The graduate.
17
1997: Hands Over Your Head
Back in California, I still had a few months of probation left. One of my first priorities was dealing with Sean, who’d ditched me on the day I dragged the Secret Service agent four blocks. I heard he was living at his father’s house off of Sandyland Road, in Carpinteria. He was a big, tough, athletic guy, and I went there planning to stab him, but when I arrived he took off running.
Then I moved to L.A. and got a small apartment on the Westside with my friend Josh, a graffiti artist I’d met at Provo, and Jamie, a skate buddy from Carpinteria. I started to focus on music again, skated a lot, took some courses at Santa Monica College, and partied every night.
Early one morning, when half a dozen friends were passed out in our living room, there was a knock at the door. I knew it was Cynthia, from Utah. She’d been in town for six days and I’d been ducking her; and a few minutes earlier, she’d called from a pay phone on the corner. I’d told her I didn’t think it was a good idea for us to see each other, and she hung up, pissed.
I wasn’t sure how she’d found my apartment, which looked like all the others in our huge apartment complex, but the knocking continued. I lay in bed, wishing her not to be there, hoping she’d go away. She knocked more aggressively, pounding now. Boom boom boom. I got up and tiptoed to the door and looked through the peephole. My friends were looking at me in drowsy confusion. I shushed them. I still thought maybe she’d go away, but then she started kicking the door.
After one kick, I opened the door and let her in. As she stood there in jeans, a flannel shirt, and hiking boots, looking like an Outward Bound guide, Josh said, “Holy shit, Ms. S., fancy meeting you here!” She suddenly looked vulnerable. I could see the realization hitting her: What the fuck am I doing here? I thought she might have a breakdown. Then she said, “Does anyone want to order a pizza?” To save her from her own painful awkwardness, I whisked her into my bedroom and had a talk with her. I told her she was embarrassing herself. I reminded her that I was eighteen, and that she had a husband and children back in Utah. I told her to go home, and she did.
* * *
—
Though I was partying a lot, I was more focused than I’d ever been. DJs were starting to make big money. I’d been DJing for years, and I thought that was what I wanted to do with my life. When I joined my friends Jay and Paul to go snowboarding in Big Bear, I discovered they’d gotten deeply into prescription drugs. Paul had robbed a series of pharmacies at knifepoint, and had stockpiled a lot of pills, and in Big Bear he and Jay spent all their time in the house, out of their minds. I wasn’t into zoning out and playing video games all day—I wanted to get things accomplished—and I left them there and hitchhiked back to L.A.
One of my roommates had a little gun that we kept under the couch for protection. We had a house rule: the gun was never to leave the premises. But one evening, after drinking two 40s with our neighbor Ron, a big dude who also skated and had just come home from prison, I decided for some reason that I’d wear the gun in the waistband of my pants when we went out. Ron and I skated and drank our way down Sunset Boulevard to West Hollywood, planning to make a little video. We went into Mel’s Drive-In, got some food to go, and left without paying. There was a commotion as the owner saw us leaving and tried to block us, but as soon as he spotted the pistol at my waist, he stopped pursuing us. At that point I had a moment of clarity and decided to empty the gun’s chamber and clip, leaving the bullets on the ground.
Twenty minutes later, Ron and I were a few blocks away, drunkenly eating our food at a picnic table and listening to the Beastie Boys on a boom box. My back was to the street. Suddenly, I heard a rustling in the bushes behind me and voices yelling. I turned around and saw four LAPD cars at the curb and a couple of cops on their knees pointing shotguns at us. The diner’s owner must have called 911. A spotlight blinked on, and an amplified voice said: “Slowly stand up, and put your hands over your head.”
I was trying to figure out what to do with the gun in my waistband, and even though the cops were yelling that I needed to have my hands over my head, I kept reaching down toward the gun. I wanted to throw it. The cops started screaming: “Keep your fucking hands away!” Finally I put my hand into my waistband and tossed the gun up the hill, and started walking backward with my hands in the air. This was the era of the trigger-happy LAPD, and it’s a miracle they didn’t shoot me. I was probably saved by my skin color and the neighborhood we were in. In the car to the precinct, a cop told me I’d come very close to being shot.
