar and Grill went as follows: owner, general manager, bar manager, kitchen manager, bartenders, wait staff, cooks, dishwashers, and at the very bottom of the heap was the bar cleaning crew, which consisted of Big Mike and his partner Von. Bike Mike was just like his name described, weighing in at over two hundred and fifty pounds, but that was the least of his problems. His looks could best be described as ugly-and that was being kind; one was tempted to call him hideous-his skin complexion mottled, greasy, and pocked with old acne scars. His front teeth were missing from years of free-basing cocaine and the remaining teeth looked like decaying, crumbling tombstones in a long forgotten cemetery. His demeanor was rough and crude, his intelligence dim at best, which made for an interesting cleaning duo because he was the brains of the operation.
Von looked small compared to Big Mike-he was the Laurel to the other’s Ollie-but anyone looked small next to the big man. Von’s limbs were skinny but he had a sizable paunch from all the beer he drank. He was a black man straight from the hood-Cabrini Green to be exact-but he had assimilated himself well into the white man’s world if only to be their underpaid lackey, which suited him just fine. The neighborhood he came from, you were a success if you managed to get a job, any job, no matter what it paid. The fact that he didn’t have to sell drugs or run with a gang made his mother happy. He was the better looking of the two, but that wasn’t saying much and, like Big Mike, he loved his cocaine, however he could get it.
The tier of drug dealer’s in O’Malley’s went as follows: Johnny Johnson, one of the cooks, controlled the market in powder. His brother Shaka, a dishwasher, handled the crack and dime bags of shitty often-laced weed. Scooter, the doorman, handled quarters and half ounces of weed but he loaded up the bags with seeds and stems to make them appear to weigh more then they really did. Mark, another one of the cooks, sold mushrooms, ecstasy, mescaline and LSD, and of all the dealers he was the least financially motivated. And then there was Patrick, one of the bartenders, who handled large quantities of weed, in fact, was the main supplier to Scooter and Shaka. Anyone who knew what was going on talked to him personally instead of going through his rinky-dink middlemen.
Big Mike had no interest in marijuana or psychedelics, he was solely enchanted with cocaine, whether snorted, smoked or-occasionally-shot-up. His addiction had been purely incidental; he enjoyed the drug so much that he tried to make a habit out of using it every day until, alas, it became a habit and he had no choice. Von, on the other hand, had joined the erstwhile team at O’Malley’s with a cocaine addiction already onboard. The only reason he worked was so that he could keep himself in rocks or powder.
Which leads us to Big Mike’s decrepit room over the bar where beer and booze bottles are strewn around the room randomly, some of them half filled with piss. Big Mike obtained some ether through a friend of his that cleans at a sports bar down the street and is preparing some cocaine for he and Von to freebase. Von is leaning over the board on cinder blocks that Big Mike calls a table, fairly drooling while the other gets everything ready.
“Back off ya fucker, let me work!” Big Mike growls and Von smiles humbly but doesn’t move an inch.
“Well if you could make those fat fingers work faster I wouldn’t be starin’ I’d be smokin’ right now.” Von says in his light, girlish voice.
“As soon as this is ready I’m taking the first hit.”
“But I paid for most of it!”
“He man, we’re a team. What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is also mine, ya dig?”
“You fat fuckin’ piece of white trash!” Von says harshly.
“You nigger fuckin’ piece of nigger trash!” Big Mike volleys back with a slight smile and the two of them stare at each for a second.
“You always gotta be playin’ the race card with me, don’t you?”
“You called me a piece of white trash first.” Big Mike says, letting the mixture cool, reaching for the glass pipe and the Bunsen burner.
“I just calls it as I sees it.” Von retorts and Big Mike snorts derisive laughter.
“Yeah? Well I’ll show you who’s a piece of white trash…” Big Mike loads some cocaine into the glass pipe and hands it to Von who takes it but not without a bit of disbelieve in his eyes.
“Are you sure?” Von asks and Big Mike smiles.
“Go ahead. You’ve earned it.”
Von puts the pipe to his lips and Big Mike sparks up the Bunsen burner. Soon he is puffing up large clouds of smoke, his cheeks bulging as he tries to hold it all in. When his lungs can’t take it any more he finally exhales and the look on his face is one of pure contentment.
“Ahhh,” he sighs. “You ain’t such a bad guy after all Big Mike.”
“Yeah, yeah. Now hold this so I can take a hit…”
It goes on like this for several hours until they are staring at the ever-brightening sky and the last of the cocaine on a plate before them. This is usually when depression sets in, when the coke is almost gone and a new day is dawning. Sleep is almost never an option, only the idea of where they can get more coke, which takes more money, which these fools consistently never have. This is where the scheming starts.
“Can you get Johnny to front us some more?” Von invariably asks.
“He fronted half of this.” Big Mike says, scratching his pimply back with a grimy, black fingernail. “Didn’t you tell him we would pay him the rest today?”
“Yeah.” Von admits, sighing, looking at the remainder of the coke on the plate. “I need to think some more.”
So they do up the last of it, but not without the usual remorse, taking every hit while thinking of the next one. That’s how the addiction works: pretty soon you are beyond seeing what is in front of you and can only think of the next one, knowing that you are that much closer to being out.
When it’s gone they eventually start arguing because there is nothing left to do but feel bad. They call each other every name they can think of until they run out of ways to use the words ‘fuck’, ‘nigger’ and ‘white trash’, on account of their poor education and limited vocabulary. At last they are silent, feeling sorry for themselves.
“We have to go to work in an hour.” Big Mike comments and Von nods demurely. The big W. The mere mention of the word makes both of their heads ache.
But this is a new day, a new era as it may be, and Von suddenly has an idea like none other than he has had before.
“I know where we can get more money.” He says.
“Yeah? Is your sister out of jail?”
“No, she’ll be in county for another month, but I’m talkin’ some real money.”
“You gonna hold up a gas station?”
“No, but your getting’ close…”
* * *
And this is how the two found themselves in the basement of O’Malley’s with a crow bar, claw hammer and a long handled screwdriver.
“We shouldn’t be doing this.” Big Mike says, looking around them as Von places one end of the crow bar into an opening in the safe and pries with all of his might.
“They ain’t gonna know it was us. As soon as we get the money we’ll get some more coke and then we’ll call the cops ourselves, like we found it when we came in to clean this morning.”
“And who do you think they’re gonna blame? One of the bartenders?”
“Doesn’t matter, as long as it ain’t us.” Von is sweating with exertion and cocaine withdrawal combined.
“Yeah, but we got keys to the place.”
“So we’ll jimmy the door to make it look like an outside job. Now shut-up and help me with this!”
* * *
Johnny opens his door slowly, the smell of crack smoke drifting out around him.
“What are you fools doing here?” He croaks, his throat dry and scratchy from drug use and lack of sleep.
“We came to pay you for the blow and see if we could get some more.” Von says as Big Mike stands behind him, looking sketchy.
“I’m not fronting you any more today, so you can forget it.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said we came to pay you, which means that we have money to buy some more!” Von says, his voice rising.
“Shhh! Keep yer fuckin’ voice down!” Johnny says but the door opens wide enough to let the two in. “Now sit down and shut-up!”
The two take a seat on the couch as Johnny triple bolts the door behind them. There is a girl laying on the floor naked, her legs splayed wide open and her vagina shiny with lubricant.
“That’s my girlfriend Darlene. She passed out a few hours ago.” Johnny says, picking up a small, slender crack pipe and heating a piece of rock cocaine inside. When it melts enough to suit him he takes a long pull, holds it, then exhales the smoke through his nose. He offers the pipe to Von, who takes it greedily. After Von gets a hit he passes it to Mike who follows suit, except that it is almost gone and barely gets anything.
“I’ll reload it when it cools down.” Johnny says, his eyes slightly crossed as the coke fires up his fried brain, if only for a few minutes before it becomes numb and stupid again.
“What do you guys want?” He asks.
Now, before the two got here they discussed this at length. They knew that it would look suspicious if they bought a large amount; surely everybody at the bar would have known if one of them collected an insurance policy from a dead relative or won the lottery, so it was in their best interest not to go waving around large amounts of cash in front of anyone who was soon to find out that the safe had been broken into. They had agreed that they should just purchase a couple of grams, saying they had gotten the money from Von’s brother, who had recently taken work as a city bus driver.
But now that they here in the lion’s den, so to speak, and they knew that Johnny often had considerable amounts of coke on hand, the urge to splurge was upon them.
“I was thinking maybe an eight ball…” Von starts and Johnny lifts an eyebrow.
“You ain’t got the money for an eight ball.” Johnny says, then looks at the two of them closely, well, as closely as he can for someone who has been up all night doing cocaine.
“Where’d you get the money?”
“We found it-” Big Mike starts.
“My brother lent it to me-” Von says, their words colliding into one another’s.
Johnny looks at them suspiciously.
“So which is it?”
“His brother lent it to him-” Big Mike starts.
“We found it-” Von says.