Up to no good on the Lower East Side.
* * *
—
Ron was out on parole, and his mother wrote me a letter saying the police were trying to pin the gun charge on him, which would mean he’d go back to prison for a long time. She asked if I would please testify that the gun was mine, and I did, writing out an affidavit.
I got lucky. Emptying the gun’s chamber and clip had been a smart move, because a loaded firearm would bring much more severe charges than an unloaded one. Since I was still serving out my juvenile probation, the new charge was treated as a violation of that, rather than as a new adult crime. So although I was sentenced to four to six months behind bars, and I’d serve the time in the Santa Barbara County Jail, once I was released I’d be off probation, my case closed.
Mom and Dad were predictably disappointed. They’d allowed themselves to hope that, post-Provo, I would put away childish things and be a productive citizen of the world. But I was caught up in my lifestyle, forming tight bonds with a like-minded group of friends, and didn’t give a fuck. And now I was eighteen; Mom and Dad weren’t legally responsible for me, and I wasn’t legally accountable to them.
* * *
—
County jail, on a hill overlooking the 101 freeway, was my first taste of the adult penal system. I was a boy among men, many of them on their way to or from prison. Here, I could see the color lines drawn even more starkly than in juvie. The Mexicans and blacks couldn’t stand each other, and Mexicans and whites sometimes formed alliances. Generally, you’d eat with “your own kind.”
I was in gen pop, which sucked because it meant that other than during the limited hours when I was allowed to go out to the yard, I was indoors all the time. I took part in the jail’s drug rehab program, mainly because I liked the guy who ran it, Dave Vartabedian, who I knew from juvie days, and because my participation would reduce my sentence. I got a job in the kitchen, waking at 4 a.m. to stand on the dishwashing line and work the sprayer until 11 a.m. After breakfast, we’d set up an assembly line in the chow hall to make sandwiches for Juvenile Hall, the same one I’d spent so much time in, which was across the road from the county jail. One guy laid down a slice of bread, another a slice of cheese, another a gob of mayonnaise, and another the bologna or turkey or mystery meat of the day. The boxes the meat came in were stamped FOR INSTITUTIONAL USE ONLY.
My first few weeks in County, I was able to keep my identity under wraps. The jail had registered me under my middle name, thinking that my last name might put me in danger. But when guards addressed me, I was sometimes slow to react. They’d be doing roll call, and I’d be dead-tired from getting up for the 4:30 a.m. kitchen detail. Someone would elbow me, and I’d snap to. “Morrell! Morrell! Are you fucking ignoring me?” the sheriff would say. “No, no!” I’d say. “Here! Here!”
Then, through Dave’s intervention, I got moved to the Honor Farm, the cushier section of the complex. The Honor Farm had vending machines. I could move around freely and go outside when I wanted. The yard was wide open, with a volleyball court and a small weight pit, and oversight was so lax that it felt almost like the movie Stir Crazy. Guys on kitchen duty walked to the fence near the loading dock to see their mothers and girlfriends, who’d hand them packages, often containing drugs and other contraband, which the guys would bring back to the unit.
My lawyer visited and said the police were tar
geting me for a series of pharmacy robberies in the area. Several witnesses had picked me out in multiple pictures. I said, “Listen, I know who did them, and it wasn’t me.” I figured my face looked familiar to the witnesses not because they’d ever seen me, much less seen me robbing pharmacies, but because of my resemblance to Dad and Pappy. “It’s not looking good for you,” my lawyer said. I couldn’t believe it; I was going to get charged with robberies I had nothing to do with.