Johnny feels the pipe to see if it has cooled down, and then loads another rock in it. He melts it, takes a hit, and then passes it to Big Mike who sucks on it gratefully.
“You guys are actin’ pretty shady.” He says, reaching into a drawer in the table in front of him and pulling out a large baggy full of white powder. Von’s eyes go wide. There must be at least an ounce in there. “But show me the money and I’ll see what I can do.”
Big Mike fishes bills out of his pockets as Von continues to stare, throwing a wad on the table.
“Ah, Mr. big spender. Am I going to be seeing something about this on the news?”
“Naw, nothing like that…” Big Mike says but his face turns slightly red.
Von gets up quickly.
“I gotta use the bathroom.” He says. “You mind?”
“Not as long as you make it in the toilet.” Johnny says, scooping out a pile of coke and laying it on a triple beam scale he produced from under the table.
“Thanks.” Von disappears while Big Mike looks at the pile growing before him. He doesn’t know how Johnny can do it, have all this coke around him and not go totally crazy. If that were Big Mike’s stash he probably wouldn’t leave the room until it was gone.
“So where did you guys really get the money?” Johnny asks as he works, adding small increments to the pile until it is at the desired weight.
“Like we said, uh, we got it from my, I mean, Von’s brother…”
Johnny stops what he is doing and looks Big Mike in the eyes.
“Look man, I don’t really care, just don’t tell me you stole it from O’Malley because that would be the lowest of low, if you can dig what I’m sayin’.”
Big Mike swallows thickly, dropping his eyes to he floor.
“Uh, yeah man, I don’t want to tell you that…”
“You stole the money from O’Malley?” Johnny says incredulously, standing up quickly. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Um, I didn’t say that.” Big Mike says, looking up at him with what can only be described as a stupid look on his face.
“You didn’t have to, I can read you like a fuckin’ TV!” Johnny says, reaching for his cell phone.
“What are you doing?” Big Mike asks nervously, getting to his feet.
“I’m callin’ the big man himself, what do you think I’m doin’? You don’t fuck around with that guy!” Johnny opens up the phone, begins punching numbers in.
And suddenly Von emerges from the bathroom, clutching the crow bar that did the job so nicely on the safe.
“You ain’t callin’ nobody!” He says, his high-pitched voice even higher due to his excitement.
“What, you gonna fuckin’ hit me now? Is that what you think you gonna do?”
“I know I’m gonna hit you, now put the phone down!”
“I’d do what he says…” Big Mike ventures when suddenly Von flies forward, swinging the crowbar like he’s Mickey Mantle or his modern day equivalent and before Johnny can raise an arm to defend himself his mouth is gushing blood and teeth. He falls backwards into his chair, the phone falling from his hand, but not before he hit the ‘send’ button.
This is what Brian O’Malley hears on the other end when he finally extracts himself from between the two women he was sleeping with and puts the phone to his ear:
“The fuck did you do that for? I think you killed him!”
From the timbre of the voice, O’Malley thinks, it sounds like his bar cleaner Big Mike.
“He was gonna call the boss! I couldn’t let him do that!”
Judging by the high-pitched squeal of the other voice, it’s his numb nuts partner, Von.
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to hit him! And what the fuck are you doing still carryin’ that fuckin’ crowbar?”
“I brought it along just in case something like this happened!”
“What, so we could get arrested for robbery and murder?”
“Just grab the fuckin’ cocaine and let’s get the fuck out of here!”
“Wait!” Big Mike yells and for a moment there is silence. Then: “Let’s toss this place. I’m sure he’s got a lot of money stashed around here somewhere.”
O’Malley listens to this in stony silence. He gets out of bed and walks over to his dresser where his cell phone is. Still listening on his landline, he dials a number on the cell.
“Hello?” A voice groggy from lack of sleep answers.
“Patrick, something has come up and we are going to have to resort to plan B.”
Suddenly the voice becomes crystal clear.
“Yes sir.” A pause and then: “Where is the rendezvous point?”
“JJ’s place.” O’Malley lights a cigar, blows billows of smoke toward the ceiling. “Call the others and tell them to get their asses there quick, before my money gets out the door.”
“Yes sir!”
“And Patrick…”
“Yes?”
“Don’t let the cops get involved.”
“No sir!” O’Malley hangs up the phone and looks out the window at the new day. One of the girls stirs on the bed behind him, scratching herself before turning over and going back to sleep. He turns and looks at the two of them for a second, notes that one of them doesn’t look as pretty as she did last night, sighs, and decides he needs a drink.