When Jay and Paul visited me, Paul was so fucked up on pills that the supervising officer said, “Either your friend has to pull it together, or he has to go.” I told Paul about my lawyer’s visit, and how witnesses thought I’d done the pharmacy robberies. Paul had brought a little supply of pills to pass to me, but once the guards started watching him closely, he was able only to drop a couple of Xanax pills in my soda. My short career as a pharmacy-robbery suspect came to an end when, while I was still in jail, Paul decided to rob one of the pharmacies again. This time, Marcus Allen, the former Raiders running back and Heisman Trophy winner who lived in Montecito, happened to be in the pharmacy and chased Paul down and tackled him, holding him until police arrived.
* * *
—
In the Honor Farm we wore blue jeans, a blue collared shirt, and workboots. We slept in barracks-style housing in a room with maybe twenty bunkbeds and forty people. The bathroom had no stalls or even dividers, just a line of showerheads with four nozzles each and a row of toilets without partitions. I learned how to shit prison-style: underwear hiked to upper thighs to mask my groin, and pants up around the knees.
Keeping my underwear and pants high was partly for privacy and partly so that I could stand up fast if I needed to. In front of the toilets was a row of sinks. If you were on the toilet and caught a guy at a sink looking at you in the mirror, it was a red flag. The number one rule in prison is to mind your own business. You notice everything, but the other person shouldn’t know you notice. You don’t want to get caught looking at someone unless you’re prepared to rape them or beat them up.
In the absence of partitions or any other accommodation for human shame, not to mention odor control, prison custom was to keep your arm behind you and flush, repeatedly, as you voided your bowels. If someone was lax about flushing while shitting, there’d be a loud chorus of “Water down! Water’s free! Flush the toilet!”
The Honor Farm was a whole compound, separated from the main prison by a huge wall; a tunnel connected the two units. One day, standing in line to exchange my linens and get a fresh set of clothes at the jail laundry, I was talking to the person ahead of me when I saw a guy drop from a tree that grew on our side of the wall but whose branches loomed out over the other side. Then another one did the same, and another, and another. On the Honor Farm side, we were all cheering, “Yeah, go! Go! Go! Go!” The men took off running and stole a car outside the probation office. Police caught two of the guys immediately. They caught a third guy a few days later. A week after that, in L.A., they captured the fourth and final man at large. He was at his girlfriend’s house, the most obvious possible place.
Even the Honor Farm felt serious. One time, Sammy, an older Mexican gangster, and another Mexican gangbanger went into a closet to fight. They really went at it. Sammy was bigger, and I feared for the smaller guy’s health. But he was tough as shit, and he made it through without being seriously hurt. It reinforced my belief that while size mattered, fierceness of character was a significant factor in a fight’s outcome. Fights were different here than in juvie, more savage. People would bite ears and gouge eyes. Essentially, anything went, because you were fighting for your life.
I got along with most people. As one of the younger inmates, I felt almost like a mascot. But maybe because of my youth, a bigger, older surfer dude with a shaved head, who seemed pissed off at life, kept giving me a hard time. He probably thought I’d be scared and take whatever he dished out. You could still smoke in jails then, and one day a few of us were out on the yard talking when this asshole, out of nowhere, put his cigarette out on my arm.
I didn’t pull my arm away. I waited until he was done. Then I went to town on him, punching him in the face. He went down, and I got a few more punches in before other guys broke it up. I hadn’t been acting like a tough guy in jail, but I’d gotten into decent shape working out in the weight pit, and I felt pretty good about the beatdown I delivered. I felt bionic, unable to be defeated in any way. Afterward, Sammy named me El Tigre, and all the Mexicans started calling me that.
* * *
—
Dad visited once while I was in county jail. We met in a private room, but he’d arrived in a chauffeured town car. Afterward, another inmate pulled me aside and said something about it. “So what?” I said. From then on, my identity was known, which inevitably prompted fights.
Mom had flown to India right before I went to jail, for what was supposed to be a quick trip. Three months later she was still there, and I received a visit from Todd Raines, her fiancé, and his kids. Todd and Mom had just moved into a grand, newly built house together. The house was probably a stretch for Todd financially, but Mom had insisted, and he loved her.
Now he’d come to tell me that he’d run out of patience. As Mom kept extending her stay in India, a rumor was circulating that she was spending a lot of time with a young maharaja, and Todd believed it. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, and Todd was weary of feeling like second fiddle. He was crushed, which broke my heart. I’d come to genuinely love him, and his kids as well. I was sad for Mom, too. Without knowing the nuances of their relationship, I didn’t think she’d ever find a man more suited to her standards, and I believed she’d come to regret losing Todd.
Mom got back from India just in time for my release from county jail. At 3 a.m., I walked with my little bag of personal property through a tunnel and out into a parking lot with huge lights. Mom was waiting in her Range Rover, and she brought me back to the house. My probation was over. For the first time in four years, I was not under a court’s supervision.
Soon after that, Mom hosted a long-planned housewarming, an opulent soiree for all of her and Todd’s friends, a Who’s Who of Santa Barbara. I was surprised to see Todd, but he hadn’t yet dropped the hammer on her. I also didn’t realize just how deeply stung he felt.
I left the party when it was still going strong, to meet up with friends. When I came home later that night, I found Mom crying hysterically. She said that Todd and another woman had been on the dance floor, getting hot and heavy, and she’d gone over and demanded that he stop and come with her to talk elsewhere. He’d refused, then shared a deep, passionate kiss with the woman. Mom, mortified, had fled, weeping. Now she tried to get me worked up, decrying Todd’s malevolence and expounding on her own victimhood. I sensed that she was hoping I would rise to defend her honor. But I loved Todd, and was offended by her behavior, and this time I felt indifferent to her predicament.
18
2007: Inspector Gadget
The cruise with Dad, island to island, is beautiful. I shoot up in my upper thighs, where the track marks won’t be visible under my shorts. My addiction is growing, but I can still pass as sober, and we all get along. One night during dinner, Neil Young’s “Old Man” is playing, and Erin mentions that I listen to the song all the time. Dad starts tearing up. Then he comes around the table and gives me a kiss.
The crystal intercepted by the LAPD doesn’t get tracked back to me and Erin, but clearly we need to be more disciplined and creative. When we return home, we put more effort into our packaging. We mix the meth in with innocuous products like jars of scented bath salts, and we experiment with other ways to conceal it—in a bag of candy, in a gumball machine, in a VCR. We do some Googling and learn that carbon paper helps thwart X-ray machines, so we wrap the drugs in that and have Emmanuel use it to wrap the money he’s sending as well. I add a few extra ounces of crystal to each new shipment to Emmanuel, to make up for the intercepted pound he
already paid for.
* * *
—
In the spring, Alex introduces me to a guy in New York named Trevor Mitchell, who wants to buy pound quantities of crystal. He’s very smart and well educated, and he, like Emmanuel, wholesales to the gay club scene. I meet him at his apartment in Chelsea, and he gives me $72,000 in cash, telling me to hold on to it: He’ll let me know when he’s ready to start receiving shipments. Returning to L.A., I smuggle the money in a cereal box.
A few months later, Erin and I return home to a message on our answering machine from Alex. It’s cryptic. He says he has been arrested by the DEA and sent to rehab, and that I should watch my back.
Alex has called a few times in the preceding months, seemingly to talk business, and now I wonder whether he has been working for the DEA. I replay the conversations in my mind. I’m always careful about what I say on the phone—anyone listening in would hear vague references to “seeing my friend” and “sending gifts” and “picking up paperwork”—and I feel confident that even if those calls were being recorded, I didn’t say anything incriminating. But after Alex’s warning, I decide to put a hold on my meth distribution business.
* * *
—
While I figure out how to proceed, I make some cash robbing a couple of drug dealers. These new robberies are another line crossed. I’m in a different frame of mind now. My pellet-gun stickups were the desperate acts of a lost, lonely, cocaine-crazed maniac grasping for some tenuous sense of power, a feeling that I still had some balls and wasn’t a total failure. But they were gateway robberies, getting me past a threshold of timidity.
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